Dead Zone (20 page)

FORTY-EIGHT

THE BOMBING CONTINUED FOR OVER
an hour—long enough that Aubrey thought the Americans surely had to be winning. The house shook and shuddered, and something collapsed. The garage, maybe, or the porch.

The four of them waited in the dark of a basement family room, Josi lying on the couch and the three others sitting in overstuffed chairs. Aubrey had finished bandaging Rich’s hands by the glow of her flashlight—the door was closed, and there were no windows. By the time she was done, the backs of his hands and fingers were covered in bandages and he looked like
The Mummy
, but the palms were clean—he’d had his hands balled into fists when the window exploded. He could still hold a gun, and his trigger finger only had a nick.

Aubrey was keenly aware that everyone was looking to her for leadership. Even though they’d all gone through the same training except for a week or two, she was somehow in charge. She’d been so annoyed when Tabitha was made
second-in-command on their first mission, but now she wanted nothing to do with leadership.

She’d seen real leadership. She’d seen Captain Gillett sacrifice his life for the sake of the mission, running toward battle, screaming orders at her. He was a true hero. Aubrey was just a seventeen-year-old girl with two months of basic training and a couple weeks of real-world experience. She wasn’t ready to make decisions. She wasn’t even ready to decide when it was safe to go upstairs.

“What do you hear?” she asked Jack.

“Not as much as I want to,” he answered. “My ears are still numb from that first bomb. But the traffic on the road sounds pretty light. It’s been a while since a tank came by. There might be some trucks, but nothing big.”

“They’ve cleaned up the damaged stuff?”

“I don’t think they’re cleaning anything up,” he said. “Just moving forward. There were some injured people, but they’re gone now, or . . . well, they’re quiet. No more screaming. Maybe a field ambulance came.”

“Anyone know what time it is?”

Rich spoke. “My watch is running, but it’s turned off and on so often that I have no idea what time it is.”

“There’s a grandfather clock upstairs,” Josi said. “It was still ticking. It probably isn’t electric.”

“What time did it say when we were up there?” Aubrey asked.

“Twelve thirty-five.”

“Any guess how long we’ve been down here?”

“An hour?” Jack said.

“I was going to say two,” Josi answered.

Aubrey gripped the arms of the chair tightly, and then forced herself to stand. “I’m going to check.”

“I can see in the dark,” Jack protested. “I’ll go.”

“No,” Aubrey said. “I’m going.”

She crossed the room, feeling her way along the wall until she reached the door. As she opened it she smelled dirt and smoke.

“Jack,” she said. “Are we on fire?”

“No,” he said. “The smoke is coming from somewhere outside.”

“Okay.” She was trembling, and she headed up the stairs rather than let Jack see.

Moonlight filled the stairwell, and even with her bad eyes she could see that something above her wasn’t right.

One entire wall of the house had collapsed outward, and Aubrey found herself on the top step looking at the field beyond the house. To her left, she could see the road, lit by a burning BMP. Across the field another house had been pounded into oblivion, and a wide crater lay beside it—something was in that crater, but she couldn’t tell what it was, other than something shiny and metal.

She looked up at the ceiling. It was drooping at a sharp angle. She quickly made her way into the living room and found the grandfather clock. All of the glass had been knocked out of the case, but it was still ticking. The face was in shadow, and she felt for the hands with her fingers. They were right on top of each other, pointing toward the two position. 2:10 a.m.

Good,
she thought. That still gave them plenty of darkness to get to the airfield.

A shiver ran down her back. She had no idea what they’d do when they got to the glider. Would the lambda even be there? Would the glider have taken off before they could do anything? Would they have to wait until it landed again?

All she knew was that the power was on right now, which meant he wasn’t using his powers.

Aubrey hurried back downstairs. “Josi, how far are we from the airstrip?”

“About three and a half miles.”

“It’s two ten,” Aubrey said. “Let’s get moving while we can. You feeling better, Jos?”

