Reaping The Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 3) (6 page)

“We want you to deliver a message, offering our cooperation in developing a solution to the danger that confronts us all.”

Glancing at the computers, Kiran said, “Why don’t you just send your own message? Or just…masquerade as me?”

“Because you — the real you — will be believed. I know you have the trust of Jack Dawson, and you must certainly be known, if only by name, to many in his circle. We have already tried sending an emissary, but he met with an untimely end long before he was able to deliver his message.” The thing grimaced. “Too few of us are left to take such risks again. We have been desperately searching for someone who would suit our needs, and we were incredibly fortunate that your plane came within range of assets that we control.”
 

Kiran’s mouth gaped open. “You shot us down?”

“Not directly, no, but it was…arranged, shall we say.” The thing shrugged. “It was a calculated risk, because we had no way of knowing if you or your cousin would survive. But it was easy enough to arrange with the forewarning we were given. We had nothing to lose if you did not survive.”

A tide of rage rose in Kiran’s gut as he remembered the ghosts that had plagued his dreams, all the people, including poor Vijay, who had died in the crash or had been taken by the harvesters later. He sprang across the table, trying to wrap his hands around the thing’s neck.

Without even blinking, it swatted him aside, pinning both wrists in one of its hands. The thing began to squeeze, and Kiran screamed as a bone in his hand cracked.

“Ever the fearless soldier,” the thing said as it released him, and Kiran slumped back into his chair, cradling his injured hand. “There is no dishonor in what we are asking of you. And tell me, would you rather we set you free to deliver an offer of peace that may help your species survive, or suffer the fate of the others aboard your aircraft?”

Kiran swallowed hard and looked away from the thing’s eyes. “And who am I to take your message to?”

“I would think that was obvious.” The thing’s face split into a wide smile. “Naomi Perrault, of course.”

DRAGONFIRE

President Daniel Miller and the members of his cabinet were in one of the conference rooms in the White House Situation Room complex, while the Vice President had joined them over a video teleconferencing circuit from North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) Headquarters, deep in Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado. In the President’s hand was a brief note of explanation and apology from the Russian President that had been delivered by the Russian Ambassador five minutes after the warheads had detonated. That had been thirty minutes ago.
 

Miller crumpled up the note and angrily threw it to the floor. “I’m not sure what makes me angrier, that they kept us completely in the dark and nearly triggered a nuclear war between themselves, us, and the Chinese, or that they had the guts to do it and we don’t.” His face was pale in the bright fluorescent light.
 

“The latest estimate puts the number of immediate casualties at over ten million dead and at least half that many injured, with another five million deaths projected in the next six months from injury and radiation exposure,” the Director of National Intelligence reported in a somber voice. “But the worst will be the famine that will hit them before next winter. They’ve destroyed or irradiated twenty-five to thirty percent of their primary grain producing region, not to mention the havoc the harvesters are wreaking on everything else.”

“And what about the harvesters?” Miller asked.

“From what we can tell so far, they’ve been largely exterminated in the strike zones, but are still propagating like wildfire everywhere else.” The DNI scowled. “The bottom line, Mr. President, is that it’s a Pyrrhic victory for the Russians. The strikes took a huge bite out of the current harvester population, but did nothing to reduce the reproductive rate of the survivors. If I had to call it one way or the other, I’d say the strike was a failure.”

“Mr. President,” Vice President Andrew Lynch said through the videoconferencing television at the front of the room, “you can’t possibly be considering following the Russians’ lead. You’ve always been vehemently opposed to any use of nuclear weapons, especially on American soil. Look what a disaster Sutter Buttes was for Norman Curtis! I doubt nuking our major cities is going to earn us any points in the polls.”

Miller slammed a hand down on the mahogany conference table, making everyone in the room flinch. “To hell with the polls! Have you seen the latest news reports from New York City? How about Chicago? Or maybe right here in D.C.?” He leaned forward, his face a mask of fury. “
Our
constituents are being eaten alive!
”

After letting that sink in, Miller sat back. “Okay, so the Russian gambit looks like a failure.” He pointed to the Secretary of State. “Find out what the Russians are doing. Tell their president that we’ll render whatever aid we can, and make it clear that we’re their allies. Got it?”

