Gus Higgins found a map of the Nasu region in the State Department digital archives and backtracked the road from the residence until it joined an arterial highway running north to south. Kate Greer pulled up the photos of the Villa from her files and tried to orientate the images they were getting from the live feed to the pictures she threw up on the monitors.
“That’s the portico over the front of the house,” she pointed at an extended part of the roofline and then indicated the section of road leaving the property with her hands. “You can see it clearly here. It’s like a carport over the front doors of the Villa. I guess that’s where the royals met visiting guests and dignitaries, under the cover of the roof in case it rained.”
Van den Berg compared the two images and nodded agreement. “Makes sense, but it doesn’t help much. What we need to know is whether the Emperor is inside that Villa, and, if he is, how close the undead are. Anyone here have a good suggestion how we go about answering those two questions?”
The only sound in the room was the hum of the computers. The air in the confined space had turned stuffy and rank with body odor.
Finally, Gus Higgins spoke.
“I think I’ve got an idea,” he said slowly, still forming the plan in his mind even as he began explaining. “But there’s some risk involved.”
Van den Berg shrugged. “Hit me with it.”
“We normally operate the birds at ten, twelve or fifteen thousand feet, right?”
“Right.”
“Why?”
“For stealth,” Kate joined the conversation. “So the mad fucking murdering bastards we’re hunting have no idea that we have eyes in the sky watching their every move,” she said.
“Exactly,” Higgins smiled significantly. “And we have to fly at altitude because the Reapers are noisy…”
“So?”
“So we get the hot shot pilot at Creech to buzz the building, man. Ask him to make a couple of low-level passes over the roof. If our target man is inside, he’ll hear the bird and know someone or something is searching for him. He’ll show himself.”
“Fuck…” Kate said, genuinely impressed. Van den Berg started to smile.
“I like it.”
“But there’s a catch,” Higgins warned. “From what we’ve seen and read, the infected are attracted by noise. It drives them into a frenzy. They’ll hear the bird too. We’ll be ringing the dinner bell if we don’t get our operators there on time.”
The gruesome possibility gave van den Berg pause. He walked a slow circle of the tiny space with his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his cargo pants and sweat running in a trickle down his back. Finally, he made his decision.
“We’re going for it.”
The room became a sudden hive of frantic activity. Van den Berg dictated the orders for Arvidson to relay to Nevada. Kate went scampering back through the ship’s narrow corridors to fetch the assault team commander. While they waited for the drone to begin its radical course change, the three Intel operators left in the room cracked open cans of Coke.
The soda was warm. It tasted like tar.
“Creech is Roger to go,” Pig Arvidson read from the chat box on his laptop. “Standby for course and altitude change.”
They watched the screens and waited. Kate burst through the door with the assault team commander close behind her.
“Have we missed anything?” there was a hectic flush of color on her cheeks and a glitter of excitement in her eyes. The work was ninety-five percent mundane intelligence, so the moments of action were a highlight for Kate not to be missed.
“The show’s just about to start,” van den Berg said.
*
The live feed from the Reaper changed suddenly and dramatically. The bird seemed to come awake from a long dreary sleep. From his darkened booth at Creech AFB, the pilot threw the drone into a steep agile dive, giving the engine full power so the sound of flight through the air was like the high-pitched whine of an inbound missile. The Reaper swooped like a vulture, skimming the treetops of the surrounding forest before it flattened out. The feed on the screen became nothing but a blur – like the view from the window of a speeding train. The sensor operator in the seat beside the pilot gave up trying to supply a clear picture.
“Incoming,” Gus Higgins felt the rising tension in the room. They all held their breath. The roof of the Imperial Villa flashed by in the blink of an eye and then the image feed lost focus as the drone’s nose pointed to the clouds in a climbing turn.
“Tell the pilot to go again,” van den Berg relayed the message. “I want two more swoops and then a quick climb back to five thousand feet with Z-2 on the lens. If there is anyone hiding inside the house, they’ll come outside to investigate… unless they’re already dead.”
