Chapter 38
As Carlie entered the bridge, she strode
across the room towards Commander Young, who was standing with his arms folded
beside his comms officer.
“This transmission was just intercepted
from Cuba. It was sent in both Russian and English,” he said, handing her a
paper with the hastily scribbled words.
Carlie scanned the sentences.
Please
help….jungle outpost….overrun by virus-modified mutants afflicted….pathogen.
Exact coordinates unknown….small airstrip....
Her eyes widened when she read the description
of the mutants. She handed the paper back to the commander. “Can I hear the recording
of the message in Russian?”
The commander gave her a headset and
then motioned to his comms officer to replay the transmission. Carlie focused
on the frantic voice, trying to decipher his dialect and noting the man’s
particular inflection. When the recording was done, she replayed it. Her eyes
shifted around the room as each sentence unfolded and she thought back to the
earlier audio recording Doctor Efron had played for her.
When she was done, Carlie placed the
headset down on the console and slowly looked up at the commander. “We need to
get to his location. I’m certain this is the same voice of a NATO weapons
inspector we listened to in a recording a few days ago back at White Sands. If
so, then he is a direct link to the origin of this virus.”
The commander looked up at the monitor
to his right which showed their location. “I can have you there in four hours
but the weather is still going to be shit for an over-the-beach insertion with
your Zodiacs. With the choppy waves and the rocky shoreline, I don’t recommend
it.”
“We need to facilitate his extraction at
all costs. We’ll have to risk it. Any helos will just draw too much attention
from those creatures. I’ll have my team ready and on deck, Commander. Please
let me know when we’re in range.”
“I’ll have the coordinates of that
transmission relayed to you.”
“Thank you, sir,” Carlie said as she
nodded to the commander and then turned and began walking away.
“And by the way, it’s not mainland Cuba
but an island off the southwest coast—Nuevo Gerona. That’s the one you
mentioned earlier, isn’t it?”
She sent a knowing glance back to him
and tilted her chin up. “I’m afraid so.”
Chapter 39
As the Zodiacs crested the last wave and
were thrust by the ocean onto the beach, Carlie jumped out into the knee-deep
surf with the others on her team and began pulling the raft along the black volcanic
sand.
Boyd and his men were doing the same and
both teams met at a cluster of young palm trees twenty yards up from the beach.
After Carlie did a quick headcount, she
huddled everyone together. “Alright, Shane and I will head up this hill behind
us and do a quick recon of the road and surrounding area. We should be back in
twenty minutes.” She looked at Boyd, who was reapplying insect repellent to his
face and hands. “I want the rest of you to set up a perimeter here and confirm
our arrival and location with the XO. Matias, you keep us current on enemy
movement with the portable SAT device—whenever that thing can get a signal. And
remember to keep coated with repellent—Efron said that mosquitos aren’t a
disease vector now but let’s not take any chances.”
Carlie cinched the shoulder straps on
her rucksack and then returned her grip to the suppressed M4 hanging off her
chest. She looked at Shane, who nodded back, and then they both disappeared
into the treeline. They began their ascent of the small hummock that rose up
from the jungle floor like a tilted football.
As they walked into the dense foliage,
the rain kept falling, making their passage along the dead leaves silent and
preventing their body scent from wafting through the cool air. After five hundred
yards of slogging through the mud, she stopped to hear a message coming in from
Matias. “The rainstorm is keeping the creatures stationary but I’m picking up
vehicle movement to the north about two miles out from our location,” he said.
“Copy that,” she said as they continued
climbing the hill. “We’ll be in position in a few minutes and report back
then.”
“Ever done any ops in the jungle before
other than babysitting dignitaries at their posh hotels in Miami?” whispered
Shane.
“Yeah, we did some training with the
government in Belize during a joint counter-terrorism course.”
“Belize—that’s a tame tourists’ jungle
compared to South America. You should try spending a month living in a hammock
in Surinam. Now that’s some raw, wild land down there.”
“No thanks. Too many nasties, with all
the parasites, venomous snakes, and spiders. I’ll take Central America any day
over that.”
“So how many countries have you been to,
exactly?” he said.
“Hell if I know. I don’t keep a diary
with all my hotel receipts stuffed in it,” she said, mulling over the question.
“It has to be over seventy.”
“Damn, and I thought I’d seen a lot of
the globe with the SEALs. I’ve been to thirty-six countries on
government-sponsored vacations.”
“Ah, if the American taxpayers only knew
just how many countries we are operating in without their knowledge, they’d
be…” She paused, stopping in her tracks. “American taxpayers—never thought I’d
be sorry to hear that term not carry any meaning.”
