Plague Zone

nodded. One picked up a phone. Without wasting another moment, Caruso pressed his own handset to his ear and said, “This is A6.”

He listened only an instant before his mouth twisted.

“Every minute there is more and more evidence that we know exactly where the nanotech originated,” he said. “Goldman was right.”

Ruth? Deborah thought. She’s alive!

More than that, it sounded as though Ruth was working on their side again, which made Deborah happier than she would have expected.

“Where is the secretary?” Caruso asked. “If he cannot personally verify his whereabouts, I am in command.” Then: “I am in command.” He pointed to an officer seated at the computers and said, “Emergency action message. Authenticate our status as Kaleidoscope.”

“This is Wild Fire with an EAM for all units,” the man said into his headset. “I repeat, this is Wild Fire with an Emergency Action Message for all units. Prepare to copy message.”

Caruso gestured to a different station. “Try to get me a direct line to the Chinese premier or anyone in their civilian government in California,” he said. “We’ll make one more effort to call them off.”

“Juliet Victor Bravo Golf Whiskey Golf November Delta. I repeat, Juliet Victor Bravo Golf Whiskey Golf November Delta,” the other man said, and Deborah felt her skin crawl again, because she knew what Caruso was doing.

After the war, they’d dispersed their civilian and military hierarchies as far as they were able. They could have returned to D.C., for example, but it was two thousand miles from the Rockies. The logistics would have been daunting. Even if they’d beefed up local defenses, D.C. would be alone, so the great majority of American and Canadian forces stayed along the Continental Divide, not only to save their strength but to remain massed against the enemy in California.

Fortunately, the Rockies stretched through eight states and one Canadian Province. Only the president, some military staffers, and a few of their irregularly elected congressmen were in Missoula. The rest of the top members of the U.S. leadership were scattered across the Divide to prevent them from ever being killed by one surgical strike. Their command systems were equally redundant.

Peterson AFB, on the east side of the Rockies, had been restored as one of their largest air bases. Years ago, Peterson had served as the new center for NORAD after the famous old tunnels beneath Cheyenne Mountain were mothballed, and the infrastructure at Peterson was too valuable to ignore even if it had taken some fallout. Unfortunately, because Peterson was also home to multiple air wings, it was a surface base. A few of its buildings could be sealed against biological threats or nanotechnology, but Deborah guessed now that Peterson was no better off than the mountaintops above Grand Lake.

If the secretary of defense was in Peterson, he could be lost like the president and the VP, either infected or hurt or cut off. From what she’d heard, the SecDef must have insisted that Caruso stay his hand until they were positive who’d created the new plague, but Caruso was usurping the SecDef in the succession of command for America’s nuclear arsenal.

It’s come to this, Deborah thought.

A profound sense of reality washed over her. She felt the bagginess of her uniform and breathed in the tense, acrid smell of the men and women who filled this box. Every choice they made now was as large as the world.

“Sir, I’m sorry,” she said, trying to interrupt.

There was a new fear coiling in her chest. She knew General Caruso from the war. The American side hadn’t had many advantages, and he’d seen little except defeat. He had been an advocate of using Ruth’s skills to commit genocide against the Russians and the Chinese, and Deborah wondered if he’d finally seen his chance.

“Sir, you’re in contact with Ruth Goldman?” she asked. “We need her — not me. She can tell us what’s happening.”

“You’re all we’ve got, Major.”

“What about Ruth?”

“Sir, I have the assistant secretary of defense on the horn!” called the Navy officer.

“Disconnect that line,” Caruso said. His lips pressed together like knives. Then he turned to a woman at another desk and said, “I want an open broadcast to all Chinese forces. They will stop their attack immediately or we’ll hit Los Angeles.”

What if Ruth is dead? Deborah wondered. Infected? She knew she wouldn’t be able to provide more than the slightest information about the mind plague herself. Caruso’s choice might be the only way. The U.S. had lost control of most of its silos during the plague year, because while those underground holes were well sealed, their oxygen was only meant to last a few days. Only an extremely limited number of crews had managed to wait it out after being equipped with precious supplies and air compressors that allowed them to create the low air densities necessary to destroy the machine plague.

With the vaccine, however, the USAF had retaken those silos, and now they had thousands of Minuteman and Titan missiles on hand — plenty to eradicate mainland China if Caruso gave the order.

You have to believe he’s right, Deborah told herself, like she’d always told herself. But her doubt was heavy inside her. She glanced up at the situation maps again, desperate to see some shred of hope. Instead, the dots in Russian-occupied California were turning into ghosts, static and dim, leaving only the Chinese zones in the southern half of the state untouched, like a safe zone or an epicenter.

North America teetered on the brink of nuclear war.

13

The jeep took them thirty miles into the night before the gas tank ran dry. That’s enough, Ruth thought as Bobbi pumped her boot on the accelerator and tried the ignition again. That has to be enough.

“Goddammit!” Bobbi said.

Ruth merely rose into a crouch with her M4 held high, ready to jump down on either side of the vehicle. Ingrid stood taller with her M16. The wind was cold and felt like death. Ruth heard crickets, which surprised her.

Ree. Ree ree.

At first the sound was irregular, but the night quickly filled with it again. The crickets had only stopped because of the intrusion of the jeep. Ruth turned her head to try to get a feel for the size of the hillside beyond the white beams of the headlights and, beside her, she saw Cam with his right arm pressed against his ribs, holding a pistol in his good hand.

She wanted to protect him so much she turned away before he could see it in her eyes. She’d long since removed her goggles to help Bobbi navigate through the dark. Off-road, those thirty miles had taken hours. Several times they’d stopped completely while Ruth or Ingrid paced ahead to inspect a creek or a hillside or groves of dead trees.

“Turn off the lights,” Cam said. Bobbi did. Otherwise there were only the stars. The night hinted at a long, slumping ridgeline above them to the southeast.

Far below, looking north, the black valley was marred by a patch of smoldering orange coals. It wasn’t Jefferson. Their home was out of sight beyond the foothills. This fire was farther north and much bigger than twenty structures.

Morristown had burned, too.

“We need some recon,” Ruth said. Their plan was to stay with the vehicle for a while. Dawn was only a few hours away. No one wanted to break their leg hiking in the dark, and Cam needed stitching. They all needed food and rest. The hot engine would also help them show up on infrared if a chopper flew overhead or if satellites photographed the area. They could use the headlights as a signal, too, at least until the sun came up.

Ruth also wanted to check her laptop. Before the fight in Jefferson, she’d initiated programs to crunch through her surface scan of the mind plague. She didn’t expect to have results yet, but she was anxious to confirm that the computer was still functioning. Its battery should be good for another six hours, but she had two extras and