The Demon Plagues (12 page)

Two days later they surfaced eighty miles off
of Fiji, in a place where wind and current would carry the
lifeboats to the island. The sullen crew loaded the rubber rafts
with plenty of food and water, then got in.

Major Muzik addressed them in a cheerful
booming voice from the bridge at the top of the sail. “Gentlemen,
it’s been a pleasure hijacking your boat. Remember that you are all
now Eden Plague carriers; I suggest you seek asylum when you make
landfall if you don’t want to wait for your Unionist masters to
send you to one of those concentration camps they claim don’t
exist.” Followed by a few salty epithets, he gave a friendly wave,
then climbed down the ladder and dogged the hatch shut before
descending to the control room.

A day later he found Bitzer sleeping in the
helmsman’s seat. Colored screens with readouts comprehensible only
to a submariner covered the bulkhead in front of him. Muzik hoped
there was an autopilot. “What’s our status, Chief?” he asked, loud
enough to wake Bitzer up.

Bitzer didn’t open his eyes. “On course and
doin’ fifteen knots quiet. This boat’s a beauty.”

“How do you know if you aren’t looking at the
gauges?”

“Completely by feel, sor. It’s in me
blood.”

Muzik sighed as he backed up toward the door.
“Why do I even ask? And what the hell am I doing on a submarine
anyway,” he muttered to himself.

“Keeping me awake, sor,” answered Bitzer,
still without opening his eyes.

“Maa-aa-aa,” Muzik bleated, sheeplike.

Bitzer finally opened one eye and raised half
a smile. “Glad to see you’re a fan, sor. Now would you mind, I’m
meditating on the mandalas tattooed in me eyelids.”

“Sometimes I miss the good old days.”

“You mean the days of snap and pop and
knuckle-me-head for officers?”

“No. Flogging.”

Bonnagh put his feet up on the console and
laced his fingers behind his head, laughing. “Ah, yes, one of the
three great traditions of the Royal Navy.”

“Okay, I’ll bite. Which are?”

“Rum, sodomy and the lash, me good major.
Rum, sodomy and the lash.”

Muzik choked off a laugh and moved on to the
mess, the team’s gathering place. The others there glanced at him
as he kept chuckling to himself.

Everyone had breathed a sigh of relief after
the crew was offloaded. Harres was up and around and running the
power plant just fine now, though his shaved skull looked lumpy
from the back. Kelley’s voice was a bit slurred from the loss of
several upper teeth but otherwise he healed well; everything would
grow back eventually. The boat ran smoothly for the next two days,
a quiet routine of regular meals and careful work on cracking the
Trident missiles and their codes.

On the fifth day after taking the
Nebraska
, Alkina glided coldly into the mess, squaring off
with Colonel Nguyen and Major Muzik. Gunnery Sergeant Repeth was
away standing watch with Bonnagh in the control room; the three
enlisted technicians were working on the warheads. In a flat voice,
almost conversational, she said, “Colonel, I demand to know what’s
going on. This boat is off course.”

Disdaining her putative rank, Nguyen replied,
“Miss Alkina, this boat is going exactly where I want it to
go.”

“It is supposed to be heading for a
rendezvous with the Free Australian Navy, who will escort it into
our sub base at Garden Island.”

Colonel Nguyen sat back in his chair,
crossing his arms. “If we were, we’d all be dead by now. Half the
Pacific Fleet is between us and Australia looking for us.”

Alkina’s upper lip twitched below her dead
black eyes. “Colonel, I am getting tired of being cut out of the
loop. Why don’t you just tell me what’s going on?”

Nguyen stood up, placing his hands flat on
the table in front of him, leaning toward her. “What’s going on is
as follows. There are leaks in the FC council. This operation was
approved by the council. Several people outside the council also
know about it, some of them in the Australian Government. Also, the
UG Navy isn’t stupid. They just lost one of their ballistic missile
subs, and they are going hell-for-leather looking for it here in
the Pacific. They can track the movements of your navy on their
overhead assets. So anywhere
your
navy seems to be going,
anywhere they look like they are trying to escort us in, they will
be a target and we will be highlighted. Don’t think they won’t use
a nuke on us and anyone near us, just to make a statement.”

