Evans sat up, surprised, dropping the book.
“Evans, isn’t it?” asked the Captain.
Evans fumbled, picked the book back up off the floor, dropped it on the bed and stood up. He didn’t recognize the man’s face, or the thick beard, but he sure as hell recognized the uniform.
“Yes, sir. I’m sorry…”
“Enough. Let’s not tarry on that.”
Evans saluted. “Yes, sir.”
The Captain was silent for a moment, his gaze sizing up the seaman.
“You’re the technician in charge of this system?”
“Aye, sir.”
“Very good. I have a job for you.”
Decision Point
On Board Chuckie
Safely back in the air, for the moment at least, Handon and Fick continued to make the most of the little mission planning suite they’d commandeered – the bombardier and navigator’s compartment in the nose. But the atmosphere in there had grown unexpectedly oppressive. For a few seconds, the only sound was the burble of the engines, the rattling of this old warrior of the skies all around them, and the wind rushing by outside.
Handon looked up. “If the carrier falls? He said that?”
“Yeah,” Fick said. “That’s how Drake put it to me, last I heard from him. If the Kennedy falls, he said, then we’re going to have to jump, splash down, and get fished out by the destroyer’s search-and-rescue guys. And then we sail back to England on her.”
Handon sighed and leaned back. “But at least with our mission objective in hand.”
Fick nodded. “Right. Which is sort of the point of the whole exercise.”
“And nothing other than that really matters.” He pinned Fick with his eye. “I got the feeling the CIC watch commander was telling me something similar just now. A coded message.”
“Coded to mean…?”
“Don’t count on the Kennedy surviving.”
Fick looked up. “But did they order us to do it? To jump away from the flat-top?”
“No. They didn’t. It’s our operational prerogative. And our call. She said they hoped they’ll still hold the flight deck when we reach them. And we’re welcome to try to jump straight onto it, if that’s how we want to play it. Assuming they’ve suspended flight ops by then, which is likely.”
Fick nodded. “So we can join the fight there. And reinforce the defense of the carrier.”
“Exactly. But with one caveat: the scientist obviously has to go straight to the destroyer. We can’t risk him, and we can’t risk his data.”
Fick snorted. “Parachuting out of a perfectly good airplane into open water, which is rapidly filling up with Zulus, isn’t exactly a risk-free operation.”
“Touché,” Handon said. “But it’s got to be better than digging in with a beached carrier that’s probably about to be overrun by ten million dead. And that we don’t expect to make it in the end.”
Fick grunted. “Huh. Well, maybe it is safer. But the scientist is still gonna need security.”
“I figured Ali. She’s been the babysitting detail so far. He seems to listen to her.”
“Fine by me.”
Handon patted absently at his breast pocket. No cigar. Dammit.
Fick saw this and grinned, his deep facial scars furrowing. He reached into his own pocket and retrieved a single tan, hard, plastic tube. He pulled it open, removed a dark Cohiba in its gold band, then tore it in half and handed one end over. He usually saved this for the very end of a mission. But maybe this was the only chance they were going to get.
“Son of a bitch,” Handon said. “Where’d you get that?”
“We pulled a lot of scavenging ops at overseas military bases. One thing the top brass can always be counted on for is creature comforts. We’ve also got some fantastic Scotch back in our quarters.”
Handon leaned in as Fick struck his Zippo for him.
“So the question remains.” Handon leaned back and puffed, as some of the stress drained from his face. “Do we jump for the Kennedy or the Murphy?”
“Well, I know where the fight is.”
“Yeah. But not so fast,” Handon said, taking the half-cigar out and tapping the ash. “There’s one other critical mission parameter.”
Fick looked up as he twirled his own stogie. “What was that thing you were just saying about how only one thing matters? The mission objective?”
Handon looked him in the eye. “I did. But what’s the scope of the mission?”
* * *
Ali secured the straps against Emily’s skinny frame, pulling them tight enough to hurt a little.
