They followed the priest back out of the little church. This time, he pulled a thick coat around his shoulders. “Perhaps it is vanity, or even pride, but I wanted to make a good impression. Now, I simply want to be warm.”
He led them outside and along the track to the parking lot of the Dollar General store. Buzz nodded to Pope as he watched them from the car, but the man showed no signs of getting out.
Buzz turned around and saw the two armed guards appear on the track behind them.
“Oh, pay no attention to them. These are dangerous times and regrettably, we must be protected against the worst of the sinners. Cannibals and evildoers.”
Buzz almost pulled Yen toward the truck, but by this time, he’d caught a glimpse of the inside of the Dollar General as the soldier on the door pulled it aside.
“Good grief!” he whispered. He hadn’t seen a shop so well stocked since the flood. This made his stockroom back at the farm look empty—even in the early days while he’d awaited the inrushing water. This wasn’t Dollar General stock, however. It was an assortment of seemingly random products stacked neatly on the metal shelving, visible in the light coming through the large windows at the front of the store. Most of it was canned and dry food, but he also saw diapers, feminine products, toilet paper and other things that had once seemed to be essentials and were now rare luxuries.
“Please, help yourselves.”
“Why are you doing this?” Buzz asked.
The priest seemed puzzled. “We seek to save as many souls as we can before the day of judgment. We believe it to be near at hand, but you must still eat between now and then. Miss Yen has promised to return and we wish to see that happen.”
“You say ‘we,’ but I’ve only seen you and those two guards.”
Key nodded. “When I arrived here, the town was empty—the people had fled while they could cross to the west. Since then, more have seen our sign and occupied the houses. But it is cold, so they shelter indoors except when we come together to pray. Now, please, take what you need. Perhaps you will return with Yen.”
“Maybe I will,” Buzz said. “Thank you.”
“And please, once you’ve done that, use our gas station to refuel.”
Half an hour later, Buzz climbed into the front of the car as Yen kissed the priest’s hand and then got into the back.
“See, I told you it was safe here,” she said. “We have food and gas. Enough to go where we have to go. But then I want to come back here.”
Pope remained silent as they made their way back to the intersection with the highway, guiding the truck up the slope and following the half-filled-in tracks of an earlier vehicle.
“You want to come back here?” Pope said. “Really?”
“He’s a bit of a religious nut,” Buzz said, “but I can imagine worse places to shelter. And we got everything we needed.”
“And where do you think it all came from?”
Buzz shrugged. He’d been so excited by the cornucopia, he’d only thought about where it had come from as he’d been loading it in the car.
Neither Buzz nor Yen said anything, so Pope continued, “Max, show them.”
Max handed over his cellphone. Although there was no cell signal, he’d powered it using his kinetic charger and he launched the Photos app.
“You see, Max and I went for a little drive while you were inside the church. Take a look at what we found.”
The first picture showed a parking lot with two sixteen-wheelers. One was a fuel tanker, the other had Walmart on the side.
“Oh, my God,” Buzz whispered as he moved on to the next photo, taken from much closer. The windshield of the fuel tanker had been shattered, bullet holes puncturing the corners where the glass clung on, and riddling the radiator and the side of the hood. And, on the wall behind the driver’s seat, a spattering of dried blood.
The Walmart truck had fared similarly, though in that case, it looked as though the cab had been set alight. With the driver inside.
“That’s where it all came from,” Pope said. “But it gets worse. Show them.”
Max swiped through the next few photos until he came to one that showed a snowy field with a large patch of green and brown where what looked like a sports field and been cleared, and a square trench dug. Inside the trench were mounds that looked like freshly dug graves.
Buzz put his hand over his mouth. “What in God’s name…”
“This is not God’s doing,” Yen said.
“But why did they let you go?” Pope said. “I was all ready to come in guns blazing.”
They sat in silence for a few moments, and then Yen said, “Because the priest thought I believed him.”
“You were lying about going back?”
Yen nodded. “I’ve got a good spider sense and I knew there was something about him I didn’t trust. I gave him what he wanted.”
“So the praying was just a performance?”
“Not at all, just the promise about returning.”
Pope laughed grimly. “And that bit of theater saved your lives. Maybe all of us. Now, if you don’t mind, let’s get ourselves to Chicago. We’ve still got a job to do and it isn’t going to get any easier the longer we leave it.”
Chapter 18
Nuke
The toughest part of the day wasn’t finding where the president was staying, but getting past the ring of police and soldiers surrounding the hotel.
It had taken three hours to make their way into downtown Denver and then to locate the Jarvis Hotel, but the snow had kept off, so the journey had been less exhausting than on the previous day, especially as they got closer and the increased traffic cleared the roads of slush and ice.
They knew they’d arrived when a burly man in black riot gear put his hand out and told them to get lost. At first, they assumed these were the president’s own security forces, but after what he’d heard the previous night, Bobby wondered whether it was a cordon designed to keep her and her people contained and unable to communicate. He could see a helicopter on the roof, so it seemed that the president could escape if she wished, but that would mean potentially relinquishing her toehold on the west and leaving her to scurry back to the sunken east.
