by James Harden
January 25th - Deadly Force
The next day they had expanded the outer perimeter of the quarantine to a ten mile radius. The quarantine now covered the town, the official immigration center and the unofficial immigration center.
It was a huge area.
But I’m starting to think the quarantine is a band-aid solution. I’m starting to think we’ve lost control.
Yesterday, the unofficial immigration center was partially destroyed by fire. A fire that was deliberately lit. Command isn’t telling us why. No one tells us grunts anything. But it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why they did it.
They locked up those poor people. Hundreds. Maybe thousands. Then they cleared out and set them on fire.
They were burned alive.
I woke up that morning and my whole body was sore. My feet, my legs. Even my throat was sore from the smoke.
I was hoping today we would be given a chopper ride back to the main barracks. Grab a shower. Some real food.
Get some rest.
But no. We had been assigned to guard duty.
We were to set up at a checkpoint about a mile outside of the outer-perimeter and watch for anyone who had broken through.
The fire and the shooting in the town had put everyone on edge. And understandably, people were trying to get the hell out of here. Not just the immigrants, but people from the township as well.
I can’t blame them.
But no one was allowed to leave. Didn’t matter if you were healthy.
Our orders were to keep a look out for anyone trying to make a run for it. We were authorized to eliminate any probable threat or any persons we believed were infected beyond help. If they were infected we were authorized to use deadly force if necessary. They reminded us that a head shot was the only way the only way to stop a person infected with the virus.
If we couldn’t contain the threat, or if the outer-perimeter was breached by too many people, we were to call in the gunships for aerial support.
Usually we operated in pairs. One shooter and one spotter. But since Gordon was still in hospital and apparently they were running low on field experienced snipers, Command said we had to split up. They wanted to cover as much ground as possible. They wanted as many shooters as possible.
So we split up. We were about a hundred meters apart. The low lying scrubs provided plenty of concealment. We settled in and positioned ourselves. I was lying flat on my stomach, rifle pointed back towards the town of Woomera. Once Drake and Franco had positioned themselves, they completely disappeared from my sight. If anyone was walking through here, there’s no way they would see us.
I was praying that no one would be stupid enough to try and escape.
My prayers fell on deaf ears.
Two guys ran towards us, about half a mile away. They were hunched over, trying to keep low and out of sight. They had no idea they were being watched. They seemed to be running between the low lying scrubs and every now and then they would dive behind one and wait for a few minutes. Once they thought it was clear they would continue running to the next point of cover.
Out in the desert it wasn’t much but the shrubbery actually provided pretty good concealment. Unfortunately for these guys it wasn’t good enough. We could see them easily.
I spoke into my mic. “Franco. I got a couple of guys here in my sights. About half a mile away. Directly in front of me. They’re headed towards your position. Do you see them?”
“Ah, that’s a negative,” Franco responded.
“Are you sure? They’re right there.”
“Oh, wait. Yeah. I see them.”
“What do we do?” I asked.
“We better call it in.”
“But we don’t even know if they’re infected.”
“Why else would they be running?”
“Because they’re scared?”
“Look, we got orders to stop anyone from getting through here. Doesn’t matter if they’re infected or not.”
“I’m going to talk to them,” I said. “I’ll just tell them to turn around. Nobody has to get hurt.”
“What? Kenji, no. Stand down!”
I turned my mic off. I don’t know what came over me. But I wasn’t going to sit there and call in the gunships. Who knew how those guys would react? And I sure as hell wasn’t going to take pot shots at innocent people. And for all we knew these guys were innocent. For all we knew they probably weren’t even infected.
I decided to take it upon myself then to save their lives. Tell them to turn around. Go back before they did something stupid like get themselves killed.
I stood up and started walking towards them. I looked over in the direction where I knew Franco and Drake were situated but I couldn’t see them at all.
I looked back to where I had last seen the guys trying to escape. They were standing up, looking right at me. They paused for a split second, frozen, like a couple of deer caught in headlights.
I waved at them, trying to get them to come over to me. But instead they started running away. They had panicked. They were not going to make this easy.
I was about to start running after them. I took maybe two steps before I heard the rotor blades of an Apache gunship. It flew in low over my head. I dived for the ground as the engine and the rotor blades roared on by.
It hovered over the area for a few seconds before locating the two guys. They continued to run, oblivious to the fact that it was useless to try an outrun an Apache gunship.
I got back to my feet and started running after them.
I actually shouted, “NO!” Not that anyone could hear me.
What’s that saying? ‘In space no one can hear you scream’. Yeah well, same thing goes here. In the outback no one can hear you scream.
The Apache unloaded with its minigun. The burst only lasted a second. The tracer bullets whizzed through the sky giving the impression they were shooting a bright orange laser beam.
The guys fell to the ground. They did not get up.
The Apache turned around and began flying right for me. It flew low, over my head once again, incredibly close.
I guess they were listening in on us before as we argued over these guys lives. I guess they were trying to send a message to us.
Enforce the quarantine.
We were probably going to get chewed out for hesitating when we got back to base.
Later in the day, when we finally did make it back for debriefing, I prepared myself to get reprimanded for compromising the quarantine. But to my surprise we weren’t in trouble. We didn’t even get a chance to debrief. Everyone was too busy. The regiment was stretched thin over the vast area of the twin immigration centers and Woomera Testing Site.
They told us to get a good night sleep.
We were going back out again tomorrow.
