Z: The Final Countdown

by Bob Mayer

  General Nystroom had come awake the moment the back hatch on his command vehicle had been opened. He swung his feet, boots still on, to the metal floor and flipped on the overhead red light so he wouldn’t lose his night vision.

  He took the message from his operations officer without a comment. Pulling his reading glasses on, he quickly read. When he was done, he slowly handed the order back.

  “What is the latest on the Americans? Is their deployment still halted?”

  “Yes, sir. There is word on the international news media that there is some sort of outbreak of a viral infection in northeastern Angola and that is the reason the Americans have stopped sending troops.”

  “Northeastern Angola?” Nystroom repeated. He pointed at the contingency plan. “But that plan calls for us to seize that particular area in the American sector.”

  “Yes, sir,” the operations officer said. “But we are on hold for execution. I assume this,” he added, holding up the plan, “is for implementation in case the Americans withdraw.”

  Nystroom held out his hand and the officer gave him the plan back. “Good assumption,” the general said, “except for one slight detail. When did the Americans halt their deployment?”

  “Yesterday—the sixteenth—around noon our time.”

  Nystroom’s finger tapped the heading on the order. “We might have just received this plan, but it was drafted on the fourteenth of this month.” He looked up. “What was the date-time-group of our hold message on the invasion where we were to await this contingency plan?”

  The operations officer flipped open his message log. “Fifteen June, nineteen fifteen local time.”

  “Two days ago,” Nystroom noted. “And this plan was done even before we got that. So your assumption is false.”

  “Which means, sir?”

  General Nystroom sighed. “Which means there is much more going on here than you and I probably care to know about, but we’re stuck with it.”

  Cacolo, Angola, 17 June

  “This is the latest,” Kieling said, holding out a batch of faxes. “We have approval to take whatever action we deem necessary.”

  Riley took them and began reading, while Kieling briefed the others gathered in the tent. The glow of the Coleman lamps reflected against haggard faces, drawn with fatigue—several showing signs of their sickness, with red eyes and sweat dripping off of foreheads.

  They were almost all here—Comsky, Lome, and the other members of the team that had been on the helicopter; Vickers and the helicopter crew; Conner—Mike Seeger was in another tent, handcuffed to the center pole; and Major Lindsay, looking very uncomfortable in his gas mask, representing the AOB.

  Right now, Lindsay didn’t look so foolish to Riley, and he would gladly trade the major’s discomfort for his own physical situation. Riley had a pounding headache, which the Tylenol 3’s that Comsky had given him had done little to alleviate. He was also beginning to feel nauseated. He’d tried very hard the last several hours not to think about the virus that was spreading throughout his body, multiplying and feeding off his own cells, but he had not been very successful. It was hard to ignore the body’s signals that something very wrong was happening. And Riley knew that the mind was amplifying and multiplying whatever symptoms he was experiencing.

  “Still nothing from Fort Detrick on this disease’s vector,” Kieling continued. “My theory on the blisters won’t get tested until they get blisters on the monkeys.

  “They’ve isolated it and are trying everything they can think of to kill it, at the cellular level, but no luck. I got Tyron to suit up and head over to the hospital to take a look at how things are going there.”

  Riley held up a sheet of paper. “NSA picked up another SATCOM transmission and they pinpointed the location.” He went to the map tacked to the plywood table and looked. “It’s here, right between these rivers.”

  “What now?” Conner asked.

  “We go visiting,” Riley said. He looked at Major Lindsay. “What about it, sir?”

  Lindsay’s voice was muffled by the mask. “You all have authorization from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. The only problem is getting you there.”

  “Why’s that a problem?” Sergeant Lome demanded.

  “We have a no-fly rule that supersedes the chairman’s authorization. To keep the disease from spreading.”

  “Can you get us a helicopter?” Lieutenant Vickers asked.

  “We’ve got three Black Hawks parked at the AOB,” Lindsay said, “but I just told you—”

  “But nothing.” Vickers turned to the Black Hawk pilot. “You are already in this,” she said. “Can you take us out there?”

  “I can fly,” CW2 O’Malley said, “but there’s one little problem. The Black Hawk requires two pilots to fly it.”