The Secretary of State nodded. “Yes, Mr. President.”

“So,” Miller said, turning back to the DNI, “what other disasters do I need to know about overseas?”

“Brazil has effectively collapsed,” the DNI told him. “Brasilia has been totally overrun and has been set ablaze by the Army and Air Force. The Brazilian government still exists in name if not much else. The president and his cabinet have relocated several times, but São Paulo, Rio, and the other major cities are as bad as Brasilia. They finally decided to plant their flag on a cruise ship and are sitting in the harbor at Rio.”

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs grunted. “That’s not a bad idea. It would be a hell of a lot easier to secure from harvester attack or infiltration, although resupply might be a problem.”

“Do we have anything like that in the works?” Miller asked.

The Chairman offered a grim smile. “You’ve got every ship in the Navy at your beck and call, Mr. President.”

“I appreciate that, but warships aren’t exactly suitable for running a government, especially taking Congress into account. Too many people are involved. I know we have several large underground bunkers other than Cheyenne Mountain that are being prepared, but I want some alternatives to all of us living like moles. Maybe it’s a latent sense of claustrophobia, but I don’t like the idea of all of us being trapped underground while the harvesters run rampant over top of us.”

“I’ll get someone on it right away, sir.”

“Speaking of bunkers,” the Secretary of State interjected, “the British Government and the Royal Family are in the process of moving into a bunker complex at Corsham, about ninety miles west of London.”

“What, the old Site 3 bunker?” The DNI frowned. “That was decommissioned back in the early 1990s.”

The Secretary of State nodded. “It was, but they’ve reactivated it. They must have every construction contractor that’s still in business working on the place.”

“What in blazes is Site 3?” Miller asked.

“Sorry, Mr. President,” the Secretary of State said. “It’s an old Cold War bunker complex in an underground quarry that they built as a leadership relocation facility. The existing facility has enough room to house four thousand people, and they’re expanding into some of the available space in the underground caverns to house even more.”

“We’ve had unconfirmed reports that most or all of China’s leaders have gone to ground, too, at the Shanghai Complex,” the DNI added. “Unfortunately, we don’t have much on that one, other than it’s huge. It can supposedly house two hundred thousand people.”

“Well,” Curtis said in a wry voice, “the Chinese have always thought big. But what about the situation with the harvesters?”

“From what we can tell from intelligence collected by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency, the Chinese military is fighting the harvesters tooth and nail, but they’re running into the same problem everyone else is facing: once the harvesters get loose in a heavily populated area, they multiply like mad and quickly overwhelm the local security forces. In the meantime, the harvesters have spread like a plague through China’s most fertile crop growing regions.” The DNI paused a moment to rub his jaw. “It’s the same everywhere, Mr. President. India is swarming with the bloody things. They’ve spread across the border into Pakistan, which is now threatening to drop nukes on India. Southern France is an abattoir and Paris is being evacuated. The harvesters are everywhere. We’ve even had reports of harvester outbreaks in Iceland and Guam.” The man licked his lips and looked down at his clasped hands. “They’re everywhere.”

It was then, in that moment, that Miller felt the cold hand of despair tighten around his heart.
We’re losing this fight
, he thought.
Even our most powerful weapons are useless, because they kill us just as easily as they kill the enemy, and even well-armed troops can’t stop them
. With unwelcome clarity, he recalled a video from Manhattan they had watched at the morning briefing the day before. Hundreds of civilians, defended by a company of National Guardsmen, had taken refuge aboard the floating museum of the aircraft carrier USS Intrepid. Helicopters had been called in to ferry the civilians to safety and a Black Hawk had just set down on the stern of the carrier’s flight deck when all hell broke loose. There was no telling exactly what happened, but somehow the harvesters had overwhelmed the troops holding one of the visitor access points and flooded like a swarm of angry insects onto the flight deck. Men, women, and children went down in a flurry of slashing claws and venomous stingers. People near the edge of the flight deck jumped into the water. But the most terrifying sight was the harvesters leaping off the deck after them. The view from the camera showed the water turning red with blood, churned into a froth by the screaming survivors of the hundred foot fall and the things that had swarmed over the carrier’s side to kill them. The video, which had been taken by one of the civilians and was streamed live to the web, had ended with a drawn out scream as the owner of the cell phone leaped into the water, after which the transmission mercifully ended.

