by Dirk Patton
“But they got greedy. They got a taste of Capitalism, the money, luxury, power, prestige. They probably played right into the Russian’s hands. The new Russian President, Barinov, is a Billionaire. Between his own money and control of the Russian government it’s not a stretch to imagine him buying the right Chinese officials to make this happen. Old, hard line China? Never would have happened. The new China? If you’ve got enough money, anything you want is yours. But this is just the musings and guesses of a middle-aged Army Colonel. If I was that bright I’d have stars on my collar, not eagles.”
I sat there thinking about what Crawford had just told us. It made sense. More sense than the original belief that China had attacked because they wanted our land and natural resources. They may have needed these things, but without the consumerism of the US, their economy would tank beyond repair. Why would they give that up, unless the men in control thought they had a replacement in their pockets? How many billions had the Russians invested in this gambit? We looked up as Captain Blanchard walked up, snapped a salute and stood there at attention, waiting for the Colonel.
“Jesus Christ, Captain. It’s oh four fucking hundred and I’m too goddamn tired to stand up and salute. Relax and have a seat.” Blanchard completed his salute, but didn’t sit, instead choosing to stand.
“Sir, we’ve completed four full search patterns of the river and both river banks. The search pattern began at the bridge and terminated sixty miles south.” He paused and turned to me. “I’m sorry, Major. We didn’t find any sign of her or the dog. Unfortunately, if they came up on the eastern shore…”
“I got it. Thanks, Captain. And tell the air crews thank you for me.” This time I lit a cigarette and started smoking it. I was exhausted, and pissed at myself. If I had killed Roach when I first saw him on the train, Rachel and Dog would be sitting here with me. Were they really gone? I had to acknowledge the likelihood, but the same part of me that believed Katie was still alive refused to give up hope. Rachel was a survivor, and Dog was… well, Dog was one tough son of a bitch. One could argue that Rachel had survived as long as she had because she was with me, and to a degree that was true, at first, but she had shown a toughness that many men I’d known couldn’t have matched.
“Thank you, Captain. Now go get some rest, all of you.” Crawford lit another cigarette.
“What about you, sir?” Blanchard prompted, falling into the role of a good aide.
“I want to look over these interrogation notes, then I’ve got to talk to the Admiral again. Figure out what we’re going to do about these fucking Russians that are stinking up our country.”
“Yes, sir.” Blanchard answered as we all stood up to head for our makeshift beds.
“Oh, Captain. Do we have early warning pickets out? For the Russians and the infected?” The Colonel asked, turning on a small flashlight and digging out a pair of reading glasses.
“Yes, sir. Air assets up at all four points and a platoon of Rangers keeping an eye on the river. Just in case the infected figure out how to swim.”
We all looked at him for a moment after he put that thought out. They can’t swim. Then, a few days ago I didn’t think they could coordinate their efforts and hunt us, either. Crawford thought about that for a moment, nodded his head and waved us away as he started reading from the legal pad.
11
I woke several hours later, bathed in sweat. The small airport didn’t have much in the way of accommodations, and Jackson and I had unrolled a couple of thin, foam ground mats in the back of a tin roofed hangar. We had gone to sleep with the hangar door open, a cool night breeze blowing in the opening, but when the sun came up the humidity returned and the metal roof had quickly heated up. Now it felt like I was in a sauna.
A few feet away Jackson lay on his back, snoring loud enough that I wondered how I had slept. I’d have to get him and Dog together to see who was louder, I thought, then remembered I didn’t even know if Dog was alive or not. The thought soured my mood, more than it already was, and I climbed to my feet with a groan. I may have stayed in shape, but my knees, back and shoulders weren’t as young as they used to be. Working the sore joints, I thought about kicking Jackson and telling him to get his ass up and moving but didn’t see the point. Let him sleep while he could.