Arvidson typed quickly and sent the message. The operator at Creech confirmed the new order. The Reaper made a graceful wide turn and approached the Villa again, this time from the southwest. It flew just a few hundred feet above the building and this time went into a wide sweeping bank without gaining altitude.
On the monitor Kate Greer thought she caught a suspicious flash of dark movement. It was only on the screen for a second, then gone. Her breath caught in her throat.
“Fuck! I think I just saw something.”
“Where?” van den Berg came instantly on edge.
“Back near the road, just as the Reaper went into its last flat turn. I… I think it might have been a running figure…” There was dread in her voice.
“Shit. Check.”
Everything from the live feed was recorded. Kate lunged for her laptop and began working furiously. Van den Berg kept his eyes on the live feed. He could feel the muscles in his back begin to knot with rising tension.
The Reaper began to bank, the treetops beneath it just a numbing blur of darkness. Then the lawns and gardens came into view a second before the roof flashed past for the third and final time.
Van den Berg snapped his fingers. “Okay! Altitude, man. Put her into a climb. Five thousand feet and Z-2.”
The drone went into a steep climb, flying away from the villa towards the imposing edifice of Mount Nasu as it clawed for altitude. Van den Berg clenched his hands into fists and waited. Slowly the drone began to turn, coming back on station and returning to a tight orbit track. Everyone waited for the lens to re-focus and a clear picture to emerge on the monitor.
It seemed that everyone in the room froze, holding their breath, until suddenly Pig Arvidson thrust his finger at the screen and shouted, “There!”
A man was standing under the cover of the portico so that only his head and shoulders could be seen. Even with full zoom, his face was blurred and made indistinct by deep shadows.
“Is that our package?” Kate sounded unsure. The smudged face didn’t seem to resemble the profile photo she had shown the operators.
“I don’t think so,” van den Berg leaned so close to the screen that his face became painted by its eerie glow. “But it might be the person who made the emergency radio call. Like a personal assistant, maybe.”
“Fuck. Do we go for him?”
“Tell Creech to pull back. I want Z-1,” Van den Berg didn’t answer the question. He spun on his heel and shrugged his shoulders at the assault team commander.
“I don’t think he’s our package,” van den Berg spelled it out. “But if he’s the man’s assistant, that might mean the guy we want is inside the building hiding and still alive. I can’t be sure. If the package is dead, you’ll be risking every one of your men’s lives to save some random aide…”
“You better decide quick,” Kate’s voice rose in ominous warning.
Van den berg turned back to the screen and stared in sudden horror. He could now see an area about a kilometer around the Villa. Moving along the road and visible through bald patches of woodland, were running dark shapes, converging on the building.
“Fuck! They have to be undead.”
Gus Higgins slumped back in his ch
air and let his head hang. He could imagine the scene on the ground. He could visualize the undead swarming towards the source of the sudden roaring noise. He pictured the man they had seen under the portico catching sight of the infected and barricading himself in the building.
For three simmering seconds van den Berg and the Delta commander stared at each other. Finally, the assault leader’s eyes turned to stone.
“We go!”
*
The operators scrambled aboard the Black Hawk, and the assault team commander gave the pilot the thumbs up. The rotors reached liftoff speed. Just as the helicopter was about to launch itself into the air, Tony van den Berg came running across the aircraft carrier’s flight deck, his arms pumping and his face wrenched with the agony of the effort. He flung himself at the open door of the Black Hawk and thrust a box the size of an iPad at the team leader.
“Take the Peeping Tom!” he had to shout to make himself heard above the deafening whine of the engine and the thwack of the giant rotors. “It’s locked and loaded.”
The Peeping Tom was the team’s own private nickname for a hand-held monitor that was linked to the drone’s feed, giving the operators a real-time view of everything the Reaper’s camera saw.
