The Nirvana Plague (51 page)

“I’m glad we finally get to meet. I’m sorry it’s not under better circumstances. May I call you Roger?”

Her cordiality was so strained it was bizarre.

“May I call you Sarah?” Roger said.

Benford almost managed not to react.

He’s going right to work on her, Marley thought.

“I asked Dr. Marley to escort you here,” she said, “so we could talk.”

“What would you like to talk about!” Roger shouted back with exaggerated effort.

She blinked. She was too self-controlled to let him really get to her this easily, but she was obviously near the end of her patience already. Each of his responses broke her stride just slightly.

“I’d like to talk about the situation in Juneau,” she said.

“There’s no power,” Roger said. “There’s no water. The food is spoiling. We can’t flush the toilets.”

Benford nodded understandingly.

“Also,” she replied, “all radio, television, and phone lines have been cut or the signals are being jammed. So let’s get these problems straightened out.”

“I think if you turn the power back on, that would be a big help.”

“I’d like to do that, but—”

“No, you wouldn’t.”

Benford’s face hardened suddenly. She didn’t reply for a moment.

“What do you think is going to happen here, Roger? Do you think we’re just going to go away? What is it you want? Do you think life is just going to be one big party from here on out? Do you seriously believe everybody is just going to be happy and free from now on? Do you think evil is just going to disappear from the world? When the bad guys with the big guns come looking for you tomorrow, do you think you’re going to stop them with a vague smile?”

Roger nodded understandingly while she talked, mocking her. “Why don’t you offer to let me call my wife?”

Benford glanced an accusation at Marley.

“Do you know where she is?” she said to Roger.

Roger’s eyes brightened. “That’s a funny thing to ask me,” he said. “Is she missing?”

“I learned this morning that the Mounties turned her over to American authorities at the Alaskan border some time yesterday.”

Marley didn’t even try to cover his surprise. “Is Ally with her?” he said.

“I assume—”

Suddenly a long blast of sound swept over the bridge, drowning the conversation. They all turned toward the harbor.

A second blast.

The fishing boats in the harbor were all blowing their horns, protesting the Coast Guard’s blockade. It sounded like every boat in the harbor was sounding at once.

Benford turned back to Roger quickly.

He was laughing. His laughter was inaudible over the earsplitting clamor of horns.

Benford stepped closer to him.

So did Marley.

“What’s so funny?” she yelled. She had to scream to be heard over the din. But there was more to her scream than volume. “Just what are you so fucking happy about?”

Roger yelled back: “What are you so fucking
unhappy
about,
Sarah?
”

Tyminski stepped in very close, looming over Roger.

Benford was losing it. She was right in his face now. “People are going to get hurt! If this doesn’t stop, people are going to get hurt. What do you want, Sturgeon? What do you all want?”

“What do
you
want, Benford!” he yelled back. “What does everyone want?”

Tyminski leaned in closer, prepared to strike.

Benford grabbed Roger by the shoulders as if to shake him — or to plead with him. “What the hell is going on!”

Roger, with real irritation now, knocked her hands away with a sweep of his arm.

Tyminski struck.

Roger’s head snapped sideways.

Marley jumped.

Roger staggered against him, knocking him off balance, then went down on his knees on the pavement.

Marley stepped back to catch himself.

Benford grabbed Tyminski’s arm, stopped him from striking again.

Roger, wobbling on the edge of losing consciousness, sank back on his heels.

The helicopter that was hovering nearby, tilted and swooped still closer.

Marley looked up. A soldier in helmet and fatigues sat in the open door behind a machine gun.

Marley thought, this is it, they’re going to kill us all.

And he wondered where Ally was right now.

Delacourt turned and fled, back down the bridge. There were more people gathered under the stoplight now, watching them.

He watched her go. He wanted to run after her.

And suddenly Benford was down on the pavement, squatting beside Roger, yelling at him. “Don’t you get it, Sturgeon? Don’t you see what is happening? How dangerous this is?”

Roger wagged his head stupidly. Perhaps he was nodding.

“The whole thing is going to explode,” she yelled. “Is that what you want?”

He looked up at her. He had a nasty welt rising on the left side of his face.

Marley squatted down with him, to examine him. He guessed his cheek bone was probably broken. Or possibly the temporal arch. It was a wonder he was still conscious.

“Do you understand what I’m saying?” she said.

“I understand you,” Roger said, slowly, managing a barely audible hiss.

“Good—”

“You fear everything.”

“Go to hell, Sturgeon.”

She got up, looking at Tyminski.

Marley thought, Jesus, she’s going to tell him to kill him!

He jumped up, unthinking, and shoved her back, yelling at her: “Are you fucking nuts?”

He had caught her off guard and she stumbled sideways.

Tyminski grabbed the collar of his shirt from behind and jerked him backwards, sweeping his legs from under him as he stumbled.

Marley felt himself airborne for a split second, out of control, then slammed onto the pavement, cracking his head.

He tried to find his feet as fast as he could — to get away before they opened fire — but he couldn’t find his feet or his hands — they seemed to have come loose from his body. For a moment he could do nothing but flop helplessly on the ground.

Then Benford was there beside him. “Get up, Marley!” she said. “Let’s go!” She stood, pulling him up after her.

