Interrupt Read online

  Bugle waved him off. Static was making both sides repeat their call signs, so Drew powered down the engines and pulled off his flight helmet, careful not to dislodge the silvery mesh cap beneath. His ears and cheeks itched. He rubbed with both hands, showering himself with gray flakes of dead skin.

  ROMEO had drugged him again during the long flight from Japan to Edwards Air Force Base just north of Los Angeles in the desert. Vicious tail winds had carried their C-17 across the Pacific in record time. Even so, Drew’s burns appeared two or three days old after responding to their salves and intravenous nutrients. Pink new skin had emerged beneath his dry blisters.

  “Nice work,” Julie said at the cockpit door. She wore a mesh cap, too, like a thin snow hat. Her smile was mischievous. Without that look, she was pretty, but the sly light in her eyes made her beautiful.

  She turned her back on Bugle, concealing her smile from the co-pilot’s seat before she bent down for a kiss. Her slender hand explored his chest as they nuzzled.

  Drew tried not to ruin her happiness. Unfortunately, he’d almost killed everyone aboard the plane. He might have noticed the guns and the running men sooner if not for his blind spot, a hazy fleck in the corner of his left eye.

  He hadn’t told anyone his vision was permanently impaired. What would Julie think if he did? He knew he had trust issues, which was ironic, because by joining the Navy he’d committed himself to a larger ideal. It was the details of individual relationships that came harder to him. He wasn’t good at sharing. They both enjoyed their little secret. Touching each other was a harmless diversion, but he couldn’t ask her to lie for him.

  He was right to fly. U.S. Command needed every pilot available, although Drew had been careful to volunteer for a lesser mission. He’d made his decision during their brief layover in Japan, where thirty agents and Special Forces soldiers had stayed behind in order to penetrate the Chinese mainland. Drew wanted to take part in the hunt for China’s weapon programs, infiltrating their coastal sites, but he’d needed more time to heal.

  Retrieving the geneticist at Silver Lake Hospital was a third-priority objective. Joint specialists with the NSA and DIA had been tracking Silver Lake’s loop transmissions since last night, piecing together every fragment they’d gleaned, but they’d only sent Drew’s team to snatch Doctor Flint because they were grasping at straws and she was nearby.

  “All right, knock it off.” Bugle smacked the back of Julie’s leg when he might have slapped her butt in the close confines of the Osprey.

  Drew thought his friend was intimidated by her, not because she was talented and smart. Bugle was talented and smart, but Julie shared something with Drew that Bugle never could. He hadn’t even made a joke when the three of them were assigned together.

  “Flint is here,” Bugle said. “Someone needs to get her.”

  Drew removed his straps. “I’ll go.”

  “You’re the pilot,” Bugle said.

  “Then you go.”

  “I’m nav, comm, and electronics,” Bugle said with a meaningful glance at Julie. “This aircraft won’t function without you or me, so—Shit.”

  A line of people moved between them and the hospital. Drew reached for his console, hot-starting his engines as Julie peered through the cockpit glass on either side. “I see nine to our left and more by our tail,” she said.

  “Kingsnake Eight Five, hostiles are surrounding the aircraft!” Bugle yelled on the radio. “Can your snipers protect us?”

  “Hold it,” Julie said. “They’re running away. Tell the Guard to stand down. Those people outside are their own people.”

  Drew glanced up as the rotors began to spin. She’s right, he thought. The people in the open were nonaggressive. Most of them wore civilian clothes. Two were National Guard. They’d hugged the building, coming no closer than sixty feet to the Osprey. Now the fury of the engines chased them away. They ran into the barricades and the city streets beyond.

  “Call off the snipers,” Drew told Bugle, powering down again. He regretted the wasted fuel.

  Where had those people come from? They must have been inside Silver Lake. They were so desperate to escape they’d convinced themselves that his arrival meant it was safe outside, exposing themselves to the EMP.

  They were lost lives. Drew didn’t have time to corral them, and they weren’t the only people his team would leave behind.

  “Let’s move,” he said. “Everybody out.”

