Jeff Carlson - Plague War

She glanced at the sky again and Foshtomi unconsciously mimicked the gesture beside her. The impulse was too powerful. Camou†age netting stretched from the camper to a nearby trailer, however, forming a roof over its door and the space in between. Ruth felt blind. It was silly, but it calmed her when she could see empty sky and she looked up again even though she knew the netting was there. Stop it, she thought. She turned to watch the USAF troops instead. The man with her paperwork had gone to a phone mounted on the camper wall, and Ruth tried to ‚gure out how the command shelter maintained links with its radio, radar, cell, and satellite arrays without creating a hub of electronic noise for the enemy to pinpoint. Maybe they’d run lines all over the mountain to disperse their signals, hiding their dishes and transceivers in other campers and tents. Did it matter?

She missed Cam. They should have been together at the end, but he’d quietly listened to her and he’d nodded and then he was gone. Deborah hadn’t been so easy to convince, but she’d left, too, and now Ruth was alone. The Rangers weren’t friends. They had never warmed to her, despite her respect for them and the blood loss they’d shared.

“Foshtomi,” Ruth said. The young woman turned, and Ruth tried to smile. “Thank you,” she said.

“Sure.”

No, I mean it, Ruth thought, but the USAF trooper hung up his telephone and said, “Goldman, you’re clear.”

“I need these three,” Ruth said.

“No, ma’am,” the captain said. He waved for her to walk forward from the others. “We going to pat you down. Take off your jacket, please.”

“I need them,” Ruth said tightly, hoping not to let her adrenaline show in her voice. “Tell Shaug.”

“We’re locked down, ma’am.”

“Tell Shaug I need them or I can’t guarantee the next step of the booster will work. They’re some of the original carriers.” The last part was almost true. Another scientist might have questioned her, but she didn’t think Governor Shaug or the military command would argue. They were too desperate for any advances in the nanotech.

“All right.” The captain pointed for his man to return to the phone. Meanwhile, he slung his weapon and ran his hands closely over Ruth’s body, not shy at all about her crotch, waist, or armpits. He noticed her cell phone, of course, and pulled it from her front pocket.

“I need that to call the lab,” she said.

He did not ‚nd the tiny glass welds she’d made on the back sides of two of her shirt buttons.

* * * *

The stairwell went down farther than Ruth had anticipated. Her phone almost certainly wouldn’t work. That was a serious problem. Ruth looked back once before the door sealed, rubbing her thumb inside her palm as if she still had her etched stone. Then the cold in the tunnel raised goose bumps along her arms and neck and she stumbled on the concrete steps.

Estey caught her. “Careful,” he said.

The stairs were very steep. Ruth quickly passed through four giant steel doors, each one about a full story below the next. They made a series of buffers meant to absorb and de†ect a blast. Maybe the bunker would survive. Each of the barricades had to be opened and then dogged shut again by the USAF colonel who’d come to lead them inside.

A ‚fth door led to a room about the size of a small house. It was crowded with computers, display screens, and people. The uproar of voices was ampli‚ed by the bare concrete walls and ceiling. This place was a box, and Ruth guessed that it held more than a hundred soldiers. Most were seated along the banks of equipment. Others stood or walked in the paths in between. The vast majority of the uniforms were Air Force blue, but there were also people in tan or olive drab and Ruth saw more than one knot of civilians.

“This way,” the colonel said.

Ruth went left when he moved right. He seemed to be heading to a door across from them, but Ruth had seen Governor Shaug inside a glass-walled of‚ce. She walked straight at him.

“Dr. Goldman?” Estey said, and the USAF colonel hollered, “Stop that woman!” The busy people clotted around her. Two men and a woman caught her arms, one of them dropping a handful of printouts on the †oor. A fourth soldier rose from his seat with his headset cockeyed around his neck.

“Let go of me!”

“Sergeant? What’s going on?” The colonel directed his words at Estey instead of Ruth. It was another way of containing her, she realized.

“Sir, I’m not sure,” Estey said, but he gestured at the glass of‚ce. None of the people inside had noticed them yet. “I think she was just trying to talk to the governor,” Estey said.

“That’s right,” Ruth said.

The colonel stared at her. “You don’t go anywhere I don’t tell you. Understand?”

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

“They’ll join us in a minute,” the colonel said. “I’m taking you to a spare of‚ce.”

“Okay. Yes.” No, she thought. Ruth wanted to be in the heart of their operations when she spoke with Shaug and his generals. If there was any hope of silencing her, they would take it. She couldn’t afford to be isolated.

She got lucky. The governor ‚nally noticed the disruption out in the main room. He strode to the glass door of the of‚ce. Perfect. As he pushed through he lifted his hand, hello , not understanding the situation. A man in a blue uniform walked after him and then a woman in Army green.

The soldiers released her. For a moment, Ruth was free. One of them bent to gather his printouts from the †oor, and the data tech returned to his seat. Ruth yanked her cell phone from her pocket. “Stop right there,” she said. She pointed the small black plastic casing at Shaug like a gun, yelling now as the soldiers converged on her again. “Stop!”

They came very close to taking her down. The data tech froze with his hand on her sleeve. Another man stood at her shoulder, and the colonel had drawn his pistol. They couldn’t know what she intended, but in the twenty-‚rst century, a phone could be a weapon. A phone could trigger explosives or signal troops.

“Everyone get back,” Ruth said. She turned slightly to aim her ‚st at the data tech, stepping away from him and the other man, creating a thin space for herself in the crowd. “Listen to me. The war is over.”

They didn’t hear her. “Put it down,” the colonel said, and Shaug called, “What are you doing?”

Other conversations continued in the room. Except for a few men and women immediately beside her, the soldiers were absorbed with their work, and Ruth wondered how many lives she’d already jeopardized across the U.S. by interrupting radio calls. One girl remained at her console, talking into her headset even as she watched Ruth’s face. “That’s a roger, Jay Three. Expect them on your north side,” the girl said.

Ruth winced and clenched her ‚st again on her cell phone. She needed to steady herself. “The war is over,” she said. “I’m forcing a truce.”

“You can’t,” Shaug began.

“Put it down.” The colonel aimed his gun in her face. Three other soldiers had pulled their sidearms, but Ruth continued to hold up her phone.

“It’s the only way,” she said.

The colonel racked the slide of his 9mm Beretta without pointing it away from her ‚rst, chambering a shell. Ruth felt herself go white as something in her chest lurched — heart, lungs. “I’m not warning you again,” the colonel said.

Estey stepped in front of her. “Wait.” He’d lifted his arms from his sides, making himself bigger as he walked into the muzzle of the colonel’s gun.

Goodrich did the same on her other side. “Everyone just wait,” he said, increasing the safe zone around her.