Jeff Carlson - Plague Zone

Cam, Deborah, and Medrano must have traces of the mind plague in their systems. All of them had walked outside the warehouse where the V-22 Osprey was stored after they were inoculated, preparing for their flight, and even the slightest whisper of nanotech would be enough. With luck, Kendra would create a new plague zone, a trap for any Chinese who entered it. Cam and the others would be the first to fall, but as more and more Chinese were infected, her counter-vaccine would spread. Their plague zone would grow. It would reach U.S. territory — and from there, the world.

They could still win this war.

Colonel Jia Yuanjun snapped to attention and tried to convey in his bearing what could not be seen in his disheveled appearance. Dedication. Fortitude. He’d had only a few minutes’ warning to comb his hair and tug uselessly at his foul uniform, trying to straighten it before greeting his visitors. His forearm throbbed in a crude plaster cast.

“Fàng sng,” said General Qin. At ease.

“Welcome, sir,” Jia responded, also in Mandarin. He was unsure what to make of the general’s expressionless face, but Qin’s uniform was clean, as were those of his two subordinates and three Elite Forces bodyguards.

MSS General Qin was in his sixties, stout, sunworn, and quivering with strain. Jia saw a tic in Qin’s jowls. That was bad. The old man was aware of it, too, patting at the underside of his jaw in a brusque, fussy manner. That his visit was a surprise could also be seen as dangerous. The Z-9 military helicopter that flew up from San Diego had declared itself a medevac, bringing much needed supplies to Jia’s base. Instead, it carried the MSS officer who’d become third-in-command of Chinese California after the bombing.

Jia did not believe this subterfuge was intended to fool the enemy. No doubt there were still American satellites overhead, but there was no one left to control those eyes and ears. Jia was fortunate that one of his sergeants had risked a call from their landing field, announcing the real identity of their visitors as General Qin walked into the base.

Jia regretted the look of his makeshift command center even more than his own poor showing. It had been necessary to escape the ash. They’d moved everything they could salvage to a second-level barracks with its ceiling and walls intact, using the bunk beds to hold their electronics, display screens, and paper notes. The place was a madhouse. Forty men knelt or sat on the floor to access their consoles while a dozen more acted as runners, stepping over an unsecured mess of cables and power cords. The noise was staggering. So was the smell. The ash had stolen into the room with them, and everyone was bloodied and sweat-stained and sour with dehydration and fear.

Silence touched the barracks as Jia met Qin at the door. It vanished again in the busy voices, but everyone was aware of the change. The new arrivals looked as if they’d walked straight out of mainland China, unsullied and neat, and their authority was all the greater for their cleanliness. They had been protected while everyone else in California burned.

“Where are your SATCOM personnel?” Qin demanded.

“Here, sir.” Jia pointed.

“These officers are now in command,” Qin said as his two subordinates moved past him into the barracks, a major and a lieutenant. Each man held a briefcase. The major also carried his own laptop.

Jia felt a flash of resentment. We’ve done well, he thought.

“There is someplace we can speak undisturbed,” Qin said, making his words a statement, not a question.

“Yes, sir. Let me leave instructions with—”

“My officers are in charge,” Qin said.

“Yes, sir. This way, sir.” Jia didn’t even glance back into the room to signal the two survivors from his command team, Yi and Renshu. Instead, he walked from the barracks with the first of Qin’s bodyguards close at his back. His stride was brisk. It was important to Jia that he wasn’t shot within hearing of his troops, and Qin would afford him no more mercy or ceremony than he had given Dongmei.

The corridor stirred with soot and debris, open to the night at one end. Each breath tasted of failure. Then the general emerged from the barracks himself with a second bodyguard. Jia’s relief was unfounded, perhaps — would they arrest him? — but he couldn’t repress a sense of victory, which made him resentful again. He loathed them for making him afraid.

The door shut and left them in darkness. One of Qin’s bodyguards turned on a flashlight. Above, Jia heard shouts from his engineers and the dozens of soldiers pressed into duty as laborers. They had worked all day to secure the base and would continue all night. He was proud of them.

Jia led Qin and his bodyguards past two doors, the second blocked by a hunk of concrete and rebar. Insignificant pieces of grit littered the floor, difficult to see in the ash. Qin moved elegantly in the pool of light cast from his bodyguard’s hand. Nevertheless, Jia saw an opportunity to show respect.

“Watch your step, sir,” he said.

The third door led to a supply room that had been locked until the wall buckled in the quakes, fracturing the door and its frame. Otherwise Jia would have forced it open. No one had recovered the keys, but the children’s boxed juices and the canned goods inside had been all that kept his troops going since sunup.

Jia sidestepped into the doorway and hit the light switch, illuminating the empty concrete. Nothing was left except one garish blue wrapper with a smiling red dog on it. Jia stared at the cardboard. Would it share his tomb?

No, he realized. They weren’t even looking at him.

“Sir, I don’t like this,” the bodyguard said, tracing his flashlight up the exterior of the doorframe.

“A few cracks in a wall are hardly the greatest risk we’ve seen today,” Qin said. “Leave me. Guard the hall. I only require a few minutes.”

What does he want?

Jia faced Qin as the older man entered the room alone. Qin hadn’t even bothered to have Jia’s sidearm confiscated, which spoke of his power and his toughness. Clearly he was also familiar with Jia’s MSS files. Qin expected obedience. Jia would give it to him. He only wished he looked the part. He felt conscious again of the blood and filth on his uniform— yet he also gloried in it. There had never been time to hunt up a new set of clothes. Nor was it likely that there were new clothes, certainly not enough for everyone, and Jia was disinterested in making himself more comfortable when his troops could not share the same improvement. His tattered uniform spoke well of his own conduct.

He’d pushed his men harder than ever. It had taken them hours to establish their new command center and reconnect with the few radar stations left in southern California. During all that time, they were helpless, their borders unmonitored and unpatrolled. The majority of their surviving planes had been returning from enemy territory, scattered across North America. A few aircraft were tucked away here and there in California, but lost their runways in the holocaust or their pilots or their ground crews.

Jia’s base was among the first to come online again. Until early afternoon, in fact, he had been the senior officer in charge of the People’s Liberation Army. Radio was intermittent. Landlines were gone completely. He was able to form up some infantry and several armored units in a dozen locations, but to what point? None of them could reach each other, nor would they have been any use against enemy fighters.

It was even more crucial to watch for missile launches, either China’s own or another American attack. He needed to know. Yet he was unable to reconnect with their satellites.