Z: The Final Countdown

by Bob Mayer

  The carefully choreographed deployment time schedule was already shot to hell, and officers fumed as they saw the little checkmarks on their efficiency reports go down a notch or two. It was bad form to be late showing up for a war.

  The PA system crackled, then a voice came on, telling all battalion and separate unit commanders to report to the loadmaster’s office. The designated officers quickly complied, eager to find out what the new schedule was. When they came back, the look on their faces was of confusion. The deployment was off.

  Even as the soldiers heard the news—welcome for some, not so for others with visions of combat infantry badges and medals to be won—a C-141 swooped in and landed, disgorging disgruntled troopers who had been halfway over the Atlantic Ocean before being turned back.

  The official word the commanders passed down was that the operation was going so smoothly in Angola that the troops already there could handle the rest of the mission. Those who had half a brain didn’t buy that for a second. Over the past twenty years, the U.S. army had never sent ten soldiers to do a job when it could send twenty.

  Something was going on, but from the lowest snuffy in the ranks through the ranking man inside the green ramp, they knew one thing: as Riley had told Conner on the other side of the ocean, they would be the last to know.

  Pentagon, 16 June

  Colonel Martin glanced at the digital clock overhead, then back down to the summary he’d just been sent from his people at Detrick. Since the last report, there was nothing new. The most disturbing information was the failure thus far to identify the infection vector. The lab was in the middle of several experiments and had discovered so far that this particular filo-virus lasted longer in the open than Ebola or Marburg. After almost ten minutes of exposure to light and air, it was still alive. By twenty, 90 percent was dead and by a half hour, the virus was completely wiped out. But ten minutes was a very long time for a virus to live in the open.

  That might help explain the massive extent of the outbreak in Angola. At USAMRIID they were exposing monkeys to the airborne virus. The problem was they would have to wait until the monkeys showed symptoms of the disease to determine how far it could travel through the air. And whether it could infect through the respiratory system.

  And time was the problem. The deployment had been halted, but there were still over eight thousand American troops on the ground in Angola—not to mention over ten million Angolans. And the random borderlines drawn on the map wouldn’t stop this thing. It was just as likely to burn east and north into Zambia and Zaire. South it would be blocked by the desert. All international travel in and out of Angola had been halted, but there was the possibility that someone had already left the country infected. As international air travel made the globe smaller, it made the possibility of a disease jumping an ocean that much stronger.

  The only good news was that, as rapidly as this virus sickened and killed, it could not hide long in those it infected. Martin felt reasonably confident that it would be contained. The problem was the cost of that containment in terms of those already infected.

  Martin was startled from his reverie by General Cummings’s voice. “What exactly is W.H.O.?” he asked, spelling out the letters.

  “The World Health Organization, sir,” Martin replied.

  “I know that,” Cummings said. “My real question is, why are they interested in Cacolo, Angola? I have a report here that WHO is alerting a virology investigative team to go to Angola in response to a request for help from an organization known as Medicins Sans Frontieres.”

  “That’s a group called Doctors Without Borders,” Martin said. “They’re a medical aid organization that works in the Third World. They probably have people in Cacolo who are seeing the disease.”

  “Great,” Cummings said. “This is going to be out on the wire soon. Some smart-ass in the media is going to put that together with the news blackout from Luanda and we’re going to have big trouble.”

  We already have big trouble, Martin thought to himself, but he kept quiet. He had already picked up the pulse here in the War Room, and he didn’t much care for it. As best as Martin could describe it, there was more concern over the way this situation looked than the way it really was. He thought of those camera commercials: “Image is everything.” It certainly was here.

  He still didn’t think that General Cummings and his staff understood the full implications of this outbreak and he couldn’t blame them, because he couldn’t give them hard figures to work with.

  But did it matter how they approached this situation? Martin had to ask himself as he watched Cummings working with his staff. There was nothing they could do other than control the image.

  Cacolo, Angola, 16 June

  Riley spread the imagery out on the ground and knelt down, studying it in the afternoon sun.

  “What do you have?” Conner Young appeared at his shoulder.

  Riley checked her out. She seemed okay, but he knew he also looked the same. He hadn’t really felt the fever, but shortly after Comsky had told him, he had felt hot. He knew that could be his mind playing tricks on him, and he chose not to dwell on it.

  “Overhead imagery of the land to the east of here.” He pointed and explained the blue and red circles.

  “You mean people are dead or dying in all those places?” Conner was stunned. “What are they doing about it?”

  “They who?” Riley said, picking up the sixteen-page intelligence summary for the past twenty-four hours that had been sent along with photos.

  “They!” Conner’s voice was sharp. “The people who thought of this whole thing. The people who make the decisions and give the orders! The people who are responsible!”

  Riley’s voice was calm. “The people who are in charge are acting. That’s why we’re quarantined.” He pointed across to the AOB. He’d been watching it all morning. “That’s why the AOB is closing in on itself. You might not have noticed, but they haven’t let anyone in or out for the past six hours, other than when Tyron and Kieling came over here and your man Seeger went nuts. Everyone’s scared.

