“You’re sure it wasn’t just anti-aircraft fire?”
“I watched the whole thing, sir.”
The captain turned back to the hatch. “Come on, guys. Let’s hoof it.” He looked at Jack. “It’s moving west?”
Jack nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Then we head west,” the captain said.
“Toward the enemy?” Tabitha asked.
“Going the other way is called retreating,” he said as the rest of the team climbed out of the Bradley.
The artillery was falling sporadically now, and Jack could hear the gunshots slowing—or maybe there were fewer guns.
“Best guess for how they’re moving it?” Gillett asked, taking out binoculars and scanning the enemy lines.
“Could be someone invisible,” Aubrey said.
“It’s moving fast,” Jack responded. “Or it did move fast last night when we were at the roadblock.” He remembered watching the headlights wink out as the device neared them. “It had to be going at least twenty or thirty miles an hour. Maybe more.”
“Someone on a motorcycle?” VanderHorst guessed.
“Motorcycles would be turned off like everything else,” Nick answered. “Bikes?”
Gillett nodded. “Keep your eyes and ears open. Watch for anything unusual.” He adjusted the straps on his vest. “Let’s move, people.”
The group hurried away from the Bradley in a loose line, like they’d been taught in basic training.
Jack stared at the enemy’s front—it was far in the distance, maybe two or three miles away, but he could see the Russian tanks as plain as day. There was infantry fighting—grenades exploding and the muzzle flashes from a hundred rifles—but none of the tanks was engaging.
“They’ve disabled their own stuff,” Jack said, running to catch up with Gillett, who was leading the group. “Probably to stop the planes from hitting them.”
Jack looked out again. There were still Russian vehicles moving, but they were in the rear ranks—several more miles back. In the distance, flying over what had to be Snowqualmie Pass, were Russian fighters.
“They don’t want their own planes to get too close to the front—don’t want them to get caught up in the . . . what do we call it, the blast arc of the device?”
Gillett stopped and turned to face Jack. “How far back before you see anything electric?”
Jack pivoted and stared toward the far eastern side of their lines. He could see a farmhouse with lights on. A streetlight.
“I’m not great at judging distances,” Jack said.
“You called it a blast arc, right?” Gillett said.
“Assuming it is an arc,” Jack said with a nod.
“Then we need to get to the starting point,” he said. “Look at the front lines and then look for the farthest distance that the power is out. Think of that like the tip of a spray bottle. Everything is arcing out from there.”
Jack turned and gazed at the Russian line. There were rows of tanks—not exactly rows, but staggered groups. Some of them were firing and some were not.
“That’s where it will be,” Gillett murmured as he looked through the binoculars.
“You want us to go up there?” Jack said, trying to shove away his fear. “Behind enemy lines.”
“We’ve got to find the device.”
He turned his gaze back toward the Russian front.
“I think their infantry is advancing,” Jack said. “They don’t need power.”
Captain Gillett nodded. “Then our boys’ll be advancing, too. And we need to cross through the line if we’re going to get behind it. Let’s get up there.”
TWENTY-FOUR
AUBREY RAN IN FORMATION ALONG with the ODA. Captain Gillett was in the lead, followed closely by Jack. Chase-Dunn and Nick were bringing up the rear. Aubrey didn’t think Nick should be running. Aubrey had seen football players try to run with concussions, and that was what Nick looked like.
She couldn’t believe Lytle was dead—couldn’t believe what she had seen, what she had stepped over in her scramble to escape the Bradley. She was glad Josi hadn’t been in that Bradley—she’d never get the pictures out of her head.
It was pitch-dark, with the exception of burning vehicles. If there was one good thing, it was that the majority of the vehicles—Bradleys and Abramses and Strykers—seemed to have avoided the artillery. Most were simply disabled by the device. Soldiers were piling out and awaiting the incoming infantry assault. Aubrey saw one man look at their team quizzically, probably wondering why they were running toward the enemy.