Wandering out into the bright Arkansas sunshine I wished for a pair of sun glasses as I headed for the trench some of the Rangers had dug on the far side of the runway to serve as a latrine. Business complete, I set out in search of the Colonel. I intended to ask him to send out another helicopter to search for Rachel, and if he wouldn’t I was going to slip away and start looking myself. Of course, I didn’t have a clue where to start, but that didn’t matter.
Trudging across the hot tarmac towards the control tower I had time to think. In my heart I knew I wasn’t going to desert to go look for Rachel. I was many things, but no matter how good the reason I wasn’t a deserter. Men were fighting and dying. Brother soldiers who most likely had someone they cared about who was missing, too. I knew I’d be fighting until I was dead, or we won, and winning wasn’t looking like it would get very good odds in Vegas right about now.
Reaching the base of the control tower I returned the guard’s salute, pulled the door open and stepped into blessed, nearly orgasmic quality air conditioning. I had forgotten that the FAA required emergency generators for any airport with a controller assigned. Apparently the Colonel hadn’t as I could faintly hear it purring away, providing power to the building. Climbing the staircase to the upper level I found Crawford seated at the same folding table I’d eaten dinner at the previous evening.
In the far corner of the room sat a folding cot, a thin Army issue blanket folded into a perfect square sitting precisely in the center. Crawford looked freshly showered, shaved and wore a crisply pressed uniform. He was drinking a cup of coffee from an Arkansas Razorbacks mug, satellite phone pressed to his ear. He looked up when I walked in and waved me into a chair on the opposite side of the table. Before sitting, I looked around for the coffee pot, but couldn’t spot one so sat down and enjoyed the cool air blowing out of the ceiling vent directly over my head. Crawford wrapped up his call and hit the end button on the sat phone.
“Before you even ask, I’ve got two Black Hawks out looking for her. Well, not just looking for her, they’re also scouting for Russians and infected, but I put a Ranger on each bird and tasked them with looking for her specifically.” He noisily slurped some coffee and picked up his reading glasses and the legal pad with the interrogation notes.
“Thank you, sir.”
“Don’t like to leave anyone behind.” He said. “That was Admiral Packard and his staff I was just talking with. Briefed them on what you got out of our prisoners last night. They still have access to our satellites, and are re-tasking several of them for surveillance of the US. What we do know is that the Russians have taken Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, Ellsworth in South Dakota and Kirtland in New Mexico. Malmstrom gave them access to our Minuteman III inventory of ICBMs. They’re consolidating their hold on us and we’ve got an idea to ruin their day.”
“I’m all ears, sir.” I said when it was obvious he was waiting for me to respond.
“SADMs.”
At first I was sure I hadn't heard him right. SADM stands for Special Atomic Demolition Munition. In plain English, a nuke that fits in a back pack. I had trained on these devices at one point in my military career, preparing to carry them into the Soviet Union if the President ever decided it was time. But that was a lot of years ago. Technology had made them obsolete, or so I thought.
“We still have some? Weren’t the last ones built in the 70s?” I asked.
“60s, to be accurate, but you know the US Government. Nothing ever gets thrown away, just stuck in storage and forgotten about.”
“Will they still work?”
“Admiral Packard checked with his staff that maintains the Navy’s nuclear arsenal and they assured him that the devices will work
as well today as when they were built. Sounds like they have a pretty long shelf life.”
“So, what’s the catch? If I’m remembering right these things are variable yield, from 10 tons all the way up to 1 kiloton. Couple of these at each base they took over, cranked all the way up and there’s a lot of fried Russkies.” I asked with a sinking feeling about where he was going with this.
“That’s our thought. Do you still remember how to adjust the yield?”
“Yeah, I do. Once you’re shown how to operate a nuclear bomb it’s not something you tend to forget.” I said with more sarcasm than I probably should have when talking to a superior officer, but at the moment I didn’t really give a shit.
