Flaring, her speed bled off rapidly and a gust picked her up. She eased off on the toggles and plummeted, jerking downward on the handles to flare again and stall. It wasn’t a pretty landing and she ended up on her knees, thankful for the hard pads she wore, but she was down. She popped one shoulder release, allowing the canopy to collapse, then the other. Rapidly rolling up the chute, she buried the whole affair in some soft dirt and hefted several rocks on top of it.
Opening up the combat equipment bag and pulling out the civilian rucksack inside, she then stripped out of her jumpsuit and put on hiking gear. In a pinch she could play the lost backpacker; in either case a woman in shorts and a ball cap was less conspicuous than a camo-clad Marine. Making sure her PW5 was accessible but out of sight, she started trekking.
The sun beat down but the terrain was not too rugged, just hills varying in size by a couple of hundred feet. She followed game trails and dry washes until she found a motorcycle track heading the direction she wanted. Within a half hour she overlooked Teller Reservoir and the laboratory complex.
Sitting down in the shade of a scrubby cypress, she drank water and used her lightweight binoculars to examine the grounds from the distance of half a mile. It took her two hours of careful study but eventually she found what she needed.
As night fell she approached the fence. From this direction, away from the access roads and the edge of the base, security was less than stellar. A laboratory complex this size meant over two miles of fencing, and there were plenty of weak spots for a trained infiltrator. She found the place she had seen, where a flash flood had washed out some soft dirt at the bottom of the mesh and slid under, erasing her tracks with a sage branch as she went.
Once inside, she accelerated, running flat out along the top of a concrete drainage canal until she came to an access road. If there were motion sensors or cameras, she wanted to give them the least possible time to see her. If she was gone when they came to investigate, she hoped they would think it was a coyote that tripped the sensor. Stars blazed overhead as the last of the glow left the sky.
At the access road she slowed, jogging right up the middle of the asphalt toward the residential area. Typical Army housing had been easy to spot, especially when combined with the visible amenities – a gym with athletic fields, a gas station-convenience store combo, and an entertainment complex with an all-ranks club.
Slowing to a fast walk she headed for the club. It was the best place to pick up information, especially as everyone there would assume she was part of the community. Human beings simply couldn’t maintain tight security for long, especially among themselves. People talked, and she hoped to listen. And if she really got lucky, she would get a line on her contact.
Inside was surreal, music mingling with the sound of billiard balls cracking, the smell of bar food mixed with aromas of beer and bathroom disinfectant. She drifted through the rooms, glancing at the clientele, looking closely at any woman she saw. None matched her mental image from long ago.
She tossed her pack into a corner and took a table there, waving to a waitress. “A Bud and a hot dog, please. Yes, chips, plain. Thanks.”
She sat back, studying the crowd. Pretty good for a Thursday night, but unless you wanted to drive into Pueblo, there wasn’t much else to do. It was probably the only restaurant open in the evening; she saw a few families but mostly singles and clumps of friends. A group of extremely fit men with haircuts and demeanors that screamed ‘special ops’ played Crud at the pool table.
She wolfed down her hot dog and picked up the half-full beer bottle and bag of chips, drifting over to the group. She saw a few glances of speculative interest; she knew she was no looker but she was tall and athletic and could be pretty when she smiled.
So she smiled.
“So...how do you play this game?” she asked the nearest, a heavily-muscled man with a strong brow and an open, Irish face. He took the bait instantly. Half an hour later she was shrieking and having fun, only half of it faked. Crud was fun, a fast-moving game using just the cue ball, the eight ball, and hands. Each player took a turn for their team in rotation, trying to knock the black ball into a pocket, striking it with the white before it rolled to a stop.
Later as she sat at their table – clearly their table, so different were they from the scientists and bureaucrats sharing the big room – she bantered and dodged questions about herself, instead turning the queries back on the men. She didn’t push; they would have had plenty of operational security training and reminders. She just asked them about themselves and let them brag.
The Irishman, McCarthy, had obviously claimed her for himself, but she didn’t let him close the deal, maintaining her social space and elbowing him when he got too handsy. She wasn’t above sleeping with someone for the good of the mission but she thought she could string him along without going that far.
The one they called Huff was her worry. He laughed loudly but his eyes missed nothing and he played his comrades like a master fiddler, keeping peace, making jokes, telling and suggesting stories, never quite the center of attention but always the one the group keyed off of – natural leader and class clown combined.
She waited a long time for some conversational connection to her potential contact, something where she could credibly ask the questions she needed to ask, when serendipity bypassed Murphy and dropped a little luck in her lap.
“Did you see that Navy chaplain? Woo, she is hot!” Bill Holden, the speaker, reached for his beer but McCarthy rapped his own bottle onto the top of Bill’s causing an instant foaming effect, spilling it onto the table. “You dick!”
“Look at that foam spurt, just like what you were thinking about.” McCarthy laughed.
“Navy chaplain? What’s her name?” Jill asked.
“Commander!” laughed Huff, a little too loud.
“No, really, I knew a Navy chaplain when I was younger. I can’t remember her name…” Jill fished, trying not to seem too eager.
