by Mark Wandrey
The powerful engines of the C-17 propelled them above the raging storm and into clear skies. The sun was past its zenith, throwing gleaming streamers of light that cast pearly opalescence across the tumbled field of clouds as far as visibility allowed. It was an incredibly calming scene and Andrew found himself sighing in relief. After the wild takeoff, it was strangely calm.
“How’s our other birds?” Andrew asked Wade, their radar operator.
The man was regarding the radar and its cryptic displays. Andrew would have doubted the average man, with no experience on military navigation gear, to be able to make heads or tails of it. But Wade was no ordinary man.
“They’re both circling and waiting for us,” Wade said.
“It’s called orbiting in our lingo,” Andrew explained.
“Gotcha, orbiting then.” Not only was he a quick study, he didn’t resist or protest when given corrected information. After their rocky start, Andrew was getting to like the man.
“They’re on the radio,” Chris announced and flipped the cabins headset control.
“23 Poppa here, glad you could join us 44 Foxtrot.”
“Thanks, Poppa.”
“41 Indigo, what’s the sitrep down on the deck?”
Andrew turned to the general who had a high gain military radio and was listening. He’d been quietly talking since they’d successfully taken off.
“Fort Hood has fallen,” he announced. Andrew relayed the information. “Our losses were light, considering. When that Apache went down I thought we’d lost it. If it wasn’t for the rapid response teams, we would have been dead meat.”
“Who was in that Stryker that held the fence while the others evaced on the last Chinook.”
“That was Colonel Pendleton and his men,” General Rose said.
They all turned at a sob from the doorway. Kathy Clifford stood at the cockpit door, hands to her mouth and tears forming in her eyes. The general proved particularly quick for a man over sixty. He caught her before she hit the deck. He called to the rear of the upper deck first class area, and a nurse came running up. Andrew turned back to his primary responsibility.
“All other transports, what’s your situation?” Andrew asked.
They all reported in good condition and nearly full fuel tanks. They had a range of almost 6,500 miles if they wanted. Just in range of Tokyo. Easily in range of London, Madrid, or Frankfurt. It was only a little over 1,000 miles to LAX. “Okay, let’s set course for LAX. You have the navigational data already stored. Look for Waypoint 1, that’s just north of El Paso, just south of White Sands. That’s our first hold point while we wait for an update from the helicopters.
They all acknowledged the orders while Chris punched in the navigational data and nodded that it was set.
“I know we seem safe and everything up here, above the clouds, above the mayhem. But stay alert. We don’t know what’s going on in the world down there.
* * *
Tobey barely took his eyes from the gunsights as the C-17 roared over not a hundred feet above his hear. The big Browning .50-caliber thumped away, every bullet killed half a dozen of the zombies who never once slowed their approach. They waded through the fire with a crazy zeal that made the most wild-eyed jihadi look calm and collected.
When the Apache had gone down he hadn’t hesitated. They were in route to the rally point with the other Strykers where a Chinook would take them away. The driver glanced over at him and he’d nodded. The eight huge wheels of the Stryker threw up massive gouts of mud as it spun about and raced down the runway infield at over 60 miles per hour. They’d skidded to a stop and the four operators piled out, almost jumping and falling as they scrambled to ready weapons. They all knew the last plane was preparing to take off. And if the runway was overrun before it could get airborne then that was it. And Tobey knew Kathy was on that plane, along with hundreds of civilian dependents of all the soldiers who fought to protect them. So they stayed, and fought.
“All the transports are away,” his sergeant yelled.
“Yeah, and the choppers,” another man said. “Fuck!”
“We knew what we were signing up for,” said another.
“Everyone aboard,” Tobey yelled.
“Why bother Colonel?” the last man wondered. He dropped a spent mag and fitted a full one.
“Because we’re not fucking dead yet, that’s why.”
“So what’s the op now?” the sergeant asked. They all headed for the Stryker’s open door. In the intermediate distance the zombies were sprinting towards them.