“This is the dumbest thing we’ve done tonight,” Tabitha said in Aubrey’s head. “We need to get the hell away from this battle, not try to get in the middle of it.”
Tabitha was twenty paces ahead of her, too far for Aubrey to respond.
“Did you see the bodies?” Tabitha asked. “Did you see Sergeant Lytle’s neck? He was right in front of me. It could have been any one of us. If that artillery shell had landed six feet back, we’d all be dead.”
“Get out of my head,” Aubrey said, but she was sure Tabitha couldn’t hear her breathless words.
“Not every lambda is fighting in this war,” Tabitha said. “They let a lot of them go home—the ones with weak powers. And they didn’t force everyone to fight. I bet if we’d said no back when all of this started that we’d be home right now. I’m from Oklahoma, for God’s sake. I shouldn’t be here.”
They hadn’t let anyone go home that Aubrey had seen. She didn’t know if that was good or bad, but that’s what she’d seen. A life as a prisoner in a quarantine camp, or a life in the army.
“Jack, if you can hear me, Tabitha won’t shut up.”
And then Aubrey laughed—a tired, exhausted laugh.
“Maybe you say the same thing about me,” Aubrey said. “‘Aubrey won’t shut up. She talks to me all the time and complains and I can’t get her to shut up.’”
Tabitha’s voice sounded in Aubrey’s head again. “I keep thinking about the rebellion,” she said. “The lambda rebels aren’t like the terrorists. They’re not fighting the good guys. They’re just trying to stand up for the rights of kids who don’t want to be used as weapons.”
“I know,” Aubrey said. “For the last time: we all know.”
Tabitha seemed to love talking about the rebellion. Aubrey wondered where she was getting her information, because they’d all been essentially out of communication with the outside world since they’d started basic training.
Up ahead, Aubrey could see Gillett talking with Jack, and they changed direction—just slightly. There were hundreds of soldiers ahead of them, from both nations.
She felt a gust of wind fly past her face. And then another.
“Get down!” Nick yelled.
She stood for a moment, frozen like a deer in headlights. Another gust of wind.
Not wind. Bullets.
She dropped to her knees and raised her rifle. She couldn’t see any targets.
Their entire group was on the ground now.
“Jack,” Aubrey said. “I’m going to go invisible, but I’ll be right here.”
They hadn’t practiced combat maneuvers with the Green Berets, but this was what she’d always done in lambda training—what she’d been taught to do by her drill instructors. She disappeared and went prone. One of her lenses had cracked when the Bradley was hit, but fortunately, the cracked lens was her left eye, not the one she used for looking in her scope.
Bullets began to hit the ground around them. Aubrey strained to find a target, but all she could see were outlines—silhouettes against the fires of burning vehicles. She couldn’t tell whether they were looking at her or away, and she didn’t dare fire.
“We have to keep going,” Gillett yelled back. “The device is on the move.”
Nick and Chase-Dunn got up and began moving in a crouch, their rifles pointed toward the enemy. Aubrey did the same, staying invisible.
Krezi was next in line, and she wa
s still lying down. Aubrey grabbed her by the vest, pulling her up.
“What the hell?”
Aubrey reappeared just long enough for Krezi to see her. “The enemy’s over there,” she said, and faded out again.
Even though she was invisible, she kept her head down. Anyone more than one hundred forty yards away could still see her.
A thought occurred to her. She stopped where she was, staring downrange, and then took off running toward Gillett. She reached him just as he and Jack were stopping at the bottom of a crater. Jack was looking around, trying to spot the device.
Aubrey appeared.
“What are you doing up here?” Gillett said.
Aubrey was out of breath. “It’s a bubble,” she wheezed.
“What?”
“My invisibility. They measured it at training camp. It’s a bubble that radiates from me—forward and back and up and down. I’m the center of a bubble.”
“So what?” he asked, watching as Jack searched.
