In the end, they decided to hunker down.
The SEALs strung up a literal perimeter out of the nylon rope, wide as it would go, hanging something jangly on each segment. Then they got out the blankets and all huddled on one side of the truck in a slightly wider circle. They broke out a big bottle of water and a case of Cliff Bars. They set a watch schedule, but didn’t need it. Nobody was sleeping. Instead they just talked quietly. They were being thrust back into the crucible of pre-civilization. And the way humans had survived it the first time was by trading information, making plans – and coordinating and cooperating.
“What actually happened before the house caught fire?” Zack asked in a near whisper. “With the street battle outside. After I got knocked out.”
It was full dark now, and they were surrounded by the massive black body of the forest, as well as the larger black body of Africa. It was like being in the stomach of a whale – a thirty-million-square-kilometer whale. Either this was a totally moonless night or, more likely given the usual brightness of the stars in this region, an overcast one. Every once in a while Bob or Dugan would click on a red LED flashlight to manipulate, look at, or dig for something.
“The militia lost,” Bob answered.
Dugan made an amused noise. “I figured the Somali militias would be ready for something like this, if anyone was. They’ve basically been living through the equivalent of the end of the world for the last twenty-five years.”
Zack inclined his head “Lost how? Specifically?”
“They got overrun or driven off by the sick,” Baxter said. “There were too many of them.”
Zack both wanted, and didn’t, to ask how many was too many. Before he could, Dugan said, “But not before they set the safehouse on fire with wild RPG hits. It smoldered for a little while first. Once it got going, we couldn’t fight it. Not least because it was on the outside of the structure.” He looked over at Zack invisibly in the dark. “You weren’t even out that long. Maybe six or eight minutes total.”
Zack sat wordless, feeling the weight of the darkness crushing in on him. It was a weird kind of virtual isolation. Disembodied voices floating around him. And God knew what the hell else out was there in the dark, behind the voices. He realized something else was bothering him. Something beyond the huge slate of current events that would bother anyone, except maybe a Viking running amok. Finally it came to him. He wet his dry lips and cleared his throat.
“How exactly did the State diplomatic security guy die?”
He felt the silence staring back at him. It was just on the verge of stretching out too long, when Bob finally answered.
“He stopped breathing sometime during the firefight.” That answer sat out there for a few seconds while the silence crept back in. Bob cleared his throat. “I didn’t hear the alarm on the EKG at first. Over the noise of the battle. When I did, I left my position and pumped his chest, and then got the defib kit on him.”
Zack nodded in the dark. “And?”
“It didn’t work,” Dugan answered for him. “He didn’t revive. And Bob couldn’t sit there doing CPR all day. We were in the middle of a gunfight.”
Zack considered this. It occurred to him that Dugan sounded a little defensive. He wasn’t sure.
Then Baxter spoke up, tentatively. “I think that was also right before we realized the building was on fire. When Dugan and Bob decided we had to abandon the house.”
Zack tried to clock Baxter’s tone with that. But Bob spoke first. He sounded not defensive, but… emotional?
“I don’t know. Maybe we could have revived him…” he said, trailing off. “Maybe if we’d taken him along, he would have made it…”
Zack didn’t want to pile in on Maximum Bob, who he knew was a profoundly good man. But he couldn’t stop himself from saying, “We could have at least taken his body.” He didn’t need to add that they never left people behind. Dead or alive.
“Look,” Dugan said. Zack could hear him stand up. “We had two casualties – out of five personnel. We were in danger of being overrun. The fucking place was coming down around our ears. The building was on fire. Hell, the whole town was an inferno. We had to bug out.” Defensive again. Something about his tone said the one he needed most to convince was… himself.
Then Zack said something else he might have better left out. Had he not been so spooked, exhausted, and generally frazzled, he probably would have – would have had the self-control and good sense not to say it. “But you managed to go back for supplies.” He had to bite his tongue after this, to stop himself adding that they didn’t even know for sure that the man was dead.
