Payload

by RW Krpoun

  Limper was damn fast, injured or not: she was prone, fumbling to bring her weapon to bear (it had been on her back on its assault sling) when Marv put a round squarely in her forehead. Number Four got his weapon into play but was blazing away on full auto from the hip, putting out a lot of rounds but none even close to Marv’s location. Marv shot him four times rapid fire and then scooted back behind the bales.

  Loading a full mag as he trotted around the bales, he moved to the other corner and checked the scene. Limper was gone for good and Number Four was breathing his last, but Greasy Knife was crawling towards his weapon, which he had leaned against the SUV, and the leader was actually up on his feet and hobbling around the SUV, using one hand on the vehicle to pull himself along.

  Unfortunately, the leader was moving more or less towards the Ranger. Marv hit him with another double-tap, and then shot Greasy Knife in the back of his head.

  Periodically checking his rear and flanks, Marv watched the scene for a few minutes, then stood and eased up, shooting the leader and both injured subjects in the head for safety’s sake as he approached. Once he was sure they were all dead, he turned on his CB. “Six, flankers zero. I’ll set off the other three big bangs and head to rally. How you, over?”

  “One to Six, we are five by five. Sending trio to pick you up in target vehicle.”

  “Outstanding. I’ll be here.” Marv replaced the expended rounds in both magazines as he trudged up the fence line. They had planted IEDs at four fence crossings, and he didn’t want someone accidently tripping them.

  JD was on watch as the captured SUV rolled up. “Everyone OK?” Marv asked as he climbed out of the back seat.

  “Yeah, pretty much. Bear took a bad jolt from the blast; he’s resting. I need the girls to strip-search Sophia so she doesn’t do a Himmler on us. Or was it Goebbels? Whatever, just make sure she doesn’t have a cyanide pill.”

  “Bear’s hurt?” Bambi asked, frowning.

  “No, just a little concussed. Chip gave him some aspirin and he’s laying down, you can check on him once you’re done. That damned explosion was like a freakin’ A-bomb.”

  “We’ve got one more to check,” Marv jerked a thumb at the SUV’s cargo area. “Plus we got some very solid gear off these guys. Me and Dyson will take care of it if you’ll stand watch.”

  “No problem. The zeds didn’t stay with the rear guard once they cleared the stream bed, but better safe than sorry.”

  “Sir?”

  “Yes, Mister Weatherford?’

  “We just received word from in-place assets-Fastbox Two’s payload has been at its target site for at least fifteen hours.”

  The Doctor pondered that for a bit. He was too tired, but there just wasn’t time to rest. “How did it get there?”

  “Apparently they broke protocol. They used civilian assets deployed on short notice with minimal information. Our bribery efforts were focused upon military and paramilitary forces, and in any case the payload was within single-flight range.”

  “So the offer to Sophia was a ruse.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Recall her.”

  The pause spoke volumes. “We reached her pilot. It was an ambush.”

  “Is she dead? Confirmed?”

  “No confirmation, sir. As per protocol she had a tracker, and the payoff had a tracker. After an explosion and gunfire both left the exchange site and moved to another location less than two miles away, then stopped. Since the team she summoned was eliminated, we have to direct assets from some distance away to investigate, but I would suggest they captured her, moved her to a secure location, located and discarded the trackers, and departed.”

  “That is reasonable.”

  “I have instructed the pilot to return, and will have a ground team confirm or deny my theory.”

  “Very good.” Doctor Davenport sighed. “We will have to operate upon the assumption that she was taken alive. Begin the displacement plan immediately. Were the security protocols followed with her departure?”

  “Yes, sir. She was moved in a sealed vehicle, as was her bodyguard. Neither can place this facility to within a half-mile.”

