Greg Bear: Quantico

‘Now I see both of you.’

Midges whistled between the buildings. Fouad was keeping his eye on lines of men in white robes walking with purpose down the broad boulevard. Some had been burned and were moaning. Drivers were returning to their cars and buses but there were loud shouts and the sirens of ambulances and a fire truck nearby, trying to get through.

‘Third truck, Jane,’ William said. ‘One more to go. Any sign?’

‘Something…an alley. There are troops between you and the alley. I’ll pass directions to your gogs.’

‘I’m not seeing anything in my-’ But then he did have a map image, as did Fouad, who touched his glasses with a look of boyish delight. ‘So fine,’ Fouad muttered. ‘We must buy her flowers.’

An armored vehicle pushed through cars and swung onto their street, ignoring shouting pilgrims and outraged drivers. William counted twelve uniformed men on foot following the multi-axle armored vehicle. The troops were wearing black berets and khakis-similar to their own. They spotted William and Fouad and immediately the observer in the vehicle held his hand over one black earphone, getting instructions. Other men aimed automatic weapons.

Crowd sound and the roar of the fire from the roundabout made it difficult to hear. Fouad could not translate. ‘Wave cheerfully and let’s get inside,’ he said. They waved and smiled and pushed up to a doorway flush in the concrete wall. The door was not locked. In the holiest city, why would anyone lock their doors? Just like at the Academy, William thought. Fouad entered second. ‘They’re not convinced. Hurry.’

The darkened hall took them past more apartment doors, some opening on deserted rooms. No lights. Power was out in the residential neighborhood. They were in an alley when they heard the first door being opened again and saw sun pouring in from that direction.

The men in pursuit were shouting angrily in Arabic-and then in English. ‘Give up and you will live!’ one called.

‘Keep going,’ Fouad said and pushed him forward.

‘-narrow alley-’ Jane said.

As the door to the alley swung shut behind them, it exploded in splinters. Slugs slammed into the masonry of an older building opposite. Chips of brick and mortar whizzed around them, one grazing William’s cheek. William and Fouad ran along the curved narrow alley. Ahead, they heard a truck engine starting; behind, more shouts and bullets.

Fouad pulled William into a corner filled with old tin garbage cans. ‘Listen. They’re talking in Hebrew,’ he said, and pointed down the alley. William could hear young men shouting but it sounded far away; his hearing hadn’t recovered. He could not tell which direction the voices were coming from. Fouad seemed certain, however.

‘There’s no time,’ Fouad said. ‘Nobody speaks Hebrew in the Hijaz… nobody .’

‘We’ve found it,’ William said to Jane.

‘We have midges behind you,’ Jane said. ‘Prepare…deorbit…two minutes…’

William and Fouad moved around the corner and saw the back end of a canvas-covered truck. The canvas had been rolled and tied to the frame on three sides. Three young men in tholes stood behind the truck. They were arranging kipot s on their heads and chattering nervously, passing instructions. One of the young man wielded a small white rectangle, waving it in the air and calling out instructions. The alley was almost empty. The crating had been pulled aside, revealing the rearmost steel hedgehog launcher.

William could not hear the soldiers. Had they turned right instead of left?

Fouad straightened and removed the pen-sized laser from his pocket. ‘Tell them.’

‘Jane, get us an OWL.’

‘-on its way-’ Jane said.

‘OWL descending,’ Dalrymple said.

Then he heard Periglas. ‘This one’s going to take out some buildings. Channeled blast. Get the hell out of there.-brick walls-’

‘I will stay and make sure,’ Fouad said to William.

‘Periglas says we need to get away from these buildings. They’ve got it pinpointed.’

‘Do they have it targeted precisely? Can we be sure? I don’t think we can take that risk.’

Soldiers walked cautiously around the curve, gun barrels foremost. That was it. No escape. Plan B with a vengeance. Without hesitation, William brought up his pistol and fired as he had been trained-as Pete Farrow had trained him, without thought. Two men fell back like broken dolls, then more shouting, more bursts tearing up the bricks and stone. Clouds of stone dust drifted down.

The Israelis on the Volvo truck hunkered and returned fire with their own machine pistols. William and Fouad were pinned. They could not escape in either direction. Fouad aimed his shots toward the truck. One of the Israelis screamed. William positioned himself to respond to the soldiers. ‘I’ll keep these guys busy.’

Fouad smiled and brushed William’s face with his hand, then shined the laser on the back of the hedgehog, creating a brilliant fan of sparkling red.

No time to think. The wisdom of the chambered round. They were all dead anyway.

A young Israeli lying in the back of the truck raised the white control box. Fouad tried to kill him but missed.

Gray smoke poured from the bottom of the hedgehog launcher. They heard an echoing, staccato hiss.

Just one truck would be enough. Millions of pilgrims, spreading around the world, clothes reeking with bad yeast. Goodbye memory. Goodbye history.

William looked skyward as his ears popped. The cloudless blue sky between the apartment buildings shimmered. Was there a white line up there…? Like a contrail, an invisible finger writing in brilliant cloud, descending.

Fouad shouted, ‘ Allahu Ak -’

The ground spasmed in rage.

William did not hear the rest.

Rebecca helped Grange into a small van commandeered by the Jannies. They had waited in the deserted shop, squatting behind the counter, until Salil, Fouad’s second in command, leader of the group that had first entered Mina, returned and gestured for them to come out. The air was hot and still and full of the smell of burning. Three columns of dense swirling black and white smoke rose high over the town and the tent city, but nothing-not the fighting, not the extraordinary pinpoint explosions and volcano-like fires, had stopped the pilgrimage from reaching its inevitable conclusion. From the main road heading west to Mecca, they could see white-clad Hajjis by the tens of thousands streaming into the split levels of pedestrian access to the three stone pillars, Jamarat-al-Aqaba, Jamarat-al-Wusta , and Jamarat-al-Ula.

Rebecca hunkered in the back of the van, crammed beside Grange and ten of the Jannies. There was little to say. Nobody knew the fate of the rest of their fellows, including William and Fouad. Jane and Dalrymple had nothing to report, except that the impact of the third and last OWL had collapsed a section of apartments and shops surrounding the alley. Damage assessment was still being completed, but the judgment of the experts on the Heinlein and back in Washington was that all three trucks had been destroyed as planned, punched into fifty-foot holes in the earth and then completely incinerated, and their cargo with them.

Midges capable of retrieval by high altitude UAVs were collecting dust from the air above Mina and from the plumes of smoke to return samples for later analysis.

Salil, driving the van, found the back road through the dry rocky hills to the desert waste. The drive became hot, dusty, and bumpy. Rebecca did not care. She was deep in thought, wondering what more she could have done.

She had lost her students. Sacrificed them. And she did not know for what. Their mission had been accomplished, but she felt no sense of pride for a job well done. All she felt was that deep anger that had propelled her for too many years; the unreasoning, innocent outrage that so many could behave without restraint, with no sense of balance or honor, much less of law, and demand so much of the desperate few tasked to rein them in.