Spooky leaned back, beginning to pace. “You
should have known this could start a hot war. I imagine everyone is
weapons-free up there and people might be dying in naval combat.
And we have three, count them,
three
men aboard who know
anything about running a submarine, in a vessel that normally takes
one hundred and fifty. We can’t fight this boat. Our only chance is
to get lost. To go somewhere where we won’t be found. And when it
comes time to launch, we have to expect an immediate nuclear strike
on our position, so every minute, every
second
we have will
be precious.”

Alkina’s clasped hands tightened behind her
back, the only telltale of her emotion. “Launch. Launch what, to
where? I thought the main point of taking this boat was to get
missile and weapons technology, to help the anti-satellite program.
To put our own satellites up. To gain a nuclear deterrent, if we
could somehow make it credible by getting around the virtue
effect.”

“You’re trying to tell me Australia couldn’t
have assembled nuclear weapons by now? And in any case you Aussies
have already gotten around the virtue effect, haven’t you?”

Allkina’s eyes glittered, and her face went
still. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“How else do you explain Samoa?”

“That was an accident. Somehow our fleet
automated integrated missile system was activated and took action
on its own.”

“That’s the party line. It sure looked like a
well-executed ambush to me. The UG lost almost an entire carrier
strike group. Twenty thousand sailors and nineteen ships. You lost
two
. Whatever it was, it convinced them that the Australian
navy was a dangerous opponent.”

“It also convinced them to obliterate several
Australian military bases.”

“Yes, but that’s what prompted the Neutral
States to extend their nuclear deterrent umbrella to the Free
Communities. That was an enormous political victory for the
Chairman and the FC.”

“Colonel, I don’t want to depend on the good
graces of others to protect me and my country, or the rest of the
FC. Or on getting lucky.”

“I’m counting on that. That’s why we are
fleeing south, as far as we can get, into the Ross Sea just off
Antarctica. That’s why our technicians are working on those
missiles. And that’s why you are going to help me launch them.”

After a surprisingly good hotel breakfast
Skull bought a tote bag from the hotel gift shop to hold his cash.
The spring day felt fresh and clean, and snowcapped peaks loomed
nearby like benevolent Nordic godlings. Flowers sprouted from boxes
in the windows of colorfully-painted historic buildings and modern
shops alike, smells mingled with the aromas of coffee and baking
bread and beer from last night’s revelry.

He walked to Geneva’s
Centrum
, toward
the
Parc des Bastions
along the French-named streets – this
was the historically Francophone section of the country – the
Rue de Lombard
, the
Boulevarde de Philosophes
, the
Boulevard de Georges-Favon
. His first stop was at a Bank of
Geneva branch to exchange dollars for Swiss francs. Next he went to
an electronics shop and bought an airweight computer and a local
prepaid smart phone with an extra simcard and a few other items. In
Europe, one could easily swap simcards, creating in effect an
entirely new phone with a different number.

Inquiring after the location of a
camera-and-optical shop, he walked a few blocks to that place.
There he bought an excellent Japanese camcorder with the best zoom
he could get, some very fine Zeiss binoculars, and a suite of
accessories including batteries, tripods for both, cleaning
solution and cloths.

He also bought two rifle sights: one
high-quality optical day sight and one night sight. These purchases
excited no comment whatsoever; sportsmen and target shooters,
police and military from all over the world routinely bought Swiss
optics for their weapons.

From a bakery around the corner he also
purchased a bag full of incredible pastries and a large cup of
fresh-made coffee to go, munching and sipping as he walked.
Tourists were common, and he deliberately fit the mold with his
half-filled backpack and shopping bags. There was nothing as
forgettable as another tourist in Switzerland.

He crossed the Rhone River that fed Lake
Geneva, here tame and full of boat traffic passing up and down for
commerce or leisure. Catching a train for a couple of miles to
complete his journey he disembarked at
Les Tuileries
station
near the northeast end of Geneva Airport.

