There were two serious complications.
First, it was a sequence that could not be corrected, either done perfectly the first time or, with faults, a waste of their entire effort. Before trying again they would need to build a new nano, and odds were that D.J. would average another six tries to re-create this hybrid structure.
Worse, the second complication was that faults were statistically guaranteed. Even as the laser stuttered and lanced into the nano’s core, free radicals were expected to damage these unimaginably fine pathways.
It would never be a hundred percent.
The question was whether they could fabricate a vaccine nano that retained enough coding to function, and how well, because whatever they created would assemble more nanos with exactly its own limitations — and it was imperative for the vaccine to operate with a low number of flaws. Otherwise it would be overwhelmed by the archos plague. It would be useless.
Twenty-six minutes into their fresh tanks, Young thumped on the glass of the hermetic chamber again. Without a radio jack, Cam couldn’t hear his words at all but the message was obvious.
Get out.
“Soon,” Ruth said. “I promise. We really can’t stop the etching process after—”
Young struck the glass again, his mouth working. Beyond him, Cam saw two of the Special Forces troops bend stiffly to look at the ceiling, although the fluorescent lighting seemed steady. Were they shutting down the power?
“What! When?” Ruth’s voice was high, frightened, and
D.J. stood up from the EUVL console. Young had swiveled his head and Cam realized he was talking to Iantuano now.
That ready animal calm fell over Cam once more but he resisted it, even as he sidestepped away from Iantuano and turned to confront him, making sure his legs were clear of Sawyer’s wheelchair. “What’s going on?”
“Get your buddy out,” Iantuano said. “They’re almost done.”
“Get him out. Two jets just came over the mountains.”
28
Leadville command had known all along. Ruth should have guessed. James had not been among her counterparts on the radio, advising and encouraging her. Delaying her. He wasn’t knowledgeable about their hunter-killer tech or familiar in any way with laser fabrication, but as the head of their labs, he should have been in the background.
James’s absence itself was the warning that Leadville had tried to prevent him from giving, and Ruth had been too caught up in her work to understand. It might have cost them everything.
Young was right. They should have run for the plane.
Were their suits bugged? No, microdevices couldn’t transmit that far. Hernandez had said something, an innocent-sounding phrase, preset signals for degrees of trouble.
“Young?” Ruth waved her palm back and forth against the glass wall of the chamber. “Young! You cut the radio relay!”
Slightly to her left, outside the glass, Young turned.
“Let me talk to them,” she said.
“I’ve got it covered, Doc. Move your ass.”
Cam was already rolling Sawyer through the air lock, pushing Sawyer’s arm down as he grabbed at the wall.
Ruth said, “Listen to me. We have the ultimate hostage.”
“No kidding.” Young shook his head, not in disagreement but in harried exasperation. “Iantuano, clear them out.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Wait!” Ruth slapped at the glass but Captain Young had already started toward the far corner of the main room, where his prisoners sat against the wall, their boots and wrists bound with silver duct tape.
He’d sworn he would slaughter them—
“Young, no! I meant the nanos and all the hardware!”
He didn’t answer. He’d switched off the general frequency. What channel had Olson used? Ruth grabbed at her controls. Static. Static. Band two was the command channel, and the pilots across town had kept this relay open:
“—down now, stand down and surrender your weapons to Major Hernandez.” The voice from Leadville was a woman’s, cool, inflectionless. “There’s no reason for more bloodshed.”
“And I’m telling you.” That was Young. “Back off.”
“Stand down, Captain.”
“Back off. We’ll blow it all up first. Understand? We’ve got enough gas cans here to have a real party, so back off. You don’t want to—”
The sky hammered against the building in two screaming sonic waves as the F-15 Eagles cut overhead.
* * * *
Leadville had sent an overwhelming force. That was what they claimed, at least, and the pilots across town confirmed that radar showed another C-130 lumbering after the two fighter jets. Leadville boasted that it held sixty troops.
Young repeated his only threat—“We’ll blow it up, all of it!”—then instructed the pilots to cut the relay entirely. He said, “Can you block our stretch of highway, put your planes in the middle?”
“Already moving.” The USAF man did not call Young sir or captain, Ruth noticed. Was that significant?
The next nearest landing space was the Sacramento city executive airport, five miles south from where they’d touched down, and the roads between were jammed with stalls — and it would be another fifteen minutes before the Leadville plane covered the distance from the Sierras, another ten or more before they were on the ground.
“We’ll be most of the way back before they even set their brakes,” Young said.
* * * *
But Ruth wondered. Even if they weren’t captured on the ground, even if the breakaways mustered air support or if Canadian fighters intervened on their behalf, would Leadville permit anyone else to keep the archos tech? Men driven by greed and fear might not understand that spin-off nano types could be to their benefit as well. Men fixated on war might disbelieve that a vaccine nano would also save them.
One air-to-air missile, that was all Leadville needed to erase a slow-moving cargo plane forever.
* * * *
“No!” Ruth tottered back from Iantuano, struggling ineffectively with her single arm. “Not yet! If we don’t have this we have nothing—”
He caught her wrist. “Are you crazy? We have to move.”
“I’m done, I’m done, I’m wrapping up,” D.J. yammered behind her and Ruth shifted back and forth, trying to be larger, trying to block Iantuano from the EUVL console.
“Let us secure our prototype or all this time was wasted!”
“Ma’am, we’re moving out.”
“I’ll go,” Todd said. “Sir? Look, I’m going.”
“Got it!” D.J. shouted. “Let me extract—”
Thump bump. Captain Young had come back to the outside of the chamber, his rifle cradled in one arm, his other hand on the glass. At the same time, two soldiers were hustling in through the air lock. Cam had already pushed Sawyer’s wheelchair across the larger room, his head turned over his shoulder to watch.
“If I didn’t know better I’d say you were playing both sides,” Young said, looking for Ruth’s eyes through the many layers between them, the glass wall, their faceplates.
She held his gaze. “That’s ridiculous.”
D.J. stepped to her side and showed Young his fist. “I have it, okay? I have our sample. Let us make sure we’ve got all the software and we can go.”
“Do it fast,” Young said, making a rolling gesture like a traffic cop. “I want to bring that laser but you’re in our way.”