Rescue—how? All at once Zack realized that Lindy had lied. She was keeping secrets. Colin Jenner probably believed the Return, which had conveyed him unconscious from the Settlement to the base, was going to swoop down and carry everyone off to safety. Lindy knew that the order would be to bomb the hell out of New America and everything else in a mile’s radius.
Or did Colin know that, too, and was still willing to help Lindy even to the point of her own death?
And how long could the overcrowded, underprovisioned domes hold out without food coming in from the forest or Colin’s Settlement?
Zack closed his eyes, opened them, and began easing Colin’s chair down the steep, narrow stairwell.
Kubetschek took point. J Squad moved through the airlock that the “super-aliens,” whoever the hell they’d been, had designed, and into the bot-bored tunnel beyond. A generation ago, on the Embassy, the analog of this airlock had served as a submarine bay under New York Harbor. In Colin’s Settlement, it had led to a wide tunnel that slanted sharply upward to bring in stored crops. In domes used as Army bases, the tunnels went downward first so they could be more deeply buried, and were fortified with steel and concrete.
Jason walked directly behind Mason Kandiss. The only light came from their helmets, and the Ranger was a huge dark silhouette. They all moved quietly, but if New America was above them, and if they had among them a superhearer, then the enemy knew what Jason was doing. No way to calculate the odds.
At the end of the tunnel, Kubetschek and Goldman mounted the stairs. The others covered them from shallow alcoves built into the tunnel walls. However, that wouldn’t help much if strong enough explosives came down from above.
Goldman tapped in the code to open the hatch. The old, familiar tension tautened the base of Jason’s skull.
The two men touched the mechanism that raised the heavy, camouflaged hatch at the top of the stairwell.
It made a shocking amount of noise as soil, bushes, small rocks slid off the rising hatch. Dirt and pebbles clattered down the stairs, mixed with fat droplets of rain. But no larger noise of enemy fire. Kubetschek sprang through the hatch, followed by the other three members of J Squad. They took up defensive positions while Jason, at the top of the stairs, spoke urgently into his mic to the comsat somewhere above.
“Signal station, come in—code red, repeat code red!”
“Signal station here,” Li said, sounding startled. “Sir?”
“Execute Operation Flamingo in five minutes. Repeat, execute Operation Flamingo… verification code Delta Whiskey Alpha. Repeat, Delta Whiskey Alpha.”
A bullet whizzed past his helmet.
Instantly Kandiss was firing. Goldman covered Jason’s body with his own as he shoved him back down the stairwell. Jason yelled, “Go! Go!” and all of them scrambled through the hatch, followed by a torrent of rain splashing down the steps. Goldman stayed to lock the hatch as the rest of them ran back through the tunnel.
Something heavy rumbled overhead.
A sniper… the stray bullet had come from a sniper, but more of the New America force had not been that far away. And now they knew where the hatch was.
Ten minutes. They had maybe ten minutes…
Boots rang staccato on the metal plates of the tunnel floor. Behind Jason, Goldman pounded along until he caught up to the others. The tunnel was wide enough for only three raggedly abreast.
Go, go, go… ten minutes. He didn’t know what would happen if they were still in the tunnel when the Return dropped down from orbit.
In the other dome, Zack and Lindy bumped Colin’s powerchair down the steps, one at a time. Colin winced but didn’t cry out. “Christ,” Lindy said, “you’d think the Army would have sprung for powerchairs that can climb up and down steps!”
Zack puffed, “You don’t want… my opinion… on what the Army chooses to spend on or… not.” God, he was out of shape. Lindy was lifting and hauling easier than he was. “Jenner, you okay?”
“Yes.”
“I’m trying to not… sorry!… Okay, we’re down.”
“That’s the airlock and decon to the tunnel,” Lindy said, unnecessarily. “Zack, scan it open and then you stay here.”
“I’m an RSA survivor and—”
“We don’t need you. Colin will listen at the tunnel hatch, and if it’s safe, I’ll go out and contact the signal station.”
“This whole idea looks stupider now that I consider it.”
“Good, I’m glad you think so, because you’re not participating any farther than this. Just wait on this side of the airlock to help with Colin’s chair after we get back.”
“If there’s a hatch, what makes you think you can lift it alone?”
“It will have hydraulics.”
“Do you know that for sure? You don’t. And, Lindy—what if there’s a code to open the hatch?”
“There is. I know it.”
Zack didn’t ask how. She’d been married to Jenner; she could have been told, or have stolen, any number of supposedly restricted things. He said, “I don’t think you should—”
“Zack, now!”
Zack put his eye and finger to the scanner. It said, “Retinal scan and digital chip match. Dr. Zachary McKay.” The airlock/decon chamber slid open.
Colin powered himself inside behind Lindy and raised his hand to the CLOSE DOOR button. The door closed.
Zack sagged against the wall. Would he ever see either of them alive again? And if Lindy succeeded in this mad scheme to alert the signal station, would either the soldiers there or the Return act without orders from Colonel Jenner? In fact, could anybody even pilot the Return now that Branch Carter was in a v-coma?
Spaceship, Monterey Base, signal station—each locked separately, unable to reach the others except by desperate measures, no better than the caged sparrows in the bird lab. Was this any way to run a war?
Decon could not be rushed, but without decontaminating everyone, RSA would win. They all went through the decon process at once, a tight fit for so many bodies. Jason counted each agonizing minute, squashed against Goldman and Kandiss. Kandiss’s AR-15 jammed into Jason’s side.
When decon was done and the airlock finished cycling, they exploded into Enclave Dome’s storage area.
Thirty seconds. They’d made it with thirty seconds to spare.
Zack couldn’t see Lindy and Colin—why didn’t the airlock have some sort of wall screen to the tunnel beyond? Or something like that? Or—
The world shook and screamed and threatened to break apart.
Zack threw himself into the airlock and slammed his fist onto the DOOR CLOSE button. Another explosion shook everything—an earthquake? Now? It seemed long minutes before the airlock opened on the other side. Colin, the superhearer, sat just beyond the airlock with his hands pressed tightly to his ears; tears made trails through the dirt on his face. But he cried out to Zack, “Get her out!”