Both Ainsley and Handon felt for the guy. But, then again, neither of them gave that much of a shit. If they went around giving away jobs to every SOF or elite force that fancied themselves the best men for the job… well, SOF guys aren’t given to backing down or shrugging with humility. And, in the end, everyone went where they were damn well ordered, and damn well did the jobs assigned to them. Especially in Handon’s Delta, where professionalism was job one.
Ainsley said to Drake, “I gather you’ve gotten the high-level concept from our OC.”
Drake and Fick looked at each other.
“Officer Commanding,” said Handon. “A little Brit-speak for you.”
“Ah, right,” said Fick. “Everything bass-ackwards.”
Ainsley almost smiled. “No, that’s the Frogs, actually – les bâtards morts.” Like many English of his class, Ainsley spoke good French. (Unlike the French, who no longer spoke.)
Drake nodded. “Okay. Yes, we got a three-page mission concept from your Colonel. He’s right in suggesting a helo insertion is too much of a stretch – bird could get there, but not back. Not without refueling. Also too much danger of mechanical failure on a helo. So it’s going to be a fixed-wing aircraft, and a combat jump.”
“Right,” Ainsley said. “HAHO.” High-altitude, high-opening – after which the operators would steer their canopies to the target. “I’m told your air wing can support this?”
“Yes, you’re in luck. One of the planes we agonized about, but ultimately decided to keep, was our C-2A Greyhound. It’s a twin-engine cargo aircraft – generally used to move supplies around the strike group, or to shore bases. It’s a big old bastard – about the heaviest thing ever to lumber off a carrier flight deck, and bang back down again – but it was too useful to scupper.”
“Capacity?” Handon asked.
“About 4,500 kilograms, 26 passengers nominal. Should take your team, all your kit, and your chutes no problem.”
“Plus a shitload of ammo,” Fick added. “We assume that since you’re jumping into Zulu Universe, you’re going to want to jump with some big-ass resupply palletes. Set up some kind of local FOB, or at least supply cache.”
“That’s affirmative,” said Ainsley.
“My guys can help you put it together and palletize it. I saw you brought an awful lot of your own hardware. But we’re not too badly fixed for stuff like 5.56 rounds and linked 7.62. When we raided the U.S. Naval Base in Singapore, we emptied their ordnance stores.”
“Top marks,” said Ainsley.
With civilian firearms virtually banned in the UK, there hadn’t been enough of a domestic armaments industry in place when the curtain came down. It had been ramped up as quickly as possible, but it was competing with industrial resources for absolutely everything – everything that Britain used to import. Of course, USOC got priority on ammo – but every time they pulled the trigger, that meant some poor bastard defending his neighborhood having to rely on an axe.
“And about that QRF?” Handon asked, referring to the Quick Reaction Force.
Fick nodded. “Basically, you call, we come running.”
Drake said, “They can insert in the same plane you went out in, as soon as it can be turned around. But probably a low-altitude opening to get in faster.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll pull your bacon out of the fire,” said Fick.
Ainsley let that sink in for a second, then spoke. “No. You’ll pull our bacon out of the fire only if it conduces to mission accomplishment. If we’re too bogged down, or torn up, or hard to get to, then you’re to act precisely as if we’re dead. You raise the banner yourselves and Charlie Mike.” More slang: continue mission.
The Marine officer nodded, sobered. “Roger that.”
Handon nodded himself. He had to give Ainsley credit.The man could be a bit of a tight-ass. But he was a brave son of a bitch and, like all the Brits Handon had served with, he definitely knew what his duty was, and damn well intended to do it. Born to rule and sacrifice…
Fick cracked a smile again. “Well, if we do have to go in after you, I trust there’ll be a hell of a lot fewer Zulus than when you landed…”
Handon raised his eyebrows. “What, a hell of a lot fewer than three million? That might leave a few.”
Fick kept on smiling. “Well… one nice thing. Once they’re gone, they’re gone. The dead never rise up a second time.”
