Whatever Gods May Be Part 29

noise communication with Rhys. Here. Told Rhys here because the Tau't Batu left with us, so they wouldn't be back before this habagat.

Please, let it be here still. Please...

And it was. Exactly where Rhys had placed it some eight months earlier, almost invisible beneath a couple of camouflage tarps. Jamie sank cross-legged to the cave floor, her legs too shaky to hold her up anymore. She wept, furtive, unable to stop, but unwilling to reveal to the others how overwhelmed she was.

This was their deliverance.

"My G.o.d, Jamie! Are you okay?"

Lynn. Jamie looked up and quickly nodded, giddy with thanks that of all the twenty-seven other souls in the cave, only this one had divined how to find her in its shadowy, almost labyrinthine limestone recesses.

"Yeah. Yeah. I-I-" Jamie tried to rise but slumped back onto the ground, her legs splayed out in front of her. She couldn't contain the small, nervous laugh that bubbled up from her chest, high and dissonant, prelude to her weeping.

Lynn came nearer, descended to her knees. "Jamie, what's wrong?" She wiped tears from Jamie's face with a soft sweep of her hand.

"I-I'm okay," Jamie managed at last, gulping back the rush of delirium. "G.o.d, Lynn, it's here. All of it." And she wept, grabbing Lynn's shirt, lowering her head onto Lynn's chest. She held on to Lynn, to the feel and scent of Lynn, and breathed deep and slow. She couldn't remember the last time it had been this easy to inhale a full, clean breath of air.

Cradling her, Lynn stroked her head, her back, and finally asked, "What's here, Jamie?"

Giggling through her tears, Jamie raised her head and pointed to the tarp-covered pile of packs about two meters from her toes.

"What? I don't see anything."

"There." Jamie pointed again. "It's right there."

"Oh!" Lynn tipped off her knees and plunked clumsily next to Jamie. "You didn't mention this."

"Didn't know if it'd really be here after all this time. But it is. And look, it's not even wet."

Jamie exhaled, wondrous, then shuffled onto her knees and stretched forward hands-first to pull one of the packs from its hiding place.

* 237 *

"Had Rhys and a couple of teams drag this stuff all the way here for Operation Repo," she said as she opened the pack. "Figured if we were gonna need it, we'd need it here. But they must have done okay, because none of this has been touched. Hmm, looks like cammies, comlink wraps, couple of IMS binoculars."

Lynn seemed puzzled. "IMS?"

"Integrated multiwave surveillance. Does radar, infrared, thermal all at once. Nice zoom capability, too."

"I've heard about those."

Jamie handed her a still-dormant pair before setting the pack aside and grabbing another one. "Ah, ammo. Lots of it. Good. Weapons gotta be right here..."

Lynn helped Jamie count it up. "North Carolina and Leonard will like this," she said when she found a well-stocked medical kit and a several bottles of iodine. "Hey, look, canteens and-what do you call these?"

Jamie glanced up from the collection of weapons, communications equipment, and cloakcream she'd gathered. "Those are hydropacks.

And those packages next to them are MREs."

"Meals Ready to Eat. Right." Next, Lynn found a fat bundle of hammocks and mosquito netting. "Good. Now we have enough water containers and hammocks and mosquito nets for everyone."

"Mmm." Jamie was distracted by a pair of IMS comlink eyewraps.

She tweaked the frame before shaking them back and forth.

"What're you doing?"

"Waking 'em up. Hardly any light in here, so motion'll have to do." Jamie examined the wraps again, then put them on. "So far so good. Now, let's see." She placed her hands a foot or so in front of her and typed on an invisible keyboard. "Gotta jump through all kinds of hoops to-yep, I've gotten them to bypa.s.s requesting a unitag. Limited functionality, but better than nothing."

"You-nee tag? What's that?"

"And-yeah, there it goes, it's activated." Jamie pulled off the wraps and gazed at Lynn. "You still on the Armed Services Committee?"

"I am. How the h.e.l.l do you know that?"

"I read a lot. Well, I used to read a lot. It is public information.

How come n.o.body told you about our unitags?" Lynn replied with a vacant stare.

* 238 *

"You're scaring me now, Senator. Those little nano ID things they stick in our ear cartilage? That the Zhong take such joy in ripping out?"

"Oh, of course. The nano-polymer unique-identifier devices- NPUIDs."

"Mmm, makes them sound like a birth control device, don't you think?" Jamie got to her feet. "Guess that's why we call them unitags."

Lynn accepted the hand Jamie offered and stood, too. For a long moment, Jamie held on to Lynn's hand, frowning at it and caressing it with resolute gentleness, in terrible need of the strength this contact somehow conveyed.

