from the blastwave by other buildings. There was a gaping hole in the roof and one wall was down, but more than a third of its classrooms were intact.
Cam went to help Obruch. Kendra didn’t want to leave the chopper. She’d nestled into the back seat and tried to pull free when Cam touched her leg.
“We’re here,” he said. “We found the sister lab.”
It was no use. They were forced to drag her outside — but her mood changed as they half carried her through the fallen buildings. Her giant eyes filled with curiosity. Maybe she’d forgotten her safe little nest in the helicopter.
“What do you think?” Deborah asked when they escorted Kendra inside. There were opaque black plastic tents in two of the rooms, although the plastic was split or sagging, pelted by debris. Clean room suits sprawled on coatracks that had been knocked to the floor. More to the point, there were several desks that had been loaded with microscopy gear. Most of the equipment was on the floor. Another room held rows of laptops and larger computers, file cabinets, and a dry-erase board covered with the deft, boxy symbols of written Mandarin.
Cam felt an unusual flash of optimism. The Chinese had been unable to carry even the beginnings of this stuff in their first flight to Saint Bernadine, and they couldn’t possibly have expected American troops this deep into the blast zone. They must have planned to come back for the majority of their equipment. In fact, we’re lucky they were hit so hard, he thought.
“We need to hurry,” he said.
Kendra was subdued but responsive. She nodded and said, “Let me see. I can see. Let me see.”
Was she consciously referring to the sky outside the roof? Cam didn’t think so, but it was getting dark. The unending twilight had become something deeper. Beyond the ash clouds, the sun was going down.
Cam left Kendra with Deborah to help the other men. Medrano had located the power room on the collapsed side of the building. All three of the labs’ generators were buried. Worse, most of the fuel cans had ruptured. “I can get one of these running,” Medrano said, “but we’d better move it first or this place will ignite.”
Cam, Alekseev, and Obruch pulled away the wreckage as Medrano tried to salvage some electrical lines, hampered by his broken arm. Then he identified which generator he wanted. By now, they could barely see. There were no stars or moon beneath the fallout. The night would be absolute.
Obruch produced a small penlight, which he ran to give to the women as Cam and Alekseev dragged the generator into an open spot of concrete. “Give me two minutes,” Medrano said, splicing his new line to the classrooms.
Kendra’s response was less satisfying when they hurried into the lab. “I need three hours,” she told them, rummaging through endless files as Deborah said, “There’s a machining atomic force microscope. It looks like it’s okay. She thinks she has what she needs.”
Alekseev took Cam aside. “This is madness,” he said.
“No. We’ve come too far to quit. Either she can do it or she can’t. There’s no sense in running away. Where would we go? The chopper’s nearly empty.”
“They were keeping aircraft,” Alekseev said in his odd English. “I will check the fuel.”
“Where would we go?” Cam said. “Your side is gone. So is ours. But go ahead — check for fuel. We’re going to need every weapon we can make if we’re going to hold this place against enemy troops.”
Alekseev paused. “You are speaking of something like your Alamo,” he said. “Yankee Doodle do or die.”
Cam almost smiled. Alekseev had his American history mixed up, but not its spirit. They were a nation created by rebels and underdogs who never did quite figure out how to manage their own success. Cam wanted to see them back on top again. “The Chinese won’t expect us here,” he said, “so we have surprise on our side. That should work against the first group that shows up.”
“What about the next?”
“Best case scenario, we won’t have to last that long.”
“Do you believe her estimates? Three hours?”
“Yes. You know who she is.”
“We know who she was,” Alekseev corrected him.
“I think she’s… motivated.” Cam chose the word carefully. “She wants to make things right. Do you understand? She wants to do something good.”
The generator rumbled outside and the lights sprang on, flooding the building. “Got it!” Medrano called. Kendra screamed, thrashing her arms in the sudden brilliance. Deborah grabbed her, talking fast, as the men scrambled to turn off as many switches as possible. They didn’t want to be the only star in the night.
When they were done, Alekseev walked over to Cam again. “We must seal this tent,” Alekseev said, indicating the black plastic. “She can work inside it.”
Cam met the colonel’s hard brown eyes. “So you agree,” he said. “We’ll stay.”
Deborah protested when they asked her to stay with Kendra, but she was hurt and she had some lab experience. It only made sense. They couldn’t leave Kendra alone.
Before he went, Cam kissed Deborah’s cheek because he knew her better than anyone else. She caught his arm to keep him close, leaning her forehead against his with sudden intimacy.
“Take care of yourself,” Deborah said.
“You, too.”
The four men spread through the ruins to dig in against the Chinese. They even hurried despite the knowledge that if they won — if any of them survived — they would be destroying themselves with Kendra’s counter-vaccine.
Cam, Deborah, and Medrano must have traces of the mind plague in their systems. All of them had walked outside the warehouse where the V-22 Osprey was stored after they were inoculated, preparing for their flight, and even the slightest whisper of nanotech would be enough. With luck, Kendra would create a new plague zone, a trap for any Chinese who entered it. Cam and the others would be the first to fall, but as more and more Chinese were infected, her counter-vaccine would spread. Their plague zone would grow. It would reach U.S. territory — and from there, the world.
They could still win this war.
26
Colonel Jia Yuanjun snapped to attention and tried to convey in his bearing what could not be seen in his disheveled appearance. Dedication. Fortitude. He’d had only a few minutes’ warning to comb his hair and tug uselessly at his foul uniform, trying to straighten it before greeting his visitors. His forearm throbbed in a crude plaster cast.
“Welcome, sir,” Jia responded, also in Mandarin. He was unsure what to make of the general’s expressionless face, but Qin’s uniform was clean, as were those of his two subordinates and three Elite Forces bodyguards.
MSS General Qin was in his sixties, stout, sunworn, and quivering with strain. Jia saw a tic in Qin’s jowls. That was bad. The old man was aware of it, too, patting at the underside of his jaw in a brusque, fussy manner. That his visit was a surprise could also be seen as dangerous. The Z-9 military helicopter that flew up from San Diego had declared itself a medevac, bringing much needed supplies to Jia’s base. Instead, it carried the MSS officer who’d become third-in-command of Chinese California after the bombing.
Jia did not believe this subterfuge was intended to fool the enemy. No doubt there were still American satellites overhead, but there was no one left to control those eyes and ears. Jia was fortunate that one of his sergeants had risked a call from their landing field, announcing the real identity of their visitors as General Qin
