All of their lives were in Ringgold’s hands. They couldn’t stay here forever. They were running out of food, and there was a risk of Variant juveniles in the area. It was either take a chance on finding help or wait to die.
“Send out the SOS to our forces here in the States,” she ordered.
Soprano nodded in agreement, but Nelson raised a hand.
“Ma’am, there are several commanders who know our call sign,” he stated. “If any of them are compromised, then we’re giving up our position. We can’t trust—”
Ringgold glared at her advisor. “Ben, I’ve made my decision.” She wasn’t sure if it was the right one, but she also knew General Nixon needed to focus on winning the war in Europe. Besides, he was too far away to help her right now anyway. America had started this nightmare, and they would help finish it, one way or another.
Soprano picked up the radio and scanned through the frequencies. Nelson sighed and neatly folded his suit coat. Then he gently set it over the stump and held out his hand for the radio receiver.
Nelson met Ringgold’s gaze, and she nodded firmly.
“This is Black Cat calling all Eagles in the area, requesting assistance at the following coordinates …”
Ringgold walked away. The deed was done; now they just had to wait. She strode to the chopper with her hands tucked into her pockets. If ROT was going to come, she wanted to be with her friends when they did.
She sat at the edge of the troop hold between Kate and Horn.
“I keep thinking Fitz is going to drop in and save the day,” Kate said with a sad smile. “Or that Reed will show up with a tank and whisk us all to safety. Kind of stupid, right?”
“Don’t say that, Kate,” Horn said quietly. “Fitz, Beckham, Apollo, and our other friends are still out there. We’ll get through this, and we’ll see them again.”
Kate wiped her eyes but didn’t reply.
An hour later, Ringgold began to feel the tug of sleep. It was late, probably after midnight. Horn had returned to the beach with King to hold security. Storm clouds drifted in from the west, crossing the moon and carpeting the island in darkness.
Ringgold felt a prick of water on her leg. The adrenaline had worn off, and her eyelids drooped, but she stood with Kate as Soprano and Nelson walked over.
“Well?” Ringgold asked.
Soprano frowned. “Not a single reply.”
“My guess is that any friendlies who are listening are too afraid to show up here,” Nelson said. “I think we should fire up the Black Hawk and be ready to move.”
“And go where?” Kate whispered.
The president of the United States and her few remaining allies had nowhere to go.
“We don’t have enough fuel to get far,” Horn said, coming in from his rounds. He leaned back into the troop hold to check on Tasha and Jenny. “You should try and get some sleep, Madam President—and you too, Kate.”
Ringgold sat back down and sighed inwardly, desperate for sleep but too afraid to close her eyes. The pain of her bullet wound was flaring up again.
“He’s right,” Kate said quietly. “We should get some rest.”
Ringgold balled up her coat for a pillow and set it beside her on the floor of the troop hold. She had slept in worse places than this during the nights she had hidden from the Variants in Raven Rock. Each time she had closed her eyes while hiding there, she had wondered if she would wake up to the deformed face of a monster. Now she wondered if she would wake up staring down the barrel of a ROT gun.
The nightmares were bad tonight. She saw her cousin transforming into a raging beast. In her dream, Emilia contorted, her body cracking and jerking as the hemorrhage virus pulsed through her veins. Then came the blood oozing from her frightened, enraged eyes, then the pained shrieks, and finally the cracking of joints.
Ringgold’s eyes snapped open. Wrapping her arms across her chest, she leaned back against the bulkhead and waited for the rain to stop. Waves slapped against the beach, then receded back to sea. It was almost pitch black now that the storm had moved over the island.
She had nearly nodded off again when movement in the darkness caught her eye. Six figures clad in black armor moved up the beach. Ringgold blinked, her heart kicking.
“Kate,” she whispered. “Kate, wake up.”
King, silhouetted out on the beach, suddenly crashed to the ground, two men in black tackling him from behind. A muffled shout came from the other side of the bird—from Jake or the pilots, Ringgold wasn’t sure.
