Nearest Night

by David VanDyke

  There came a crackle in Spooky’s headset. “Jumpmaster, this is Eagle One. Ten minutes out. No bogies detected.”

  “Roger.” Spooky stood and walked to the edge of the closed ramp, where everyone could see him. The team’s eyes tracked him, awaiting instructions. Though Reaper had demanded tactical command, he was by far the most experienced jumper and thus had been designated jumpmaster.

  And, regardless of agreements, Spooky intended to gradually move the team toward thinking of him as the overall boss.

  “Ten minutes!” Spooky called. “Begin oxygen. Check equipment.”

  Reaper moved to inspect Spooky’s gear one final time, and he did the same for her.

  “Cut the interior lights,” he said into his intercom mike.

  “Cutting lights now.” The inside of the plane filled with an eerie red glow.

  “Switching to radio.” Spooky took off his wired crew headset and hung it on a hook, and activated his encrypted radio comms link. “Sound off for equipment check.”

  His earpiece crackled as they began to call in by established order.

  “Spirit check.”

  “Buzz good.”

  “Stitch ready.”

  “Hulk good.”

  “Bunny’s always ready.”

  “You can say that again. Livewire roger.”

  “Flyboy’s shit-hot.”

  “Tarzan’s swingin’.”

  “Shortfuse check.”

  “Hawkeye’s go.”

  “Reaper, all okay, jumpmaster!” She gave him a grin.

  “Spooky check. Pop the chemlights.”

  The team bent the plastic tubes on the corner of the pallets, causing a fragile glass cylinder in each to break and the chemicals to mix, glowing in the infrared spectrum visible on their NVGs, night-vision goggles.

  Spooky addressed the pilot. “Eagle One, drop the ramp.”

  A loud hydraulic whine vibrated through the fuselage. A frigid blast whipped through the plane’s interior. As the ramp lowered, a thin strip of night sky appeared, a deep blackness against the plane’s interior red glow.

  Reaper, Shortfuse and Spooky moved up to check the large cargo parachutes on the three pallets.

  “One minute,” called the copilot. The plane slowed, extending full flaps as if for landing in order to reduce speed to the minimum needed to keep flying. The noise and vibration increased.

  “One minute!” Spooky held up one emphatic finger. “Take your positions.”

  Spirit and Stitch joined Reaper and Shortfuse each at a corner of the first pallet. The rest moved to their assigned places, each on a pallet’s corner.

  “Thirty seconds,” the copilot said.

  “Pull the chocks,” Spooky ordered.

  The team removed the locking devices on the pallets, allowing them to move freely on rollers that extended down the ramp and out the back of the plane.

  “Ten seconds.”

  “Ten seconds!” Spooky repeated aloud.

  “Go,” said the copilot. The jump lights turned from red to green. The jet engines roared as the pilot brought the nose upward toward a stall, tilting the plane so the cargo would more easily roll out the back.

  “Go!” yelled Spooky, pointing at Reaper, who along with the other three began to push the pallet down the ramp toward the square of darkness.

  “Go!” Spooky yelled again, pointing. Hawkeye, Hulk, Bunny, and Flyboy shoved their pallet, only one second behind the first.

  The rear of the plane bucked slightly as the first pallet slid off the end of the ramp, four jumpers hanging onto it, then again as the second cleared.

  Spooky ignored the fog creeping onto his goggle lenses. This problem would solve itself in the blast of terminal velocity as the air rushed into every crevice of his equipment.

  Buzz, Livewire, and Tarzan joined him, pushing the third pallet. Spooky grasped the thick cargo netting. “Go!”

  They accompanied the pallet into the void.

  One hand tightly grasping his corner, Spooky opened his arms and legs wide and the panels of the wingsuit caught the air. He struggled to stabilize himself, the heavy pallet dragging him downward faster than his suit wanted to fall.

  A drogue chute deployed from the pallet, stabilizing it and slowing its plunge to the approximate speed of the accompanying human bodies. Below and ahead of him, Spooky could see the other two pallets, or at least he could see the IR chemlights attached to their corners. He checked his wrist altimeter. Twenty thousand feet already, and falling fast.

