“Just H?” The anticipation in his own voice surprised him. Why was he flirting with this woman? Besides, he had actual work to do. He didn’t need the distraction.
“Just H.”
Anthony shot a look at Tony, who was smirking at the exchange. “What can I do for you, H?”
Holding an index finger in the air, she pulsed him a virtual card. Her full name and title appeared in his retinal display.
“Special Advisor to the White House?” Anthony reassessed every assumption he’d made about this woman. “What does that mean exactly?”
H shrugged. “It means whatever my boss wants it to mean on any given day. Right now, it means I’m here to invite you to a meeting.”
A meeting. With the President of the United States. Getting away from politicians was one reason he’d come to Mars in the first place.
“I’m sorry, my schedule is pretty full at the moment, Miss—H.”
“Oh, I’m sure it is.” She shrugged. “I imagine you’ll be very busy trying to get your conversion efficiencies up to twenty-five percent legitimately … using the advertised dosage of bacteria, I mean.”
Anthony’s eyes narrowed. “Who are you?” He turned on Tony. “How did she get here?”
“I invited myself, Anthony.”
His anger crawled up his neck, red as the Martian landscape. “I think I’ve heard enough. Tony, put her on the next shuttle back to Earth.”
“Please, Anthony.” H’s hand clamped on his arm with surprising strength. “You need a lifeline, I’ve got a rope. You’re a man of big ideas, but maybe some of them were ahead of their time.”
H removed her hand from Anthony’s arm. “I’ll be in touch.” Her index finger lingered.
As she walked away, her laughter lingered in the manufactured air.
Chapter 6
William Graves • Arizona Desert
With the Arizona sun hammering down from a cloudless sky, Graves could feel the moisture being baked out of his body. All around him, as far as he could see was rolling sand, like golden waves. Less than a day ago, this area had been I-10 from Tucson to Phoenix, a multi-lane highway. Now, nothing but virgin desert.
The soldier in the lead, with the magnetometer, called out a reading and stabbed an orange flag in the sand. He mushed his way through the loose sand until the flags showed the outline of the vehicle. Four soldiers with shovels tramped forward and started digging. Four miles back, they had backhoes and bulldozers to move the sand and drag cars out, but Graves was leading one of the advance teams, searching for survivors. He shook his head in frustration. The Disaster Mitigation Corps had all sorts of technology, but it was useless here. He and his troops were reduced to using metal detectors and shovels like this was some macabre day at the beach .
He directed the soldier with the magnetometer to keep moving and pulled off his dark glasses to wipe the stinging sweat out of his eyes. The unshielded sun was intensely bright, forcing him to squint. He sipped water from the catch-tube on his shoulder then picked up a shovel.
Stab-pull, stab-pull . His efforts didn’t so much shovel the sand as shift it to one side, but he found the work a monotonous relief, a way to displace poisonous thoughts with physical labor.
If his team had realized the water shortage earlier, the evacuation would not have happened, and none of these cars would be on the road. If he’d been more forceful with the Tucson mayor about the evacuation. If he’d sent an armed escort with the water convoy, the city of Tucson might have held for another day…
Stab-pull, stab-pull .
If, if, if, his thoughts whirled in a carousel of blame, all pointing the finger of responsibility back at him. Last night, Graves had found out the Lake Havasu pumping station had indeed been shorting the Central Arizona Project on water supply, as his team had suspected, but his intervention was too little, too late for these poor people.
His shovel struck something in the sand and stuck. “I’ve got a hit,” Graves called out.
“Me, too, sir,” said a young soldier next to him. With her face swaddled against the sun and wearing dark glasses, she looked more like an actor in a sci-fi movie than a US soldier.
He dropped to his knees to find the tip of his shovel buried in a spider-webbed windshield. When Graves wrenched the shovel free, grains of golden sand sifted into the hole and disappeared. He put his face close to the small dark area of exposed glass.
“Move back. We’re going to break the windshield.”
No answer.
