Hard Road: Deadly Horizon (Dark Plague Book 2)

by Bradley West

  “Yeah.”

  “Done here. Wait for me: I’m junking up and coming with you.”

  “Roger that.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Siege Mentality

  Thursday, July 16, 2020: Douglas County, Nevada; Berkeley, California; night

  “Change of plan,” Jaime gasped as he ran up to Derek. “Carla and Tien are in trouble. I’m going with Travis. Take my radio and monitor us. Speak with Sal. I tied up their watcher: the kid’s across the street stuffed in a closet on the second floor.”

  The SUV pulled up with Travis at the wheel, window down.

  “Do I have time to grab nogs and spare mags?” Jaime asked.

  “Arkar’s got you covered. Let’s roll,” Travis said. The gas pedal was down before Jaime had the door shut. Thirty feet away, Yonten backed the big rig away from the front gate and the Telluride surged through.

  Jaime flopped into the seat next to a bandaged Melvin, long guns between them. “Big man, are you able to fire that SAW with your left hand?”

  “I hope not to fire any weapon. I’m through taking life,” Melvin said.

  “If they shoot at us, you return fire!” shouted Travis from the front seat.

  “No, I’m no longer a warrior and won’t shoot except in defense of the helpless,” Melvin said. “There’s been too much death.”

  Travis exploded. “For fuck’s sake! You’re 101st Airborne! The M249 fires two-hundred rounds a minute. Either you’re willing to work the SAW or I turn around and we swap you for Yonten. The kid barely shaves, but we can rely on him.”

  “Keep driving,” Melvin said after a pregnant pause. “I know that weapon well and I’ll fire it if I have to.” He felt sick inside, having just spent a half-hour praying with Pat and preparing to turn over a new leaf of non-violence.

  “Everyone, calm down,” Jaime interjected. “The plan calls for Melvin to provide suppressing fire to pin down the guards and keep reinforcements away from the med center. With luck, you won’t have to shoot anybody. That okay with you?”

  “Better. Much better,” the former Army sergeant said. When the time comes, Lord, please show me the right path.

  “We assume they won’t move Carla and Tien because of the equipment involved and the need to sterilize rooms,” Travis said in a normal tone. “The State Liners should guard them in place until they’ve completed their mixing or batching or whatever the hell it is they’re doing, but that still doesn’t tell us where they are.”

  Jaime consulted his phone and typed in an address. “The fire station is across the street to the west of the med center. We pull up in the rear and look inside. If we can occupy that without being observed, we’ll set Melvin up in the second-floor window. We can surveil the complex and draw up a plan. When the time comes, Melvin keeps their heads down and their assholes puckered.”

  “That’s a solid plan if we knew where they were, but we don’t,” Travis said. “Tien’s situationally aware, and if he’s able, he’ll signal his location. We know Carla will be nearby. Let’s start at the firehouse and play it by ear, but we’ll need to pinpoint their location before we go in.”

  “There’s no way in without alerting them,” Jaime said. “The med center is one-story, so if Arkar and I go in through the roof, everyone will hear us. Same if we break out a ground-floor window.”

  “It’s a medical facility, so there’s a big waste storage area somewhere on site. I’ll enter through there.” Travis’ tone didn’t invite debate.

  “Medical waste? Are you kidding me?” Jaime asked. “It’ll have more Covid-20 than there are cockroaches in Juárez.”

  “Tina gave me a spare extra-large hazmat suit,” Travis said. “I’ll shed the top one once I get into the building proper.”

  “What about shoes? You got an extra pair of boots?”

  “I’ll bag and carry my boots along with my weapon and tiptoe in my hazmat booties.” Travis didn’t want to admit he’d planned only to this point. “It’s not like we have a lot of choices. Unless we surprise them, the surviving captors will barricade themselves with Carla and Tien. Their reinforcements will surround us and then it’s a bloodbath.”

  Jaime tried to retort, but Travis continued: “You’re part of the op too—you have to kill the backup power. We’ll recce the building together and pick a window away from the sentries where you can climb in, ideally unnoticed. Arkar will help Melvin with the diversion before the two of them move to the opposite end of the med center with Melvin driving and Arkar on guns.”