  “Everyone have the beacons in sight? Say now if not.”

  No one reported negative. He could see IR strobes flashing at the drop zone below, invisible to anyone not equipped with the proper devices. Buzz, Tarzan and Livewire seemed stable at the other corners of his own pallet.

  “Pallet pathfinders take over now and command your teams.”

  Now, one leader of each pallet would coordinate his or her own aim, guiding the falling cargo toward the drop zone while keeping the team together. Without teamwork, it was easy for jumpers to go astray in the dark and land far from the others.

  Spooky switched to his small team’s individual freq. “Rotate south by southeast. Good. Now expand a bit and catch some air.”

  He heard three affirmatives. Everyone loosened up their body positions, and their legs flew upward, hands hanging onto the corners.

  Fifteen thousand feet.

  “Easy. Buzz, close up a bit.” Spooky struggled to keep the pallet’s mass aimed in the correct direction. He felt his shoulder stretch with pain as his wing-suit snapped with a sudden gust. The weight of the heavy load pulled him head-downward. The pallet bobbed and rocked around the drogue chute’s attachment point. The others whipsawed, barely hanging on.

  Ten thousand feet.

  With a sudden jerk the pallet flipped to one side and began to tilt and spin, oscillating back and forth trying to find equilibrium in the wind resistance. Spooky saw Buzz lose his grip. Searching upward, he saw the man above them. “Get back on the pallet,” Spooky ordered.

  “I can’t,” Buzz replied. “I think my hand’s broken.”

  “Then use your other one!” said Tarzan.

  “One hand won’t do it.”

  The pallet started a deep slow oscillation that grew until it was jerking the three attached bodies side to side. Then it began to buck and spin.

  The motion launched Livewire away while Spooky and Tarzan held on at opposite corners, hands gripping the pallet’s webbing while their legs were thrown out from them by the wind resistance and the centrifugal force of the pallet’s oscillation.

  “Abort guidance! Break off!” Spooky ordered. Tarzan let go and Livewire backed off his attempt to regain a handhold. “I’ll ride it in. Come find me if I missed the DZ. We can’t afford to lose the gear.” He crawled to the center of the pallet and slid his legs under the heavy risers that would support the cargo when its main chute deployed. He had to make sure he was out of the way before…

  The automated opening device cut the heavy Dacron support cord, letting the drogue chute be drawn upward by the wind. Its powerful pull snapped lightweight cotton breakaway ties, allowing the main canopy to be dragged out of its carrier and into the blast.

  The giant parachute opened with thunderous sound. The shock slammed Spooky into the pallet’s top and he groaned as he bruised, but in a moment he found himself riding the cargo peacefully downward.

  Standing and holding a riser, he located the strobes on the ground. Putting his full weight on the riser closest to the target, he tipped that side of the canopy downward and spilling air from its opposite edge, a crude method of driving the parachute in the direction he wanted it to go, a technique developed in the early days of the Airborne. “Spooky here. I’m on the pallet. Report status.”

  “Under canopy,” answered Livewire. “Got you in sight.”

  “Me too,” said Tarzan.

  “I think I’m below you,” said Buzz.

  Spooky looked sou
theast and estimated his angle of drift. Surprisingly, the strobes seemed much closer. It looked like the wind had brought him some luck, blowing the pallet rapidly toward the DZ. Combined with his own impromptu steering, it appeared he’d make it, just barely.

  “Get some clearance from the pallet and hit the DZ. I don’t want you in the trees,” he ordered his sub-team. “Find me as soon as you land.” He switched to the all-team freq. “Pallet three here. I’m riding the cargo and slipping it toward the DZ as best I can. I’d call it fifty-fifty whether I reach flat ground. One and two, report status.”

  “Pallet one chute open and on target,” said Reaper. “We’re under canopy and are following. No sign of hostiles, nothing unexpected.”

