Z: The Final Countdown

by Bob Mayer

  “I feel fine,” Lieutenant Vickers said. “Just won’t be dancing for a while.”

  Riley smiled. “Sorry. We’ll get you out of here,” he added. Comsky was wrapping a metal splint that looked like chicken fence around her lower leg, holding it in place with an Ace bandage.

  Vickers looked over at the helicopter. Smoke was still coming out of the large hole in the tail boom. “Looks like the cavalry threw a shoe.” She peered at him, searching his plain jungle fatigues for any insignia. “And you are?”

  “Dave Riley.” He jerked a thumb at Conner who was kneeling with Seeger as he filmed the scene. “I’m with them.”

  Vickers nodded.

  “You’ll be all right,” Comsky said. “I’ve immobilized your ankle.” He reached into his aid kit and took out some pills. “These will help.”

  “Transmit,” Conner ordered Seeger. They were in the shadow of the helicopter, protected by the drooping tail boom.

  “Now?” he asked, surprised.

  “Now.” She gestured. “This is hot.” She looked over at Lome, who still had the M-60 in his hands and was searching the horizon, looking for targets. “And there’s always the chance we might not be getting out of here.”

  Seeger shrugged and took out the small satellite dish, hooking it into the back of his camera.

  * * *

  Ku gave a strange, choking sound. Riley and Comsky moved over to him just in time to see him vomit a vast quantity of dark red blood.

  “Jesus,” Riley muttered as they stared at the sergeant.

  Comsky quickly donned a pair of surgical gloves. He thrust a pair at Riley. “He’s choking. Hold him down,” he ordered as he pulled a tube out of his bag.

  Riley slipped the gloves on and grabbed Ku’s shoulders. Comsky leaned over and put his hand into the man’s mouth, sweeping around with his fingers, trying to clear it out. He wiped off a mass of black goo on Ku’s shirt, then put the tip of the tube inside the man’s mouth. Ku violently threw up again. This time a mass went around the tube and splattered into Comsky’s face and over his chest.

  “Fuck!” Comsky yelled, wiping across his eyes to clear his vision.

  Riley kept his grip as Ku thrashed about.

  “Turn him on his side,” Comsky ordered. He pushed the scope farther in. Ku’s chest began rising and falling. “All right. He’s got air,” Comsky said. The medic reached inside his aid kit and pulled an IV out. “But he’s lost so much blood, he’s going into shock. He’ll be dead if I don’t get something in him.”

  There was a tearing sound from inside Ku.

  “What was that?” Riley asked. It was the most nauseating thing he’d ever heard.

  “I don’t think we want to know,” Comsky said as he slid the needle into Ku’s arm.

  More blood came up out of Ku’s mouth around the tube. There was material mixed in the blood.

  “What’s that stuff?” Riley asked.

  “His guts,” Comsky said. “That’s what we heard tearing. His insides are just disintegrating.” He kept working. “Fuck,” Comsky muttered. “I can’t get this going.” The needle hadn’t taken and blood was seeping out around the hole. He tried again, with the same result. “Christ, I’m killing him trying to save him. He’s going to bleed to death while I try to get blood expander into him.”

  Ku’s eyes flashed open. It looked to Riley like he was trying to speak, but the tube prevented that. The sergeant’s hands dug into Riley’s arms with amazing strength and he half sat up. More blood and guts poured out. Then Ku’s head flopped back and his eyes rolled up.

  Comsky reached forward and felt the man’s neck. “He’s dead.” Comsky peeled off his gloves and threw them down next to the body. “Fat lot of good those did us.”

  Riley looked up as Lome fired a long burst with the M-60. “We have other trouble right now.”

  A new voice spoke in Colonel Harris’s headset. “I’ve got the helicopter. Are you sure all friendlies are in the immediate vicinity of the crash site? Over.”

  Harris called the helicopter pilot and confirmed it. “Roger, all friendlies are within twenty feet of the crash site. Over.”

  “Roger. I’ve multiple targets on thermals outside of that perimeter. We’ll take care of this. Out.”

