Suspended above the runway was a swirling layer of smoke, drifting in quiet eddies. Floating above it was the moon—huge, round and full, the color of lead through the overcast, lifting into view.
And then, slowly and gracefully, into the grey circle of the moon came a giant silhouette—the breathtakingly huge, powerful shape of an aircraft, gliding silently through the top of the smoke layer, its nose rising majestically as it began its flare for the landing. The nose lifted higher, then higher, then gasps came through our headsets as the nose rolled higher still, exposing a glowing, jagged edge where Tanaka’s heater had melted the great plane in two.
The front end of the aircraft rolled slowly onto its back, settling closer and closer to the runway, the glowing maw of its wound approaching as though to swallow us all. Molten fragments floated across the island and flared into pillars of flame where they hit the jungle, making no sound at all.
Then suddenly the trance was broken as the plane plunged through the wall of smoke and smashed into the runway, spinning furiously toward us along the right side, crushing the remaining crews watching from behind their machines.
Polaski jumped. I strained to see through the smoke, and then I saw it too.
Barely outlined against the glow of the flames, a black figure was walking toward Elliot where he stood by Tanaka’s big heater. I started to run, pulling off my headset as I went. “Elliot! Elliot, look out!”
Elliot spun just as Cole raised his arm and pulled the trigger.
He hit Ellen Tanaka squarely in the face from just inches away.
W
e lifted off in a helicopter two hours later. The island was in flames, a pyre whose smoke churned into the night like oil, blotting out the moon.
Chan sat hunched in a corner of the deck as the turbines swept us through the night, her face in her hands and her shoulders shaking as she wept. Elliot slumped against the after bulkhead, head turned with his cheek against the cold metal. Paulson sat to one side, frowning at her hands and counting something on her fingers. Polaski looked out a window with pursed lips. I stood across from him, holding onto a strap. I was staring out through the door, not wanting anyone to know how frightened I’d been when I’d thought the gun was aimed at Elliot.
The five of us were the only ones left, the only ones who’d been at that end of the runway. The rescue crews hadn’t found Cole, or any trace of his body.
THREE
Passover
A
t dawn the next morning a pillar of black smoke still blotted out the sky over the island. I sat on the stoop of our bungalow and watched, far to the east.
During the night I’d gone to find Chan, and she’d taken me into her bed. But the picture of oily flames and charred bodies hadn’t left me, and finally she’d put a hand on my chest and sent me away. Elliot had come later, and now sat tossing pebbles into the dirt. They made faint little thumps in the darkness where they hit.
“Cheer up,” he said.
“You should talk.”
“Hell, it ain’t so bad. We still got stuff to look forward to. We could have breakfast, you know, with that real good egg shit, then—well, come on, Torres, think of all the stuff we could do. Your head gets to hurting, thinking about it . . . You don’t believe me, do you? That’s the trouble with you, Torres, you take everything so serious. It’s depressing being around you, sometimes.”
“They’re dead, Tyrone. A hundred forty-two of them. How the hell can you let them go so quick?”
“No, sir, you don’t ever let them go. You hang onto them real tight. But you don’t let them drag you back, neither. Don’t forget that, you hear?”
What had the old man done when the fires came? Had he tried to hobble away on his cane? Call out for help?
M
usic from a flute brought me out of my sleep. It came from the trees, the same tune I’d heard the other night. Again, as I listened, it seemed to bring back some other place, some other time, hard to remember.
A chair scraped in the room behind me. Elliot was gone. The air was still, with a light mist hiding in the trees.
The chair squeaked again.
“Torres.” It was Polaski’s voice.
“What.”
“How rich is it possible to get?”
“As rich as you want, Polaski.”
Silence.
“I mean, can you have a trillion dollars?”
“Christ.” I went inside. Boots hung off the end of my bunk where Elliot slept. I sat down across from Polaski and took a drink from his canteen.
“Okay. No, you can’t get trillions. At a certain point money doesn’t mean anything anymore. In the end it’s something the other guy only honors if he feels like it, and if you’ve got almost all of it, he’s not going to feel like it. You reach a point where you’ve got too big a claim on society’s resources and they devalue the money or cut you off, because you’re bidding against it for labor and goods it has to have.”
“How can they cut you off? It’s legal money, isn’t it?”
“Grow up.”
“Fuck you, too. What if we’ve got some other kind of hold?”
“Listen, Polaski, if you’re talking about selling those plans, you’re not going to get anywhere near that kind of money. It doesn’t work that way.”
He looked disgusted. “No one’s getting those plans, Torres. We build the power cells, and those we sell.”
“Forget it. And don’t even mention patent rights. They’ll duplicate it overnight, and by next morning every company and government on the planet will have a nice tidy little reason why we need to be deported and our facilities nationalized.”
Polaski reached for the canteen.
“Fuck ’em,” he said.
T
he overcast had lowered even more an hour later.
“So listen, Torres. You made copies yet?”
“Before we moved out yesterday. There was just the document in the blocks, so I copied it off and wiped them. He was done with the modeling.”
“So how long to build a power cell and find out if it works?”
