Supersymmetry (29 page)

The plane landed before Alex expected it. She had finally managed to fall asleep and thus missed the last several hours of the transit. It had definitely been a good choice to stay clear of Ryan; she had seen him lose his dinner a few seconds into the flight. She didn't bother going over to him. She expected he could get off the plane without her holding his hand.

They had landed at the Krakow 8th Air Base in southern Poland. Since Turkey's semi-peaceful assimilation of Greece and most of the Balkan states, Krakow was only two hundred kilometers from the Turkish army's front lines. She saw rows of fighter planes, bombers, and helicopters, and farther afield, meadows full of tanks, trucks, and rocket artillery.

The sky was gray. A light rain was falling, but that didn't stop hundreds of uniformed soldiers from striding purposely through it, attending to various duties. Planes roared overhead. The noises of a hundred engines clamored to drown each other out, and the air was dank with the smell of wet metal.

Ryan pushed down the ramp past her and promptly fell on his face at the bottom. A uniformed major hauled him to his feet just as Alex reached them. The major was large and dark-skinned, his features almost invisible in the gray light. Even so, he projected a sense of lethal strength that went beyond just solid musculature and military posture. This man was a controlled killer.

“Please tell me you're Major Hughes,” Ryan said.

The major nodded. “Welcome to Poland, Dr. Oronzi.” He turned to Alex. “And you are?”

Alex had a moment of panic. She couldn't give them her real name, could she? They would know that she was wanted for Secretary Falk's murder. She was still wondering what to do when Ryan said, “This is my assistant. Her presence here is code-word compartmented; her identity is need-to-know.”

Hughes seemed to accept that explanation, as if secret identities were a normal part of his life. He saluted Ryan, who made a pathetic attempt to return the gesture. “I've been instructed to deliver you safely to the facility and give you everything you need.” Hughes lowered his voice. “And just between you and me, sir, this is the most incredible piece of Special Ops hardware I have seen in all my days. The Rangers and Seals are going to piss themselves when they find out we got it first.”

Hughes took them on the road in an open-top Jeep. Alex studied his uniform, wishing she remembered more about divisions and insignia. He was in the Marine Corps, she could tell, and almost certainly Special Ops. Was he Force Recon? Would he know Sean? Running into him among the hundreds of thousands of coalition troops amassed on the Polish border would be quite a coincidence, she knew, but how many Marine Special Ops units could there be? Hughes probably knew where her brother was. She couldn't ask him, though, not without giving away her identity.

The streets were packed with a mix of tiny European cars and huge military trucks and Humvees. Alex had no idea where they were going, though again, she didn't want to call attention to herself by asking. There seemed to be billboards on every building, most of them alien and incomprehensible, though occasionally she saw products or logos she recognized. Coke. McDonalds. Kraft Macaroni and Cheese.

Between high-rise apartments, she caught glimpses of the famous churches in the old town, though they seemed to be heading in the other direction. Finally, they stopped at a building that Alex guessed had once been an elementary school, though she couldn't read any of the Polish signs. Soldiers in gray fatigues guarded the entrance. They saluted Major Hughes as he marched Alex and Ryan through.

The school's gymnasium was crowded with more Special Ops types, training on the use of Higgs projectors. There were a dozen civilians in the room, but only one six-foot black woman with three-inch heels and pink eye shadow. “Tequila!” Alex shouted.

Tequila Williams saw her. Her mouth dropped open. Only then did Alex realize what a bad idea this might have been. Vijay and Lisa and Rod were here; they would recognize her. They would know she was wanted for murder. If Alex had to run, here in Poland, she'd be in bad shape. She was in the middle of a potential war zone. She didn't know the city or the language or have any way to get back to the United States. She could turn invisible and probably evade capture, but then she would be a ghost, trying to survive without any human interaction. The best option might be to let the army arrest her and send her home for trial.

“Alex!” Tequila screamed. She trotted across the room and wrapped her arms around her. “Did they finally decide to leave you alone, honey? All that nonsense about you and the Secretary. I told them you didn't do it.”

