The UK was a perfect foothold to reclaim Europe and beyond, and if the American forces could develop the fastest way to clear an area of infected and kill them off by the thousands, then the riches of half the world would be theirs for the taking.
They could emerge as the dominant power on the entire planet.
Fisher’s personal ambition wasn’t quite so grand, but he would be a fool not to seize the opportunity on offer. The least he expected when the business was done was a position as section chief somewhere.
His reverie was interrupted by the mechanical sounds of the fax machine chirping and chuntering as another vital piece of information was received, and as he watched the printer arm shoot back and forth over the roll of paper, he jumped slightly, startled by the sudden noise of the satellite phone’s shrill ring.
“Fisher,” he said in economical answer to take the incoming call.
“This is Jacobs,” came the slightly delayed and detached voice, “pickup by chopper at twenty-one-fifty your time for briefing.”
“Understood,” Fisher answered, hearing the call cut from the other end.
He slowly replaced the receiver into the case and rested the fingertips of his right hand there, smiling. If Jacobs was involved, then he knew Langley and, in turn, the White House, would be investing in his plan.
A glance at his watch told him he had a little under thirty minutes to be at the nearby airfield, so he threw on the heavy coat he was sure he’d die of exposure without in the harsh landscape and drove himself.
The ride to the carrier stationed thirty miles to the west was short but uncomfortable as the helicopter bucked and dropped, thanks to the icy crosswind it flew through. Fisher could only imagine how harsh it had been there in the middle of winter and was thankful he’d arrived as the worst of the weather was beginning to break. He was amazed how the conditions could so drastically switch from a fresh covering of perfect dry snow to a diagonal downpour of stinging rain like a million needles aimed for any gap in a man’s clothing where skin was exposed.
Those musings killed the time until the engine note changed and their airspeed slowed for the pilot to begin clawing his careful way sideways to land the skids on the rolling deck. The rotors powered down and Fisher unstrapped to reach for the door as it was opened from outside. Another agent greeted him. Fisher didn’t recognise him, but the appearance of a man in a suit was so out of place on a navy warship that it made his agent status obvious. The man shouted over the noise to confirm he was who he was and led him inside.
“Briefing room is this way, Sir,” the man said, offering nothing more but leading the way to what counted as a large room aboard the floating fortress.
“Fisher,” Jacobs called out to him as he walked in, “take a seat.” Jacobs didn’t introduce any of the dozen other men sitting at the chairs arrayed before a raised dais and Fisher saw a mixture of uniforms which were primarily naval. Others not in uniform were just as obvious, but the briefing started before he could get a bead on them.
“Okay then, I’ll get right to it. Aerial surveillance reports indicate that the use of the device was far more effective than expected, with a confirmed radius of roughly forty miles give or take, depending on the terrain,” Jacobs explained, telling Fisher that everyone in the room was just as read-in on the situation as he was, if not probably more so. “Other devices are either being retrofitted in theatre or are in transit from the US and expected to be fully operational for deployment within seventy-two hours. Mister Robertson will fill you in on the method.”
Robertson, tall and built like a sportsman but appearing oddly timid in the company he was presently keeping, stood and adjusted his spectacles. The man was clearly with the agency and not an agent, so Fisher marked him down as one of their eggheads immediately.
“Gentlemen,” Robertson began with more confidence in his voice than Fisher expected from his demeanour. He nodded towards the back of the room and the lights dimmed in response. A projector started up to flicker a bright display against the solid wall to their front. A map of the UK appeared, quickly followed by another acetate sheet laid over the top, showing a red circle.
“The plan is to drop a series of devices in sequence over a period of nineteen days.” Another three sheets were laid over the displayed image with more red circles appearing and overlapping. “These devices will bring out any of the infected people and cause them to congregate in a single area, ready for the deployment of a cure.” Murmurs rippled around the briefing room and Fisher shifted in his seat uncomfortably. “Estimated time before we are able to begin operations there is eight to twelve days.” Robertson nodded at Jacobs and sat again. Jacobs’ eyes found Fisher and his expression invited him to chime in. With a long intake of breath, Fisher steadied himself and stood, proceeding to walk to the front of the room to be able to turn and see everyone’s faces.
“Are you planning to drop this special ordnance and congregate every possible infected being into the same location as the test area?” a man in a naval uniform asked.
“Negative, the area…” Jacobs looked to another suit, who consulted a stack of papers for a frustrating handful of seconds.
“Bristol.”
“Bristol is being used as a secondary test area to deploy the serum and also test the most effective munitions against the infected. The other devices will be dropped ranging north to south and will cover most of Britain, eventually leading everything to…” He once again snapped his fingers impatiently at the man with the papers, who desperately rifled through them to find another place name.
“Hastings,” the agent said eventually.
“So the infected all end up at Hasti—” Jacobs shot a quizzical look at the agent, who froze with no idea why that had caused the man any confusion. “Seriously? We’re having another Battle of Hastings? Anyway… it’s been calculated that this is the best area that won’t damage any real infrastructure or impede deep-water ports for the eventual repopulation efforts.” He scanned the room to make sure there were no little hands raised in the air and wrapped things up.