They could hear Dugan stalk over to the truck. “We make the tactical decisions,” he said, his voice flat and emotionless now. “Especially since we were the ones conscious at the time. It’s done.”
Zack took a deep breath. He realized Dugan was right. And even if he wasn’t, the last thing they needed was fault lines forming in the structure of their group. For all they knew, theirs was the last structure going, the last effective human organization anywhere in Somaliland. Anyway, it was all they had. And they’d damn well better keep it together if they were going to make it to Djibouti alive. Or even out of this haunted fucking forest. Zack pulled his blanket around him and curled up.
Before drifting off into a ragged sleep, he thought about his mother and father, only a few hundred miles from there, on the ranch in Kenya where they had semi-retired. He resolved to try and call them in the morning. He thought about them as he drifted off into sweet semi-oblivion. But later, in his dreams, faceless demons with defibrillators chased him through the black forest. They moved silently, neither speaking nor making a rustle, the only sound the rubbing of their defib pads in front of them.
They were trying to keep Zack alive.
So that Africa could torture him, forever.
Burning In
He awoke with a convulsion. Someone had nudged him with a boot toe. A voice hissed, “Get up. Get ready to move.”
It was Dugan. There was a fair bit of moonlight now, maybe also some starlight, filtering down through the trees, and Zack could make out Dugan’s face in it. His head was disfigured, the wrong shape. As Zack slowly came awake, he realized the SEAL was wearing his night vision goggles, which jutted out of his forehead. He was also holding his rifle ready. Zack looked around the clearing, and could see Bob shaking Baxter awake in the moon glow.
He checked his watch. He’d barely been asleep an hour.
Then he sensed something else. The drone of an engine.
He stood and blew into his free hand. It had gotten cold in the night. And his wounded arm was very stiff. Also, his headache was back, with a vengeance. He’d been half aware of it in his sleep, moving in and out across the edge of consciousness. Now he thought about going for the med ruck for more painkillers. But he didn’t dare. The engine noise was growing louder. Though he still couldn’t place it. Now, though, he at least recognized that it was overhead.
“It’s a C-130, or variant,” Dugan said, clocking it from the engine noise. Zack knew he was right – he now recognized the distinctive sound of four turbofans. “And it’s headed for Hargeisa.”
Bob threw open the back window on the truck and dug around until he came out with something. When he started speaking into it, Zack realized it was one of the hand-held radios. “Unidentified 130 flight overhead, this is an OGA element on the ground, right in your flight path. How copy?” He let off the transmit bar and waited. Nothing came back.
“There,” Dugan said, pointing through the sparse tree canopy to the north. The others followed his finger and were able to make out, not the aircraft, but a small white blob, growing larger, then another, and another. “Parachutes. It’s a combat drop.”
Bob straightened up. “And the drop zone looks to be just north of here.” He threw his radio back in the truck, then followed behind it. “Get in. Everybody saddle up.” In thirty seconds they and all their gear (they hoped) were ba
ck in the womb of the truck. Dugan gunned the engine, and they started rumbling over foliage toward the road.
“Who do you think it is?” Zack asked.
Bob said, “Maybe 75th Rangers, or the 86th. Any airborne unit based at Lemonnier, or passing through.”
“They must be jumping in to secure Hargeisa,” Zack said, almost smiling. “Stability and peacekeeping ops.”
“Kick-ass,” Baxter said, pumping his fist. “Come on, airborne! Now that’s a rescue. A whole company of Rangers, jumping right in…”
Dugan wrestled the wheel. “A little far out of town to jump in.”
Zack thought about it. “Marching in? Rendezvousing with ground transport, maybe?”
“We’ll find out either way,” Bob said, reaching into the glove compartment and pulling out a CIP, a combat identification panel, with a bright IR signature on the front. This one also had magnets sewn into the back. Bob leaned out the window of the bouncing vehicle and slapped it on the hood. This, he hoped, would keep the airborne guys from lighting them up.
