Plague Year by Jeff Carlson Page B

together along the river, until the highway dodged east into Leadville, where it split in two. From town, Highway 24 shot north again to rejoin the railroad in a wide marsh basin.
    Colorado roads tended to swerve through the shapes of the land, but this basin covered four square miles and some tired draftsman must have simply laid down his ruler. The highway cut straight through.
    “It’s perfect,” Ruth said. “We can come in out of the southeast like we were hitting Runway 33 at Kennedy.”
    Mills finally looked her in the face.
    “The angle’s almost exact,” she said. “Look at it. And the prevailing winds are out of the north just like you’d want.”
    “This hill at the south end could be trouble,” he answered, and Ruth fought down a hopeful laugh and let him continue. He held the photos in both hands now. “The road isn’t wide enough, either,” he said. “What is it, sixty, seventy feet? The wingspan is almost eighty.”
    The runways at Denver International, where Leadville planned for them to touch down eventually, were twice as wide as Highway 24 yet still only half the breadth of the strips at Kennedy Space Center. All in all, if they did try to land without permission, without ground support, Denver International might be slightly less risky than Highway 24—but then what? The Mile-High City wasn’t high enough. They could only hit Denver if there was a plane ready to fly them up to Leadville.
    Ruth moved closer and tapped one finger on the photo. “We can overshoot that hill,” she said. “There’s plenty of room.”
    “There’s a bridge over this fucking railroad right in the middle. No way. It’s fifty feet wide at the most.”
    She had been relieved that the tracks ran under the highway instead of vice versa. Obviously you didn’t want to squeeze the shuttle beneath a train trestle at any point during a landing—but Ruth had figured that the overpass was no different than the highway itself. “What’s the problem, the guardrails? Our wings will clear them easy.”
    “It’s not like landing—”
    “Yeah, yeah, it’s not a plane, stop saying that! I know more about this than you think. If you come in on target we’ll zip straight down the center. And if you’re off a bit, the nosewheel can pull us back in line.”
    The approach was everything. The shuttles had long been compared to flying bricks. They were not only clumsy in atmosphere—unlike conventional aircraft, the Endeavour would be unpowered during touchdown. Essentially the machine became a hang glider that was too heavy for the updraft of its body and stubby wings. Worse, the shuttles had no go-around capability. A pilot who didn’t like what he saw did not have the option of goosing his jets and regaining altitude to circle back. Once committed, it was do or die.
    “You’ll have to pull off the best fucking touchdown in history,” she said, making herself use his favorite swear word and afraid it sounded forced.
    He didn’t answer. Ruth hoped he was visualizing his approach. Derek Mills was something of a hotshot, or had been a year ago. That was why he’d been sent up here, like all of them, and she knew he’d kept himself as sharp as possible, running simulations, talking through an occasional exercise with Leadville. Maintaining hand-eye coordination had been his excuse for playing video games instead of cleaning or doing inventory.
    Mills shook his head before he spoke, then swept his hand over the photo from left to right. “There’s a rainstorm coming out of California right now, and another one behind it.”
    He had been prepping for the situation himself!
    Ruth felt a wave of adrenaline and involuntarily bent both arms into her chest as if to contain the feeling, aware of that wild laugh bashing at her insides again.
    Mills was the key. Building a majority vote would be impossible, given her relationship with Doc Deb and the hard discipline shared by Ulinov and Wallace. But if she could tempt Mills