Chapter Thirty
By nine PM Eve had finished her stint for NBN, a rack of lamb, a half-hour mimicking the lilting lingo of South Afrikaners for the government's impending plea to African neutrals, and a quick scan
In Eau Claire, Wisconsin, the Nightly News tape aired at midnight. Lieutenant Boren Mills had been awake for twenty hours; he damned the discomfort of his contact lenses, switching to bifocals in the privacy of his room in the Bachelor Officers' Quarters. His attention was only half on the holo because Mills already knew of the SinoInd invasion of the Amur region.
'… Shortly before dawn, this Thursday morning,' said a young man in clipped British diction. In the distance sprawled mountains; a river glinted not far away, partly hidden by massive concrete apartment complexes of a typical small RUS city. At ten klicks' distance no flames were visible, but smoke roiled from rooftops. Mills guessed it must be Khabarovsk.
But the newsman continued, 'Elements of the Chinese Third Army crossed the Amur River here, at Blagoveshchensk. Amphibious trucks towed primitive rafts filled with soldiers, protected by mortar fire. The Chinese met stiff resistance here and at Khabarovsk; but in several places along the six hundred kilometer front, CPA troops have driven thirty kilometers or more into RUS territory.
'The civilian population has been evacuated. The civil defense cadre of Blagoveshchensk remained behind and is inflicting heavy casualties on the advancing Chinese People's Army. A RUS spokesman has assured this correspondent that the CPA cannot hope to consolidate these temporary gains. He says the Chinese are using outmoded equipment that probably can't withstand modern RUS weapons expected soon from Vladivostok.
'But this morning, the CPA took portions of the old trans-Siberian railway north of the Amur. So, at high noon in Siberia, the CPA boasts an invasion and a vital rail link. The question is: can they keep either of them moving? In Blagoveshchensk, I'm Peter Westwood for the BBC.'
Mills was wide awake now. As the news turned to Cana da's entry into the western rank of warring nations, he cudgeled his memory for the Vladivostok messages that had passed through his ELF channels. The RUS port city, within artillery distance of China, had taken such a nuclear shellacking that even its submarine pen entrances near Artem had collapsed. There was no longer any point in sending US subs there for repair or provisioning. Mills made a silent wager that China had more than an old rail link in mind. Strongly gifted with visual memory, he recalled that the Chinese thrust was generally northeastward. By driving to the Sea of Okhotsk they would also cut the big new Baikal-Amur railway — a truly crucial artery through Siberia which had cost twice as much as our Alaska pipeline.
Oil, iron, coal, even diamonds passed from Siberia to the coast on the new artery and if it were slashed, much of Siberia might bleed to death. Yes, Mills decided, the RUS was in damned big trouble if SinoInd forces could push a spearhead to the Okhotsk Sea. And if the RUS was posturing about help from devastated Vladivostok, that posture would fool no one — that is, no one but surviving Americans who found their media more believable each year.
Boren Mills had guessed already that Canada was ready to throw in with the good guys, even with her growing mistrust toward the fumbling RUS colossus that owned more Arctic resources and techniques than Canada herself. Mills did not care what Canada did, so long as she did
Chapter Thirty-One
'Turn the durn thing off, Liza,' growled the weather-beaten man on the pallet. 'It's just wastin' power, and l can do without hearin' why the Mexes are neutral.' The hand he waved toward the old portable TV was a ghastly contrast to the rest of his wiry body. The fingers were so grossly swollen by blisters that the hand seemed a cluster of long pinkish grapes. Way land Grange had not yet lost much of the sparse straight hair on his head, but swarthy skin already was peeling from his forearms. He closed his eyes, held his breath, lay back and faced the ageless stalactites overhead.
Louise Grange nodded to eleven-year-old Sandy, who snapped off the set. 'You ought not to take off that cold compress, Daddy,' she rebuked her husband softly.
'Ain't the hand that hurts,' he grunted, now staring into the gloom of a cavern lit by a single candle that kept his wife's coffee warm. 'Tryin not to lose my supper.' His stomach muscles knotted again; he felt the cool damp rag caress his forehead, recognized the loving touch as his daughter's. Like her father, Sandy wasn't long on talk. But her soothing hands were quick and sure, and the girl always seemed to know where it hurt without being told. 'Must be half-past twelve,' he managed to say. 'Time you was asleep, sprat.'
'Daddy's right, Sandy,' said Louise, nodding toward the pile of quilts and supplies they had carried from the scorched Blazer. 'Make you a nice pallet, hon.'
'Can I write in my journal?' Sandy's few words, moth-flutter soft as usual, managed to carry both acquiescence and pleading without a hint of protest.
'Just for a minute,' her mother warned, redirecting a stray wisp of graying blonde hair that had escaped the bun at her nape. Louise and Wayland Grange exchanged eyebrow lifts, signals that passed for smiles in the laconic little family.
Sandy's journal was one of life's little mysteries. Wayland had once teased his wife about a traveling book salesman because, as he put it, “You and me together couldn't read our way through a deck of cigarette papers.'
Sandy's school near Sonora, Texas, may not have had carrels or video classes, but it had something, for sure. Even if Sandy did not read much, even if her spelling was no-holds-barred after she'd missed a year with that lung infection, the sprat had filled more than one spiral binder with words. No one but Sandy had ever read those words. No one in the family had ever mentioned the possibility, despite curiosity that was a mixture of pride and concern. The Granges were that kind of family.
For minutes the silence of the cavern was broken only by the skritch of pencil and sounds of breathing. Across the great sweep of Edwards Plateau in southwest Texas were dozens of known caverns and many more undiscovered. Wayland had guessed that hundreds of others, folks who had spent their lives among the sand- strewn washes and sere rangeland of Sutton County, would emerge safely from their favorite hideyholes when the time came. Their own cavern was no match for Longhorn or Carlsbad, but Wayland had first made love to Louise on the cool sand of its long-dry streambed. It was their retreat; secret, inviting when temperatures soared and locusts buzz-sawed in the mesquite. Some men longed for tropical beaches. Wayland Grange would have given you three Waikikis and a Boca Paila for their inviolate, unnamed grotto south of Sonora. As long as a man had to die someplace, it might as well be where he had loved living the most.
Low, so Sandy would not overhear: 'Daddy, we got to find you some help. I'll try the ceebee after the child is asleep.'
'Now where you think help's comin' from, Liza? Sure God, none's comin' from San Angelo.' He tried to chuckle. He would never know how he found his way, drunked up like that, to the state four-wheel-drive Blazer and then south from San Angelo to Sonora. The air base had taken a twenty megaton airburst just far enough away from the research station at San Angelo that the grain silo had withstood the blast. It had been Wayland's luck that he and Doug Weller had killed a liter of mezcal in the silo, waiting for Aggie researchers to doctor the packets of grain for experimental animals at the Sonora breeding farm. Way land had been lying just inside the concrete silo
