Without Warning Part 4

STAND BY FOR AN ANNOUNCEMENT BY HM GOVERNMENT.

"Check the French news channels," she said. "See if they're still on. And the English sports channels."

Monique abandoned the task of glaring at her to flip channels with the remote. As Caitlin had expected, the continental stations were still broadcasting, as were Sky Racing and the English football channels. Even the end of the world wouldn't be allowed to interfere with interminable replays of last year's Champions League.

"It's nothing," Caitlin a.s.sured them, rubbing at her throbbing temples with one hand, the one trailing slightly fewer sensor leads. "The government has taken control of the news broadcasters. It's standard procedure in a national emergency. Just watch ... And Doc ... what's your name again?"

"Colbert."

"Dr. Colbert. I'm not dying?"

He gave the impression of a man greatly relieved to find himself back on familiar ground.

"Not yet. But you could, without proper treatment. You are not yet incapacitated but the lesion might well require intense therapy and very soon. But we can treat you as an outpatient for the moment... We need your bed." He shrugged, smiling for the first time, almost apologetically.

A single, high-pitched tone filled the room for one second before the TV screen came back to life. Tony Blair was sitting at a desk in a book-lined room with a British flag prominently draped from a pole behind him. His eyes were haunted, and even beneath a very professional makeup job his skin looked blotchy and sallow.

"G ... good evening," he stammered.

Colbert wasn't kidding about needing the bed. An hour later, still swaddled in bandages, trailing one rogue sensor lead that had become entangled with her unwashed hair, Caitlin Monroe was still in-character as Cathy Mercure, attempting to sign herself out of the Pitie-Salpetriere while shaking off what she'd come to think of as her "secret squirrel detail." The motley trio of professional antiwarmongers had closed around her like a fist as she'd dragged herself out of bed, dressed, and pushed her way through corridors now crowded with panicky idiots.

Caitlin was surprised at the hysterical undertow that was already running so strongly in the Pitie-Salpetriere. But then, the place was full of people who were already stressed out and had nothing much to do beyond watching television while they waited for some sort of traumatic medical procedure. On the way down to checkout she witnessed any number of pedal-to-the-metal, full-bore freak-outs. One woman even barreled right into her; a large, bug-eyed Parisian Mack truck, she knocked Maggie right off her feet, screaming about the end of days before disappearing down the hallway with her enormous, deeply dimpled b.u.t.t swinging free in the rear of a badly strung hospital gown.

"I'll be a lot better off out of here," Caitlin a.s.sured her companions.

Apart from Monique, who remained suspicious after discovering Caitlin's hidden gift for her native tongue, the secret squirrels weren't doing much better than any of the ranting, unbalanced Frenchies around them. Maggie, after picking herself up off the floor, was blabbering on about needing to phone her sister in Connecticut. And Auntie Celia had settled on a never-ending string of curses and oaths as her favored response. They'd all made perfunctory efforts to get her to stay in the hospital, to argue with Colbert that she was too ill to move, but Caitlin could tell that each was spinning off into her own little world of free-floating and violently unstable anxiety. The whole city was probably going to be like this. The whole f.u.c.king world.

For her part, she didn't know what to think about the news out of the States. It was bordering on schizoid. But she did know that even if this all turned out to be some postmillennial War of the Worlds shakedown, if she'd been cut off from Echelon, she was traveling blind and unarmed in a world of predators. She had to run to ground as soon as possible, reestablish contact with Wales Larrison, her controller, and get some updated instructions. Christ only knew what had gone down while she'd been out of it. Plus, of course, Monique was eyeing her with increasing suspicion.

A single television suspended from the ceiling in the main waiting room had drawn a huge pool of onlookers, all muttering and gasping at every new revelation from the French-language news service. Caitlin ignored it. She was having trouble negotiating her release with the large, distracted black woman on the front desk. Like everyone else she seemed incapable of dragging her attention away from the TV for more than a few seconds. Monique tugged at her elbow, saying in French, " I want to speak to you," while Maggie, who had spied a bank of pay phones, exclaimed, "All righty then!"