Crawford ignored my tone and continued. “The problem is there’s only three locations we can identify where these are in storage. The Navy had some at Little Creek in Virginia and at Coronado out in California. Unfortunately, no one can find any records to confirm they’re still there, or even exactly where they are on the bases, and there’s not someone to call up and ask to go check. The third location, and we have found inventory records from less than a year ago, is Los Alamos.”
I looked at him and stayed silent. I knew what was coming, and I wasn’t going to help him. The room was quiet other than the rush of cool air from the air conditioning vents and a large analog clock ticking away on the wall over the north facing bank of windows.
“I need you to lead a team into Los Alamos and retrieve the devices. Records indicate there’s ten of them in storage. Captain Blanchard has all of the details you’ll need.”
I knew I was going to accept the mission before he even asked. Yes, asked. Crawford was a good officer, a good leader. He could have ordered me to go, but that wasn’t his style. He knew me well enough by now to understand that he didn’t need to order me to do anything. Just explain to me why it needed done. I’ve always been a soft touch that way.
12
The two little girls were named Lindsey and Madison, Madison the younger. Rachel’s guess of their ages had been close. Madison was seven and Lindsey ten, almost eleven as she proudly announced. Their parents owned the small gas station, the only place to buy gas for forty miles in any direction, Madison assured her. They had only lived in Arkansas for a few months, their parents having sold everything they owned to come up with the money to buy the business from a distant relative. The girls missed their friends, but said their mother was very happy to have left the crime in their Memphis neighborhood behind.
They huddled with Rachel in the back of the office area, Dog lying protectively between them and the door. He was close enough for the girls to touch him and both kept a hand on his back, gently rubbing. Tired, but unable to sleep, Rachel got them talking about what had happened to their parents. While they talked, she kept an eye out the glass front of the office even though it was too dark outside for her to see anything. She trusted Dog to warn her if there was any danger.
Shortly after the attacks, the local Sheriff had come around and talked to their daddy. They weren’t able to hear the conversation, but when the man left their father was very upset. He used a lot of bad words when he was telling their mom about what the man had to say. Their mom got frightened and begged their daddy to take them away to somewhere safe, but he said there wasn’t nowhere safe anymore. He said that the monsters were everywhere and the river was all that was keeping them safe and they couldn’t leave it.
It wasn’t long before the first monsters showed up. It was late evening and the girls were playing in front of the gas station while their parents sat watching. Madison was playing a game of hop scotch and when she hopped out of the last block and looked up, there were three men walking down the road in her direction. The men were still down the road a short distance, a small stand of trees screening them from their parents’ view. It wasn’t uncommon to see field hands walking long distances in the area, so Madison didn’t pay any attention to them and went back to her game.
Back and forth she went, happy with how well she was doing. She had just started another game when Lindsey screamed. The three men were much closer now, just coming around the edge of the trees, and when Madison looked up she screamed too. One of them was missing most of his face, bone and teeth clearly visible in the evening light. Their mother started screaming and running to protect them while their father dashed into the small office and grabbed the shotgun he kept under the counter. Gathered up in their mother’s arms they started crying as she hustled them to safety, crying harder when they heard the booms of their daddy’s gun.
After that they weren’t allowed to play outside any more. There was a small two room shack behind the gas station which was where they lived, and their mother stayed there with them while their father kept watch from the office. They never saw any more monsters, but every day or two they would hear their daddy’s shotgun and their mother would start praying that he was OK. Then, two days ago, the bad men came.
There were six of them, and peeking out through a crack in the wall the girls recognized the Sheriff who had come by and upset their daddy so much. There was a lot of shouting and the men pointed guns at their parents and made then climb into the back of one of their pick-ups. The girls, crying, had stayed hidden in the shack like their mother told them. They watched as the trucks drove away, two men sitting in back with shotguns pointed at their daddy. There hadn’t been much food left in the shack and they had finished it off quickly, wandering out to the office to search for more.
