He thought about neutralizing the guard up here too, but dismissed it. He was too weak to go hand to hand again.
If only he had some way to divert their attention…
First, though, he had to get the rest of the team on deck. After ten frozen minutes, he began a low crawl toward the nearest I beam. Shook it, but it didn’t move. Good.
In the dark, he put a bowline in the end of the nylon, making it fast to the beam. Waited another two minutes; then slid back and dropped the line over the cliff.
Ragger came up next. When he had his breath back, Teddy hissed at him, “Roll off to the right and find a way under the wire.” For once the airman didn’t argue, just crawled off. A smaller shadow next: Trinh. Obie whispered, “Go left and look for a gap.” The shadow nodded.
“Where’s Maggie?” Teddy hissed.
“He is not doing well.”
Fuck. He crawled to the edge. Gradually he made out a darker blot ten feet below. “Magpie! That you? Get your ass up here!”
A cracked whisper-cough floated. “Not… quite sure I can, Teddy-boy.”
“Stay clear of the cable. I’m gonna come in on this line.” He began hauling it up, almost dragging his own flagging corpse over the edge. He gasped as the crumbling rock gave way, and scrabbled backward. But returned to whisper fiercely to the prisoner below, urging him up. At last he gripped outstretched fingers, and pulled him up and over to lie together.
The Australian’s shoulders were shaking. Teddy realized he was coughing, silently, face pressed into the dirt. “Maggie, y’okay?”
“Taken a bit crook today, mate. Just… a bit crook.”
“We’ve gotta get through this wire before that searchlight comes back on.”
“Just… can’t.”
Something liquid bubbled in Pritchard’s throat. Teddy could make out the dark gleam of blood in his beard. “Knackered here, mate. Done for. You… go on without.”
“Don’t give me that shit, Magpie. You’re coming, if we have to drag you.”
“No, oi… been thinking. Gotta cut that light off. No chance making it without.” His cave mate was fumbling at his back, freeing what Teddy realized was the AK. Pushing it into his hands. “That cable… feeds the light, right?”
“Looks like it. Why?”
“Short it with something, breakers’ll pop. No lights.”
“We don’t have anything to short it out with, Maggie. Or — oh — you mean the rifle?”
“No, you’re going to need that.” The Australian waved a hand. “Ready?”
“Magpie… Pritchard… what the fuck are you talking about?”
“I’ve got fooking galloping consumption. Not going to make it into those hills. But, you know what?” He coughed hard, and the bubbling sounded deeper. “Least, I’m dyin’ free. Tell ’em that, if you make it.” He writhed, and Teddy realized he was digging one arm into the friable soil. Spitting his own blood onto it, to make the short circuit complete. His other arm hammered Teddy’s back. “O-roo, mate. Now get the fook going.”
Major Trinh, in the dark. Vu, a smaller, silent shadow behind him. “Gap in the wire. Ten meters to our left.”
Closer to the tower, but maybe that wasn’t bad. Teddy wavered, grinding his teeth, about to argue. Then accepted it. He squeezed Pritchard’s wrist. “We’ll miss you.”
“Half your luck, mate. Half your luck.”
They were on the far side of the wire and crawling for the second belt when the searchlight came on above them. It swept up the bluff, then toward them. Teddy hugged the ground, face buried, but they were too close to be overlooked now. In the next second, a machine-gun bullet.
A sputter and hiss from the cliff edge. A cry, cut off almost instantly.
The searchlight flickered, and went out.
There were three wire belts, with a ditch between the first and second, but the outermost was only half finished; more a warning to outside trespassers than a serious barrier. Once past that, they rose warily to stand erect. Almost not believing they’d made it through. But despite shouting between the towers, no lights had come on. And when Teddy had brushed against a wire with his back, it had been dead, without power.
They began walking.
They trudged along all night, keeping to hard surfaces and then the tops of ridges, when ridges rose. Keeping rock under their feet so they’d leave no tracks. Teddy didn’t have to drive them on. They knew they had to push it. He had to admit, Maggie had been right. No way he could have kept up. Not in his condition.
At dawn they lay concealed on a hill, lost in a chaotic jumble of immense rocks that made him think of the White Mountains. Far ahead the snowcapped peaks of the Tien Shan floated in the clear air.
He lay motionless, belly empty, staring up. Could they really cross them? It seemed impossible. But they had to, or die. He, and Trinh, and Vu, and Fierros.
Yet even death would be better than recapture, and the camp again.
3
“Watch yourself!” The supervisor pulled the slight officer in the white hard hat back as a silver-hot shower of sparks burst out high above them. The liquid steel fell in a crackling, coruscating waterfall exactly where she’d been about to step. Molten drops sizzled on wet iron like a fiery snowfall. Blue smoke rose, with the hot choking stink of burning metal.
Commander Cheryl Staurulakis, USN, hesitated, blinking through the data streaming in front of her eyes. Then, adjusting her smart glasses, she settled the hard hat more firmly over a black-and-olive shemagh and marched ahead, through the smoke and sparks.
A step behind her pale-haired, hard-cheekboned, steeltoe-booted, blue-coveralled figure, a foreman sighed and hitched a tool belt over a drooping paunch. The dry-dock supervisor punched numbers into a battered notebook.
Above them loomed a darkling presence so immense and curved that, like a planet, only a portion could be glimpsed. The cruiser’s hull was spotted with the dull red and bright yellow and glistening black of fresh paint, the charred seams of fresh welds, the silvery patches where workers had ground them down to bare metal. As soon as the metal cooled, women in dust masks slapped paint over it, edging along platforms above the wetshining floor of the dry dock. Shouts and the clatter of pumps echoed in the cavernous space. The sun glittered through catwalks far above. A pump throbbed; water spattered down. A grinder shrieked, scattering sparks like gold coins thrown to paupers by a pope. The workers were finishing the new bow structure, and buttoning up the other repairs.
Through the augmented-reality lenses, Cheryl noted the blisters along the hull where the new Rimshot sensor/output modules had been welded in. She squinted at where fresh paint ended and barnacles started. If only they’d had time to strip and repaint the whole hull… The bright blue sky seemed far away as the supervisor explained, “We edge the dock out into the channel, then start flooding. Right before you float, we secure ballasting. Our fitters are down belowdecks inspecting your seals and sea valves for watertight integrity. Once you’re satisfied your DC checks are set, you give the order, ‘Float the ship.’ I’m up at the head of the dock, watching trim and list. If you go off half a degree, I stop and we figure out what’s wrong. Once you’re fully afloat, we power you out with the trolleys and wire pendants up there”—he pointed up to where steel threads crisscrossed the blue—“and make you up to the tugs, take you over to Victor Wharf. Just make sure your engineering guys know—”