by Jeff Carlson
“Sir, there’s another helicopter in the ruins ahead of us,” the pilot said, glancing back at Jia.
“Proceed to target.”
They could collect their dead later, along with whatever equipment and clues remained. Jia was sure the second site had been attacked, too, but he needed to go through the motions of physically verifying it. A fool’s errand. This was how his life would end, cleaning up other men’s errors before they condemned him for their own mistakes. His disappointment was sickening, yet he thought, I’ll do my best. Perhaps it will be of some help to Qin if we—
“Watch out!” the copilot cried.
Two rocket trails lanced through the night. The fiery streaks went wide and cut past Jia’s helicopter as the rotors howled, the pilots reacting after the fact. The aircraft banked hard to Jia’s left, but the joy he felt wasn’t for escaping.
The Americans are still here! he thought.
His retinas burned. Both rockets had come from roughly the same place in the ruins. “There!” Jia yelled, pointing past the copilot’s helmet. The Z-9 had no armaments, but he wanted to avoid more incoming fire.
“I see them,” the pilot said as the copilot chattered into his headset, “We’re pulling left toward—”
A third rocket lifted from the earth directly in front of them. It slashed across the nose of Jia’s aircraft. The pilot shoved at the collective again, rocking them downwards. Then the night exploded.
“No!” someone yelled in the glare.
The rocket had struck the other helicopter and puffed away from its side in a long whipping cloud of fire and smoke.
Got ‘em, Cam thought. Three explosions lit the gloom like fireworks, although two of the RPGs landed in the ruins beyond the helicopters. Those bright pops of fire were disori enting because he expected them overhead. For a moment, his head reeled, trying to make sense of the distant flashes on the ground as a third, much closer light etched the shape of a Chinese bird into the sky.
The third shot was Medrano‘s, fired from somewhere to his right. It delivered only a glancing blow. The explosion seemed to bounce away from the helicopter’s side, but it was a killing strike. With infinite care, Medrano had bolted vials of the new machine plague to four of their rocket-propelled grenades. His RPG breached the aircraft. The nanotech did the rest. The helicopter shuddered, then spun away into the rubble below. The flames went out before it hit. Nor did it explode. But there was a solid wham in the dark.
Cam grabbed for another RPG against the wedge of concrete where he’d chosen to make his stand. They were closer to the labs than he liked, but they were afraid of being overflown, so they also wanted to be able to shoot at the campus in case the enemy got behind them.
The home’s foundation was exposed where its walls had been blasted away, creating a small, open corner for Cam to lay his arsenal, memorizing each weapon in line. If Alekseev had lifted a second launcher of his own, the Russian colonel held his fire. Cam couldn’t see the other man but he was fiercely aware of him and the others, too, like echoes of himself. In combat, they were as close as brothers.
“Save your round!” Alekseev called. “Save your round!”
“I hear you!” Cam shouted. This RPG was his last, and they were shooting blind. It was probably only their first shots, like tracer rounds, that had given Medrano an opportunity to zero in on the choppers. Now the surviving bird turned north, the sound of its blades slapping at the rubble.
Cam reached into the night with his ears and his bones, using his entire being as a tuning fork. He could track the vibrations. There, he thought. “Eleven o‘clock!” he yelled. “They’re at eleven o’clock!”
He ducked into the house’s foundation.
“Respond, respond!” the copilot screamed, trying to raise their comrades as Jia yelled into his own transceiver. “This is Short Dragon,” he said. “We are taking fire. The Americans appear to be dug in around our—”
The city beneath them ripped apart. Jia was still looking for the other helicopter when the black ruins shattered, heaved into the air by four explosions. The fires were distorted. Each sunburst was dirty with wreckage. At least one threw the body of a car spiraling up toward him, its hood and tires leaping away. Something banged off their aircraft with a crack like a gunshot and the helicopter lurched.
“We’re hit,” the pilot said calmly.
I was selfish, Jia thought. Uncareful. “Can you fly?” he asked, but the answer was obvious in the accelerating clockwise spin of the helicopter.
“Our tail—” the pilot began.