The girls sat on either side of her, Madison finally lying down and putting her head in Rachel’s lap. Rachel was shocked and saddened by their story. She knew racism was still alive and well in the world, probably would be as long as there were humans that weren’t identical to each other, but never dreamed that there were men who would take advantage of the situation to start enslaving other men. Where the hell was John? Why hadn’t he found her yet?
Gently stroking the child’s hair as she drifted off to sleep, Rachel cursed the circumstances that had separated her from John. These innocent little girls needed his help, and she just needed him. At first Madison started softly snoring, Lindsey soon falling asleep with her head resting on Rachel’s shoulder. It wasn’t long before Rachel’s eyes grew heavy and she joined them in a dream haunted sleep. Dog was aware that all of them were sleeping, but he didn’t take his eyes off the windows that looked out at the road. Remaining still and silent, he watched the small pack of infected males approach from the east and stumble slowly past the turn-in to the small gas station.
13
Little Rock Air Force Base outside Little Rock, Arkansas was a hive of activity, despite having been nearly decimated by the second outbreak a few days ago. I was just arriving from West Memphis on a Black Hawk that would take a few minutes to refuel before heading back to where Colonel Crawford had his temporary headquarters. Captain Blanchard was with me, briefing me on what was known about the conditions in Los Alamos, where the SADMs were stored in the city and calling ahead with his satellite phone to coordinate the equipment and personnel I needed. I would have liked to have Jackson with me to watch my back, but I had asked him to stay in West Memphis and help with the search for Rachel and Dog. Crawford left the decision up to him and he had grudgingly agreed.
I had several problems to deal with to get my hands on the nukes. First off, Los Alamos was crawling with infected. The small city had avoided the initial release of nerve gas, but Blanchard’s best guess was that due to the relative proximity to Denver, which had been attacked, the virus had arrived and wreaked havoc.
Problem number two was the whole reason I was even going. The goddamn Russians. They had captured Kirtland AFB which is on the southern edge of Albuquerque, giving them effective control of a large swath of the American southwest. Los Alamos, no more than 70 air miles from Kirtland, was within the protective bubble of the CAP – Combat Air Patrol – that the Russians were flying around the clock. There was no way to get an aircraft inside the CAP and on t
he ground in Los Alamos without being spotted.
Problem two exacerbated problem number three. Once I had the nukes in my possession, how the hell did I get them out where they could be used by American forces? I hadn’t seen them, but had been assured we had satellite imagery that showed plenty of vehicles available that we could commandeer. The SADMs were so small and light I didn’t even need a truck. A small SUV or even a sedan with a decent sized trunk would fit the bill if that was all I could find. I refocused on the moment as the Black Hawk’s tires touched the tarmac. With good luck wishes from Captain Blanchard I jumped out the side door onto the concrete apron.
Fifty yards in front of me a man stood next to the door of a squat office building. He waved and I headed in his direction. As I approached I had a moment to look him over. He was younger than me by more years that I cared to acknowledge, close to my height with a broad chest, powerful arms and shoulders and probably close to my weight. Dressed in desert camouflage cargo pants and a tight, black dri-fit T-shirt with a holstered pistol and slung rifle I could tell he wasn’t an officer. Both arms were almost fully sleeved in tattoos, artfully done with the result making his already powerful build appear even more intimidating. When I closed to within a few feet of him he straightened his stance and snapped a salute which I returned, surprising him when I stuck my hand out to shake his.
“John Chase,” I said, looking him in the eye and trying to get a sense of who he was.
“Tech Sergeant Zach Scott.” He replied with a small grin. “Welcome to Little Rock. Heard you had some excitement in Memphis.”
“Yeah, and I didn’t even get to see Graceland.” I answered with a grin of my own. He smiled, either because I’m genuinely funny or because I’m an officer. He didn’t look the type to suck up, and didn’t feel the need to encourage me to say something else witty, so he passed my first little test.
