“So,” I said, tentatively. “You’re not here to kill me? Last time I saw you, you cracked my head with a rock.”
He grinned, showing white teeth behind his beard. “It was a good throw, was it not?”
“Bled like a bitch. You aren’t mad at me for hauling your dad off?”
“No. That war is over, and before he was taken away for the last time, my father spoke of the respect you showed him as an enemy. Then, of course, I have read your book, after he died. He was your friend.”
“Yes. We owed each other our lives, many times over.”
He bowed his head again as a sign of respect, then stood. “Colonel, I have permission from my unit to serve TDY with your team, IST-1. If you need a good sniper, I am your man.”
“Of course. Let me see to your orders, and I’ll have you transferred by tomorrow.”
He saluted again, and then asked to see his father’s grave. I yelled into the house for Nate to show him, and the two went off together to the back of the house where Ahmed and Doc Hamilton were buried.
Brit watched him go with a bit of a longing look on her face. “He’s kinda cute, you know. This works out perfectly. You bring a home a hottie to piss me off, you old goat, and I get blessed with a good looking hunk of a man. Fair trade!”
Ugh, she loved to take a shot at me sometimes, just to keep me on my toes. “I did NOT sign on Shona to have another hot woman on the team!”
“Oh, it’s ‘Shona’ now, not Captain Lowenstein?” she said, arching her eyebrow.
“Gimme a break, Brit. He’s way too young for you anyway.”
“Oh sweet husband of mine,” she said, with an evil smile, “he’s only two years younger than me, old man. Have fun sleeping on the couch tonight.”
And then we were seven.
Chapter 248
The eighth man showed up the first day we started training, jumping off one of the last barges to come through the canal. Apparently he liked the sound of gunfire, so he jumped ship and came strolling up to where we were practicing clearing houses.
In the years since the apocalypse, the canal system in NY had once again become a vital transportation system. Boats were cheaper to build than railroad engines and box cars, and it was a lot easier to maintain the locks than miles of railway. The barges themselves, though, still had to travel through some pretty bad areas; hijacking by looters was a common problem. As a result, young guys who hadn’t been scooped up by the military often rode shotgun on the barges. We had a lot of traffic come down from the burnt out areas of Quebec, with precious metals and tech salvage, and heading back with food supplies.
He came walking up and stood watching for a few minutes. I was observing Shona and Elam on the three gun range, hitting pop up targets with pistol, carbine and shotgun, and I didn’t notice him standing behind me until he snorted in laughter at the woman fumbling with the unfamiliar shotgun. She was an expert with the 9mm and the M-4, but hadn’t ever had call to use a shotgun since basic. I turned to look at whomever had made the noise, but slowly; anyone dangerous wouldn’t have gotten this far onto the farm without an alert from the infantry guys or my own security team.
“Think you can do better?” I asked, recognizing him from the boats. I had seen him around before, but never talked to him. The kid was a giant standing next to me, well over six foot. The AR-15 he had slung in a tactical rig looked like a pee shooter in his hands.
“Sure can,” he drawled. “Mind if I do?”
“Be my guest,” I motioned, and gestured to the weapons rack. “You are…?”
“Obadiah Weatherson. But you can call me Obi.” With that, he walked over to the rack and pulled out a 12 gauge pump, checked it over, and fed shells into the breach, then put a loaded 9mm pistol in his belt. Lowenstein, who had finished the course in an acceptable time, eyed him suspiciously. Elam Yasir just stood aside, not having had his chance to go yet. The two had been avoiding each other as much as possible, and I wondered if we were going to have a problem between a Jew and a Muslim. I hoped not. It was bad enough that Ziv only tolerated Yasir because he had grudging respect for his father when he was alive. The Serb pretty much ignored Lowenstein. He stood with an evil grin on his face, holding a stopwatch. The man rarely smiled, and I think he wanted the kid to fall flat on his face. Three gun is a tough training event, and we worked extensively on it, increasing the difficulty until it was second nature.
