The tipping point was here. That seemed to be why the Chinese gambled. Their need for fuel, food, and tools was part of it. Every small town they absorbed was a help, and they made it tougher on the American Air Force by sprawling out. Widespread targets were harder to hit and had more time to cover each other, but Ruth wondered if the Chinese were also pushing so hard in this area because, like her, they hoped to recover some trace of the nanotechnologies developed in Leadville.
They might have already found it in the American dead. Here and there, they would have taken prisoners, too. In fact, it wasn’t impossible that the U.S. had transmitted the nanotech to the Chinese with their bullets and missiles. Every time a soldier loaded his weapon, each time a ground crew rearmed a jet, their skin, sweat, and breath were tainted with it.
Ruth had no way of guessing if Chinese researchers were outpacing her or if the enemy had already developed new weaponized nanotech themselves.
* * * *
“You know about the snow†ake,” she said to Hernandez. She needed to warn him to be careful of his own planes if it looked like he was losing his ‚ght to keep the enemy from I-70.
If the Chinese †anked the Aspen group, if Grand Lake thought this was the last place to catch the Chinese in a bottleneck before the enemy surged toward the new capital, there was no telling what they might do. The snow†ake was the easy solution. There was no way to defend against it, and after its initial burst, the snow†ake was clean.
“The weapons teams were trying—” Ruth said, but she stopped when she realized she was distancing herself from what she’d done by using the past tense.
“I’ve heard about it,” Hernandez said. “I don’t think Leadville ever let the nanotech out of their control.”
He was trying to help. He thought the snow†ake was gone forever. For a moment, Ruth couldn’t even speak, overcome with self-loathing and embarrassment. His troops had saved her, and in return… “Grand Lake has it now,” she said. “I built it for them.”
His dark eyes stared at her in the gloom.
“I didn’t know what else to do,” Ruth said, and Cam murmured, “Jesus Christ.”
She hadn’t told him. What could he do? It had seemed like the right decision at the time. She’d thought she was providing her country with a powerful new deterrent, and that was still true, but now everyone in this place was in jeopardy.
Hernandez looked away from her even as his hand tightened on the edge of the cot. It was almost as if he swooned. He understood. Ruth saw it in his gray face. He was a tactician, and throughout the civil war he’d seen his people turn on each other again and again.
Grand Lake had always had the option of nuking the enemy. There were still USAF of‚cers in the sealed missile bases in Wyoming and North Dakota, but the Rockies would be downwind of any target in the western United States. Worse, the enemy would almost certainly answer in kind.
The snow†ake was different. A nano weapon would be an escalation. Using one would run the chance of a nuclear response, but desperate men might convince themselves that it would scare the enemy enough to stay their hands. Desperate men might believe that an unparalleled new weapon of mass destruction was exactly what could win the war.
It left Hernandez in a terrible dilemma. He needed to keep his guns and infantry in close to repel the Chinese, but at the same time, if he overcommitted, his troops would have no chance to pull back before Grand Lake dusted the area. And yet he needed to commit every last man. If he lost another battle, if Grand Lake panicked or simply lost patience with the limited strength of Aspen Valley, the jet ‚ghters that had aided Hernandez might instead bring death to everyone beneath them.
The bombing would not be indiscriminate. Ruth hoped they’d have the brains to drop their capsules on the far side of the Chinese, but their pilots had no experience with the snow†ake. Their pilots would be accustomed to hitting their targets straight on. Regardless, the chain reaction was inherent to the technology. It would reach American lines.
“The best thing we can do is tell Grand Lake I’ve found what I need,” Ruth said.
“You haven’t even started—” Hernandez shook his head at himself. He was clearly still stunned. “Of course. Okay.”
Lying isn’t easy for him even now, Ruth thought, despite how many times people have failed him.
He stood up. He seemed glad to move away from her. “What can I say on an open frequency?” he asked.
“Tell them I have what I was looking for. Just like that. It should buy us more time.”
“I’ll call them now.”
“I’m so sorry,” Ruth said. “I am.” Words were inadequate. Once again she’d hurt the very people who were risking everything to help her.
23
Chinese artillery pounded the land in the distance, a staggered thumping that came and went. Three or four explosions hit together, followed by a pause, then ten or more impacts in a rush. In the brief quiet, Cam heard American guns returning ‚re. His left ear was still partly deaf but the outgoing shells made a distinct crack. Crack crack. Then the heavier explosions picked up again, battering the other side of the mountain a few miles to the west. Cam wished they’d driven farther from Sylvan Mountain. He constantly expected this narrow rock gorge to erupt with death. They were still so close, and the enemy had begun a new offensive with reinforcements out of Arizona.
The war was always there. Smoke and dust poisoned the evening sky, drifting toward them on the wind. Cam stared at the sunset, a sooty orange glow beyond the dark peaks that formed the horizon — but people were dying in that spectacular light, he knew, and the beauty of it upset him.
He turned the other way, looking for Ruth in the gorge. He was huddled with Foshtomi and Goodrich along a split face of granite, cleaning half a dozen carbines. Busywork. Otherwise the waiting was impossible. Hernandez had ordered them to sit tight. Estey wanted to run patrols through the area — he was as restless as any of them, Cam thought — but they were behind their own lines and Hernandez insisted on as little activity as possible to keep from drawing the enemy’s attention. It was bad enough that they’d rolled away from Sylvan Mountain in two trucks and a jeep, with Ruth, Cam, Deborah, and the ‚ve Rangers supported by a Marine platoon and Hernandez himself.
Hernandez intended to take Ruth all the way to the command bunkers at Castle Peak, but they’d already lost too much time. If she could produce an answer, he needed it now. So they waited. They ate. They tended each other’s wounds and tried to catch up on their sleep.
It had been nearly thirty-six hours since they’d hidden in this jagged gully. Cam ached with tension. More than anything else, the plague year had taught him to act. The urge to stay ahead of every threat, whether real or imagined, was exactly why he’d left Allison. He still wondered at himself. He’d given up her smile and her warmth in exchange for nothing except more hardship, blood, and glory. That was not the decision of a well-grounded individual. At the same time, he wasn’t sure what kind of man would have let Ruth go alone.
“Hey, take it easy,” Foshtomi said, pressing her knee against his.
The slight movement made Cam realize he was as rigid as the rock itself, his body hunched as if to jump up. His jaw hurt from grinding his teeth. She’s right, he thought. You’re actually damaging yourself.
“Sometimes the only thing you can do is wait it out,” Foshtomi said, returning her work. She was inspecting an M4’s bolt carrier group, yet Cam saw her hazel eyes lift to his face once more as if to catch him disobeying her. Sarah Foshtomi was a good squadmate. Cam almost smiled. There were worse things than sitting here with this resilient young woman. That much was true. But he didn’t have the bene‚t of Foshtomi’s years in the military. She knew how to do her job and only her job, accepting her place in the larger whole, whereas Cam had learned nothing except the self-reliance of a loner.