It would be such a waste for her to be killed out here.
The up-and-down terrain slumped into a saddle between the short hill on their right and, on their left, a more gradual rise that eventually thrust up into Prospect Mountain, one of the rounded white peaks east of Leadville. In this rare low spot, their highway merged with another that had come out of the northeast along the river. It was a textbook defensive position. Cars had been stacked three deep and three high across the gully, civilian cars, many stripped of their tires and seats and possibly their engines and wiring as well.
This colorful pile of steel was beyond anything required to divert the refugee masses up the eastern slope, of course. It would withstand artillery, though it didn’t look as if an assault of any kind had ever come. No wonder. A tank had pulled forward from the one gap left in the wall, where it probably functioned as the gate, its stout barrel raised cross-river in support of the helicopters.
Twenty soldiers stood at the entrance and stopped each vehicle, if only briefly. Why? Was there a password? She supposed there must be. How else could you keep out infiltrators who looked like you and talked like you?
Impeded by the tank, traffic jostled for position. Directly ahead of Ruth, a black Suburban butted against the lean man’s jeep and he beat on its tinted driver-door window with his walkie-talkie. Horns bawled, helpless, stupid, but she still heard some of his confident voice.
The soldiers at the gate waved the lean man through without hesitation, before his driver had stopped — and when he gestured they let both ambulances pass as well.
* * * *
Leadville was the stuff of postcards and paintings, even disregarding the majesty of its mountain cradle. The pride taken by its tourist board had been deserved.
The main body of town covered slightly more than one square mile on a shallow, concave plain just west of a sweeping mess of upheavals and canyons with names like Yankee Hill and Stray Horse Gulch. Eastward, the mayhem of land rose onward until it finally broke at 14,000 feet and plunged away toward Kansas.
There had never been many trees at this elevation— absolutely none, now, all burned for fuel during the first winter — and Leadville was a gathering of red brick. The white spire of a church jabbed heavenward. Anchoring main street were two heritage museums, the courthouse, and a well-preserved opera theater built in 1870, and the low buildings and wide boulevard would always have the shape of a frontier town. It didn’t matter that these structures, and the shops and breakfast cafes, had been turned into command centers for civil, federal, and military staffs. It didn’t matter that sandbagged firing positions cluttered the sidewalks.
This place, already so laden in history, would survive to repopulate the continent and become America again. Ruth swore to herself. Her days, her nights, her life, anything. She would make it happen. These people had fought too hard.
Gus touched her leg and she leaned away, squeezing both hands into fists despite the horrible grating in her arm.
“Look,” he said. “Look at that.”
But she had already seen. Red, white, and blue bunting hung from the streetlights and storefronts, and she noticed a podium on the courthouse steps as they sped past. A victory parade. A celebration in the face of starvation and madness.
“We made it,” Gus said.
Ruth nodded but couldn’t talk, too busy, too keyed up, all senses locked on absorbing her surroundings.
She had never cried in front of them.
* * * *
The jeep led their little convoy around the back of a modern hotel, which seemed strange, but she saw another ambulance parked in the lot already. She stared at the three-story building. Some new reflex in her was desperate to get inside again. Inside meant clean, calm, alone. Inside meant safe.
“My name is Major Hernandez,” the lean man told them, as medical staff bustled around the open doors of the two ambulances. “We’re going to get you out of those suits and have the doctors look you over.”
It was a chaotic moment for an introduction but he made it work, looking for Ruth’s eyes as she sat deep inside the ambulance, then trading a curt nod with Ulinov. Ruth had the impression that he made everything work, but he wasn’t her idea of an officer. He wore no decorations or pins. His only insignia was a single nonreflective black oak cluster on one side of his collar — and she recalled how the MPs had acted, making way but not saluting. Of course. It would be stupid to identify command in a war zone with snipers in the hills.
Hernandez was also shorter than she’d realized, no bigger than Ruth, yet stood undisturbed by the rush of white uniforms. The medical staff had wheelchairs, a gurney, and two men held IV bags overhead, shouting, but they went around him exactly as the traffic jam had dodged around the tank.
The gurney and IV bags, probably blood plasma, went to the other ambulance — for Derek Mills or for the wounded medic?
Ruth opened her mouth but Major Hernandez continued, his tone practiced and reassuring. “You’ll probably see some old friends inside. We have NASA’s best physicians waiting.”
Ulinov was lifted down into a wheelchair as Gus crawled out on his own. Ruth tried to follow, with help from the EMT inside the ambulance, and she fell against the woman. Raging adrenaline had carried her up and down the Endeavour’s interdeck ladder, but at a real price. Her body had no more strength left than a bag of jelly rammed full of sticks and stones wherever it hurt.
Then the gurney rolled past again in a knot of bodies, bearing an orange pressure suit. Mills had made it!
Deborah stood at the rear of the other ambulance, resisting the nurse who was trying to ease her into a wheelchair beside Ulinov. “Let me go with him—” Deb had her smooth jaw tipped up in that haughty, aggressive way.
“Easy.” Hernandez pushed an open palm at her. “We have the best teams right inside. Let us take care of you too.”
Ruth grimaced. Her own heart was slamming, badly overtaxed by Earth’s gravity, and her system hadn’t been ruptured. The injuries Mills had suffered must be twenty times more dangerous because of that strain.
She was grateful to be set in a wheelchair herself.
“There are some people who need to see you,” Hernandez said, and Ruth looked up and was confused to find him addressing Ulinov. “I’ll hold them off awhile if you like, Commander.”
Ulinov shook his head. “You have the shuttle secure?”
Hernandez turned smoothly to Ruth, as if the question had been hers. “Yes. Your equipment is all safe, Dr. Goldman. We’ve pulled everything out.”
He made another spare gesture and they were wheeled toward the glass entrance. Ruth watched Ulinov’s face, wondering at his exchange with Hernandez. Why was it important for them to talk to him?
Too much else was happening. “Is Derek going to be all right?” she asked. She didn’t want anyone to think her only concern had been for her gear.
Hernandez paced alongside her without answering, and Ruth realized that he might not know the name. She glanced up again to clarify. His frown was genuine, affecting his dark, direct eyes. “I’m afraid your pilot is dead,” he told them.
Ruth shook her head. “But I saw—”
Deb, close behind, cut her off in a clipped tone that Ruth took to be accusing. As if she could have known. “Bill has puncture wounds over his left hip, arm and shoulder, blunt trauma to the abdomen and thigh. He’s hemorrhaging.”
And yet Bill Wallace had stayed at his console to complete the emergency power-off.
Ruth moved her head again, unsure what she was denying, if anything. She would need to rediscover that kind of courage and dedication in herself.