“First off, gentlemen,” he said confidently, “let’s be clear on what we mean by the word ‘cure’…” He paused to take in the expressions on those faces. “The ‘cure’ being developed is a serum that prevents any of the infected from representing a danger to any living person or animal. It kills the infected person by causing massive haemorrhaging. It is not pretty, but it does work. I’ve seen it.”
“Seen it how?” asked a voice from the front row. Fisher opened his mouth to respond but Jacobs cut him off.
“The how and the why and the where are classified,” he said abruptly. “What’s important is that the serum is in production, the first batch of which will be delivered very soon.”
Fisher’s eyes went wide for a second before he got himself under control. Professor Grewal had been adamant that further testing was required, but Fisher’s eagerness to provide results had forced his own hand in reporting the success back to Langley. Both Grewal and Chambers—who he found far more amenable than the Brit—were in agreement that the ‘cure’ as they all liked to call it, wasn’t ready for use without more testing. As Jacobs went on explaining more of the logistics of how it would all happen, Fisher leaned back against the edge of a desk and tried to sum up the courage to interrupt the more senior man.
That courage never materialised, or at least his career aspirations stopped the words from forming in his mouth, but either way he stayed silent, as the plans to bring troops over the Atlantic in time for spring were discussed.
“What about the evacuation of anyone left there?” a voice asked from nearer the back, unaware or simply unconcerned that ‘there’ was more accurately ‘here’.
“Quarantine and evacuation protocols will be dealt with by the military,” Jacobs answered, “and the President has agreed to expedite all applications for asylum from British citizens, but this is not our primary concern. Our primary concern is developing the most effecti
ve method for corralling and destroying those infected.”
“What’s the method for deployment of the cure?” a man asked, the wings on his US navy uniform indicating that he was a pilot.
“Airburst munitions,” was all Jacobs said.
“Specifically?” the aviator asked, unperturbed at the attempted stonewalling. Jacobs sighed.
“As of oh-eight-hundred tomorrow, three AC-one-thirty Spectres will be stationed in Las Palmas. They will have the necessary munitions supplied to them and the delivery will be by forty-mike-mike and one-oh-five-mike-mike airburst. Any other questions?”
“What about a BLU-eighty-two with a daisy cutter?” one man asked.
“Too much serum to waste in one go if it fails. Next?”
“Las Palmas?” asked another voice uncertainly, sure they were asking a stupid question but going ahead with it anyway.
“The Canary Islands,” Jacobs explained, reciting information he’d recently learned by the sound of his voice. “The outermost region of Europe, a little off the western coast of north Africa in the Atlantic, owned and controlled by the Spanish government. We entered into an agreement with that government some months ago but since then contact with their continental base of operations has been lost, with obvious assumptions for what that means. There is a contingent of government on those islands who are effectively trading new lives in the US for all their surviving citizens for use of the island chain by our forces indefinitely.”
“In-flight refuelling?” the pilot asked.
“KC-one-thirty-fives,” Jacobs told him, the information meaning nothing to many in the room but evidently satisfying the man asking.
“When do we start?” asked a new speaker.
“In forty-eight hours,” Jacobs said. “As I said, deployment of the sonic lure devices will begin in the north and head progressively south, providing the fastest time on target for our planes when the party starts.”
The briefing was dismissed, leaving Jacobs and Fisher at the front of the room. The two men’s eyes met and Jacobs must have detected the trepidation in Fisher’s.
“Forty-eight hours,” he said again, waiting for Fisher’s acknowledgement.
“Forty-eight hours. Understood.”
TWENTY-TWO
Finding somewhere to safely park two armoured vehicles under cover was no simple task, given their size. The sudden and oddly concerning lack of wandering zombies made the task infinitely safer and more simple, and while that conundrum was pushed temporarily aside, they settled on a large industrial garage unit.
Bufford and Larson got out first, the former having been cooped up inside the Warrior for too long and the latter insisting that she was fine, in spite of having expended almost all of the ammunition she’d been carrying only a few hours previously. They entered the unit via a small pedestrian door, before emerging a full ten minutes later as Bufford hauled on a chain to roll up the big shutter and admit the two vehicles reversing inside. The roller shutter came down behind them and Duncan immediately set about searching the large workshop for fuel stores.
As they all congregated and stretched their cramped muscles, sounds of a trapped animal, hissing and yowling, drifted out of the hatch to them, followed shortly afterwards by a small projectile of brown and black exiting the vehicle and seeking the nearest piece of low cover too small for a human to fit. Everyone but the royal marines looked shocked. Peter had already learned of the survival of the cat who had followed him and Amber so long ago. He smiled at Johnson, who just seemed speechless.
“Bloody thing has to be down to two lives maximum,” he muttered, digging in his pack and handing a tin of something to Peter. He fished in a pouch on his webbing to produce a tin opener, offering it to the boy, who was already proudly holding his own and grinning at the SSM.