Horn ran over to the helicopter, his eyes wide. “We have to go, now.”
The kids stirred awake, sleepily calling out for their parents. Ringgold kept her focus on the men in black. They were all carrying machine guns.
Horn turned and raised his rifle, the muzzle shifting from target to target. He cursed. Even Ringgold, who was no soldier, could see that they weren’t going to win this fight.
One of the men stepped out in front of the others and shouted, “We have you surrounded. Drop your weapons and identify yourselves!”
“You first!” Horn yelled back.
The leader of the team continued to advance. “Drop your weapons and give up the president.”
The moon spilled across the ocean, its light parting the waves like a highway running through an endless desert. Ringgold didn’t see any sign of a ship out there—so where had these men come from?
“I’m not going to ask you again,” the leader said, his voice rising. The other men all fanned out to surround the Black Hawk. Two more showed up around the front of the chopper, shoving the marine pilots and Jake into the sand, their hands already bound.
Horn shifted from target to target. Nelson was standing to his left with a pistol raised. Ringgold couldn’t see Soprano.
“Last chance,” the leader said. He balled his fist, and the other men stopped, all of them directing their guns at Horn. He blocked the front of the troop hold with his body, the only person standing between Ringgold and these men.
Tasha called out for Horn.
“Stay where you are, kiddo!” he yelled back.
Ringgold would not allow Horn to be slaughtered in front of his own children. Not if she could do anything about it. ROT wanted her, and only her.
“Put down your weapons,” she ordered as she scooted out of the chopper.
Nelson moved in front of her. “Get back, ma’am. I’m not letting them take you.”
“Me either,” Horn said with a snort. “Just give me the word, Madam President, and I will light these bozos up.”
“Get away from her,” the leader said. She could see his features now. The whites of his eyes stood out against his dark skin. She wondered what was going through his mind.
Nelson took a step forward and aimed the gun at the man speaking.
“Put your gun down!” he yelled at Nelson.
Ringgold reached over and put her hand on the barrel of Nelson’s gun, slowly pushing it to the ground.
“I’ll go with you. Just let everyone else go,” she said to the leader.
She strode past Horn and Nelson and prepared herself to be riddled with bullets, or at the very least to be whisked away to a dark prison cell to await execution later. If it was the latter, she hoped she would get to look Wood in the eyes before she was killed.
“Ma’am,” Horn pleaded. He tried to move in front of her, but she turned and faced him. “It’s okay. You did your job protecting me, but you have to look after your daughters now, and Kate.”
Horn snorted like a bull, his gun moving from face to face. The men in black all watched her as she strolled from the chopper toward them.
“Stand down,” the leader said, balling his fist.
One by one the rifles were lowered. All but Horn’s.
The leader approached slowly, his eyes flitting from Ringgold to Horn. “These men are with you, President Ringgold?” he said.
Horn finally pointed his rifle’s barrel toward the sand.
She strai
ghtened her back. “Yes, they are.”
“You could have just said so earlier,” the man said in a gruff voice. “I’m Senior Chief Petty Officer Randall Blade with SEAL Team Four. We’re here to evacuate you to the USS Florida.”
Ringgold narrowed her brows. “You’re SEALs? Why the hell didn’t you say so earlier?”
Blade flashed a white grin. “We thought this could be a trap. ROT was on the airwaves warning of something like this. We took a risk by coming here—a pretty damn big risk, if you ask me, but someone above my pay grade thought it was worth it, and they were right. You still have some friends out there, President Ringgold.”
Horn and Kate stepped up to flank Ringgold on both sides. “I’m Doctor Kate Lovato,” Kate said. “Please, have you heard anything about Captain Reed Beckham?”
Shaking his head, Blade said, “I’m sorry, ma’am. Get your things. We don’t have long.” Blade nodded at one of his men, who pulled out a radio. He called in a ride over the channel.
The other SEALs unbound the hands of the marine pilots, Jake, King, and Soprano, who had also managed to get himself captured. The men took up positions along the beach while Ringgold and her friends gathered their belongings.