  “I’m rotary wing-qualified,” Lieutenant Vickers said.

  “You’ve also got a broken ankle, ma’am,” Comsky said.

  “I’m rotary wing-qualified,” Vickers said again. “With the splint, I can handle the pedals if I have to.”

  “But—” Comsky began.

  “End of discussion, Sergeant,” Vickers said.

  Comsky smiled for the first time in hours. “Yes, ma’am.”

  A rumbling noise came from outside and everyone’s head snapped up. “Artillery?” Vickers asked.

  Major Lindsay shook his head. “Thunderstorms are coming in from the east.”

  “So what’s the plan?” Conner asked.

  * * *

  In the city, Tyron tried to conquer his fear. The streets were deserted, but he could sense eyes watching him from the darker shadows of the shacks along the road. The rebreather sounded abnormally loud in his ears and, despite the temperature drop at night, he was hot. The sky was overcast and he could see lightning flashing to the east.

  Ever since the shock of seeing Kieling thrown into the wire and his suit breached, Tyron had hidden in the shelter. That is, until Kieling had come by an hour ago and picked up the latest faxes from Fort Detrick. The conversation had been brief and to the point.

  “You’re a fucking doctor, Tyron,” Kieling had said from the entryway, the inner door separating them. “You took an oath. This is what it’s all about. We need you working this like you’re supposed to, not sitting on your ass in there, hiding.”

  “I can’t,” Tyron had answered honestly.

  “You will,” Kieling had responded. “Or else I’ll have Sergeant Lome open fire on this shelter and fill it full of little holes. Then you’ll have no choice. And the way Sergeant Lome seems to be feeling, he might not make much of an attempt to miss you.”

  Fear versus fear. If it had simply come down to that, Tyron knew he would have stayed in the habitat and taken his chances. But Kieling’s first words had touched a chord. Tyron was a doctor and he knew he had a duty. Besides the fact that there was no way out of this place until Z had finished burning. Going to the hospital would give him an idea of how long that might be.

  Not long, was Tyron’s first impression as he stepped into the entryway to the main ward. It was dark inside. No power, Tyron remembered. But the lamps weren’t lit either. There was someone sitting behind the old desk: a nun. Tyron reached out his gloved hand and touched her on the shoulder. “Sister?”

  She fell over onto the floor, and Tyron stepped back in disgust at the mass of black bile that was all over the front of her habit.

  Tyron jumped as a low voice spoke behind him. “I didn’t think anyone would come back.”

  He turned around. “Sister Angelina!”

  “I have been trying to move the living to A wing,” Angelina said.

  Her white robe was caked with blood and other material that Tyron didn’t want to identify. She was moving very slowly. “How many are dead?”

  “Thirty-three.” Sister Angelina stepped around him and pulled the dead nun’s habit over her face. “Thirty-four.” She knelt and crossed herself, her lips moving in prayer.

  Tyron moved past her and
looked into the main ward. There were bodies on the beds. Some on the floor where death spasms had thrown them. Tyron knew better, but he could swear he could smell the odor of death. He forced himself to look. They were all bled out. Blood had exploded out of every orifice of the body, including their eyes and ears. That was the virus looking for a new host, having finished with this one. He forced himself to look more closely. The blisters in the red streaks had broken open on all of them. Maybe Kieling had something.

  Tyron turned and moved as quickly as his suit allowed. Sister Angelina was still kneeling, praying. She didn’t even look up as Tyron shuffled past, out the door into the street. He had a crazy desire to tear off his helmet and breathe fresh air, but he knew the air was tinged with death. Or maybe it wasn’t. “Keep moving,” he said to himself. “Keep moving.”

  Vicinity Luia River, Angola, 17 June

  “We have a reply,” Trent said, holding out the message flimsy.

  Quinn put a poncho over his head and used his red-lens flashlight to see the letters. Quickly he decoded it.