  They filed from the cockpit into the body of the aircraft, where a Marine stood at the side door with an M4 carbine, his forearm encased in a fiberglass cast.

  The four of them were it. ROMEO had no one else to spare. A Navy captain had told Drew to grab one man from a pool of unattached agents, so he’d taken the Marine he’d befriended aboard the C-17. Even with a broken arm, or maybe because of it, Staff Sergeant James Patrick looked like an incomparable fighter.

  Patrick had shut the protective screen on the aft side of the door. Drew closed a second one behind himself. The Osprey had been modified with runners across its deck and ceiling, allowing metallic fabric curtains to isolate this section of the interior. Otherwise they would allow the EMP inside when they opened up.

  Drew said, “Bugle, Sergeant, stay with the aircraft. Julie, you’re with me.”

  “Oh sure, she gets all the fun,” Bugle said.

  Drew took an M4 from a duffel bag at Patrick’s feet. He handed the weapon to Julie, then grabbed a backpack and another carbine for himself. “Buddy-check each other,” he said.

  Bugle stepped to Drew first, leaving Julie and Patrick to pair up. All of them would wear their flight helmets as additional armor, which made it difficult to verify that their mesh caps were seated across their foreheads and temples. Bugle had to lean close. His breath smelled like the beef noodles they’d gorged down at Edwards AFB.

  “Watch yourself out there, dick hole,” Bugle said.

  Drew squeezed his friend’s lanky arm. “We’ll be back in fifteen minutes,” he said.

  In the command center, Emily gawked at the video feeds as a Guardsman said, “They’re walking outside!”

  The plane was low and fat, its fuselage barely off the ground. When the side door opened beneath its high wings, four people rushed out. They seemed immune to the effect. The first two ran toward the hospital. The others stayed by the plane, walking apart from each other with their weapons up.

  “The sun must have stopped,” the Guardsman said. “We can go out there!”

  “No way,” an officer said, keeping a handset at his ear. “We just lost thirty people from the ground floor when they ran for the plane.”

  “But those pilots—”

  “They said they have some kind of armor. It’s on the plane, too.”

  “Is that possible?” Bowen asked Emily.

  “I’m not a physicist,” she said. “I can’t make anything like that.”

  “I didn’t expect you to. You’ve done enough. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” Emily said cautiously, wondering at his sincerity.

  He sounded like he was saying goodbye to her.

  Five minutes later, Emily hung back as Walsh escorted the Navy pilots into the command center. They looked clean. Their uniforms were new. The man hadn’t shaved—his nose and cheeks were peeling—but the woman’s face looked well-scrubbed inside her flight helmet.

  The brims of their mesh caps fell to their eyebrows and formed broad sideburns, giving them both a hooded, bird-like appearance. Could it be that easy? Emily wondered, pressing her fingertips to the soft part of her temple. It was another clue.

  The man saluted Bowen. “Sir, I’m Lieutenant Commander Drew Haldane. Under the Bighorn protocols, I’m authorized to draft as many as nine of your men.”

  “My men won’t do you any good out there,” Bowen said.

  “I’ve been requisitioned ten spare caps, sir. One for her. Nine for reinforcements.”

  “I need five,” Bowen said. “There are fires right
now that we can’t reach.”

  “No, sir. The caps are mine.”

  Bowen clenched his fists. “This building is on fire,” he said. “I need to be able to put it out. We need to be able to repel attacks.”

  “No, sir,” Drew said. “I’m sorry, sir.”

  Emily wasn’t sure how to feel about him. He was forceful, even rude, and he held his body like someone else might hold a sword. His feet were set apart, balancing his weight to jump or fight.

  “I won’t go,” she said.

  Everyone turned in surprise. “I’m under orders,” Drew said.

  “I won’t leave these people. Isn’t that what you plan to do? Take their best men and go?”

  Julie said, “There must be a thousand people in this building who’d trade places with you.”

  Emily wasn’t sure how to feel about her, either. She felt like they were ganging up on her. She said, “If you can go outside, we need you here.”

