Then, after looking the length of the helicopter, Raven shot back, “There is no drink cart, Dad.”
Cade smiled at her retort and the manner in which she said “Dad” which could be construed in one of many ways. But this time, judging by the inflection and tone, his mind automatically inserted the word silly. Could have been worse, he thought to himself. Thankfully she had never been prone to talking back like some of the girls who had attended sleepovers at the Grayson house. He rummaged in a cargo pocket. Pulled a Capri Sun he’d been saving for this occasion, and said, “Dad’s drink cart is on board.” Framed by the helmet, Raven’s beautiful smile made another appearance.
He burned the image into his memory, then swept his gaze right. He caught Brook’s eye and winked at her; a simple gesture that cracked the usual granite set to her jaw, producing a rare smile—also archived for use on a rainy day. Because going forward, he told himself, things are certainly going to get tougher before they get better, and I want something I can call up—to get me through those tough times when things start getting dicey.
He looked at his Suunto and felt a barely perceptible vibration pulse through the Chinook as the auxiliary power unit came to life somewhere within the airframe, powering the hydraulics and lighting the twin-turbines. Right on time, he thought as the rising high-pitched whine of the jet-turbines spooling and the slow but steadily rising thwop-thwop of the rotor blades reached his ears. A moment later the kerosene-tinged odor of jet exhaust wafted in from outside. Once again he got Raven’s attention with a gentle nudge, plugged his nose, and mouthed, “Pee-eww,” at her.
Suddenly the airframe groaned as power was applied to the engines. Consequently, Cade imagined the massive rotors feet above his head gaining rpms, their characteristic droop disappearing as centrifugal forces at work flattened them out and bowed them upward slightly.
As the noise inside the cabin rose, Cade regarded Brook. Her eyes were closed, the flight helmet making her look a little like a bobble head doll—albeit a very beautiful one. He passed his gaze over to Wilson, who was seated across from him next to one of the four widely-spaced porthole-style windows on the port side, wearing the same stoic the-world-has-gone-to-hell-in-a-handbasket look on his face. A look that aged him a decade at the least.
Through the porthole, above and left of Wilson’s shoulder, Cade could see Cheyenne Mountain—President Valerie Clay’s fortified redoubt—and the undulating spine atop the Rockies’ western front stretching north toward Denver. Then he craned around and regarded the Ford which was sitting on the tarmac a dozen feet from the Chinook’s starboard side.
Sun flared from the copious amounts of glass and chrome and black sheet metal. The thick straps of the cargo sling securing the truck to the helo’s underbelly were fluttering madly, buffeted by the hurricane-strength rotor wash. On the tarmac, one of Whipper’s men was standing near the Ford, sending some kind of instructions via hand signals to the aircrew in the cockpit.
Suddenly, in his flight helmet which was connected to the ship-wide comms via a thick cable plugged into the bulkhead, Cade heard the co-pilot—who was a doppelganger to Agent Alex Cross—call out, “Thirty seconds to launch.” Then Ari broke in over the co-pilot and said, “Welcome aboard Night Stalker Airways and vehicle transport. Next stop, Mack, Colorado. We will be cruising at one hundred and thirty knots at one thousand feet above ground level—” Let’s keep it that way, thought Cade, “—with an estimated flight time of one hour and forty-five minutes. Please stow your tray tables and put your seats in their upright positions, and then after a brief test hover we will be underway.”
Reacting to the announcement which everyone else heard broadcast inside their helmets, Cade mimed folding up an imaginary tray table, an impromptu act which seemed to lighten the mood, drawing laughs from the girls but not from Wilson, who was now bent at the waist, face buried deep in his hands.
As the rotors bit into the air and the turbines strained to generate the torque necessary for lift off, the noise in the fuselage rose exponentially. Then, simultaneously, as if the move had been rehearsed in advance, both Raven and Sasha shot furtive wide-eyed looks around the cabin and clamped their hands over their ears on the outside of their loose-fitting flight helmets. Brook, however, merely closed her eyes and settled in for the harsh flight—this being her third stint aboard a Chinook since the outbreak and all.
