Hannah slid her hand out from under his and picked up her pencil, scribbling a couple of notes as an excuse to separate herself from him. The general didn’t seem to notice as he continued, “This is our opportunity to begin again where Sanjay’s research ended. We have the means to deploy a team down to that facility and gather all the research notes, specimens, and whatever else there is, and bring it back here. The government is still functioning from…well, I can’t say where from on this phone line, but they have scientists working on a cure. If we can present them with data that talks about how the virus was created, then that might jumpstart their program.”
Hannah wrote the word “jumpstart” and underlined it several times. It wasn’t a bad idea, but it was a very dangerous one. She’d been on the ground with some of the world’s best operators and they got wiped the fuck out in minutes. Wouldn’t sending in another team just create the same problem?
“Sir?” she asked when the general paused, holding up her hand like a kid in school.
“Yes, Ms. Dunn?”
“I agree that there’s an opportunity here, but…” She allowed herself to trail off.
“You can speak freely, here,” General Bhagat prompted.
She glanced again at the sergeant for a moment. “I was an anomaly on my team, sir. I was the pilot. Everyone else had a special operations background with years of clandestine operations under their belt. And we were completely wiped out in minutes down there. Are there SF teams here at Bliss? You know, people who are trained for this sort of mission or is everyone here a conventional soldier?”
“That’s a good question,” he replied. “Simply put, no. We do not have a Special Forces element here. From what I gather, they were mostly eliminated trying to secure government officials and protect key facilities in the first few days of the outbreak. However, the infected that we see these days are vastly different than the ones we faced a year ago. Your team faced newly turned, healthy,” he made air quotations with his fingers around the word, “infected. The pathetic, starving wretches we see these days are a far cry from those first cases. You’ve been out there amongst them recently, so you probably know that more than we do.”
“Yes, sir,” Hannah answered. “They may have a diminished capacity to act or pursue their prey for long periods of time, but they are absolutely still dangerous. They hunt in packs and people end up getting trapped, then overwhelmed. The damned things are dumb, but numbers are on their side and that’s how they get survivors now.”
“I understand that, Ms. Dunn. We’ve been fighting these things from day one, first during the establishment of the quarantine zone, then securing El Paso, the collapse into the cantonment area when the FEMA camps fell, and we see them every day—almost every day now, I guess.” He glanced at the Division Operations Officer.
“That’s right, sir,” Colonel Tovey stated. “We haven’t had any contact in about four days. But with the Air Force close air support, we fought wave after wave of them for months, almost non-stop, until we started turning off the lights at night. Of course, that brought its own problems in the refugee camps, but we’ve increased our presence there and have that mostly under control now.”
“So, we may not have special operations soldiers here, Ms. Dunn,” General Bhagat resumed, “but we have a wealth of experience fighting these things.” He glanced around the room. “We need to raid that facility and get all of the intelligence that we can.”
The general cleared his throat. “Dan, can you provide transportation for a team—a couple of platoons—down to Brazil?”
Hannah stared at the telephone, anticipating Colonel McTaggert’s response. He’ll say no, won’t he?
“Ah, I need to get back with you, sir,” McTaggert’s voice came from the speaker. “The briefer stated that there was a C-130 on site when she was there, so there’s the potential that we could land there. Just off the top of my head, without any planning, there’s no way a C-130 could make it all the way to Brazil and back without refueling, so I need to confer with my Air Ops officer and my planning staff before I commit to this mission to see if it’s even possible.”
“What kind of a turnaround are you thinking?” General Bhagat asked.
“We’ll need at least a couple of hours for initial planning, sir.”
Bhagat smiled. “Sounds good. We’ve got a lot of planning to do on our side as well. What do you think, Dave?” He looked at his operations officer. “Is fourteen hundred doable?”