“How’s that feel?”
“Tight.”
“Good.” Ali tugged them both another half-inch. “They’re meant to be.” She spun the girl around, checked the container and ripcord, and checked the positioning of the parachutist’s life preserver. She then patted her on the ass, and spun her around again. A few feet away, Juice was doing the same to Dr. Park.
Ali spoke to both of them now. “There’s no jump door on this aircraft. But the rear escape hatch will do. The important thing for you to remember when you go out is to dive low. You need to make sure and clear the ailerons on the tail. Understand?”
“I think so,” Emily said.
“Got it,” Park said.
“Low and fast. And you pull the ripcord the second you’re clear. I’ll be right behind you.”
Emily paused and held Ali’s big dark eyes with her huge light ones. “Ali.”
“Yeah?”
“What happens then?”
“We’re going to be briefed on that. But the most likely scenario is we float down to the ocean surface, inflate our life preservers, detach our parachute rigs – and wait to get fished out by some nice U.S. Navy rescue swimmers, who will then give us an amusing helicopter ride.”
“Don’t worry,” Park said to her. “You’re in good hands.”
Emily tried to smile. “And what about the dead?”
Ali managed a smile in response. “You should know better than anyone – they don’t go out on the water. Right?”
But in her head, she found herself modifying the line from the little girl in Aliens:
They mostly come on land. Mostly.
* * *
“The other parameter is this,” Handon said. “This thing isn’t over – even if and when we get out of North America alive. And one of our two teams has to survive for the next phase.”
“If that’s so,” Fick said, “then why do they keep sending us both on suicide missions?”
Handon laughed. “Fair point. But in any case we’re looking down the barrel of at least one more mission – after this one.”
“I’m listening.”
Handon drew a deep breath. His cigar was down to a nubbin, but he couldn’t quite bear to finish it off. It seemed somehow like the short fuze that was burning for all of them. “The vaccine – the one Dr. Park developed. It’s only a prototype. He designed it based on samples of the virus he collected back at the very beginning. Right before the fall.”
Fick stubbed his own cigar out. He sensed their interlude of relaxed camaraderie was coming to an end.
Handon let his continue to burn down toward his fingers. “But the virus has been mutating all this time. It’s not the same bug that started the plague. The prototype vaccine works by RNA interference – on genes of the virus that have probably evolved over the last two years. Park believes he can adapt his technique. But he needs to know which genes of the virus are transient, and which are the critical ones – the ones that stay the same over time. Otherwise, we’ll be inoculating people against a strain that doesn’t exist anymore.”
“I’m following. So how do we determine that?”
“We need a sample from a very early-stage victim. The proverbial Patient Zero.”
Fick chuckled, a bit mirthlessly. “Sounds like a bad zombie movie.”
“Nevertheless. By comparing the current strain with a sample from
a victim near the beginning, he can tell what the unchanging genes are. Sooner or later – and I’m guessing later will be too late – we’re going to have to go out and dig one up. And that means returning to the point of disease emergence.”
“Hargeisa,” Fick said. Unlike most people, he had lived long enough to hear the disease named after the city in which it was first identified. “Somalia.”
Handon nodded. “Right. Which means sailing to the Gulf of Aden.”
“And then another mission into denied territory. Probably another air insertion.”
“Also correct.”
Fick bobbed his head. “So if I’ve got my geography straight, all of Somalia ought to be within range of the Seahawks on the Murphy – they’ve got the range, endurance, and load capacity. Which means we can do the mission even if we lose the flat-top.”
“Yes. But what we can’t do it without is an SOF team with the full spectrum of capabilities needed for that mission profile.” Handon finally felt the the cigar end burning his fingers and squashed it with his palm on the table. “We have other special mission units back in Britain, at Hereford. But I’m honestly not sure there’s going to be time. The clock’s still ticking – maybe too fast to just swing by Southampton and pick up a new team, before heading south again and rounding the African Cape. And we’re on the water now – with perhaps the only two vessels that can stretch to the mission.”