“I’ll live.”

Aubrey led the way up the stairs, but didn’t step outside onto the collapsed wall. “Jack, you take point again.”

“Which way are we going?” he asked.

“Wherever we can stay out of the light. House to house, maybe?” She chastised herself for that. Real leaders didn’t end their orders with
maybe
. “House to house. If we can find better cover, then let’s take that.”

Jack nodded and took her hand to give it a squeeze. “Yes, sir.”

She squeezed back, and then he climbed out through the broken wall, rifle at the ready, and began jogging toward the next cover—the ruined house she’d seen across the field. Aubrey ran after him, Rich and Josi falling in line behind.

The dirt was hard, the frozen earth of winter. Aubrey was grateful that no snow had started falling yet. That would have made this entire operation miserable. She’d thought the same thing back at the base. Winter had to come soon. Their luck couldn’t last much longer.

It made her even more surprised that the Russians had chosen now to attack. Granted, Seattle and Portland didn’t get a lot of snow, but the mountain passes certainly did. They’d been lucky to get through—even if they were being held back at Cle Elum and Ellensburg.

It made her wonder if they had a lambda who could control the weather. Wouldn’t that be something. Already, this lambda they were chasing was the most powerful lambda Aubrey had ever heard of, though she wondered now if Josi was right—if it was because of drugs. The US Army hadn’t been exactly fair with their treatment of the lambdas, but at least they weren’t trying to turn any of the teens into super soldiers.

Then again, the Russians had had a lot more time to plan this all out. These lambdas had probably been trained for years; Aubrey had heard enough about the terrorists to know that they had been in sleeper cells for at least a decade, if not longer. This plan was a long time in the making. Maybe the Russians even had more powerful strains of the virus, and had created stronger lambdas who were more powerful and had fewer side effects.

Jack slowed as they approached the ruined house. The object Aubrey had seen in the crater was fully visible now—the wreckage of a plane. She couldn’t identify it from the twisted and shredded steel, but she saw the American insignia—a white star in a blue circle with red-and-white stripes—beneath the cockpit.

No one was in the cockpit. The chairs weren’t there—the pilots must have ejected.

Aubrey felt a sudden pang of fear. If pilots had parachuted down, would the Russians be searching the ground for them?

“Jack,” she said, “are any people around?”

He was quiet for a long time. Aubrey rubbed at her face—her nose and cheeks were freezing.

“There’s someone up ahead. Two men on the road.”

“Our guys or theirs?”

“Not sure. They’re not talking.”

“Get us closer,” she said.

He nodded and pointed at a wooden fence that ran the length of the next field, parallel to the road. “Let’s go on the far side of that fence.”

She agreed, and he jogged off. She followed, watching him run, wondering what she would do if the men were American. They wouldn’t be armed with more than a sidearm, and they’d be trying to get back to the American lines, not wanting to go on a mission to kill the enemy lambda.

They were likely air force. How did rank work between different branches of the military? She had no idea, and that made her almost want to laugh. Here she was, leading a mission behind enemy lines to take out one of the most wanted targets in this war, and she didn’t know something as basic as how rank worked.

Jack stopped at the end of the fence and turned. A paved road ran in front of them. “They’re Russians.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Can we move around them?”

He lifted his head above the fence just enough to see them. “They’re watching the intersection. They don’t look like they have night vision, but one of them is staring this way.”

She peered up and over the fence. She could barely see the men. They were probably a hundred yards away. But if she could see them with her bad eyes, she had to be sure they could see her team.

Aubrey took a deep breath. “I’ll distract them. You watch. When they’re distracted, you guys cross the road and get to the next cover—that barn over there. I’ll meet you there.”

Josi grabbed her arm. “Be careful.”

“I will.”

Aubrey disappeared. She paused to kiss Jack on the cheek, even though she knew he wouldn’t feel it, and then she climbed the fence and started toward the Russians.

