had closed her ‚ngers on the small plastic capsules as if to hide them.
Deborah had turned herself in.
* * * *
“It’s over,” Shaug said, gesturing for the headset.
Ruth stepped back from him. “You don’t have my other guy,” she said. She’d almost used his name. Maybe she still should. Foshtomi had immediately guessed who was helping her and it might improve her stance if they knew who held the parasite— one of the few men who’d walked out of Sacramento. “Make the call,” she said. “You’re short on time.”
“We’ll ‚nd him,” Shaug said.
“I don’t care. If he pops the capsule, that’s it. The nanotech hits us ‚rst. You lose everyone who’s evacuated and every forward unit across the Rockies.”
Caruso grimaced. “This is insane.”
“Make the call,” Ruth said to the comm specialist before she turned to Shaug and Caruso again. “Don’t you get it? If you do it my way, the Chinese retreat. We win. Please.” She stared into their faces. “Please.”
The headset only rang once.
“Yeah,” Cam said, as steady as always. His voice set her heart thumping again.
“Are you okay?” she asked, too loud.
“Yeah. What’s going on?”
Ruth found it very easy to picture him alone with nothing except his ri†e and his pack, hurrying across the mountainside. After all this time, he belonged out there, whether he wanted it or not. He would have crossed below the barrier hours ago, losing himself in the trees and rock, but he was no longer wearing goggles or mask, his face exposed to the wind…and in Ruth’s imagination, his dark eyes lifted at the drumbeat of helicopters…
“I need you to go through with it,” Ruth said gently. Then she realized how that might have sounded. “No, I mean, just keep moving, but I need you to stay ready.”
“If you—” Cam said.
Another voice broke in. Grand Lake’s people had been listening all along and Ruth felt a sickening bolt of panic as a new man on her headset said, “Najarro, this is Major Kaswell. Stand down, soldier. Do you understand? Stand down. If you let her use that nanotech, you’ll kill thousands of your own people.”
Cam didn’t even respond to the other man. “If you think it’s best,” he said.
“I do,” Ruth answered like a promise.
He was the perfect one to shoulder the responsibility. He was accustomed to relying only on himself and to being apart. Maybe he even resented them because he wanted so much to belong but always felt on the outside.
“Cam,” she said, without thinking. Then she repeated it. “Cam, thank you.” She knew they had to keep their conversation short to prevent Grand Lake from triangulating him, and she wanted to make their connection as real as possible. “Don’t worry about me,” she said.
“You’ll be ‚ne.” Then his tone changed. “You let her go or I’ll release the nanotech anyway,” he said to everyone else on the line. Then he hung up. There was so much more to say and they’d never had the chance.
Ruth was shaking. She nearly dropped the button. But she had learned to channel the force of her emotions and she turned it on Shaug and Caruso. She let the tremor show in her voice. “I’ll give you one hour,” she said. “Get your planes ready. We’d better have them in the air before we warn the Chinese, or they might just sterilize this place with another nuke.”
Caruso said, “We need longer than that!”
“One hour. I’m through arguing.”
“Goddamn it, this is insane.”
“We win,” Ruth said. “Do this and we win.”
The parasite had it all, the advanced targeting of the new vaccine and the unparalleled replication speed of the machine plague. Because it lacked the hypobaric fuse, it would spread worldwide in far less time than it had originally taken the plague, ‚lling the atmosphere, riding the jet stream. The nanotech would hit Europe and Africa in days instead of weeks, dooming everyone to the tiny fragments of land above ten thousand feet. With their other war in the Himalayas, the Chinese couldn’t risk it even if the Russians might — and without their allies, the Russians would also fold.
“Think what those bastards did to us,” Shaug said. “You’re going to let them keep California?”
“Some of it. For now. What does it matter?”
“It’s our home! It’s ours.”
“They’ll go back to their homes if we let them. If we give them a little time. They’ll go back or I’ll wipe them out. Just them, don’t you get it?” Ruth knew she could design a new plague to eradicate the enemy — only them, all of them — a smart bug that understood geographical limits. The parasite was merely the ‚rst step in a stunning new level of nanotech.
“Then do it now,” Caruso said. “Kill them now.”
“No.”
He was as exhausted as all of them, she realized at last, and since the invasion he’d seen little except defeat. He would grasp at any straw, but she would never start a genocide if there was any other option. Even a new plague would not be instantaneous. The Chinese would have time to launch their missiles.
The desperate nations around the world simply could not continue ‚ghting. The cost was too steep and there was no end in sight except total collapse.
“It has to stop somewhere,” Ruth said, blazing with sorrow and faith. “It stops today.”
25
The mountainside was busy with people, a confusion of dark shapes against the lighter earth. Hundreds of them formed two slow-moving chains, following the long
Cam stood motionless above a short cliff, squinting into the light. “So many soldiers,” he said.
Allison grinned. “That’s good.”
He shook his head. Grand Lake seemed to be losing a signi‚cant number of troops to desertion and their uniforms added to the disorder. Most of them had taken off their helmets and ‚eld caps. They’d donned civilian jackets or hats. And yet they stuck together for the most part, making concentrations of Marine or Army green despite their efforts to blend. The other refugees tried to avoid them, which was impossible, creating knots and jams within the migration.
There was no ‚ghting that Cam had seen. Everyone was too busy, loaded with packs and slings, but he’d noticed more than one collision. The nearest ravine had a crooked drop in it. Again and again people tripped and fell there, jostling in the crowd. Cam supposed it was only a matter of time before someone’s frustration led to blood. He worried that a lot of the troops were still organized squads. He was especially interested in the loners and small groups who chose to hike through the rougher terrain outside the ravines. Not all of them were heading down. Here and there, tiny ‚gures trudged upward against the larger trend. Why? Allison thought they were giving up. Others were probably looking for places to camp out of the wind, but she agreed that some of them must be hunters sent by Grand Lake to get to Ruth ‚rst.
Cam tugged restlessly at his carbine’s shoulder strap. Then he swung his binoculars to another man standing on a high point across the slope, one of Allison’s people. Cam signaled with his arm straight out from his side, holding the pose until the man saw him and returned the gesture. It meant “I haven’t seen anything.”