“One vessel,” Fick corrected. “The other is beached.” He looked up at Handon seriously. “Wait – have you been briefed on the outbreak at Hereford?”
Handon’s eyebrows knitted up. Fick immediately knew no one had told him yet. Shit.
“It was bad – happened right before you launched from the carrier. Drake didn’t want to tell you, since there wasn’t a damn thing you could do about it.”
Handon remembered now how they had lost comms with USOC at Hereford right before they took off. “Outcome?”
“They controlled it. But I heard your Colonel had to take off in an Apache and rocket your whole goddamned hospital himself. Something like twenty percent casualties, base-wide.”
Handon shook his head. This news actually seemed to shake him. Hereford was the one place that was supposed to be safe – the one rock they had under them in this topsy-turvy fight.
Fick went on. “So, point is, I don’t think we know for sure what the status of your teams there is. Maybe they’re still operationally effective. And then again maybe it’s just us.” He paused. “Also, there’s been a bad outbreak in the south of England. That one’s not contained, and it’s heading toward London. I’m told it’s got a lot of the military engaged.”
Handon shook his head again. Fortress Britain itself was in danger of falling, and no one had told him until now.
As always, the biggest variable in warfighting was the dissemination of information. Those who survived combat learned quickly that it was almost always understanding what the hell was going on that kept you alive. But information was flighty. Sometimes things that weren’t remotely true got passed along to everyone in the battlespace; other times, absolutely critical intel never got to the one group of people who desperately needed it.
It all made death very whimsical.
“Okay,” Handon said. “Then it’s more true than I knew: the clock’s ticking down, and it may be down to just us. Which means your team or mine – one has to survive and be ready to go, ideally along with its leadership.”
Fick looked up. “You do know I’ve got the rest of my guys, five other fire teams, on board the flat-top?”
“I do know it. But that’s the thing – we don’t know if the carrier is going to make it, so we can’t count on them any more than we can count on Hereford.”
Fick shook his head. “Your point, I take it, is that we can only afford to send one of our two teams to reinforce the carrier. Which is probably a death sentence for whoever does it anyway.”
“We don’t know that for sure. Not yet.” Handon turned and put his hand against the plexiglas, pressed it up against the sky. “Look. Your people have more serious injuries than mine. So you go to the destroyer. We’ll jump in and try to save the day on the carrier. And if that doesn’t work… then you get your men patched up, raise the banner, and carry on. You finish it.”
Fick pushed the map away from him, and put half his ass on the edge of the little table. “Okay, Handon. Look. I haven’t made any secret that I think my guys are up to any mission your guys are. But the fact is… I still have twenty-one Marines on that carrier. They’re digging in, or maybe already fighting, right now. And I’m going to go back there and lead them.”
Handon just looked tired. He knew, and he knew Fick knew, that this was just posturing. It couldn’t be any more than that. “Okay, Gunny. I get you. But, look – you know full well that the lives of the last fifty million human beings on the planet hang in the balance. Whatever we decide to do, it’s got to be about that.”
Fick physically deflated slightly. “You’re right. Of course, you’re right.”
“Let’s just make sure we have a plan that gets Dr. Park out of here with his laptop, that safeguards at least one team with its leadership, along with sea transport to the Gulf of Aden, and air transport from there to the interior. And we’ll take the rest as it comes.”
“Okay.”
Handon smiled weakly. “And if we’re still at an impasse about who goes to the JFK, I’ll fight you for it.”
Fick stood and put out his hand. “You can fight Brady.”
Handon grasped his hand. “Brady can fight Predator.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
* * *
“Everybody bring it in, and listen up!” Handon barked, stepping into the main compartment of the bomber, and facing down the length of it, as Fick followed behind him up the little ladder. The others variously rose and tried to crowd forward.
Handon saw Ali there, holding the hand of the girl from the Diablo. And, in that brief moment, he admitted to himself what he already knew: that the real reason he was assigning Ali to get Park to the destroyer was that he couldn’t bear to send her to her death.