“So, how we get around?” Yuri asked once they’d retreated to the corner of the next block.
Bobby peered at the cordon. “Well, in the movies, one of us would create a distraction and the other would run in.”
“I see problem.”
“Yeah, you’re the one who’s got to get inside, and I don’t think you’re going to outrun anyone.”
“So, we go together. Maybe steal car. Ram into hotel…”
“And get shot in the process? No, we’ve got to be a little more subtle than that.”
Yuri shook his head. “Problem is, I do not do subtle. Not anymore. We have to get in.”
Bobby looked again at the hotel opposite. “Where do you reckon she is?”
“Penthouse, surely? She is president.”
Crossing the street, Bobby’s gaze moved from the hotel to the building opposite.
“What are you doing?” Yuri asked when he returned.
“The hotel is a little higher than this building, whatever it is.”
Yuri screwed up his face. “You think we can jump it?”
“No! But if the president is in the penthouse, then she’s likely got a panoramic view.”
“And she can see top of this building. Or people on it!”
“Yeah,” Bobby said. “Let’s see if we can attract her attention.”
Yuri followed Bobby as he skirted around the ugly concrete structure. “Is parking lot, no?”
They’d emerged onto the main street, where a pair of snow-covered ramps led into the dark. “Yeah. Not in use, though. Maybe we’re in luck.”
“For once.”
They made their way up the concrete ramp and into the interrupted darkness of the first level. A few cars, widely spaced, rotted away in forgotten corners, flurries of yest
erday’s snow mixing in the dusty air.
The stairs stank of urine and worse, and they were forced to climb in almost complete darkness, half expecting to step in something vile at any moment. When they reached the top level, Bobby pushed the door open and then shielded his eyes from the blinding light reflected from the perfect blanket of snow.
They walked around the outside of the top level, which was open to the sky, and looked across to the hotel. “Yes, I think if she looks this way, she sees us,” Yuri said.
“Okay, well we can use the snow to make a message, but what do we write?”
Yuri smiled. “Easy.”
#
Helmut Jager prowled the perimeter of the penthouse suite like a tiger in a gilded cage. They were wasting their time here. He liked President Buchanan—she was a strong, intelligent person who possessed a cast iron integrity that his employer Dr. Else Lundberg entirely lacked—but she was also stubborn to a fault. She was in danger here, in what was effectively now a separate state. And, in Helmut’s opinion, an enemy state.
He’d accompanied Lundberg as a member of her security team on this visit to Buchanan. The president, after all, had access to vast government resources, many of which were just now re-emerging from beneath the water, though the ice that had replaced it was almost as great an impediment.
He turned a corner, striding along a glass corridor with panoramic views of a crystal city. A dark grid crisscrossed the white blanket that lay on all the horizontal surfaces and piled up against the taller buildings. The only movement was the ant-like crawling of cars and trucks along the choked roads.
He wondered how long it would take for all evidence of civilization to be buried beneath the snow and ice. And that led him to consider Ted Pope and Dr. Baxter. Last he’d heard, they were struggling across a frozen wilderness in their quest for clues to the disaster engulfing the planet. As far as he knew, Lundberg’s team had made little progress, though the fact that she kept Dr. Rath imprisoned suggested she wasn’t too concerned.
Since the incident with the Minotaur rocket, Helmut had found himself left out of Lundberg’s deepest confidences. But she still trusted him to protect her. He grunted as he considered how well she knew him, at least in that way. She knew he didn’t like or approve of her, but also that he wouldn’t allow harm to come to her as long as he remained her head of security. But she’d been absent from SaPIEnT’s Denver headquarters on more than one occasion, taking others with her for security.
“Hi, Helmut.”
He smiled as Lexa Delmont, chief of Buchanan’s security detail rounded the opposite corner and walked toward him. He knew what the others said about the two of them: the Vikings, they were called. Lexa was tall, fair and angular, whereas Helmut was muscular, blonde and had a bushy mustache. If only the others knew the full truth.
He noticed her blush a little as they approached each other and turned to look out of the glass onto the city.
Helmut was going to try to make small talk, but Lexa interrupted him. “What’s that?”
She was pointing down at the roof of a parking garage.
Helmut leaned forward, his nose pressing against the glass. “Do I see letters in the snow?”
“I think so.”
“Y. U. R. I.”
“What does that mean? Is it an acronym?”
Helmut scratched his chin. “Can I see someone moving up there?”
“Two people, looking this way. It’s a message? Must be for us—we’re the only building that would see it.”
“And only the upper floors.”
“Which means the penthouse. The president.”
Lexa leaned on the window. “Yuri. It must be a name. Do you know anyone called Yuri? Maybe they work here.”
Turning away from the view, Helmut rubbed his temples. He knew the answer was close, he only had to put zwei und zwei together. Yuri was a Russian name—well, Slavic, anyway. The only Yuri he’d ever heard of was Gagarin, the first person in space.
Space.
Donnerwetter!
“The crew of the ISS who bailed out? You know their names?”
Lexa’s mouth dropped open. “There was an American and two Russians. But I don’t know what they’re called.”