She took off past Caitlin and Monique and her head suddenly burst open.

Ropy strands of blood, bone chips, and gobbets of brain tissue splattered everybody within two meters. As Maggie's oversize, badly dressed, and utterly lifeless frame began to drop to the floor, Caitlin was already in midair, having launched herself without thought toward the nearest cover. She sailed over the counter, crashing bodily into the nurse with whom she'd been making so little headway. A cheap pink radio exploded on top of a filing cabinet. The screams began as the hundred or more people crammed into the foyer finally realized that somebody was shooting into their midst, but Caitlin was already on the move, belly-crawling toward an open door that she hoped would give onto another exit point.

"Wait!"

She felt a hand on her ankle and lashed back with a heel strike, only checking the move as she recognized the voice. Monique. The blow still caught the French girl heavily on one cheek, and she cried out in pain. Caitlin swore and reached back behind her, grabbing Monique by her collar and roughly dragging her up into a crouching run. She slipped once, losing her footing and painfully twisting one knee. "Move," she yelled. "If you want to live, move your a.s.s!"

Behind them a riot had seemingly erupted. She heard two m.u.f.fled shots and the crash of breaking gla.s.s, barely masked by the uproar of the terrorized crowd. A frightened nurse stood in their way, her eyes wide and staring. Caitlin elbowed her aside and made for a doorway behind her.

"What is happening?" cried Monique before Caitlin cut her off.

"Shut up and run!"

Crashing out into the corridor, they ran headlong into a couple of security guards, one fat and wheezing and another who looked like he might have started his career as a public security professional back in the days of the Maginot Line. "That way," yelled Caitlin, throwing a glance back over her shoulder, where she caught the briefest glimpse of pandemonium in the hospital foyer. Snaking around the guards, she sped up again, turning left and right, slamming through a series of swinging rubber doors without regard for who or what she might find on the other side. She'd let go of Monique and didn't much care whether she was keeping up or not, as she blew through yet another set of swinging doors, crashing into an orderly and the trolley he'd been pushing. It tipped over and fell to the tiles with a great metallic clattering of medical instruments and stainless-steel bowls. Never stopping, Caitlin swooped down on a foil package, slipping it into her sleeve as she hurried on.

"Wait, Cathy, wait."

Monique was still with her.

They'd found the treatment area of the hospital's emergency ward, and even by the usually chaotic standards of an ER their entrance drew attention. With no televisions in this ward and almost everyone distracted by whatever injuries or raging illnesses had gained them access to the overstretched facility, the sudden noisy appearance of two women, covered in gore and moving at great speed with no apparent regard for their own safety or anybody else's, caused heads to turn and all conversation to halt. Monique was obviously about to start demanding answers, and looked like she might just put down roots on the spot where she'd slid to a halt. A formidable gray-haired woman in a matron's uniform started moving toward them with her head down and eyes glaring murderously. She put Caitlin in mind of a big blue bulldozer.

"What the h.e.l.l are you doing?" asked Monique. "What is going on?"

Before Caitlin could answer, or even just spin around and keep running, the same heavy rubber doors swung inward and two men, both of them armed, muscled through. They were dressed in suits, one of them badly bloodstained, and their eyes swept the room, quickly settling on their quarry. Caitlin knew there was no chance of running.

Two bullets took the formidable-looking matron in the chest, throwing her through the air and rendering her a whole lot less imposing as her body crashed into a bed and dropped to the floor, twitching and pulsing extravagant amounts of blood onto the yellowing tiles. Monique screamed and ducked, covering her ears with both hands. Her cries were lost in the bedlam as patients and medical staff exploded into panic. Having no cover and no safe exit, Caitlin took the only option left. She attacked.