  Arkar was studying his map app. “Turn right fifty meters and rear fire station straight ahead,” he said, ending the debate. They hadn’t seen a moving vehicle: Gardnerville-Minden, Nevada, was a ghost town even driving up Main Street.

  The firehouse was empty and dark. A pair of ambulances and two firetrucks sat in their bays, protected by locked massive roller doors that the four men couldn’t budge. A search for keys was fruitless. They set the bipod-supported SAW up on a heavy wooden table butted against a second-floor window to provide a downward angle and a 120˚ firing arc.

  Jaime and Travis used binoculars to count adversaries, spotting one each at the three visible entrances. The med center was two hundred feet long with parking lots on three sides. The lots were one-quarter full with cars that had presumably belonged to deceased patients. Three dirty pickup trucks were parked bumper to bumper in the no-parking zone up front at the ER entrance.

  “Three trucks mean twelve or fewer men,” Jaime said.

  “Unless they stood in the beds, in which case add twenty more,” Travis replied. “But I think you’re right. None of the tailgates are down and there’s enough crap in the back of two of them that it would have been hard to fit anyone in there. Assume it’s an even dozen. One man on each door, and eight unaccounted for.”

  “Two to four guarding our people, and the rest on patrol,” Jaime said.

  “It’ll be dark in thirty. I’ll go down and suit up. Let’s leave from the back and make a long arc to the south before working east and north to pick a window. Once I find the trash door, I’ll worm my way inside.”

  Jaime gave a thumbs-up.

  “Melvin starts shooting the sooner of 21:41 or the med center lights go out. From first contact, assume Jaime and I’ll have ten minutes to extract Carla and Tien before reinforcements arrive. Melvin and Arkar break off after five minutes and drive to the south end of the med center. Expect a hot exfil.

  “Jaime and I will turn on our walkie-talkies once the SAW stops,” Travis continued. “If there’s no one around, Arkar works his way inside while Melvin guards our rig. If you lose your wheels, hotwire a car in the lot and keep that south exit open. It’s a lot of moving parts and we need to be flexible.”

  “The plan’s solid coming from an old-timer,” Jaime said with grudging approval. “The only problem is that Arkar and I are the two who should be infiltrating. You’re wounded and slowed down. This op requires speed.”

  “I agree, except for the part about having to crawl through biohazard bags to get in. I can’t ask anyone else to do that. It’s my fault she’s stuck in the first place, and I’ll get her out.”

  “No doubt you’ll give ’em hell,” Jaime said. “But you’re not fast.”

  “I’ll be downstairs.” Travis knew the younger man was wrong, even if he was right. He could barely walk without limping from a deep bruise on his left ankle joint. He’d had pieces of motorcycle chain surgically removed from his abdomen and shoulder, and a credit card-sized flap of skin torn almost completely off his forehead and held in place with a couple stitches and superglue. Had the task ahead required endurance or hand-to-hand combat, he’d have ceded the role to Jaime or Arkar. But the mission’s success or failure hinged on the ability to tell friend from foe in the dark while under fire. This Texas hound dog had cleared houses in close-quarter combat for almost a decade, and that was why he was still the man for the job.

  * * * * *

  Sal sat in a director’s ch
air outside the hospital ’Bago wearing both an N95 mask and a Plexiglas face shield Tina had insisted on after the convoy’s two recent positives. Despite looking like a man in a diving helmet, this was the best he’d felt since before the big one. His heart rate was steady and his throbbing, splinted left arm kept him alert.

  “There’s a lot going on,” Derek said. “Tien gave the distress call and Jaime joined Travis, Melvin and Arkar at the last minute. The team’s gone to the med center to rescue Carla and Tien. We’re supposed to wait here until ten o’clock when everyone’s retest results are in. We’re under-gunned and expect the militia to try to free Vargo now that they’ve grabbed our scientists. What they don’t know is that he’s unconscious and they’ll have to carry him out. Travis said to abandon Vargo when we left. Oh, and I almost forgot—Jaime left their young sentry gagged and zip-tied across the way. What do you think?”

  Sal frowned. “Maybe we leave right away, but before making that call, we need Tina’s input.” Derek rushed off to find the doctor while Sal pondered options and scrutinized roadmaps.