“Just get us down in one piece,” Jia said before shouting at his radio again. “This is Short Dragon at point two! We’re hit. We’re hit. The Americans appear to have dug in around the target and we’re putting down on the northern—”
Two more explosions painted their glass with light. In the false dawn, Jia saw the fins of a hundred broken walls rising from the ground. Poles. Wires. Was there anywhere safe to land? Seconds later they slammed into the mess. The helicopter bounced, then leaned to one side. “Go, go, go!” the pilot shouted, powering down as Jia and his men leapt out in a swift orderly line. He should have been proud of them, but he couldn’t see past his fury at his own failings.
“Split up,” he said, pointing Lieutenant Wei’s squad toward his left. The two pilots and another man would form up with him. “We’ll circle to either side. Stay on your radio. Be quick. We need to pierce their lines as quickly as possible.”
First he would advise his old base. Would they send reinforcements? How could more troops reach him if there were no more helicopters? Jia’s loyalty was to China and to General Qin, but he recognized the danger in what he must say.
Fifty percent of my strike force is dead.
If his superiors felt that he was losing this fight, they would send Xian heavy bombers over the labs. In fact, Jia wondered if those planes were already in the air.
Kendra looked up at the first explosions. “Go,” she said. “Help them.”
“I’m here to help you,” Deborah replied, floundering at the self-possession in Kendra’s face. My God, she thought. Is it possible she’s been totally coherent all this time?
“I know what to do,” Kendra said. “The marker—”
There was another huge detonation outside and their tent whispered and scratched as debris fell from the ceiling.
“I just need more time,” Kendra said.
“I can help.”
“You have to trust me.”
But I don‘t, Deborah thought. “Kendra—”
“I’m okay. Look at me. I’m okay. I know what to do.”
Deborah stared into the witch’s liquid dark eyes. Then she nodded and grabbed her AK-47 from the desktop, tearing through the sealed flaps of the tent.
The rubble burned. Fires leapt and crawled through the ruins in a dozen places, casting orange light and shadows. Cam waited with his insides crackling in the same way. The fighting had slowed to nothing for thirty minutes as the Chinese felt their way through the treacherous pitted landscape. Every second that passed was in his favor. Twice he heard people crunching in the dunes, but he held his fire. He was less likely to miss if they were point-blank.
Let them come to you, he thought. Let them come.
Suddenly two of Medrano’s bombs went off a hundred yards to Cam’s right. He heard the heavy stutter of an AK-47. Medrano? Another weapon responded. Cam tried to pinpoint either gun’s location, but the fight was too far away.
A third weapon joined the second, an unfamiliar brrp pp pp pp. Were the Chinese carrying submachine guns? Bullets pinged in the rubble. The AK-47 had stopped. Then another bomb tore through one of the standing walls, hurling fire and debris. The submachine guns quit and the AK-47 yammered again, once, twice. Cam realized there were two of the assault rifles. Obruch must have gone to support Medrano. They were holding the line. Cam wanted to help — he wanted to scream and cheer — but he stayed focused on the ruins in front of him, skimming
his gaze back and forth through the half-light.
Something moved to his left.
Cam raised his RPG launcher.
Then an object whispered overhead and clanked from a metal surface to his right, bouncing in the wreckage. Maybe there was another impact in front of him. Grenade, he thought. He ducked into his foundation again to protect the RPG with his body. If the vial of nanotech on its nose was broken…
Three explosions bracketed him harmlessly. Cam was untouched by the nearest bang, though the noise slapped into his ear like a pencil. They don’t know where I am, he realized, standing again with the RPG on his shoulder.
Alekseev’s response was more dangerous. He set off another block of C-4. A boxy commuter car flipped out of the wreckage. Fifty feet away, shrapnel punched into Cam’s shoulder and hip. Roughly the same distance from the bomb, the torrent of fire also illuminated a man in a hollow against one of the still-standing walls. The Chinese had used the noise of their grenades to advance. Cam fired but sent his rocket high, shoved off balance by the hot metal in his side. Then the man was obscured by smoke and dust.