From the marine’s slightly demented grin, Handon got the sense he would be perfectly happy to go out and try to personally kill every one of the 7 billion undead abominations that currently ran the world. Like he felt no one was getting any younger, and this was a job that needed doing, and he’d prefer to be getting on with it.
Handon figured he could only respect that. Demented as it was.
“Okay,” Ainsley said. “Let’s get stuck into the mission parameters. At a high level, I want to make sure we’re on the same page with logistics, comms, the air mission, waypoints for infil and exfil, branches and contingencies, ISR, map packs, essential tasks, operational timings. Once we’ve got our command ducks in a row, we’ll bring in both teams and drill down on everything…”
BACK TO HAUNT YOU
Major Grews stood at the top of the slope, shifting impatiently, his mind jittering from one scene to the other. Below, in the yard, the last of the train carriages was being shunted along the track at an excruciatingly slow pace. It had taken the best part of the morning to clear them out in preparation for the tunnel’s excavation. Even though he was weary of waiting, he was still extremely impressed by the speed at which the engineering team worked. Impressed would actually be an understatement.
He had witnessed a lot of deployments, a lot of temporary bases being erected in hostile territory, and he was always amazed at how quickly these things came together when they threw a a few hundred skilled soldiers at the job. But this, this had been beyond that. He had watched for six hours as just thirty weary-looking soldiers of the Royal Corps of Engineers – arrived just that morning after being woken from their beds in London – systematically shifted nearly forty carriages with little more than a few engines and some forklift trucks.
The area had to be completely clear. A lot of heavy equipment was coming in to haul out the collapsed section of the tunnel – seriously heavy machinery that his bosses only dusted off on special occasions. They were gas guzzlers, these diggers, and meant for leveling an area very quickly. This time they would be digging out fifty cubic meters of rubble. Unfortunately, this would mean opening the tunnel right up, as well as a good chunk of the hill under which it sat.
Grews glanced over at the field, across the train tracks, at the two monstrosities that sat hulking in the blistering sun, waiting to churn the ground. He tracked his vision further over to the field, where pyres burned even now, eight hours after the last zombie had fallen. Nearly a hundred of the damn things had been on the loose in the end, most of them alive and sleeping in the Premier Inn a day ago. Now they were burning. The remainder, about two dozen, had crawled out of the hole that the first had made.
How the hell that thing had clawed its way out was something Grews didn’t even want to dwell on. But he couldn’t stop himself worrying that a few of them may have slipped by, out into the countryside. There was a large search party out there right now, scouring the forest and the scrublands, visiting every building no matter what its function. Drones and manned surveillance aircraft scanned the area tirelessly through video, IR, and synthetic aperture radar. And all of them just looking for stragglers who may have gotten away. As for the super-zombie… well, he hoped that it was only one of them. And that one had now been accounted for with a hundred bullets in its head put there by his troopers.
Though Grews still wasn’t buying the super-zombie theory. He thought it more likely that damnable security guard had just been lying to save his own skin, along with the single remaining soldier from the hotel. Both damn useless. They would have had a lot to answer for if they weren’t a
lready on their way south. Best out of his way, thought Grews, who would have hung them if he could have. They should have used their own bodies to block up the hole instead of running for it.
The thing that was troubling him was how all of this had happened so quickly. The engineers from London and the diggers should have taken days to organize. They must have already had plans in place to do this, Grews thought.
Twenty minutes later and the diggers were at work. The first one took the tunnel entrance head on, eating away at the mass of solid stone – solid stone in all but a small passage that had allowed the creatures the night before to break through. The second digger was already slicing off massive mounds of earth on the hill above.
Digging. Had those creatures, the zombies, or at least this one fast one, really been digging away for nearly two years?
Grews turned to the junior officer, a woman, who stood nearby. "Check in with the Harbor barracks OC. I want to know if the second sweep of the town has been completed."