The team leader gave van den Berg the ‘thumbs-up’ sign and flashed a devil-may-care smile.
The Black Hawk lifted off the deck and raced away across the ocean.
DALIAN HARBOR
LIAODONG PENINSULA
CHINA
The invasion was executed with China’s typically zealous efficiency, spearheaded by four Yuzhao-class Type 071 amphibious transport dock ships that appeared over the horizon at dawn and took up station off Dalian Harbor. A wave of Harbin Z-9WA helicopters lifted off from the ship’s decks, clattered overhead, then swept towards the coastline, opening fire indiscriminately on the people found wandering the streets around the vast sprawling port. The choppers swept further inland to provide a curtain of covering fire for the thousands of PLA Navy Marine Corps troops and armor that raced ashore on Zubr-class LCAC’s.
The Chinese Navy Marine Corps had been modeled closely on the US Marine Corps in terms of organization, doctrine and tactics. The 164th Marine Brigade stormed the harbor of Dalian and landed three waves of ‘boots and bayonets’ on the ground inside the first hour, while overhead JH-7A Flying Leopard fighter bombers from the 13th Air Regiment based at Qinhuangdao streaked by at the speed of sound, bristling with bombs and missiles that were destined for targets in nearby residential zones.
The invasion plan called for a barricade of barbed wire north east of the industrial hub, stretching eight kilometers from one side of the isthmus to the other, effectively partitioning off Dalian from the rest of mainland China. It was a massive undertaking, coordinated like an elaborate ballet. Engineers worked with frantic efficiency and the sky overhead filled with helicopters, their guns blazing as they pushed further north towards the Jinzhou District, clearing a ‘dead-zone’ between the wire and the approaching infected. High rise buildings and factories beyond the perimeter were callously laid to waste by the fighter-bombers to give troops behind the fortifications a clear field of fire. Wailing sirens and alarms pierced the rumbling ‘crump’ of explosions, and buildings collapsed in great clouds of grey dust and debris. Thousands of terrified civilians caught on the wrong side of the wire fences ran screaming and dazed into the devastated rubble.
Behind the engineers came fast, light armored personnel carriers filled with camouflaged Navy Marines.
Making use of the network of highways that criss-crossed the industrial landscape, and exploiting the efforts of thousands of sweating troops, the first line of barbed wire was installed before midday. By that time, heavily armed Chinese Marines had swarmed into the city streets of Dalian and a second assault wave had been landed further south at historic Lushunkou, known to westerners as Port Arthur. ZBL-08 armored cars, bristling with 30mm cannons patrolled the heavily defended wall of wire, while the Navy Marine Corps force consolidated their positions with sandbagged defensive emplacements.
With the barbed wire barricade in place, the Chinese began fortifying the defensive line. A fleet of heavy-lift choppers transported empty shipping containers from the harbor to the perimeter for use as elevated machine-gun posts while helicopter gunships flew continuous missions beyond the border. Blazing cannon fire lit the smog-polluted sky until darkness fell.
Around the vast industrial hub of Dalian’s port, Marines went street-by-street, building-by-building, searching for signs of infection, armed with guns and flamethrowers.
“The plan is proceeding as expected, Minister,” Colonel Zhang Bingjun stood at the end of a long pier that dipped its finger into the polluted brown water of Dalian Harbor. Much of the land at the water’s edge had been bulldozed and cleared in recent months to make way for new industrial developments. From where he stood he could see bombed residential buildings to the north that had been attacked by the swooping Chinese fighters earlier in the day. Dusk was approaching and the foreshore seemed ominously silent. Out in the harbor, the skyline winked with the lights of the Navy’s flotilla of troop transport ships.
“Resistance?” Yi Dan asked from his Beijing office.
“None,” Colonel Zhang said down the phone line. “The infection has not yet reached the Liaodong Peninsula. We were lucky.”
Yi grunted. The invasion of Dalian had been hastily planned, but with great risk had come great reward.
