Ruth hoped to ‚nd her answers there. If not, the expedition was wasted. Everything boiled down to whether or not she’d guessed right — but if, for example, Leadville had only tested its nanotech on its troops along its northern border, they’d come all this way for nothing. There would be no perfect vaccine. They would have no explanation for the ghost nanotech and Ruth would be more alone than ever, as the last top scientist in the United States.
She snapped at them and then apologized. She obsessed with her maps even when they hadn’t taken any new samples since the Ute Pass. Cam tried to kiss her that night and Ruth grabbed a handful of his jacket and used her arm like a piston, shoving him back. But ‚rst she pulled him closer and opened her mouth. He was sure of that.
Ruth was a mess, strung out and unsure even of herself. Cam had never felt so clear. He knew he’d been right to come. The Rangers were committed but Ruth needed friends, not only protectors. He regretted adding to the demands on her. There was no time or privacy for them to pursue whatever was happening between them, and she wouldn’t relax until they’d found the remnants of Leadville’s military.
Unfortunately, Wolcott was a swamp. The town sat in a steep channel along the Eagle River. The quakes and †oods had turned this gorge into a muddy lake. It was June 27th. Their only choice was to turn back and ‚ght around the water to the east, where they stumbled into a hot spot as they winched their jeeps up an embankment. Ballard was distracted, infected in his ear and hands. He caught his sleeve in the winding cable and the winch snapped his elbow before Park shut it down.
Escaping the machine plague had to be their ‚rst priority. Ballard toughed it out, cursing himself, and eventually Deborah and Sergeant Estey reset his joint on a lush mountainside spotted with white and yellow †owers. Cam stared at the little blossoms. This place seemed completely untouched by the vast con†ict of men and machines, and he imagined there were other safe pockets everywhere, even beyond enemy lines.
The thought shouldn’t have made him sad. Angry and sad. If we’d just shared the vaccine, he thought. Had the entire war really hinged on that one decision? Where would the ‚ghting stop? Even if Ruth was successful, even if she developed a perfect vaccine, that didn’t seem like enough of an advantage to push back the Chinese. Cam saw no end to it.
They stayed in the meadow for lunch, bolting down a meal of tinned ham and fresh, bitter roots as distant percussions echoed from the mountains. Artillery ‚re. Cam looked out into the pale blue sky but saw nothing, no smoke, no movement. The war was still hidden down in the west, but it was hurrying closer even as they drove toward the U.S. lines.
Park expected it would be at least another day before they reached the northern edge of the Aspen group. They were only six miles from the nearest secured area, a base on Sylvan Mountain, but they weren’t moving much faster than a person could walk. The terrain was too rough. Park stayed on the radio constantly, trading coordinates with †ank units and requesting information on the Chinese. He could call in air support if needed, if there was time, but until they reached Aspen Valley, ultimately they had no one to rely on except themselves.
On the morning of the 28th that wasn’t enough.
* * * *
The hillside erupted in geysers of ‚re and dirt. Four or ‚ve towering blasts appeared out of nowhere, bracketing the jeeps, hot and bright. Then the explosions seemed to walk together like two drunken giants, stomping through the vehicles and then back again.
One of the jeeps †ipped. Captain Park’s? Ruth’s? In the third jeep, separated from the others by curtains of debris, Cam lost track of the two vehicles ahead of him. He’d gone deaf in the ringing impacts, yet he was aware of rocks and earth clattering against the jeep. The hood twisted up and stopped again, a jagged metal sheet. In the driver’s seat, Wesner twisted sideways as something whipped into his head. Cam was struck in the arm and chest, but the other man shielded him from the worst of it, even when the windshield cracked and imploded. Bits of fender and other shrapnel had rattled through the torn shape of the hood. Wesner took most of that, too.
He was still alive. He pawed feebly at the steering wheel as Cam grabbed the biggest wound on Wesner’s neck, trying to stop the bleeding.
“Get out!” Foshtomi yelled, directly behind Cam in the backseat. She sounded like she was at the bottom of a well and it wasn’t until she bumped past that Cam realized they’d quit moving. His inner ears were in shock. His balance was gone and he swayed as if the ground was an ocean wave when he left the jeep, dragging Wesner behind him.
Foshtomi helped as best she could for ‚fteen staggering yards, screaming with effort. Her cheek was cut and there was blood in her hair, too, but she kept her arm around Wesner’s back.
Cam glimpsed other people to his left, partially eclipsed between smoke and daylight. Friends? Enemy troops? Ruth, he thought. Her name was like a small cool space inside his panic. He slowed down, intending to run in that direction.
Foshtomi tripped him. Foshtomi stamped her boot down on his ankle and the three of them fell behind a bump of granite as the giants pounded the vehicles again. The sound was enormous. Cam jammed his hands over his ears without thinking, uselessly trying to block the hypersonic blows.
The wetness on his palm reminded him of Wesner. He turned to apply pressure to the man’s wounds again, but Craig Wesner was dead, slack-faced with dirt in his eyes.
Foshtomi shouted distantly. “Break!” she cried. “Okay?” She leaned close and Cam watched her mouth as she repeated it. “We run again in the next break!”
“No!” Even his own voice had the faraway quality, and Cam gasped at a stabbing pain in his left side. A broken rib, maybe. “We need to ‚nd Ruth!”
“We can’t help her!”
Cam shook his head and twisted awkwardly to look up, keeping his body †at. He hadn’t seen or heard any planes, but the sky was dark with windswept banners of pulverized dirt and smoke.
“The jeeps!” Foshtomi yelled. “They’re shelling the jeeps, not us! We have to—”
But the giants danced away suddenly, spreading across the hillside. Half a dozen ‚reballs punched into the green earth in what appeared to be random lines, moving southward and down the mountain. Chasing someone? Cam knew from talking with the Rangers that modern warfare could take place over a range of tens of miles. Tanks and cannon were capable of remarkable precision at that distance. Their jeeps had been spotted by a forward observer or a plane or a satellite. Somewhere, Chinese artillerymen were lobbing shells at a target they couldn’t even see, simply obeying a series of coordinates.
There was no way to ‚ght back, other than to radio for help. Foshtomi was right that they needed to get out of the grid, but the Chinese seemed to be hitting the entire mountainside now, mopping up. If they ran, they could just as easily move into the next salvo as move to safety.
Cam wasn’t leaving without Ruth. The thought steadied him and he risked another glance up the hill.
It was the lead jeep that had overturned. One wheel had blown off and the axle was ripped away. There was only one body in the open, a man lying in a dark blotch of †uid. The second jeep, Ruth’s jeep, had crashed into the destroyed vehicle but looked abandoned. She’d gotten clear.
She must have gotten clear, Cam thought. But the giants were coming back again, slower this time. The explosions picked their way along the slope, lifting brush and rock in powerful, bone-shuddering detonations. Cam pressed himself into the earth. Each breath was laced with smoke. Then the impacts were past and he was up and running.