“That’s not the way it’s done, Polaski. You tell an MI to build a virtual copy and simulate it. That’s what the old man was using the big blocks for, and his MI said it works. Assuming all the materials exist.”
“Yeah, okay. So what do you need to prove it can actually be built?”
“Faster systems, like Canberra. Or China Lake’s better, if California let the U.S. keep it open.”
“They did.” Elliot was sitting up on the bed. “U.S. got to keep it under the treaty. What the hell are you up to?” He was looking at me.
Footsteps came from the porch and Bolton stepped in, still in his dress whites.
“Whatever you’re up to, lads, you can forget it.” He threw a yellow flimsy onto the table. “They’re breaking us up, with unaccustomed dispatch. Possibility of courts-martial relating to the aircraft, with additional rather cryptic questions regarding our search for a missing researcher—about whom we know nothing, hm? The Army are not amused, gentlemen.”
I looked away.
“When?” said Polaski.
What the hell did it matter?
“Fifteen-hundred hours. We have six hours, lads, to come to terms with the wretched little scraps of our lives they will leave us.”
For a minute no one spoke, then Elliot left abruptly. When he came back it was with Chan, who stopped and leaned in the doorway. She looked tired.
“Listen, Chan,” said Elliot. “Bolton says they’re busting us up at fifteen-hundred. How come you can’t break into someone’s communications and put out a message that we’ve been picked up or we’re dead or something?”
She sighed. “One,” she said, “that’s not the way you work a bureaucracy. What you do is create a classified unit somewhere with no known access code, then transfer us to that unit. Then you reassign that unit to this island. In the military mind, we no longer exist.
“Two. I c
an’t get that deep into their systems. I can file personnel status changes, but I can’t move units around or requisition equipment or classify information. They change those passwords every ten days, and without a much bigger front-side store it would take me months to crack one. They know that.
“Three. What do you think I’ve been trying to do all night?” She didn’t look at me. “Most of the night.”
“All right!” Polaski’s fist slammed into the table. Chan frowned, in no mood for dealing with him, but I was reaching into my pockets at the same time. I set the silver blocks on the table.
Chan gave me a puzzled look, then snatched up the blocks without another word and pushed her way back out the door.
* * *
I
t was sometime after three when a CH-77’s lethargic thumping approached from above the clouds. It materialized through the layer just offshore, then beat its way in toward the clearing.
We were sitting under the mess canopy, waiting for the Army and the rain. We hadn’t seen Chan since morning, and the brief hope sparked by her departure had faded. We’d told Bolton and Elliot about the plans for the power cells. Bolton listened with a polite skepticism, his eyes flicking restlessly across the landing field. Elliot hummed and spat sunflower husks.
Now we sat and watched the ugly machine coming in across the clearing. It was squat and slow, and spent a while finding the right position before it waddled onto its tiny legs and the pilot killed the engines.
We wandered out to watch. As the rotors spun down one of the cargo doors slid open and an MP stepped out and looked around. The pilot and her chief kicked open their own doors and leaned against the fuselage. It got quiet.
Then all at once Chan was racing around a corner and up to the helicopter. She pushed her way past the pilot with a mumbled apology, then pulled herself up to look at the instrument panel. She slipped back down and ran out of sight between the buildings.
The pilot took the performance with good enough humor, but the MP tensed. He watched her go, then walked over and stopped in front of Bolton.
“I understand we’re giving you a lift off the island? Kits ready? Anything heavy?” He was being friendly, but he looked at each of us in turn and didn’t seem to miss much.
We couldn’t think of anything to say.
The silence was broken when Chan ran up to the helicopter again, back past the pilot and into the seat. She picked up the microphone and set one of the radios, breathing hard from the run.
The pilot put her hands in her pockets and watched. The chief wandered around the nose to see. The MP folded his hands across his chest.
Chan brought the microphone to her lips.
“Paradise Control, Watchdog Three on guard.”
“Watchdog Three, Paradise. Go ahead.”
“Paradise, be advised I have a signature on a CH-seven-seven in grid four-two oscar, restricted zone.” She seemed to be reporting a sighting of the very aircraft she was calling from, although our island’s position in 42-oscar had never been restricted.
A pause by the controller.
“We show no restrictions in forty-two oscar, Watchdog. Say your point of origin, please.”
Chan ignored him. “Check your overlays, Paradise.” The morning’s airspace notices, not yet on the master grid.
“Stand by.”
Chan’s hand shot out to the frequency selector and waited. The MP turned to glance at Bolton, then looked back.
“Thank you, Watchdog,” said the controller.
Chan spun the selector and the same controller’s voice came up on the new frequency.
“—ster one-five, Paradise Control. Acknowledge.”
Chan stuck the microphone out the door to the pilot.
“It’s for you.”
The pilot raised an eyebrow but took the mike.
“Duster one-five.”
“One-five, you’ve entered restricted zone niner-zulu without authorization—”
The controller stopped.
“Stand by, one-five.” Apparently something else had popped up in front of him.
Chan ducked under the microphone cord and walked lightly around the MP to stand between me and Bolton. She squeezed my hand. The pilot and her chief looked at each other. The MP stared at the microphone.