Eager hands swept the sand aside, clearing a larger space. The heat and the sand grinding into the soft skin of every body crevice was forgotten now. When the windshield was mostly clean, Graves stepped back and nodded to a beefy soldier. The young man, similarly camouflaged against the sun, lifted a six foot-long shaft they called the harpoon. A retracted four-fingered grappling hook gleamed on the end. He raised the shaft, called “Stand back!” and punched it through the glass. There was a chunking sound as the grappling hook splayed out inside the windshield, white fingers against the black interior.
Two more soldiers stepped forward. The three of them heaved on the shaft in rhythm. Cracks swept across the glass with a crinkling sound, the center bulged outward, and finally with a sigh like the opening of an automatic door, the windshield folded like paper and pulled free.
Graves dropped to his knees and slid into the opening face-first. It was dark inside, forcing him to strip off his sunglasses. Sand sifted into the car all around him, making little piles on the dashboard, the floor, the empty front seats.
It was a minivan, an ancient internal combustion model with sweat-stained seats and scarred dashboard.
He pulled the bandanna from his face and immediately regretted it. The smell in the vehicle was damp, musty with sweat, sharp with urine. Under that, a fetid smell of being far too late. Already Graves could feel the heat outside sucking the valuable moisture from the space.
“Sir, you should let us go—”
“Quiet!” He needed to hear. “Wait outside.”
Graves turned on his headlamp.
There were four of them, a mother and three children, all daughters, ages less than one to maybe four. The woman had put down the backseat and laid out blankets to form a makeshift bed. She lay on her side, the infant pressed close to her chest, her free arm reaching out to embrace all three. They appeared a mixed-race family, some kinky hair mixed in with the woman’s own straight, black locks. An ashen sheen tinged her mahogany skin, and her lips were blue with hypoxia. Graves forced himself forward and checked each body for a pulse.
They were all dead.
• • •
Graves felt a tug on his arm. “Colonel.” Another tug. “Sir.”
“I said, wait outside!”
He started awake, blinking. The fetid smell of death vanished, replaced by the antiseptic comfort of air conditioning.
Jansen’s shaved scalp gleamed in the muted light of the aircar interior. “We’re here, sir.”
Washington. They’d been ordered to Washington, DC.
Graves swallowed. “Right.”
His aide gazed at him with what looked like understanding. Graves wondered if she had nightmares about Phoenix too, though he’d never had the courage to ask.
He stepped out of the vehicle into mercifully weak sunshine. The fresh scent of birch trees washed away the stench of the dream. The area around the Pentagon had been bermed years ago to protect against flooding. The new construction subdued the noise of passing traffic and gave the military installation an incongruous, park-like feel.
Jansen appeared at his side, settling her beret in place. Graves squared his shoulders and led her through the building’s VIP entrance. The security bots scanned their biometrics as they walked in. They didn’t even have to slow down.
The inside of the Pentagon was cool and professional, a rush of uniformed bodies moving in every direction, everyone in a hurry to get to their next meeting. Islands of laughter interrupted sca
ttered conversations as they passed. They descended to the Pentagon’s secure deck, a compartmented area of isolated briefing rooms.
The quarterly disaster threat assessment meeting had been advanced two weeks, which had surprised Graves. Since taking the helm of the Disaster Mitigation Corps, he’d come to feel disdain for the tenuous state of public awareness regarding their changing planet. The newsfeeds, addicted to breaking news, had dulled the public into a disaster-of-the-day feeling of overwhelm. Weather catastrophes were the new normal.
Graves had seen seawalls crumble beneath the onslaught of hurricanes, neighborhoods ripped apart by massive tornadoes, whole communities reduced to ash by wildfires. And now the largest sandstorm in US history had buried an interstate full of Americans.
No one seemed to appreciate the enormity of the big picture. That myopia sometimes made these meetings seem like one step forward and two steps back. A glance at his display said they’d be late in two minutes.
