Black Ops

by Alan Baxter

  “Well fuck me blind,” murmured the general. “I know you.”

  “Been a long time, Ike,” said Ledger.

  General Ike Black shook his head. “We all thought you were dead.”

  Ledger said nothing.

  General Black turned to his men. “You know who we have here? This is Captain Joe Ledger. America’s number one covert gunslinger.” His eyes clicked back to Ledger. “Jesus on a stick, Ledger, if even half the stories about you are true you’ve killed more people than God. Everyone used to say that if they send you in the shit’s already hit the fan. You took down the Jakobys, the Seven Kings, that crazy anarchist bitch Mother Night. All that stuff.”

  Everyone was staring now. Even Tom was looking sidelong at Ledger.

  “People exaggerate,” said Ledger.

  “No they don’t,” said Black. “People don’t know the stories I’ve heard, and I heard them from the people who know. You’re supposed to be a psychotic, bloodthirsty, ass-kicking psychopath. You’re the one they send in when they want scorched earth.”

  Ledger sighed. “Nice to be remembered for one’s accomplishments. I also threw a good breaking ball and I’m pretty good with Donkey Kong and Ms Pac Man, but nobody ever talks about that.”

  “And they said you’re a smartass who mouthed off to at least three presidents.”

  “Five,” said Ledger. “But who’s counting?”

  Black grinned. “So the zombies didn’t eat you.”

  “I’ve proven indigestible so far.”

  “Where were you when things fell apart? Seems like you’re the guy they should’ve called in when Lucifer 113 slipped its leash.”

  “I was out of the country,” said Ledger with real sadness. “Trying to save the world. Wrong apocalypse. By the time I got back it was all for shit.”

  They stood there and the cavern was completely silent around them. General Black cocked his head to one side and scrutinized him. Then he glanced at Dr Pisani, who stood nearby with glazed, confused eyes and tear tracks on her face. “What did he say to you, Doc?”

  Pisani licked her lips and opened her mouth to speak, but then shook her head.

  General Black frowned at Ledger. “Maybe you’ll tell me what you said.”

  Ledger shrugged. “I just told her how much I admire what she’s doing here. What you’re all doing here. Saving the world.”

  “Saving the world,” echoed Black. “That’s all you said?”

  Ledger could feel the anxiety coming off of Tom. The young man had a great poker face but his body was rigid with coiled tension. Ledger caught the subtle shift as Tom moved his weight to the balls of his feet. A martial arts trick; a fighter’s trick – using muscular tension and weight distribution to prepare the body for immediate high-speed movement.

  Ledger smiled now and he lowered his voice so that the conversation was private between Black and him. “Listen, Ike, I think I get what you’re doing here. This facility, the sorting of people, the vaccine. I get it. We both get it. The ass fell off the world and it’s either going to go completely down the shitter or it’s not, and the only way it’s not is for someone with the vision, the balls, and the talent to put it back together.”

  Black said nothing.

  “You were always a bad boy. Blackwater and then Blue Diamond. You’re no more a general than I’m Catherine the Great. I get it. The old system’s gone, so long live the new system. There’s no government anymore, no army, no nothing. Who’s to say you don’t have the authority to pin some stars on your shirt. I’m cool with it because it’s the first smart thing I’ve seen anyone do since this all fell apart. Someone had to do it. I wish I’d thought of it first, but I didn’t. You did. Far as I’m concerned that means you earned those stars. You got my vote, for whatever it’s worth.”

  “Really?” said Black in a voice that was heavily laced with disbelief.

  “Really. If someone doesn’t start a new government and organize a new army, there’s not going to be a future because there’s not going to be a human race. So, props to you.”

  “Funny hearing this from Uncle Sam’s number one problem solver.”

  “Uncle Sam’s dead,” said Ledger. “I’m not. The president ate the vice president and congress ate each other, so there’s no one signing my paychecks these days. I’m not a young kid anymore and, quite frankly, I’m getting tired of being a one-man-army in a rerun of The Walking Dead. The odds are against me.”