  “Pallet two chute deployed and on target, more or less, on the northwest edge of the DZ. I think those damned pilots put us out a few seconds late,” said Hawkeye.

  “Well done,” Spooky forced himself to say, suppressing the urge to chew the asses of his own sub-team. They should get the message.

  As he came in, Spooky had time to register the location of the other two pallets by their lights, one nearly in the center – that would be Reaper’s – the other off to his far left, near the tree line.

  He also saw the smaller, personal IR chemlights attached to the helmets of the first eight team members, but curiously, they all seemed stationary instead of bobbing about with the unloading of pallets. Alarm bells rang in his head, but by then, he’d run out of time. The pallet slammed into the ground and tumbled with its sideward momentum.

  Spooky leaped and curled into a ball, hoping for no tree stumps or large rocks to break his bones. His undeployed chute and helmet should protect him from smaller bumps and bruises. Luck was with him again. He rolled to his feet and immediately began moving toward the pallet, now at rest, tangled in its shrouds and lines, ten yards from the trees. As he walked, he readied his favorite P90 assault rifle, a small, handy thing perfect for a man his size.

  “Take your hands off that weapon,” said a deep voice from the darkness. “Drop it on the ground slowly, and the handgun.”

  Spooky hesitated, trying to find the source of the voice. He could dimly make out at least a dozen shapes in his NVGs, all with rifles aimed. Should he make a break for it himself? Alone, he could disappear into the woods and probably take out several, disrupting the enemy plans. Or were they enemies? Security Service would likely have gunned them down already and captured anyone who survived.

  “You’re surrounded and outnumbered,” the voice continued. “Stand down.”

  Spooky sighed and set his weapon slowly on the ground. He then pulled out his pistol and dropped it as well.

  Chapter 12

  Larry Nightingale drifted toward consciousness from a deep well of darkness. Part of him fought coming awake. That was where the pain lived, a horrible and terrifying agony. It took away all dignity and caused him to say things he couldn’t control. Worse even was the fear of what might come next.

  He’d never have believed it of himself before this. With the Eden Plague to assure him of healing, he thought he could face any torture with a John Wayne stare and a comic-book quip.

  He was wrong. The Eden Plague had betrayed him. It refused to allow his nerves to become dull. It forced him to feel every cut, burn, shock and stab. And even though he’d been inoculated with Elise’s updated, low-hunger virus, in these extreme circumstances, craving for food added to his misery.

  He tried to lift an arm to rub at itching eyes, but found he couldn’t move. Testing other parts of his body, he discovered he was strapped down to a flat, cold surface. A constant hum filled the background.

  He felt himself drop, and his empty stomach protested, adding incipient nausea to his misery.

  I’m in an airplane, he thought, but to where?

  He’d held out for as long as he could. Resistance training told him forty-eight to seventy-two hours was about average. He’d made it four days, he thought. Maybe five. He’d lost track. Nothing to be ashamed of, he kept telling himself. After a few days, information grew stale, and less important. That’s what the book said, anyway.

  Initially, he’d only given them his cover story. After several days, they had broken through this, and to his shame he’d told them most of what they wanted to know, though slowly and with as many evasions as he could insert.

  Though he’d withheld one key piece, stashed deep in his memory.

  Larry hoped the holdout period had given his contacts in Europe time to be warned, to scatter and go to ground. The interrogator, a man who called himself Adam, had not been happy. He obviously knew he was winning, but not fast enough, and it made him angry.

  Larry took that as a small victory.

  Opening his eyelids, renewed pain washed through his head and he nearly passed out again. Part of him leapt toward that solitude, but he fought the temptation and clung to consciousness despite the promise of agony.

  Yet he found nothing but darkness. Straining hard, Larry thought he could see hazy shapes, patches of dark and lighter dark, though they were probably illusions. He closed his brutalized eyes, feeling savaged tissue there instead of the smoothness of normal corneas.

  How long will it be before I can see normally?

  Will they allow me to live that long?