His head cleared a little. He saw Roger a few yards away — he was still alive — on his hands and knees, crawling, and trying to get up.

Benford dragged Marley forward, up the bridge. “Graham wants us back at the barricade.”

Tyminski was coming toward him again.

“He needs medical attention,” Marley said, looking back at Roger.

“Come on!” Benford shouted.

Tyminski grabbed Marley’s other arm and together they hauled him away, back toward the barricades.

The white Coast Guard helicopter shot low over the
Sea Word’s
bow, cut left, and thundered away toward Juneau. It passed so low and close they felt its prop wash on board.

Up in the cockpit, the first mate threw his hands in the air and hooted and waved.

“Boy,” said the captain, “quit your hollering and get on the radio.”

“Yes, sir, Captain! What for, Captain?”

“See if you can find out any news. What’s going on up ahead.”

On the afterdeck, Karen hunkered down when the helicopter passed.

Ally just laughed.

The news crews scrambled out of the cabin to see what was happening.

Coming forward, they saw the control tower of the airport rising over the flats ahead. A line of sky blue floatplanes sat idle along the shore.

A few minutes later they saw a pair of fighter jets spring off the tarmac, cut sharply, and loop back east. Engines shrieking they also passed almost directly overhead, but not as low as the helicopter.

“Boy!” Banger yelled, louder than he needed to. “What’s the good word?”

“Can’t find anything but static on the radio, Captain!”

“What about the navigation channels?”

“Nothing!”

“The heathens must be jamming all civilian communications. Total blackout! Well, I reckon we’ll be seeing for ourselves what all the commotion is about soon enough!”

Benford and Tyminski hustled Marley back through the barricades and the clutter of vehicles and huts behind it to a helicopter waiting on the pavement. They shoved him inside and jumped in after. The helicopter was airborne in seconds.

Benford asked Tyminski for his canteen and splashed water into Marley’s face. “Come on. Try to get your head clear.”

His head was still swimming, but he looked up at her fiercely. “What the — You know where my wife is, don’t you?”

“I know what I told Sturgeon. Your wife and his wife were handed over to US Army Reserve troops at the White Pass border crossing eight miles north of Skagway yesterday.”

“So they’re in Skagway?”

“I assume so.”

“Is that where we’re going?”

“No. General Graham wants us onboard the
Auster
.”

“I want to go to Skagway.”

“Talk to Graham about it.”

“I want off this merry-go-round.”

Benford was keyed up, and it made her hard. “Calm down,” she said coldly.

“Fuck y— Roger needs a doctor. Lieutenant Gorilla here probably fractured his zygomatic—”

“There’s at least twenty bambi doctors in Juneau. They can deal with their own injuries.”

“Their own injuries? You sound like— This isn’t Kashmir. They aren’t the enemy. You don’t get to kill them all and make it go away.”

“He’s lucky he didn’t get his head blown off. So are you for that matter.”

The helicopter hopped onto the
Auster’s
aft pad as lightly as a dragonfly, and Benford and Tyminski leapt out and trotted away toward an ensign waving them into an open hatchway. Marley lugged himself lead-footed after them, the thumping rotors driving spikes into his skull. Even through that pounding noise he could hear the angry wail of the harbor boats’ horns.

At the hatchway, the ensign grabbed him by the elbow and came with him into the passageway, hurrying him along. Marley wanted to know what the damn rush was all about, but couldn’t find the energy to ask.

The ensign brought him to a conference room door and pushed him inside.

Graham was already barking at Benford — or it sounded like barking to Marley.

“And just what the fuck was that all about, colonel?”

He was standing. So was Benford. Everybody in the room was standing. And there seemed to be a lot of them, a room full of uniforms. Marley was feeling faint now. He looked around stupidly for a chair. Concussion, he thought vaguely.

“The situation in Juneau is deteriorating rapidly,” Benford said.

“I can goddamn well believe it is, colonel!”

Marley spotted an unoccupied chair. It was right next to him. He sat down heavily. He heard his name.

“This Marley?”

It was Graham.

“Yes, sir,” Benford answered.

“Dr. Marley, is there anything like anyone in charge in Juneau, what do you think?”

Marley looked up at the general. Graham looked strange and wild. He was scared and there was no one to help him.

“Well, what do you think, doctor? This is your last chance.”

Marley couldn’t understand what he wanted to know.

Graham turned away dismissively.

“Wait.”

He turned back.

“What do you mean, last chance?”

“If they don’t stand down, we will be forced to fire upon—”

“What? No. You’ve got to be kid— Stand down? What are they doing? They’re not doing any—”

Graham turned away again. He’d given Marley his five seconds, now something else wanted his attention. “All right,” he barked. “Has anybody got through to Washington yet?”

Marley finally began to feel how sharp the sense of fear was in the room. He stood up. But then he didn’t know what else to do.

Graham’s back was in front of him.

From somewhere in the room one of the uniforms said: “Sir, topside says they’re coming out of the harbor!”

“God
damn
it!” Graham snapped back. “We should have mined that fucking harbor yesterday. We should have mined the whole fucking channel. We should have cut them off and pulled the hell out and left the lot of them to rot in their own shit.”

Marley couldn’t understand why the fear was so explosive now. What was going on?

“Orders, sir?” the uniform said. “How do you want us to respond?”