Greg Bear: Quantico

The mass of pilgrims had already shifted to the main roads through the center of Mina. Thousands had dropped their supply of pebbles as they fled. Small piles and scatters littered the street. Buses and cars had been abandoned, some blocking access to the smaller roving armored vehicles.

In the distance they heard the rumble of a tank chewing up pavement. A thick, ugly belch of diesel exhaust curled above the square gray blocks of new concrete apartments. The wind had died. Rebecca was watching the tank’s filthy plume curl lazily in the still morning air. This would not be the best time to launch the rockets-even if the trucks had survived and were still on the move. But if Jane was right, and Winter had died, the rest of the Israeli extremists might be in disorder, desperate.

Jane directed them down a warren of alleys. William stumbled on a cobble and skidded on some pebbles, nearly falling. He caught himself and slammed up against a concrete wall. The sound of his harsh breath echoed from the gray buildings. Overhead, an old woman threw open a window and stared down on them, but quickly withdrew. Fresh bullet holes had pocked the walls.

‘They’ve all gone mad,’ Amir whispered as they passed an elderly black man, his ihram stained with blood, one leg crushed and impressed by a tire tread.

Fouad spoke to their shipboard guides. ‘The walkways are almost empty, just bodies. We see no truck.’

‘We’re updating,’ Dalrymple said. ‘Fresh UAV image coming in now. You should be seeing our midges. We see you .’

They all looked up. Four bird-like craft zipped overhead at roof level, then curved out of sight. They heard the distant roar of a crowd on the move, more armored vehicles.

The plume from the tank had shifted. The wind was changing.

Rebecca and William stayed close to a wall of stones set in plaster. Rusted spikes topped the wall. A midge flitted over the wall and down the street. The images in their gogs flickered. Rebecca heard only digital slices of Jane saying, ‘…see you. Next street-heavy…’

Grange ran across the street and whipped off his gogs in disgust. ‘Mine are useless. Getting anything?’

Rebecca shook her head, frowning. ‘Hold on.’

‘…there’s a truck that meets…-scription…street east…’

‘Maybe something east,’ William said, ‘next street over.’

Fouad had gone around the corner and now he came back long enough to wave his arm. The cross street, empty moments before, filled with the frontrunners of the crowd they had heard earlier, being harried by an armored vehicle that chugged and veered. A soldier in a green army helmet leaned back from the vehicle’s open hatch and fired an automatic weapon into the air.

Rebecca kept close to William, with Grange right behind. They approached the cross street carefully as men in ihram and an old woman in gray broke away from the flow and ran back to where they had been, by the body of the old man-turned in confusion-and then ran again, jumping for the sidewalk as an old Mercedes roared along the narrow passage, tires squealing.

Clear as could be, Jane’s voice was back in their ears: ‘Jannies have cornered a suspect truck,’ she said. ‘Meets the description. It’s a block east.’

Periglas broke in. ‘We can target an OWL. You have a cluster coming up on prime position.’

Dillinger added, ‘If this is the truck, we should take it out now.’

They pushed through the last of the pilgrims fleeing northwest. In a roundabout half-circled by new apartments of brick and concrete, opening to the north and affording a view of the shadowed mountains and the tent city, they saw a large white Volvo truck with a canvas cover. The windshield had been crazed by bullets and a body hung from the open driver’s side door. Fouad, Amir, and Mahmud were exchanging pistol shots with two young men on the back of the truck.

Dalrymple said, ‘We see a second vehicle about a klick east of you. It’s stopped on a side street. Some of your men are in that vicinity and have called down a strike. That’s what you’ll hear in three minutes.’

William tried to find the tank exhaust. He couldn’t, but the wind was increasing and blowing from the southeast. ‘Where are the pilgrims?’ he asked.

‘Most seem to be passing the Al Malim mosque,’ Jane said. ‘There might be ten or twenty thousand along the Jamarat overpass.’

Rebecca and William took up a position behind a low ornamental wall fifty yards from the Volvo truck. Two of the young men-olive-skinned, black-haired, they looked and dressed Arab-had rolled back the canvas covers from the side opposite, trying to keep out of the line of fire. They had revealed three large crates, the wooden tops pulled aside and stashed between.

A matter of seconds. One young man waved a small white rectangle in his hand.

Simultaneously, three bright red dots zipped across the front of the truck-laser pointers from Fouad’s men. Across the roundabout, a second group of Jannies emerged from behind a wall and began firing.

Fouad ran and waved his hand frantically for everyone to get back.

‘Look away and cover !’ Grange shouted. ‘OWL descending.’

There was no sound, simply a foreboding, a silent presence like a huge finger pushing aside the air. William felt his breath catch. The ground bucked and an unimaginable noise caught him mid-air and made the flesh of his legs and arms strain back from the bones. Out of the corner of his eye, through the fingers of his right hand and tightly closed eyelids he saw the flashbulb brilliance of the explosion that punched the truck through the pavement and concrete and deep into the earth. The searing heat from the fountain of white fire raised blisters on his face and hand. He hit the ground several yards back. His shirt caught on fire and he rolled and felt Rebecca and Grange slapping down the flames.

‘Move back!’ they were shouting, and William got to his feet and ran. He could not help but look back-and the image, though much reduced, still half-blinded him. A whitehot smoking volcano had broken through the pavement and buildings and filled the roundabout with simmering waves of heat and light. Showers of burning white metal spewed from the hole and stuck sizzling against the buildings, cracking concrete, stones and plaster.

Another explosion rocked them. Looking east through a gap in the buildings, William half-saw, through dancing voids of after-images, a second column of brilliance ascend over the tent city.

Two down , William hoped, and then realized he had lost Rebecca and the others. He couldn’t see them-he could barely see at all. His ears were ringing and he had burns over much of one side of his body.

Fouad came up beside him. ‘Hey, classmate,’ he said. ‘You’re injured.’

‘Sunburn,’ William said.

Fouad had similar burns across half his face. ‘When in the desert, wear sunscreen. I do not see the others.’

‘Neither do I.’

‘Then it is you and me, bro’.’ Fouad behaved as if in mild shock; pupils dilated, face pale behind the burn. ‘One more truck. Did you hear where it might be?’

William shook his head. The earnodes were quiet. He looked down at a small winged thing that lay on the asphalt before them-a midge. It had been knocked from the sky by the blast. He was about to nudge it with his toe when Fouad grabbed his arm. He winced at the touch-he stung all over. They backed off. The midge erupted in white flame and exploded with a sharp pop. ‘Det cord,’ Fouad observed.

William heard Jane Rowland, her voice again clicking in and out. ‘We see you. Can’t find others. There’s a-’

William bent his head toward the sky, as if that might help, and covered his ear with a cupped hand. ‘Say again, Jane.’