Helmut banged on the window. Who would know? Lundberg, certainly, but he was reluctant to ask her. He knew that what he chose to do next could turn out to be vital.
“I have an idea,” Lexa said. “Follow me.” She led him along the corridor and into a luxuriously appointed room that had a set of leather couches facing each other.
“We should not be in here,” Helmut said, but he didn’t stop her as she reached under a marble-topped coffee table and pulled out a sheaf of printed sheets.
Without another word, she led him out of the room and back to the external corridor overlooking the parking garage. “Here, look through these.”
Helmut riffled through the sheets. They were notes from presidential briefings. Classified.
“Here!” Lexa said, holding up one sheet. “Colonel Yuri Sharipov. One of the three astronauts.”
“You think that’s him? And perhaps one of the others?” Helmut said, gesturing at the message in the snow.
“Yes. John Brady, the commander, told Denver control about something he’d seen as they passed near the Antarctic. Says here it’s a possible Chinese base.”
“But the ISS was destroyed.”
“Disabled. It’s still visible, so it hasn’t burned up or exploded—not entirely, anyway. But we haven’t heard anything from them in a couple of weeks. They were believed to be lost. Intelligence suggests…” She ran her finger down the paper. “Chinese involvement based on messages from Brady before the station went dark. A reentry capsule landed in Nevada, but it was reported empty.”
Helmut shook his head. “But this makes no sense. If it’s them, why are they here? And why so long to get here?”
“Maybe they want to tell the president directly. It wouldn’t take them long to work out that the situation here is…complicated. After all, they could have declared themselves to any of the guards in the cordon, but they must have realized they work for Schultz.”
“So, what do we do?”
“It’s simple enough,” Lexa said. “I’ve just got to persuade the president.”
#
“Helicopter is coming,” Yuri called, pointing at the top of the hotel building. “Do we hide?”
“No way! We wanted to get their attention, and we got it. Now we wait to find out what happens next.”
They retreated to just inside the door at the top of the stairs so they could shelter from the snow thrown up by the rotor blades.
The Black Hawk landed, and Bobby saw a tall woman climb out. She was unarmed, but had the manner of someone who could protect herself if threatened.
She marched over as they emerged from the doorway.
“You are Yuri Sharipov, cosmonaut?” she bellowed over the roar of the engines.
“Da.”
“Who are you?” She looked at Bobby.
“This is Bobby Rodriguez. It is because of him that I made it here.”
“You’re not needed,” she shouted. “We’ll take it from here.”
Yuri shook his head. “No! Bobby comes or you leave us both here.”
“I could take you by force.”
“But then you would learn nothing. Bobby has intelligence also. Both of us or no deal.”
She looked from one to the other and finally gave a tiny nod. “Let’s go! We have to move fast.”
They followed her across the roof and Yuri made sure Bobby got in before he did. The door closed and the noise level dropped a little as Bobby breathed a sigh of relief. Whatever happened now, they’d made it.
A large man with a yellow mustache and a dark suit climbed out of the pilot’s seat and shouted into the woman’s ear as the engine died down, before gesturing for Yuri and Bobby to follow him.
It was a relief when the door shut as the helicopte
r wound down.
“Hand over your weapons,” the woman said, accepting the handguns before patting them down and checking their pockets. “Let’s go.” She led them down the stairwell and into a plushly appointed corridor.
“What’s wrong with him?” the woman—who’d identified herself as Special Agent Lexa Delmont—asked Bobby as he held on to Yuri’s arm.
“He was in space for six months and has spent the past…I don’t know how many days it is now…trying to get here with the information he’s brought from the ISS. Jeez, I’m exhausted; I don’t know how he’s made it.”
Lexa took the other side of Yuri, supporting his arm. “I’m sorry, there’s no time for you to rest. The president wants to see you immediately.”
“Is okay,” Yuri said. “Will also need laptop.” He pulled out the memory card on its necklace.
Before Agent Delmont could answer, they were standing outside a door which was thrust open.
Bobby followed Yuri inside, his eyes drawn to the small, brown-haired woman who rose to greet them. She’d been sitting at a set of tables arranged in a square. A second woman, this one with striking gray hair, sat at ninety degrees but did not get up. Aside from Agent Delmont the only other person Bobby saw was a big bodyguard who lurked by the door.
“Do I have the honor of meeting Colonel and Pilot-Cosmonaut Yuri Sharipov?”
“It is my honor, Mrs. President,” Yuri said. “And this is Bobby Rodriguez of Ragtown. He has made it possible for me to bring my report to you.”
The president’s attention turned to Bobby. “Mr. Rodriguez, I’m sure you have a story to tell and I have a feeling your country will have cause to be grateful to you.”
Bobby took her hand. “Thank you, Madam President. I believe that Yuri has vital intelligence.” He’d better, Bobby added to himself. Now they were here, he was suddenly frightened of an anticlimax.
“May I introduce Professor Lundberg of the Denver Institute of Science. She is my chief scientific advisor.”
The gray-haired woman gave a brief nod, but Bobby saw no welcome there.
Deluge | Book 5 | Lost Page 16