  “You have a friend,” said Black, nodding to Tom.

  “Him? Fuck. He’s a sushi cook. He’s good with knives and he doesn’t mind taking orders. He’s nothing to this.”

  “To what? You’re talking a lot, Ledger, but you’re not getting anywhere.”

  Ledger glanced around and then leaned closer. “The vaccine is bullshit. I think your Dr Pisani is bugfuck nuts, and she’s injecting people with tap water. There is no vaccine for Lucifer 113, and if there was it wouldn’t be antiviral. You know and I know it. Maybe the doc knows it, and that’s why she’s blown out her circuits, though I suspect she was already damaged goods before you started this operation.”

  “Still not hearing anything I want to hear,” said Black. “And we have a line of people wondering what the hell is happening here.”

  “Sure. How many guys you have here, Ike? Twenty? Thirty? If they’re all like the nuclear scientists guarding the checkpoint then you’re working with inferior materials. How many of them were actually military?” When General Black didn’t answer Ledger nodded. “That’s what I thought. So what happens if all those people coming here get wind of this as a shit operation?”

  “What makes you think—?”

  “Come on, Ike, I’m not stupid. That color coding thing? Maybe the tourists think that’s some kind of Sorting Hat, but I don’t think the red-band people are going to a nice safe dorm. They’re old, or sick, or useless, or dangerous. You’re weeding out the dangerous ones. Tom and me got through because he’s a cook and I told the guards that I was a ball-player and amateur hunter. Cooking and hunting are important skills for a colony, and that’s what this is. I bet you pulled out the medical staff, anyone who can fix, make, repair or build and they got white bands, too. That’s what the vaccine thing is all about. It’s a beacon to draw people to you, and if you can protect them, they’ll never know that they’re not actually immune. Tell me I’m wrong.”

  Black’s eyes narrowed, but then he gave Ledger a tiny nod.

  “So, here’s my offer,” said Ledger. “I’ve trained more real soldiers than you’ve ever seen. I know weapons and tactics, I know defense and attack. You said it yourself, I used to be Uncle Sam’s go-to guy for fucking up other people’s days. That’s me. I figured this shit out in fifteen minutes. Someone else is going to do that, too, and they might not be in here. They might be out where they can spread the word and gather a bunch of villagers with pitchforks and torches. If that happens, do you want me dead in a ditch or do you want me overseeing the defenses of your new kingdom?”

  It took a long time for General Black to respond. The room remained quiet though no longer silent. There were discrete coughs and the rustling of people shifting nervously. No one interrupted the private, whispered conversation.

  Finally, Black said, “How do I know that I can trust you?”

  Ledger shrugged. “You’ll have me watched. Put guards on me. Don’t give me a gun until you’re sure. If I twitch the wrong way, do what you got to do. But that’s not how it’s going to play out, Ike. I’m offering a barter. I need a home, I need a clean bed and a shower – God knows I need a shower – and I want three squares, a roof over my head, and a life again. You can give me all of that. In return I’ll give you an army.”

  General Black straightened and walked a few paces away. Ledger cut a look at Tom and saw that the young man’s calm was cracking under the strain of uncertainty and imminent
danger. Ledger made a very low, very small gesture with his left hand. Calm down.

  Tom’s tension eased by about two per cent.

  Then General Black raised his arms out to the side and turned to the people who were waiting in line.

  “Listen to me,” he roared. “Everything is okay. In fact, everything’s great. This man here is Captain Joe Ledger. You won’t have heard of him, but he was a very famous soldier. A Special Ops solder. Best of the best. He’s come here to join us. To help us. And he is my friend. Let’s show him how much we appreciate his coming all this way to support our sacred cause.”

  The guards began applauding first, and if it was a bit slow and uncertain at first, Ledger could understand. Then the medical staff joined in and then everyone. Only Dr Pisani did not applaud. She stood staring at Ledger with confused eyes and a mouth pulled rigid with fear.