  Tina assumed Sal wanted a Covid update and launched straight in: “No one other than Johnny and Hugh displays Covid symptoms. We’ll have the PCR test results in three hours. If anyone caught Covid, we’ll put them with our two patients in the semi’s trailer. Erinn’s in there laying out blankets, pillows, and cushions, plus food, water and a bucket toilet.”

  “Let’s talk logistics,” Sal said. “We have two RVs, a supply truck, the SUV, and the semi. There are twenty-one 3M members, including Tyson. Two drive the semi, two take the truck. There are six of us at the med center with the SUV. That leaves five adults for each RV, plus a baby. If we leave before the retest results are back, at worst we expose four people, probably fewer because Steph and Tyson are immune.”

  “What if we have multiple Covid positives in more than one vehicle?” Tina asked.

  “If you can, assign people to vehicles based on who they spent the most time with today,” Sal said. “At any rate, we must immunize everyone soon or we’ll die. That means it’s more important to help free Carla and Tien than wait here and find out who might be infected.”

  “But what can we do to help?” Derek asked. “We only have three shooters.”

  “Our contribution is to stay out of the way, distract our foes, and not get taken hostage. We have to get far enough that whoever follows us can’t come back to the med center in time. Let’s push on to Depot #1, our fuel cache outside Winnemucca, two hundred miles from here. The 3M’ers have the directions already. Assume that the Telluride will take the shortest route, so we’ll take an alternative one to ensure we don’t put more State Liners on their tails. Once the 3M convoy is some distance away—fifty miles? A hundred miles? Whoever follows us will either try to stop us or they’ll turn around.”

  “If you don’t need me,” Tina said, “I have to look in on Tyson and check on our wounded.”

  Sal nodded and she walked away. “We can leave fast—say in the next twenty minutes—we take their scout with us.” He looked at his maps and traced the route with a finger. “We’ll take Highway 395 out of town to the south, then cut across on Route 208 east and then north. At some point they’ll realize we have their boy and launch a major pursuit. When they get close, we dump him unharmed. Provided it goes according to plan, they’ll have no incentive to follow us and they’ll be too far away to influence the med center rescue.”

  “And if we don’t get out in time?” Derek asked.

  “Once their scout misses a comms check, they’ll send people over here. If he’s gone and we’re gone, they’ll put two and two together fast and we might not get away from town before we’re shot to pieces.”

  “What do you want to do with Vargo?” Derek asked.

  “Our goal is to reduce the numbers they can send to the med center,” Sal replied. The strength in his voice was fading. “We can’t shoot them or blow them up without triggering unforeseeable repercussions. What we do instead is slow them down.”

  “How so?”

  “Wire up dummy explosives where Vargo’s being held. They’ll call in more people to defuse the bomb.”

  “I can mock up something in a hurry,” Derek said.

  “It’ll have to be fast. I’ll help Tina roster the vehicles.”

  * * * * *

  Long jogged the med center hallways, checking on his men in random patterns to better surprise interlopers. His walkie-talkie worked only line-of-sight and was useless ninety percent of the time. Then a call came through: “There’re people upstairs in the firehouse. I can see one man with binoculars from where I’m standing. I don’t have binos. Can someone with magnification come over here? I think it’s the Californians and maybe there’s a machinegun up there too.”

  “I’m on my way,” said Long and started running. He passed a rover and ordered him to join the pursuit.

  * * * * *

  Tien measured, mixed and heated like man possessed. He imagined Carla watching with approval over his shoulder. He looked at his watch: nine o’clock on the dot. He checked his walkie-talkie and it still produced only static. Maybe the unit had malfunctioned, or else they’d blocked the signal? Either way, he and Carla were isolated. She needed another hour.