“For now?” Tobey asked as the last of them climbed in and the steel door was buttoned closed. The first zombies threw themselves ineffectively against the hardened steel structure of the armored vehicle. “For now, we survive.”
He tapped the driver on his helmet and pointed at the breech in the fence, then stuck his head back out of the turret hatch. A zombie was climbing up the side, white hot rage etched into the man’s face like it was laser cut. Hands curled into claws and reached for him. Tobey drew his personal UCP .45 ACP and blew the top of the thing’s head off. “Move out!” he yelled as he spun the turret and began firing, cutting a path for them to follow into the storm.
* * *
General Rose had been half dozing as he listened to the sporadic reports from the helicopters and Ospreys that ranged out ahead of them between Fort Hood and Los Angeles. They covered as many airfields as they could in that distance with low flyovers when it was deemed worthwhile. The C-17s had more than enough fuel to reach the coast, but the Osprey were in the redline and the Chinooks not much better. The gunships were using droptanks and minimal armaments. They had roughly the same range as the Chinooks.
An hour ago an Osprey had reported it was landing at a promising location, Truth or Consequences Municipal Airport, just north of the town by the same name in New Mexico. It was a resort town that traded in tourism to the Elephant Butte Reservoir. They’d never been heard from again. Everyone listened as an Apache entered the area. It was a longbow variant, with special surveillance cameras mounted on a boom sticking out from the top of the rotors.
“Longbow seven reporting,” the radio said.
“Go ahead Longbow, this is Brass Hat,” the general said.
“I have the Osprey. It landed safely.”
“Sitrep?”
“Evaluating,” the pilot said, “wait one.” They were currently circling El Paso as the rest of their airborne convoy continued west. “I have numerous people on foot around the bird. They do not appear to be infected. A semi truck is being used to offload the Osprey of all armaments.”
“What’s the inventory of that bird?” General Rose asked. His aid, always only a few feet away, stepped forward and handed the General a tablet computer, the Osprey preselected. The General made a face. “Any sign of the crew, Longbow Seven?”
“Negative sir. The Osprey appears fine, none of the personnel in sight are in uniform.” There was a pause. “They are finishing their offload. I just got a heat plume from the semi.”
“Understood, Longbow,” the General said. The muscles in his jaw worked for a second.
Splash the bird and the truck. I say again, splash the bird and the truck.”
“Acknowledged, Brass Hat, splash the Osprey and the truck.”
Andrew knew that miles away the Apache would be rising above the ground level where it had hidden while using its camera to observe the scene. Its nose mounted M-230 30mm chain gun could fire only six hundred rounds per minute. But ten 30mm bullets per second, each with enough kinetic energy to blow a modern car in half was a real hell storm.
“Firing,” the pilot said, and they could hear the distinctive chatter of the gun. “The aircraft is tango foxtrot. The truck is running, switching to missiles.
“Acknowledged, Longbow Sev
en, proceed to next objective.”
“What was on the Osprey?” Wade asked.
“Communications gear, anti-tank rockets, small arms and ammo. We’re going to sorely miss that.”
“But why blow it up? You might have just killed the pilots?”
“They were probably already dead,” the General said. “We can’t take the risk of that kind of ordinance falling into the hands of someone who’d hijack a military combat vehicle.” Andrew nodded, he understood the logic. But to Wade and Chris, it seemed like a cold, bloody, heartless act. “And we don’t have the time to land troops to retake it.”
They orbited around El Paso,whose airport had already been determined to be run by the zombies, and waited for the helicopters to make the next leg. An hour later the three C-17 flew on towards Tucson as helicopters checked it out, as well as Phoenix.
Phoenix was a loss, but Tucson airport was mostly intact. The perimeter fence was solid and there were a couple dozen civilians and police holding it. Several of the Chinooks with capacity landed troops who reinforced while others landed and the thirsty gunships all came in for fuel, followed by the remainder of the Chinooks and the lone surviving Osprey.