In just a few more seconds they rumbled over the shoulder and back onto the road, turned, and accelerated north. Dugan and Bob spotted for the descending parachute canopies by sticking their heads out the windows. At this point, the turboprop engine noise could be heard passing almost directly overhead. The plane itself was blacked out and invisible. Dugan stopped the vehicle, and he and Bob piled out.
“Stay put,” Dugan said to the other two.
Bob grabbed the panel and draped it over his arm.
Zack rolled down his window and stuck his head out, just so he could get some sense of what was going on. He heard something approaching, closing with him and getting louder, couldn’t make ou—
BLAMMM!!!
Something big and heavy whumped into the ground not 15 meters from where he sat, and bounced once. Only after it hit did he hear and recognize the screaming that had preceded it.
“What the fuck…?” Dugan hissed, he and Bob fanning out and converging on the point of impact. Zack’s eyes bored holes in the darkness trying to make out what was on the ground.
“Oh, Jesus,” Bob said, turning away.
Another impact, fainter, sounded between the treeline and the highway, maybe 40 meters south of them. It was roughly along the flight vector of the plane. And it hit like it had been shot at the ground by some aerial gun firing beanbag chairs.
“Jesus Christ, they’re burning in…” Dugan said, turning again. He meant their chutes weren’t opening.
Then Zack looked up and behind them, and had to search for his voice. “Dugan… Bob…” The two turned to face him, and then followed his line of sight, which was up and to the south.
Now fire was falling out of the sky.
Zack had to watch it for a few seconds before he worked out what it was. They were burning and twisting parachute canopies, two of them, and then a third, and a fourth. They floated at first, like Chinese lanterns, then quickly picked up speed as the nylon burned away to ribbons. And then more screams reached them across the night air, accelerating as the screamers hurtled toward the earth.
Instinctively, Dugan turned to observe in the direction everyone else wasn’t, which was north up the road. He could see a handful of intact canopies and jumpers settling onto the ground, one after another, between 100 and 300 meters off. He made a tactical decision, dividing the team into survivable units.
“Bob. Stay with the truck and Baxter. Zack, you’re on me.”
It didn’t even occur to Zack to argue. He just got his pistol into his right hand, got out, and took off at a trot behind Dugan. They reached the first paratrooper in seconds, a few meters off the road. He was on the ground, tangled up in his chute, and struggling with it. Dugan let his rifle fall on its sling, drew his knife, and moved to help.
“No!” Zack shouted, hooking Dugan’s elbow with his gun hand.
“Lemme go,” Dugan said, pulling his arm free.
“Look!”
Dugan followed the ray of Zack’s pointed weapon, level with the ground and further north, but closer to the treeline. One of the paratroopers had gotten clear of his chute and was moving toward them. He was clear of it, but not free – it dragged on its lines behind him, twisting and catching on the ground. Zack couldn’t see the man’s face, only his movement. But that told him enough. Through his NVGs, Dugan could make out more. He brought his rifle back up and stared over the top of it, as the lurching figure dragged his canopy toward them, arms outstretched toward them.
“Fucking shit…” Dugan said.
Zack stood where he was, waiting to be told what to do.
Then he screamed and kicked. Something had grabbed his legs, both of them together, stealing his balance, and he tipped over heavily. He reached out to break his fall, but then bounced onto his left arm, and screamed in agony as the hard road surface pummeled it.
“Fucking fuck!” he spat, suddenly tangled in parachute nylon – and in limbs. The fouled paratrooper had crawled forward to Zack’s feet and pulled him down. Now it was all over him, clawing and grabbing, grunting and biting – but the parachute lay between the two of them like a body condom. Zack was too shocked and hurt and scared to speak, but just hissed and fought off the arms that embraced him while he tried to kick and crab crawl away. He heard an impact, and some grunting, and then a louder impact, and the body that was on him flew off. With the weight gone, he pulled and scrabbled at the slick material of the chute, still trying to scurry away. Two shots rang out, then two more, then more hands were on him through the nylon.