One of her a.s.sailants had been caught with an empty magazine, leaving his partner as the primary threat. She grabbed the only ranged weapons on hand, a couple of stainless-steel bowls, and launched them with great force like bright metal Frisbees directly at his head. He had no choice but to duck and weave, firing anyway, the bullets heading downrange unaimed, uncontrolled. One splattered an IV bag. Another struck a patient in one arm. Taking the foil pack from inside the sleeve at her wrist as she charged, Caitlin stripped the silver wrapping away from a disposable scalpel, and focusing her kjai, her war shout, into the very center of her target, she closed the short distance between them as quickly as she could.

To those normal, mortal beings around her, she moved as a fluid blur of violent action, suddenly airborne, one long leg pistoning out and into the sternum of the armed attacker. The gun fired again, bringing down a shower of plaster dust from the ceiling as he slammed backward into a wall. His head struck a metal oxygen tap with a wet crunch, and he began a slow drop to the ground, trailing a greasy organic smear down the wall. Without pause Caitlin's whole body swept around in a small, self-contained tornado, one foot lashing out to strike squarely at the gun hand of her second foe, who had just jacked in a fresh mag as she struck. The pistol, a Glock 23, discharged a single round, shattering an overhead fluorescent light. Turning tightly with the direction of the kick, getting right inside the circle of her man, Caitlin shot out her free hand, grabbing his wrist, extending it up, and slamming her other arm in under the elbow to snap the vulnerable joint with a terrible crack. In a flash, her weapon hand whipped backward and she opened his throat with the razor-sharp scalpel. A geyser of hot blood spilled out in a rush as she continued to spin, dragging the bulk of her victim around between her and the first man. Only then did she strip the Glock from the weak, rubbery grip of the man, who was already slumping out of her grasp. She felt fingers breaking as she wrenched it away.

In the s.p.a.ce of less than three seconds she stood over her would-be killers. The pistol was already c.o.c.ked. Two loud, flat cracks rang out and she finished off the p.r.o.ne figure by the wall. A slight shift in stance as she swung around and double-tapped the man at her feet, even though his life was already bleeding out of him. Almost no thought went into the actions. She hadn't indulged herself in the luxury of conscious thought since the two of them had burst into the ER. She had simply reacted, her mind and body running along tracks that had been laid down for her by thousands of hours of training.

"No!" screamed a voice. Monique's. "What are you? You f.u.c.king monster!" I'm Echelon, thought Caitlin, as she took the weapon from the lifeless hand of the first man she had killed. The ER was unnaturally still all around her. No one had yet recovered from the shock of such extreme and unexpected violence. Her gun hand seemed to float toward the weeping French girl. A slow, inhuman movement, machinelike in its lack of compa.s.sion. Monique was no longer an a.s.set, a resource to be exploited for the mission. She was a loose end.

Guantanamo Bay naval base, Cuba

The Cuban officer's salute was crisp, and his posture ramrod-straight, but his eyes betrayed confusion and anxiety. Musso returned the salute before dropping into a more relaxed posture. The two men stood in a bare office, borrowed for the meeting. Until two days ago it had been the domain of a navy lieutenant, but he had transferred back home, and n.o.body had yet arrived to fill his berth. And five'll get you fifty that n.o.body ever will, Musso thought bleakly.

"Major," he said, to open the discussion, "welcome to Guantanamo Naval Station."

Major Eladio Nunez bobbed his head up and down in an agitated fashion.

"Would you care to sit?" asked Musso.

"Si. Thank you."

Nunez dropped into a chair with some relief. His aide, a captain, remained at attention by the door. Lieutenant Colonel Stavros stood at ease by the cheap government-issue desk on which Musso had leaned back. Outside, the base was locked down on its highest alert. Two marines in full battle rattle double-timed past. They were ready. The question was simple enough. Ready for what?

"This ... ah ... this is very difficult... you understand?" said Nunez. He leaned forward, his hands rubbing together nervously. "We do not... I don't..."

"You've lost contact with Havana," Musso offered.

