The captain half crouched and laced his fingers together over his knee, palms up, making a step for her. When he straightened, Ruth waggled her cast with all the grace of a chicken. She hadn’t expected him to hoist her up, but he did it easily. She would have toppled if the soldiers in the truck hadn’t grabbed her good arm.
“Whoa, hey, we gotcha.” The nearest of them smiled, a light, honest, boy-meets-girl grin.
It didn’t matter that Prince Charming here probably flashed the same look at every female over seventeen. Ruth saw an opening. She couldn’t think of anything clever to say but that didn’t matter, you’re really strong or thanks guys would do the trick, start a friendship. Calculating, she smiled back, but there was a familiar voice behind her—
Major Hernandez. “Do we have it together, Captain?”
“Sir.”
She pushed against Charming, driven by a spike of panic, but of course her sneakers and jeans were obvious among their boots and forest camouflage.
“Dr. Goldman,” Hernandez said.
She thought of the story she’d told Aiko, that she was only riding down to the airport and back. But the captain had just checked her off on the manifest. She could hardly use that lie in front of him, and otherwise her mind was blank.
“We need to reach California before sunset,” Hernandez said, looking up at her, “and nobody wants to wait another day. I’ll expect you to do a better job of working with the group from now on. Understood?”
Ruth nodded dumbly and let out her breath.
* * * *
They planned to do what White River had not — to keep Sawyer and his work from the council. They planned to divert north to Canada, develop the vaccine nano on their own, then spread it far and wide.
The substitution game would have been impossible for James to pull off alone. He had zero influence over the military command, and three scientists could hardly outfight or escape an escort of elite troops.
Some or most of their escort would be on their side.
James was not alone. Nor was he the top leader of the conspiracy. James had only hinted at this and hadn’t dared to put a name on paper — there had been no names at all — yet Ruth had to believe it was one of the top generals if this person could switch units as he saw fit. At first glance it seemed odd that a military man would object to the council’s actions, but Ruth suspected that career army were indoctrinated with much the same ethics as everyone in nanotech.
With great power comes great responsibility, and the sixteen hundred people killed in White River had been fellow Americans, or could have been again someday. Someday soon.
21
Ruth sat quietly through the short drive, head down, mouth shut. Fortunately, conversation was possible only in a yell. The big truck had no muffler and its shocks were blown. The slat benches in back rammed up or slammed down each time the wheels hit the slightest bump in the road, and she let the bass roar of the engine fill her head.
The airport was a dense and complicated scene, the short county runway surrounded by fat commercial airliners and smaller craft. Waiting on the tarmac now was a single-engine Cessna, civilian white and beige, and a much larger C-130 cargo transport painted olive drab.
They parked beneath the 130’s tail but could have driven straight in. The rear of the plane was open — it dropped down and became a loading ramp — with a jeep, a flatbed trailer, and a bulldozer lined up nose to rear within its long body.
Ruth saw no more troops or specialists waiting to join them among the USAF ground crews, so the expedition would total fewer than twenty. She was the only woman.
Hernandez, the ranking officer, dispatched five Special Forces and an Air Force pilot to the Cessna, then hustled everyone else into the massive C-130. Was he trying to keep on schedule or was he, like Ruth, afraid that a voice on the radio would cancel their mission before they were in the air?
Her fellow techs were Dhanumjaya Julakanti, better known as D.J., and Todd Brayton, both from the hunter-killer development team. Both had helped design the discrimination key.
She got the acknowledgment she needed in their eyes and a nod from D.J., but there was no way to talk. Hernandez insisted everyone sit together close behind the cockpit. The bulldozer, trailer, and jeep were chained to the deck, but if anything snapped free during takeoff, it would drop toward the tail. Smarter to be up front.
A knife of panic bit into her again when the plane lunged skyward. The interior was a long, dimly lit drum. No windows. Too much like the Endeavour. Worse, the web seats ran alongside the edges of the deck, facing the opposite wall rather than forward, so that the g-forces drew her stomach sideways.
Finally they leveled off. Always courteous, Major Hernandez unstrapped and knelt before the three techs. Ruth watched his face intently, alert for a wink, a word, a tipoff of any kind.
“I know this all seems thrown together,” he said, “but you’re in capable hands. I don’t want you to worry about anything except your job, okay?”
Hernandez and four Marines had been assigned to the expedition as their personal bodyguards, in addition to the seven men of the Special Forces team and three USAF pilots. Hernandez rattled off introductions, making a point of including the troops in the other plane — and Ruth noted that this handpicked group was all chiefs and no Indians, entirely sergeants and corporals. It also seemed top-heavy, with Hernandez and the Special Forces captain. A lieutenant colonel headed the trio of pilots.
D.J. said, “Seems to me you’re a little shorthanded.”
“No point wasting suits,” Hernandez told him, “or air, or jet fuel. And there isn’t going to be anyone else there, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
No, Ruth thought. Not after they dusted White River. None of the few regions still capable of getting a plane off the ground would dare.
The small Cessna was flying ahead of the C-130, since it required a shorter, narrower space to touch down than the cargo plane. If necessary, the men aboard the Cessna could do whatever possible to improve and mark the landing area.
After a flight of two and a quarter hours, the C-130 would have the fuel capacity to circle or even to return to Leadville in a worst-case scenario, but there was a sufficient stretch of road waiting. Satellite photography, backed by discussions with the Californians, confirmed a near straightaway of 2,500 feet along the slanting plateau of the mountaintop.
“Putting down in an urban area might be tricky if this guy’s lab was in a city,” Hernandez said, “but the C-130 is one of the toughest aircraft ever built. We can squeeze into a dirt field if necessary, then drive from there.”
D.J. scowled at the bulldozer and began to open his mouth. “We’ve got everything covered,” Hernandez assured them.
“We’re in, we’re out, we’re home.” Home. Shit. There was her clue. Major Hernandez was still loyal to the council.
* * * *
“It’s the Special Forces,” Ruth said. “Think about it.”
D.J. shook his head. “James and Hernandez are friends.” She shook her head right back at him. “That doesn’t mean anything. James tries to get in good with everyone.”
Privacy hadn’t been a problem. The C-130 could hold nearly a hundred troops, and the vehicles formed a low, irregular wall down the middle of the deck. Ruth had opened her laptop and started arguing schematics with D.J., who caught on and made some loud comments of his own. After a minute she’d apologized to Hernandez for the disruption, then moved away with D.J. and Todd. They were still in view of the soldiers but buried in engine noise, which was bone-shaking here alongside the wings.