They ate their food pills and sipped from their canteens. They were all too weary to talk and spent the remaining three hours resting further. Rhea had been unable to sleep earlier, but now it came quickly, and her mind shut off. Will, Chuck and Renaldo also probably slept, she didn’t know. It was up to them. She knew Horatio and Gizmo would be standing guard, either way.
And so it was that she awoke at the three-hour mark, courtesy of the internal alarm she’d set, and was greeted by the sight of seven SUVs driving into view across the rubble. She saw them on the thermal band in the darkness. The fact their headlamps remained inactive wouldn’t be considered suspicious to the satellites, not with the profusion of bioweapons roaming these lands.
“Good timing,” Horatio said. “I was just going to wake you.”
Rhea nodded. Beside her, the silhouettes of Will, Chuck and Renaldo were rubbing their eyes.
The SUVs were indicated in blue on her overhead map. When she zoomed in on that map, she could see the individual dots of the friendly occupants, who had positional sharing active. Because Rhea and her companions had the intensity of their comm nodes dialed way back, the newcomers wouldn’t detect her own position until they were much closer.
A moment later, she knew they had when she received a join request for the encrypted comm channel. She accepted.
“Warden,” a voice said. “It’s good to see you guys. Glad everyone on your team made it through intact. Any problems?” She recognized the voice of one of the original Rust Town Wardenites.
“None we couldn’t handle, McGraw,” Rhea replied. “Any news from Miles yet?”
“Yes,” McGraw replied.
Rhea tensed, hoping against hope that all of this hadn’t been for nothing.
“His team made it to Rust Town intact,” McGraw finished. “No casualties. Every last drop of water was delivered, and safely stored.”
She slumped in relief and gave Will a hug.
“So it wasn’t all for nothing,” she murmured against his shoulder.
“We’ve bought the residents of the slums another week,” Will agreed.
“Nothing like seeing a plan successfully come to fruition,” Horatio commented. “Yay.”
Rhea let go of Will and glared at the robot’s silhouette. “Why does it sound like you’re being sarcastic?”
“I suppose I am, to a degree,” Horatio replied. “My innate response to most things human is sarcasm, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
The seven SUVs parked under the intact section of the overpass, and men armed with rifles emerged from each of them. They were outlined in blue on her HUD, and surrounded Rhea and the others, keeping their backs to them and scanning the surroundings with their weapons.
“Look at these guys,” Will commented softly. “Think they’re a crack military team or something.”
“Well, I for one appreciate the effort,” Rhea said, knowing that her words would make at least some of those men beam.
Two of the Wardenites parted near Rhea, and McGraw’s silhouette stepped between them to address her.
“So, what are you orders?” McGraw asked.
“We go with you,” she replied. “And then continue to Rust Town. The settlement isn’t in the clear just yet.”
“What about this SUV?” McGraw nodded at the abandoned SUV parked beneath the overpass. “Do we take it with us?”
“No,” Rhea said. “The spy satellites will be paying far closer attention to you this time out, than they did on your initial drive here.”
“Assuming they realize we’re the same convoy,” McGraw said. “Which is doubtful.”
“True enough,” Rhea told him. “But they’ll still be paying attention. So we leave the SUV.”
“Another sacrifice for the cause,” McGraw said approvingly.
“Not really,” Rhea told him. “We’ll send a team back to retrieve it at some point.” She glanced at Renaldo.
“I’ll see that it gets done,” Renaldo said, falling smoothly back into his leadership role among the Wardenites.
McGraw led her to the SUV parked in the middle of the convoy and opened the sliding door.
“I assume your team would like to stay together?” He beckoned at the two rows of empty double seats, which was easily enough to fit six team members.
“Appreciate it,” Rhea said, piling inside. She slid all the way to the window. Horatio piled in next to her, followed by Will. Chuck and Renaldo took the back seat.
McGraw sat behind the wheel, and another Wardenite took the passenger seat.
The other men loaded into their SUVs, and then the convoy set out once more, traveling in single file through the streets. McGraw wasn’t driving, Rhea noted. Not that she expected him to.
She kept an eye on the overhead map and quickly realized the convoy was traveling mostly on the sidewalks to the north of the buildings, staying within the green zone for as long as possible. She held her breath when the vehicles finally moved out into the open, exposing themselves to the watching spy satellites—and the predator circling far overhead.
She remembered it had taken several seconds before the predator had terminated the self-driving SUV she’d sent into the streets earlier, so she didn’t rest easy when nothing happened. Everyone in the vehicle remained absolutely silent: she could feel the palpable tension in the air. She wondered if she should have ordered one of the SUVs to tentatively travel outside the green zone first, but that would have been viewed as suspicious by the satellites, and the predator. After all, the occupants of these vehicles weren’t supposed to know that an SUV had been destroyed here only a short while earlier, and any behavior that suggested otherwise would’ve been considered suspect.
Gizmo followed along dutifully, keeping pace in the dark.
“I want Gizmo to hold off on sending out any LIDAR bursts,” Rhea told Will. “Let’s keep the drone on the down-low for the time being. Observe for thermal signatures.”
“You got it,” Will said.
The SUVs kept their headlights turned off, again mostly to avoid attracting the attention of bioweapons. It would have no effect on the satellites’ ability to see them, considering the vehicles were readily visible on the thermal band.
The seconds turned into minutes, and still nothing