As Cade looked on, the horizon outside the window seemed to shift slightly as the Chinook’s front gear left the tarmac. Then the craft leveled off, and the buildings and perimeter fencing in the distance steadily slipped from sight. In his mind’s eye, Cade could picture the strapping affixed to the pallet under the truck going taut and the cargo finally leaving the ground. But instead the comms crackled, and he heard the co-pilot say, “Four o’clock starboard.” Then the engines powered down considerably and Ari said, “Everybody brace. I’ve got to put her back down.”
Suddenly the helo juddered and yawed sideways, losing a few feet of altitude in the process.
Hover test my ass, Cade thought to himself. With the cold presence of impending doom tickling his stomach, he regarded his family, and then uttered a prayer, asking the Man upstairs for a soft wheels-down landing. Because from experience he was well aware that it would only take a few degrees list to port or starboard to bring the rotor blades into contact with the asphalt tarmac and send thousands of pieces of disintegrating steel and carbon fiber flying through the air like angry hornets. Hoping for the best while bracing against the worst, Cade grabbed a handful of webbing between his thighs with one hand, and wrapped his left arm around Raven’s narrow frame. “Hold on,” he said sharply.
Chapter 68
Quarry
Colt .45 in hand, Duncan climbed from the Black Hawk, ducked his head against the perceived threat of decapitation, and hustled in a combat crouch towards the Chevy Tahoe. After covering the distance as fast as his old bones would allow, he pulled up short next to the truck’s rear quarter panel and peeked inside. Shoehorned in behind the rear seats was a black plastic Pelican case the size of a typical piece of wheeled carry-on luggage. The cruiser’s molded-plastic back seat was empty; moving toward the front of the rig, he found the window rolled down and, like the others, the door hinged open. The keys were still in the ignition and apart from a half-full bottle of water, a poorly-folded road map, and a bolt-action rifle that he thought might belong to Jordan, he found no other personal effects.
But most importantly, what he failed to find in and around the SUV was what gave him a modicum of hope. Thankfully missing were obvious signs that a struggle had taken place. He saw no traces of blood. And there were no shell casings inside or around the SUV. And so far, other than the two dead rotters between the farthest of the three outbuildings, there were no other corpses in sight.
After deciding to check the swaybacked structures first, he met Daymon’s gaze; knowing that the former firefighter had no military training, decided that dumbing down the hand signals was the best way for them to communicate. So he pantomimed his intentions by pointing at the shed on the left and then walking his fingers across his palm.
Message delivered, Duncan left the temporary shelter of the SUV’s door and endured the blasting sand and water and continual popping of the rotors as he sprinted to the nearby building. Pressing his back against the roughhewn boards, he steadied his breathing and listened hard. But nothing distinguished itself over the noise of the chopper and the whoosh of blood surging between his ears, so, seeing as how any element of surprise had been squelched by their less-than-ninja-quiet arrival, he called out for his brother, quietly, at first.
There was no answer.
He tried again. Louder. More urgency in his voice.
Still he got no response.
Goddamn it, he thought to himself. Why did I let him go out without me?
With the business-end of his pistol out in front, he cleared the tiny buildings starting left and working right and, like the lonely Tahoe, f
ound all three abandoned and empty.
He popped out of the third building closest to the garage and scanned the perimeter one final time, walking his gaze along the fence line to the gate, then back to the brambles and the long-idled heavy machinery. He looked over at Daymon and placed his hand up, palm out, fingers spread slightly—another silent signal telling him to stay put. Then for some reason something about the damp earth’s appearance a dozen yards behind the Tahoe piqued his interest. But seeing as how he was closer to the garage, he made a mental list that placed examining the disturbed ground between checking the garage’s perimeter and fully sweeping its interior. The latter he decided, based on the sheer size of the place, he wouldn’t be doing alone.