  “No immediate fear of an air strike, then. We can move at Priority Three, I believe. Did she have access to any of the displacement sites?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Very good. Choose one at random and get things started.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  When the door closed, Cyrus leaned back in his chair and stared tiredly at the ceiling. The virus was out of his reach, and Sophia was lost. Getting that sample would have turned the battle around for FASA; as it was, the thin veneer of central control over his organization was unravelling as the various government agencies fought back. District 13 had almost no central control left, and his own district was beginning to experience desertions. Without a rallying point FASA would soon split into its component parts, each cell, group, and faction going its own way.

  Losing Sophia was a blow, albeit not for any personal reason-she had no real commitment to any goal, just a burning lust for anonymous harm and chaos. She was useful in these hectic days of setting the fires, but would have been a significant liability when the time came to rebuild.

  No, her loss represented the only top staffer lost by District 12. Up to this point his was the only District in the Western Hemisphere that could make that claim. If District 12 was losing, was there any hope for FASA?

  He pushed himself to his feet, scowling: this was no time for doubts. He would get a couple hours sleep and relocate to the new command site. The battle would continue, no matter who he lost. He had tasted defeat, but he was not defeated, and District 12 would continue to perform just as exceptionally as its leader.

  The RV was brand-new, and very nice, Sophia noticed absently. She was sitting on a settee with her wrists wire-tied together and also wire-tied to her belt, which was on backwards so she couldn’t unbuckle it. In addition they had wound duct tape around the knees of her jeans so she walked like Frankenstein-running or even jogging was out of the question. They were on the move-Portal was elsewhere, they had a second vehicle, and they had dumped the purse and the bags the stones were in before they had set off, and the GPS tracker along with them. Plus, of course, her own tracker.

  Her head still ached from the explosion, and her ears were still ringing. Bear, her erstwhile turncoat, was likewise feeling poorly and was elsewhere in the RV being ministered to by a tall blonde woman. There was another woman, a pretty Hispanic girl, and a second vehicle, although she hadn’t gotten a look at it. The Hispanic girl, Chip Wilson, and the Pole were in the other vehicle, along with Portal, who apparently had been taken alive as well. The man they claimed had abandoned them was driving; the wrestling promoter was sitting in the booth with a can of beer to hand methodically examining each of the stones with a magnifying glass, and the olive-skinned man who had left the mental health facility in Jacksonville was sitting on a sofa across from her, examining a rifle which might have been Dennis’.

  “Do you know anything about diamonds?” She asked.

  “Not really,” the promoter admitted. “But its pretty obvious most of these are fake.”

  “You go by ‘JD’, don’t you? JD, do you really think your family will be safe now that you have crossed FASA at this level? We haven’t crossed the Rubicon yet-you can still walk away from all this.”

  The handsome man placed the stone he was examining into a zip-lock bag and took a long drink of beer, condensation beading on the silvery sides of the can. “You really don’t know, do you?”

  “Know what?”

  “How bullshit your files are. You bet your life on this omnipresent knowledge, and its crap.” He jerked a thumb towards the front of the RV. “You didn’t know about Bob, or the girls, did you?”

  “No,” she admitted, trying to look contrite.

  “Just like you don’t know what your damned virus did in Tallahassee.” He took another drink and crushed the can. “Go ah
ead: threaten my family again. What can you do to them that’s worse than what has already happened?”

  She tried to look sympathetic, thoughts whirling. JD was the best bet of the five she had files on-other than Wilson the others had minimal or no family ties. “I’m sorry.”

  “No, you’re not,” JD picked up another stone. “That’s exactly what you set out to do.”

  She let a few miles roll by in silence. When JD got up to discard his beer can she caught the dark man’s eye. “Who are you?”

  “Addison.”

  “Addison, do you really trust your government?”

  “No.”

  “Neither do I. Do you support your government?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t either. Why are we on different sides?”

  “Because I don't trust the government, or anyone who is against the government.”

  She stared at him, but he had returned to examining the rifle.

  Marv emerged from the rear of the RV. Kneeling by the driver (she assumed Bob was not his real name) he activated the GPS unit and typed in a route.

  Satisfied, he came back and positioned a folding chair, an outdoor chair made of green nylon and black plastic rods, and sat down in it facing her.