  “Hey, look,” said a high-pitched male voice, coming closer. “I think he’s awake.”

  Larry heard two sets of footsteps approach, and then pain exploded in his left kidney. He groaned and recoiled as much as the straps would allow.

  “Oh, you better get used to that, big boy,” said a second voice. “Where you’re goin’, everything that’s happened to you so far is gonna feel like foreplay. They’re gonna take you apart and see what makes you tick.”

  Both men laughed. One of them punched him in the belly, and then they walked away.

  He knew what the threat must mean. An Eden death camp, with a side dish of biological experimentation. In America, he assumed. There were similar camps in China, in certain countries in the Middle East, and in the New Soviet Union, giant masses of starvation and torture, but these sadistic bastards were obviously Americans.

  It seemed an irony of life that the closer a man began to his fellows, the more vicious they became when they turned against him.

  Larry also sensed these particular abusers weren’t done with him yet. Adam had promised as much at their last encounter. They still wanted something from him, or wanted to use him as leverage against the FC. Maybe he’d be part of some kind of prisoner exchange.

  Don’t think about that, he warned himself. False hope is worse than no hope. These types wouldn’t release an Eden.

  And, I’m going home, he thought with an odd mix of nostalgia, sadness, and loss. The USA wasn’t his home any longer and he knew it. When he and his family took off from the Arizona desert in that plane several years ago, they turned their backs on everything that had come before. They’d built new lives, in new places, in a new world. A better world, or so he’d thought.

  But things had gotten worse, not better.

  “Some homecoming,” he mumbled.

  “What’d you say?” asked the first man from nearby.

  Larry didn’t respond.

  “That’s what I thought,” said the second.

  “Better enjoy this while you can,” said the first. “Things are about to get real...pleasant...for you soon. Ha ha, get it? Pleasant?” Both men laughed.

  Larry got it. He’d heard about Camp Pleasant, the Little Auschwitz of America. Instead of responding, he found himself fantasizing about killing them, slowly, torturing them as he’d been tortured.

  Then he felt ashamed. He was no murderer, returning evil for evil. But if they got in his way when it came time to make a break…he wouldn’t hesitate to take them down.

  And if he had the chance, he’d infect them.

  That would be the sweetest revenge of all.

  Chapter 13

  Chairman of the Free Communities Dan
iel Markis gazed at his multi-screen teleconferencing installation, showing senior leaders from a variety of governments. He wondered again how he’d ended up in this position. As the initiator of the Eden virus’ rapid spread around the globe, he was seen by some as a visionary saint, by others as a terrorist villain, the Devil incarnate.

  Whole treatises had been written debating his motives, merits, and sanity, most without ever consulting him or asking directly. Months ago he’d cut back on media interviews, because in the end they all had their agendas derived from the governments they supported or the owners of their media outlets. Those obviously set against him and the FC used selective editing to make him look evil, and those fair to him were viewed as his mouthpieces, purveyors of propaganda.

  The world had become too polarized for rational dialogue. Moderates were seen by each camp as enemies: If you’re not with us, you’re against us.

  Standing in the middle of the road got you run over by both sides.

  I’m just a man trying to do my best, Markis said again to himself, a mantra. Please God, don’t let me screw up too badly.

  “Chairman,” said South Africa’s Minister of Home Affairs, “we of course appreciate what you’re doing, but we’ve already got our hands full. It’s taking everything we have right now to relocate your people from the DRC along with all the Edens that are being pushed out of there and several other countries in Central Africa. Unfortunately –”

  The Australian Deputy Prime Minister gruffly butted in. “We can say the same, but on a larger scale. Let me remind you all that we are working hard to resettle over a million Texans that the Unionists were threatening to exterminate. Many of them are still recovering from the aftereffects of radiation sickness from the Austin nuclear abomination. We, of course, stand behind you, but there is only so much we can do.”

  “What about you, Arana?” Markis asked the Deputy Prime Minister of New Zealand.

  The low-key, studious Maori smiled thinly. “We have only just settled the expelled Ethiopians.”