“Where exactly are you taking us?” Kate asked Blade.
“To the USS Florida and then to a small fleet of warships, boats, and a French research vessel two hundred miles to the east,” he said.
“French?” Ringgold cut in.
“Yes, ma’am. Those friends I was talking about, they aren’t just Americans.” Blade paused and looked at Kate. “They’re also looking for help. Apparently, there’s some new kind of monster in Europe.”
Andrew Wood stroked his scarred chin as he watched his fortress come into view from the plush leather seat of his newly acquired Boeing VC-25. The military version of the 747 was nicer than he had expected. Although he had been hoping for better in-flight meals.
“An MRE?” he said, staring at the package set in front of him by a female soldier who was doubling in duty as a glorified flight attendant. She stuttered and batted long eyelashes over a pair of blue eyes.
“I-I’m sorry, sir,” she replied. “That’s all we have.”
“No fresh fruit or grilled salmon? What is this world coming to?”
She shook her head ruefully, and Wood chuckled. With their ranks swelling, he hardly knew anyone outside his inner circle.
“What’s your first name?”
“It’s, um, it’s Yolanda, sir.”
“Yolanda—what a sweet name.”
“Uh, thank you, sir.”
She swallowed and took a step back. Wood loved making people nervous and paused for dramatic effect. Then he raised a hand and laughed again.
“I’m just messin’ with you, sweetie, but I would like an alcoholic beverage. I’m assuming we have something on board. I’d like something stiff—stiff and cold.”
“Yes … Yes, I can do that, sir.”
Yolanda hesitated again and then backed up as he shooed her away like an insignificant fly.
He took a bite of dry beef and turned back to the view. Snow-brushed forests peppered the terrain below, and crystal clear rivers meandered through the frozen tundra. At night, the temperature dropped far below freezing. It was one reason the hemorrhage virus had never made it here, and if Wood had to guess, it was for that reason Jan Ringgold and her staff had evacuated survivors from Anchorage and other cities to SZT 19, which was only about twenty miles to the west.
But this time Wood wasn’t heading off to take over an SZT. His growing army was doing that for him. He was going home to the place where he had spent the majority of his career in the military.
Xerxes, the code name for the Resistance of Tyranny military base near the Knik Glacier, was one of the most secure places in the United States. That was obvious even from the sky. The five-cornered former military facility was nestled along the blue wall of a glacier.
The men and women living there now had spent the past seven months beneath the ice. It was one of the most inhospitable places in the world, too cold and isolated even for the Variants. That was why Wood had picked the base to be the ROT headquarters.
He continued stroking his scarred face and leaned closer to the window for a better view of the blue glacier in the distance. Tucked against the bottom were five circular structures peeking above the snow. Most of the base, however, was hidden beneath the ground. He had renamed the top secret facility after the great Persian king who had sought to take over the Greek empire—and much of the rest of the world. The story had always fascinated Wood, but where Xerxes had ultimately failed, he would succeed.
Before he did that, he needed to get General Nixon on the ROT team, and the general wasn’t the easiest man to coerce. It was going to take some major convincing to get the United States military in Europe to ally itself with him. Luckily, Wood had the perfect plan to make it happen.
Yolanda returned with a vodka on the rocks. For a moment, he wondered what her story was. You didn’t survive the apocalypse and get a job working for Wood by being a loser.
“Prepare for landing,” one of the pilots said over the PA system.
Wood sipped the vodka and looked away from Yolanda, no longer interested in the young woman. He glanced down at the graveyard of armored vehicles on the southern edge of the base, recalling the cold nights he had spent on patrol down there thirty years ago, waiting for the Soviets to invade. That experience—and working for a paranoid, borderline schizophrenic commander—had prepared Wood for a different type of invasion.
Wood didn’t see the monsters populating the earth as the end of humanity. He saw them as an opportunity—an opportunity to finish what his late brother, Colonel Zach Wood, had started while working with the Medical Corps.