  The AC-130 Spectre gunship was developed around the C-130 Hercules transport plane frame. Inside the spacious cargo hold, instead of paratroopers or pallets, there were three large guns, their snouts pointing out holes in the left side of the aircraft. Between the three—a 20mm cannon, a 40mm cannon, and a 105mm howitzer—the aircraft could fire several thousand rounds a minute and put a round in every square inch of a football field in less than ten seconds.

  The pilot who had just finished talking to Colonel Harris had the plane in a counterclockwise racetrack at over a mile of altitude. His targeting officer was using an amplified thermal imager to scan the ground and acquire targets. The guns were computer controlled, and the officer was feeding in each one outside of the perimeter of the people around the crashed helicopter.

  In the rear crewmen waited. Not to fire the guns, the computer would do that on the command of the targeting officer, but with shovels to clear away the mounds of expended brass that would pile up around the guns once they did begin firing.

  On the ground Riley cocked his head. There was a familiar sound in the air. He looked up, but in the hazy sky he couldn’t see anything. Still, he knew what was coming. He’d seen this before.

  “You might want to point that thing out there,” he called out to Seeger, indicating in the direction of the UNITA rebels who were cowering behind a disabled pickup truck, popping up occasionally to fire an errant shot in their direction.

  “I think I’ve got them all,” the targeting officer said.

  “Let ’er rip,” the pilot ordered.

  The targeting officer flipped a switch and the plane shuddered as all three guns began firing. The 20 and 40mm cannons had Gatling-type barrels and were fed by belts of ammunition. The 105mm howitzer ate a stack of rounds fed from overhead, one at a time.

  On the ground it looked like two solid lines of red came out of the sky and touched down. First on the pickup truck closest to them. Intermingled among the lines was the crump of a larger 105mm round.

  In three seconds the truck, and the men around it, disappeared. The firing shifted and, one by one, the troops that had set the ambush had the tables turned on them. There was no escaping under the cover of trees, as the thermal targeting of the Spectre saw through the trees and the weaponry tore apart the foliage, destroying what was underneath.

  It was all over in thirty seconds.

  “We’re clear,” the helicopter pilot called out. “There’s a Chinook en route to our location to pick us up and sling-load this aircraft out.”

  Riley put down the M-16 he’d been using. The adrenaline rush was wearing off. He could tell Conner was ecstatic. She had footage that would most certainly make people sit up and notice. Right now, she was talking into the camera, giving her after-action wrap-up.

  Riley walked over to Comsky, who was looking down at what remained of Sergeant Ku. Little more than a red lump of flesh in a vaguely human form. “What happened to him?”

  “I don’t know,” Comsky said. “I’ve never seen anything like that. It’s like his body was just eaten up.” He was rubbing his hands together nervously. “I think he had some sort of disease. He didn’t look too good when he got on board the chopper.”

  Comsky looked over at Conner and Seeger. “Hey, bring that camera over here.”

  “What do you want?” Conner asked.

  Comsky pointed at the body. “Take a close-up of him.”

  Conner flinched. “Why?”

  “Just do what I say,” Comsky said. He was searching through his aid kit. He pulled out a scalpel.

  “What are you going to do?” Riley asked.

  Sergeant Lome had walked over and he echoed Riley’s question. “What are you up to, Comsky?”

  T
he medic was pulling on a new pair of gloves. “I don’t know what killed him, Top, but there’s people back in the States who might. We need to give them something to work with.” He looked up at Seeger. “Keep the camera on the body.” He placed the tip of the scalpel on the center of Ku’s chest.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Sergeant?” Lome demanded. “You can’t go around cutting people up!”

  Comsky raised his eyebrows and looked up at his team sergeant. Top, he’s dead and he isn’t going to get any deader by me cutting him. Trust me, I know what I’m doing. This is important. Very important.”

  Lome glanced around. Other than the pilots, he was the ranking man on the spot.

  “We might have whatever killed Sergeant Ku,” Comsky said, thumping his chest. “That’s why it’s important that I do this. To try and get an idea of what it is.”