The C-17s just orbited, they hadn’t even used a quarter of their fuel, and the Tucson airport wasn’t really suitable for them. Over the next hour the entire fleet of helicopters landed and refueled. The ground personnel there helped, just grateful to be relieved. When the Army birds took off again they took all the civilians along.
With the helicopters safely refueled their ability to reach Los Angeles was no longer a problem, and the C-17s didn’t have to wait for them. General Rose gave the order for them to proceed to destination. It was an hour later when Wade gave a chagrined laugh.
“What is it with you and engines?” he asked Andrew.
“What’s wrong?”
“Number two is running hot.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Andrew said and examined the controls. Engine #2, inboard port side, was noticeably hotter than the other three.
“How bad by the book?” Andrew asked.
“About 250 degrees below automatic shutdown, four hundred degrees below danger level. It’s been increasing at a rate of five degrees a minute.”
Andrew did the math in his head, fifty minutes until auto shutdown. If he overrode that, another thirty until he risked wasting the engine. And that assumed it didn’t get any worse. He glanced back at the general.
“It’s your plane, Lieutenant,” that man said, “but I don’t like walking. Or crashing.”
“Shut down #3,” Andrew said, and Wade went through the inflight shutdown. The RPM gauge showed the engine spinning down and the ‘Power Loss’ light came on over the engine’s status readout. Immediately the autopilot increased the elevator angle as their speed began to decrease.
“23 Poppa, what’s going on, Foxtrot?”
“We’ve had an engine overheat,” Andrew said to the other plane.
“Want us to slow down?”
“There’s no reason for that. You and Indigo proceed to Los Angeles. Relay any radio contact, if you get it?”
“Affirmative, Foxtrot. Good luck.”
All told they lost forty-two miles per hour. The other two planes quickly began to leave them behind. Andrew watched through the windscreen as they began to grow steadily smaller. In half an hour they were just a dot on the radar.
“I’m taking us down a few thousand,” Andrew told them, “to compensate for the lost engine.”
“There are mountains ahead,” Chris reminded him.
“We’re still at 28,000 feet,” Andrew said.
The Laguna Mountain range only averaged 6,000 feet, so navigating it would be no problem. But they weren’t very far from the coast, so the transports would begin their descent before reaching the mountains. More than thirty miles ahead, 23 Poppa, in the lead, began to clear the mountains and promptly started getting transmissions on military channels. They created a line of sight relay and informed 44 Foxtrot.
“We’ve got relayed coms from the coast,” Chris said excitedly.
“Let’s hear it,” General Rose said.
“CSG 8, commander actual,” the voice came through with a small amount of static. “Rear Admiral Lance Tomlinson.”
“III Corps actual, Major General Leon Rose,” he replied, “good to know we’re not the only operating military unit.”
“General Rose, good to hear you as well. We have a few Guard units here, but you’re the first regular Army to turn up.”
“Who’s ranking officer there?”
“As of now, you are. Vice Admiral Prescott was in route to meet up with the Ford but his chopper went down off the Oregon coast. We think one of the crew turned.”
Rose cursed off the radio. Andrew could tell he’d been hoping for someone of a higher rank. That a two-star general was the senior officer spoke volumes.
“Civilian leadership?”
“Nothing right now, General. We’ve been trying to establish a link with the Pentagon or any of the fallback bunkers, but no joy.”
“Understood. I have about five hundred soldiers and seven hundred dependents en route. Can you have LAX prepare for our landing?”
“No possible, general. We lost LAX sixteen hours ago. Combination of infected civilian aircraft and perimeter failure. Guard units did a bangup job, but ran low on consumables. We evacuated them.”
“Alternative landing site?”
“We have two Marine Amphibs here, the Essex and the Malkin, plus three Nimitz class, including my George Washington. The Ford is just tying up. Should be plenty of room.”
“What about land side?”
“General, we’re entirely ocean based at this point. I’m sure you’re aware of how this plague has spread. You’re out of Hood, right?”