  “No, ma’am,” Drew said. “My orders are to take you and your equipment to a secure location.”

  “We have to go after the Neanderthals first.”

  “No, ma’am. That is not the mission.”

  “We need to communicate with them! Maybe we can stop the war.”

  “One of them is her nephew,” Bowen said.

  Emily stared. Why would Bowen undermine her efforts when she was arguing to keep as many resources at the hospital as possible? Because he was a good soldier?

  Drew said, “Ma’am, everyone’s lost family and friends. I’m sorry.”

  “Listen to me! We have a chance here that we might never see again. The Neanderthals won’t—”

  “We’re aware of your theories. That’s why we’re bringing you to a safe location with other top scientists. We need your help.”

  He managed to sound respectful, but Emily wasn’t convinced. “Don’t snow me,” she said. “If you don’t believe any of the data I’ve put forward, why are you here?”

  Drew bristled back at her, and Emily realized his clean, rested appearance was a mirage. How had he suffered the blisters on his face?

  “I’m not paid to think,” he said. “I’m under orders.” Then he looked at Bowen. “Sir, nine men. Point me in the direction of her equipment.”

  Emily intervened again. “That means you have more of your armor,” she said.

  He stared at her. “No, ma’am.”

  “There must be bags or sheets of it in your plane. If you didn’t, you couldn’t carry the lab gear outside without exposing it to the pulse.”

  “We do not have armor to spare,” he said, looking at Colonel Bowen. “I’m sorry, sir.”

  “The labs are in the north wing,” Bowen said.

  Drew turned to Julie. “Lieutenant, I’ll take a detail to Dr. Flint’s labs with her to make sure we don’t miss anything. I want you to grab four men and see what you can do to stop the fires.”

  “Aye, sir.” Julie’s voice was crisp, but Emily didn’t miss her fond, worried glance. Everyone else was distracted as Drew took off his pack and removed ten mesh caps.

  “This is M-string, the culmination of sixty years of Cold War research and next-gen physics,” he said.

  Bowen’s men huddled around him.

  Emily watched Julie instead. Once upon a time, she’d looked at Chase the same way every time he left for work. The two pilots were in love.

  Before he walked to the door, Drew made eye contact with Bowen and several other men. “Colonel, all of you, I need a vow on your honor not to say anything about the caps. If word gets out that we can protect ten people, they’ll riot.”

  Bowen nodded to Walsh. “Get helmets on everyone,” Bowen said. “Try to hide the caps.”

  In the command center, only Walsh and a Guard lieutenant had been assigned to Drew. Walsh would gather seven recruits from their recon and sniper teams, send half of them after Julie, then meet Drew at a stairwell en route to the labs.

  Leading Emily, they stepped into the hall, where Drew steeled himself to let Julie go. The smoke had thickened. Screams surged through the hospital below them. Julie had no training as a firefighter, but he’d seen West Hollywood crews among the police and National Guard. With luck, they had some equipment with them, even air tanks, because Drew couldn’t ask the people in this building to watch his team fly away while they burned alive. He had to send Julie to help because he couldn’t give her cap to anyone else.

  “Hurry,” he said.

  Julie saluted. He returned it. Her face was somber now, and he missed the elfin light in her eyes.

  She ran west with the Guard lieutenant. Drew went east with Emily. Within seconds, they dodged a line of soldiers relaying jugs of liquid detergent from a laundry room. That must have been all they had left on this floor to douse the flames. Then he passed four Guardsmen gasping for breath as a medic cut away a female soldier’s charred pant legs. She squirmed and groaned.

  Emily shouted at him. “The Neanderthals came here twice! They might come again.”

  Drew didn’t answer.

  “If there’s any chance of reaching them, it’s through me. I’m his aunt. I know him. P.J. might recognize me if we can talk.”

  Drew stopped her to avoid a squad rushing in the opposite direction with armfuls of wet towels. The sight filled him with horror and respect. They had nothing better to wrap themselves in before approaching the flames, but Bowen’s soldiers were a long way from giving up.

  He was harsher with Emily than he intended. “You’re not my only objective,” he said. “We can’t stay here.”