It had only one runway, and generally
aircraft took off and landed over the northeast end, using the lake
for their final approach or initial departure. According to the map
on his phone, there was also a considerable swath of forest, farm
fields and parkland curving from the end of the runway north and
westward along the edge of the airport proper. Walking along using
the GPS function to track his progress, he found his way to a
position on the edge of the forest there, the
Bois de
Foretaille
. There he settled himself with his back against a
tree, eating pastries, drinking coffee, and looking through his
binoculars at many interesting things as the jets flew low over his
head.

He made some cryptic notations in his phone,
and then began to walk again. Methodically he partially
circumnavigated the airport counterclockwise, first north then
westward, examining the terrain, tapping the touchscreen from time
to time. By the early mountain sundown he had found out what he
needed to know.

He caught a taxi back to the hotel, a
concession to his nearly half-century old body that, while fit,
knew more aches and pains each year. That didn’t matter; every day
for the last ten years had risked his death, tempted his death,
cheated his death for his cause.

He ate dinner in the hotel restaurant and
took a nap; his body was confused by the jet lag, but the alarm on
the phone woke him up on time to make the call.

“Allo.”

“I’m looking for my brother. He said to speak
to you about a trombone.”

“
Oui
. Come to 14
Rue Descartes
at twenty-two.”

“
Oui, d’accord
.” Skull hung up. Ten
o’clock – ‘twenty-two’ on the usual European twenty-four-hour
clock, 2200 hours in military time – was an hour away. He spent it
walking the chill Geneva streets, looking at the clear, bright
stars with genuine pleasure. In Mexico City he seldom saw the night
sky for the smog.

At precisely ten according to his Patek –
thankfully on his wrist in this safe city – he knocked at the door
of 14
Rue Descartes
. It was an old door on an old street but
impeccably maintained and painted, and it opened immediately
without sticking or squeaking. A man of about seventy waved him in,
looking at him over spectacles clipped to his nose –
pince-nez
, he remembered they were called.

“My brother said you might have a trombone
for me?”

“
Oui
. You have money?”

“Of course. North American dollars.
Okay?”

“
Oui, pas de problem
. We have some
excellent banks here in
La Suisse
. You may have heard of
them.” The man’s eyes sparkled with good cheer as he led the way
down a flight of narrow stairs into a basement.

Skull laughed in spite of himself. It was
good to visit a place where life wasn’t grim and full of fearful
citizenry. “You do have an excellent reputation.”

“
Bien sur,
what else has a man but his
reputation? And mine is superb.” He opened a modern steel door that
went through to a short tunnel lined with white-painted brick. The
door at the other end opened into a machine shop; lathes and
presses and less identifiable machinery dotted the large floor.
Stacks of pipes, sheet metal, and machined parts were stored neatly
on shelves. The old man nodded to a middle-aged technician who was
carefully tending the edge of a piece of steel with a fine wire
brush as they crossed the floor to a large, immobile-seeming steel
cabinet.

“Turn around, please.”

Skull did so, and when he was told to turn
back, the thing had been silently swung aside like a door,
revealing another workshop behind.

Inside he saw more machine tools, but these
were specific to the armorer’s art. Gunsmithing was an ancient
tradition here; the Swiss were among the best weapon-makers in the
world. Long guns lined the walls on pegs, but no handguns. Owning a
rifle here was completely normal and expected; handguns were
tightly controlled.

“What kind of weapon would you like?” the man
asked.

“First, untraceable. I may have to abandon it
after use. Second, something in 7.62, that can take these sights I
will leave with you, something very precise and accurate, nothing
old and worn out. It is for distance work.”

“It will be expensive.”

“I have enough money.”

“I have no ammunition. It is too dangerous to
deal in ammunition. I can tell you a place to go but you must not
tell them of me.”

Skull waved the offer aside. “I have
match-grade ammunition with me. I need you to scan all the
cartridges and choose the best ones, then select the weapon based
on this ammunition. Tune up the gun. Crown and lead-lap the barrel.
Lighten the hammer. Set the trigger pull to three pounds, and fit
an angle cosine indicator and a bipod.”