The Breach - Ghost Country - Deep Sky

Paige’s residence lay right along the cutoff. Through the dust he thought he could resolve which one was theirs, though it was hard to tell. Second, the Breach and its protective dome were probably unharmed. Level B51 was not a full floor, but simply a tunnel that extended straight north from the central elevator hub, before opening to the vast cavern housing the Breach and its fortifications.
    Travis thought of the falling bomb—clear of the plane before the first Patriot hit. Not just clear. Dropped. The bomb had arced and landed precisely as the pilot wanted it to. Not straight into the elevator shaft—the logical bull’s-eye if the goal was to level the entire building—because dropping it there would’ve damaged the Breach’s chamber, or at least buried it.
    Holt had deliberately avoided doing that. He’d settled for taking out half the complex and hoping the shockwave would kill everyone inside.
    But he wouldn’t rest on that hope. Not for a minute. Which meant there was more trouble coming, and probably soon.
    Travis considered that as he strained for the sound he knew he’d hear—would probably already hear if his ears weren’t ringing. He turned his head and held his breath, and finally picked it up: the crying and calling of survivors among the intact north-side floors. The sounds all came from the top five or six residence levels. It made sense: much deeper and the shockwave would’ve been unsurvivable. Even the backup lighting was sparser below that point—the air compression of the blast had destroyed most of the bulbs. Travis tried to gauge the number of voices he was hearing. Maybe a dozen. That too made sense, given that most of Border Town’s population would’ve been down in the labs at this hour. Only a few would’ve been up in the living quarters.
    He twisted and looked at Paige, crouched just behind him. She could see past his head well enough to understand the situation. She could hear the cries too. So could Bethany and the half dozen others in the hall behind her—the whole crowd from Defense Control.
    “Is the stairwell still there?” Paige said.
    Travis nodded. He kept his eyes on hers and saw them narrow.
    “There’ll be kill squads on their way here,” she said. “Won’t there?”
    “Staged and ready to chopper in as soon as the bomb hit,” Travis said. “From just outside our radar field. Which is what—forty-five miles?”
    “About that.”
    “Figure Black Hawks. What’s their top speed?”
    “About a hundred eighty miles per hour,” Paige said. “Three miles a minute. So fifteen minutes’ flight time. And the defenses up top are all dead—they run on building power.”
    Travis withdrew from the hole and stood. He faced the small crowd.
    Evelyn pawed tear-soaked concrete dust from beneath her eyes, her gaze sliding back and forth between Travis and Paige, the question too obvious to need voicing: Why the fuck is this happening?
    Travis didn’t answer. His mind was running the crucial math. There were six electric Jeeps up in the pole barn, fully charged. Straight-line over the desert, they could reach Casper, and they could do sixty with no trouble. The Jeeps were sandy brown, the same color as the ground, and Travis had never seen them kick up dust on the hardpan around this place. They didn’t even leave tire tracks. All of which meant they could avoid being spotted by the arriving choppers—but only with a serious head start. Travis’s gut said ten miles was the minimum safe distance; his head could do no better.
    Evelyn was still waiting for an answer. So were all the others.
    Travis looked at Bethany and indicated the tablet computer she was still holding. He could see its connection icon in the lower corner, red with a diagonal slash through it—Border Town’s wireless system had died with the power grid.
    “From up on the surface,” Travis said, “you can get a signal from cell towers on I–25, right?”
    Bethany nodded.
    “Can you find out if there are spy satellites in visual range of this place?”
    She nodded. “It’s not likely. One in four chance, any given hour or so.”
    “Can you go up right now and find out?” Travis said. “And while you’re there, move the Jeeps outside, then scatter random clutter over where they were parked.”
    She nodded again and didn’t say another word. She stepped past the hole and ran for the stairwell.
    Travis turned to the others. “Look at your watches or your phones. Fix on a point