“Evacuated eight hours ago. But we need a ground base.”
“General, the biggest helo you will fit on any of these platforms. We even have room on the cruisers and destroyers.”
“You don’t understand, Admiral. I have three, repeat three C-17s loaded with passengers and consumables, including all the civilian dependents on the bird I’m talking from.”
“Well, shit,” the Admiral said.
Chapter 29
Tuesday, April 25
Evening
Andrew listened to the flag officers discuss options. The Marine senior commander, Brigadier General Coleman, was brought into the discussion. It was agreed that they could secure a landing site with the personnel and assets on hand, but not in the time remaining. The three C-17s had no more than five hours of flight time remaining. While the discussion went on, the first two arrived over the Los Angeles basin and began orbiting. Andrew’s plane cleared the Laguna Mountains and began to descend.
He’d flown into LAX many times, even flew a fighter there once years ago. In the late afternoon you could see the lights of LA from a hundred miles away. The complete lack of those lights was disturbing.
“How much of the country still has power?” Chris wondered.
“No way to tell,” the General said during a lull in their discussion. “Andrew, what’s the probable outcome of an ocean landing?” Andrew considered it for a moment.
“Well, you’d lose all the cargo on the other two, of course. These planes are a lot more robust than civilian airliners. But they aren’t designed to stay afloat for more than a few minutes. Ours is the most heavily loaded. We have hundreds of people sitting on the floor down there. We’d have dozens of critical injuries, maybe hundreds. People would be flying around down there like beans in a can kicked down a hill.”
“Not an appealing mental image.”
“It wasn’t meant to be, Sir. If this crate had a structural failure, it would probably go down in less than a minute.”
“We only have fifty or so life preservers on board,” Wade chimed in. “It’s not configured for passengers. Even when it is, normally it only carries 177 troops in seats.”
>
“What about shooting our way out of LAX or San Diego?” the General asked.
“Possible,” Andrew said. “We could land right through the crazy fuckers. They won’t pose a huge threat at that point, even if we ingest a few. The problem is the numbers. The Admiral said there were thousands on the field. That suggests the perimeter is shot. It’s going to be damned hard to get them off us after we land, even if Chinooks are standing by. I don’t even know if we’ll have enough time, the helicopters are hours behind us. The Marines might have enough if they got in the air fast, but still…”
“After they rescued all these civilians, they’d have to move them off shore then come back for the soldiers,” the General said. Andrew gave a sardonic thumbs up. “Come on Lieutenant, find us a way out of this.” They flew on for a few more minutes as the general conferred with his equals on the carriers while Andrew thought.
“Wade, what’s the minimum realistic landing distance for these?”
“About 1,500 feet,” Wade said almost immediately.
“How long is a Nimitz class carrier?”
The General’s head came up. “Oh, you must be kidding me.”
“Do you have a better idea?” the general asked the admiral on the George Washington. Needless to say, he thought they were crazy too, but gave them the data. The flight deck was 1,092 feet long.
“Not long enough,” Wade said.
“Aren’t there three supercarriers there?” Andrew asked.
* * *
Two hours later the three C-17s were circling the area of the flotilla, as it had been dubbed, at only 5,000 feet. Everyone was staring in disbelief at the thousands of boats and ships that had gathered only a mile off shore from San Diego harbor. The Marine carriers were dwarfed by some of the container ships, tankers, and one Supermax cruise liner. But all were eclipsed by the three supercarriers.
The first challenge the naval staff faced was extracting the carriers from the flotilla. No thought had been given to keeping their mobility in the midst of the greatest seaborne evacuation in history. All the carriers were surrounded by every matter of ocean craft, and it could have taken hours to get them clear. That much time wasn’t available. So two destroyers from each Carrier Strike Group maneuvered in front of their carriers and began pushing. Loudspeakers were used as a warning. Most of the boats and ships moved out of the way. Some had to be towed. A few were pushed.