  It looked like he’d have spare time. The first order of business was to hide the vaccine on his body to minimize detection. The final concoction was only three hundred mil—barely ten ounces—and if he double-bagged it, he could tape it to the small of his back. Then he’d whip up a phony vaccine batch that the locals could confiscate and with luck the bag of genuine 896MX would remain undetected. Of course, if he fell on his back or the bags sprung a leak, they were screwed. A better idea was a double bluff: hide the real vaccine in this room, bag up fake vaccine #1, and prep a colorful beaker full of yet another imitation vaccine, phony #2. Let them find what was on him and he’d come back later to retrieve the Real McCoy. He had to get busy, but first he had to mark the door so that the rescuers would know he was in there. The only unobtrusive thing he had that Travis would recognize was his Livermore Labs ID on an orange lanyard. He’d been running nonstop for forty-eight hours and hadn’t yet discarded this relic of his past life. Tien hung it from the doorknob, quietly shut the door, and relocked it. The hallway had been empty and deathly quiet. Where was everyone?

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  First Blood

  Thursday, July 16, 2020: Berkeley, California; Douglas County, Nevada; night

  Katerina confirmed what Norris had asserted: evidence that “LifeSaver” had read his private messages on Pirate Bay. “It must be the Maggios,” she ventured. “I know Burns helped Stephanie and the brat. Before Burns died, he gave her the unencrypted thumb drive with his log-ins and passwords, and they’ve used it to go online.”

  “What good does looking at a Dark Cure advertisement do the Maggios unless they want to sell doses too?” an impatient Norris asked.

  “You’re right. Let me think. Burns was dying of a Covid-20 relapse. We saw he’d emailed proof-of-life photos of Stephanie and the baby. He must have cut a deal with Maggios: He’d free them in return for the last dose of the original vaccine that Sal stole. Last night, somehow, he found Stephanie and the newborn in the freezer, and the Maggios gave him the vaccine. He survived and he’s back online.”

  “That was very honorable of the Maggios,” Norris sneered. “Are they together now? If so, Burns is a long way from here and so is my money.”

  “Maybe he is, but that’s assuming the Maggios have spare vaccines that they want to sell to the highest bidder. Also, I call bullshit on the idea of joining forces. Burns hates Sal for stealing the vaccine which forced him to kidnap Sal’s grandson. Burns’ wife claimed the baby because she was infertile. It’s complicated, but Lindy Burns died and Burns blames the Maggios. They hate each other even if he did save Stephanie and the brat. Hell, Burns knows I used to work on campus, and for all I know, he’s here looking for me.”

  “If you sen
t him a private message on Pirate Bay, would he agree to meet?” Like a hyena on a newborn impala, Norris had a nose for profit.

  “He would if he’s around and alive. I could offer him Muller’s deal. He handles customers and Bitcoins, the Souls manage delivery and security, and I supply the plasma antibodies. Everyone wins.” Katerina smiled.

  “Yeah, speaking of supply, how much longer?” Norris’ tone had lost its threatening edge.

  Ah, shit. “The first batch might have been bad from sitting out all night. All I know is that I was so tired I couldn’t see or think straight. The plasma’s worthless. Let me take two Ambien, sleep six hours and I’ll be good as new. I should have fifteen doses ready to inject by this time tomorrow.”

  “Fifteen? That doesn’t even cover my crew!” Norris’ calm façade dissolved into a mask of fury, and his backhand caught her square in the cheek.

  Katerina spat blood onto her stuck-up professor’s expensive carpet as she glared at the Neanderthal with hate in her eyes. “If you kill me, you’ll get nothing. Once we get the first fifteen, we sell four, you and I take one each, which leaves nine for your crew. You can’t be serious about sharing the loot with all fifteen even if we hit it big. Eventually, you’ll need to cut the team down to just the varsity. Leave a half dozen shots until next week or cull the herd sooner. Ten Souls are more than enough to take down the Maggios’ parade of housewives. If the Dark Cure works, in a week everyone who receives the shot tomorrow will donate a pint and we’ll have ten times as much plasma to work with. Chill the fuck out.”

  From the sudden rage on Norris’ face, Katerina realized the man had a thin skin. He grabbed her petite shoulders and shook until her brain rattled and her eyeballs ached. “You ever speak to me like that again, I’ll end you. Send LifeSaver a message asking for a meeting tomorrow, saying you have Dark Cure to sell. Friday night, we’re having a party in this room. If you don’t have fifteen perfect doses, I turn the Souls loose and you won’t own a hole that isn’t bleeding by the time they’re done. Let me read the message before you send it.”