A Time to Die (5 page)

Two other men appeared, racing around the corner. They paused for half a second to observe the man and his grisly meal before racing up the street towards the stalled mob. They looked like a business man and a waiter, both dressed for work, only both were obviously injured and both obviously insane. Then they screamed, that mind wrecking sound from hell — in person this time. In a moment they fell upon the rear of the crowd, tearing into people with fingernails and teeth like… like… zombies?!

“No fucking way,” Vance whispered, then looked around as if someone was witness to his insane thought. He was of course alone, and that bothered him too. Was this some sort of elaborate deception?! Was that possible? It would take a Hollywood special effects company a week to do this.

“They’re… they’re…” the camera man stammered, looking for the words, “they’re eating people,” he almost whispered. The camera fell back to the corner once more where the woman’s killer was back on his feet, blood running down his chin as he chewed a mouthful of flesh and looked around with wild eyes. Vance found himself wishing he could see the look on the man’s face better, then instantly changed his mind. He didn’t think he could survive that look if he were to ever see it clearly. As if the very viewing of that face of malevolent evil would forever ruin a part of his psyche.

From around the corner came another man, holding something small in his arms he was taking big ripping mouthfuls of flesh from it. Vance tried to comprehend what he was seeing, then recognized a tiny hand as another bite was taken, and he screamed himself this time.

Vance slammed the lid closed on the laptop and stood with a shudder, backpedaling away from the computer desk, his feet caught on the desk chair and he crashed backwards to the floor, smashing his tailbone painfully and making his head slap hard against the linoleum tile. He took no notice, but crab-walked backwards to get as far away from that unspeakable abomination he’d just witnessed. He came up against the opposite wall, tears pouring down his face and shaking his head in utter disbelief. And that was how Ann found him an hour later, knees tucked up under his chin, rocking back and forth while shaking his head and saying “No,” over and over again.

Chapter 7

Sunday, April 15

Wheels up 0645, the orders read. Andrew chewed a protein bar as he walked towards the flight line, the morning sun barely over the armored airbase hangars of Riyadh. A pair of Saudi F-15s sat nearby, their Hadji aircrews working on them under supervision of America Air Force technicians. The crew chief saluted to Andrew with a wrench and he returned it with his helmet. The mission bothered him, but he was back in the pilot seat, so who cares that he had to fly a camera run.

He came around the end of the hangar and there was his bird, light shining off the raised cockpit and “Lt. Andrew “Switchblade” Tobin” newly stenciled on its side. Two Air Force personnel had lines hooked up to a large, flattened pod latched to the starboard inboard pylon which he immediately recognized as the camera unit. He was surprised to see a pair of air-to-air missiles on the wing tips as well as a trio of cluster bombs on the opposite pylon.

“Morning, Lieutenant,” the crew chief saluted as he approached. The two techs looked up but didn’t stop their work.

“Morning chief,” he returned the salute and then gestured with his head towards the camera pod. “Problem?”

“No sir, they’re just updating the software.” Andrew nodded and began his walk around with the chief in tow. He grabbed the air-to-air missile and gave it a good tug to be sure it was properly attached.

“Why the ordinance for a camera run?”

“Standing orders for all sorties out of Riyadh,” the chief pointed out. “We had a couple recon flights get locked up by an Iranian Mig last month, so they changed the SOP.”

“I see. And the clusters? I ain’t planning to be low enough to drop those.” He kept to the ‘official’ story. No need for the chief to know he was going to be airborne for about twenty hours.

“Well, the camera pod is the newest model and weights out at nearly fifteen hundred, so we figure three 500 clusters would level it out. Couldn’t hurt, just in case, right?”

Andrew eyed the man and wondered if the CO had let him in on the facts of the mission. There was no drop tank, so he doubted it. This was purely on the down-low. “Good enough, Chief,” he said and pulled on an elevator, checking to be sure nothing was loose. “This bird taken any damage?”

“She lost an engine six months ago, but not combat related. Just a compressor failure. Other than that, she’s a virgin sir.”

Andrew nodded again. The F/A-18D didn’t often get low enough to see action. He missed his F-35 already, especially if the Iranians were starting to feel their oats. He’d love the chance to match one-on-one against those MiGs.

A few minutes later, the techs packed up their gear and Andrew finished his preflight. He signed off on the chief’s paperwork as the ground grew climbed down from the cockpit and one of them stabilized the bottom rung for him. He thanked the man, shouldered his flight bag, and stepped up with his good leg first.