Cam flung himself down. Had he seen a second soldier in the dark? Either way, the instinct was correct. Bullets snapped past his position. It was as if the explosions had opened a door. Submachine guns chattered in the haze, stitching through the wreckage. Cam leaned up with his rifle and got a face full of splinters, closing one eye against the pain.
Alekseev’s AK-47 roared on his left. Maybe he took some of the heat off of Cam. The submachine guns didn’t stop, but most of the noise turned away from Cam. Far to his right, he heard guns at Medrano’s position, too.
Cam lifted his rifle again as the firefight tapered off. Without thinking, he hesitated, too. The battle had a life of its own. Every burst of gunfire stimulated more shooting, and each pause did the same. They communicated with friend and enemy in the same way.
“Tíng hu!” Alekseev shouted. “Tng! Ràng w mn tn tn!”
There was silence.
Ash fell.
Somewhere, a burning wall peeled apart and clattered on the rubble beneath. Cam listened to the dark. Alekseev’s gambit was a risk — trying to engage the Chinese with lies, offering to trade nonexistent hostages for the chance to escape — and Cam wanted to protect his ally. He stood gingerly with his rifle at his shoulder.
Someone called, “W mén zài tng zhe ne.”
“W mén shu l yu n mén de rén!” Alekseev shouted. “W mén yào hé n mén jio huàn t mén q zhong de y gè, rú gu—”
Two grenades detonated on either side of Alekseev, one of them above his head. The Chinese must have held their weapons as the fuses burned down, only throwing the grenades at the last second.
The concussions shredded Alekseev in a twisting white hurricane. Cam screamed and fired. Another weapon chattered back at him. Bullets thunked into the wood and drywall on his left. He hit someone. There was a yell. Then a round slammed through his forearm and spun him backward. He lost his rifle. Get up! he thought.
The Chinese were breaking through.
Deborah reloaded quickly, leaning her bad shoulder against a wall. She’d stayed at the edge of the campus instead of wading into the ruins. It was a decision that allowed her to support Medrano and Obruch, sniping at the muzzle flashes on their flank while keeping the option to run toward Cam and Alekseev or even to retreat to Kendra’s lab.
It was like shooting at sparks. The enemy guns flickered, faded, and flickered again. Hit or miss, she never saw anyone. Her frustration helped her concentrate. Every muscle was centered on her weapon, because firing her AK-47 was agony. Deborah barely had enough strength to control the weapon and she probably couldn’t have managed it on semi-auto. Instead, she picked at the Chinese with single shots, jarring her shoulder with each round.
She knew she’d better move. They would get a bead on her if she didn’t. So far, other guns had distracted them, being much closer, but now everyone on her side was either hurt or hiding or dead. The fighting had stopped. How long has it been since the chopper landed? she thought. Forty minutes. Maybe less. It’s not enough.
Deborah crept forward in the orange light, torn in two directions as her body shook with adrenaline and fear. Were any of her people still alive?
Jia slogged through the rubble on both knees and one hand, keeping his pistol up. He’d slung his slender-barreled Type 85 submachine gun in order to climb. The wasteland was peppered with sharp edges and gaps. It slid. It creaked. He’d lost count of the bruises on his legs. His left arm ached inside its cast.
Only Jia and the copilot were still mobile. The other soldier was dead and they’d left their pilot behind after he was wounded in both thighs.
Jia thought they were very close. In the half-light, past the ragged shapes of the debris and a bent lamppost, he glimpsed a somewhat open field that must have been a parking lot. Several cars were strewn across it in clumps, and the flat ground was covered in soot and trash, but compared to the rest of the city, this clear space was a garden. Beyond it stood larger buildings that might have been the same size and shape before the quakes — the lab site.
The enemy was using AK-47s, not American rifles. Nor was the one man he’d glimpsed wearing a containment suit, so why weren’t they sick with the mind plague? Who were they really?
Jia was out of grenades. Otherwise he would have thrown one to mask his approach. It was very quiet. Every movement was painstaking. He crept toward the lamppost through glass and tree branches and the soft cushions of a sofa, testing each bit of junk for noise. He wanted to holster his pistol — he needed both hands — but couldn’t bring himself to climb without any weapon at all.