FORTY-NINE

AUBREY DIDN’T BOTHER TO CROUCH
or hide. She didn’t have a rifle—she’d left hers at the farmhouse when she’d run out of ammunition. But she carried Captain Gillett’s Beretta on her hip.

She didn’t want to kill these men—there had to be an easier way to create a diversion—but she felt good knowing she had the option.

They looked young—her age, or maybe a little older. Aubrey wondered if the Russians had a draft or if these guys had enlisted voluntarily. She glanced around for something to distract them with, but the intersection was empty. All of the wreckage was off the road, or farther away—not that she knew what she’d do with it if it were closer.

Both men had radios with headsets, so they could talk immediately to their superiors and report whatever Aubrey was about to do.

She could kill them. Fast and easy. She was so close that it wouldn’t be a challenge, not even with her tired hands.

She’d started a fire the last time she was supposed to create a distraction. But neither of these men was smoking, and she didn’t have any matches.

They had grenades attached to their vests. She could pull the pin on a smoke grenade. She stepped closer to one of them—a baby-faced boy with a gap between his teeth—and inspected his grenades. The two fragmentation grenades were easy to identify—they were round, a little like the American M67 that she’d trained with. But the other grenades were cylinders. That was what smoke grenades looked like, but it was also what incendiary grenades looked like. She could be pulling the pin to send off a lot of smoke, or she could pull it and light this man on fire with phosphorus. The grenades had writing on them, but it was in Cyrillic.

And time was ticking.

She knew what she should do. She’d known it since she started walking up here. She just didn’t want to do it. But it would work, and there wasn’t anything else jumping out at her.

The baby-faced soldier’s rifle hung around his neck, and he rested his arm on it.

“Forgive me,” Aubrey breathed. “This is for you, Nick.”

She put her hand on the trigger and gently pointed the gun at the other man’s leg. She set the selector switch to automatic and pulled the trigger.

FIFTY

JACK HEARD THREE DISTINCT SHOTS,
not from Aubrey’s Beretta but from a Kalashnikov.

“Come on,” he said, and the three of them ran from the fence and across the street.

“Ti menyah ubil!”

“Ya, nyet. Ya eto ne zdyelal!”

Jack kept running, making sure Josi and Rich were with him, pounding across the field at a full sprint until he reached the barn. He slid to a stop in the shadow of the building, his heart pounding. He hadn’t thought that Aubrey was going to shoot, but he should have known.

He peeked his head out around the corner and focused in on the men. One was down, holding his leg, shrieking at the other.

“Schto ti zdyelal?”

“Mnye nuzhen vrach k peresechenyu dvesti trinadtset. Propuska. Propuska, ya skazal!”

Jack pulled back, looking at Josi. “How’s the head?”

“I’ll be fine,” she said. “If everyone would stop shooting.”

“That’s probably what that Russian is thinking,” Jack said with a tired smile.

“That’s a little morbid.”

“It’s been a long day.”

A moment later Aubrey appeared, out of breath and leaning forward, hands on her knees.

“Nick’s plan?” Jack asked.

“Shot him in the calf,” she said.

“How’s your leg?”

“Fine. I probably need to change the bandage. I think I may have pulled some stitches earlier.”

“We should have checked it back at the house.”

Rich jumped in. “You just want to look at her legs.”

Josi and Aubrey stared at him.

“What?” he said. “Jack just joked about a Russian getting shot and I can’t joke about Aubrey’s legs?”

Jack started to laugh.

Aubrey’s face broke into a smile. “That’s
Private Aubrey’s legs
to you, lambda.”

“Yes, sir.”

Josi snorted.

Aubrey sighed through her smile. “We need to get moving. Jack?”

“Let’s do it.” He turned and began running toward the next cover—a cluster of trees at the edge of the next field.