The chief himself climbed up after him and helped Andrew buckle in and set his survival pack in place so it would eject with him should the unthinkable happen. The man nodded at Andrew’s right leg. A few inches of dull titanium was visible there. “I can’t tell you how much I admire you guys who come back after something like that,” he said and patted him on the shoulder.

“Can’t leave my friends to do all the hard work,” Andrew winked, “besides, I had a spare.”

The chief chuckled and locked Andrew’s air supply in place. A couple of last minute checks and he patted him on the helmet. “Safe flight sir, say hello to the Lone Star for me.”

The bastard did know! Andrew flashed him a thumbs up and waited for him to get clear. The ground safety crew flashed the thumbs up and he started the ignition sequence. As the glass cockpit came to life — he watched the starboard engine spin up and fall into normal operations ranges. A light went out indicating the ground crew had removed the external power. A man stood in front with crossed red batons, indicating he was still chocked. Once Andrew was certain everything was running normally, he cross-linked the starboard engine and started the port. It too came up flawlessly and he gave the thumbs up to the man out front.

The crossed batons became two held straight up. The chocks were clear. Andrew released the brake and felt her start to roll. The man back at a slow walk, gesturing with the batons until Andrew was clear of the flight line, then pointed them both twice to the right. Andrew began his turn as the man saluted him, and he returned it in kind. He was on his own.

“Riyadh Ground Control,” he called out and began relaying information.

Ten minutes later, after waiting for a pair of C-130s to lumber in to the air, Andrew lined up and slid the throttles forward. A hundred thousand pounds of thrust smashed him into the seat as the fighter shot down the runway. He followed protocol and rolled at least twice as far as he needed to before gently lifting off and retracting his gear. He cleared the end of the outer marker at just over four hundred knots and climbing at a leisurely two thousand feet per minute. He sighed contently. This was where he belonged!

By the time he’d been in the air for a half hour, the F/A-18D had reached 30,000 feet and was traveling two hundred and seventy-eight degrees magnetic at just under Mach 1. Andrew trimmed the speed through the computer to optimize fuel economy, double checked both engines performance, and broke out his tablet computer. The avionics computer said it would be six hours before he rendezvoused with the KC-135 tanker over the northern Atlantic Ocean.

Chapter 8

Monday, April 16

“I’m fine, God damn it!” Vance bellowed at the nurse who was checking his vitals for the ninth time since that morning.

“The doctor will make that determination, Mr. Cartwright.”

Vance sighed and allowed her to take his temperature and scribble on a notepad before leaving him alone in the twilight lit hospital room. The truth was he felt anything but fine. He had almost no memory of how he had ended up in the hospital, of how Ann found him in a fetal position, Lexus sitting next to him whining like a puppy because daddy had taken the happy bus to la-la land.

“Traumatic catatonia,” the doctors told him when he came around. Ann was almost catatonic with fear for him herself, and Vance didn’t blame her. They were still trying to come to grips with being pregnant, and he loses it over some video? He’d been lucky enough that the connection had timed out. He could hardly think about what he’d seen without feeling icy fingers crawling up his spine. He didn’t want to think about her seeing that video, especially with what was growing inside her. But think about it he did. Now that his mind had coped with the initial shock and his emotional state was stable (well, more stable), he was logically considering it.

Could that have been a hoax? Without access to a computer and the hordes of expert friends on Facebook and other sources, there was no way to be sure. Did he think it was a hoax? Absolutely not. It would require a Hollywood special effects house days or weeks of work to do that, and it had all the hallmarks of a live stream.

Lightning played across the San Antonio skyline and he turned his head to watch. A titanic struggle was developing in the heavens. He didn’t get any more sleep before morning when Ann showed up to get him.

* * *

The RHIB from the Coast Guard cutter U.S.S.
Boutwell
circled the oil platform once as the personnel on board tried to see what was going on inside. Lieutenant Junior-Grade Grange looked through her field glasses. She could see several windows were broken on the modified rig and dark smoke curled out from what appeared to be a burnt out building the center. No other signs of life were apparent. Her black hair, held a carefully braided regulation tail back under the lid, threatened to come free from the winds slipstream.

“Anything, ma’am?” asked the man to her left, a combat helmet on his head and headset mike under his chin.

“Nothing, Boatswain.” She put the glasses back in their holder on the console. “How long has it been?”

The man consulted a dispatch. “Coastal monitoring station at San Diego received the SOS seventy-seven hours ago. Sent only once, it did not recur. The nature of the mayday was… unusual.”