Out of necessity, the population had adapted in the last few decades, albeit at great cost. Migration favored moving inward to the Midwestern states. Those who remained along the reshaped coasts had rebuilt cities devastated by flooding to counter rising sea levels. Even venerable old buildings like the Pentagon had set up levees and elaborate drainage systems, complete with dikes. Dutch history books had proven useful at the close of the twenty-first century.
Graves placed his palm over the locked door of the meeting room. Acknowledging his identity, it clicked open.
A lone man sat at the long briefing table. He wore a dark business suit, modern cut. The material changed color subtly as light reflected off it. Dark green, now navy, now gray. The stranger stood and extended a hand. “Colonel, welcome.”
Graves entered and shook the man’s hand automatically. “I’m here for the disaster threat assessment meeting.” He glanced around, wondering where his commanding officer and the rest of the DTA staff were.
“You’re in the right place, Colonel.” The stranger resumed his seat.
Graves took a seat, his internal radar pinging. “I’m sorry, you are…?”
“I work for the Office of Budgetary Compliance.”
“Oh.” Graves shot a glance at Jansen, who shrugged. He wished she could do a quick search for whatever the hell Office of Budgetary Compliance was and why his DTA meeting had been coopted by a slick-palmed bureaucrat in a shiny suit. But she’d get nothing on this secure deck of the Pentagon. All external comms and WorldNet links were blocked by security.
“Shall we get started?” The man spoke in a light tone, his accent neutral. He had vaguely Japanese features and smiled in a way that failed to engage his eyes. Graves disliked him already.
“I’ve read your report on Phoenix, Colonel.”
Ah , Graves thought. He’s here about the water poaching .
The man called up an image on his tablet and slid it across the table. “I wonder what you can tell me about these people?”
The photo showed six people walking abreast with the dark wall of the record-breaking sandstorm in front of them on the horizon. Graves recognized them as the New Earthers the Intel group had shown him.
“They’re Neos.” Graves pushed the tablet back. “The ones we saw in Phoenix, just before the storm.”
The man nodded. “Yes, that’s exactly correct. Have you seen people like this at other disaster sites?”
“They’re pretty common. They seem to be attracted to extreme weather events. Some sort of twisted nature worship, I guess.”
“Do you know how they managed to get into this area of Phoenix? The whole region had been evacuated, right?”
Graves shifted. He hated explaining the realities of military occupation to a civilian. They never understood the exigencies of military necessity and never tired of asking inane questions. “Mandatory evacuations are not perfect, Mister…” The silence extended. Graves plowed on. “They might’ve hidden when we went house to house. To be perfectly frank, if someone is determined to avoid a mandatory evac order, it’s not that hard to do. ”
Jansen cleared her throat, a signal they’d practiced. Graves guessed his tone must have gotten edgy.
The man seemed not to notice or care. He shook his head slowly as he called up another image. Graves accepted the tablet and held it up so Jansen could see. A video streamed, pieced together from various drone and security camera footage. They watched as each of the six made their way to the deserted suburban street where Perkins had spotted them. The final image showed them facing the coming storm as it approached.
“Each of them left secure housing hours before the storm and walked to the meeting point. Someone told them to go there, Colonel.”
“I don’t understand, Mister Whatever Your Name Is.” Graves was tired, and his bullshit meter had begun to tick-tick-tick. “What does this have to do with water poaching?”
“I’m not here about the report you filed, Colonel.” The slick man sat back. His suit phased a charcoal gray. “I’m here because someone knew about the storm hours before you did. Well before our weather satellites even predicted this event. Someone told these six people to go to Phoenix and wait.”
“And what does that have to do with me? I’m the guy who gets airdropped into a disaster to make things better; or, at least, not worse. Food, water, shelter, rescue—that’s what I do. Tracking cults is not in my job description.”
“And you don’t find it the least bit strange that these Neos show up at disasters, at precisely the right time and place—almost every time?” The man leaned forward again, his eyes unblinking as he regarded Graves. “That they seem to be able to predict these events with remarkable accuracy? ”
Graves shot a look at Jansen. They’d considered the New Earthers to be demonstrators at best, suicidal crackpots at worst. But the man’s confirmation of their own hypothesis that they appeared at the scene of nearly every major disaster was disconcerting.
