Coleman started moving. Out the door, down the corridor. He started talking, and Rusty gathered that he was now talking to his men. Doing a roll call? They were coming out of the door. Four of them. Apparently two others were in bad enough shape that they couldn't even make the Bones work. All four of these looked much better than Coleman. And when the others saw him, they started telling him to go back to bed.
"I'm not dying in bed," said Coleman. "Come on."
To Rusty's astonishment, they then began to run down the corridor—a shambling step, more machine than man—and Rusty was starting to follow when his ear was caught by Mrs. Malich talking to someone.
"They won't go," said an old man, one of the caregivers.
"They can't get caught here," said Mrs. Malich.
"These kids are the job we took on," said the man. "We're not leaving them now."
"You can't protect them if this enemy force gets into the university. This place is indefensible against a strongly armed enemy."
"You sound like one of them," said the man, chuckling.
"My husband was one of them," she answered. "I've been hearing this for fifteen years."
"Then you know why we're staying."
"Yes," she said. "You love these men."
"They'll need water and meds and food, those that can eat. They need us to try to keep them cool."
"I won't try to make you do what you don't want," she said. "If it were my husband in one of these rooms, I'd hope for someone like you looking out for him."
Rusty didn't know whether he'd ever play this. Maybe it depended on the outcome. If everybody died, then this scene would play on every news show. If they lived, it might just sound mawkish, as if they knew they were being recorded and they were playing to the tape. He would tell his listeners that they didn't know, but if, after all that, you said, "Everything turned out okay and none of them died," it would feel like anticlimax. They're looking into the face of death, but if death turns away, it stops being tragedy and just becomes melodrama.
What am I thinking. I'm here. If everybody is killed, this tape won't play anywhere except maybe in some Sudanese assassin's tent.
If they even were Sudanese. But Rusty kind of assumed they were. He'd seen the aftermath of what they did in Darfur. Heartless murderers, that's what they were, in Rusty's honest, politically incorrect opinion. Had nothing to do with their being Muslims and everything to do with their being cruel, murdering scum.
And now Mark and another boy, an African, were talking to Mrs. Malich. "Mark, this isn't optional. You're leaving now. With me, out into the city."
"Go ahead, Mom. I'm not leaving them."
"I'm not leaving you!"
"You've been working with the people out there," said Mark. "Chinma and I have been working in here. It's our job. It's what we came for."
Mrs. Malich was crying now. Tough as nails, she was. But for her son, she cried. "Don't do this to me, Mark. We came here to heal the sick, not get shot at."
"We could have been killed by the D.C. sniper back home," said Mark.
"You were four years old back then, and we weren't in Virginia yet," said Mrs. Malich. "Please come. I beg you."
"Go," said Mark. "The other kids need you to get home safe."
"I need you to get home with me!" said Mrs. Malich.
"And you have responsibilities," said Mark. "People out there depend on you. Go."
To Rusty's surprise, the African boy, Chinma, stepped between them. "Nobody will change minds. Do your jobs."
And that was that. The young African was right, and they both saw that he was. Still weeping, Mrs. Malich touched Mark's face. He kissed her hand. Then she took off at a trot.
With that, Rusty made up his mind. He wasn't going into the city. He was casting his lot here, with the sick and dying soldiers and the brave people who were staying with them so they wouldn't die of the nictovirus during the attack. If they lived, he'd live, and he'd leave with the best story. Out there, the combat might quickly move away from him. He might miss it all. But here, the story was inside the four walls of every room that held soldiers and their caregivers.
Rusty left Mark and Chinma in the room with the two remaining men from Coleman's team—Benito Sandolini and Aristotle Wu, Mark told him—and went from room to room, talking to the soldiers, the caregivers, whoever was conscious and willing to chat. Rusty told a few jokes on himself, got them laughing here and there. Some of them had been listeners back in the States on local stations, or satellite radio, or Armed Forces Radio, and so they talked to him like an old friend. "I knew you'd show up here, Rusty. Just the kind of insane place you'd go."
