Gnash

by Brian Parker

  “Another thing sir…” the general hesitated. “Sir, we believe that Lieutenant Colonel Colton, the man who was immune to the infection, was killed in the attack.”

  The president held his head in his hands and said, “How am I ever going to explain this to the American people?”

  “I’ve been thinking about this sir,” Ramón Menendez, the new White House Press Secretary, interjected. “It was a terrible tragedy at the refugee camps, yes, but there may be a positive message for the bigger picture that we can use to offset this setback. General Thompson, didn’t you say yesterday that you’ve discovered a way to incapacitate these things?”

  “Yes. The sonic pulse cannon scrambles their brains and they are incapacitated for several minutes. But we only have five of the cannons, all prototypes. We’ve already directed the factory to produce as many of them as they can, but the problem with the pulse cannon is that it only has a five or six minute use period, then it can be between thirty to forty-five minutes to recharge the thing, depending on which prototype model you’re using.”

  “Yeah, but that’s a pretty effective weapon that we’ve been able to use, right?” Ramón pressed.

  “It’s been invaluable,” General Thompson agreed. “Since we discovered that it could be used like that, we’ve been able to employ it successfully all along the lines to stop the massed attacks that have hit us so hard. We even pulled them off the lines and employed them at the overrun camps; that’s how we were able to kill every last one of them before they escaped the wire.”

  “So, while it was a huge military and humanitarian disaster, that’s a psychological victory that we can pass on to our citizens Mr. President,” the Press Secretary said. “Now they know that we’re figuring out ways to beat these guys. Hell, by using this new technology, we’ve been able to ensure that they’re corralled in the city. We’ve finally identified what the virus is…I mean, what Alex-C is, so now we can work on a vaccine. This is all great news that our people need to hear sir.”

  “Ok, I like it. It’s true, it’s tragic and it’s hopeful,” President Holmes said. “Start crafting a speech that conveys that message. I want to broadcast something early this morning. We all need the encouragement. Give it to me straight Pete: How big of a loss is it for us that Colton is dead?”

  The Chairman thought for a few seconds and said, “Sir, our best scientists examined him, took a ton of blood and tissue samples and pretty much poked and prodded the shit out of him, but they couldn’t figure out how the hell he wasn’t infected, or if he was even a carrier of the dormant virus. They have a lot of his tissue and blood samples to work with, and maybe now that Doctor Collins has identified all the components of the virus, he’ll be able to figure out why Colton was immune, but I can’t be sure about that. Bottom line sir, it’s not optimal that he was killed, but given our lack of understanding about this virus, I’m not sure that it will impact us before we wipe the zombies out by military means.”

  “Alright. I want to press the attack as hard as we can to wipe these things out, do you understand me?” the president asked.

  He stared at the general until he said, “Of course sir.”

  Then he turned to his Secretary of Homeland Security, “Rob, are the people even able to see or hear these broadcasts we’ve been sending out? Is the power back on consistently?”

  “Yes sir. We know the major metropolitan areas have power. Our reporting is still spotty, but it’s getting better every day. We instituted a security detail program with the National Guard for all of the power plant workers. New York, LA, Chicago, Boston, Dallas/Fort Worth, Atlanta, the list goes on. The power is slowly being restored to the outlying, more rural areas as well.

  “We’ve successfully put down the outright anarchy that plagued most of the country right after the blast, except for LA, which is still a disaster with all the Hispanic and African American gangs battling for control of the city and the immediate suburbs. And Indianapolis, that one is strange to us. There have been rumors of zombie activity there as well, even though the release of the Alex-C virus was thought to be localized to the Pentagon. We’ve cordoned off the city, but when we send in National Guard units, no one has returned. UAV overflight shows nothing out of the ordinary, except that there are not too many people around.”

  “How secure is that National Guard ring, Rob?” General Thompson asked.

  “Apparently better than the one you put around Washington, general,” the secretary retorted.

