The Burning Skies (46 page)

“The story is you get to stop watching the vid.”

“I mean what’s up with your hack?”

“I know what you meant. Now get in here.”

Linehan doesn’t move; he keeps on gazing at the city in the window while the ayahuasca keeps on crackling in his mind. It seems to have intensified now that he’s on the Moon. He feels so gone it’s almost as if the city’s gazing in at him: the heart of lunar farside, the translucent dome of downtown Congreve shimmering in the distance. The L2 fleet’s a blaze of lights in the sky beyond. The city beneath it has managed to slip through the events of the last several days. It’s been left unscathed.

So far.

“How are we getting in?”

“I’ll tell you as we go,” says Lynx. “Help me out with this.”

“With what?”

“In here, you moron!”

In the other room, Lynx is pulling material out of a rather large plastic container. Material that looks like—

“Those are suits,” says Linehan.

“No shit.”

“Just making sure we’re on the same page.”

“You’re really getting on my nerves,” says Lynx. He pulls
the suit out farther, his new bionic hand hissing softly as he does so. He hands the edges to Linehan, starts pulling at the second suit.

“So where did you get these?” asks Linehan.

“Special delivery. They showed up while you were watching the vid.”

“I would have thought I’d have heard the door.”

“There was no knock.”

“I still would have noticed,” says Linehan.

“Alright, asshole, you win. They were here all along.”

“Where?”

“Behind that panel.” Lynx gestures at a panel in the wall. One that’s ever so slightly askew.

“How’d they get there?” asks Linehan.

“You ask way too many questions.”

“It’s how I stay alive.”

“But somehow you keep ending up on suicide missions.”

“That what this is?”

“Take a good look at those suits, Linehan.”

Linehan does. And then takes an even closer look.

“Wait a sec,” he says, “it’s not even—”

“But you’re wearing it all the same,” says Lynx.

T
he streets are a total mess. Everyone went to work this morning thinking it was just a normal day, only to realize it was anything but. Now they’re all trying to get home, or just trying to find a place to hide. Vehicles are jammed everywhere. Everyone’s honking. Everyone’s yelling.

“What do you think?” says Spencer on the one-on-one. “I think we need to get a little lower,” says Sarmax. They’re on a two-seater motorbike. They’re wearing civilian clothing. Sarmax is driving. Spencer’s just looking—at the
data in his mind, at the chaos on the streets. Sarmax takes the bike up along the sidewalk, weaving through the crowd. People leap out of the way—he steers past them, and down a covered alley. The vaults of the city overhead vanish. They roar through the enclosure and out into more traffic. The city-center ziggurats glimmer in the distance. Eurasian flags fly atop some of them. American flags have been raised on others.

“Divide and conquer,” says Spencer on the one-on-one.

Sarmax says nothing. He’s lost in thought. Or maybe he’s just trying to avoid thinking. He’s been acting strange this whole time. When Spencer realized he was being paired with Sarmax he was grateful to be getting away from Linehan. But a day and a half with the new guy, and he’s feeling a little nostalgia for the old. Linehan may have been nuts, but at least he was hell-bent on avoiding hell. Whereas Sarmax has been running this mission like a man who’s tired of life, as though the one thing that mattered to him in that life is gone. Spencer doesn’t know what’s up with that. He’s pretty sure he doesn’t want to. He’s got enough on his hands dealing with what’s in his head anyway. And now a wireless signal reaches his brain.

“Ignition,” he says.

“Good,” replies Sarmax.

The only thing that gets Sarmax to talk is something that involves the mission. In this case the news that the thermite they rigged at the handler’s safe house has just ignited and is probably busy spreading to adjacent buildings. Nothing back at Jarvin’s place is going to be found intact. The only evidence of the mission that’s left is on this motorbike.

Which Sarmax is now sending down another alley. It slants downward, turns into a tunnel too narrow for larger vehicles. People jump out of the way as the motorbike roars past them, and then the bike pulls out into a larger concourse-cavern where buildings reach from floor to ceiling. The road
here is much wider. Only it’s got even more traffic on it. The wrong type of traffic too …

“Shit,” says Spencer.

“Relax,” replies Sarmax.

And stops the bike. To do anything else would attract attention from the Eurasian convoy now steamrollering its way down the center of the road. The two men wait by the sidewalk with the other bikes and mopeds while the drivers of the vehicles trapped in the path of the juggernatus flee past them. The heavy Eurasian crawlers crunch the civilian traffic into so much wreckage. Spencer stares at the power-suited soldiers sitting atop those crawlers.

“The fucking East,” he says.

“Better stop thinking that way,” says Sarmax.

“Why’s that?”

“Because we’re here to look the part.”

Spencer’s been doing his best to make sure that’s the case—to make them into Russians who are part of this city’s vibrant émigré community—and who fortunately never did anything to get onto the list that the new bosses of this half of HK compiled in advance of their arrival. These two particular Russians have been living here for more than a decade.