  “As far as responsibility goes,” he continued, “I don’t think anyone is responsible. Seeger’s not too far off. This is an act of God, if you believe in God, that is.”

  Riley watched Conner visibly try to calm herself down. “Do you?” she finally asked.

  “Believe in God?”

  “Believe that there is a greater plan. A greater power behind everything that happens.” She pointed at the imagery. “I just can’t accept that all these people dying is random. That it’s just the fates playing their hand. There has to be some reason.”

  “Maybe there is a reason,” Riley replied. “I just don’t know what it is. I do believe there is some higher power, but I also know that inherent in that belief is the acceptance that I won’t know what that higher power is or what its designs are. So I can’t tell you the purpose behind this disease, Conner.” He paused. He wondered if he should follow Kieling’s lead and keep what he knew to himself or tell her.

  “If it spread out there this quickly,” Conner said, tapping the imagery, “then we have it. We’re the walking dead.” She laughed, but it was not a pleasant sound. “And my cameraman is off the deep end. At the very least this would be Pulitzer prize material, don’t you think? Reporter films own slow demise from viral outbreak during peacekeeping operation.”

  “It’s not certain—” Riley began.

  “Ah, ever the optimist,” Conner said. “That’s the second time today I’ve called you that. By the way, Dave, I don’t blame you for me being out here. It should be the other way around. You should be blaming me for dragging you all over the world the last year or so. You should have settled down somewhere. You certainly did enough for God and Country when you were in the service. I’m sorry you’re here.”

  “I take responsibility for my own—” Riley began.

  “Give me a break, Dave,” Conner said. “Just accept my apology, okay?”


  “All right.”

  “Thank you. Well, back to work on my own obituary. That’s a joke, Dave.” Conner turned and walked away.

  Riley started to get up to follow, then stopped. They were all in the same boat and they could exchange sympathy all day long, but it wouldn’t do any good. He looked at the imagery. He was bothered by something. Something he’d said to Conner and something he’d read in the intelligence summary, but he wasn’t quite sure what it was. He flipped the cover sheet and began reading it one more time, but it was very hard to concentrate.

  Luia River, Angola, 16 June

  There was a distinct lack of aircraft flying, which bothered Quinn. Certainly, the Americans couldn’t have completely broken UNITA so quickly. There was nothing on the SNN broadcast, other than a report that the Americans had halted their deployment. That was curious, but not surprising. Perhaps they were having second thoughts.

  The patrol was making good time. Quinn had originally planned on moving only at dark, but the lack of over-flights had changed that. They were moving along the east bank of the Luia, making large detours around the few villages that stood in their path.

  The detours didn’t seem necessary. The countryside was deserted. The Americans had certainly done a good job of sending everyone to ground, Quinn figured.

  Darkness was falling and he wanted to keep pushing on until at least midnight, take a short break, then continue. His reckoning was that they could sleep when they got back to the border.

  Quinn pulled up his night vision goggles and switched them on. He had two of his men out front and one on each flank, twenty meters out. Trent and he were with Bentley, ten meters behind the point. The patrol crested a tall, grassy ridge and Quinn halted briefly to look around. He could see a long way in every direction and there was nothing. No lights, no fires, no sign of civilization. There were no running lights of aircraft anywhere in the sky. They could be the only people on the face of the planet, based on the information his senses were giving him.

  Quinn glanced at Bentley’s back as the man passed by. Something was wrong with this whole deal. The mission, the terrain, the Americans. There was something happening. Fuck Skeleton, Quinn suddenly decided, giving in to his sixth sense. He’d learned long ago to trust his gut and it was screaming at him right now. Turn back!

  Quinn took a step forward to halt his point man and was instantly blinded by a flash of light. A sharp crack of explosion reverberated in his ears and he felt a shock wave blow by, tumbling him to the ground. Quinn struggled to his feet, the goggles slowly adjusting back to normal, twisting his head, looking about.

  There was screaming ahead. Quinn jogged forward, weapon at the ready. The screaming came from one of the men who had been at point. The man was lying on his side, hands holding the stumps of what had once been his legs, now gone from mid-thigh down. Blood squirted out through his fingers.

  Quinn looked for the other man. There was a part of a torso about twenty feet away.

  “Mine,” Trent said, pointing at a three-foot crater. “Antitank, from the sound and the pit. We’re lucky it wasn’t antipersonnel or we’d all be mush.”

  “Lucky!” Bentley’s voice squeaked. “I was almost killed.”

  Quinn knelt down to the wounded man, whose screams had descended to gasps of pain-filled breath. “Easy, mate, easy.” He shifted around to the side of the man, one hand on his shoulder. With the other he brought up the Sterling, out of the man’s sight, and, holding the muzzle less than an inch from his head, fired a round into his brain.

  The flank security had come running in at the sound of the explosion and they all stood looking at the two dead men.

  “Right,” Quinn said. At least he now knew why he had gotten spooked. He turned to the remaining members of his patrol. “No flank. You two take point. Let’s move.”

  As they left behind the bodies, Trent moved over next to Quinn. “Well, another hundred grand for each of us now that Peterson and Dunnigan are dead,” Trent noted.