  Lome hesitated, then nodded. “All right. Go ahead.”

  Comsky slid the blade through flesh. Ku’s stomach was full of black blood with traces of internal tissue mixed in it. Comsky reached through the goo with his hand, pulling up dripping internal organs. Conner turned away, retching, the meager breakfast she’d had coming back up.

  “His kidneys are gone,” Comsky said. He pulled something up. That’s his liver.” It was the color of urine and partly dissolved. Comsky put it back down on top of the mass of blood and guts that had been Sergeant Ku. He looked up at the camera. “I don’t know exactly what killed this man, but the people who might know are at Fort Detrick. Whoever’s looking at this tape back in the States, please get a copy to Fort Detrick.”

  Comsky stood and pulled a poncho out of his rucksack. “Let’s bag him. Bag him tight. Then I suggest we clean up as best we can.”

  Chapter 9

  Fort Detrick, Maryland, 15 June

  A madman working in a wax museum could not have set a more fearsome scene. The bodies were twisted into grotesque shapes. Mouths were open; silent lips that would never know the passage of a final scream were pulled wide over fangs. Their chests had been opened, red blood frozen and caught hanging like threads of red.

  The eyes were the worst. Black orbs staring aimlessly out, framed in red blood like cheap eyeliner that an epileptic makeup artist had applied.

  Dan Tyron didn’t like dealing with frozen bodies. Not out of any sense of aesthetics, but because frozen objects have pointy parts and pointy parts make holes in gloves and flesh. And this frozen locker was hot. As hot as any place on earth. And hot plus a hole in the space suit he wore equaled dead.

  Inside his suit, Tyron was a large man. He just barely made it inside the army’s weight standards every time his annual PT test rolled around, and that was only after careful dieting and some fudging by the unit first sergeant on both the scale and height recorded. The philosophy around this place was that they weren’t going to have one of their own separated from the army just because of some stupid rules that had nothing to do with a soldier’s capability to do his job.

  Tyron had sandy blond hair and a wide, cheerful face that belied a man who was handling dead bodies. Very carefully, he rolled a cart under one of the monkeys. He pushed a button and the chain that had held the body up lowered it until its entire weight was on the cart. He then most carefully unfastened the meat hook that was jammed through the monkey’s back from the chain, leaving the implement in place.

  He slowed his breathing. His faceplate was fogging up and the air inside his suit was getting stale. He rolled the cart out of the refrigerator room and shut the large steel door behind him. Then down the corridor to the necropsy room, where he plugged in the air hose for his suit to a wall socket. The familiar sound of the fresh air being pumped in filled his ears and the mask cleared. The sound was as comforting to him as the whine of a smoothly running engine was to a helicopter pilot. It meant his lifeline was working. He locked the wheels on the base of the cart so it wouldn’t move. Every action was slow and deliberate. He double-checked everything he did. This was not a place for mistakes.

  Tyron pulled extra-large surgical gloves over the space-suit gloves, then glanced at the other occupant of the room and pointed at the monkey. “On three.”

  The other person had the name “Spencer” stenciled on the chest and a woman’s voice echoed him over the radio to confirm she understood. “On three.”

  “One.” Tyron and Spencer each grabbed one end of the monkey. “Two. Three.” They smoothly lifted the body and placed it on an operating table, handling it as delicately as they would a bomb, which in effect it could be considered. The monkey was dead, but there were things inside it that existed in a netherworld between life and death, waiting for other living flesh to devour just as they had devoured the monkey’s.

  “It’ll take a couple of hours to defrost,” Tyron said. “We’ll do the cutting on this one at thirteen hundred.”

  “All right,” Spencer acknowledged.

  He turned to the other table, where a second monkey lay. They had taken it out of the freezer the previous evening. Tyron picked up a scalpel and handed it to Spencer. “Welcome to level four. Your first patient, Doctor.”

  He couldn’t see Spencer’s face as she bent over the corpse. “Thank you, Doctor.” She pressed the blade into the monkey’s stomach and sliced. The interior cavity was full of congealed blood.

