Brendan shrugged again. “The intel community…” he said.
Zack finished for him. “…is a small one.” Now Zack looked around him at the thick forest that surrounded them, dappled with early morning light. And he exhaled, as if he had been holding his breath for a long time, and slumped down into the chair.
“Glad to be here?”
Zack shook his head. “You can have no idea.” He paused, listening to the faint chirping sounds of the forest waking up, and breathing the clean air. Feeling alive again, for the first time in a very long time. “Listen,” he said. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
“Yes,” Brendan said. “And you needed to tell me alone. I got that.”
Zack blinked into the patches of sunlight falling on the tower. “I think you may have an informer in your camp. Someone talking to Godane.”
“Impossible,” Brendan said. He said it calmly, as if he knew this to be fact – not defensively, as if he were asserting it. “It’s got to be something else.”
“Maybe so. But Godane has known things about your movements in advance – things I can’t account for any other way.”
Brendan smiled. “The old ‘argument from personal incredulity’.”
Now Zack smiled. He got it. Brendan was saying that Zack’s inability to imagine anything else didn’t mean there wasn’t something else. And the line also told him something else: that this was a very smart young man.
“There could be another explanation,” Zack said. “But I’m telling you it’s something. He knew you were going to Lemonnier for weapons. And he knew you were set up to ambush his assault force. And that information did not come via the Predator. I know because Baxter flies it.”
Brendan shrugged. “Maybe he’s got another drone. Would he make a point of telling you if he did?”
“No.”
“Maybe he’s got scouts out scouring the ground. Maybe he’s also got a U.S. radio with our encryption protocols keyed in. What do these things have in common?”
Zack sighed. “He wouldn’t tell me about it.”
“Exactly.”
Zack held Brendan’s gaze for a few seconds, each of them feeling more comfortable now. Both men were thinking the same thing: that they’d found, if not an ally, at least a like mind or kindred spirit. Both were educated. Both were calm and methodical. They felt like they understood each other – including, perhaps, their failings.
Zack acted on this growing intimacy. He said, “At some times more than others? You meant Jake. Your team sergeant.”
Brendan shrugged. “That relationship is always a complex one.”
“He’s a lot older than you.”
“Among other differences.”
“Such as?”
Brendan looked out at the thick forest. “Well, for starters, I probably would have had us work harder to avoid this war with Godane.”
Zack nodded. “Why does Jake hate him so much?”
Brendan looked back in and down. “Aside from the bombings, the beheadings, the shopping mall shooting rampage? That kind of thing?”
“Yeah. Aside from that.”
“Al-Sîf almost certainly killed one of his close friends. I should say ‘executed’.”
Zack squinted back into memory. “That expensive rifle al-Sîf carries.”
Brendan nodded. Then his expression softened. “But, as usual, Jake also has some very good points. We can’t just sit here at the mercy of Godane, and whatever attacks he wants to throw at us. Peaceful coexistence may just not be possible now.”
Zack nodded. “I suppose not. The die was cast when our Predator overflew you. I wish Baxter had picked another route.”
“Or kept what he saw to himself.”
Zack made a pained expression, but kept his tongue. He didn’t think it would help explaining this one, either.
Brendan caught this look, and softened. “He seems like a good kid.”
“He’s excellent,” Zack said. “He was top five percent of his class at the Farm. And his language concentration was Russian, which is no picnic. Mainly, he’s loyal and reliable, even when things get bad. Especially then.”
Brendan smiled and said, “Druz’ja poznajutsja v bedé.”
Zack shook his head. Russian wasn’t one of his six languages.
“‘You know your friends when trouble comes’.”
Zack nodded. He had that right. He switched back to current events. “Unavoidable or not, Godane knows you’re here now. Can you leave? Up stakes?”
Brendan shrugged. “I think it’s an option. But Jake’s much fonder of the one where we kill Godane, kill al-Sîf, and kill all their guys. Then put our feet up on their corpses and have a drink.”
Zack took that on board. “Even with the damage you’ve inflicted… you’re still outgunned about seventy to one.”
Brendan smiled. “I have no doubt Jake thinks he can find a way. We’re all about force multipliers here.”
“You could easily get half your team wiped out trying. Or all of it.”
“I think Jake would prefer that to any kind of accord, or compromise.”
Zack shook his head. “There’s no question Godane’s a monster. But you don’t have to go out and slay every monster in the forest.”
Brendan looked down at the older man, his eyes clear. “Jake won’t even consider making peace with Godane.”
He turned to face the forest again.
“And I’m not sure what’ll happen if I order him to.”
* * *
Now Zack laughed, and shook his head.
“What’s so funny?”
“What’s funny is that Godane is exactly the same, in his way. He has this mix of existential terror and pure hatred for you guys. I tried to convince him that he wouldn’t come out well in a shooting war with you. He wouldn’t listen. He wants to see you all of you dead and in hell.”
Brendan said, “Well, here we sit. And we might soon be dead and in hell.”
Zack snorted. “As opposed to alive and in hell.” But then his expression grew serious again. “What I guess I need to understand about this guy…”
“Jake?”