Kimberley hovered behind Peter and smiled nervously at Johnson as she fussed over the boy and earned suspicious glances from his sister. Ever since he had been left behind at the farm, she had blamed herself and expected criticism from others, but when none came, she seemed to act harder on herself than even before. Johnson smiled back, forcing his facial muscles to move into some semblance of an expression designed to reassure her that she wasn’t to blame. Privately he blamed himself, even taking Peter aside when he could pry his sister from him for just a minute, to apologise to him. Peter had been the one to offer the reassurances then, taking responsibility for sneaking away from the group without telling anyone.
Johnson, a man accustomed to large industrial garages, returned the conversation to the subject of diesel and brought Duncan’s attention to the grubby metal tank standing in the yard.
“Better to get it now than risk having company later,” he said. The logic was sound, but it was a hassle to drive the two big wagons back outside and crank the heavy hand pump up and down to brim their tanks, while the others formed a loose cordon with their guns trained outwards. The task all but drained the remains of their strength. When both wagons were full, Johnson encouraged them to fill the three metal jerrycans they found with diesel, seeing as they were already there.
Safely back inside, they set a guard and began a debrief on what had happened since they had last seen one another.
Daniels, finally stood down from the need to do things immediately, filled Johnson in on what he’d missed.
“It was bad, Sarn’t Major,” he admitted. “We lost half the boys when they went back to the base for more wagons and gear. Only Povey made it back and that was because the Regiment boys found him being chased by a pack of the bastards. It was Nevin.” At the mention of the squadron sergeant major’s nemesis, the big man scoffed in derisive anger before a smile crept across his bearded face and he recounted his last sight of Nevin—undead and trapped inside a shattered body halfway down a cliff—to the radio operator. Daniels’ smile grew to mirror the SSM’s.
“Good,” he spat vehemently. “Less than the fucker deserved after what he did.”
“That’s not the half of it,” Johnson went on. “Seems like our missing troop sergeant set himself up as lord of the hill and was running a bloody protection racket, which Nevin found himself a part of. It was those two bastards who wrecked our little winter headquarters with a Ferret.”
Daniels nodded towards the two royal marines. “But they did for him?” Johnson sucked in a breath as he fought down the physical response the recalled emotions threatened to overwhelm him with.
“Yeah,” he answered. “Saved our lives by being prepared to give up their own. It’s bloody good to see them in one piece…”
“The others, the Mister Palmers and Mister Lloyd, went to Scotland with the SAS blokes and the helicopter crew.” Johnson nodded along as Daniels gave him the details on that, listening as he described the brutal winter with too many mouths to feed and not anywhere near enough food to go around.
“Funny,” Daniels said, “when they all left, there was more than enough food left. I think that’s the way, you know? Small groups…”
“Probably right,” Johnson agreed distractedly, his thoughts evidently going elsewhere.
“We going to talk about this or ignore it?” a voice asked from behind them. Daniels turned, hearing the hostility in the tone and misunderstanding it. He found himself facing the wild-bearded SBS sergeant whose abrupt manner he had taken as angry. Johnson, accustomed to his directness, answered him.
“Can’t say it hasn’t been on my mind,” he agreed. “Charlie? Fetch me a map of the area.”
The map was laid out flat with most of them huddling over it.
“We’re here,” Johnson said, indicating a small town outside Salisbury, “and the Screechers stopped coming round about here,” he said, tapping the sharp tip of the bayonet he was using as a pointer on the map a few miles to the west.
“The house was back here,” Daniels said as he tapped a finger on the map, “and AWACS reported the swarm down here.” Again, another tap on the map some twenty miles to the south.
“All of th
em heading in the same directions…” Larsen said thoughtfully.
“So why do you think this has something to do with the Yanks?” Johnson asked Daniels.
“They were on to me straight away,” he said, brow furrowed as though he was trying to find the source of the paranoia in his own words. “I’d been broadcasting regularly, seeing if I could get them to make contact back.”
“Them?” Bufford asked gruffly.
“The Americans, mainly. There’s at least one French frigate and some supply boats from other European countries. Our navy’s there too, but they’re not running the show, by any stretch of the imagination.”
“And you know this how?” Johnson asked, suspecting he knew the answer but not comprehending that anyone had the patience he suspected Daniels possessed.
“Spent all winter going through every NATO frequency on the list,” he answered flatly. His tone gave away the fact that it had been tedious work, to say the least.
“I got a response in the beginning,” he went on, “and they wanted to know our location and strength and all that. Said they were cataloguing survivors for future extraction when the situation was under control. I asked what that looked like and they didn’t say anything. Anyway, they took my emergency hailing channel and just stopped answering. Gave up after a while; I was more interested in finding yo—in finding any more of our boys who’d made it off the island and were at a loose end.”
“And we appreciate it, Charlie,” Johnson said, seeing through the young man’s pretence. “But that still doesn’t answer the question…” Daniels looked down for a moment, probably deciding on the best way to phrase his thoughts, before raising a single finger and wagging it slowly as he spoke; almost as though it were connected to his mind with an invisible string that teased out the conclusions from the mess of suspicion.
Toy Soldiers (Book 5): Adaptation Page 16