“So what if it is a lambda? What if it’s some lambda’s brain, and it’s sending out signals in a perfect sphere, shutting everything down.”
“That’d be one hell of a lambda,” the captain said skeptically.
Aubrey could hear bullets flying over their heads. Outside of the crater the rest of their team was under fire.
“Okay,” Gillett said, peering up and over the edge. “If it’s a lambda, and there’s a bubble around that lambda, what does that mean?”
“It means it’s behind our lines,” Aubrey said. “It’s behind us, not in front of us. Jack, look up front to where the power starts, and then look back to where the power starts, and right in the middle of that is where we’ll find the lambda.”
Jack climbed up the side of the crater and looked forward, then back. He stared for a long time, and Aubrey wished he’d get his head down—infantry was fighting only a hundred yards away.
“If she’s right,” Jack said, “then the lambda is miles behind us. I’d guess this bubble—if it is a bubble—is close to twenty miles wide.”
“Is it still moving west?” Gillett asked.
Aubrey could hear the Green Berets—and maybe Josi and Tabitha, too—firing.
“It’s stopped for the moment.”
Gillett looked through his binoculars again. “So it’s a question of moving forward or moving backward.”
“If we go backward,” Jack said, “it’ll be miles to the center of the bubble. But we have to get back there to find the lambda.” There was a rumble across the sky, and Aubrey looked up. She didn’t see the planes, but brilliant explosions rocked the Russian lines.
She sighted her rifle on the nearing Russian infantry, looking down the scope and trying to identify uniforms. There was an outline that was clearly someone carrying a Russian AK-74 rifle. She lined up the crosshairs—and then saw him fall from someone else’s bullet.
“I can’t tell who’s on our side,” she said.
“Wait,” Jack said, but when she looked he was talking to the captain. “The bubble or the arc or whatever it is just moved farther back toward the Russians. Maybe two or three hundred yards. No, closer to five hundred.”
“It’s protecting their lines from bombs,” Gillett said.
“It’s stopped all their artillery,” Jack said. “And most of their tanks. They’re all quiet.”
“It moved fast.”
“Really fast,” Jack agreed. “And I didn’t see anything move up there—no vehicles.”
“So you think it’s the bubble.”
“I just think it moved really fast.”
The infantry assault was pushing the Americans back—the Russians were getting closer every minute.
Images from last night flashed in Aubrey’s mind. Her insubordination. Her pledge to be a better soldier—a pledge that she made to no one but herself, but a pledge that she intended to keep.
“Permission to engage the enemy?” she asked.
“Of course,” Gillett said.
Aubrey disappeared, and ran up the side of the crater and over the top. She jogged forward. She was determined to make up for her poor choices yesterday.
Aubrey dropped to a knee, alone in a stretch of farmland. Ahead of her, American soldiers were pinned down, fighting a losing battle against a stronger force.
She lifted her gun to her shoulder and sighted a Russian. They were easier for her to identify now—they were close, and there were so many of them.
She let out a breath and squeezed the trigger, firing a burst of three rounds, dropping him. She flicked the selector switch to semiautomatic, and sighted another soldier. She let out a breath and squeezed.
TWENTY-FIVE
“WHERE DID SHE GO?” GILLETT asked, but Jack could only shake his head. She wasn’t close enough that he could smell or hear her.
Jack raised his own rifle, hoping he wouldn’t hit her in the back.
Beside him, Gillett began to fire, too.
There was a flash of light as Krezi blasted a burst of energy. It hit the ground in front of a soldier and he fell back.
The American soldiers ahead of them seemed to be doing a little better.
The two American fighters—Super Hornets—screamed out of the night sky again and strafed the enemy. Jack lowered his gun and watched, and a moment later he saw it—more Russian vehicles went dark and powerless.
“It moved again,” Jack said. “The planes are forcing it to. It goes really fast.”