"Yes sir," said the communications officer. She was young and inexperienced, but he couldn’t take his two regular comms guys away from their desks. There was too much to organize today and he needed them on the radios to coordinate everything.
Grews looked down into the yard, fifty feet from where the digger was tearing the ground apart, and near where the first of the carriages had been parked just a few hours ago. A team of three dozen of his best men were gathered, checking equipment, loading weapons, and then rechecking. They were his elite – Royal Marine Commandos who had turned up in the Channel six months after the border had been closed, and months after Europe had become a graveyard. They had traveled all the way from Germany, and through all kinds of hell in between, stolen some fishing boats and rowed.
CentCom had wanted to move them out, reassign them to Hereford or London, but Grews had managed to delay that for months – long enough for them to become a permanent fixture in his barracks. They were his urban cleansers, used for storming coastal villages along the French and Portuguese coasts so that teams of scavengers could safely do their jobs. But this time they were going somewhere new. This time they were going underground to clear out the Channel Tunnel.
A shout went up near the tunnel, and the digger stopped. The ring of squaddies, standing thirty yards from where the digger was munching away at the rubble, lifted their rifles and took aim. Shots rang out for a few seconds, and then silence.
More of the damn things being let out of the darkness.
Just an hour later and he stood and watched as the first team of marines entered the tunnel – which was now a gaping maw at the end of a fifty-yard-long trench. The diggers had done their job at dazzling speed.
The first squad moved slowly, the lights on their weapons lighting up the tunnel ahead of them, glints flickering on the walls. Grews only wished that they still had enough working night vision goggles, but what few he’d had in stock had been packed up and shipped to Hereford for the golden boys of special operations. His men would have to use spot lamps, and their weapon-mounted tactical lights. At least they had been able to find a supply of oxygen canisters and breathing masks. He had no doubt that the air in that tunnel would be rancid at best.
The second squad entered the tunnel just thirty seconds later, followed by the final dozen that made up Squad Three. All moved as the first had, slowly and methodically, heads low and backs hunched over, their weapons never lowered.
Grews turned to his radio operator, now seated at a small desk with a laptop and a comms suite perched on top of it. Its noisy generator buzzed a few yards away. On a table nearby were three small LCD monitors showing the helmet-cam views of all three squad leaders. Shadows flickered across the screens and reflected off the water that was already ankle deep.
"Okay, give me a headset and keep open channels."
"Yes, sir. Hold on a moment… Harbor division confirms that the above-ground sweep is completed."
“Good.”
Grews put the headphones on and tapped the microphone.
"Comms check. How copy?"
Three calls of "Solid copy" came back quickly.
"Okay. Keep your ranks tight, watch the flanks and cover every damn crevice that you see. No fuck-ups. Remember your orders: kill on sight. Anything that moves down there is a threat, no exceptions."
There was a pause, seconds passing as Grews waited. Now a new voice popped up on the command net. One that had been monitoring silently from almost a hundred miles away.
“Good work, Major. I think I can leave this in your hands now.”
“Thank you, Bob,” said Grews, holding back the burning feeling in his stomach. Interfering ass, he thought.
Grews turned to another young officer standing nearby.
“Is that air pump going yet? Did we get the vents open? Fetch me a chair,” he snapped, not waiting for answers. “And switch to the secondary squad net. We’re ready to do this our way now.”
The young officer grinned.
“Absolutely, sir.”
INTERMISSIONARY POSITION
Handon stuck his head into the sleeping compartment as he and Drake cruised by outside.
“Mission briefing, all hands, one hour. Down the hall.”
Predator nodded, and Juice saluted, ironically.
Handon started to withdraw, then paused. “You know where Homer and Ali are?”
“Nope.”
“Tell ’em when you see ’em.”
Drake stood paused behind Handon in the passageway. He leaned around him now. “You know, all ship’s IDs have active RFID chips on them. We can find your guys from the bridge, or any deck’s security station.”