When he neared the pale green door, which rather ominously was blood-spattered and hanging ajar, he couldn’t help but notice the destroyed lock and bullet holes puckering the steel where presumably Logan or one of the others had used their weapon to gain entry. Seeing only cheap-looking furniture inside the gloom, he moved on. With the .45’s muzzle tracking his gaze, he cut the corner wide and wound around back, along the way making all of the same observations and assumptions as Logan had concerning the newness of the roller doors out front and the recently-installed windows on the far southernmost side.
Duncan was nobody’s fool, and possessing a strong intuition and usually infallible gut instinct ran in the Winters family. And as he stood near the corner of the building and watched the rotor blades cut the air above the chopper, the mental note hit his in-box, spurring him into action.
He ambled onto the crushed rock parking lot where he followed a zig-zag pattern to the spot of disturbed earth that he’d noticed earlier.
One look was all it took for all of the pieces of the puzzle to fall into place. He walked a wide rectangle, boots crunching a cadence, his mind wrestling with a new set of clues. Positioned in a sort of semi-circle, blending in with the like-colored earth, were a dozen brass shell casings, all of them 5.56 and probably from an AR or M4-type carbine. Not good, he thought as he continued the search. A dozen yards from where he found the brass, on the periphery of the disturbed area, he spotted a number of black playing cards that had found their way into the puddles, became waterlogged, and were now sitting at the bottom.
Instantly his stomach constricted. A frigid tremor wracked his body as he bent over and plucked one from the water. It was an Ace of Spades. Death cards. He’d seen them before in Vietnam usually accompanying the mutilated corpse of one of his brothers-in-arms. He turned it over and over in his hand—thinking—but still didn’t recognize what the blood-red logo on the opposite side represented. The image was of some kind of medieval warrior in full battle dress, wearing a plumed helmet with a thin slit for eyes. He pocketed the card and the .45 went back on his hip in its high-riding holster. He ducked his head, covered his face and sprinted back to the helicopter. Yanked the door open and shut the Black Hawk down. Meeting Daymon’s eyes and noting the perplexed look on the man’s face, Duncan snatched up an M4 carbine from the back compartment, nodded in the direction of the garage, and mouthed, “Follow me.”
Once the turbines had quieted down and the rotor blades were stilled, and he and Duncan were twenty feet from the bird, Daymon asked, “I saw you inspecting the ground. What did you learn?”
Duncan halted, turned towards Daymon, and hung his head. He removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. Finally he replaced his glasses, met the younger man’s gaze, and replied, “Whoever was here, ain’t here any longer.”
Trying to ruffle away the dome shape the helmet had pressed into his dreadlocks, Daymon said, “Can you elaborate? ‘Cause I’m no good at guessing games.”
“A couple of helicopters set down over there behind Charlie’s cruiser. One had skids like a Huey, only different. The other marked the ground up just like ours. The wheels were side by side and there was also a wheel out back. Probably a type of Black Hawk, which leads me to believe the other ship was one of those Little Birds ... like those special ops helos I saw flitting about Schriever. ”
“Begs the question then ... who were they? And where did they spirit your brother, Gus, and the ladies off to?”
Like a portent of things to come, a stiff wind gust banged the office door against the wall.
“I’m not so sure they’ve been taken.” He hinged at the waist, placed a hand on his knee and took a couple of deep breaths. “I don’t like what I’ve seen so far. In fact, my gut is telling me something I don’t want to hear.”
Resting the shotgun on his shoulder, Daymon opened his mouth like he was going to say something, but thought better of it and remained silent.
“Found some spent brass back there. Now I’m terrified to set foot in that building,” Duncan said, gesturing at the creaking door.
“I’ll go first,” Daymon said, leveling his weapon at the doorway. He took the steps in one stride and covered his mouth against the pungent reek of death that hit him the moment he crossed the threshold into the low-ceilinged room.
Seeing this, Duncan put his boot on the first step.
Voice muffled by his free hand, Daymon looked back and said, “You better not. I’ll do this alone.”
***
Three minutes later, by Duncan’s watch, Daymon emerged from the door carrying Logan’s crushed and bloodied bowler. Looking every bit a walking corpse, ashen-faced and speechless, the dreadlocked man sat down hard on the top stair.