  “I told you I would find you,” he grinned.

  It wasn’t a pleasant smile, and she was struck how much different he was in person. His pictures hadn’t really caught the man, but she still couldn’t believe that this uneducated cliché had gotten the upper hand. “That you did. Do you expect you’ll enjoy your reward for long? FASA has a long memory.”

  “FASA is dying on the vine,” he shrugged. “Your high command is dead, and your confederation of dirtbags is unravelling. Just the relocations to nullify the information you have will disrupt their operations and cause a few defections. Besides, I don’t expect they really get too sentimental about each other. They’ll write you off as the cost of doing business.”

  That was an accurate assessment, but she shook her head. “Marv, Marv, you still don’t see the scope of what you have crossed, do you?”

  “Yeah, I do: its tied up in front of me. In short, you couldn’t stop one Ranger and a handful of heroes from crossing half the country. We’ve left a trail of dead FASA teams and mounds of zombies in our wake. You really think you can talk your way out of this?”

  “Maybe FASA won’t come after you. Maybe. But let’s say they don’t: you’re still a dead man walking. This patriotic nonsense means that you and the rest of your ‘Yard Gnomes’ are in for the duration, and the zombies might have missed you so far, but they won’t always.”

  “Let me guess: if we let you go, you’ll make us rich?”

  “Why not? FASA would pay well to get me back. You don’t have to die fighting other people’s wars, Marv. Oh, they’ll pat you on the head and say ‘who’s a good boy?’; they’ll even give you a pretty little piece of metal on a ribbon, but in the end they’ll put a rifle in your hands and send you out to fight. You’ll draw small-time money taking big time risks, and if you live you’ll still be at the bottom of the pile. You’re smart, Marvin, smarter than we gave you credit for, but if you go this route you’ll be nothing but an idiot. A dead idiot.”

  He nodded thoughtfully. “You know, I found a tablet on that reaction force you had, the other white SUV. They had shot some video of what they were doing earlier in the week, I guess. Some sort of weird ethnic cleansing, only I couldn’t make out what group they were trying to take out; it just looked random. Rapes, torture for no reason other than to inflict harm….sick stuff.” He sighed. “I saw stuff like that overseas. Stuff like that reminds me that someday I’m going to have to answer for everything I’ve done. Every single thing.”

  “Preaching sermons now? How many people, uninfected people, have you killed?”

  “Not as many as you.” He met her gaze. “But the fact is, I think I can justify those killings. Your FASA goons, definitely. But selling out, that won’t be something I can explain. I’m gonna have to drink of the cup that’s before me, no matter how badly I want to avoid it. Your files didn’t tell you that about me, I guess.”

  “Religion,” Sophia shook her head in disgust.

  “Yeah. In a word, religion. I have to take my part in the suffering. Thing is, come the day, I can’t use what others do as an excuse.”

  “Are you trying to convert me, or convince yourself?”

  He grinned. “Its more just finding my own way. I had to reach deep these last few days, really dig to keep going. That’s the thing about times like there, you stop living on autopilot and really have to look at the world around you. You have to pick a place and a side.”

  “And you’ve decided rich and alive is just too much for your faith to handle?”

  “I think letting you go to spread more death is not the path I want to walk. How many teams did we tie up, besides those we’ve killed, Sophia? How many percentile points of FASA’s capability were bled off trying to stop the payload?”

  She shook her head. “Very little. I hope that you can live with that small outcome.”

  “I can. I doubt you will.”

  “One thing: where did you get a dummy payload? I got a good look at it on the flagpole-hanging it on the rope was clever, it let me see the weight of it.”

  “We got it when we handed off the real thing yesterday. All that payload had was vials of nutrient solution.” He grinned at her expression. “Yeah, that’s right, Sophia: hours before Bear called you it was already at the site. You spent the last twenty-odd hours chasing a fiction.” He stood, folding the chair preparatory to sliding it into the narrow green carrying bag.