The course is started with a carbine or any long rifle, whatever your preference, engaging the targets until the magazine runs dry. Then you let your weapon fall on its sling, grab the shotgun, and continue to engage, repeating with a pistol. Time penalties are given for missed shots; in our case, it was center head shots or nothing. We also switched up weapons from time to time, or practiced magazine changes on the fly instead of switching weapons. Our course had up to fifty targets and was almost a hundred meters long. Running it out full bore was exhausting, and I had the guys do it again and again, both individual and as two man sections. We were working up to a full team exercise, burning through ammo like it was going out of style. I wanted us to be ready for whatever came our way.
Obi, as he called himself, took off like a bat out of hell. I’ve been in many, many combat situations, and this kid was like watching Derek Jeter field a line drive over to first base, back when we still had baseball. He was halfway down the course, with twenty rounds expended, before he registered his first miss, and his second round hit dead center. Ziv’s grin faded and turned into a scowl as the kid came trotting back, scoring a forty nine out of fifty, with fifty two rounds expended. He hardly seemed out of breath.
“Sorry about the last one. I’m not as good with the pistol as I am with a rifle. Hard to make my hands fit into an M-9. Next time, if you let me use my large frame .44 revolver, I’ll do better.”
“Kid,” I said, “do you need a job?”
“That’s what I was hoping you’d ask, Colonel. I’ve been riding boats since the ice broke, and I’m tired of it.” He grinned a wide, open disarming grin, and I felt myself warming up to him, despite his bit of cockiness.
“Consider yourself hired. Go up to the house and see Ms. O’Neil, tell him you’re our new machine gunner.”
His face fell when he realized that I was serious. “But, I thought, you know, since I’m so good, I could …”
“Could what? Everyone on this team can shoot. Brit is even better than you with a shotgun and a pistol, and despite your size, I’m pretty sure Ziv could eat you for lunch in hand to hand. Shona has seen more combat in the last year than a scout will see in a decade, and Elam can hit a squirrel at a thousand yards. No, we all work together, and I need a machine gunner.”
“But,” he almost spluttered, “What good is that going to do against undead?”
“Used properly, at the correct height, it can do a shitload of good, and Zed isn’t the only thing we go up against. So if you want to roll with us, you do what I say. Is that a problem?”
He seemed to think about it for a minute, and then his face lit up again. “Nope! I guess.”
“Good. You aren’t that smart are you?” I asked, smiling to let the edge off.
“Smart as I need to be. I’m still alive,” he answered, but grinned back at me.
“Good. After you see Ms. O’Neil and sign your contract, Major Zivcovic here will see how good you are at hand to hand combat. Try not to hurt, him, he’s getting slow in his old age.” Ziv glared at me and muttered some kind of Serbian curse, but Lowenstein and Yasir were both smiling. There’s lots of ways to build a team.
At that moment, the radio crackled to life. “Lost Boys, this is Rattlesnake Six. We need your Six element and your medic to come over to OP One ASAP, Over.”
“Do you need a nine line, over? And security status?” I asked back, meaning a medical evacuation. In an emergency, unlike most, I could get a MEDEVAC out of Albany. Rank has its privileges.
“Negative, no threat and no medevac, but you gotta see this shit, ove
r.”
“Roger that, on my way.” I jumped on the four wheeler and told Shona to go up to the house and get Brit and Scott, our medic. Then, not waiting for them to move, I peeled out, followed by Ziv on his own four wheeler. Obi and Elam started jogging, double time. Observation Post One was at the bridge over the canal, only two hundred meters north of us, and I made it there over the field in less than a minute, only stopping to unlatch and then relatch the gate across the causeway leading to the island.
When we got there, Lt. Kilas, the infantry platoon leader, stood with two of his men, Ryan, and my two private security contractors who ran OP One. In front of them, on the ground, lay a hog tied figure, writing and moaning. I could smell the undead before I even hopped off the quad.
“What’s up, Lt? Why haven’t you put it down yet?” He said nothing, just gestured to the thing. I approached cautiously, rifle up on my shoulder; undead were very strong, and I had seen them smash down a wooden door before. I didn’t want to think what would happen if the flex cuffs broke.
The thing had been a middle aged man; not one of the original infected, who were usually a shambling mess by now, eight years later. This one had probably come from the second plague, two years ago. It wore the remains of an Army uniform, one of the new ones designed for Z combat. As I approached, red dot directly on its head, ready to pull the trigger, it twisted around and glared at me, red eyes glowing. I expected the howl to start, that grating, annoying howl that they used to call each other to feed. If it did, I was going to plug it for sure.