Then, without saying a word—because none could describe the pain he was feeling—Duncan turned and slumped against the rust-streaked wall, riding it to the ground where he sat with his arms wrapped around his head for a good ten minutes.
Chapter 69
Schriever AFB
In order to leave the landing pad clear for the Chinook and put the Ford back down in roughly the same location it had been before launch, Ari had to make the unannounced but very necessary sideslip maneuver—that even to Cade, who was used to riding in all types of aircraft, had seemed very uncharacteristic at the time, considering the helicopter wasn’t taking enemy fire.
“Bad choice of words,” Ari said over the shipwide comms as he leveled the bird out. “Whipper tells me he has an important passenger on the tarmac who we need to get on board.”
Cade’s mind ran in circles as he craned around and looked outside to see who might be waiting. The first candidate that crossed his mind was Colonel Shrill. Maybe the man had decided at the last minute that he wanted to pop in on Major Beeson unannounced and conduct a surprise inspection in person. If so, Greg was not going to be happy. Maybe President Valerie Clay and Major Freda Nash were going come aboard and put on another full court press to try and convince him to stay at Schriever and continue running ops for them. If so, Brook was not going to be happy. No use speculating, he told himself. Resting his head against the bulkhead, he watched the scenery outside the window crawl slowly upward as if their takeoff had been recorded and was now being played back in reverse.
The mountains were momentarily visible through the small porthole window. Then the Zs crowding the distant fencing gave way to blue sky, which was quickly blotted out by the flat, squared-off rooftops of the nearby aircraft hangars. Lastly, a supernova-like glare illuminated the helo’s dark interior as they put down next to the truck which had spun a few degrees while airborne and was now sitting perpendicular, almost as if it were about to T-bone the helicopter, its newly-cleaned windshield simultaneously reflecting and amplifying the ascending sun.
Finally the Chinook came to rest, its bulbous tires and substantial hydraulic shock absorbers making the landing even softer than Cade had prayed for.
Then the stone-faced African American flight engineer unhooked his safety harness, strode aft along the metal gangway, and hit a switch that started the rear ramp on a downward journey.
Accompanied by a steady hydraulic whine, inch by inch the metal maw parted, allowing in harsh white bars of light which temporarily blinded everyone inside the helo.
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When a semblance of normal vision finally returned, Cade panned his gaze aft at their new passenger and was suddenly flooded by a feeling of been-there-done-that when he recognized the fully-framed silhouette.
Chapter 70
Utah
Though Duncan had skipped the section in the DHS flight manual concerning the Black Hawk’s performance thresholds, judging by the intermittent blips and bleeps coming from the cockpit warning systems as they hammered along a couple of hundred feet above the treetops pushing one hundred and fifty knots, it suddenly occurred to him that whatever they were, he was probably nearing or exceeding many of them.
With the turbines whining, high-pitched overhead, and the main rotor beating a sad cadence against the moisture-laden air, he nosed the Black Hawk on a westward heading, keeping the livewire glint of the Ogden river off to their left and SR-39 meandering lazily below.
Then for at least the tenth time during the short flight, he looked over his left shoulder just to make sure he wasn’t stuck in a never-ending nightmare. But sure enough, Gus’s and Logan’s corpses were real and still back there, lying crossways in the cabin, wrapped in sheets stripped from the bunks in the subterranean shelter. And even in his side vision, Duncan could see that the crimson blooms, roughly center mass on each of the bodies where the murderers had scored tightly-grouped shots, were steadily spreading across the white fabric like some kind of unstoppable virus.
Daymon adjusted the boom mike and asked, “What’s on your mind, sir?”
Twisting his head owl-like and fixing a no-nonsense stare in Daymon’s direction, Duncan drawled, “No, you didn’t. I will not have you and Phil both calling me sir. Duncan works for me. Or Winters. Hell ... you can even call me Chief if it’s OK with the Chief.”
Mortal: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse Page 33