  Ike Black strode over and took Ledger’s hand, holding it high as the applause swelled, and then shaking it. He used the handshake to lean in and whisper in Ledger’s ear.

  “If you’re fucking with me, Ledger,” he said, “I will have you skinned alive. Don’t think I’m joking. I’ve done it a dozen times before. I’ll cut your balls off and make you eat them.”

  His handshake was crushingly hard, but Ledger knew the trick of positioning his hand so the bones braced against the force rather than collapsed within the stricture. He met Black’s eyes and smiled at him.

  “You don’t have to worry about me,” he said. “You don’t ever have to worry about me, General.”

  —18—

  The Hall of the Mountain King

  The big treatment hall was cleared and the people with the white wristbands were sent outside to bed down in one of the big tents, with Ike Black telling everyone that the doctor was exhausted. There was no option for discussion or debate as soldiers moved in and cleared the room.

  “Let me show you fellows around,” said the general. “I think you’ll appreciate what we’re trying to do here.”

  The tour started with introductions to Ike Black’s senior staff, most of who were clearly not military men but instead looked like a roughhouse crew of bikers, backwoods hunters, and general hard-cases. Tough, but not in the same way professional soldiers were. Harder in the wrong places and with noticeable lapses in personal discipline and an understanding of military procedures. For all that they were dangerous, and more so because their actions would be random and unfiltered.

  Joe Ledger and Tom Imura shook a lot of hands as the general showed them around the complex.

  “This was a hardened facility,” the general explained. “The rock and iron in the mountain kept them from EMP burnout and the blast doors kept the eaters out. Tucson’s a total loss, and when I got here there were half a million of the dead bastards walking around.”

  “How’d you handle that?” asked Ledger.

  “Controlled burns, mostly. Brush fires, some incendiaries fired from our helicopters.”

  “You still have helos?”

  “Had,” said the general wistfully as he led them into an adjoining chamber where a hulking Bell UH-1Y Venom ‘Super Huey’ squatted. “One crashed and this one needs parts that we don’t have here, and we don’t have an aviation mechanic to tell our machinist what to make.”

  “I might be able to help with this old girl,” said Ledger. “I’ve tinkered a bit.”

  Black gave him a startled look. “Really?”

  “Sure,” said the soldier, patting the gray skin of the helicopter. “Motors, rotors, and avionics. When you spent as much time in the field as I have you need to know how to fix your ride. Couldn’t Uber my way out of the kinds of places they sent me. I can fix a boat, too.”

  “No boats out here,” said Black, “but I’ll file it away for when we expand.”

  “What about ground transport. Anything need work there?”

  “We’re doing better with vehicles. We have five Humvee light armored vehicles, couple of utility cargo trucks. Six noncombat vehicles. All in pretty good shape.”

  “That’s not a big fleet for an army. You got how many guys here? Forty?”

  “Fifty-one,” said Black. “We’ll make do. If we can’t drive, we’ll use horses. But one of my scouts found a place a few hundred klicks from here that has a crap-ton of three and four-wheel ATVs. Two-stroke engines, and we took in a guy today who fixes that kind of stuff. He’s sure as shit going to earn his room and board.”

  The tour moved on, with Black becoming expansive and Ledger encouraging him to brag. Tom Imura drifted along behind like a silent ghost, and behind him were two armed guards. Another pair of guards walked point for their small party. Black was being welcoming, but not stupid.

  They passed Dr Pisani’s lab, and although there was a guard the lab was empty and dark. Ledger paused outside to peer through the dusty glass. The general walked on a pace, then stopped and joined him.

  “Does she know?” asked Ledger.

  “Allie? Fuck no,” said Black, then he thought about it and amended that. “I don’t really know. She’s damaged goods, as you probably saw.”

  “That a recent thing or…?”