  “Gentlemen, don’t start bickering. Do that on your own time,” the president sighed. “Rob, what’s your best guess about Indianapolis. Is it infected or not?”

  “Sir, we have to assume that it is. Like I said, nothing is confirmed, but the lack of activity combined with the total loss of forces points to either infection or some type of extra-governmental organization taking out the National Guard.”

  “Let’s assume that the city is infected,” the president responded. “Pete, do we have any forces that we could shift to assist the ring around the city?”

  “I’ll have to check with my planners sir. I don’t believe that we’ve committed everyone to the Washington defense…” he trailed off. “Sir, as you know, the Brits and Canadians have requested to help out. They can provide us with several thousand troops without involving all of NATO or the UN. Given our staggering losses to personnel, before we figured out how to use the pulse cannons against them,” he said as an aside to the Press Secretary, “I recommend that we accept their help.”

  He remained silent as several members of the Cabinet seated around the briefing table aboard Air Force One protested and vented their frustrations. When the loudest of the group had finally ceased, the president raised his hands, palms out in an effort to quiet everyone. “I’ve given this careful thought and consideration. I was seriously opposed to it as recently as yesterday. However,” he paused as the men and women around the table erupted into objections again.

  “However,” the president continued, “our recent setbacks at the refugee centers and the potential of problems in Indiana have now forced my decision. John, contact Carolynn and have her pass along my decision to the Prime Minister. Pete, have your folks work up a clear cut ROE. The Brits and Canadians will have the authority to kill zombies, but will not have authorizations to fire on American citizens unless they are being directly threatened.”

  “Sir,” Ramón Menendez raised his hand. “Have we determined the legal status of the zombies? I’ve been able to avoid it so far, but the questions keep coming up.”

  “Sir, if I may,” the Chief of Staff queried. Once the president waved him on he said, “The Justice Department’s legal opinion is that these are enemy combatants and we have every right to defend ourselves against them.”

  “Well, there you go. We finally got our legal clearance to wipe these things off the face of the earth,” General Thompson said with a snort of derision. “I’ll have the ROE for you by the time we land in Denver sir. My lawyers have been working on a version of it already in case the UN forced its hand.”

  “Fine, thank you General. I know it’s not going to be a popular decision, but we need all the help we can get. The Brits have stood with us through thick and thin. We saved their asses twice last century and it’s time they repay the favor.

  “Is there anything else? I liked hearing that we’re getting the power grid back online, so give me some more good news.”

  About halfway down the table William “Chip” Bullis raised his hand. “Sir, I have some news for you, but it’s not for everyone’s ears,” he said gesturing towards the lower half of the table where the non-Defense and Intelligence cabinet members sat.

  “Any alibis before Chip gives the secret portion of the brief?” the president waited, “No? Ok, thank you everyone.”

  The president remained seated as the bulk of his staff stood and left for other compartments within the plane. When all but the Homeland Security Secretary and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs ha
d left, the Director of the CIA turned to the president and said, “Sir, we know where the attack originated from.”

  The president failed to hide his smile and said, “I knew there was a reason we kept you around Chip. What have you got?”

  “First off sir, let me admit to you that we missed it. Hell, every intelligence agency in the world has missed it for centuries, possibly even for a millennia.”

  He paused to let that sink in. “My analysts started unraveling the threads of hundreds of seemingly unrelated messages and feeding information into our database during the week in between the Pentagon attack and the missile detonation. Interestingly, references from Alexander’s conquest of Afghanistan and the British occupation of both Afghanistan and Pakistan started getting spit back to the analysts.

  “There were random passages from digitized versions of journals and official histories that spoke of a great secret society in the mountains that controlled everything in the region. In both instances, Alexander and later the Brits tried to find this society and wipe it out so that they could exert their own influences. Nothing worked. Interestingly, though, the Soviets didn’t report encounters this group, which could mean it is either extinct or simply went deeper into hiding.