Grange snorted. “Right, zombies. I think someone’s pulling our leg.” That had been her thought since she’d seen the dispatch, eight hours ago. The platform was just outside United States territorial waters. Details suggested that some sort of biomedical research was being conducted, of the type that would be illegal in the homeland. That tidbit hadn’t helped with her taking the mission seriously. Rightfully, it should be a naval ship here, but none were available. The old man had been offered the mission, under his discretion. They’d come down from Los Angeles and then west at twenty-seven knots. The log indicated it was the first time the
Boutwell
had left US territorial waters since she was handed over to the Coast Guard after the Navy had decommissioned her in 1979.

“So what’s your take, Lieutenant?” the Boatswain asked. “Looks like something is up.”

“It does at that,” she reluctantly agreed. But what, she wondered quietly.

“Captain’s on the horn.” The Boatswain said as he cupped the headset to hear over the roar of the twin 150--horse outboards. “He says to stop wasting gas and board that thing.”

Grange made a face but nodded none the less. Orders were orders. She had eight men, not including the Boatswain and his three men manning the longboat. Because they often interdicted drug runners, there was a twin mount .50 caliber machine gun in the center of the boat. A steely eyed chief sat the watch. Unlike coastal missions, it wasn’t loaded, even though two boxes of ammo sat close at hand. The other two crewmen were driver and assistant. Her eight men were all armed with .40 Smith & Wesson semi-auto handguns. Four of them carried M-16s, four Mossberg 12-gauge shotguns loaded with buckshot and the slings crowded with extra rounds. Standard boarding detail. Standard waste of time, she figured. Looked like someone went crazy and set off a bomb or started a fire, to her.

“Take us around to the dock on the east side,” she told the Boatswain and grabbed a handhold as the boat spun around and raced in toward the platform. Each leg was fifty feet across with four of them supporting the massive platform like the legs of a chair. A dock floated freely around one leg, held in place by cables to float up and down in the swells. She’d spotted at least one boat docked there on their first orbit. Each leg held ladders, secured at the bottom with chain link cages to avoid unwanted visitors. There was a pair of bolt cutters aboard, standard equipment. It would be better to gain access without resorting to that, though. The dock would have a door, probably controlled from above. At least they could knock.

The dock came into view and she lifted the glasses for a better look. No longer racing laterally, it was a much clearer image this time. There was a small 10x10 shed (equipment office?) and a pair of metal lockers. A gas pump sat close to the central area closest to the leg where a ramp rested on wheels, moving slightly up and down in the afternoon swell. She was just wondering why someone would paint the door into the platform red when she realized it was splashed across the door, and not a shade of red you would use to color anything.

“Boatswain, slow your approach and arm your men!” His head came around at the sharp order and he quickly had them slow and relayed her orders. All around her the men looked worried as they fitted magazines into guns and racked tubes to charge shotguns. The .50 caliber gunner knelt to open boxes and deftly began readying his instrument of destruction.

The boat had slowed to maybe ten knots as she looked around and gave a nod before raising the glasses once more. Yeah, it was blood all right. Or someone was taking a joke way too far.

“Body in the water,” the driver called out and pointed to a blue dressed pair of shoulders bobbing in the surf.

“All stop,” she ordered and the boat drifted forward. “Get a gaff and check if that’s a live person.”

One of the man put his rifle down and took a stick from its holder on the gunwale. As the motors idled and the drifted within reach, he gently hooked the blue shirt and pulled. Another man held his belt, just to be sure. As he pulled the body rolled over. Most of the face and neck were gone, torn away. Maybe eaten by sharks after he/she fell in the water. She couldn’t even tell the sex. One of the men gagged and held his face.

“Steady men,” the Boatswain said. “Let’s get the body aboard.”

“Belay that,” Grange said with a shake of her head.

“Ma’am?”

“It’s not going anywhere. You there, slip a life ring over that arm and we’ll come back for it.” She turned to the Boatswain, “I don’t want the men all getting freaked out with a damn corpse on the deck if we get in the shit.”

“Aye-aye, Ma’am. You heard the Lieutenant, secure the body with a float and let’s move on.”

The tenor of the motors changed as they were put in gear and the longboat crawled towards the dock. The delay had bought the gunner time to load his big guns, and for that she was grateful. For some reason now, ten armed men no longer felt like a force to be reckoned with. She remembered her own sidearm and quickly removed it from the holster, loaded it, and returned it.

Another minute and they were holding a few yards from the dock. It was apparent to all of them now that a battle of sorts had taken place. There were blood sprays in a half dozen places, and two more bodies sprawled across the deck of a thirty foot Boston Whaler tied up a short distance away. It was listing to port badly and Grange figured it would sink soon. There were bullet impacts here and there from small arms. Not many, but a few had obviously found the Whaler.