“No – nooo—” Zack grunted, flailing blindly.
“Zack, easy, calm the fuck down.” It was Dugan. He pulled the rest of the chute off him and flung it away, then grabbed Zack’s good arm and hauled him up. Zack lurched to his feet, head swimming from the fear and the pain. He couldn’t get his breath. He looked down, and nearly at his feet was a fully kitted out airborne Ranger in a jumpsuit, pants bloused into boots, big chest ruck in front of him, rifle strapped to his side, pouches stuffed with magazines, tactical helmet with radio mic and goggles on top. He was totally squared away – except for two bullet holes in a sore-covered and peeling face. His open eyes were rheumy and ulcerated. He was sick.
And now dead.
Four more shots rang out and Zack’s head snapped level in time to see the one with the trailing chute fall to his knees, then pitch over. There were two more beyond that one, in various states of struggling with their chutes and lines. Zack looked to Dugan, who checked his fire and lowered his rifle. They really didn’t know the state of the other two. And, very clearly, Dugan had had his fill of murdering U.S. Army Rangers today.
A single sharp wolf whistle sounded behind them. They both spun to face the truck. Bob stood beside it. He looked at them, then up and away to the south, tossing his head. Behind him, in the distance, there was now a brighter fire in the sky. It was the C-130, visible for the first time due to great licks of twisting flame trailing from its open cargo ramp in the rear. Gouts of thick black smoke billowed behind it and obscured the stars, and the plane was already moving at an angle, both down and to the side, and was tipping over further by the second. By the time it went in, out of sight beyond the horizon, Dugan and Zack were back at the Tahoe. The sound of the crash arrived a few seconds later. They and Bob climbed in wordlessly. Nor did Baxter speak.
Dugan turned the motor over and put it in gear.
“Fuck holing up for the night,” he said, driving the vehicle forward and scanning ahead through his night vision goggles.
As they drove in silence through the black heart of the night, Dugan and Bob sat there trying to picture, and Zack knew they were trying to picture, what an outbreak and battle in the close quarters of a C-130 cabin would be like. Dozens of young men, closer than brothers, sickening and turning on one another, while the healthy – and of this there could be no doubt – tried to help them.
And all of them falling together to the cold earth.
<
br /> PART THREE
“My punishment is greater than I can bear.”
– Genesis, 4.13
No Sleep ’Til Brooklyn
They didn’t stop again except to pour fuel in the tank. They just drove on and on. Anything, or anyone, on the road they just blasted by at the highest speed possible. They also didn’t speak much, except to hail the TOC at Lemonnier a few times more. First the TOC blew them off. Then it stopped responding to their hails altogether.
While Dugan drove, hunched over the wheel, Bob flew the Predator, with the GCS, which he had dragged up front and wedged in the passenger side on his lap. Its excellent night vision and thermal optics were a huge help in making sense of the black maze of the landscape, and allowed them to see threats before they appeared. In retrospect, they decided the UAV made the difference between getting up this highway safely, and getting jammed up and killed or infected.
Bob quietly called out sitreps to Dugan beside him: “Two Victors, front to back, both in the right lane… two foot mobiles in the left.” Dugan flashed the lights and blatted the horn on approach. When the two figures didn’t get off the road, but instead moved toward them, Dugan slowed and swerved to miss them. But only just barely. And mainly because of the risk of damage to the truck.
Something was hardening inside all of them.
In the back, belatedly, Zack tried to get some news on his phone. There probably wasn’t a cell tower within 50 miles anyway, but if there was it was out now. His data throughput via satellite was terrible, but he got some headlines. On the front page of The New York Times was a small block in the bottom right: “African Mystery Illness Spreads: Cases reported in Cape Town, Delhi, and Qatar.” It was much smaller and lower down than the big headline that read “UK Bombings: Additional plots foiled, but Britain remains locked down.” He clicked on the outbreak headline for five minutes before giving up. He read it aloud to the team. Nobody said anything.
Arisen : Genesis Page 12