“Don’t worry, even now with the world in
pieces, once a new governing agency is formed, they’ll figure out a way to
stick it to us. This time we’ll be paying with MREs, bullets, or meds.”
“Geez, what happened to the glass-half-full
guy I knew?”
“He’s still in here,” Shane said,
tapping his fist against his vest. “It must be the company I’m keeping these
days.”
“Yeah, I’m sure that’s it alright.”
“I think after this op, we need to put
our boots up for even a few hours and enjoy some cold brews.”
“Now you’re gonna start on this? Jared
was going off on me in New Orleans about skipping out on our duties and finding
a nice, quiet sanctuary to while away our days.”
“Whoa…I never said anything like that.
I’ve still got plenty more missions left in this weathered frame of mine…and
you do, too…minus the
weathered
part.”
“I’m not so sure anymore. I mean, after
this is over and we get the vital intel back to White Sands—note my optimism—I have
other plans, with or without their help.”
“You think General Adams is going to let
someone like you leave?”
“I didn’t say leave for good. I just
have to take care of….some things.”
As they crested a small finger of
volcanic rock that jutted out over the valley below, Carlie could see miles of
untrammeled jungle in the faint sliver of moonlight poking through the clouds.
She lowered her pack and leaned her upper body against the flat slab with her
M4 in front of her.
Chapter 40
There was a break in the storm and
moonlight began seeping in from behind the cloud cover, illuminating the dense
canopy below Shane and Carlie’s hilltop perch. They were surveying the terrain
and route ahead with their rifles’ nightvision scopes.
“I see the dirt road that leads to the
airstrip which is about two miles out from here. Not much but dense jungle so
concealment shouldn’t be an issue,” said Carlie.
“Yeah, but travel time will be—nothing
more arduous than slogging with a ruck through the tropics,” said Shane,
leaning against his pack, which was serving as a rifle rest on the rock before
him.
“We can walk that road for part of the
way.”
“Uhm…not too sure about that,” Shane
said, adjusting the focus on his scope. “Carlie, look to your three o’clock.
There’s a convoy of three trucks heading down that road and I can see muzzle
flashes coming from the rear truck.” Shane had his vision fixed on the scene
below. “Must be the remaining Santa Ria guys.”
As Shane focused on the moving string of
vehicles, she could begin to hear the faint sound of automatic weapons fire as
the trucks sped in their direction.
“There must be a shitload of those
things after ’em if they’re lighting up the forest like that,” said Carlie.
“Damn…it actually looks like six
creatures…those fast-moving ones zig-zagging through the trees parallel to the
road. I can’t fucking believe the speed that those things are operating at.”
“I thought they had piss-poor eyesight
when it was dark?”
Shane watched two of the creatures jump
onto the side of the lead cargo truck and rip open the canvas top on the rear
bed. Horrific shrieks pierced the inky black night and then the truck swerved
into a palm tree, sending the driver out through the glass of the front window.
The rotund figure who was wearing a lime-green shirt was quickly disemboweled by
a single creature.
The two other vehicles screeched to a
halt, blocked by the wreck. Shane saw the remaining men jump out of their
vehicles and begin shooting at the treeline. In the faint moonlight their
rounds went astray. The four other creatures sprang onto the crowd and quickly
began shredding limbs, reducing the gang of twenty-one smugglers to fileted
corpses within ninety seconds.
“Son of a bitch, three truckloads of
armed bandits cut to pieces like they were scarecrows.”
Shane had seen the face of combat many
times; the chaos and horror of the battlefield never grew easier to bear. He
had learned to control the adrenaline and mastered his fear to such an extent
that his judgment was rarely hampered. Now as he studied the scene below
through the green glow of his nightvision scope, his heart raced and he felt
his throat searing like he had swallowed a hot coal. “Fuckin’ A, what are those
things?”
Carlie pulled her face away from her
scope and rubbed her eyes then looked at Shane. “Let’s get the rest of the
group up here and then skirt far to the east of that road to get to the
airstrip. Then, we’re hauling ass back to the Zodiacs or the secondary
extraction point.”
“I think it’s gonna have to be the
latter as those things are starting to move down the road towards the beach.”
Carlie pulled her head back from the scope
and activated the radio mic in her ear. After relaying their whereabouts to
Boyd and telling her two teams to move up to their location, she switched the
channel over to the XO on board the
Farragut
.
“Commander, we will be exfilling to the
secondary point upon picking up the package. I will radio back in two hours
with an update on our progress.”
“Copy that. This storm is clearing out
and you’ll only have a narrow window of darkness left to slide by those
creatures.”
