“We look like angry UPS drivers,” Jimbo said.
“More like angry UPS packages,” Renzi said. “These outfits make noise, man.” The fabric was coarse and made a shushing noise when they walked.
“Don’t start bitching this soon,” Chaz said. “We don’t need camo in the AO.”
“Oh, I haven’t started bitching, brother.”
“You ain’t my brother, Renzi. My brother’s black.”
It was all just grab-ass. Relieving the tension. Shaking out the kinks.
Guns were next. Each man picked up the rocket gun that they’d used on the range and zeroed in. Jimbo Small wrapped the fore-end of his weapon in strips of paper cloth he tore from one of the extra shirts.
“Cuts down on glare,” he said. “Still say we could use a long-range gun.”
“Barnes didn’t work up any workable scopes,” Dwayne said.
“These rocket rounds would have a wicked bad trajectory anyhow,” Jimbo said. He shrugged and shouldered the weapon.
“Yeah,” Dwayne said.
Tauber handed Dwayne what looked like a simple hand-held transmitter, a speaker with a built-in mike. A press key on the side was the only audio control. It had a retractable whip antenna, plus a foldout mini-keyboard for text.
“I built a new wave transmitter,” Tauber said. “Easy to use. I modified it to carry audio. Just press to talk. It’s made of soy-based plastic. Twenty-four-hour battery life. Just give me an initial check when you arrive and location updates as you make progress. Turn it off when not in use. It has a three-hour digital record feature and will turn the unit on and repeat your last broadcast every ten minutes. If the field’s not open when you send I’ll catch the replay.”
“What’s the range?” Dwayne asked. “Well…” Tauber said.
“Yeah, I know. You never got to test that,” Dwayne said. He stuck the transmitter into a pocket on the leg of his pants.
Tauber produced a box and held it out to the group.
“Biodegradable wristwatches,” he said. “Made of compostable paper. Good for about thirty days. You can keep me apprised of the relative time, so I can make my adjustments when I re-open the field in forty-eight hours.”
The watches were digital with a flat face on a broad band colored in stripes of green and tan. “Set them at zero,” Dwayne said as each man took a band.
The men stood strapping on the watches, adjusting packs and triple-checking the loads in their weapons and helping one another attach the line from each rifle to a belt-mounted battery pack.
“We’re ready, Doc,” Dwayne said and turned to the others. “Let’s take a walk.”
6
The Mission
A hot wind trilled through the guy wires of the steel tower as the noon sun beat down from a yellow sky. Low vibrations boomed from within the Q-hut that housed the reactor. Around the tower, the air filled with a frisson of static energy as a massive jolt of electricity ran from the reactor house, through shielded underground cables, to the pylons driven deep into the rock at the tower’s base. The air was alive, bristling with anticipation.
A million wriggling serpents of bluish light engulfed the shining ball atop the tower. Thick arcs of pure electromagnetic power reached for the ground and turned the sand to thin puddles of glass wherever they made contact. There was an audible hiss as molecules collided and superheated air rushed to fill the vacuum left by the discharge. Man-made thunder shook the ground for miles around. A sheet of brilliance that would be mistaken for heat lightning could be seen as far away as Tonopah.
Inside the largest Q-hut, Parviz and Quebat sat at consoles in their lead-walled, rubber-floored control room and adjusted the flow of rapidly multiplying power into the Tube chamber. They wore disposable Tyvek bunny suits and thick goggles. The flatscreen monitors before them showed bar graphs spiking into the red. Other screens showed temperature, wattage, amperes, and reactor function. All wavering but within acceptable performance ranges.
Parviz spoke into a mike to the image of Dr. Tauber on one of his monitors. The image on the monitor was degraded by the free-floating power surge that engulfed the compound. It wavered but held firm enough for them to communicate.
“You have power, Doctor,” he said in his Oxford-accented English.
In the Tube chamber, the four ex-Rangers stood in single file at the bottom of the steel ramp that led into the tunnel of frozen coils. The vapor from the concentric rings was growing thicker. The steel ramp, walkway, and railings were coated with a layer of slush that dripped from the thrumming coils.
Tauber called to the men from the computer station. “I can hold the field for thirty minutes. If you don’t accomplish your mission in that time frame, you can either return or wait until I can re-open the field.”
“How close are we going to come to your sister’s team’s arrival?” Dwayne called back. He blew into his gloved hands. Damn, it was cold.
“Hard to say,” Tauber said. “I have to adjust the flow to the coils with the help of a modulation program. I’ll try to get you there within an hour of their arrival. But it could be as much as a day. I just can’t say.”
“Sounds more and more like a goat-fuck all the time,” Renzi said.
“Fire it up, Doc,” Dwayne said.
“It’s ready now,” Tauber announced. “Anytime, gentlemen.”
Dwayne led them down the walkway into a dense fog of frozen air. Each man followed, his footing uncertain on the slick steel grate.
Renzi was second. Then Smalls.
Chaz brought up the rear. And then they were gone.
Dwayne was on his hands and knees and bringing up everything he’d eaten that morning and the night before. He was wracked with chills and burning up all at the same time. His vision swam white and red. His mouth tasted like tin. There was a hammering pain inside the back of his skull.
He straightened up with eyes squeezed shut and shook his head from side to side. Still on his knees, he looked around
