“Phone? No.”
The boy dropped to his knees in front of him, plopping the bag between them.
“Eat for you,” said the kid, pulling a fist-sized package from the bag. It was wrapped in brown paper. A strong odor announced it was fish. The flesh looked purple.
“For me?” asked Zen.
“You.”
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Zen devoured it. The fish tasted like bad sardines drenched in coconut and vinegar, but he would have eaten ten more handfuls had the boy brought them. He was so hungry he licked at the paper.
“So,” he said finally. “No phone, huh?”
“Why do you want phone?”
“I want to call my friends.”
“No phone. Who are you? Not Bart?”
Zen guessed that the boy had been quizzed by his parents or other adults when he went home with the turtle. They might be waiting for his answers now, to decide what to do.
He had no idea what was going on in the world beyond this atoll. He wondered if the Chinese had managed to use their nuke, and if so, if the Indians would blame them for the destruction.
“Is there a war?” Zen asked the boy, not sure how to phrase his question.
“War?”
“Did people die?”
The boy looked at him blankly. He was old enough to know what war was, but maybe his village was so isolated he had no idea.
“Where do you live?” Zen asked the child.
“Where do you live, Bart?”
“Where do I live? Las Vegas,” said Zen. “Near there.”
“Vegas?”
“Slot machines. Casinos. Las Vegas.”
“Springfield?”
Springfield was the fictional setting for The Simpsons television show.
“That’s not a real place, kid,” blurted Zen. “I live near Vegas. That’s real.”
The boy’s face fell.
“You know that’s a television show, right? Make believe?”
asked Zen. He realized he’d made a mistake, a bad mistake, but didn’t know how to recover.
The kid started to retreat.
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“Hey! Don’t go!” yelled Zen. “No. Don’t.”
But it was too late. The boy pushed the small boat into the water without looking back. Lying across the shallow gunwales, he stroked back toward the sea, turning right and quickly fading from Zen’s view.
Base Camp One
1500
DESPITE A TWO-HOUR NAP, JENNIFER WAS STILL FEELING
groggy when she sat down with Danny Freah and Dancer to review the situation with the experts at Dreamland Command. The possible locations for the three remaining warheads had now been narrowed down to approximately five-mile rectangles. New data from a pair of U-2s and a Global Hawk scouring the region near northern India and northeastern Pakistan would be available by nightfall.
“Tonight may be it,” said Colonel Bastian, coordinating the briefing from Diego Garcia. “Power is coming back all through the subcontinent, and both countries are pushing their militaries to resume patrols. And then there’s the Chinese.”
They were participating in the briefing via an external speaker and microphone hooked into Danny’s smart helmet.
Jennifer couldn’t see Dog’s tired face as he spoke, but she knew what it would look like—thick, sagging bags beneath his eyes, taut lips, hollowed out cheeks.
He’d have shaved before he came on duty. He wouldn’t have waited for hot water, just scraped his chin clean as quickly as possible.
But thorough. He had a system that he never deviated from.
“Any word on Zen and Bree?” Danny asked as the briefing came to an end.
Dog paused a second longer than normal before answering, and that half of a half second told Jennifer everything. She could almost feel his chest expanding in the next moment as he took in a breath—a stabilizing breath—before answering.
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“Nothing yet,” said Dog.
“They’ll find them.”
“Yup.”
And then he was gone, without even saying anything to her.
It took Jennifer a minute or two to return her thoughts fully to the operation. By then Danny and Dancer had drawn up a plan for dividing the Marines into three groups and retrieving the warheads once they were located.
“Wait,” she told them as they started to get up from their camp chairs. “Who am I going with?”
Dancer glanced at Danny, then said to her, “You’re staying here, aren’t you? There are more tests you have to do.”
“The tests are a waste of time,” Jennifer replied. “I can help disable the weapons.”
“I don’t think we need you, Jen. No offense,” said Danny.
“I’ll go with Dancer,” she said.
“I have one of the Navy guys,” said Dancer, referring to the members of the nuclear team. “The other will be with Gunny on the third team.”
“So who’s going with you?” Jennifer asked Danny.
“Just me,” he told her. “I’ve done this a couple of times now.”
“What if you get hurt? You have no backup.”
“Yeah, but—”
“I’m going to get something to eat,” she told him. “I’m ready to go whenever you are.”
An atoll off the Indian coast
Time and date unknown
TWICE, ZEN THOUGHT HE SAW AIRCRAFT CROSSING THE
sky. Not wanting to carry anything that would make it difficult for him to swim back, he’d left the radio back at the tent. All he could do was stare at the sky, trying to make the wisps of clouds form into something tangible.
He had no luck with turtles. Perhaps he had found the only 262
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two on the small atoll yesterday, or maybe the one that escaped had somehow alerted the rest of the species. He sat for a while in the shallow shelf, staring at the water around him, and then just staring, wondering what to do next.
Sooner or later someone would hear one of his broadcasts.
They’d track them down and then come for them. There was no place on earth so desolate that someone somewhere wouldn’t come across you.
But what if the unthinkable had happened, if he and Bree, and the kids they’d seen yesterday, were the only people left?
He couldn’t get the idea out of his mind.
Tired, and convinced that there were no more turtles, he pushed his way back to the sea. He turned his head so the side of his face barely touched the water and began gently stroking back to Breanna.
HE DIDN’T SEE THEM UNTIL HE WAS ONLY A FEW YARDS AWAY, and then all he saw were their legs, brown and scarred.
Zen’s heart jumped. He raised his body, pushing his gaze upward until he could see their backs and then their heads.
There were three of them—boys. They were arrayed in front of the tent, standing a few feet away from it in a semicircle. If they’d had sticks or any sort of other weapon, he would not have been able to control his rage. As it was, he just barely managed to stay calm.
“Hey guys, what’s going on?” he yelled.
The three kids turned around. The one on the right was the older boy who’d come yesterday. The others were about his age.
“So what’s happening?” Zen asked. He pushed himself up the incline toward the tent, then pulled himself into a sitting position so he sat near their legs. “One of you guys bring a phone?”
“You’re American,” said one of the boys. He had a light birthmark on his cheek, as if someone had pressed a thumb to his face at birth.
“Yeah. That’s right. Where are you from?” Zen asked.
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The boy gestured. “Here.”
“I didn’t see your house.”
The kid laughed again, then said something to the others, probably sharing the joke.
“I was wondering if you guys could help me get in touch with my friends,” said Zen. “I need some sort of phone.”
He wasn’t sure if what he said was too colloquial or too fast, or if the boys simply didn’t want to help him. In any event, they didn’t respond, still talking among themselves.
Zen felt his pulse quickening, his apprehension suddenly stoked. The kids might not have weapons, but there were rocks all around.