He wondered if he would hear his planes before the bombs fell. How much time was left? Jia was close enough to the site that napalm or high explosives would incinerate him, too, and yet he pressed on, caught between the need for silence and the need to hurry.
Almost there, he thought.
A running shape broke across the field, sprinting out from the buildings. Jia did not hesitate. He leaned up from the wreckage and opened fire.
The pistol barked in Cam’s face — but it was not directed at him. It was pointed over his head. Where? Someone was racing from the campus. Deborah? The figure was too scrawny. Too short. Too crazy. With all the dense clarity of a nightmare, Cam knew Deborah had more sense than the charge into the open.
It was Kendra. What was she doing? He caught one hint of her expression in the fires, huge white eyes, white teeth, black cheeks streaked with sweat or tears.
The gunfire cut her down.
“No!” Cam screamed.
Jia reeled backward when an AK-47 stuttered in the ruins beneath him, surprisingly close. It chewed through the lamppost, then cut within centimeters above his head. Jia was lucky the copilot was to his left. He heard the copilot’s submachine gun chatter.
The two guns dueled, exchanging bursts. In a sudden break, Jia swung himself up and fired, too, emptying his pistol.
His reward was a thrashing body in the night. The enemy soldier collapsed.
Deborah saw the new firefight break out on the perimeter — and just as quickly, she saw the rifle on her side fall silent. Was it Cam or Alekseev? Deborah scrambled to help. She left her corner.
The enemy guns swung toward her. She was spotted against the open face of the building, drawing fire from at least two Chinese.
She leapt into the parking lot, finding safety behind an overturned car. Her shoulder felt like an oven, a hot box of bone and meat. The vehicle rang with bullets. Glass and paint showered her hair, but that didn’t stop her from peering through the wheelwell for her friends.
What she found was an even greater surprise. Twenty feet away, Kendra lay dying as she groped at her ruptured chest. No. The crazy witch seemed to be making passes at the air above herself, reaching for heaven or hell or something else only she could see.
Where did she come from!? Deborah thought.
Then: I shoul
dn’t have trusted her! But she said she was okay. The men needed me. Deborah’s conflict of pride and disgust was directed as much at herself as the other woman. We knew she was unstable. Cam told me to—
A trick of light changed everything in Deborah. As the fires licked and danced, a tiny square gleamed in Kendra’s hand. A substrate. Deborah’s low-level training was enough for her to recognize what had happened.
She wanted to celebrate. She needed to cry.
The stupid goddamned witch, she thought. They’d won! Kendra had built her counter-vaccine — but the nanotech needed to be absorbed by a host before it could multiply. It might not have escaped if Kendra inhaled it inside the lab. The mind plague would rob her of her senses. What if she’d become trapped in her tent or if the Chinese sealed her in the building? She needed other people for the new plague zone to expand beyond anyone’s control.
Maybe the crazy witch wanted to die. On some level, she must have realized how close the enemy had come. Why hadn’t she run to Deborah? Had she been looking for her in the night? The two of them could have infected each other, hiding beside the building or even here among the cars.
Kendra was trying to ingest the substrate, but she couldn’t lift her hand to her mouth. Blood dripped from her elbow as she trembled with weak, useless spasms.
This is it, Deborah thought. All we need to do is get the nanotech inside her. Or me.
Deborah ran into the open.
Jia fired on the third American, too, grimacing in pleasure as the blond-headed soldier jerked and fell. Then his pistol was empty again. He had no more spare clips, only his submachine gun.
He began to press forward again. He stopped when he realized the American sprawled in the parking lot was still moving. A ruff of yellow hair shone in the guttering light. Jia seated his submachine gun against his shoulder. The weapon was designed for brute power, not accurate shots, but it was critical to stop the Americans from whatever they were doing. Bringing nanotech? Wiring more explosives? Nothing else made sense. They wouldn’t have left their fighting holes without good reason, so he would shoot the wounded.