Hannah looked at her old Timex watch, the one that all the operators on the Havoc team had made fun of her for using since it didn’t have GPS tracking, a pedometer, a heart rate monitor, or any of the infinite number of battery-draining features that their watches boasted. The simple timepiece had served her well and didn’t need to be recharged once a week—a bonus when the power grid went down. It was almost 10 a.m. now, so that gave the two groups about four hours to conduct initial planning. It was doable, but a lot of details would surely be overlooked.
“Yes, sir,” Colonel Tovey answered. “I think that’s enough time for an initial map recon, discussion with the brigade commanders about personnel availability, and to put together a rough plan.”
“Good. Is that enough time for you, Dan?”
“Yes, sir. I believe so,” the Air Force colonel replied through the telephone.
“Let’s reconvene at fourteen hundred. I’ll need your honest assessment about the feasibility of transporting a platoon or so all the way to Brazil and back.”
“Understood, sir. Are you calling us back or do we call you?”
“Ah, we’ll set up the bridge to dial into again, sir,” Major Calamante, the signal officer, replied. “We’ll just leave it open the whole time in case there are questions. Nobody else is using it.”
“Good job, Six,” the general replied. “Maybe next time we can get a VTC operational and we can see each other. Okay, let’s get back together here in my office at thirteen forty-five for a pre-brief. Just a small group, I don’t need every one of you here for the pre-brief. Everybody else, be standing by, ready to go for the fourteen hundred.”
General Bhagat stood and Hannah surged to her feet along with everyone else, accidently dropping her notepad at the unexpected movement as the others in the room said, “Iron Soldiers!” and saluted the general at the end of his meeting. Seeing it now, she realized it was one of the traditions that she actually missed from her days in the Army. It was a silly, inconsequential thing, but there it was, nostalgia creeping up on her. She leaned down to pick up her items from the floor.
“Sir, can I have a moment to talk to you?” Colonel Tovey asked the general. “We need to discuss options for refugee food shortages. We’re running out of food again.”
“Yes, of course, Dave,” General Bhagat said, glancing at the group. “Give it a moment though.”
“Yes, sir,” the operations officer replied. He turned back to watch as the group made its way from the room. “Oh, Ms. Dunn?”
“Yes, sir?” Hannah replied.
“Since you know the AO, I’ll need you to come help us with the planning of this mission.”
“Um, sure. Okay.” She gestured toward Colonel King. “I rode over here with the Aviation Brigade commander, so…”
“Excuse me. Carol?”
Colonel King nodded. “Yeah, I figured you’d be keeping her, Dave.” She put a hand on Hannah’s shoulder. “I’ll be back here for the thirteen forty-five pre-brief and we can take you back over to the brigade area after the meeting. Sound good?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Hannah replied, ducking her chin.
“I know it’s tough, Hannah,” Colonel King stated. “You’ve been through so much already, seen way more shit than we have locked behind our walls, but we need you to help us out for just a little bit longer, then you can take some much-needed R&R, okay?”
“I’m fine, ma’am,” Hannah assured the older woman. “I’ve had a lot of time over the last year to work through my feelings
and the implications of what we failed to stop down there. I’ll do anything to help put an end to this.”
The colonel’s fingers dug into her arm slightly as she squeezed. “Don’t go saying that too loud, dear, or they’ll take you up on it.”
Hannah’s mouth dried as the implications of Colonel King’s statement registered in her mind. Was she really prepared to do anything to set this right? She had a feeling that she was about to find out.
15
* * *
MANHATTAN, NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK
MARCH 6TH
“So, you’re the people I’ve heard so much about.”
Grady evaluated the man they’d waited hours to see. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected the post-apocalyptic warlord to look like, maybe some muscle-bound freak wearing armor made from tires with spikes protruding from the shoulder or something similar, but the figure before them was just a normal-looking guy. Jackson Jefferson looked to be twenty-five, thirty max. He appeared normal in every aspect as he sat on a simple armchair. He was clean, seemingly well-manicured except for his hair, which grew wildly in tight bunches, and wore a simple pair of jeans and a black t-shirt. In fact, he didn’t appear to be much of anything, which was exactly why Grady assessed him as dangerous. You don’t become the leader of the type of people they’d seen without being absolutely ruthless.
