Dead Zone (12 page)

TWENTY-THREE

JACK’S WORLD EXPLODED IN PAIN
as all his senses overloaded in an instant—too bright, too loud, too pungent, too bitter. Too everything.

For a moment he couldn’t hear, couldn’t think. He saw the fire in the front of the compartment. Aubrey was on her feet, the closest to the flames and desperate to get out.

Lytle was next to the back hatch. He should have been opening it. But he wasn’t moving. By the light of the blaze Jack saw slick wetness running down the front of Lytle’s unmoving body.

Tabitha jumped up, pounding on the door, panicking, no idea how to get it open.

Nick was dazed, unable to stand because Aubrey was in front of him, filling up the tiny aisle space. Chase-Dunn stood and shoved Tabitha back into her seat, and then began yanking on the handle to open the hatch. Something was stuck.

Jack’s hearing came back all at once, and for a moment the world seemed to be moving in double time to catch up with what he had missed.

“Come on, Nick,” Aubrey was shouting, yanking at the Green Beret’s vest straps. “Get up. We have to get out.”

“It’s not opening!” Tabitha cried.

Jack glanced back at the fire and saw the slumped, lifeless body of the Bradley commander. The gunner was nowhere to be seen.

Then Jack noticed he could see outside—through a split of twisted metal in the turret.

“Open, damn it,” Chase-Dunn bellowed.

“We’re going to die.” Tabitha was standing, her back pressed against the damaged wall. “We’re going to burn in here.”

“We’re not going to die,” Jack said, and climbed over Aubrey’s seat toward the turret.

The heat was tremendous, and he wondered if he had started to blister. He stepped over the fallen commander—what was left of him—and climbed up the ladder to where the top hatch was blown wide open.

“This way,” Jack shouted, his hands stinging on the hot metal.

No one heard him and he jumped back down and grabbed Aubrey. “We can get out through the turret!”

Nick nodded in groggy agreement, and Aubrey turned to reach for Chase-Dunn. “The turret,” she yelled. “Hurry.”

Jack turned back around and darted up the ladder, fighting to ignore the bloody mess around him and the pain in his fingers. When he reached the top he pushed what was remaining of the hatch out of the way.

Outside was a nightmare of flames and explosions. He stopped on top of the Bradley, looking down into the turret as Aubrey climbed out and quickly jumped to the ground. The front of the vehicle was a gaping hole spitting fire and sparks.

After Aubrey came Nick. He was tottering on the ladder, moving in shaky, uncertain motions. Jack grabbed him by the forearm and pulled him out. Tabitha came next, darting as fast as her feet would carry her, and jumping off the Bradley as soon as she could.

There was a long pause before Chase-Dunn appeared at the bottom of the ladder, and Jack could only assume he was taking a final check of the other soldiers. Finally, after Jack was sure he was starting to roast in his Kevlar suit, Chase-Dunn jumped onto the ladder and scrambled up. He waved Jack’s outstretched hand away.

“Get on the ground,” he said, pain on his face. “Everyone needs to get down.”

Jack checked his gear and then jumped over the edge of the Bradley, hitting the hard earth and stumbling forward. A moment later, Nick landed behind him, and then Chase-Dunn followed.

There was a sudden screech across the sky and a firework show of explosions lit up the Russian lines. Jack recognized the shapes he had memorized during training. Four F-22 Raptors—stealth fighters—had just dropped bombs on the Russians, seemingly unaffected by the power outage.

Instantly, the artillery bombardment from the Russians slowed.

Chase-Dunn grabbed Jack and pulled him to the rear of the vehicle where the team was gathered.

“What’s everyone’s status?” Nick asked, breathing heavily.

“I’m okay,” Aubrey said.

“Me too,” Jack answered.

“Freaking out,” Tabitha said, but tried to keep a calm face on.

“Lytle’s gone,” Chase-Dunn said. “Shrapnel to the neck. I’m good. How about you?”

“Hit my head,” Nick said, “but I’ll be okay. Do we know the status of the other guys?”

Jack turned and leaned out from behind the Bradley, searching the devastation for the second half of their ODA. There were burning vehicles everywhere, providing the only light on a motionless, powerless field.

Up ahead was the other Bradley—maybe three hundred yards in front of them. It was stopped, but didn’t appear to be damaged.

“It’s okay,” Jack said. “I think. It’s not on fire.”

The American planes appeared again, flying in a line parallel to the Russian battle lines. Jack saw a rocket fly up and miss one of the fighters, and then they each dropped another bomb.

“Wherever the device is,” Jack said, returning to the relative safety of the back of the Bradley, “it’s not over there. The Russians are able to fire their artillery, and their tanks are firing on ours. And our planes are making it through.”

“How can the planes make it through?” Nick asked.

“They’re not flying over us. I think that’s the key—they’re not flying above the device, so the device isn’t affecting them.”

“So it’s over here somewhere?” Chase-Dunn asked, his face full of fury for his dead brother-in-arms.

“It’s got to be,” Jack said. “That’s how it’s stopping all of us.”

“Well, let’s go find that son of a bitch.”

Nick nodded sluggishly, obviously more injured than he was saying. “Everybody, rifles up. Follow Chase-Dunn. I’ll take the rear. Let’s get the rest of our team.”

“We’re going out there?” Tabitha said incredulously.

“It’s no safer here,” Chase-Dunn said, and then turned and began jogging across the churned earth. “Let’s go free our compadres from their coffin.”

Aubrey shared a look with Jack and then followed. Jack ran after her, and listened to the frightened protests as Tabitha came behind. Nick’s footfalls were irregular, like he wasn’t running in a straight line, but Jack focused on Aubrey in front of him and tried to keep up. She didn’t run like someone who had eight stitches in her leg. She didn’t run like she was carrying almost a hundred pounds of gear and body armor.

An explosion rocked the ground beneath them and Jack stumbled, nearly falling on his face. Clods of dirt landed all around, and Jack turned back quickly to make sure everyone was still standing. Nick was steadying himself, but Tabitha was right behind Jack, running like the devil himself was chasing her.

There was a scream of engines—much louder this time—and two more planes came strafing the enemy. These were Warthogs, one of the most heavily armed attack aircraft in the air force. They dropped their payload, blasting with rockets and cannon while surface-to-air missiles flew up all around them. None of the Russians’ defensive missiles hit their mark, and the Warthogs disappeared over hills to the north.

Jack was out of breath by the time they reached the second Bradley. Chase-Dunn pounded on the back hatch with his fist, but Jack was sure the people inside wouldn’t be able to hear it above all the other noise.

“Tabitha,” Nick said, catching up. “Tell them to open up. And get out of the way—that door is going to hit you when it opens.” Jack noted a slight slur in his speech. Did he have a concussion?

Tabitha stared at the door for a long moment, and then the small hatch on the back cracked open, revealing Captain Gillett.

“We got hit, sir,” Nick said, trying to straighten up. “We lost the crew and Sergeant Lytle.”

There was a roar of engines again, and Jack watched the Warthogs coming back for another pass. Their cannons lit up for a moment and then went dark. Instead of flying over the enemy, the two planes drifted, powerless, and then crashed into the enemy lines.

“The device moved,” Jack said urgently, turning to Nick and then to the captain. “Those planes just went down and they were flying in the same track both times.”

“What are you talking about?” the captain asked, stepping through the hatch and outside.

“Two Warthogs,” Jack said. “They flew north and were fine, but when they tried to fly south along the same course they were knocked out of the sky. The device is moving.”

“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 was 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.