  “I know,” Quinn repeated. He felt warm and his head was throbbing. This was all fucked up.

  “You all right, sir?” Trent asked, peering in the dark.

  “No.”

  Chapter 14

  Cacolo, Angola, 16 June

  Kieling tenderly wiped the blood off a little girl’s chin. He had a surgical mask on and wore two sets of gloves, as did the nuns, courtesy of one of the equipment cases he’d had packed on board the B-l. Too little too late.

  He knew a lot about the progression of the virus now. At least its first seventy-two hours. And what he’d learned scared him. It was fast. Faster than anything he’d ever seen that was this deadly. It was violating the basic paradox of virus survival, killing so fast it should be inhibiting its own spread. But that didn’t appear to be the case, at least not from that imagery he’d seen earlier in the day.

  Kieling still wasn’t sure about the vector, but he had one possibility: the rashes that were developing on the bodies of some of the victims. They looked like ropes of angry red crisscrossing the skin. Inside the red, pustules were forming and occasionally breaking. That might be when the virus got into the air, Kieling speculated.

  “When will the others arrive?” Sister Angelina was behind him.

  She had been on the ward ever since he’d arrived, never taking a break. He didn’t know what fueled her. He did know that she knew she had the virus. He’d seen her bend over and retch into a pan a few hours earlier. She’d glanced up at him and smiled, carefully wiping the foamy black matter from around her lips with a stained rag.

  “They should be here in the morning,” he answered.

  She put out a hand and touched him on the arm. “There are no others, are there?”

  “There is some difficulty in transportation and entry requirements,” Kieling said. “What with the Americans and the Pan-African forces trying to get to Savimbi and UNITA. Things are a bit unusual, so it is taking longer than—”

  “You’re with the American army, aren’t you?”

  “I...” Kieling halted. Sister Angelina was looking at him, her face calm. “Yes.”

  “There will be no others coming to help, will there? We’re on our own, aren’t we?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you for being honest.” She looked down the row of beds, the sound of people vomiting and moaning in pain filling the air. “I need one more answer. Did your people cause this?”

  Kieling blinked. “No.”

  “I would not have believed that answer if you had not told me you were with the army. And if your army were not soon going to be suffering like these people are. And if you were not here among us without your suit. You have it also, don’t you?”

  “Maybe.”

  She pointed toward the door. “You’d better go back to your people and help them. Thank you for your help.”

  Riley looked up as Kieling entered the tent. He had the imagery and intelligence printout spread out on a table in front of him, but he wasn’t looking at it. All it did was reinforce his feeling of impending doom. He’d faced death before but never in such a drawn out and certain fashion. Always before there’d been a chance, hope that he could beat the odds, and up until this he had. Conner was seated across from him. They hadn’t said a word for the past hour, each lost in their own thoughts.

  “How bad is it?” Riley asked.

  “It’s bad.” Kieling looked at him. “How are you feeling?”

  “I have a headache,” Riley said.

  Kieling’s gaze shifted to Conner. “And you?”

  “The same,” she said. “And surprise, surprise, I’m running a slight fever. That was very slick of you and Comsky to decide whether we should know we were dying. Who made you God?”

  “I’m sorry. I’ve made a lot of errors in judgment on this trip.” Kieling sat down on a folding chair next to Riley. “Seen Tyron?”

  “He’s hiding out in the habitat,” Riley said. “I went by there an hour ago and he said they had n
othing new from Fort Detrick. He just yelled through the door. Didn’t even bother to suit up.”

  “It will take time for the vector experiments to work,” Kieling said. “Time we don’t have, because we’re already ahead of them time-wise if we’re infected.” He rubbed the stubble of his beard. “You know, Sister Angelina at the hospital asked me an interesting question, and I was thinking about it the entire way back here.”

  “What was that?” Riley asked. He’d taken aspirin, but there was no change. His head throbbed and he felt warm.

  “She asked if we’d started this virus.”

  “You mean biological warfare?” Riley asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Did we?” Conner asked.

  “You’re joking, right?” Kieling said.

  “No, she’s not,” Riley replied. “I’ve seen our government do things that are on a par with this.”

  “Kill people like this?” Kieling said. “Why?”

  “To test a weapon maybe,” Riley said. “Let me tell you a little story.”

  With that, Riley launched into the story of his encounter with the Synbats—synthetic battle forms—in the woods of Tennessee three years ago. Creatures that were designed under government contract to replace the infantryman. Except the experiment had gone terribly wrong and the Synbats had escaped and gone on a killing rampage. Riley and his Special Forces team, with the aid of a Chicago police officer, had finally cornered them in tunnels under the streets of Chicago and wiped them out by flooding the entire system.

  “So don’t tell me that our government isn’t capable of something like this,” Riley concluded.

  “You never told me about any of that!” Conner exclaimed when he was done.

  “I couldn’t,” Riley said. “It was classified.”

  “What a story. After all we went through in Antarctica, you couldn’t tell me—” she began, but stopped as a thought struck her. “So why’d you tell me now?”

  “The answer is obvious,” Riley said. “It doesn’t matter now.”