“I guess so,” Jake replied to the warlord’s question. “I’m Lieutenant Jake Murphy, United States Army.” He stepped forward with his hand outstretched, but two men moved to intercept him, faltering his progress.
“Stop it, you two,” Jefferson admonished. “They have guns. If they wanted to kill me, they’d just shoot me.” He stood and closed the distance. “Idiots.”
Jefferson shook his hand and then Sergeant Turner’s when the man introduced himself as well. “And you are?”
“Grady Harper,” he replied. “I worked for a different branch of the government.”
“Oooh, secretive.” Jefferson pointed a finger at him. “I like it. We only get a couple of hours of electricity a day around here from the solar panels we rigged up, so we can’t waste it on watching TV, but I used to love a good spy movie. Please, just tell me that we didn’t do this to ourselves. That the CIA or the Army didn’t accidently release the virus that we were planning to use on somebody else. Can you at least tell me that?”
Grady’s eyes narrowed as he assessed the man farther. There were literally hundreds of different government agencies, how’d he settled on the CIA was either incredibly astute, or he was just bored out of his mind and looking for anything exciting.
“We didn’t do this,” Grady replied. “It was the Iranians, in concert with the North Koreans.”
Jefferson slapped his palms together and pointed toward the back of the apartment. “I knew it. I knew it wasn’t us.” Louder he yelled, “You owe me now, Beth. I was right. It wasn’t us!”
He turned back to the small group. “I bet you have some fun stories about secret missions.” Jefferson’s long fingers wrapped around the back of Grady’s hand, easily half again longer than his own, as they shook hands. There were no calluses, no rough patches, it was as if the guy had been an office worker before all of this instead of the cop or gangbanger that Grady had thought upon initial inspection.
“So,” Jefferson said, “allow me to introduce myself. I’m Jackson Jefferson. Somehow, the residents have elected me to help guide them through these trying times. Is there a government response to help us out? I mean, we can still see those things across the bay, so I don’t think we’ve beaten them yet.”
“We’re actually trying to get to the labs at Columbia University,” Jake declared. “We thought—”
“Don’t bother,” Jefferson said. “They can’t help you.”
“Why’s that?” Grady asked.
“Most of the scientists are dead. One of their researchers went a little crazy and killed all of the crusty old bastards who refused to listen to any new ideas after a few weeks of trying to discover the truth about the virus. Real messy scene too. Dead people all over the lab and nobody bothered to clean them up.”
“So, there aren’t any scientists left?” Lieutenant Murphy asked.
“Eh, there may be a couple that I missed. Not a hundred percent sure.”
Alarm bells began to sound in Grady’s head. “That you missed?” Jake asked.
“Yeah. I killed those stupid old fuckers,” Jefferson chuckled. “We had the body of one of the whackjobs that the NYPD killed at LaGuardia. It was a few weeks old, so the cells we were working with were not the best samples. I wanted to get a live subject from New Jersey because I thought I was onto a potential discovery, but because it didn’t follow ‘established medical protocols’,” he said as he made exaggerated air quotations with his fingers, “they said that it was dangerous and incredibly shortsighted. One of them even went on to say that I was trying to kill everyone in New York City. Can you believe that? The final straw was when that same dick suggested they should infect me—me!—with the crazy juice to make a live test subject. Obviously, I couldn’t let that happen.”
Grady shifted his weight to his back leg, glancing around the room. There were at least two guards in there with them, but no way of telling how many more were in the other rooms. Jefferson had called out to a female, so there was at least one noncombatant out of sight as well, maybe more.
“You do realize that if you try anything, you won’t make it out of this building alive, don’t you?” Jefferson asked, pointing at Grady. “I grew up on the streets of New York. I see you choreographing an attack there, Mr. Spy Man.”