“It’s Forman,” cackled McCarthy, more than slightly drunk. “I wonder if she lives up to her name. Get it – for man?”
“Chill out, McCarthy,” warned Huff. “The General hears you talking like that – or were talking like that – and you might be out on the street. Not that I care, then I wouldn’t have to babysit your sorry ass through basic first aid class.”
“Ah, you PJs, you think you’re such hot shit with your medical shit, let’s see how shit-hot you are in some real shit.”
“You’re drunk, McCarthy, you said ‘shit’ four times in one sentence, you stupid shit.” Huff laughed heavily, tongue out, haa-haa-haa.
Jill wrapped her arm around McCarthy’s huge biceps and whispered in his ear, “Let’s get out of here.” Two minutes later they were leaving the club, Huff’s eyes on them all the way.
I wonder what he’s thinking. I’m not cut out for covert ops, play-acting and wondering what everyone knows or suspects.
They walked the hundred yards to McCarthy’s barracks block. Jill let him play some grabass to distract from her questioning, but she eventually got the approximate location of Forman’s room. She hoped he was too drunk to remember her inquiries in the morning. At his door he surprised her by going in for a sudden, violent kiss.
Jill pushed him and his tongue away, controlling her anger. She played her trump card. “So…you’ve never been with an Eden?”
He stared at her, bleary-eyed and swaying. “What do you mean?”
“An Eden Plague carrier. We’re all legal now. You don’t know what fun is until you been with one of us.”
Realization overcame him and he stumbled backward, scrabbling at his doorknob while spitting on the ground. “Uh…no…Jesus, bitch, go away!” The revulsion on his face was comical. His door slammed and she heard him lock it behind him.
She repressed a twinge, feeling insulted despite her understanding. It had been a long time since she had to deal with this kind of naked bigotry. It made her wonder what the US was really like the
se days.
Jogging quickly back to the club, she watched out for Huff and the rest of his jocks. Not seeing them, she retrieved her backpack and slipped back out, making her way through the near-deserted streets to the officer quarters McCarthy had indicated.
All she knew was that Forman had a room on the third floor. She was lucky someone as boneheaded and drunk as McCarthy had been able to tell her that much. Eight rooms – studio apartments really – on each level, from what she could see of the configuration. As she climbed the stairs she wondered how she was going to find the right one.
God bless the Army and its anal ways, name tags! Each door sported a small metal frame to hold a three-by-five card, with rank and name hand-printed on it. Twenty seconds later she was knocking quietly on Forman’s door. When it opened, the two women stared at each other across the threshold and across ten long years, stunned seconds ticking by. Jill, prepared, finally broke the tableau as she reached out to hug Christine. They clung together, tears of joy and reunion streaming down.
Inside, they caught up on ten years of war and peace.
Forman told of her work in the new Underground Railroad, smuggling Edens out of the UGNA, mostly through Canada, where the populace was more sympathetic to basic decency and unwilling to cooperate with the Unionists. The Edens would be sent by air or sea across to Greenland or Iceland or the British Isles to find asylum. She told how she was eventually caught, but as one of the wealthy and powerful Jenkins family, she was protected from the worst punishments, only having to endure grueling interrogations and a relatively humane prison cell, not the dungeons and torture chambers of the SS. She’d been clever – or wise – enough not to become infected with the Eden Plague back then, which spared her the concentration camp.
In her turn Jill told of escaping from Bethesda and attempting to rejoin her unit, only to go AWOL when the directive to arrest all Eden Plague carriers came from the President; of flight across the South into Mexico, still possible before the Unionists took power; of fleeing to South America when the UGNA annexed Mexico, eventually to link up with the newly-formed Free Communities Armed Forces under Daniel Markis; of a life of raids into enemy territory to free imprisoned Edens and damage the mechanisms of repression; and finally, of her role in the launch of scores of nuclear weapons.
The guilt of that action, so recent but ruthlessly suppressed, poured out of her, and Christine Forman absorbed and accepted it, her arms wrapped around the younger woman, rocking her as Jill sobbed with remorse.
“I was so stupid! I had so many chances to head her off – if I’d showered at a different time, if I’d just seen what she was…Kelley and Harres and Doc would be alive, and so would all those other people.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” soothed the chaplain. “You weren’t in charge. Your Colonel was, and he should have seen what was going on. He knew she was a Psycho but he left her with the run of the sub instead of locking her up. You can’t be responsible for bad command decisions.”
Jill shook her head, pulling away. “I know that…but now that you mention it, I didn’t think of the fact that he should have just locked her up. As soon as he was pretty sure she was a Psycho, why didn’t he neutralize her as a threat? He wasn’t the type to make that kind of mistake.”
“Perhaps it wasn’t a mistake.”
Jill stared at Christine in horror. “You mean he wanted it to happen?”
Forman shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m just saying I’ve always had a good nose for when something stinks, and something about what you told me seems off. So you can stop beating yourself up about it. You did the best you could, and God will be the final judge. We can only do our best in this life, accept His grace and forgiveness, even when we can’t forgive ourselves.”
“I wish I could believe that.”
“You can, Jill. When you’re ready, just pray, and He will forgive you.”