“Yeah. What I need to understand is this: is he as good as he thinks he is?”
Brendan said, “He made it all the way to the end of Delta Selection.” He didn’t have to explain that Delta was the premiere Tier-1 special operations unit in the world – in the history of the world. And that their selection process was the world’s most grueling and selective. Only the top guys in the world made it through that.
Zack squinted. “Okay – so how come he’s not in Delta, then?”
“He was rejected at the final step – the commander’s review board.”
“Why?”
“Only the Delta commander knows for sure. Maybe it was something in his psych eval they didn’t like. Something not quite right or slightly off in his character, that maybe the review board sensed. I don’t know.”
Zack looked up. “Okay, look. The main thing about Godane is that he’s a monster of ego. Everything he does is in thrall to it. That’s why he’s gotten seventy of his people killed – nearly including me. That’s why the war. It’s all about him, and about his control. He says it’s about serving God, but that’s the worst kind of egotism – the kind that claims to be about something bigger, something noble and pure. But it’s a sham. A terrible and very deadly one.”
Brendan looked troubled as he listened to this. It was making him wonder about something very dangerous – about whether in fact Jake’s motivations were as pure as he made out. Was it all really about getting Kate back safely? And about the survival of the team – or maybe the survival of humanity, with what they knew now? Or was this really just all about Jake – him getting the better of Godane, getting revenge on al-Sîf? And about who was going to be king of the Horn of Africa?
Had Jake started to believe his own mythology – or, even worse, was he starting to doubt it? Either way, the man’s intent now
was clear: he wasn’t going to back down. Instead, he wanted to double down.
Rather than giving voice to any of this, Brendan just nodded at Zack’s bandaged fingertips. “Did Godane do that to you?”
“I got off easy.”
“You need to have Elijah take a look at that for you.”
Zack nodded. But then he got up out of the chair and put his hand on Brendan’s arm. He said, “Listen. Everything’s changed now. I understand that we need to get your teammate back. But we also have to get Zulu Zero out of that Stronghold. And we have to get it back to Britain.”
Brendan shook his head. “Even if I thought that was possible… I don’t see it becoming part of our mission tasking.” Britain, he clearly felt, might as well have been the moon. “We’ve got too many other problems right now.”
“That may be,” Zack said. “But the human race has one problem: survival.”
That seemed to bring Brendan up short. He had some thinking to do.
And as he looked at Zack, the man’s expression seemed to be telling him something – something he didn’t know how to articulate. And it was this: that Zack had now found something he could do – some way to help, a chance to expiate his sin, to redeem his failure to stop the pandemic in the first place. A way to try and make it all right again.
“Look,” Zack finally said. “I was the guy assigned to stopping Godane’s bio-attack – the first time. I thought I did. But I let something slip through. All of this. It’s all my fault. I knew it was coming. I knew exactly what it was going to look like. But I missed it anyway. And the whole world went down.”
Brendan looked like he didn’t quite know how to respond to this. But he didn’t have to. His radio chirped up.
“Bren, Jake. TOC. Now.”
From his tone, it was clear that now meant now.
Herd
Camp Price - TOC
By the time Brendan and Zack reached the TOC, word had gotten out and everyone else was converging there.
So much for nap time, Brendan thought.
When they ducked inside, they saw Elijah had already taken control of the Shadow back from Jake. And the others were crowding in around the drone video window, in the thin morning light that bled in through the windows. The whole scene had a dreamy air – probably because most of them were on the verge of hallucinating from sleep deprivation.
Brendan and Jake were closest to the screen. What was on it was not unclear, or open to a lot of interpretation.
“Is this a new herd?” Brendan asked. “Or the same one?”
Elijah hesitated before answering. “Well… sort of both.”
“Explain it to him,” Jake said. He was obviously about as interested in subtleties and waffling now as he was in a hot dick sandwich.
“Okay,” Elijah said, putting the drone on autopilot and turning to face the now-crowded TOC. “You remember that huge herd that was just barely going to miss us?”
Brendan said, “It’s not going to miss us now?”
“No, it’s still going to miss us. But it’s not huge – it’s absolutely staggering.”
“Why are we just finding this out now?”
Elijah looked slightly pained. “I never flew to the back end of it – only from side to side across the front. These things tend to have a proportional shape, kind of oval. Once you map the front, you’ve pretty much got it. Or so I thought.”
“What changed?”
“Jake took it deeper. And it turns out I was only looking at an advance finger sticking out of the front of this thing. What’s behind it is absolutely massive.”
“Define massive.”
“Between ten and twenty times bigger than anything we’ve ever seen before.”
“How many?”
Elijah exhaled. “I’d estimate it at five million. This thing’s going to swamp the whole region. I mean, just about the entire Horn of Africa – Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia, and half of Ethiopia. The only thing it’s going to miss – I think – is the narrow strip of coastal mountain range we’re all sitting in right now. And we’re still probably going to get slapped by its edges.”
The mood in the TOC was plummeting. Brendan said, “Can we weather this? With the height of our walls?”
“I’m not sure,” Elijah said. “But I do know someone who’s going to be asking himself the same question.”
