dozen languages mixed with seasoned troops who, like as not, spoke English.
In China, Chang Wei had given up negotiations with Guatemala, the only country capable of furnishing the sites China needed. The continental leapfrog operation would have to be one great leap, but here at least Chang's preparations had a boost from an unlikely source: the development labs of the Ministry of Materiel. Indeed, both the source and the product seemed so unlikely that Chang had insisted on an eyewitness demonstration. The device had already been field-tested during the early moments of the war, providing cruise power for a pygmy sub which had been lost. Further development had languished until Chinese intelligence sources revealed that British subtlety, and not Chinese technology, had caused the loss.
Once convinced of the gadget's potential, Chang had demanded vastly larger versions of it — only to be told of its inherent mass limitations. Its output could reach only a certain level, and that level had neared its theoretical maximum. Chang considered the long-range implications of the device, then initiated security precautions that all but strangled its production. Perhaps fifty scientists and engineers understood its functions. A dozen of those suspected that their lives would not extend beyond SinoInd victory.
Now, in May, Chang was satisfied with the production figures. The devices lay stockpiled in final assembly tunnels near the Yangtze, a swift conduit hundreds of meters deep in the mountain regions.
Chang was not satisfied with the news from Tsinghai. Cha Tsuni, thought Chang, had finally found a bug to test his serenity. The conventional high explosives the RUS had rained on Cha's labs had probably been pure accident, one more target of opportunity to disrupt the flow of materiel to Kazakhstan. Chang found himself wishing Cha's operation had been nuked outright; might have called for it himself had he known how quickly the new disease would spread to Huangyuan,
Surviving the RUS bombardment, Cha was now treating himself for the bacillus he had somehow produced. Treatment, he had complained in his most recent dispatch to Chang, was almost as dangerous as the infection — but hardly as repellent. Cha would not, of course, be permitted to leave the quarantined region in Tsinghai. Already the supply trains detoured through Mongolia while Cha's people sought new antibiotics to quell their demon bacillus. Now some of them were fighting it, in the most literal sense, blindly.
Chapter Sixty-Five
On his second assignment, in May, Quantrill endured temporary silicone pads, subcutaneous cosmetics that gave him an extra chin and cheeks of a cherub to go with the red wig. He looked all of thirteen with his 'baby fat', though quite a large thirteen. He was furnished precisely the right image to emulate a kid scamming in Provo, Utah, during the four days he needed to isolate a newspaper reporter.
Investigative reporting had always been hazardous. It became more hazardous if a reporter stumbled onto traces of a construction project intended to house the secret seat of the American Government. Once the feebies discovered that the reporter had made a microfiche drop to an Irish agent, his days were few. Ireland was too friendly with the SinoInds.
To Quantrill it did not matter how or when Larry Pettet began to supplement his salary with Hibernian money. If T Section said Pettet was superfluous, he would not live to spend much. Pettet entertained few vices, but he had difficulty with even those few in Provo where a vigorous Mormon majority had outlawed booze. Pettet noted with chagrin that more and more cities were returning to prohibition since the Collier administration took over; noted it, and shrugged. He could always find good whiskey; it was all a matter of paying the price.
Larry Pettet paid in full the day after he bought his half-liter of Johnny Walker from the chubby kid who hung around the motel. The JW was the real stuff, all right, but the stocky red-headed kid refused to bring him anything larger. If Pettet wanted several bottles, he'd have to buy it at the kid's brother's place out Bartholomew Canyon Road.
Listening politely to Pettet's nonstop monologue as the reporter drove eastward into the canyon, Quantrill reflected that one could be pernicious without being mean. Pettet laughed easily, sympathized with a kid trying to make ends meet in such a world, asked shrewd questions about the brother's little booze-running operation. Pettet thought it might make a good story once he was safely back in Bismarck. He was still chortling when he walked into the deserted barn, the redheaded kid at his heels.
Quantrill had chosen the site because the barn contained the putrefying carcass of an old horse. If and when anyone cleaned out the place, they would not wonder at the unpleasant smell.
'Jesus,' said Pettet as he started to turn in the doorway, 'you know there's a very deceased animal in here?'
'Two,' said Quantrill, and shot him dead.
This time, thought Quantrill as he shoved the spy's body under rotting floorboards near the flyblown horse, he'd done a more professional job. It had been quick, crisp, as quiet as a silencer could make it; and he did not feel quite the same sense of loss, perhaps because he had not paused to savor the act.
Quantrill was discovering a fact about himself. By denying himself that rising tide of savage malevolence beforehand, he spared himself much of the remorse he felt afterward. Vaguely he understood that his value system would not haunt him for an act of war as it would for a personal vendetta. His sleep was still haunted, but no longer by those he had loved.
As Quantrill changed buses in Fresno, a Japanese trawler south of Kyushu mooched sluggishly over the surface of the Philippine Sea. Her sonar said that an incredible trove of protein was moving out into the Pacific at a pace and depth that ruled out pursuit by the trawler herself. That was what the herd subs were for; to sample a potential harvest, and to drive it by audio signals to the nets. If this enormous migration was not one of fish, it certainly fooled the trawler.
Probably, the skipper guessed, it was a school of sharks. Never mind that sharks rarely massed in such numbers. The school, a vast shoal steady at six hundred fathoms, ran too deep for Sei or Orca. Pacific Squid did not grow to six-meter length, the apparent dimension of the blips found by sonar. There was only one good way to find out what they were, and the herd sub darted away under emergency hydride boost to take a sample.
The trawler picked up a muffled detonation later and assumed at first that it was the two-man sub, dispatching one of her little homing torps against a straggler. The huge shoal was moving away under an inversion layer, a kilometer down.
Later the skipper was not so sure about that homing torp. The sonar record was ambiguous and could be misinterpreted. Whatever the herd sub found, its crew could not report from their grave in the primeval ooze of the Nansei Shoto Trench. The vast stream of life passed implacably on to the east and presently the phenomenon was forgotten.
Sandys jurnal May 18 Sun.
The truth is babys are all ugly even Child. I dont care. Mom says she looks like her dady, I try and try but cant remember how my dady looked. Poor mom is all tit, she lost wait after Child came but I gess making milk takes it out of you. Child is helthy at least she has a good yell. Todays a day of rest, ha ha. Well, the profets dont work us as hard on Sundays. I dont know whos ranch we took butlm sure our convoy passed near Sonora, it even smells like home. One thing about herding sheep it keeps you away from Profet Jonsen. They tell us the devil is loose here on Edwards Platow, they sacrifise insides of sheep. Somthing sure eats the guts out on the range, I bet its just a old cyote but I hope it is the devil, theres plenty of folks here hed grab in a minit. If mom was strong we coud lite out cross country but wed never get far with Child and the prof ets know it so they let me go out alone. They coud care less if the devil gets me. Me neither.
Tonite the radio talked about big quakes under the ocean I don't believe it, I never felt a thing here. If true I pity the Looshans whoever they are.
The great sea quake of May 1997 had been expected, but seismologists could not have foreseen its intensity. Its focus was below the great Mendocino fracture two thousand klicks north of Hawaii. Its first cyclopean pressure wave created a tsunami that thundered onto Hawaiian shores three hours later, obliterating beachfront buildings on the north of Molokai and Oahu. The loss of life was very light, thanks to the seismic alert system. Many lives on