Before he could finish their work, he had to take down the most dangerous enemy of all—Jan Ringgold. The former president was an outlaw who had escaped his attack on the PEOC. He had been chipping away at her power and credibility with an intricate web of lies for the past few weeks, but the time for playing games was over.
His masterstroke had been attacking SZT 15, in what was once Chicago, and blaming the hemorrhage virus outbreak there on Ringgold. Once he’d discovered that Ringgold’s nearest living relative, a cousin, was sheltering there, SZT 15’s fate had been sealed. After all, who in their right mind would support a woman who had knowingly turned her own family member into a monster?
Wood resisted the urge to chuckle, fearing it would make the wrong impression on his inner circle. He was to be supreme ruler of the new world order, but he didn’t want to be seen as an eccentric despot. If there was one thing Wood hated—other than Reed Beckham and his band of tyrants, of course—it was a stereotype.
The men who made up Wood’s team sat in front of him. Three days earlier there had been four advisors, but Wood had lost Jack Johnson when he’d sent the man to check on the USS George Washington.
Someone had gotten to the aircraft carrier, blowing a gaping hole in the ship and destroying several of the hemorrhage-virus missiles. Wood wasn’t sure who, but it didn’t matter now. The bastards were undoubtedly all dead or infected.
The VC-25’s pilots circled the base, providing an aerial view of a lake and the glacier below. Wood could even see SZT 19 in the distance, although it was hardly anything to look at—basically just a run-down fort built to house a couple thousand survivors. It had only taken one visit to get them to align with ROT. Most of the mayors of the SZTs were spineless cowards. And those who weren’t, Wood would dispose of when the time came.
“Sir, sorry to interrupt, but I have news,” said the rough voice of Michael Kufman.
Wood looked up at a pair of ruthless black eyes. The former Delta Force operator stood six feet, three inches tall, with linebacker shoulders and the massive biceps of an Olympic arm wrestler.
“Well?” Wood said. “What’s your news?”
“I just got word that Coyote has been captured at th
e SZT in Los Angeles.” Kufman didn’t smile or show any hint of emotion as he gave the news.
“That’s excellent,” Wood said. He smiled, and Kufman returned the gesture with something that looked more like a scowl, his thin lips parting to show the gap between his two front teeth. Wood wasn’t sure the soldier was capable of smiling.
“Have you ever cracked a joke, Kufman?” Wood asked.
“Your brother wasn’t one for jokes, sir,” Kufman said stiffly.
Wood took another sip of vodka, welcoming the burn. His older brother and Kufman had been good friends. The best of friends, in fact—there wasn’t any other man Zach would have wanted at Andrew’s side to see him through to the end.
“Tell the pilots to keep the plane hot. It seems I’m headed for La La Land shortly,” Wood said. His smile was gone, and he turned back to the window to watch the tarmac rise up to meet the plane. The wheels hit the snowy asphalt with a jolt.
He finished off the vodka and waited for the plane to come to a stop. In moments like this, when he had nothing to do but wait, he would contemplate his revenge. Beckham was dead, but he was still looking for Master Sergeant Joe Fitzpatrick, the cripple who had blown his brother’s head off at Plum Island.
At first, Wood had thought Beckham was his King Leonidas, but the Spartan king who had stood with three hundred of his warriors against the Persian masses was not Beckham after all. He had been far too easy to kill. In Wood’s eyes, his great nemesis was Fitzpatrick, and Wood would have his revenge soon.
He walked through the plane’s open door and stood at the top of a ladder overlooking the icy terrain. Gathered on the tarmac were a hundred men dressed in black parkas, automatic rifles slung over their backs and helmets with goggles atop their heads.
Sure, they weren’t a million-strong Persian army, but they would have to do.
Despite the rage swirling through his veins, he forced a smile and waved at his men, imagining what Xerxes, the King of Kings, must have felt when he walked off his ships before the invasion of the Hellespont.
Extinction War Page 3