Blinking back new tears, Jamie took in and then quickly exhaled a deep breath. "We've got a real chance now," she said before squaring her shoulders. "A real chance." She wanted to offer Lynn the promise- I will get you back to your Rebecca and your daughters-but all she could offer was the trying, so she said nothing else.

Lynn's eyes widened for a nanosecond before she nodded, and Jamie felt a tremor in her hand. Oh. So you didn't quite realize.

Lynn squeezed Jamie's hand, and Jamie knew that for the first time Lynn understood she faced greater odds of dying in the Palawan than surviving it.

* 239 *

Chapter tWenty-eiGht.

hoW We Keep eaCh other alive Perched on a small boulder in the dark cavern, Jamie waited for those not on watch to settle in before her. Almost all of them carried something-a weapon, a comlink, binoculars-with which their hands made small repet.i.tive motions.

"You know the drill," she said, swinging the comlink wraps she held in a tight circle. "Keep those cranksets moving 'til you power up whatever you're working on. We won't get any help from daylight for a while yet, and we need everything we got ay-sap."

"How long's this usually take?" asked Vargas.

"Depends on how much elbow grease you use, Sergeant." Then Jamie changed her tone-low and stern, it gave warning: Do not f.u.c.k up. "The weapons and scanners with juice left in their power packs are out there now with the people on first watch. By next watch, we need the rest of this gear powered up. While we're doing that, we're also going to review the dangers of active signaling." Despite the moonlight, she couldn't see their faces and knew they couldn't see hers because several of Rhys's tarps had been draped across the wide cave entrance. Slivers of pallid light offered the only illumination. But at least they didn't have to huddle in damp, bat-infested corners to avoid being spotted by less obvious surveillance tools, like low-inclination Zhong satellites or swooping Zhong drones.

"The gear we found today gives us some solid leverage," Jamie said. "We can see at least a little bit now, thanks to a few pairs of IMS binoculars and the IMS capabilities in the comlink eyewraps. Plus we have some pa.s.sive-identifier cammies and some cloakcream, so now we can run patrols as well as post sentries without exposing ourselves * 240 *

to the enemy. Most important, these cammies are visible to our ops satellites, so we can use them to do a three-person pa.s.sive-signal routine that our ops center will spot eventually and recognize. Our first signal went out about twenty minutes ago and we'll repeat it every half hour 'til we get a response."

Jamie paused, wanting her words to sink in.

"Once our people see us and confirm our ident.i.ty, we'll get the rest of the comlink activation stuff we need so we can receive all ops center downlinks. That means weather maps and temperature data, which'll give us precise feedback on what levels of rain and temperatures keep us hidden from the enemy. So we'll know reliably when to get out of sight."

Jamie jumped to her feet to emphasize what she'd say next.

"But even after we make contact, we must stay pa.s.sive, people.

Anything we do that's active-uplinks to ops satellites, any kind of weapons fire or active IMS scanning or even comlink-to-comlink chatter-exposes us. The enemy will see it. This discipline must be absolute. Our lives depend on absolute stealth." She halted again, squinting across the dark s.p.a.ce where each of the marines and the four Filipinos sat. "I don't care how tempted you are. Our stealth must be absolute. Those of you on watch tonight will carry E-nineteens, but your orders are to use these weapons only as a last resort. Because if you do use them, the whole frigging PIA will be on our doorstep. If you encounter the enemy and cannot avoid him, or if you determine that he'll discover this location, then you are to remove the threat using your combat knives or machetes or some other stealth means."

"Like throttling him," growled a marine.

"Yeah, that'll work," Jamie said. "We've got seven out there now-three doing sentry, three on patrol, and a watch commander doubling as skywatcher to monitor for acknowledgment of our messages. Those of you on the next watch will wear the cammies and IMS comlink eyewraps we found today, and you'll cloakcream up before moving out from under these tarps here. Ditto with the watches after that. Remember, guys: Stealth in everything. We're phantoms and we're gonna stay that way. So repeat after me: No satellite uplinks, no active IMS scanning, no comlink-to-comlink chatter, and no G.o.dd.a.m.n weapons fire."

* 241 *

They chanted it back word for word in a low whisper, like a mantra-all but Sherman, who remained silent.

"Questions?"

There were none. With whispers and murmurs, the group dispersed to their hammocks, except for three men-Donato and two of the snipes-who huddled with Jamie.

"Still awake, Senator?" Jamie asked a few minutes later, settling into the hammock just inches from Lynn's.

"Mmm, just finishing my first MRE," Lynn said through her final mouthful. "These are pretty good. Reminds me of Thanksgiving." Jamie laughed. "Hey, North Carolina, what'd you put in those baby d.i.c.ks?"