"Si. But more than that. Something strange. A few miles to the north of my position. A sort of heat curtain. We can see the land behind it, through a haze, and it looks normal. But nothing, or no people, move there. There is a town, not far beyond the line, on the road north. Nothing. Not a soul."

Musso nodded. Nunez was deeply agitated, but Musso was not so stupid as to make any judgments about the man's character on that basis. The major had been chosen by the Cuban military to face off a mortal enemy squatting on the very soil of his motherland. He would be neither a fool nor a coward.

"Have you sent anybody in?" he asked. "To investigate."

The captain standing by the door moved fractionally. A tic flickered under one eye. Nunez nodded.

"Si. Yes. I send in some scouts. They appear to, uh, to disappear in the heat haze. It was very thick, very powerful, no? Near the effect? It seemed much hotter. And so my men they walk in, slowly. They ..."

He groped for the right word.

"They shimmer? Yes? In the haze? And they are gone."

"Just gone?" asked Stavros.

Nunez nodded vigorously. "Yes. Sometimes the haze seems to shift, like a curtain, just for a second, and we can see farther down the road, say two hundred meters. It is like looking into a fish tank, yes, in a restaurant? It is a very strange sight. Like a curtain of air? I do not see how that can be but it... ah ..." He rolled his hands in a helpless gesture, seeking the right words again. "You can see this curtain. But the scouts, they never emerge on the far side. Their uniforms. They fall in a heap. Charred and smoking."

Musso frowned. He thought he understood what Nunez was describing. The heat wall sounded a little like a blast wave, the front of supercompressed air that moves outward from the point of an explosion. But in this case it wasn't moving, or compressed. It merely hung in the air "like a curtain," as Nunez had called it.

Musso cleared his throat.

"Major, my own observers reported some of your men ... heading north ..."

"Yes," he said bitterly. "They abandoned their posts."

"And they ran into the haze?"

Nunez nodded, almost looking satisfied.

"Yes. There was no need to shoot them. They have gone, too."

"I see," said Musso. "And what would you like us to do?"

Nunez shifted uncomfortably in his seat, looking around, surprised at last to find himself in the devil's lair. He sighed.

"We would like help. We are not a tin pot dictator's ship," he said, forcing Musso to suppress a grin for the first time that morning. "We have been intercepting your satellite news services. We know this is beyond the normal. Something terrible and large is happening. We need to know what. To prepare."

Musso folded his arms and let his chin rest on his chest.

"This 'curtain' of air," he said after a brief moment of quiet. "Is it stable? Is it moving, expanding at all?"

Nunez appeared deeply troubled by the question. "Like I said. It is a giant curtain and like a curtain, it moves as if blown by the wind, sweeping over the countryside like a curtain blows in a window."

Musso had to suppress a shiver that started at the base of his spine and ran up into his shoulders. The idea of this thing moving an inch was disturbing at a cellular level.

"Major, how much is it moving? Have you been able to determine any limits?"

Nunez bobbed his head up and down.

"It seems to ... billow ... is that your word? It seems to billow like a sail, up to fifteen or twenty meters. It seems random. Just like a curtain or the branches of a tree moving in the breeze. But if it sweeps over you ... poof! You are gone."

"Well, we need to know more about it, about the parameters under which it operates. But neither of us can send any more of our people in," said Musso.

"I know," Nunez agreed. "We have watched your planes and ships, no? The pilots and sailors, they have been taken, too."

"What about a Predator?" suggested Stavros. "I understand there's a unit on base. The effect doesn't seem to interfere with electronics. Perhaps we could send one up and into the affected area."

Musso gave Nunez an inquiring look.

"How d'you feel about that, Major? We could send an unmanned drone up, but we'd be violating your airs.p.a.ce. I would need a written authorization from your senior officer."

Part of him marveled at how deeply ingrained the a.s.s-covering reflex was, but what the h.e.l.l was he supposed to do?

"I am the senior officer, now," said Nunez as he began patting his pockets. "My colonel was in Havana, and Lieutenant Colonel Lorenz drove into the haze before we realized what it was. His car went off the road and burned."

