bet
He went up two bands as he’d been taught. “Arapaho Five, Two Echo Two,” he said on the new channel.
The woman in Grand Lake didn’t waste a moment, either, resuming their conversation in knifelike bursts. “What is your current location? Over.”
“We’re eighteen clicks southwest of Wackyville.” That was Morristown’s unfortunate nickname because so many of the people there were cultists, and Cam said, “Are you familiar with this area? Over.”
“Affirmative. Over,” the woman said, as Cam heard a snatch of a man’s voice behind her.
“—they get so close?” the man said.
“Ma‘am, I’m not alone,” Cam said urgently. “Two Echo Two is still together. Do you understand me? The gang’s all here and I need that chopper now. Tonight.”
“Can you maintain your position? Over.”
“Ma‘am, we have wounded and a lot of people sick. Over.”
“You need to hunker down, Two Echo Two, because everybody’s in the soup right now. All air assets are committed. Sit tight. I’m going to get you that helicopter, but I need a little time. Over.”
“Are you”—he almost couldn’t say it—“Are there people sick there, too?”
“Monitor the radio, Two Echo Two. We’ll patch you into our pilots as soon as we have an asset available. Over.”
“Oh, shit.” Cam stared at the handset without hitting his SEND button.
“Two Echo Two?” the woman asked. “What are you using for far and near recognition signs, Two Echo Two?” she asked, but Cam had already stood up and turned away from the radio with a cold, fresh sense of rising dread.
Bobbi touched his jacket. “Cameron?”
He couldn’t meet his friend’s eyes. What could he possibly say? He knew a Black Hawk would need most of an hour to cross the distance between Grand Lake and Jefferson — much longer, if Grand Lake was in chaos itself. He’d hoped to get them into the underground bunkers in Grand Lake, but that might be impossible if the surface of the mountain was crawling with infected people.
“Two Echo Two!” the radio said. “Two Echo Two, do you copy?”
Cam knelt and picked up the handset again as if it weighed a hundred pounds, uncertain it was worth the effort. Whoever had launched the plague, whatever the nanotech did, she wouldn’t tell him on an unsecured transmission. She might not even know.
“Just get here as fast as you can,” he said.
5
In the blue light of the display screen, the colonel’s face was ghastly pale. The effect was supernatural. The light transformed his round features into something lean and monstrous, creating shadows like a mask. He used it well, turning to grin at the four technicians beside him. He knew his teeth shone like fangs because Dongmei’s pretty mouth glowed in the same way when she matched his expression.
They were all afraid. He wanted to harness that energy. As a senior officer, Colonel Jia Yuanjun had been trained to browbeat his troops if necessary, driving out weakness, but not every situation called for blunt force. These four were among his select. More importantly, they were right to be nervous, so he’d planned to redirect that adrenaline, binding them to him with aggression and pride. Everyone in the blue light of the flatscreens was very young for this task. They were so lost, too, here on the other side of the world from their home. Colonel Jia was only thirty-two, less than ten years older than any of his technicians — but like their fear, their youth could also be an advantage. Their hormones ran healthy and strong. That was another reason why Lieutenant Cheng Dongmei was present. Dongmei was the only female in the room, and, in fact, one of just eleven women in the entire battalion.
She was smooth-skinned and elegant even in her tan jumper and with her black hair cropped as short as the men’s. The red Elite Forces patch on her chest curved along the top of her breast. Her gun belt flared from her hips, accentuating the hourglass of her waist. Colonel Jia did not want Dongmei for himself, for reasons that he could never tell anyone, but he was not above using her to drive the others.
He spoke in Mandarin, the dialect of the ruling Han. “If these signals are correct, it’s spreading even more quickly than we’d hoped,” he said.
“They are correct, sir,” Huojin said.
Jia swung on him. “Your sector shows the most gaps! Why?”
“The wind is not as strong in northern Colorado as it is elsewhere tonight, sir,” Huojin said. “Perhaps the weather predictions could have been better.”
Jia nodded, concealing his pleasure behind a stone face. Huojin was the only one in his team who was not Han. Huojin was nearly full-blooded Yao, one of China’s many ethnic minorities, a distinction that had become even more significant since the loss of three-quarters of their nation’s populace. Jia often put him on the defensive even though Huojin was his second best data/comm technician. That constant tension, like the presence of Dongmei, helped everyone in the group as they strove to outperform each other.
“The weather is ideal,” Jia said, rebuking Huojin. There would never be a time when the wind carried evenly from British Columbia to New Mexico. Then he relented. “Your dispersal patterns are adequate given local conditions.”
“Sir,” Dongmei said, “I still have one fighter southbound from Idaho with two bomblets onboard. Shall I route him toward Colorado?”
“Hold your fire,” Jia said.
Their attack had been painstaking, because they’d possessed only ninety-three capsules of nanotech to spread up the entire length of North America. Jia wanted to keep any reserves as long as possible. In truth, Huojin’s sector appeared to be no less saturated than the others‘, especially given the innumerable valleys and basins hidden within the Rockies.
Huojin was operating with another handicap. The military installations in Utah had prevented overflights farther east, shielding Colorado from the border patrols they’d used to seed the mind plague elsewhere. Reaching into Montana and Wyoming had been equally problematic, so hours ago they’d detonated thirty-four of their capsules high in the atmosphere, allowing the nanotech to sift down toward the areas where the Americans maintained the core of their Air Force and government.
Jia turned his gaze to the screens again as if looking for those invisible streams. The bunker where he stood was on the outskirts of Los Angeles, but Jia had almost forgotten. This room transcended that distance. The quiet that held these young soldiers in the eerie blue light was a place of its own, and Jia reveled in it. Together they hung poised above America through a distant constellation of satellites and planes, watching as the plague zone grew and consumed the enemy.
It was a humble scene from which to conquer a superpower. They had only a few pieces of expensive equipment mounted on desks made from crates, with so few chairs that Huojin and Yi sat on crates themselves, buried deep within a hurriedly built complex of naked concrete. A single air-conditioning vent rattled above them. The cables to and from their electronics lay banded together on the raw floor, twisting away toward data and power jacks set in the wall by the only door. The room was cold. The sole, overwhelming smell was the dusty rock stink of the concrete.
Jia couldn’t think of anywhere else he wanted to be, not even his parents’ apartment in Changsha — not even if some magic could have resurrected them.
“There,” he said, pointing at Gui’s third screen. VANCOUVER. The tangled coastline of British Columbia was still lightly populated, which left few breeding grounds for the nanotech, and Jia had been reluctant to send his fighters inland from the Pacific. The Chinese and the Russians both regularly patrolled the coast, and they had every reason to send their jets into eastern Oregon, contesting their borders with the Americans, but until the initial strike