Repeth looked down at her hands. “Okay, I’ll…I’ll think about it.”
Christine patted Jill’s hands. “Good. Now, why are you here?”
“We got your message. Our intel people put the clues together – you being brought here, the Tiny Fortress project – but we desperately need information. The Free Community bio-research program hasn’t been able to find a way to defend Edens from the Demon Plague. And the EP is incurable. The best we can do is suppress the immune system overreaction but there aren’t enough drugs and hospitals left in the Free Communities for widespread treatment. Millions died in the initial Demon Plague drop, before quarantine measures limited further damage. We have to have a cure, or some kind of treatment! Chairman Markis believes the nanobot technology will provide it – if the Americans will share it. But he just went to talk to President McKenna today and he denied all knowledge of the project. Markis is convinced he knew but he’s terrified of something or someone. We have to find out what, or who, and the key is somewhere here.”
Forman sat back, crossing her arms. “That’s a long chain of reasoning, assumptions and guesswork. But I’ll try to find something out. I can’t promise anything. I really wanted a new start here, without divided loyalties, now that the Unionists are gone.”
“They might not be gone – or something worse might be lurking under the surface. The US is weak and disorganized, people are fearful – fertile ground for another seizure of power. And if they get these nanobots really working, there’s no telling what they might do.”
“I know. Salvation or damnation.”
Jill nodded. “Either way, it’s a lot of power. In the wrong hands it might doom the human race.”
-37-
President McKenna sat by the cold fireplace in the New White House study. The fact that this replacement Presidential mansion used to be owned by a Hollywood star, now dead, only added to its chic in the public mind. Even in times of great difficulty, people wanted to touch glamour.
Today he nursed a Scotch, waiting for the inevitable visit. When the shadow slipped in through the side door, it was a relief; McKenna wasn’t a weak man but he didn’t have the nerves of steel he wished.
The man spoke from the darkness. “I can’t believe you let Markis go. You should have notified me right away, and held him here.”
“Can you imagine the reaction from the rest of the world if we’d have detained him? Our economy is in shambles as it is; we have people starving, for God's sake! Not to mention radiation poisoning leading to widespread demand for the Eden Plague, leading to Sickos – sorry, Edens – being beaten or lynched by mobs, and our security forces are stretched thin, we have desertions from the ranks, the dollar is becoming worthless with the hyperinflation – do you want me to go on? The Mexicans and the Canadians could invade us with Cub Scouts and we’d have to capitulate, so don’t lecture me about what I should have done.”
“You really ought to be careful how you talk to me, Nathan.”
McKenna stood up, tossing off his Scotch. “You see? With all our problems, your main concern is how you feel disrespected, and how you get to call the President of the United States by his first name. Even someone like you should be able to see how bad things are and deal with reality as it is, and let the little things go. And if you get rid of me, the next guy might be worse. I’m holding this country together right now because I have the experience and the contacts to do it. You need to do your job and get those nanobots working. If not, you’re going to end up losing me anyway.”
“Is that a threat?” The shadow stilled, quivering with suppressed rage.
The other man sighed. “No, it’s just a fact of life. The cancer’s going to get me eventually, unless the nanobots can cure it, or you let me have the Eden Plague. Three outcomes, only one of which is good for you. Unless you think this country’s ready for someone like you to step into the light and be the next Fuhrer.”
The shadow ground his teeth, then backed up to the door. “Maybe I will. Don’t push me.” He set an injector on the table by the door, then he was gone.
McKenna sh
ook his head and poured himself another drink, willing himself to ignore the thing his tormenter had left, the thing calling to him. He held out as long as he could, then walked slowly, deliberately, painfully over to the tiny device. He picked it up, set it against his neck, and pushed the button. It fired its blessed relief into his veins, granting him another day.
***
JT Tyler knocked on the door of his father’s den. The General called for him to come in from his seat in an old leather armchair. A bright reading lamp nearby illuminated the hardbound copy of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich in his hands.
“Hey, Dad. Did you hear about Markis’ visit? Wild, huh?”
“Yes,” agreed the older man. “Flies in, sees the President, then flies right back out before anyone really knows what’s going on. I phoned McKenna and he was kind enough to tell me that Markis wanted to know about Tiny Fortress. When McKenna denied all knowledge and told him to leave, Markis took off right away. I’m not so sure that was the right play.”
“Yeah…I think he should have tried to string him along, see what Markis really knew. I’m sure their spies heard the name and probably the general area of research for the program, but it would have been useful to find out just how much they knew.”
The General put the book aside, folding his hands. “Sit down, son. The real question is, why did he come in person? That’s unprecedented. One head of state showing up unannounced for, what, some kind of impromptu summit? Why did he do it?”
JT sat down, throwing his booted feet negligently up on the leg of the leather sofa. “Skull says Markis loves the grand gesture.”
“But a gesture to do what?” Travis insisted. “When he went to Geneva, he was trying to strike a deal.”
“Yes, that went well,” JT said sarcastically. “What SS moron dreamed that up?”
“Actually, the question is, how did they get their hands on nanobots? Isn’t lab security your area?” The old general looked sharply at his son.
The Demon Plagues Page 23