So much for gender equality in special operations, he thought.
He looked over to see Fick stepping up beside him. As he drew a breath to be heard by everyone over the noise, Fick started in without him.
“Here’s the deal! Naval Air Station Oceana is overrun. We can’t land there. And, as you’ll have guessed, this wonderful historical aircraft is unfortunately not suited for carrier landings. So we’re all jumping for it – either back to the Kennedy, or farther offshore, to the Murphy. As half of you already know, and the rest have probably worked out by now, the Kennedy is currently beached. And she’s facing down the biggest herd of undead anybody’s ever seen. If she can hold on long enough, she can get her reactor restarted and maybe get the hell out of there. But I’ll be honest with you – nobody rates her chances very highly. The Murph is remaining at stand-off distance. And if the flat-top goes down, she steams home alone.”
Fick looked over at Handon, who was running his eye over the men and one woman of these two unrivaled teams. Handon took the pause as an invitation to continue the briefing.
“We’ve been given a choice – jump in and fight for the JFK, or jump to safety on the Murph. Relative safety, anyway – we’ll go into the drink, and get fished out by their rescue swimmers and helos. But here’s the thing. One of our two teams has to survive, with the capability to carry out the next phase of the mission. Yes – there’s a next phase. You’ll get briefed. But one fiasco at a time. So let’s pretend this is a democracy for ten seconds. Who’s got input?”
The wind and engine noise ruled for the next few beats. Handon looked up again, and said, “Oh, and not Park, obviously, who goes straight to the destroyer. And not Ali, who goes as security for him.” He looked again at the group. “Come on. What say you? Pred?”
Predator looked up from under his huge brow. “Flat-top.”
Handon looked nonplussed. “That it?”
“That’s it. Flat-top.”
Juice half raised his hand. “I’m with Pred. If that’s where the fight is, I don’t like the idea of running out on it. Anyway, if it all goes tits-up there, we can always displace to the destroyer.”
Handon suppressed his reaction to this, which was half impressed and half amused. Displace, he thought, is a term that covers all manner of sins…
Juice read his look. “Helo, ship’s launch, zodiac, lifeboat. Or just dive off the flight deck and swim for it. Lot of options.” Handon wasn’t sure that was strictly true, but he liked where Juice’s head was at.
Brady, who was leaning his lanky, muscular, and dinged-up frame against a strut at the side of the cabin, looked up and raised his hand. “I’ll go to the Kennedy,” he said. “No glory-hogging for the dog-faced soldiers.”
“Not to mention,” said Reyes, “the rest of our guys are on the flat-top. They fight on the Kennedy, we fight on the Kennedy.” But Reyes said all this from a sitting position. It wasn’t clear whether he could even stand. What was clear was that he didn’t give a shit whether he could stand or not. In their world, the brotherhood came before all else. And you didn’t run out on your brothers. End of story.
Only Graybeard looked troubled. Finally he spoke, his thumb and forefinger on his gray-whiskered chin. “I’m not sure it’s the smartest play. How likely are eight men to make a difference to a fight that big? And why throw us away in a set-piece battle, when we could make a big difference somewhere else in the war?”
He let his cagey, veteran’s perspective sink in for a few seconds, before scratching his whiskers and adding, “Then again, what the hell. If everyone’s dead set on reinforcing the Alamo, it’s fine by me. Hell, I’ve already cheated death twice today.” Left unsaid was that he had cheated death hundreds of times. The only thing you knew for sure about an operator his age was that he was a survivor.
As Handon reviewed the resolved faces of the men lined up before him, he mentally slapped his own forehead. It was unanimous: of course everyone wanted to go to the Kennedy and fight. He should have known better than to put it out for discussion. Nobody was going to back down. None of them were going to be the team who slunk away. Which meant it was ultimately going to have to be an executive decision.
Arisen, Book Five - EXODUS Page 12