  “Those ancient leads combined with thousands of instances of modern intelligence sources from years of data on the region. We used radio and telephone interceptions, internet IP address origination points, HUMINT and satellite imagery, just to name a few. All of these items together led us to determine, with 95% accuracy, that the group responsible for this attack was operating from a group of mountains that straddle Afghanistan and Pakistan called the Karakoram Mountain Range. Think Tora Bora, where we almost got UBL in 2001.

  “I received the briefing the night of 23 April and authorized the insertion of a plused-up version of one of our SOG[21] Paramilitary Operations Teams to get eyes on the area,” the CIA Director continued. “I briefed the president in the days following the blast about the mission, but until yesterday my guys had just been doing a lot of mountaineering.

  “Late last night, only a couple hours before we were evacuated for the second time, my SOG team reported that they had indisputable evidence of a cave complex, completely shut off from the outside world. They captured a half-starved, severely beaten boy in the middle of nowhere. Initially, they thought he was insane. He raged on about a complex where the Masters had lived for centuries in their fight against the pale-skinned, beardless infidels.

  “Luckily, the team chief recognized him as a potential informant, so within a few hours of giving him food and water and tending to his wounds, he was coherent enough to tell them how to get back to the complex and even used the 3D map on the computer to help approximate the cave’s entrance, but he refused to go himself.”

  “Sounds like a set-up then, those people have never seen a computer before in their life,” the general stated.

  “True, but they were able to get him to understand the concept of maps and cross-referenced his claims with the U.S. headquarters element still in Afghanistan. The area that the kid indicated was never formally searched due to the fuzzy international border with Pakistan, we played it safe and didn’t go as deep into the mountains as these guys are located,” Chip continued.

  He sighed and said, “All of the boy’s teeth had been bashed out years earlier so when he sucked dick, he couldn’t bite and the field medical examination revealed scarring that indicated that he’d been used for sexual recreation for a very long time. More recently, he’d been beaten, burned and cut to such an extent that the medics weren’t even sure he would survive the night. He didn’t, by the way, he died a couple hours after the team split up to investigate the boy’s claims.

  “On the way to the cave, they almost stumbled into a courier on the way up the mountain, but they were able to follow him the rest of the way to the complex. There were several well-armed men inside a pretty shallow cave, in which, it turns out, there ended up being an elaborate fake wall in the rear of the cave. They used a nano drone to fly inside behind the courier and investigate. Once inside, they saw a relatively large, system of tunnels and rooms. They weren’t able to explore the entire system though because the deeper the drone went into the complex, the weaker the signal became due to interference from the rock. They didn’t want to risk discovery or the loss of the drone, so they flew the drone back to the fake wall and waited for it to open again.”

  “What kind of drone are you talking about? I’ve seen ones as small as a hummingbird. What have you guys cooked up over there?” Rob Griffith asked.

  “It’s about the size of a honeybee. We’ve had them for a few years now. They’ve got a camera and GPS transmitter. Pretty neat little things really, nearly silent and nearly undetectable” Chip beamed.

  The president looked his CIA chief right in the eyes, “Are you certain that this is where the attack originated from? How can you be sure?”

  “Sir, during their exfil, my SOG team captured the courier that they had followed to the complex earlier in the day. They tracked him to a site several thousand feet down the mountain and snatched him before he could destroy any intel. In his spider hole, he had computer equipment, generators and weapons. Using a hasty NSA[22] satellite uplink, the team determined that the original internet message directing the followers of Islam to rise up on the Night of Power was composed and transmitted from the laptop we found in the cave.