They ran for what felt like hours. It was the same routine the whole way—darting from cover to cover, watching for Russian patrols and sentries. They were able to avoid everyone else that they came across. Security seemed to be getting looser, not tighter, as they got deeper into enemy territory and closer to the airfield. There were more houses, which made running and hiding easier, and the airport was on the north end of town; they didn’t have to go through the city center, or even go past many buildings to get there.

But for all the ease they were having, and the jokes they were telling, Jack was growing more and more uneasy. The airport was going to be hard to access. And the lambda was going to be guarded.

They ran past a group of three ponds to a large house.

“Okay,” Josi said. “It’s right over there.” She pointed to a street, and to the field beyond it.

“It’s dark,” Rich said. “Is the power out again?”

Aubrey shook her head and pointed at a house to the south that still had a porch light on. “It’s probably—”

Jack held up his hand for her to be quiet. He was listening. The airfield lit up as two dozen rockets shot into the air, just in time to meet four very low-flying American planes.

The whole house seemed to shake as the planes flew over. Two of the planes—they were Super Hornets—were hit by the rockets and burst into flame. But all four of them managed to drop their bombs, which hit the airfield like an earthquake.

The house they were huddled beside shuddered violently, its windows warping and shattering.

“I am getting so sick of glass,” Rich started to say, but another wave of American planes came right over them louder than a freight train, louder than anything Jack could compare it to. A second set of explosions rocked the airfield and Jack was knocked to the ground by the force of the blast. He watched the sleek black jets—F-35 Lightnings—veer up in a sudden climb.

Instead of climbing and disappearing, they slowed, stopped, and then began to fall.

Jack glanced back at the porch light, but Rich was ahead of him.

“Power’s out.”

All four of the aircraft tumbled helplessly back to Earth, exploding in the fields beyond the airstrip.

“Jack,” Aubrey said. “Find me the glider.”

So much of the airport was burning that it was easy to see across it.

“There are two runways,” Josi said. “And they only hit one of them.”

“Where’s the glider?”

“I’m looking,” Jack said. “It might be burning rubble. I can see the remains of six Russian jets.”

“The airport is laid out in a triangle,” Josi said. “Two runways, and then a road connecting them. There’s a row of hangars and buildings on the south side—I think that’s what just got bombed.”

Aubrey was on her feet. “We need the glider. Where the glider is, the lambda will be.”

“There it is,” Jack said, and pointed. “Over by the far buildings—the ones that didn’t get smashed.”

“Let’s get closer,” Aubrey said. “Quick.”

Jack stood up, hating to move when there was so much light, and ran through the yard of the house and past two more. He stopped at a row of trees. They were at one point of the triangle, where the two runways came together. A tank was sitting quietly at the point, its crew watching the fires off to the west.

“Damn it,” Jack said, and pointed. “The glider is being hooked up to a towplane.”

“Then the lambda’s going to be on it. What guards are there?”

Jack pointed. “There’s that tank. And we can probably bet there are enough soldiers to fire all of those surface-to-air missiles we saw.”

“Those weren’t coming from a vehicle?” Rich asked.

Josi answered. “They were coming from all over. I’d guess Grinches or Gimlets.”

Jack looked at her. “What kind of names are those?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Aubrey said urgently. “Is the lambda in the glider?”

Jack closed his eyes and tried to focus in on it. “It’s too close to the fires,” he said. “I can’t make out something like breathing.”

“Where will it take off?”

“Straight ahead,” Josi said. “Past the tank. The other runway is too bombed out.”

“Rich,” Aubrey said. “You’re good with that rifle?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re our sniper. Josi, you stay with him and keep him safe.”

“What am I supposed to shoot at?” he asked.

“Don’t let that glider get off the ground,” she said. “Take out the towplane or the glider once they get over to the runway. They’ll be driving down the runway coming toward you here. Shoot the pilot or the tires or something. But not until they’re on the runway. We have to make sure the lambda is inside.”

“Should I stay here?”

“Wherever you have a clean shot.”

Jack looked at Aubrey. “What about me?”

“You come with me. We’re going to find that lambda, and kill him.”