Stavros handed him a pen and notepad. The Cuban began scribbling immediately. n.o.body spoke while he wrote. Musso walked over to the window. It was coming on for midday and the sun beat down fiercely on the base. A flagpole across the compound outside cast only a short dagger of shadow, the Stars and Stripes hanging limp in the humidity. Guantanamo was not a major fleet base. It had been established as a coaling station, not the most glamorous of postings, long before it became a famous prison camp. Down in the bay, a couple of tugs and a single minesweeper lay at anchor close to sh.o.r.e. It was a scene entirely normal, even ba.n.a.l.

"Here," said Nunez, handing the slip of paper to Stavros. "You may countersign as a witness. I have authorized Brigadier General Musso to deploy surveillance a.s.sets into Cuban territory on a temporary basis, with myself to administratively supervise such deployments in each and every instance."

"Fine," said Musso.

In fact there were any number of red flags sticking out of such an arrangement, and under normal circ.u.mstances Nunez would have guaranteed himself a trip to prison, or even a blindfold and last cigarette, by writing out such an order. If he was willing to put his nuts in the grinder, Musso could hardly quibble.

"G.o.dd.a.m.n."

Lieutenant Colonel Stavros was the first to speak, and he said it all.

"G.o.dd.a.m.n is right," agreed Musso.

"Madre de Dios," muttered Nunez.

His very presence in the situation room would have been unthinkable only hours earlier, and two heavily built MPs were shadowing his every move, but Musso wasn't expecting any trouble. Nor was he expecting any repercussions from having allowed an enemy officer into one of the nerve centers of the U.S. military to watch some of its newest technology in action. There had been some quiet and very forceful dissent from the army's senior representatives on base, a military police colonel and a signal corps major, no less. But they had been overruled with extreme prejudice.

"Empty," said Nunez. "Completely empty."

"G.o.dd.a.m.n," whispered Stavros again. A single bead of sweat trickled down his temple even though the blue-lit room, buried thirty meters below ground, was nearly as cold as a beer fridge. Fear sweat, sour and musky, filled the s.p.a.ce. Holguin, a city of more than three hundred souls, scrolled down the plasma screen in front of them. It lay nearly a hundred klicks away to the north, well within the Predator's range. But Musso intended to push the aircraft on, deeper into Cuban airs.p.a.ce. It was going to go down in hostile territory. Or what had been hostile territory this morning. Musso was already thinking of it as no-man's-land now. Quite literally.

The sysop controlling the surveillance bird had dropped its alt.i.tude to three hundred meters, a height at which the Predator's cameras could easily pick out very fine detail on the streets below. In fact, so low was she flying and so close had the operator pulled in the view that the real-time feed was a blur, and Musso, like the other observers, was instead examining slo-mo replays on the other monitors. In one, the Calixto Garcia Park, right in the middle of the city's downtown area, rolled into view. Another showed the giant Cerveceria Bucanero brewery-a joint venture with the Canadian brewer Labatt. It was aflame, but n.o.body was fighting the blaze. On some monitors beautifully decaying Spanish colonial architecture sat cheek by jowl with aesthetically worthless cement office blocks and warehouses. Winding streets gave onto cobblestone plazas and the town's surprisingly rich cultural district, wherein half a dozen museums, galleries, and libraries all stood.

Not a solitary human figure moved anywhere.

"You know what else I don't see," said Musso. "Dogs. Or birds. Or animals of any kind."

"d.a.m.n," said Stavros. "You're right."

Unlike the satellite images they'd been watching on the European and Asian news services, the Predator fed live video, and although the streets of Holquin were not nearly as crowded with vehicular traffic as an American city of comparable size, they were still choked with the wreckage of hundreds of cars, many of them burning, which had apparently all lost their drivers at the same time. A thickening layer of smoke hung over the city, stirred only slightly by a gathering breeze.

"General Musso, sir?"

"Yes, son," Musso answered without looking away from the eerie scenes.