Even though they arrived only yesterday. About five hours before Russian and Chinese soldiers showed up, in fact. Infiltration’s a lot easier if you arrive before a perimeter gets established. So now Sarmax fires up the motorbike again, takes the vehicle out of the cavern and through a long series of service tunnels. At one point they bump down stairs. Sarmax stops the motorbike just past the stairs and leaps off the back. Starts rigging things onto the wall.

“What’s that?” asks Spencer.

“Hi-ex.”

“To use on who?”

“Nobody.”

“What’s up with that?”

“Shut the fuck up.”

Spencer obliges. Sarmax finishes what he’s doing and gets back on the bike. They keep going, wind along the passage, onto still wider streets, with buildings crowding up the walls along both sides. Cyrillic logos are everywhere. This is an area that’s nowhere near as crowded as some of the ones upstairs.

“I’m surprised it’s not bedlam,” says Spencer.

“It was,” says Sarmax, “when it got cleaned out.”

“Which was when?”

“This morning. This was one of the first places the ‘liberators’ hit. I’d estimate half the population got rounded up. Everyone who’s left is keeping a low profile.”

“Like us.”

“Just act natural,” says Sarmax. He turns the bike down a side street, hits the brakes, and slides off. He leans the bike against a wall and turns to Spencer.

“Let’s go,” he says. “Remember, only Russian from now on. I’ll do the talking.”

Spencer’s downloaded the requisite software. But Sarmax has known the language for years. Theoretically that puts them on the same level. But in practice, the edge goes to the man who’s actually run missions against the East before. He and Spencer walk farther down the side street past several storefronts. Nearly all are boarded up. The only one that isn’t has no signs. Noise can be heard from within, along with music and singing.

“Sounds like a whorehouse,” says Spencer.

“Because it is.”

A well-appointed one too. With a madam to greet them before they get much farther. She speaks to them in Russian.

“Do I know you gentlemen?”

“I hope not,” says Sarmax.

• • •

S
he hopes this isn’t what it looks like. Because it looks like the Throne’s stabbed her in the back. Like he’s got her imprisoned. And it doesn’t do anything for her peace of mind that the only other explanations she can think of are even worse. Perhaps the Rain got to the Throne after all. Perhaps they were waiting for him in his bunker. Perhaps they’ll be here any minute.

But the minutes keep on ticking past, and the only door to the room she’s in remains closed. No sound emanates from beyond it. All she’s got is the vibration that’s coming through the walls, the low humming of some engine. She wonders how long it’s been—wonders how long she’s been drifting in and out of consciousness.

Wonders whether she’s even awake right now.

The thought that she’s not continues to be the most optimistic scenario she can think of. But it’s not one she takes seriously. She thinks back to the Throne talking to her in the wake of her destruction of the Rain. Telling her he wasn’t sure they were all gone.

Or was that her saying that? That they needed to execute the original strategy: needed to combine with the Eurasians to sweep the globe and achieve certainty that the Rain were finished. But then Harrison said he was no longer sure that was the right strategy. That he wasn’t even sure the Eurasian executive node had been reconstituted yet. That he needed better data on what was going on in Moscow and Beijing before he renewed his overtures to the East. That he needed her help in obtaining that data.

And she said no.

She remembers now. She said no. And when he asked her why not, his voice wasn’t in the tone of a man whose life she’d saved. It was in the tone of a man who had never been denied. Who had learned nothing, as though the hours on the Europa
Platform had happened to somebody else. She’d answered him—said she couldn’t play power games. He merely blinked, asked her what she meant. She tried to tell him, but she couldn’t explain.

Or maybe she can’t remember her own explanations. Because she’s having trouble piecing together what happened after that. Something about her begging him to finish what he started. Something about taking détente to the next level. But he’d just smiled—almost sadly, it seemed to her—just smiled and said that détente was a balancing act, that he was the only one who knew how to walk that line. That he couldn’t turn back the clock. That he wouldn’t want to. That he couldn’t rely solely on the advice of a computer …

She’d stared at him. She’d said,
you mean me?
He shook his head. Said—

But now she hears something. On the other side of the door. It’s unmistakable. It’s electronic locks sliding away.

“Who’s there?” she says.

There’s no reply. She hears manual dead bolts being slid from their grooves.

“Who’s fucking
there?”
she yells.

But there’s no reply.

The door opens—

Y
ou been here before?” asks Linehan on the one-on-one.

“What makes you say that?”

“You drive like a man who has.”

But Lynx just shrugs, keeps on maneuvering through the traffic on Congreve’s outskirts, toward the dome that’s rising in the distance. That traffic’s pretty light. It ought to be—it’s the middle of the graveyard shift. The sun is visible in the sky, but Congreve runs on Greenwich Mean Time. Totally
arbitrary—but it has to run on something. And the sun’s cycles are of limited aid to those who dwell upon this rock.