Instead, what I heard sent a streak of fear and cold right through my body. Out of its mouth came a dry, hissing rattle and …
“Helllllpppppppp meeeeeeeeeeeee pleassseeeeeee killlllll meeee…”
Chapter 249
I shot him. Immediately. My finger squeezed the trigger and the rifle rocked back into my shoulder, the sharp CRACK! echoing across the water. The high velocity 5.56 round punched a small hole in his forehead, and exited out the back, blowing off a fist sized chunk of skull and digging into the pavement. The red light went out of his eyes and the corpse shuddered once and went still.
“What the FUCK!” exclaimed Lieutenant Kilas, and I turned to face him. He looked aghast at what I had done.
“Problem, Lt?” I asked casually, keeping my weapon on my shoulder. Behind him I saw Ziv move out of my line of fire, and my three guys moved off to the left, hands on their weapons, leaving all three infantry exposed.
“You just shot that man!”
“I killed a Z. There was no man left in him.”
“But I HEARD him talk!” he started to protest, and I raised my rifle a little higher.
“Lt. Kilas, if there was a man in there, he’s better off, and no you didn’t hear him say anything. Are we clear?”
“But …”
I raised my rifle barrel higher, and Ryan trained his on the other infantry soldiers, who stood numbly.
“But nothing, Captain. You might have maybe imagined something. Air hissing out of their lungs can sound a lot like speech. I’ve seen it before, it’s just decomposition. You heard NOTHING. Are we clear?”
The man looked very confused. “I guess, Colonel. But ...”
I raised my barrel fully until it was pointed directly at his face. “ARE WE CLEAR?”
“Yes Sir, crystal.” He looked pissed, but stepped back.
“Ryan, escort these men,” I said, gesturing to the specialist and private standing there, “back to their bivouac area. Lt, come with me.” I lowered my rifle and started back towards the house, not looking to see if he followed me. I was pretty sure Ziv would make sure it happened.
We met Brit coming down from the house with Scott and Shona, and I motioned for them to follow me back. When we got to the porch I sat down heavily, dropped my magazine and cleared my weapon, and set it down next to me.
“Lieutenant,” I said to the officer standing in front of me, “let me explain something. What happens if the word gets around that the undead are really still people?”
The kid was smart, I’ll give him that. Once out of the stress of the situation, he quickly came up with the answer. “Some bleeding heart civilian is going to start demanding we treat the undead like people, and try to minimize damage.”
“Right, and they are also going to head back home to try to find the wife or child they lost in the apocalypse, and demand that a ‘cure’ be found. Which is bullshit.”
“There isn’t any cure. Vaccine, yes, but once you’re infected, you’re infected,” said Brit.
“So think about what that means to any combat unit. Think of the fucked up orders that will come down. Avoid casualties among undead, attempt to contain, etc. How many men will you lose if that happens?”
I could see it was sinking in, but he had one last question. “Would you have really shot me if I continued to argue with you?”
“And both your men,” I answered.
“If he didn’t, I would have,” added Captain Lowenstein. She had caught up to us, along with Elam and Obi. “I’ve been in the shit fighting undead for the last year on Bradleys. There is no way in hell I’m letting word of that get out.”
“His men will talk. Maybe we should kill them all,” said Ziv, in his flat, remorseless tone.
“No,” I said, to the young officers’ relief. “They might, but no one is going to believe them, and the Lt here will back up my story. Another month and it will be just a rumor and a legend, and I’m not going to let them leave here for another month.”
“Ah, Nick, there might be a problem with that. These came in on the last boat,” said Brit, and she handed me an envelope with “TOP SECRET / EYES ONLY” stamped on it in red.
“OK,” I said, taking the envelope. “All of you, scram. Ziv, you and Brit and I have some work to do.”
We went inside and I ripped open the letter. Inside was an encrypted flash drive, with, I’m sure, orders and Intel for another operation. Before I opened it, Brit put her hand on mine.
“Nick, we don’t have to do this. If it doesn’t have to do with those traitors, I’m not going, and neither are you. Even if it does, I’m Ok with not going. We’ve got the kids to think about.”
I looked down at her hand, where the finger nails were just growing back, and clicked open the orders file.
