“I agree,” Lo Fa said.
“I must stay,” Che Lu said.
“Suit yourself,” Croteau said.
Raindrops pelted Toland. He had quit using his night-vision goggles, because nothing could help a person see in this. He was back to the basics he’d learned as a young lieutenant in the Canadian Army: compass direction and pace count. He looked down, then knelt and felt with his hand. Dirt, no grass. He squinted into the dark. It appeared that the runway ran perpendicular to their path.
“We’re here!” he yelled, reaching out and grabbing the back of Faulkener’s backpack. The signal was passed and the men gathered in close.
“How will we know when the aircraft lands?” Baldrick asked.
Toland was shivering now — a down spike in his fever — as water rolled down his body. “If I knew what type of aircraft, that would help. We might have to wait until this thunderstorm passes and the pilot gets an opening. When it lands,” he pointed out, “we’ll see it. Don’t worry. Let’s just hope it gets here.”
He hadn’t told Baldrick about the FM frequency. Toland had his survival radio in an ammo pocket on his vest. So far nothing. His stomach twitched, and he leaned over as he vomited into the mud.
The pilot of the Sparrow was circling on the edge of the thunderstorm, just above stall speed, creeping west with this part of the storm. There was another thunderstorm behind him, and he estimated he’d have about a five-minute window to hit the landing strip, make the pickup, and get back in the air.
Two kilometers to the west, Turcotte and the others in the bouncer waited. Turcotte tapped Kenyon on the arm.
“Could this thing be some sort of space bug that Earth Unlimited gathered?”
“There’s nothing alive up there,” Kenyon said. “But I’ve been thinking about it ever since you told me about the satellite, and I think I know what they did. Zero g.”
“What?”
“Zero g,” Kenyon repeated. “Things work differently under zero gravity. Biology, physics — at the molecular level the rules change.” He was tapping his forehead. “I read a paper about manipulation of the RNA under zero gravity.
“There’s a thing called transduction. A virus infects a bacterial cell that has a toxin…” Kenyon shook his head. “Forget about all that, it’s not important right now. But this is starting to make some sense. The blisters on the black rashes. I think that’s the way the virus moves — the blister explodes, the virus goes into the air. And this is different than, say, Ebola, because it lasts in the air. It holds together under ultraviolet light longer. And zero g would be the only way to manipulate the virus to get that effect.”
“Then the satellite wasn’t sent up there to spread the virus,” Turcotte said. Kenyon shook his head. “No. It was a zero-g lab.”
Turcotte looked over at Yakov.
The Russian had been silent for a long time. He continued his silence, not responding to the look.
“You shot it down, didn’t you?” Turcotte finally asked.
Yakov raised a bushy eyebrow. “Excuse me?”
“Sary Shagan,” Turcotte said. “The Earth Unlimited satellite was over that site when its orbit began to suddenly deteriorate.”
“Ah.” Yakov waved a hand. “Yes. We fired a laser at it.”
“Why?” Turcotte demanded. “You started all this!”
“We started all this?” Yakov was incredulous. “You give me too much credit. This started ten thousand years ago! It has been a war that has lasted that long, and we humans have been pawns. Well, we fought back. This disease — do you think they were going to put it in a bottle at The Mission? What do you think those four scheduled Earth Unlimited launches from Kourou are for?”
“Can they spread this via a satellite?” Turcotte asked Kenyon.
“This”—Kenyon indicated the immediate area—“was spread via a satellite coming down, but it’s not very effective. A single point to start from.”
“Tell that to Vilhena.” Yakov snorted. “The payloads in those four rockets are different. A Section Four man lost his life finding that out. They hold multiple atmospheric return crafts that can spray the virus. Between the four payloads there are sixteen craft. Enough on their flight paths to blanket the world. You would have preferred we waited until they perfected their plan? We acted, and Section Four was destroyed in retaliation.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“I am sure of nothing,” Yakov said, “except that we have to stop this Black Death.”
In the Spectre gunship the storm didn’t matter in the slightest. The four powerful turboprop engines cut through the wind and rain and the men in the inside were on task, particularly the targeting officer, watching his TV set.
The thermal imaging also wasn’t affected by the weather. He could see as clearly as if it were broad daylight.
They were flying low, doing shallow S-turns. They’d started at the bouncer and were ranging out in a clover-leaf pattern, always coming back and then back out at a slightly different angle.
In the back of the AWACS a young technician stared at her screen. She played with her computer for a little while, then she reached up to the rack above it and pulled down a three-ring binder. She flipped through, searching. Finding what she was looking for, she tapped the man next to her. “Hey, Robbins, align with me.”
Robbins switched to the same radar frequency. “What do you have, Jefferson?” “Just watch.”
“What am I looking for?” Robbins asked after a minute.
“There! See it?”
“A shadow,” Robbins said. “There’s a thunderstorm outside, in case you didn’t notice.”
Jefferson ignored him. “Look what happens when I let the computer project a cross section based on the shadow.”
“What the hell is that?” Robbins asked.
Jefferson handed him the binder. “You haven’t been doing your homework. Colonel Lorenz wouldn’t be pleased.”
Robbins read. “The Lockheed Q-Star. It says here that it’s an experimental aircraft, and not in production. Hell, it says this thing was tested back in the early seventies.”
“That doesn’t mean someone couldn’t copy it and make their own,” Jefferson said. “And they didn’t have the radar technology and computer systems we have on this plane back in the seventies. It would be invisible back then. But it isn’t now.”
Robbins handed her back the binder. “Your find, you do the honors with the colonel.”
The Sparrow pilot knew he was very close now, He pressed the send button on his stick. “Horseman, this is Sparrow. Over.”
Toland sat up straight, ignoring the pain in his stomach and head. He fumbled, then pulled out the radio. “Sparrow, this is Horseman. Over.” He squinted up into the rain. It was getting lighter. The worst was passing.
“Horseman, this is Sparrow. I’ll be down in three minutes. Be ready to load fast. Over.”
“Roger that. Out.” Toland stood with difficulty. “Aircraft’s inbound. Let’s get ready.”
“Got him!” Colonel Lorenz called out. “Got them both!” He had the small airplane on screen for sure now, and they had pinpointed the FM ground source. “Direct in the Spectre and the bouncer,” he ordered.
Inside the Sparrow, the pilot held the stick between his knees as he pulled the bolt back on his pistol. He had room for only one man, and that man was Baldrick.