What was really getting to her was the two bodies in the Whaler. One was face down, only a leg sticking up over the side. The other was in the pilot’s seat, his face and jaw ripped completely away, tongue hanging down like a macabre red tie.

“What the fuck?!” one of the men demanded, no longer able to keep his peace.

“Dios mios,” another man said, reverting to Spanish. “El Diablo!”

“That’s enough,” the Boatswain barked and the boat fell silent.

“Let’s go in,” Grange said, unable to keep a quaver from her voice.

“Aye-aye, sir,” the old Boatswain said and tapped the driver on the shoulder. The motors went into gear again and the boat slid forward.

Despite her efforts the men were spooked pretty badly. Regardless, when they were a meter away two of them did as planned. Slinging shotguns they took ropes and leaped across to the dock. One quickly secured the rope to a cleat while the other unlimbered his weapon and went to one knee. The boat was made fast to the dock and the other six men swarmed over the side. Grange was last ashore, her sidearm held at her side in one hand and trying to control her breathing.

No sooner did they hit the deck then the sound of the elevator came alive in the platform leg. Nine weapon muzzles spun around to cover the doorway quickly followed by the twin barrels of the big fifty.

“Steady,” she said, then quickly glanced at the Boatswain on the longboat. “Be ready,” she said and glanced at the two lines securing it to the dock to make her thoughts apparent. “I want to get the fuck out of here, fast, if need be.” He nodded in clear understanding and had a big meaty hand on his own sidearm.

The sounds of the elevator slowed and stopped. Safeties came off in a series of rapid clicks as the doors slid open with mechanical efficiency and a young black woman stepped out.

“I’m Doctor Lisha Breda,” she said, a relieved look on her face, “and we’re very glad you’ve come!”

* * *

The F/A-18D streaked across the Mexican sky at just over a thousand miles per hour. At nearly 45,000 feet up, the computers struggled to balance the controls against the power flying at the very edge of the planes operational envelope. Andrew was breathing twice as fast as he should, partly from excitement and partly in fear. He was breaking international law and violating at least a dozen operational regulations.

The fact that his CO had ordered him up here and provided aerial refueling was beside the point. An officer was obligated to follow both his commanding officers’ orders, and not violate his oath as well to not break civilian laws. The civilian chain of command had forbidden a recon run over the Mexican capital. Technically he was just ferrying a recon equipped fighter and taking a very long leisurely turn before coming into land at Fort Hood. A five hundred mile turn.

His navigational system had told him an hour ago that he’d passed over into Mexican air space. The channels were dead, no one challenged him. The Mexican air force was hardly the envy of any other industrialized nation, though they did at least watch their borders. This was the first sign that the old man’s instincts, and those of his fellow co-conspirators, were good.

According to the computer, he was passing within fifty miles of one of their military bases. Though it wasn’t on the itinerary, he activated the camera pod and programmed a run. Under the starboard wing, powerful cameras aligned and began taking digital images. A minute later, he was out of range.

Another hour and he angled to the north. Still not a word from either military or civilian air traffic control. “What the hell is going on down there,” he wondered.

His scrambled communication board came alive with a text message through tac-net. “Tightend-Switchblade. TOT?”

Andrew consulted the computer and replied in kind. “Switchblade-Tightend, TOT forty.”

“AK,” was the simple reply. He’d told the old man he would be over Mexico City in 40 minutes. Anyone monitoring the text channel would have no idea what was going on.

The final minutes passed and the computer told him he was approaching target. He triggered the preprogrammed recon run, verified his position though the GPS transponders, and waited. Right on time, the cameras began to roll.

This time he decided to watch. He knew there wouldn’t be much to garner from a small military base that was many dozens of miles to one side. This time he was flying directly over on one of the largest cities in the world. The images were wide angle, and unbelievable. “Oh my god,” he whispered.

Vast areas of the suburbs were ablaze or shrouded in smoke. The first high-rise he saw looked like a matchstick blazing away, at least half its height completely engulfed in flames. And as his fighter raced north, it got worse. Huge tracts of the city were burned to cinders. Crisped buildings and toppled towers were everywhere along with the famous wide avenues clogged with crumpled and burning cars. It looked like pictures of Berlin after WWII.

He passed downtown and continued north, and there saw some first signs of what was transpiring. Lines of tanks and APCs were firing madly as they withdrew… before a human tide. “I can’t believe it.”