  “After that, they conducted a hasty field interrogation and the courier broke fairly quickly. He was just the computer programmer who designed the website and sent out the directive to carry out attacks, so he didn’t know the various plots. But what he did tell us, we weren’t prepared for. The real power in the region is a group known as the Brotherhood of Niyyat. Niyyat means ‘intention’ in Farsi and according to the courier, this Brotherhood is thousands of years old and there are five men who are in charge of the group, called Masters, just as the boy claimed. When the interrogator asked him if the group was affiliated with Al-Qaeda, the courier laughed at him. Through this guy, we learned that Al-Qaeda was created as some type of front for the Brotherhood, a way to spread their message without ever revealing the true organization’s motives or intentions. The front was so good though, that it actually ended up creating an entire network of linked organizations and operatives itself.”

  “How do we know this courier wasn’t lying?” General Thompson asked.

  “We’ve developed certain field-expedient techniques that combine drugs, pain and rewards in order to get information quickly. A carrot or stick approach, if you will.”

  “Hardly legal in any sense,” said the Homeland Security Secretary, who was a former police officer and the Director of the FBI before being appointed to his current position.

  “Grow the fuck up Rob. We’re playing by big boy rules right now. We’re walking such a narrow tightrope that if we slip up, this nation may collapse. If I have to torture some no-account fucking terrorist piece of shit in the middle of nowhere, then by God, I’ll do it,” Chip said louder than he meant to.

  He composed himself and continued, “Sir, we’ve got these fuckers. This is the ancient organization that the Greeks and the Brits couldn’t find and were scared to death of. This is the actual head of Al-Qaeda, not the public mouthpiece that we took out when we killed bin Laden. These are the guys that planned and directed the attacks against the world’s leadership, including the assassination of President Gosebeck. This group is responsible for unleashing the zombie plague. Hell, you could even say that they’re ultimately responsible for firing that nuke since Gutmont would have still have been the Prime Minister if they hadn’t ordered the killings at the G-8 Summit. Now is the time to rid the world of this menace once and for all.”

  Over the intercom, the chief pilot interrupted the meeting. “Mr. President, we are preparing for our final decent into Denver. We’re about eight minutes out. Please ensure you are secured for landing.”

  The president looked at
each man around the table and said, “Gentlemen, this is the best lead we’ve been given. Our intelligence points to this organization as the orchestrators of this attack and possibly as agitators throughout written history.

  “Chip, I want this organization taken out. I don’t want a cruise missile blasting the complex. We’ve let too many terrorists escape over the years because we thought we got them with a missile. I want men on the ground. I want proof that it’s destroyed. And I want it to happen as soon as possible.”

  “Yes sir. We’ll send our team in right away.”

  SECOND INTERLUDE

  17 May, 0420 hrs local

  Karakoram Mountain Range

  Afghanistan-Pakistan Border

  “Kestrel, this is Skyscraper. In position.”

  “Roger Skyscraper. Is Reaper on station?”

  A brief burst of static from the earpiece evolved into, “…ger, Reaper is on station, loaded for bear.”

  “Reaper, there’s interference on the line. Fix it before we go hot,” Kestrel muttered into his headset.

  His team had studied the 3D map of the cave complex that the nano drone drew the when they piloted it inside for an entire day. The imperative from the Director to hit this complex as today didn’t allow for his SOG team’s normal prep before missions.

  Before he joined the Company, he’d been an Active Duty operator. His DEVGRU team spent almost five weeks in isolation preparing for Neptune Spear in Abbottabad[23]. They conducted planning sessions, map exercises, sand table rehearsals, developed infil and exfil plans, rehearsed clearing the house’s mock-up in the shoot house and practiced CQB[24]. It was non-stop training for that one fateful night.

  This mission, however, was literally thrown together last minute, so they’d have to do it live. The team consisted of its normal compliment of operators and they had the MQ-1 Predator drone’s bigger, meaner brother, the MQ-9 Reaper for aerial support, but that was about it. Kestrel wasn’t sure if that was due to the circumstances back in the States or for deniability purposes. Maybe a little of both, he decided. He was extremely confident in the team’s abilities, but he would have liked some more support, especially for the security element responsible to take out the squirters, which he had to carve out of his team.