"There's only four of us left, including the pilots. And I exercised my option to activate the package."
"Jesus, what didn't you bungle?"
"They know where the base is. Sergeant Storch seems convinced there'll be a retaliatory strike within the next hour. He thinks they'll try to use RADIANT on you."
"We won't be here," Mrachek said curtly. "Lie down, Cornelius." She pressed down on his shoulders and arranged him on his bed, drawing the sheets up to his neck and reaching around the bed and bringing up straps to hold him in place at his chest, waist and knees. Then she raised the bed up to its full height, and wheeled it towards the door.
Vijay stood in her way. His paper suit was torn in several places, revealing maroon chinos, a plaid shirt, and nasty but shallow abrasions on his knees and elbows. "We have nowhere to go," he said. "I went outside, and imagine my surprise to find we are surrounded by military and civilian federal law enforcement authorities? They did not seem concerned for my continued wellbeing, but I convinced them to refrain from attacking for the present."
"How'd you do that?" Stella asked.
Vijay smiled apologetically. "I told them we have a hostage."
Storch lay on his side on the empty bench of the helicopter's troop compartment. They were well away from Radiant Dawn, but he found he preferred to keep the gas mask on. Everything smelled burnt. He barely noticed the pilot's terse dialogue with the pursuing chopper, and merely nodded absently at the detonation of the tactical nuke onboard the ruined Hind. Well, there's the end of it, he thought. Tough Spike Team Texas might've been, but the big A was something else again. Wasn't it? He couldn't make himself believe it. They'd be back, only now they'd glow.
They moved a lot faster with no napalm or soldiers onboard. Wittrock sat up front with the crew, occasionally looking over his shoulder at Storch.
He didn't even breathe hard at Radiant Dawn, but he's scared shitless of me.
As near as Storch could tell, their plan was to land at a small general aviation airport just over the Nevada border. There, they'd destroy the chopper and split up (ha!) in small cars and head separately for the border. There was a rendezvous point somewhere in Central Mexico, but Storch didn't give a shit. There was nowhere to go that would make him forget. But he'd done it before, blocked out the part of the incident in Iraq that defied all reason, even as it explained his condition. His body wasn't sick-it was trying too hard to be healthy, trying to adapt to environmental stressors without the full arsenal of genetic tools for true evolution. All these years, his body had been trying to be like Brutus Dyson's. How would he live with that? It was an island of comfort, the idea that he could fall asleep and awaken with no memory of the last twelve hours. When his hair started to fall out from radiation poisoning, or he had flashbacks of burning children and men eating men whole, he could tell himself it was the Gulf War Syndrome again. That wouldn't be so bad.
Wittrock was shouting into the radio, his thin voice cutting through the droning harmonics of the helicopter to drive Storch out of his approaching sleep. He thought about beating the physicist up again, but his body wasn't up to the task; he barely wrangled his legs into a sort of locomotion, loping up to the flight deck on the bobbing, terrain-hugging motion of the chopper.
"Why didn't you get out when you had the chance, goddammit? This is exactly the scenario we least wanted to even consider!"
"What's wrong?" Storch asked, thinking it would be about the airport, or the Mexican rendezvous point.
Wittrock flinched and looked at Storch, still wearing his body armor and gashelmet and holding his MP5 out from his side and pointed at the windshield. "Some of our personnel are still in the base. They're surrounded by Navy and FBI tactical forces."
"So we're going to have to get them out?"
"I'm afraid it's impossible," Wittrock said, and thumbed the microphone's send button. "Cornelius, we never seriously anticipated this happening, but we did plan for it."
Armitage's deathly rasp cut him off. "I'm well aware of that, Witt. I'm in good hands. You don't have to worry about me."
"Godspeed, Witt." Storch recognized the deep feminine voice of the dykey doctor. "Vijay and I will see to it. The charges are already set, and we'll administer the final evasion kits ourselves, then take care of each other."
"What?" Storch said.