  Finished, he smiled at her. “You weren’t the target of today’s operation, Sophia. Sure, capturing you and killing off that team was nice, but the real goal was to keep FASA focused on the Yard Gnome Action Team. Like I asked earlier, Sophia: how many resources did you spend for nothing?” He chuckled. “I hope you can live with that.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  They were rolling southwest now, crossing into Texas on Highway 271 as the sun drew close to the horizon, and then heading west on Highway 82.

  “Hey, Sophia,” JD nudged the dozing woman, and pointed out the window when she looked up. “Welcome to Texas.”

  Hanging from a convenience store’s burnt-out façade were eight bodies, hands bound behind them. Placards around their necks said ‘FASA’ in bold letters. ‘3/141 36ID TXARNG’ was spray painted across the wrecked building’s front.

  “Looks like you people haven’t been winning hearts and minds. Or even just winning.”

  She gave the promoter a disgusted look and leaned her head back, closing her eyes.

  Marv sat in Doc’s green folding camp chair in the aisle, back to the windshield, watching the TV, Addison stretched out on the sofa to his right, JD now moving back to the booth after needling Sophia. The Ranger had the laptop balanced on his knees and was making notes on a legal pad.

  They were watching discussions of the new legislation putting the US under emergency law for twelve months, and the declaration of war levied against FASA and ‘any state or organization which attempts or support the attempt to mount attacks against the territory or citizens of the United States of America’. A bill (supported by the President) calling for the nationalization of the police forces under Federal control had been defeated; the Simms-Hardy bill defining infected subjects to be ‘virus vectors not subject to the protection of the law as pertains to Human beings or animals, nor real property in any sense’ had passed. The President had also signed a general amnesty for the termination of any infected person committed prior to Simms-Hardy becoming law.

  Congress was now hammering out the final details in a bill that would restructure much of Homeland Security and FEMA into three new agencies: the Department of National Security, the Department of Strategic Response, and the Department of Emergency Management.

  “So DNS will have the security functions that Homeland has n
ow,” JD mused. “Much thinned down. DSR is what again?”

  “The counter-virus agency,” Marv checked his notes. “Its really not a big agency, more a coordinating body for other agencies’ assets operating against zombies and that sort of thing inside the US. The military has to be under civilian control, after all. DEM is FEMA plus HUD and The Department of Health and Human Services.”

  “So Emergency Management is what, disaster relief?”

  “Yeah, dealing with the upheaval of people fleeing around. They mentioned something about Patriot Homesteads, which I take it are going to be some sort of secured housing for people in the hardest-hit areas. Not a lot of details at the moment.” The Ranger tapped his notepad thoughtfully. “How are we doing, Bob?”

  “Two hundred miles and a little under a half tank of gas,” Dyson replied after a pause, still not used to his cover name.

  “OK, give the truck a call and look for a spot to pull over. We’ll empty our gas cans and switch drivers.” He typed a line and closed the laptop. “I need to talk to everybody, anyway.”

  Nelson picked up on the second ring. “Colonel Nelson.

  “Fastbox Two, sir. We’re thirty minutes from the meet point.”

  “You’ve made very good time, Lieutenant. The rally point is a roadside park; for obvious reasons I want the prisoner transfer to be covert for the time being.”

  “Yes, sir. Sir, you’re aware that there was an aircraft in the area that probably reported her as missing, correct?”

  “Yes, I am. Its not FASA I’m worried about, but rather our people. Emotions are running a bit high, and the last thing I need is for some hothead to put a bullet into her. It will take me an hour or so to get to your location, as the Federal Marshals will be talking custody of her.”

  “The Feds are getting her?”

  “Civilian prisoners fall under the operational jurisdiction of the Department of Strategic Response, formerly the Office of Strategic Response,” Nelson sighed. “A short-lived agency of which you and I are both alumni. Speaking of which, one reason for the delay is that it will be our last interaction, and I want to make sure everything gets sorted out correctly.”