  “Nah, she was half out of her mind when I found her. She was here in the base with six pencil necks, four soldiers and a lot of dead people. They were in here for a couple of years. Teams would go out looking for survivors or trying to make contact with other groups, but none of them ever came back, and when I rolled up the last ones here had pretty much lost their shit. The soldiers threw in with me right off. I wasn’t regular army, but like you said, what does that matter.”

  “Word,” agreed Ledger, nodding.

  “The lab crew had been working on a cure, and Allie Pisani swore she had cracked the damn thing, but…”

  “No?”

  “No. It can’t be cracked. There was this other doctor, Monica McReady, who was a big shot in bioweapons from out at a station like this in Death Valley, and for a while they were feeding intel to Allie, but then they went dark. And it happened at just the wrong time, right when Allie thought she was onto something, but she needed some vital info from McReady. Couldn’t go in the right direction without it, and bam. Done. Nothing. I think that’s when Allie Pisani lost it. I think she saw it as some kind of slap in the face of hope and optimism, or maybe she thought that it was proof God was throwing in the towel on this whole shit show. Not sure, and don’t really care. I mean, sure, a cure would have been dope, but we never got it and won’t get it, so we make do. No use crying over spilled milk, am I right?”

  “Right as rain.”

  Black smiled broadly and nodded approvingly at Ledger. “God, it’s nice to have a conversation with someone who gets me, you know? Someone who’s both been there and done that and doesn’t have his head all the way up his ass.”

  “Believe me, General, I’m enjoying this conversation, too.”

  “Fuck that ‘general’ stuff unless we’re around the tourists. It’s Ike. Ike and Joe, okay?”

  He stuck out his hand again and they shook, both of them grinning at each other.

  They wandered outside into the camp. Ledger caught Tom’s eye and saw the younger man’s confusion. He gave him a wink and allowed him to interpret it any way he wanted.

  “So how’s this set-up work, Ike?” asked Ledger. “I have a line on the white wristbands, and I’m pretty sure I dig what you have in mind for the reds. Dead wood, am I right?”

  Ike Black paused for a moment, his eyes searching Ledger’s face. “You disapprove?”

  “Me? Fuck no. Planet Earth’s a lifeboat, brother. We can’t waste food on anyone who isn’t going to make it anyway. And we can’t waste food on anyone who’s not going to help us row to shore. Far as I see it sentimentality is a sucker’s game.”

  General Black paused a moment longer, then nodded. “Glad to hear you say that.”


  “And, let’s face it, Ike,” said Ledger leaning close, “I didn’t last this long by being Mr Rogers, you dig? It’s not a wonderful day in the neighborhood and not every motherfucker I meet is my neighbor.”

  One of the guards said, “Preach.”

  Black shot him a stern look but did not disagree. Instead, he gave another nod.

  “What about the blue tents?” asked Ledger casually. “Women and kids?”

  “They’re being protected.”

  Ledger snorted. “Don’t blow smoke up my ass, man. And don’t bullshit a bullshitter. The general population’s pretty fucking small and if we’re going to rebuild then we need breeding stock. Younger they are the more seasons they have to squeeze out new Americans, am I right?”

  Ike Black stopped and stared at him, a small hopeful smile playing on his lips. “Christ, you really do get it, don’t you?”

  “It’s pretty black and white, Ike. It’s survival of the fittest and with humans that means survival of those people who can make the hard choices.” He clapped Tom on the shoulder. “That’s what I’ve been trying to teach my friend here. How to do what’s necessary when it’s necessary.”

  Tom cleared his throat and, still using the thick accent, said, “I’m working on it.”

  “General!” someone called.

  They all turned and a guard with a radio headset ran up and whispered in the general’s ear for a few minutes. Black pulled him aside and they whispered back and forth for a bit before the general nodded and the guard ran off, talking into his headset as Black rejoined Ledger and Tom.

  “Anything wrong?” Ledger asked.

  The general shook it off, then a shrewd look came into his eyes. “Tell you what, fellows, there’s no time like the present to put your money where your mouth is.”