"Well, LT ma'am, we did acquire some packs of pepper from the less enlightened," North Carolina said cheerily as she added Lynn's MRE packaging to the pile that would be hidden in the morning. "Have to admit, pepper makes 'em a whole lot better than I ever remember."

"Baby d.i.c.ks?" asked Lynn.

Jamie laughed again. "The little hot dogs that remind you of turkey and all the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs."

"I think it has more to do with the company I'm keeping," said Lynn.

"Yeah." Jamie spoke in a hush. "These are real good people." Let me be strong enough, smart enough, not to get them killed.

Lynn said nothing. Like North Carolina, she had swung into her hammock, and Jamie figured she'd already nodded off. Then she heard Lynn move.

"Jamie, just so you know..." Lynn paused. "I understand about the Chinese officer."

Jamie shifted in her hammock to look toward Lynn, but the cave had gone too dark to see anything without the aid of pa.s.sive IMS. A second later, someone jostled her hammock-a hand feeling its way.

Lynn whispered now, her hand firm on Jamie's bicep. "And we're lucky to have you as our leader."

Jamie didn't dare speak; any sound at all might jinx Lynn's words, Lynn's hope. She placed her hand over Lynn's, pressed down, and fell asleep entreating the stars she couldn't see for the luck Lynn believed they already had.

* 242 *

v Accompanied by gusty winds, rain came well before dawn. The first sounds of it against the tarps woke Jamie, who managed to exit her hammock without waking Lynn or North Carolina. She donned IMS comlink eyewraps to find her way and crept toward the front of the cave.

"Anything?" she asked Donato, who sat just inside the tarps.

f.u.c.king A, why aren't you outside where you'll get the best signal reception?

He shook his head. "You still got more than half an hour before your watch."

"It's okay. Go bag some sleep."

Donato handed her the only one of their four comlinks set up to receive and acknowledge an ops center response to their signaling.

Then he stripped down to his skivvies; so did Jamie. She wanted to scream at Donato, but she wriggled into the soaked pa.s.sive-identifier cammies he'd been wearing, applied cloakcream, and scrunched on the boonie hat-all in silence.

Jamie checked the E19 more carefully than she might had the rifle spent the last few hours in the hands of a grunt, then slipped between the tarps and outside into the eerie almost-light created by a three-quarter moon high in the sky behind a heavy cloud cover.

Seven or eight meters from the cave entrance skulked the close sentry, with whom Jamie exchanged the agreed hail-reply gestures before checking her comlink. Fifteen times already, a three-person crew had executed the routine that should have been noticed hours ago by an operations center tech somewhere.

A response would come through first as static, white noise, while the tech broadcast-scanned for possible receiving comlinks. Then the receiving comlink-the one Jamie had now-would send a brief splinter-noise acknowledgment. Or maybe two or three or G.o.d knew how many, depending on how much the ops center people worried about functional comlinks falling into enemy hands and on the extent of the ID confirmation and cryptography they deemed necessary.

These splinter-noise signals from the comlink posed real danger.

* 243 *

The enemy had to be hyperalert for anything anomalous and might well detect the signals' white-noise effect in such a remote place as Mount Mantalingajan. Yet such signals were also essential. Only after they were transmitted would the receiving comlink be able to pick up the usual downlink broadcasts that meant an ops center communications link had been established.

But why, after fifteen pa.s.sive-signal displays, had there been no response? The weather? Then Jamie's stomached clenched into nausea.

Oh G.o.d, oh G.o.d, what if we're not receiving the response they're sending? Did I f.u.c.k up that first comlink initialization?

If a response had been sent by an ops center but not acknowledged by their comlink, the ops center would likely conclude the enemy had been able to grab a working comlink and... And what? This far away, we'd probably be ignored, we'd be lost, doomed. A new wave of panic crashed over her, and for agonizing seconds she was paralyzed. s.h.i.t s.h.i.t s.h.i.t s.h.i.t s.h.i.t s.h.i.t- A bright green lump moved at the corner of her eyewraps. Infrared.

Somebody's there! Jamie crouched, rifle poised. The lump took more obvious human shape, and an arm appeared. It signaled. Jamie went weak-kneed as one of the marines on patrol approached.

"All clear north, LT," he reported in a whisper.

The sound of his voice cleared Jamie's head, and she started to run through the unitag bypa.s.s procedure she'd used on the comlink. But troubleshooting it would have to wait. First they'd stick to the schedule and do the signal routine a sixteenth time.

Jamie moved farther from the cave entrance to act as sentry while three of the marines on watch positioned themselves above the cave entrance and began signaling. Please see us.

After the routine had been completed, Jamie stayed out there to pee. Squatting in the dark, urine splashing between her legs, she heard it: Static.