Juice’s eyebrows had already gone north. “No need,” he said, reaching into one of his hard cases and coming out with a handheld digital radio scanner.
“I think the frequency is—”
“Four-point-two gigaherz,” Juice finished for him, pointing the scanner at his own pocket.
“We’ll take it from here,” Pred said.
“Carry on,” Handon said, withdrawing and marching off with Drake.
“I assume you’re thinking what I’m thinking,” Juice said to Pred, rubbing his hands together, then twiddling knobs.
“Yep. Not only are those two both always disappearing – but nearly always at the same damned time. Never realized it before. It’s like never seeing Batman and Bruce Wayne at the same party… And now’s our chance to bust them.”
“Only if they’re currently within about 200 meters…” Juice scrolled through a listing on a touchscreen on the scanner. “The IDs are broadcasting name and service number.” He panned the device around the room. “Yep, got Ali. She’s aft of here, probably a couple of decks up.”
“Awesome. And Homer? ’Cause I’ll bet you my last nutsack they’re in the same spot. I knew it. On some level, I think I always knew it…”
“Got his card, too – looks pretty damned close to the same vector, but…”
“But what?”
“The signal strength.” Juice stood and went to the door. Pred followed him out, down the passageway – and into the berthing compartment next door.
Pope looked up from his rack. “Help you boys?”
Juice stepped to the bunk on the other side of the room. He picked up Homer’s ID card from where it lay on the bed, and looked at it forlornly.
“Sons of bitches,” said Pred.
“Thought we had ’em,” said Juice.
Pope gave them a serene yet uncomprehending look, and watched their backs as the pair withdrew.
* * *
Henno poured Ainsley a cup of coffee, Julie Andrews, as he always took it. (White nun, i.e. milk with no sugar.) Then another cup, Whoopi Goldberg, for himself. The two sat across the metal table in the dim and empty mess.
“You get through to the missus before we sailed?” Henno asked. He knew Ainsley’s family, from long years of service together.
“No,” Ainsley said. “Total commo lockd
own, after the first briefing.”
“Jesus… Don’t know what they think the gobshite zombies are going to do if they get wind of a mission. Moan on a different frequency or something.”
“Well… opsec’s a hard habit to break.”
“It’s gotta be tough for her,” Henno said, holding his boss’s eye, and thinking of the man’s wife. “Not hearing a peep until we get back. That’s if we get back.” Henno had been a committed bachelor since his first divorce. It was a lot easier in the military, never mind in spec-ops. When you came back after unexplained six-week absences, and could only answer that you’d been “somewhere hot”… well, it was easier on a casual girlfriend, or one-night stand, than on someone you were supposed to be sharing your life with.
Ainsley shrugged. “She’ll call Hereford and they’ll tell her I’m deployed. She knows the drill. She’s been through it enough times.”
“Fair play.” Henno’s coffee was just getting to sub-scalding, so he raised it and drank deeply. He swallowed, paused, and looked up. “Do you think we’ll come back from this one?”
“Don’t worry too much about that,” Ainsley said, straightening, and raising his mug with thumb and two fingers. “Worry about what kind of world we leave behind.”
Henno was pretty sure his captain was thinking about his two little boys at that moment. But he let it lie.
* * *
Ali brushed her fingertips across his as she rose to leave.
Without a look back, she strode down the dim passageway, straightening her uniform slightly. Despite her best efforts, she thought anxiously about what the two of them had been doing – and what she’d say if they were caught. She could just hear Handon asking, “What were you thinking?”
Luckily, she had a good answer to that one: I was thinking we all might be dead tomorrow.
As to why she was with who she was with, well, that was a slightly more vexed question. She’d chosen him because he was gentle, and because he was good. As to why he had consented… well, he’d probably say it was because he was weak. And because he was a sinner. And Ali also knew of course that he was lonely, like all of them. The ZA was a damned lonely place, even in a family of special operators.
Arisen, Book One - Fortress Britain Page 13