“Grady, don’t do anything stupid,” Jake hissed.
Grady gritted his teeth. “You’re admitting to murdering scientists?” he asked. “The very same scientists who could have helped put a stop to this?”
Jefferson shrugged. “A lot has happened around here that you guys don’t know anything about.” He crossed one leg dramatically over the other. “That reminds me, you were just about to tell me where you came from and what you’re doing in my city.”
The lieutenant shook his head slightly at Grady, meaning for him to leave it alone. “We traveled here from El Paso, Texas,” Jake said, telling a white lie since the two of them had come from Kansas, while the rest of the platoon had come from Texas, but this guy didn’t need to know that part. “Our research capability is nonexistent there. The CDC response and FEMA camps were overrun, and the scientists who could have helped got schwacked early on. Since then, we’ve been stuck inside the base, simply trying to stay alive. The commander assessed that the threat from the infected had diminished enough that we could risk sending troops to the last known safeholds of humanity. We’re here looking for scientists to help with the virus.”
“I already told you that they’re all dead, so I guess you came all this way for nothing.”
“That’s—”
“Nah, I’m just fucking with you, man. I’m a scientist, and I even worked at the university, so you’ve found a researcher. What could you possibly expect me to do?”
“Um…” Jake drew out the word. “We came here to see what research was being done into a cure or a preventative vaccine for the virus.”
“Yeah, well.” Jefferson uncrossed his leg and leaned forward. “I worked on it for a few weeks until the power went out—after I cleaned up all the bodies, of course.” He paused to bump fists with the man on his left. “It’s definitely manmade, a bioweapon. There are too many different kinds of DNA strands attached together to occur naturally. All of those strands mixed together create one hell of a nasty virus that I simply couldn’t figure out how to defeat. Then juice stopped flowing, the mayor got thrown off the bridge, the NYPD stopped going to work, and the city descended into complete chaos. We needed strong leadership, so I stepped in. The rest is history.”
“So, you don’t think there’s a chance of finding a cure?” Murphy asked to get the rambling conversation back on track.
> Jefferson shrugged. “Sure, man. There’s a chance for everything. Phil here might just shoot you for invading my meditation time.” He pointed to the guard he’d fist-bumped. “Actually, that might be more of a statistical probability than a chance, but whatever. There may be a chance of developing a vaccine to prevent someone from acquiring the disease if there were a fully-functional lab and a very motivated researcher. From the few that I’ve seen, I’m pretty sure there’s no cure once it’s taken them.”
“What about if you were presented with a person who was immune to the virus?”
“I haven’t seen anyone with an immunity. Every person we’ve sent to Jersey for supplies or whatever that got bitten has been infected and we had to put them down. Are you telling me there are people with immunities to the virus?”
Jake nodded. “There are a lot of those types of people out there. We’ve got hundreds of them at Fort Bliss, probably a lot more who were never bitten before they came to the refugee camp. Last I heard, estimates were somewhere around one in a thousand were immune.”
“Fort Bliss? Is that in Texas?” Jefferson scratched at his beard and a hint of crazy showed in his eyes. “You guys really from the Army, or are you just some gang trying to move in on me?”
“No. We’re not a gang, man. Fort Bliss is the Army base next to El Paso…in Texas,” Jake replied. “Like I said a minute ago.”
“Texas! Texas!” He slapped “Phil” on the forearm with the back of his hand. “You hear this shit, Phil? They’re here from Texas and expect us to do something for them.”
“Yeah, boss. Dat’s just dumb,” the guard replied with a thick, native New Yorker accent.
“Exactly,” Jefferson agreed. He slapped his hands together and rubbed them back and forth. “I’m sorry, fellas, but I don’t think New York is the saving grace that you thought it would be.”
“But you said that you were a scientist,” Jake protested.
Five Roads To Texas | Book 11 | Reciprocity [Sidney's Way 3] Page 10
