A distant shriek turned her head again, a living sound, high and ragged. A cat? No. Her gaze darted over the colorful jam of cars, the tall face of an office complex. Was it some trick of the breeze? Then she noticed Cam patting at Sawyer’s shoulder and realized the sound was his, muffled by his suit.
But was the son of a bitch mourning or — it was cruel to think it — was he only frustrated with his suit, his own stink, the isolation of being without a radio?
Hernandez and his Marines made a great business of reporting each landmark and reading quadrants off their maps, as if they might get lost despite moving at a near crawl. The pilots, who’d stayed with the planes, were relaying both the general frequency and the command channel back to Colorado. Ruth supposed the theory was that another team could benefit from their observations if they didn’t make it out.
The constant chatter was also a way to overcome the desolation, concentrating on each other instead.
But it too was a danger. She didn’t think Senator Kendricks would listen himself, not hour after hour; he was too busy, too important, but if she were in his shoes she would insist on regular updates — and her name would be mentioned. It was not an if but when.
Kendricks would know that something was wrong.
After four blocks — after more than forty minutes — they escaped the main thoroughfare and turned north on 35th Street, into residential streets leading nowhere except into a warren of low-rise apartments and duplexes. These narrower roads were spotted with stalls, but the residents here had mostly escaped their immediate neighborhood and left these streets passable. The ’dozer ranged ahead as they pointed eastward again.
“Keep it under thirty,” Hernandez told Gilbride, who sat at the jeep’s wheel. Hernandez himself had picked out a spot on the trailer with his map unfolded, sitting alongside Cam and Sawyer and Marine Corporal Ruggiero, Corporal Watts, and Sergeant Lowrey.
The Special Forces unit followed in the pickup truck, minus Staff Sergeant Dansfield, who was running the bulldozer, and Ruth worried that by segregating themselves they’d alert Hernandez, if only subconsciously. Were they making plans, their radios off? What if he realized they’d shut down their headsets?
She knew they’d made one obvious blunder. When they left the plane, most of the soldiers brought only their sidearms. In this place, guns were just something else to carry. But two of the Special Forces had grabbed their assault rifles, and Hernandez must have noticed—
Ruth squirmed, shifting her cast inside the tight pocket of her chest and making a fist. The strain hurt her still-healing break and helped her center herself. Stop it. Calm down.
Hernandez didn’t know. He couldn’t. If Leadville sent warning he’d confront her immediately, along with D.J. and Todd, or arrest the Special Forces depending on the extent of his information. Only the conspirators had reason to hold back, but if they waited too long and a warning came— If they decided to back out because Sawyer’s lab was stripped clean—
Stop. Just stop. Ruth clenched her fist once more and held it, hurting, furious with herself.
They went nineteen blocks to 55th Street quickly, but then the frozen traffic crowded in again. Weaving south, they managed another block before the road was impassable. As planned, the bulldozer swung into a driveway and crashed through a six-foot fence, then another. They cut across two lots back toward 54th. One yard was a small Eden, ivy, brick, sun chairs. The next was carpeted with dead lawn as dry as cereal. Dusty particles wafted up behind the ’dozer, and Todd, in his fidgety way, brushed his suit clean and then tried to smooth the folds in his sleeves.
“We’re eight minutes over our mark,” Hernandez said. “Not bad, gentlemen.” They had expected to reach this point after three-quarters of an hour. Ruth felt like she’d aged a month.
“How are we doing on air?” Todd asked.
“Lots of time,” Hernandez told him.
“Look at my gauge, okay?” From his gesture, Todd intended these words for Ruth and D.J., directly behind him, but Hernandez said, “I’m not going to endanger you unnecessarily, believe me. Let’s hang on until we reach the labs.”
Ruth leaned forward and put her glove on Todd’s shoulder. Twenty-plus minutes in flight, ten more unloading the vehicles, another sixty to come this far— He was still outside the red, which surprised her. “You have twelve minutes,” she said.
They drove south on 54th and then swung eastward again on Folsom, another main thoroughfare that was comparatively open for several blocks.
The jeep blew a tire just past 64th Street. They had been about to stop anyway, to allow the ’dozer to clear the thickening stalls, and now Hernandez said, “Buddy check, buddy check. We change out the man with the lowest gauge first.”
Two of the Special Forces guys wrestled with a spare tire and car jack, moving deliberately to keep from snagging their suits. Captain Young and two others began switching air tanks, Sawyer first, then Sergeant Lowrey, then Todd. A person alone could not have done it. The hose attachment was shut, leaving the wearer with no more than the air in his suit. Simple brackets held the canisters into their packs, easily freed and easily screwed down again — but the threat of contamination had a complex solution. A semi-rigid plastic hood attached to a compressor pump was fitted over the hose and tank spigots, then taped to secure the seal. The pocket of low pressure destroyed any archos that had gathered there, before Captain Young reopened first the hose connection and then the tanks.
A suit alone contained maybe fifteen minutes of breathable air, but Ruth clenched her fist each time they began the process, no matter that they never took longer than two minutes. She was fourth. She kept from babbling her phobia only with concentrated effort, staring down at an orange shard of taillight plastic rather than the men around her.
The tire change was done before Young finished with her. Meanwhile, the ’dozer had cleared Folsom Boulevard down to Sixty-eighth Street. Hernandez got them organized again and they rolled on through the dead traffic, three more blocks.
Highway 50 stood to the south like an immense wall, forming a straight horizon beyond every gap in the buildings. So damned close. But there hadn’t been any room to land there.
Two hundred yards down 68th Street, the ’dozer bashed its way into a narrow parking lot that was empty except for a red VW Beetle. Dansfield shoved the car into a hump of brush and left his machine in that corner, out of the way. Beyond the small lot lay an L-shaped, two-story structure, both levels banded in dark gray brick and silvered glass.
Inside the nearest wing was the archos lab.
* * * *
Hernandez made her wait. He wanted his men to enter the building first, but renewing everyone’s air supply took priority.
Ruth stepped out of the jeep, stamping her boots and hugging her laptop. She stared at the mirrored face of the building yet did not recognize her reflection or the emotions inside herself. No. This moment felt as if the last flight of the Endeavour had been condensed into one tremendous pulse, faith and doubt, excitement and terror.
Young changed out Dansfield and Olson immediately, because they were in the red, then took care of D.J. and Cam next after the rest of the soldiers volunteered to wait. Still thinking of Endeavour, Ruth also re-experienced the stunning respect she had known for the rescue teams.
These men were astounding, all of them, to have fought across this wasteland with such competence.
It was wrong that they needed to be enemies.