He finally worked his way down to the supply room, where a handful of caregivers were arguing. "I'm not taking up arms," one man insisted.
"The enemy doesn't care—if you're here, they'll kill you," said a woman.
"I'm not here to kill, I'm here to heal."
"Then go out into the city and be safe!"
"Don't do this. If any of us picks up a gun, we're all fair game."
"We're fair game anyway, don't you know what these guys have done in Darfur?"
"You don't even know who they are."
Rusty remembered what the African kid had done, and he bustled in, all cheerful business. "Well, I've got that on tape, and it's really dramatic. But nobody's going to change anybody's mind, so why don't you get back to the soldiers, and if the bad guys break in here, well, then you do whatever you think is right at the time."
"Who are you?" asked a woman.
"I'm Rusty Humphries. Who are you?"
"You were taping us?" asked a man.
"Automatically comes on. Don't worry, it'll never play on the air. Go. Your patients need you."
"We're the night shift," said the woman. "And you aren't in charge here."
Now Rusty was getting a little irritated. Apparently talking sense only worked when you were talking to sensible people. "Let me put it to you another way. You're standing down here doing nothing. If that's all you're good for, get out of here. Me, I'm staying with these American soldiers and I'm going to do whatever I can to keep them safe. Like moving them up to the top floor."
"How will that help?"
Rusty wasn't sure it would—he'd just made it up right then. But, as always, he came up with a pretty good reason after he'd made up his mind. "We've got to buy time. We've called on the fleet to send choppers and Marines, but it'll take time to cover the distance. We just have to keep these boys alive long enough for the Marines to take over. You can do that, can't you? It's not picking up a gun, it's moving the victims. Okay?"
All they needed, apparently, was a plan and somebody to tell them what to do, as cheerfully as Rusty knew how, yet with all the steel in his voice, too.
It didn't take long. Under the circumstances, the sick men had no choice but to try to walk, and they managed pretty well if there was someone to help them. Mark and Chinma helped the last two of Cole's team. Rusty was helping them to a room well along the corridor when he heard a distant explosion. It was starting.
Some soldiers just couldn't get up and walk, even with help, and the cots had no wheels and there were no elevators and none of the caregivers were strong enough to carry them up one or two flights of stairs. So they had to remain on the lower floors. In every case, a caregiver stayed with them. No speeches, they just stayed. Nobody in this place was going to die alone.
Up on the top floor, the soldiers were lying on rows of pallets, far too many for each room—but a little crowding was bearable if it kept them alive long enough. Rusty watched the ballet of caregivers moving among the soldiers, talking to them, touching them, giving them water.
This is how you fight an epidemic.
Then somebody sneezed, and everyone turned to look. It was Mark.
He looked around at the others. "I always wear the mask," he said quietly.
Chinma touched Mark's shoulder and said nothing.
Rusty could imagine what the other
caregivers were thinking. Mark had caught the nictovirus; so could they.
Then again, if the enemy soldiers had their way, they'd all be dead before sunset. Rusty chose not to make this observation aloud, however.
In the silence of the room, the sound of gunfire could be heard outside. "Maybe that's the Marines," said somebody.
One of the soldiers spoke up. "It's the bad guys," he said.
"How do you know?" asked a woman.
"The sound of the weapons," he said. "None of ours are firing."
Another soldier said, "Didn't hear any choppers, either."
Silence again. More gunfire. Distant. But not so very distant.
"Dang it," said Rusty, "I always planned to die in a place where I was the best person there. Now I've got to die with all of you. The angels are going to line up to take you to heaven, and I'll have to find my own way, on foot."
Mark seemed to know what Rusty was trying to do, and laughed. "Heck, Mr. Humphries, where you're going it's just downhill all the way."