“Duster one-five, our apologies. You are cleared into R-niner-zulu to pick up one Warrant Officer A. W. Paulson for routine reassignment, then return Motherlode-direct. All other orders are superseded. Clearance expires on zone departure. Contact me on engine-start.”
“Cleared R-niner-zulu, return Motherlode-direct. Roger one-five.” The pilot clipped the mike back and put her hands in her pockets. She and her chief leaned against the fuselage to watch us.
The MP stood halfway between them and our little group, then finally he, too, turned back to face us, looking grim. No one spoke.
Finally Chan said, “Lieutenant?”
It took Bolton a minute, then he straightened and tugged down his tunic. “Quite.” He turned briskly and strode off toward the MI hut.
We stood where we were for a long time—Chan, Elliot, Polaski and I on the edge of the clearing, the crew under the stubby wing of their obese helicopter, and the MP out in the middle. It began to rain.
Drops spattered against the canvas behind us, and sizzled off the helicopter’s engine housings, putting up a fine mist. The air smelled of wet dust.
Finally we heard feet slapping through the puddles and Bolton reappeared, escorting a sleepy-looking Paulson to the open cargo bay. He handed in her kit bag, then walked back to the MP and saluted.
The MP’s eyes narrowed. Rain dripped from his brow as he stared at each one of us in turn. Finally he turned back to Bolton and saluted, spun on his heel, and walked to the helicopter. The crew began their engine-start, and the pilot reached for her microphone.
We’re free, I thought. For now, at least, we’re free.
FOUR
The Eye of Mount Nebo
S
un hissed off the salt pan of Searles Lake, and China Lake to the west, shimmering between the Mojave Desert and the Sierra Nevada. The temperature climbed above 130 degrees.
Inside the lab, ventilators hummed and dripped water down the walls. Computer screens waited for my instructions, if only I could think what more to ask. In the concrete pits under the grating, processors iced in frost sent up wisps of helium into the room.
The China Lake Naval Weapons Center seemed isolated and adrift. There was an air of resignation, with the staff just waiting for the war to end.
Chan had gotten me in, a week after the bouncer crash, with the rank of captain and a classification high enough that I was isolated even from the staff. The escorts who brought my meals were polite but reserved. The systems I was using were set to purge when I was done.
She’d gotten me in, but she hadn’t been happy about it.
“Why are you doing this, anyway?” she said. “And why with Polaski? I don’t think he knows when to stop, Eddie.”
T
he day after Chan had gotten our unit classified and the MP had gone, a T-98 light aircraft had landed on the island, flown by a quiet-spoken colonel from the Judge Advocate General’s office, with the name HOLKOM on his fatigues. He was a slight, mustached man with greying hair, and was accompanied by a petite woman in civilian clothes named Delaney, who blushed frequently and carried a mobile data terminal.
They were there to conduct interviews, he said.
“If I might ask a question, Colonel,” said Bolton, meeting them by the airplane while Elliot disposed of classified documents we’d been reading in the bungalow. “How long has it been since you got your orders? This island has been sealed off, you know.”
“Oh, I’m sure it has, son, I’m sure it has. Haven’t talked to a soul in two days, is the thing—hell of a trip out from Washington. But I sure would hate to go all the way back without even a postcard for the kids, wouldn’t I? And I don’t much take orders from anyone
, Lieutenant. Don’t tell anyone where you’re going, I say, or what you’re up to—just poke around and you never know what you might find. Over this way, shall we?” With a hand on Bolton’s shoulder he steered us off toward the bungalow. “Sarah here”—he moved his hand over to her shoulder—“well, her mom thinks she’s in Philadelphia, as I recall. Fine woman, her mom.”
Chan had gone back to her quarters briefly and had then stolen a look into the plane, but now she gave me a tight-lipped shake of her head: There was nothing she could do.
The bungalow was clean, although Polaski’s mattress bulged in the middle more than it should have.
“Well, why don’t you just get set up there at the table, Sarah,” said Holkom, “and we can all get acquainted.”
The young woman, Sarah Delaney, glanced at Polaski and then Elliot and blushed, then sat down at her terminal. A bright pink heart with lace edges had been sewn onto the breast of her blouse. “Hi,” she said. A tiny dish antenna purred out and locked on a certain spot on the ceiling.
“So, what have we got?” said Holkom. He glanced around. “Warrant Officer Chan, Warrant Officer Torres—top of your class, weren’t you, son? Pretty good for a boy off the streets. You would have been a good officer, anyone ever tell you that? And Sergeant Elliot, okay . . .”
Elliot saluted and Holkom turned farther in his seat to take in Polaski. His eyes dropped to Polaski’s name tag.
“Oh, yes? Well, well, Platoon Sergeant Polaski, 1st Engineers. Didn’t expect to find you here. Or maybe I should have, what do you say? Well, we’ll deal with you later.”
He turned back to Delaney, now prim and upright in her chair, her fingers poised on the keys. Holkom nodded to her, then spoke to Bolton without turning around.
A Grey Moon Over China Page 5