  “We have to! P.J.’s our best bet to understand what’s happening. I can bring up his medical records if you can access local data banks. The rest of those men are John Does.”

  “Why do you need his records?”

  “Identifying a biomarker is just the first step. I can develop gene therapies that will cure them, but I need more positive controls. My sister paid for newborn screening. That means we have P.J.’s genotype.”

  “You don’t sound like you’re sure about this Neanderthal stuff.”

  “Have you seen them?”

  “Yes. We have video nationwide.”

  “Then you know how they breathe and sing.”

  Drew reached the stairwell where he would meet Walsh. Blocking the way to the ground level were two desks and four soldiers. They were yelling at a horde of refugees on the stairs.

  Emily extended one hand as if to grab Drew’s arm, then held back. She’s afraid of me, he realized. But that didn’t stop her.

  Beneath the yelling, her voice was firm. “In early Homo sapiens, the larynx gradually dropped into the throat to allow for extra air intake for short-burst running. Neanderthals never made that adaptation. For them, surviving the cold was more important. That’s why their bodies were shorter and thicker than ours. That’s why they’re breathing funny.”

  “It’s eighty degrees outside.”

  “In periglacial Europe, wind chill might have put daytime temperatures at fifteen degrees Fahrenheit in summer. That’s why they developed larger noses and larger sinus cavities. They inhale slowly to warm the air, then blow it out fast to make room for the next slow breath. It doesn’t matter now that they’re in a temperate climate. The behavior is hardwired.”

  “I’ve seen them run.”

  “The people outside aren’t true Neanderthals, and that’s not my point. Neanderthals could run. They probably just weren’t as fast as us. Everything is give and take. They sang because they couldn’t talk because they didn’t need language because they’re less individual than we are.”

  Drew blinked at her logic, trying to keep up. He’d heard Bowen’s broadcasts of her theories. “You think they use ancestral memory,” he said.

  “Yes. Even more important than the cold was the geomagnetic pulse. Homo sapiens developed an elastic skull and huge frontal lobes, but at the cost of weak spots at our temples. The Neanderthals had much heavier bone in their foreheads and comparatively tin
y frontal lobes—anything to preserve their brain core. They’re more efficient than we are. We have more imagination.”

  Emily shrugged, and Drew liked her for her ability to skim through eons of growth and transformation in so few words.

  “There was interbreeding,” she said. “The Neanderthals are still inside us today, and I can prove it if you don’t waste this chance.”

  The tenacity in her blue eyes was compelling. So was the fact that she wasn’t a stuck-up egghead whose main goal was to save herself. She didn’t even want to leave.

  Drew understood what it was like to predict trouble before anyone else saw it. ROMEO had disregarded his initial warnings, too, and he didn’t know enough about her field to argue.

  Could he be wrong for the right reasons?

  Drew had no doubt the Chinese were using an EMP weapon. Solar activity created diffuse “noise” on a wide spectrum. No one would confuse man-made systems with this noise. Even if most of the havoc had been caused by flares, the unusual pulses he’d detected above the South China Sea were artificial. The only question was how many EMP weapons China had deployed and if they had anything to do with the change in the sun, which seemed unlikely. Even DIA analysts had considered that a stretch.

  Emily must have noticed the change in him because she hurried to say more. “Forkhead box binding protein two plays into a host of physiological attributes like wider chests and altered vocal abilities with increased range in tone. Who does that remind you of?”

  “Cavemen. Singing.”

  “There will be overexpressions of FOXP2 in the men I’ve tested. I expect the same for keratin, SELEN BP1, the list goes on and on, but I need a larger sample base to verify my biomarker and I need known subjects.”

  “Why?”

  “Positive controls. Listen to me. My sister paid for newborn screening, which means we already have P.J.’s genotype. In his case, a lot of the work was done years ago. That will save me days of work and weeks of computer time.”

  Drew had said he wasn’t paid to think, but, ultimately, that latitude was inherent in every ROMEO mission. He was trained—authorized—to change his mind if the circumstances warranted it.