TO: CDR, IRREGULAR SCOUT TEAM 1
FROM: HQ,USJSOC (Z)
DATE: 15 JULY 20—
YOU ARE ORDERED TO PROCEED AT BEST SPEED TO INTERCEPT MOUNTAIN REPUBLIC FORCES ATTEMPTING TO SECURE NUCLEAR WARHEADS FROM THE WRECKAGE OF CVN – 72 U.S.S. ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
WRECK IS CURRENTLY AGROUND NORTH OF MIAMI GREATER METRO AREA. CREW 100% INFECTED. GRID COORDINATES ARE NK XXXX-XXXX.
“Shit,” I muttered under my breath. I doubted they would be able to activate a nuke, but they sure could make a hell of a dirty bomb from it. Pulling up Google Earth, I saw that the location was a small harbor up the coast from Ft. Lauderdale, but south of Jacksonville. Pretty much nowhere. That was going to be hard as hell to get at. Chutes were out; all our gear would drown us in a second if we landed in the water. I was going to have to talk to Ryan about this. I kept reading.
ENEMY FORCES EXPECTED IN PLATOON STRENGTH. MOUNTAIN REPUBLIC MAJOR JOHN STRASSER IDENTIFIED AS TEAM LEADER.
CURRENT CIVILIAN LEADERSHIP WILL NOT ALLOW NUCLEAR WEAPONS STRIKE ON CARRIER WRECKAGE. IST-1 IS TO SECURE VESSEL UNTIL SUCH TIME AS REGULAR FORCES CAN FOLLOW ON. EMPHASIS ON ELIMATION OF INFECTED AND PREVENTION OF MOUNTAIN REPUBLIC ACQUISITION OF WARHEADS.
CURRENT INTELLIGENCE AND STATUS OF MIAMI – DADE AREA INCLUDED IN APPENDIX D.
Appended to this at the bottom was a little note.
“NICK, I’D SEND SOMEONE ELSE, BUT YOU’RE ALL WE HAVE RIGHT NOW. ~ COLONEL FYNN.”
“Haha, fuck that, as you Americans say.” Ziv was looking at the words contemptuously. “I go back to Kansas, get new wife.”
Surprising me, Brit turned to him and said, “Are you … chicken? A little scared, Sas
ha?”
“You are damn right, redhead demon wench. And you should be too.”
“Well,” I interrupted, “I’m not going to order anyone to go, but we’re going. If they get their hands on a nuke, and blow it in Albany, this place might become uninhabitable. That and, despite what you said, Brit, I’m going to make Strasser pay for what he did to you.”
I closed the laptop and pulled out the stick, slipping it into my pocket, and went out on the deck to think things over. This was going to be tough.
Chapter 250
When you’re a soldier, you often get the vaguest of orders, and are told “go do it.” The problem is, if you do it right, the person who gave you the order gets all the credit. If you screw it up, then you’re the only one to blame, and often the blame comes in the form of a corpse, you or your buddies.
That was what I was facing now. I looked at the orders again. “YOU ARE ORDERED TO PROCEED AT BEST SPEED TO INTERCEPT MOUNTAIN REPUBLIC FORCES ATTEMPTING TO SECURE NUCLEAR WARHEADS FROM THE WRECKAGE OF CVN – 72 U.S.S. ABRAHAM LINCOLN.”
Proceed how? Intercept, how?
ENEMY FORCES EXPECTED IN PLATOON STRENGTH
And we were going to take them on with an eight man scout team. We would have to expect that every guy in that platoon was a combat veteran. Plus the million plus undead that were roaming around the Miami – Dade area.
SECURE VESSEL UNTIL SUCH TIME AS REGULAR FORCES CAN FOLLOW ON. EMPHASIS ON ELIMATION OF INFECTED AND PREVENTION OF MOUNTAIN REPUBLIC ACQUISITION OF WARHEADS.
And what, the fuck, did that exactly mean? Secure the vessel? Was someone going to take a derelict CVN and start it up and sail it away? Did they want us to tie ropes to the nearest skyscraper so it didn’t float away?
None of us knew crap about radiation from warheads, or the reactor, or ships. I was going to have to appoint Ryan our Subject Matter Expert on those areas.
Zombie Killers: HEAT Page 6