“What are you suggesting?” Graves asked. Then he held up a hand and pushed the tablet away. “Never mind. I don’t want or need to know. As long as they don’t interfere with my relief efforts, I don’t really care what they do.”
The man tapped the tablet several more times and pushed it back to Graves. “Do you know these people?”
The woman was young, not quite thirty, with a thin, austere face, long dark hair, and penetrating eyes. She looked vaguely familiar.
“She’s the UN Secretary for Biodiversity,” Jansen whispered. “Kisaan. I don’t know the guy.”
Graves did. He studied the five o’clock shadow of the jawline, the crooked nose, the slight squint in his eyes. “The man is Remy Cade. Used to be under my command. He was caught up in Vicksburg. Good kid. Damned shame how they hung him out to dry.” He glared at the man. “He deserved better. They all did.”
“Have you had any contact with Mr. Cade in the last year?”
Graves shook his head. “I haven’t seen Cade since his trial. I was a character witness, for all the good it did him. Why?” His patience was wearing thinner by the minute.
The man tapped his tablet again, then nodded. “Thank you for your honesty, Colonel. We have reason to believe Mr. Cade and Secretary Kisaan have allied themselves with the New Earth movement. Your biometrics indicate you’re telling the truth. Which is lucky for you.”
Jansen gasped beside him. While the passive monitoring of personnel biometrics wasn’t illegal, it was ethically questionable, to say the least. Graves felt Jansen’s anger rising. They were decorated military officers, after all, and this was the Pentagon.
Graves cleared his throat to stop Jansen from speaking. “I certainly feel lucky,” he said, sarcasm infecting his tone. “If you’ll excuse us, Mr. Nobody, we have a disaster zone to manage.”
The tablet pushed across the table again. “I’ve just been given authorization to read you both into a Special Access Project. You’re familiar with the process?”
Graves hesitated only a moment, then placed his palm on
the proffered tablet. The gloss of text that appeared was brief. He passed the device to Jansen, who read herself in.
“What is Haven and why do you need us?” she asked, her anger at being monitored still evident.
The man smiled thinly. “Haven is the US military’s Plan B in the climate war. We need men and women who can deal with the logistics of unpredictable natural situations.”
Graves exchanged a look with Jansen.
“Excuse me, sir,” she said. “You haven’t told us what Haven is.”
The man tucked the device under his arm and stood. “Let’s just say we’re building an ark for the human species and we want you to outfit it. We’ll be in touch.”
Chapter 7
Ming Qinlao • Earth Orbit
Auntie Xi had traveled to the Moon by private shuttle, of course. Ming had hoped against all reason that maybe they’d take a regular transport home. It would have given her a chance to digest the news of her father’s death in the comforting company of strangers. Her aunt wouldn’t dare to discuss family matters in public.
Instead, Ming huddled next to a window, watching the Earth grow closer while the Moon—and Lily—fell farther away. The shuttle was a Qinlao executive model, outfitted with a dozen captain’s chairs wrapped in real leather. Watching the spiral arms of a whirling white cyclone in the South China Sea, Ming traced the family logo embroidered on the headrest with the tip of her finger.
Gone were the controlled environments and recycled atmosphere of lunar caverns. Soon she’d feel the wind on her cheek, the sun on her face, the humidity of unpredictable weather patterns .
And gravity.
Lucky she’d kept up with her daily weight training and muscle mass supplements. Anyone who made the transition back to Earth after long stretches on the Moon spoke of the pain, the fatigue, the careful movements necessary to keep fragile bones from breaking.
Ming rested her head against the cool of the shuttle window. The pain would be more than just physical pain during her trip home.
“May I get you something?” She could barely hear Ito’s voice above the hiss of the air-conditioning.
The Lazarus Protocol: A Sci-Fi Corporate Technothriller (The SynCorp Saga Book 1) Page 5