  TO QUINN FROM SKELETON

  PAY UPPED TO A MILLION A MAN U.S. DOLLARS ALREADY IN YOUR ACCOUNT—TIME IS OF ESSENCE—DO NOT HALT FOR ANYTHING—CALL FOR AIR EVACUATION WHEN BENTLEY CONFIRMS ARTICLE RECOVERED—AIRCRAFT REQUIRES RUNWAY—MINIMUM LENGTH THREE HUNDRED METERS—SIDE TO SIDE CLEARANCE FIFTY METERS—MONITOR FM FREQUENCY 32.30—YOUR CALL SIGN HORSEMAN—AIRCRAFT CALL SIGN GULL END

  “Wake up, Sleeping Beauty,” Quinn ordered Trent. “We’re moving now.”

  National Security Agency, Fort Meade, Maryland, 17 June

  “I got you!” Waker yelled out, startling the men and women in the other cubicles in the NSA surveillance room. “I got you!” he repeated, his fingers tapping keys quickly.

  On his computer screen the silhouette of the African continent appeared, then grew larger, the edges disappearing, the computer focusing in on the southwest part. It went down south of Angola into Namibia. South of Oshakati where Waker had intercepted messages from the SADF/Pan-African invasion forces that were marshaled there. Still farther south.

  The screen halted. The downlink from the surveillance satellite had fixed the location of the origin of the uplink on the return message to the location he had fixed earlier in Angola.

  Namibia, along the Atlantic coast. Waker read the name of the region. “The Skeleton Coast.” There was a town there. That was where the signal was coming from. “Luderitz.”

  Waker quickly summarized the information and sent out a priority intelligence report. Then he reached over to the bookshelf behind his desk and pulled out an atlas. He looked up Luderitz. There was a red line drawn around the town, extending up the coast one hundred kilometers and south over two hundred and fifty kilometers to the Orange River, the border with South Africa. The red line extended inland about a hundred kilometers. In small red type next to the zone it said prohibited area.

  Waker put the atlas down on his desk and stared at the map. Who the hell controlled that strip of land and why was such a large area prohibited? Waker had a feeling the answers to those questions were going to become very important, very soon.

  Cacolo, Angola, 17 June

  Riley had tried to talk Conner out of coming, but she could tell his heart wasn’t in it. Priorities had changed in the last forty-eight hours, and things that had been of great concern that short time ago were no longer important.

  She held an M-16 in her lap. Riley had stuck to that. If she was coming she would be armed. He’d given her a quick lesson in its use. She also wore a flak vest and, over it, a combat vest bristling with extra ammunition clips, a canteen, and a knife.

  Riley was leaning between the two pilot seats up front, talking to Lieutenant Vickers on the intercom. The engines had just been started and the whine grew louder, the blades overhead slowly beginning to turn.

  Riley sat back down next to Conner. He handed her a headset and she put it on.

  “Hear me?” Riley said.

  “Loud and clear,” she replied.

  The helicopter’s wheels separated from the ground and the aircraft banked forward and to the right.

  “The objective is three hundred kilometers away,” Vickers called out over the intercom. “ETA in one hour, twenty minutes.”

  “Dave, what do you think is out there?” Conner asked.

  “Somebody who might have some answers,” Riley said. She could see that he was looking out.

  “And?” Conner pressed.

  “Shit, Conner, I don’t know,” Riley replied. His head turned and he looked at her. “Somebody’s out there in the middle of all this death. Using SATCOM radio through a commercial satellite. Encrypting their messages with one-time pads. I don’t have a clue whether that somebody has anything to do with this disease.”

  “Well, that’s pretty damn encouraging,” Sergeant Lome’s voice cut in on the intercom.

  “I’m not here to encourage you,” Riley snapped.

  “Why are you here, then?” Lome asked.

  “All I know is that I’d rather be on this helicopter going to do something—anything—than back there inside that wire waiting to die,” Riley said.

  “Amen to that,” Comsky said.

  “Amen,” Sergeant Oswald’s voice piped, followed by Tiller’s: “Roger that.”

  “I didn’t know you Special Forces guys were so religious,” Vickers called out from the front.

  “The way Z is burning,” Kieling said, “I might even catch a little of that religion soon.”

  Vicinity Luia River, Angola, 17 June

  “Wait a second,” Bentley said.

