Ulinov had saved her even before himself. It was a debt she couldn’t reconcile. She hated him for his part in the bombing, and yet she respected his loyalty and his self-sacrifice. He was a good man. He was just on the other side. Ultimately, the bombing had even caused some good. At the edge of the blast zone, beneath a stifling, radioactive haze, Deborah’s unit had surrendered to the nearest rebel command. Later, people said there had been thousands of acts of unity everywhere as U.S. and Canadian forces turned to face the invasion together. The truth was that Deborah’s company only wanted to run from the fallout without needing to fight through rebel lines. In fact, her people hiked ninety miles north before they learned what was happening in California.
Once more, Deborah’s training as a physician brought her straight into the middle echelons of their leadership in Grand Lake. It wasn’t what she wanted. She had only been with the men and women of her unit for most of a week, but when the sky ripped open, those soldiers became the only people she knew in the world. Yet she was under orders. Deborah had to believe that Grand Lake knew where she could do the most good — and they were right.
Ruth was rescued from an airfield in Nevada and brought back to the Rockies. Deborah, with Emma, found herself working alongside Ruth again. For the first time, Deborah was glad. Ruth had changed. She was more open. They needed each other.
One of Deborah’s tasks had been to organize blood samples from thousands of soldiers and civilian refugees after Ruth discovered a new kind of nanotech inside them, a nanotech that shouldn’t exist. Leadville had been testing several prototypes on its own troops, and Deborah chose to serve again when Ruth left Grand Lake, joining an elite military escort meant to aide and protect her. Ruth thought their best chance was to recover every fragment of Leadville’s work that the survivors of the bombing must be carrying in their blood.
Unfortunately, many of those refugees were starving and sick and terrified. Chinese aircraft ruled the skies. Soon enough, Chinese armored units rolled into the foothills of the Rockies — and Ruth betrayed her own people again, threatening both sides with the parasite. Deborah still didn’t know how to feel about what she’d done. Yes, Ruth’s plan had worked, bringing the war to a standstill, but only at the cost of exiling herself. Worse, she’d given the West Coast to the enemy when she might have decimated them instead.
Ruth had even briefly convinced Deborah to help, her crazy goddamned genius shining in her eyes like holy fire, although Deborah’s feelings had changed as soon as Ruth left her alone. Holding a vial of the parasite in her bare hand, waiting for Ruth’s signal to open the plastic tube, Deborah’s heart had soured at the idea of murdering thousands of Americans even if it meant saving millions more. Instead, she’d turned herself in along with the nanotech.
Deborah wasn’t proud of being tempted. She had just been very, very tired and hurt and afraid. Nor had she lied to the National Security teams who debriefed her afterward. She was considered a loyalist because of it, which was embarrassing and wrong. That was why she was still in Grand Lake. Deborah was one of the “lucky” people who were hardy enough to survive at this elevation, even if she had sinus trouble, so she’d accepted one of the key personnel slots in Complex 1.
She’d cut her blond hair for the same reason — to make herself a better fit. Deborah was no longer a civilian serving in the Army. She was Army.
They carried on a vital peacekeeping mission. Even with the many flaws, the superstructures beneath these mountaintops were a feat of engineering and difficult to replicate. U.S. Command not only needed as many existing bases as possible, they’d always kept one eye toward surviving another plague. The landing strips on the surface were small and congested, but the fuel depot was well protected, and this place had all the advantages of high altitude and geographical isolation.
Grand Lake Air Force Base was a powerful component of the deterrents arrayed against the Chinese and the Russians, not only because of its aircraft but because it served as an Alternate NORTHCOM. Complex 1 housed one of the early warning hubs for NORAD, the organization dedicated to monitoring the world for nuclear launches or initiating a U.S. first strike. They had the eyes, ears, and authority to coordinate with the missile silos in Wyoming and Montana — but even if they achieved 100 percent containment, sealing themselves off from the nanotech, Deborah knew their clean air would only last forty-eight hours.
There was still one final choice to make.
12
“Hold it.” Two men in containment suits stood in the next short hallway, blocking Deborah’s path. One of them held a submachine gun. The other carried a pistol and a walkie-talkie. Neither weapon was pointed directly at her, but the message was clear. These men were a quarantine point.
Mendelson and three others stood to the side, waiting nervously. “This isn’t right,” Mendelson said.
Cables lined the bare ceiling behind two fluorescent lights. Deborah’s boots scuffed on a rough patch where the concrete had fractured, been repaired, and cracked again. The entire hall had a slight sideways tilt. The air was rank with mold. Originally, these complexes had been sterile places, but there was some moisture leaking through the patch in the floor, and bacteria grew swiftly in the light and heat necessary to make the warrens habitable.
Behind her, the acetylene welder hissed. Its blue light flickered as more of her troops filed in behind her, craning their necks and bumping against each other. Emma said, “Why are we—?”
“Move over there,” said the man with the pistol.
It was exactly how Deborah would have organized things herself. Welding the doors wasn’t enough. The engineers also needed to be sure that everyone on this side was clean before they were allowed any farther.
What if they weren’t? That frightened her, but she covered the feeling with a brisk, impersonal thought.
“You’re Reece,” the first man said suddenly.
Deborah nodded. “Yes, sir,” she said, not knowing his rank. She couldn’t even meet his gaze through the Plexiglas eyepieces in his hood.
“Good.” The man lifted his walkie-talkie and spoke loudly. It was a clumsy system, but his suit radio must not have been hooked into base communications. “We have Major Reece,” he said. “She looks okay.”
“Roger that,” the ‘talkie crackled.
What was happening?
“They think we’re infected,” Mendelson said.
“They just have to be sure,” Deborah said. “That’s all. We’ll be okay.”
She was ready to sacrifice herself if necessary. She had always been ready. There was honor in dying for the greater good, and the past two and a half years had only reinforced that belief in her.
“They need all the help they can get, and they’ll want these files,” she said, gesturing at the laptops and paperwork in their arms. The command center was too small for the hundreds of staffers necessary to receive and analyze NORTHCOM’s data streams, so they worked elsewhere in the warrens. Most of their information was regularly e-mailed inside, but they’d learned redundancy above all things. Paper files could be read even if a virus crashed the system.
The welder shut off. Boot steps sounded in the other hallway and Deborah flinched. Her self-control was eroding. What if the nanotech had sifted through the door before the engineers finished their seal? The plague wouldn’t affect those men, but they might be carrying traces of it on their suits. If so, as they walked into this hall, it would jump through Deborah’s people like wildfire…
One of the Navy officers spoke up. He must have been thinking the same thing, and he wanted to be sure the engineers knew what he was carrying. “I have three years of NSA intercepts on the Chinese LOGSTATs,” he said.
“I’ve got our SATCOM codes,” another man said.
“We’ll be fine,” Deborah told them.
“You’re bleeding,” Emma said, reaching for her, but she stopped short of taking Deborah’s arm, which filled Deborah with regret. They’d learned that touching each other was dangerous.