"We can't take the chance of their being caught," Wittrock calmly explained. "None of us is legally alive in the United States, so at the level we'd be held and questioned, torture is a very real possibility, and we still have so much to lose. Other units, other projects, and then there's the possibility that Radiant Dawn operated under government sanction. Cornelius could never bring himself to seriously consider it. He could still feel loyal to a stupid government, but not an evil one." Wittrock bowed his head in the most profound display of emotion Storch had ever seen from him. Here, at last, was someone for whom he would cry, someday. Maybe it was only because of the strategic setback to the Mission, but it would bring him pain. Good. "Do what you have to do, and good luck to you. It's been an honor to serve with you."
Another voice broke in over whatever final farewell Mrachek was about to deliver, and Storch blinked and bit his lip as he heard it. "You want me to kill myself? Fuck you, you crazy bitch! You're gonna have to kill me!"
It was the nurse.
Stella
…
Storch kicked Wittrock in the back and stepped over him, nocked the barrel of the MP5 in the pilot's neck. "Turn back south, buddy. That lady doesn't want to die with your people."
Wittrock took the co-pilot's sidearm and pressed it against Storch's helmet, then, reconsidering, looked for a soft spot in the armor on his back. He gave Storch more than enough time to elbow him in the throat and knock him back into the troop cabin, where he spilled onto his back and lay still, trying to focus on getting a whole breath of air in.
The pilot looked Storch over and made the course correction. "It's suicide for all of us," he said. "They're probably already dead."
"I hope not, buddy, and so do you. Just get on the phone and tell them we're coming."
"It's not that simple," the co-pilot put in desperately. "There's set scrambler channels, but the feds probably have them monitored by now. They'll know we're coming. We're still twenty minutes out."
"How'd you do that magic trick at China Lake? Just do that again."
"We're not rigged with the infrasonic generator. It's on its way to Mexico right now. We had to make weight to carry the troops."
"Then we'll all have to think of something, real quick. You got them on the horn, yet?"
The pilot handed Storch the mic. He thumbed the button. "You there, Stella?"
Armitage coughed. "They're gone. Who is this?"
Storch swallowed hard. "Sergeant Storch, Doctor. Had a crazy idea we could try to get you out, but—"
"Nothing doing, Sergeant. Mrachek's off chasing that damned Orozco woman, but when she comes back, we're all going to our greater rewards, right, Vijay?"
"Sir, I must urge you to take the pill."
"No, none of that, can't swallow it, anyway. Gimme your gun."
"Then—she's still alive?"
"Who? Delores? Far as I know. That nurse she brought in is leading her a merry chase, but there's no way out of here. Nobody can be taken alive, Sergeant. It's the nature of the Mission. Everyone who takes up the cause understands that. No, Vijay, get your hands off it, would you kindly let me do this one last thing with my own goddamned hands."
"Sir, I'm only worried that you might—"
BANG
He waited a moment, but heard nothing. The line might've gone dead, but for a faint beeping that might've been a smoke alarm. "Guess he did it right," Storch said, and let the connection go dead.
The pilot seemed to float up in his seat with relief. "So we can return to course, now, right?"
"Did I say that? Stay southbound and step on it, or I'll take my chances your friend here can fly the fucking chopper."
It felt good to have somewhere to go, and someone to go to. He only hoped he wasn't too late.
35
"It doesn't have to end like this," Mrachek called out as she stalked the corridors of the Mission's abandoned base. Her echoes ran amok through the honeycomb of bare concrete chambers, but even when she stopped and tuned into the silence, she couldn't pick out the sounds of her quarry over the ambient dripping and crumbling of the structure. The runaway nurse wouldn't be found easily, but Mrachek thought she could count on her seeming inability to leave an argument unanswered. "There's no other alternative, Stella. The base is rigged with plastique in all the load-bearing struts. It's going to implode. And there's no way out. Even if you get outside, what then? The feds will shoot you, or if they take you alive, you'll spend the rest of your short life in federal custody, trying to clear your name. You'll die in jail, or in a safehouse, which amounts to the same thing, eaten up by your cancer. This way, at least, it'll be quick and peaceful, and no one'll ever associate you with this place, or what we've done. Stella?"
