zone. As if on cue, more things surface within her. More pieces of her purpose. She marvels at the spaces they fill—marvels, too, at all the gaps they still leave. What they reveal has the feel of a plan laid hastily. It has the feel of the same old story: get them before they get us—and turns out that she was the right woman for the moment. She’s sick of it. She can’t get enough of it. Her pulse is quickening. So is her mind. The city streams past. Her destination looms on the screens ahead.
Stealth pod tumbling from the heights: and within that pod is Marlowe, watching the sun sinking to the west, watching all the readouts, watching as he drops toward Belem-Macapa’s sprawl. It’s like the swamp to end all swamps: swarms of roving jet-copters are the insects, while the city’s highest spires reach out of the murk like reeds. The levels below that waver in the gloom. The levels below that are invisible.
Even to Jason Marlowe. He has the sensors, sure. But he’s not using them. He doesn’t dare. All he’s using are the maps he’s been given. He’s got the city’s simulacrum burned into his brain. He sees the way the city looks beneath its veil. He sees what his pod’s descending into—feels the pod jettison, feels his suit’s glidewing buffeted by turbulence even as visibility drops toward nil. What’s left of the sun dissolves. Marlowe turns his attention to the buildings in his mind, drifts in among them.
The Amazon twists and turns, closing on the ocean. The Operative gazes down at the city that’s sliding into view, watches as it swallows the river in smog.
“The epicenter of the latest flare-up,” says the pilot. “That’s not just environmental meltdown. It’s scorched- earth warfare.”
“Come again?”
“They’re burning their own buildings to blind our satellites.”
“Ah,” says the Operative.
“The latest round started up ten days ago,” says the pilot. “It now extends through half this city’s districts. They say the Jaguars view it as a test of strength. They say that if they can force us to withdraw, they’ll show the world who really rules this continent.”
“They wish,” says the Operative.
“You’re saying we have all the answers?”
“Nobody has all the answers, flyboy. All I’m saying is that all they’re doing is killing their own people.”
“Not to mention our soldiers.”
“Who are a hell of a lot cheaper than our machines.”
“You sure?”
“Look,” says the Operative. “Hate to break it to you, but everything you see down there is
“And the economy of South America—”
“Would collapse? Already has. Doesn’t matter. Only thing that means anything is our control of the equator. Don’t you get it, man? The profit margins that gives us in vacuum turn those cities into write-off.”
“Maybe it once did,” says the pilot. He sounds testy. “Maybe. But not now. You can’t write off a whole war.”
“Jesus Christ,” the Operative mutters. “I thought you said you’d read history? I thought you thought you knew something about the way this world works? What you’re looking at isn’t a
“You wouldn’t believe what space has shown me,” the pilot hisses. “But that doesn’t mean that I’m going to see things your way. If what you say is true, why don’t we just withdraw from all those cities down there. Abandon them. Seal them off.”
“You probably would if you were in charge,” says the Operative. “Problem with you flyboys is that you’ve got no sense of the subtle touch. You can’t seal off a tumor. Can’t withdraw from cancer. If we left the cities to the Jaguars, they’d mobilize all urban resources against us. They’d be fanning out through the jungles and the sewers. They’d be assaulting our launch bases in nothing flat.”
“If that’s true, then why don’t we just nuke them?”
“We may yet.”
“But why haven’t we yet?”
“Because no one’s used a nuke since Tel Aviv and Riyadh.”
“So?”
“So this is the era of detente. The second cold war ain’t that far in the rearview. The last thing anybody needs is for one of the superpowers to start frying populations wholesale. How do you think the East’s analysts are going to rate the situation’s stability if we start charbroiling the Latins?”
The pilot doesn’t reply.
“Exactly,” says the Operative. “And while you’re at it: don’t forget the East has a similar problem in Africa.”
“Lagos and Kinshasa.”
“And about twenty other cities.”
“Didn’t they once contribute to our Latin problem?”
“By supporting the insurgents? They may still.”
“No kidding?”
“And we may still be returning the favor.”
“You’re joking.”
“You’re naive,” says the Operative. “Don’t you know what
“I’ve heard many definitions.”
“So let me give you the one that counts.”
“Namely?”
“Same game. New phase.”
“That’s all?”
“Believe me: that’s enough.”
* * *
They’ve reached the perimeter. Haskell watches as her ’copter sweeps past skyscrapers that have been transformed into mammoth firing platforms: whole sections of walls, whole stacks of floors removed to allow scores of gun-emplacements to be situated within those scooped-out innards. Giant metal nets drape here and there, connecting other buildings. The whole area looks like the domain of some monstrous spider. The ’copter starts to weave in among those nets. It’s a complicated route. Haskell counts at least three distinct lines of defense, each one containing untold fields of fire.
Though she knows full well the real point of this place isn’t defense. It’s the reverse. It’s the way modern urban warfare gets waged. Establish bases in the city in question, use those sites to launch forays into the concrete wilderness all around. Hedgehogs, some call them. Hell on Earth might be more accurate. Haskell never thought she’d be in the middle of one.
But there’s a first time for everything. She feels her stomach lurch. The ’copter’s circling. Those circles tighten around one building in particular. The craft floats toward it, touches down on the roof.
The engines die. She hurriedly pulls her breath-mask into place, strapping it onto her chem-suit—just in time as the hatch swings back. Helmets peer inside. But Haskell’s already coming out—“Out of my way,” she snarls, and they back away quickly.
She leaps lightly to the rooftop, looks around. Two other jet-copters sit alongside hers. Soldiers in powered armor stand at attention. Barbed wire rings the rooftop’s perimeter. Buildings protrude out of the murk beyond like fingers jutting up from quicksand. The sky overhead couldn’t be more than two hundred meters up. Half-seen