That had been one of the last civilian communications out of Manhattan. Every bridge and tunnel to the island had been destroyed in an effort to contain the harvesters, with heavily armed Coast Guard and police boats blasting the creatures caught swimming across the surrounding rivers.
 

He looked up at the sound of a muffled boom. Washington, D.C. itself was under attack, and Miller knew it wouldn’t be long before he would have no choice but to abandon the White House for Air Force One. The entire block occupied by the White House and the nearby executive office buildings had been barricaded and fortified by the Army’s 1
^st
Battalion, 3
^rd
US Infantry Regiment, which had traded its dress uniforms and ceremonial duties for combat uniforms and perimeter defense. The regiment’s other units stationed in the Washington area had been divided up into platoon sized combat teams to defend the most critical infrastructure points in the city. Apache gunships and armed Black Hawks attacked targets called in by the local police or National Guard quick reaction teams.
 

Miller looked at one of the map displays. It looked much like the images of Earth’s night side taken by astronauts in low orbit, showing the glow of lights that marked human civilization. This map looked much the same, but the lights were red, marking the spread of the harvesters.

A quote came to him from Winston Churchill, about whom Miller had written the thesis for his master’s degree in political science many years before.
Victory at all costs
, Churchill had said,
victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival
.
 

Looking up at the others, at the faces now wearing expressions of doom, he said, “Ladies and gentlemen, right now, today, we’re getting our butts kicked. It’s not the first time that we’ve lost the opening battles of a war. But we’re going to do what we’ve always done. We’re going to dig in, fight like hell, and figure out how to win this fight. Do you understand me?” He looked pointedly at the DNI, who nodded. “For now, let’s keep the focus on protecting vital infrastructure and continuing to get the word out to citizens about how they can kill these things. I don’t want any helpless civilians out there. I want them armed with all the knowledge and any weapons, manufactured or makeshift, that we can give them while we come up with something that’ll kick the harvesters in the balls. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Mr. President.” The chorus around the table was still downcast, but heartfelt.
 

That will have to do for now
, Miller thought. “Okay, you all have a lot of work to do. Get to it. I’d like the Secretary of Defense, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Secretary of Homeland Security, the National Security Advisor, and Mr. Richards to stay behind.”

The other members of the cabinet quickly got up and filed out past the four heavily armed members of the Secret Service detail who stood guard outside. Miller caught a glimpse of the bushy black tail of one of the cats who also stood guard. The feline, a Maine Coon, he recalled, was as big as some smaller dogs. The cat peered in at him. Or, rather, it looked in at the cat of unknown heritage that was busy entertaining itself under one of the chairs along the back wall of the conference room. Everywhere Miller went, even to the bathroom to shower or relieve himself, a cat went with him. Even when riding in the limousine, a Secret Service agent would toss in a cat like a furry hand grenade before closing the door.

Who’d have ever thought that the life of the President of the United States might depend on a cat? It’s a damn good thing I’m not allergic to the little beasts.
Miller broke out into a grin.

“Mr. President?” The National Security Advisor was eyeing him with a worried expression.

“Nothing, just an inside joke.” Then Miller turned to Carl Richards, who had left one of the seats against the wall where he had been sitting for the open cabinet meeting to take a place at the table next to the Secretary of Homeland Security. “Please tell me we have some good news from Dragonfire.”