  Quinn went down on one knee, Sterling at the ready. Bentley flipped open the lid on one of the cases. He pulled out the GPR into which he had programmed the location of whatever it was he was looking for. “That way,” Bentley said. “Four hundred meters.”

  Quinn didn’t have to say a word. He stood, the other three men deploying around in a wedge. They were in relatively open terrain, with small clusters of trees every hundred meters or so. By Quinn’s pace count they had moved three hundred meters when he saw something silhouetted on the top of a ridge ahead.

  Quinn twisted the focus on his goggles. A tree, twisted and shattered by some powerful force, was leaning to the right. Perhaps artillery or an air strike, Quinn guessed. He wondered about that. According to the map, the nearest village was about seven or eight kilometers away.

  Bentley checked the GPR one more time. “Wait here for me,” Bentley said, his hand straying up to the night vision goggles perched on his head. The straps weren’t adjusted correctly and they kept slipping down. Quinn wasn’t in the mood to help him with it.

  “We should go with you to the top of the ridge,” Quinn said. “If there’s someone—”

  “I said, wait here,” Bentley said. He picked up the third case and took it with him.

  Quinn gestured and the other three men went to earth, facing out in the other three cardinal directions, weapons at the ready. Quinn watched as Bentley walked up the ridge and past the broken tree. As soon as the man was out of sight, Quinn followed.

  As he came up to the tree, Quinn crouched low. He slowly peeked over a broken bough. The terrain dropped off on the other side, but Quinn’s attention was focused on the gouge in the grassy slope. Starting from the tree and going downslope, the dirt was torn as if a tank had ripped through. Bentley was at a large piece of crumpled metal at the end of the gouge, opening the third case.

  Quinn heard the screech of metal as Bentley leaned into the wreckage. A downed aircraft? Quinn wondered. Perhaps Bentley was here for its black box, or maybe classified equipment or something else that had been on board.

  Quinn turned and worked his way back down the slope, considering the possibilities.

  “What’s happening?” Trent asked.

  “There’s a plane or chopper crashed on the other side of the ridge,” Quinn said, his mind working. “It must have been carrying diamonds. Maybe the U.S. got it enforci
ng the no-fly rule, or maybe it had a bomb on board in some scheme Skeleton thought up. Regardless, Skeleton had had a homing device placed on board and Bentley is getting the diamonds.”

  “Must be quite a few to be worth this much,” Trent said.

  “You and I know Bentley could carry enough diamonds in his backpack to be worth tens of millions,” Quinn said.

  “What are we going to do?” Trent asked.

  “I don’t know.” Quinn looked upslope. Bentley had appeared, moving quickly toward them.

  “Let’s get moving,” Bentley said.

  “Change in plans,” Quinn said. “Last message I got from Skeleton said to call in for air evacuation as soon as you recovered what you were supposed to.”

  “Well, I got it,” Bentley said. “So call.”

  Quinn’s head snapped up like a bird dog on the scent. “Hear that?”

  Trent’s head swiveled on his thick neck. “Yeah. Helicopter.”

  Quinn stuck the muzzle of his Sterling in Bentley’s stomach. “Maybe you already called and we’re getting double-crossed here?”

  “I couldn’t—I don’t have a radio!” Bentley protested.

  “You have that SATCOM thing you used to get this position,” Quinn said.

  “I left it here,” Bentley pointed out. “I swear I didn’t call anyone.”

  “Then who’s on the helicopter?” Quinn asked.

  “I don’t know!”

  “It’s setting down to the south of here,” Trent noted. “Where we were camped.”

  Quinn removed the gun from Bentley’s stomach. “Someone picked up our satellite transmission.”

  “How can they do that?” Trent asked.

  “I don’t know how,” Quinn said, “but it’s the only thing that makes sense.” He took a deep breath and cleared his head. “All right. Here’s the plan. We call on the SATCOM. If someone’s intercepting, that means they get a fix on us here, but we start moving right away. In the message we designate a linkup point.” Quinn studied his map. “Here. Eight clicks north.” He knew the spot well. It was an abandoned dirt strip that was used occasionally by diamond smugglers. Quinn had run an assault on the airstrip a year and a half ago.