The rest of her team gathered around, grinning and clapping her on the back. Lisa and Rod peppered her with questions about her trip over and rambled on about Polish food and military accommodations. Even Vijay seemed pleased to see her, telling her how good it was to have her back on the team. “Though even with your help, there's no way we're going to train enough people in time,” he added morosely.

They all seemed to assume she had been exonerated and had now come to Krakow to join the team. “I'm not here to help with the training,” she said.

“Of course you're not,” Vijay said. “That would be too much to expect.”

“Listen,” she said. “Don't ever take your projectors off. Keep them with you, and keep them running, even when you eat or shower. Take them to bed with you.”

“Why? What's going on?” Tequila asked.

Alex spotted Ryan following Hughes into an office on the far side of the gym. “I'll be back,” Alex said. “I'll explain it to you.”

“It's that thing, isn't it?” Rod said. “The thing from the demo that killed Falk.”

She could have kissed him. “Yes,” she said. “We're fighting it. Be careful.”

Alex jogged over to the door through which Ryan had disappeared. Inside, a very serious looking Asian woman in civilian clothes was talking intently. Major Hughes stood at attention behind her. “Come in, Ms. Kelley,” the woman said. “And please close the door behind you.”

Alex did so, a little rattled that she knew her name. Though if she knew it, that probably also meant she knew Alex hadn't really killed the Secretary of Defense. Alex closed the door as asked, and then joined Ryan. Ryan glared at her. What was wrong with him? Was he actually mad at her for helping him overcome his fears enough to take the plane?

She turned toward the woman, getting her first good look at her face. She recognized her. It was Ryan's lab assistant from back at the High Energy Lab. “Nicole Wu?”

Nicole gave a curt nod and offered Alex a dry handshake. “Actually, it's Colonel Wu, CIA. Thank you for coming.”

Alex gaped at her. “CIA? You're kidding me. So you've been, what, undercover as a physicist? Spying on Ryan all this time?”

“No, actually, I am a physicist, though I'm afraid the agency doctored my resume quite a bit. I went to Muhlenberg, not Cal Tech, and I didn't actually finish my dissertation. I know enough to get by, though, and not be totally useless. I was the one who first convinced the government of the feasibility of the technology Ryan wanted to build.”

“Nicole has been our main contact into the intelligence community,” Ryan said coldly, not meeting Alex's eyes. “On paper, it was the Department of Defense paying the bills, but of course the Agency took a great interest in the technology, and behind the scenes they were really running the show.”

“Which makes me Ryan's boss. And yours, when it comes down to it.” Nicole gave a tight smile. “Now, can we get down to business?”

The room looked like a sports director's office, with trophies in a glass case and posters on the wall of men playing soccer—or football, Alex supposed they would call it. She was surprised to see a mesh bag full of basketballs in a corner, and a football—an American football, that is—on the desk. She had never been much into sports as an adult; that was Sandra's thing.

Nicole sat behind the desk. Ryan promptly sat in the other chair, leaving Alex to stand. “Ryan told me about Jean Massey. I need to understand how quickly she could have gotten the technology to Turkey, and the soonest they might reasonably be able to field it. This is crucial intelligence; American lives are on the line.”

“You're going to make a preemptive attack, aren't you?” Alex said. “We're not going to wait to see if the Turks attack; we're going to start the war ourselves.”

“That decision is way beyond my pay grade,” Nicole said. “I'm just trying to establish the timeline.”

Alex looked at Ryan. “Do you think Jean could have teleported there? Or would she have to take a plane?”

Ryan shrugged. “How should I know? She's working for the varcolac. My best guess is, she can go wherever she likes in an instant. Or at least, she can go wherever it wants her to go.”

“So we'll assume teleport,” Alex said. “That means she's had a full day there. She can't have had any Turkish contacts, so it may take her some time to connect with the right people in their government. On the other hand, if she started showing off what she can do, it wouldn't take long. It may depend what her demands are and how readily they agree to them.”

“Oh, they'll agree to them,” Nicole said. “They'll agree to anything, once they see what she can do.” She sounded bitter, disgusted. “Really, Ryan. She just waltzed in and asked for them, and you handed them over?”