“Is the harbor secured?”
“Yes,” Colonel Zhang said. “There is still much work to do, but the task will be completed by morning.”
“And the infrastructure? The cranes and the machinery?”
“Undamaged, Minister.”
“Good,” Yi allowed himself a moment of relief. “What about your perimeter?”
“The barbed wire fortifications are in place and are being added to as we speak. In the morning we will begin airlifting more shipping containers for additional watchtowers. APC’s patrol the wire, and my helicopters have cleared a kilometer beyond the fence with their machine guns.”
“And what of the cities to the south of your position?”
“Lushunkou has been captured without incident. There is no infection in the city or its surrounds. The people have been rounded up and are being brought north to work as labor in the shipyards. My engineers will begin building temporary camps to house them in the morning.”
Yi closed his eyes to marshal his thoughts. The next task would be to transport thousands of skilled workers and the tens-of-thousands more laborers Tong Ge would require for the shipbuilding work to commence. There was still so much to do.
“When the infected come, Colonel, they will come like a great wild wave, a million or more strong. Will you be able to hold them for two weeks?” Dalian was just three hundred kilometers from the city of Dandong. Yi knew the infection must be spreading inevitably closer with every passing minute.
“Yes,” Zhang said confidently. “Reinforcements will arrive with the dawn, and we have all the air support I can fit in the sky. You can send your shipbuilders,” the Colonel said gallantly. “Dalian is secure.”
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON D.C.
The Black Hawk flared and landed on the White House lawns, startling unwary staff and attracting the attention of the Washington media who were outside the gates at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, filming live broadcasts to their studios.
They turned their cameras in time to see a broad-shouldered man they didn’t recognize. He wore a dark suit and stood flanked by two Secret Service men, their coat-tails flapping in the rotor wash. The agents led the way to the West Wing, talking into their radios to clear the route.
President Austin was in the Oval Office on a call to the Pentagon when he heard the discrete knock from the outer room. Austin put down the phone and stood. He had shed his suit coat, and stood beside the desk with his shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbow.
The door opened
and Nathan Power entered the room, followed closely by the two Secret Service agents. They stayed by the door, tense and alert, while the President came across the room with his hand extended.
“Nathan Power.”
“Mr. President.”
“Thank you for being available at such short notice.”
The two men shook hands.
The President’s first impression was of a focused, serious man, not overly tall, but filled with a restless energy that seemed to give him a powerful presence. His hair was dark, cut short and neat. His features were too gaunt, and the jaw too heavy to ever be considered handsome. Behind the rugged exterior, his eyes were dark and intelligent.
The President didn’t waste time. “Did the National Security Advisor brief you on the reason for this meeting?”
“Yes, sir,” Power’s gaze was calm and level. His mannerisms, tone and posture all revealed the telltale traces of a career in the military. He stood with a straight back, almost at attention.
“Well?”
“I would be honored, sir.”
The President arched an eyebrow. “You understand exactly what I’m asking of you?”
“I believe I do, Mr. President.”
“Well let’s be sure,” POTUS said. He began to roll down his shirt sleeves and button the cuffs. He had another, more formal meeting, scheduled in ten minutes time. “I want you to get ahead of this spreading virus. I want you to go wherever it is going, and I want useful data that we can use to compile a picture of this thing. I want you on the ground, not getting second hand reports in an air conditioned office. You’ll have to get in harm’s way of this infection to be effective.”
“I understand, sir. Just tell me where you want me to start.”
“Russia,” President Austin said.
Nathan Power’s face showed no change of expression. “Do the Russians know what I will be doing, sir?”
“Yes. I’ve spoken to the Russian President. He has assured me of his government’s full co-operation. They have a team of their own experts assembling, but you’re to keep your observations to yourself. That’s an order. I want you tracking this virus to gather information, not to share it without my direct permission. Understand?”
Dead Storm: The Global Zombie Apocalypse Page 24