“Godane.”
“Yeah. Because this thing is going to hit the Stronghold dead on.”
All thoughts went to Kate. “Their walls are twice the height of ours. Will they hold?” Brendan looked to Zack and Baxter.
Baxter said, “I’m not sure how to tell you this. But I could have told you this.”
“You knew about the size of the herd?”
“Yes. It’s what I was tracking when I overflew you guys in the first place.”
Elijah shook his head. “That Predator – much longer range and endurance than our Shadow.”
“Yes,” Baxter said. “And I knew. Godane knows. And they’re hard at work building their walls up even more, so they can ride this thing out.”
“That’s his plan?” Jake asked.
“Yeah,” Baxter said. “Get the walls up to twenty-five feet, or thirty if they have time. Then hunker down and keep quiet while it goes by.”
Jake said, “What makes him think twenty-five feet will be enough to save them, if twenty isn’t?”
Zack spoke one syllable. “God.”
Baxter nodded, and added two more. “Allah. Godane thinks he’s God’s chosen one, and that al-Shabaab was spared in order to restart all of humanity – and the faithful only need apply. He has no trouble believing he’ll survive this.”
“Maybe God will spare them,” Elijah said. “But I can tell you that once this herd hits, nobody’s going in or out of that Stronghold, probably not for a good long time.”
“How soon?” Jake asked. “When does it roll in?”
“About a day. Give or take.” Elijah looked back up at Jake. “Whatever plan you’re developing for getting Kate the hell out of there… you’re going to have to execute it fast.”
* * *
After the others had cleared out again – back to their duties, sleep now permanently on hold – Brendan and Zack stayed in the TOC, with Elijah still at the controls.
Zack leaned in closer, squinting at the video window. “Can you zoom in more?” he asked. Elijah obliged. He took a closer look then turned and addressed Brendan. “Look at the clothing on these guys. That’s not local.”
Brendan leaned in close over the display, trying to make out individual items of clothing on what was a roiling mob of animated corpses.
Zack touched his chin. He looked like he was going into analyst mode. He pointed at a particular spot on the screen. “I’d say that’s Egyptian garb, most of it. Maybe even Tunisian, some of it – there.”
Brendan regarded him blankly. “So?”
Zack blinked. “Basically, these guys have crossed most of Africa to get here.”
It was clear Brendan didn’t get the significance of this, if any. Zack took a breath. He realized he couldn’t blame the young officer. It was a long and slightly obscure chain of logic. He motioned toward the door and they both stepped out into the courtyard. When Zack continued, his voice was low.
“Remember how I said Zulu Zero was likely to be critical to a vaccine effort?”
“Yes.”
“Well, what that really means is: a sample of the virus from a very early-stage victim is critical. First would be best of all. But, really, anything from the area around Hargeisa, the point of disease emergence, would probably do. It would almost certainly be from someone who went down at the beginning.”
“Except—” Brendan said, slowly catching on.
“Yeah. Except this gigantic herd of five million dead North Africans is about to flood the zone.”
“And they’ll swamp the whole region,” Brendan said.
“Exactly. Which means good luck finding an early-
stage victim floating in the resulting ocean of later-stage victims. They’ll be like single particles in an extremely diluted solution. Except for—”
Brendan nodded. “Except for the one Godane’s got.”
“Which means that one is about to become absolute gold dust.”
Kwon trotted up. He spoke to Brendan. “Jake wants everyone in the team room, for a planning session. The clock’s ticking.”
“What are we planning for?”
Kwon looked at Brendan like he was stupid. “Getting Kate back.”
Before setting off, Brendan stuck his head back into the TOC. He said to Elijah, “Bring the Shadow back and refuel. Then get it flying south.”
Elijah nodded. “Over the Stronghold.”
“Affirmative. Call me when you’re on station.”
Whatever Jake was planning, they were definitely going to need aerial reconnaissance of the Stronghold now. And, even more than ever, they were going to need to keep track of what the hell Godane was doing.
With Zack and Baxter extracted, they had lost their advance warning system – their one ace in the hole.
* * *
When Brendan and Zack entered the team room, they found Jake, Kwon, and Todd already poring over maps spread out across the table.
Brendan said, “You’re going to try to trade the GCS for Kate.”
Jake nodded. “Yeah.”
Zack said, “You do know Godane will double-cross you, and betray whatever arrangement you make. That’s absolutely guaranteed.” He looked around the room. “And if you go anywhere near that fortress, he’s going to kill every one of you – starting with her, so we all get to watch.”
Jake nodded again. “Yeah. He’s definitely going to double-cross us.”
Todd straightened up. “But we’re going to double-cross his ass first – and worse.”
“Much worse,” Kwon added.
“Okay,” Brendan said, putting both hands down on the map. “But here’s the thing. We’re going to get Zulu Zero while we’re in there.”
Jake didn’t look pleased by this. “And if we can’t? Or if that’s incompatible with getting Kate back?
Brendan exhaled. “No one wants our teammate back more than me. No one has more of an obligation to bring her home safely. But it’s not enough.”
Arisen : Nemesis Page 28