It was indeed hard not to rise to the bait. Stella watched the stocky doctor pass by her hiding place twice, belting out her twisted case for euthanasia with her queer little dartgun extended out in front of her in the strangest gesture of peace she'd ever seen. In the end, it was not self-control, but futility, that held Stella's tongue. She was right. Stella'd run and run around the base, easily outpacing Mrachek, but quickly becoming lost. She'd found the big corrugated steel doors opening on the motor pool, but they were locked and spot-welded shut.
Fumbling around them, looking over her shoulder at each of the four corridors that fed into this antechamber, she'd thought she was saved when she heard whispered voices on the other side. Risking all, she'd screamed, "I'm a hostage! Get me out of here, they're trying to kill me!" Whoever was on the other side probably couldn't make out her words, or just didn't care, because they'd strafed the doors, punching a zigzagging line of holes across both doors. Stella ducked behind a concrete pillar and clamped her hands over her ears. Then they'd started in with a battering ram; the doors rippled with each deafening crash, but refused to buckle. They'd have to blow their way in, and friendly or not, they'd probably kill her in the process, so she'd started running again, with Mrachek's voice before and behind her, growing louder on all sides as the doctor's patience began to falter.
Fearing she'd come around a corner and catch up to Mrachek from behind, she'd followed the stairways down and away from the motor pool, and backed into a shadowy stairway leading into a mold-stinking cellar, and sat down on the top step and tried not to cry.
It was hard enough just catching her breath from one to the next. She thought of all the mass-suicides which had dotted the last twenty years. She'd never understood the hysterical sense of tragedy the media and general public attached to such events, as she'd always assumed the people involved had wanted to die. If they were so weak or deluded, so be it, the world was better off without them. Now she understood that such a rash decision was never a unanimous one, and she found a new kind of fear she'd never imagined possible, for how could one defend oneself against those who had already decided to die, and wanted only to take her with them? If she wanted to get out of this, being quicker or craftier would amount to nothing. She would have to kill. It was a far cry from simply wanting to survive, but she found she'd be willing to kill someone far dearer to her heart than Delores Mrachek to get out of this. To live and die in federal custody, eaten by cancer, would be heaven compared to dying like this, for a fanatic's vision she couldn't even say she understood.
The soldier wouldn't let them do this,
she thought. Zane Ezekiel Storch, that was his name. He would get out of this hole, and go through anybody who deigned to stand in his way, even if there was no out to get to. Maybe if she got out, she could see him again.
Get it together, you're not getting any closer to the exit.
Think. She closed her eyes and tried to visualize the base and thread a path from her current bolthole to the motor pool. It was two levels above her, but Mrachek would hear her long before she got to them, if she wasn't camping out there now. Vijay was out there too, but she doubted he'd leave Armitage. A fanatic's fanatic, Vijay was probably dead beside his leader with a smile on his face.
"It has to be this way, Stella." Mrachek's voice, distorted and faint, snaked through the base to her ears: "None of us wanted it to end like this, but being taken by the feds is not an option." The voice was far off, yet near; Stella looked around, darting her head into the corridor and jumping back before she realized she'd seen nothing. No. Looking again, she saw where the voice was coming from.
A grated ventilation shaft in the wall, just above eye level. Regularly spaced holes in the concrete beneath it hinted at iron rungs ripped out of the wall, but she took heart at the sight of them. The shafts were intended for men to travel them, probably to access the lower levels once they were jam-packed with the barrels of toxic waste that were supposed to be here. She rushed to the shaft and hauled herself up onto the narrow lip below the grate, and yanked with all her weight. The latch groaned, but didn't give; globs of unrusted metal covered it, someone had welded it shut, but the hinges themselves were still rusted.
Come on,
she hissed to herself, ignoring the squeal and scrape of the protesting grate that must be reverberating throughout the base. She braced her legs against the wall to either side of the grate and leaned back, pumping rhythmically until the hinges gave way all at once and she was falling backwards into space, the grate a lodestone on her chest that smashed her flat when she hit the floor. Her back wrenched and all the air whooshed out of her lungs; her hands, still entangled in the grate, wouldn't come free in time to soften the blow. She gasped and rolled the heavy grate off her chest, sobbing with pain. Mrachek would hear this, and come running. She had to get up and move. Without breath, without energy, without anywhere to go, she had to get up and move.