Everybody laughed, and Rusty gathered Mark close to his body and ruffled his hair. "You're way too old to have somebody muss your hair like this, aren't you?"
"Yes sir," said Mark.
"Well, suck it up, boy," said Rusty.
BORES
Making plans for the future of nations is foolish. The system is too complex. The rules do not change, but the gameboard shifts continually, and your opponents and you are not the only players. Every speck of nature is arrayed against the progress of civilization and must be tussled with every step of the way. Storms, droughts, famines, earthquakes, plagues—all have toppled rulers, crushed civilizations, or at least dashed the hopes of a potentially great player of the game.
The best a ruler can hope to do is make incremental changes to open up options in the future. A suggestion here, a word there, a bit of information to a trusted ally or a predictable enemy. The use of force where required, diplomacy where no victory is possible or necessary.
It isn't a matter of throwing the dice over and over. In truth, you will do better if you avoid ever throwing the dice. In the game of nations, a bad throw can end your game.
Instead, what you need is to get lots and lots and lots of dice. It greatly improves your odds of finding what you need when history requires that you finally commit yourself to a throw. Against an opponent with the normal pair of dice, you want to roll a dozen pairs. Against nature, you want to roll a hundred.
Cole was not sure he was even in control of his Bones. He knew he was walking forward, but he could hardly feel his own muscles moving. Just the faintest twitch moved him forward. Of course, there was no leaping and bounding—the Bones responded to the movements of the body inside them. But the designers had done it right. They had taken into account the needs of an injured, feeble soldier. When you used great force, the Bones magnified you into a superman. When your movements were weak, the Bones did not push beyond a sedate pace.
Cole's real problem was his own brain. The fever had him, and he knew it, but he didn't know how to compensate for it. He could see, but in the bright sunlight he could not see well; he knew he was hallucinating here and there, seeing figures in motion on the periphery of his vision who did not exist, but it was hard to tell the hallucinations from the Noodle's informational displays. Was that what a drone was seeing, or a movement on the street, or an impish bit of fever playing with his mind?
It wouldn't be helpful if he turned and fired at something that didn't exist. Or at a civilian. But his judgment was so slow, he could probably be shot himself in the time it took to make up his mind.
And how was his aim?
It didn't matter. There was no removing himself from this mission. He and the jeesh could move because they had the Bones, and the other guys couldn't, and so it was up to them to hold off the attackers as long as they could. At this point their lives became expendable.
Mingo, Load, Drew, and Babe were all in better shape than Cole was. Better if they did the shooting, and Cole stayed back to pass information to them from the displays. It would be no help to them if Cole died meaninglessly because he couldn't think straight. But if he was needed—when he was needed—he'd shoot as best he could.
Worst of all, strange ideas kept running through his head. He knew it was just the paranoia of the jeesh infecting his feverish mind, but he couldn't shake the feeling that it was President Torrent who had sent this squad of soldiers to attack them. That somehow it was part of his plan to make martyrs out of the American soldiers and Christian caregivers in Nigeria.
He thought of the Indian Mutiny of 1857, when native Indian soldiers rebelled against the British East India Company. In the aftermath, it gave the imperialists in Britain a pretext to end Company rule in India and add Empress of India to Queen Victoria's titles. Or the sinking of the Lusitania, or the taking of the Alamo, the sinking of the Maine—outrages that galvanized the public and made jingo-ists and imperialists out of them all.
He remembered a class session on the Crimean War, and the popular song that gave rise to the term jingoism.
We don't want to fight, yet by jingo, if we do,
We've got the ships, we've got the men,
And got the money, too!
They're coming here because Torrent needs them to wipe us out in order to stir up the fever of imperialism in American hearts, and to justify his actions to the world.
Torrent would never do something fake, like the Gulf of Tonkin or the ridiculous pretense Hitler staged of Polish troops attacking Germans in 1939. Torrent would have something real, and completely untraceable back to him. Yet somehow he made it happen, because it would serve his purposes so well.