“She would have killed me!”

“You could have
lied
, genius. You could have told her you didn't have any. That you gave them all away. Or—better yet—you could have told
me
the truth and actually given them all to me like you said you did. Then when a mad, psychotic, escaped murderer-turned-traitor showed up in your lab you wouldn't have had anything to give her!”

“I said I'm sorry.” Ryan's voice was high-pitched and whiny.

“You could have been a hero,” Nicole said. “Now you'll be lucky if you're not prosecuted.”

“Prosecuted?” Alex said. “That's a bit much.”

“He just handed our most significant military advantage over to our enemy,” Nicole snapped back. “American troops, perhaps thousands of them, will die because of him. I think jail time would be pretty lenient.”

Alex waved it away. “Fine. It doesn't matter whose fault it is. What I want to know is, what are we going to do about it now?”

“That's already done,” Nicole said.

“What do you mean, done?”

“It's taken care of. Plans are in motion. It's a bit earlier than we intended, but some people”—she glared at Ryan—“have forced our hand.”

“You sent troops into Turkish territory?” Alex asked. But no, a significant troop movement would have been public, would have made the news. All the fighter planes and bombers she saw at the airport wouldn't have been on the ground. “No. You sent Special Ops teams in, to take out important targets, didn't you? You sent them with Higgs projectors, to use the advantage while you still could.”

“That, and a few other preliminary attacks,” Nicole acknowledged. “Laser disruption of their satellites. Initiation of viruses we've insinuated into their comm systems. The full assault is outside my control, as I said, but the normal timeline will have the fighters scrambled within hours to take out their radar and SAM sites, followed by the bombers. The infantry should cross the line sometime tomorrow.”

“You don't get it, do you?” Alex said.

Nicole raised her eyebrows. “I beg your pardon?”

“This isn't about us and Turkey. It's about the human race trying to survive against a powerful creature that wants to annihilate us. There's nothing the Turkish army can throw at us that's as dangerous as the varcolac. Forget about Jean Massey. Forget about Turkey. It's the varcolac that's the threat.”

Nicole nodded with a patronizing smile. “I've heard Ryan's alien intelligence theory before. If you don't mind, I'm going to worry about whether Turkey has the means to deliver its nukes before I worry about a ghost in the machine.”

Alex clenched her fists. There didn't seem to be much point in arguing with Nicole. She had been there the whole time, presumably seen the evidence Ryan had that something intelligent was breaking out of the wormhole. If she didn't believe him, nothing Alex could say would convince her, and there wasn't time to sit around trying.

“Let's go,” Alex said to Ryan. “Looks like it's up to us.”

Ryan looked startled. “What?”

“Miss CIA here thinks she knows what's going on. She's not going to help us. We're going to have to find Jean ourselves.”

“Oh, I don't think so.” Nicole held up her hands. “You can stop right there. I brought Ryan here to analyze the Higgs projectors when the ops teams return, to make sure they're working as well as they can be. I don't need my prize physicist jumping off to who knows where in the middle of enemy territory. What if they kill you? What if they torture you and force you to tell them everything they know? Just because Jean gives them the technology doesn't mean they'll know how to use it.”

“Jean will tell them,” Ryan said.

Nicole stood up, exasperated. “That's not the point. The point is, I don't want my chief technologist falling into enemy hands!”

Alex opened her mouth to say something defiant, but then thought better of it. Nicole probably couldn't stop her, but she didn't want to give her the chance, either. Instead, she said, “Fine. We'll do it your way.” She let her anger and frustration fill her voice. “We'll stay here and help with the training. Just don't say I didn't warn you.”

Nicole's smile was cold. “Thank you. I knew I could count on you.” She turned to Ryan. “The other thing we need to do is ramp up manufacture. I've commandeered a cell phone factory in town and set a team to work developing a large-scale production process. Within the week, I want enough Higgs projectors for every soldier in our army. I'll take you to the site this afternoon; maybe you'll have some suggestions.