Ahead of him, the battle was raging, and the Americans began to push the Russians back. Lying in the crater and watching the fight, Jack felt almost like he was in the nineteenth century. No tanks were moving. No artillery fell on them. No planes were in the sky. It was just rifle versus rifle. Granted, they were automatic rifles and everyone was wearing body armor and helmets, but this was a different kind of war, somehow more primal, more ancient.
“Let’s try to find that lambda,” Captain Gillett said. “You think you can locate the center of the bubble?”
“I can try,” Jack said. “But it might move.”
“That’s why we should go now.” He turned and yelled down the line. “Everyone get ready to move on me. Aubrey, that means you, too.”
There was a long pause. Jack wondered if Aubrey had tried to do something heroic—tried to get over into the enemy lines and win this fight single-handedly. Jack had known her long enough to know that last night had to be affecting her, and affecting her hard. Aubrey was still dealing with the guilt of a home life based on lies.
Would something like this push her over the edge?
And then she was back in the crater with them, loading a new magazine into her M16 and breathing heavily.
“We’re heading out,” Gillett said.
“Okay,” she said, her face flushed.
Gillett checked his own gun, and then clapped Jack’s arm. “We’re following you.”
Jack took a breath and then nodded. This was so much guesswork. He could really only see lights in the distance in both directions. In every direction. And he was somehow supposed to find the center of a circle of darkness?
At the very least he knew he had to head east.
He scrambled up and out of the crater, jogging at a decent pace. He worried he was going too fast for Aubrey—she’d just been invisible and that made her tired. But he forced himself not to think about that. That was for the captain to deal with. Jack just needed to find the lambda.
As he ran he dodged around more craters, around lifeless tanks with bewildered crews, around infantry squads who didn’t know where they were supposed to be or what they should be doing. He crossed dirt roads and fields. It was cold, but he was sweating gallons under his gear.
He listened to Aubrey run, listened to her breathing. She was panting for air, but so was he.
Jack refocused on the area in front of him. There were miles to go before they would get to the center of the circle, and that was if he could find it. This was why they’d been force
d to run so much in basic training with all their gear. Somehow it seemed easier here—probably because real bullets were flying.
He took a moment to listen to Rich, and then to Krezi. They were pushing hard. Harder than anyone should have expected of them. Even so, Jack kept running. He would let Gillett decide when it was time to break.
“Jack, I need to talk to you,” Aubrey said, her words coming out in short, strained breaths.
He waited for her to say more. The muscles in his calves, thighs, and back all stung. It felt like he was carrying another person on his shoulders.
“Not now,” she gasped. “Later.”
And then Jack stopped, coming to almost a dead halt and staring up in the sky.
A figure—a girl—flew up from a stand of trees. Jack had seen flying lambdas before, but not like this. Below her, in some kind of harness, she carried a second person—a small, thin boy.
Before Jack could even point to her, she was launching forward—westward, toward the Russian lines. He followed her path as she rocketed away.
“What is it?” Gillett said, stopping beside him. He was sucking in gulps of air.
“Did you see her?” Jack asked.
“See who?”
Jack looked down at his watch. It was ticking again.
TWENTY-SIX
TABITHA LEANED AGAINST A WOODEN fence, her gun slung across her chest.
Captain Gillett was on the radio calling in for a helicopter to pull them out.
“Finally,” Tabitha said telepathically to Krezi.
Krezi looked back at her and rolled her eyes.
“I hurt everywhere,” Tabitha said. “I swear, there are going to be blisters on my blisters.”
Krezi nodded and leaned against the fence, too. She wasn’t carrying a gun, and she folded her arms across her chest.
“You should have seen it,” Tabitha said. “The inside of our Bradley, I mean. It was horrible. Sergeant Lytle was sitting right across from me and he got hit with a piece of shrapnel. It was long and jagged. It looked like a dagger, and it was just there in his neck. It was like he never had a chance, you know?”