Carlie thought back to the carnage
below. “Day or night, I don’t think it’s going to matter anymore. We just
witnessed a cluster of swift-moving creatures destroying a group of nearly
two-dozen smugglers in minutes,” she said, leaning back to look at the moon. “Something
has definitely changed.”
Chapter 41
Once the rest of both teams had joined
Carlie and Shane, they headed down the opposite side of the hill and walked in
a wide arc away from the road. Carlie felt this would give them plenty of space
between them and the cluster of fast-moving mutants that Matias’ SAT-com device
indicated were heading down the road to the beach where their Zodiacs were
located.
After an hour of difficult movement
through the dense jungle, they made their way back to the road near a
convoluted fork in the muddy terrain. The storm was starting to ease up and
every few minutes the moon would stab fingers through gaps in the jungle canopy
to illuminate the slick substrate below.
“Carlie, hold up,” said Matias, who was
staring down at the faint red screen of his SAT device. “This thing is fading
in and out,” he said, tapping the polycarbonate screen. “This road to the right
heads into the airstrip. The smuggler encampment looks to only have a handful of
creatures over the next half-mile though there are larger pockets of them
moving through the forest beyond this region. Other than that, I’m not getting
much of a reading as to any survivors in the vicinity of the airstrip.”
She came over and analyzed the digital
topo map as the screen kept fading. Carlie took off her boonie hat and
scratched the back of her head. “Alright, we need to neutralize some of those
mutants along the road before we can go any further. I want to dispatch them
from here in case there are others lurking around that we don’t know about.”
She motioned for Shane, Matias, and Boyd
to come up next to her. “It looks like thirteen creatures about six hundred
meters ahead,” she said. “Let’s do some headhunting.”
“Copy that,” the three men said, getting
into a kneeling position and resting their M4s on fallen logs for support.
The rest of the group gathered around
them while peering through their rifles’ nightvision scopes. Boyd was next to
Carlie and she could hear his muffled breathing.
She stabilized the rifle on the
moss-encrusted log in front of her, feeling for the familiar cheek-weld of the
stock and then adjusting her sights. The first mutant was a thin figure wearing
bent glasses. Carlie centered the red dot on the forehead and then eased her
finger over the trigger. She steadied her breathing and then felt the slow
depression of the trigger followed a micro-second later by the creature’s head
splattering on a tree trunk.
She could hear the suppressor rifles
around her as the others went to work. Carlie continued the same methodical
pattern of shot placement until the road ahead was devoid of movement.
“Any other tangos?” she said, scanning
the terrain with her nightscope.
“Negative,” said Boyd, pulling his head
back, his streaked camouflage face paint looking like someone had dragged a
muddy rake across his cheeks. He was giving her a surprised look and Carlie
thought it was because she had dropped four creatures in the time it took him
to kill two. She ignored his stare and strained to hear any movement coming
from around them. Carlie leaned back from the log and whispered to her left:
“My team will head to the airstrip and
see if we can locate any survivors there. Bravo Team will head to the other
beach location and procure one of the boats.” She pointed to the left fork in
the road. “If all goes as planned, my team will exfil along the road back to
this fork and regroup at the new dock. Those other jacked-up mutants are a few
miles out from here so we should only have a handful of the
normal
undead creatures to contend with,” she said, looking at each team member. “If
things heat up, I’ve instructed Commander Young to hammer the jungle shoreline
upon receiving our coordinates from either myself or Boyd. Any questions?”
“What about the
Farragut
sending
in a helo to extract us?” said Jared.
“The XO indicated that this storm won’t
clear up significantly for another six hours so airborne ops are going to be
out of the question until then. That mile distance to the ship that we did in
the Zodiacs shouldn’t be a problem in the choppy conditions if there’s a decent
boat at this other dock.”
“Ah, the joys of unknown variables.
Combat wouldn’t be combat without ’em,” said Shane.
The teams split back into their separate
groups and headed out, running their separate directions to the fork. As they
trotted, Carlie kept her vision focused on the narrow road which was squeezed
in by the green grip of dense foliage. She saw truck tracks in the mud and
thought about the earlier scene of carnage with the convoy of smugglers. She
had trained for a lot of bizarre scenarios over the years with the Secret
Service but the bad guys were always human, with normal reflexes, weaknesses,
and identifiable capabilities. Those fast-moving creatures made her shudder and
she felt her right palm gripping the handle of her M4 tighter as she placed
each foot forward. She glanced down at the luminescent dial of her watch and
hoped that, in an hour, her teams would all be safely back on the ship and free
from such monstrous horrors.