  Spencer watched his subordinate as she worked, making sure that she was noting all key abnormalities, although most were not hard to spot. The kidneys were totally gone. The liver was yellow and part of it had dissolved.

  He took the samples she was cutting off and placed them onto glass slides. The only glass allowed on level four. When she indicated, he took a pair of large clamps and cracked open the monkey’s chest, holding open the rib cage for her to work in there.

  There was a crackling noise in the air and Spencer was startled. She froze and looked at Tyron, trying to guess what the cause was. “Voice box,” he mouthed to her, looking up at the ceiling. She looked relieved. Any break in the routine was scary down here.

  What the hell do they want? Tyron thought. The speaker crackled again and this time he recognized the voice of the USAMRIID— the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases—commander, Colonel Martin.

  “Dan, we have a development in Angola.”

  A development, Tyron thought, his pulse skipping a beat. Something was hot there. He remembered seeing the news on SNN about the UN/Pan-African mission into Angola. Something about the 82d Airborne deploying.

  “I need you to look at something,” Martin’s voice continued. “ASAP.”

  Tyron unplugged his air hose and moved to the air lock. He stepped in. His mask was fogging badly. “Got to have control,” he whispered to himself, slowing his breathing. The lock cycled and he stepped through. He ripped off his boots, then stepped into the next chamber. He pulled a chain and the suit was hosed down. He waited impatiently as the shower ran through its sequence. There was no way to make it go quicker. Not if it was going to ensure that all viruses that might be on his suit were gone.

  A development. The word echoed through Tyron’s consciousness. He was coming out of one of only two biohazard level four labs in the country. The other one was at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) headquarters in Atlanta. The people who worked at both USAMRIID and CDC around level four agents knew that a development usually meant someone had died and that more people were going to die unless they intervened quickly and effectively.

  It was obvious to most people why the CDC had such an interest in disease. It was less obvious why the army had one, except to students of military history. Even in the relatively modern times of the last century, in war more soldiers died of disease than in battle. Whenever masses of men gathered together, pestilence was never far away. Also, biological and chemical agents had been used before as weapons of war and they would be used again. USAMRIID’s job was to try and stay one step ahead.

  The shower finally shut down. Tyron walked into the stagin
g area and took off his suit. He rapidly threw on his Class B uniform and went to the elevator, still tucking the light-green shirt in.

  The door opened and he rode it up to ground level. When the elevator opened, Colonel Martin was standing there waiting, dressed in sweatpants and a faded green surgical shirt—his normal work uniform. “This way,” Martin said. They went directly to his office. Four other people were gathered there: the other top experts in the office on bio-agents.

  “We’ve already seen this once,” Martin said, pointing at the TV. He picked up the remote and turned the VCR/TV on.

  “What is this?” Tyron asked as the screen showed a crashed helicopter and people shooting.

  Colonel Martin had all the information on a classified fax that he read from. “A Navy F-18 Hornet was shot down over northeast Angola at eleven twelve hours today, Greenwich Mean Time. This helicopter was sent to recover the pilot. It, too, was shot down at approximately eleven twenty-three hours.”

  The camera panned over to two men leaning over a supine figure. It closed in and Tyron leaned forward to see. The man was vomiting blood and in convulsions. There was a breathing tube stuck in his throat and blood coming out of the eyes. He watched one of the men trying to get an IV going only to have blood pour out of the needle punctures. Tyron recognized the symptoms, but he’d never before seen them in a human, only in monkeys. “Oh, shit,” he muttered.

  “That was our conclusion,” Colonel Martin remarked dryly.

  He continued to watch as the man died. Then the scene cut to the medic who had been working on the man cutting him open.

  “His kidneys are gone,” the medic said. “That’s his liver.” The medic turned to face the camera. “I don’t know exactly what killed this man, but the people who might know are at Fort Detrick. Whoever’s looking at this tape back in the States, please get a copy to Fort Detrick.”

  The tape went blank.

  Tyron looked around the room and then focused on one man. “Ebola?”