How else would the Sudanese know that the entire American base in Calabar had the nicto at the same time?
This is insane, a part of his mind kept saying, but the thoughts raced through his head again and again, around and around, accompanied by the same stupid song. This is just what Torrent wants, just what he wants.
"Cole," said one of the men. "What are you talking about?"
He realized he was singing the song—whispering it, really—but one of the features of the Noodle was that it would amplify the slightest sound from the leader's helmet and transmit it at a fully audible volume level to his men.
"Sorry," said Cole.
"Don't go south on us, Captain," said Babe.
I'm not the captain, thought Cole. Reuben's the captain. His jeesh, not mine.
Torrent's sending enemy troops to kill us, just like the trap in Bangui. Just like in New York City, which made him think of the technology they were going to face.
"They've got the EMP thing," said Cole. "They've got it. They're going to immobilize us."
"Damn," said Mingo. "You're probably right."
It had taken a fever to put himself on the same paranoid level his men were already on. Torrent couldn't be behind this. But somebody was.
What to do to do to do. Can't fight without Bones, but if we use the Bones they can shut us down.
"They can only shut us down for thirty seconds at a time. Long enough to reboot," said Drew.
That's right, thought Cole.
"Okay, here's the plan," said Mingo. "We go as two pairs. Only one man shoots and moves forward at a time, and nothing big, no huge jumps that put us up in the air and expose us."
"Like any of us can do that right now," said Babe.
"Other guy hangs back," Mingo continued. "When they zap the first guy, second guy stays under cover but keeps the enemy from hurting his partner till he can reboot. Got it? Never expose all four of us at a time."
They're counting to four, but I make five. They're doing this without me. They can do this without me. They never needed me. I shouldn't even be here. I should be back at the university lying in bed waiting for them to come and kill me.
"Is that all right, Captain Cole?" asked Mingo.
"Captain Cole?" echoed Drew.
They were calling him "captain," like
in the days when Averell Torrent was National Security Adviser and sent them out on missions to intercept or destroy Progressive Restoration weapons. For some reason this touched Cole very deeply and he got tears in his eyes.
"Call him General Cole and he might answer," said Load.
And just like that, Cole snapped out of it. Not completely, but he was rational again. Able to respond.
"I'm here," said Cole. "Good plan. I'll tell you what I see. If I see anything real. Follow Mingo."
They made their way to the north and east of the university, toward the Ikang Road. The drones showed Cole that the old man had been right, there were six trucks, already at the outskirts of the city, heading along the main road that passed between the airport and the university. They didn't look like troop trucks—the Pred operators would have interpreted them as a convoy of panel trucks, probably bringing in food, if the old man hadn't reported that there were uniformed soldiers inside.
"They know where we are," said Cole. "Not us specifically, but our base at the university. Still in the trucks. Reaching where the Ikang Road turns into the I.B.B. They'll come south down the road along the west side of the university. No attempt to hide."
"Marines get here in five minutes, right?" said Drew.
Cole checked the display showing him the ETA of the choppers and Marines from the fleet. "More like eight," he said.
"Trucks'll be empty by then," said Drew.
They took up positions that covered the road, but they knew if the enemy weren't idiots they'd get out of the trucks long before this point and come in from a dozen different directions. At the same time, they knew the clock would be ticking. The old man's heroic ride had bought Cole's men about ten minutes of prep time, a ten-minute head start for the Marine choppers.
Meanwhile, the Predators circling overhead were armed.
Cole clicked himself over to talk to the drone's sensor operator. "I need Hellfires, starting with the lead truck."
"I've got it," said the operator, and three seconds later Cole's display showed the lead truck blowing up. The second truck bumped into it, but everybody poured out of all the trucks except the first one so only a few men were caught in the explosions as Hellfire missiles took out all the other trucks. "Thanks," said Cole, and switched back to his men.