Authors: Dirk Patton
“Just this morning it was discovered that the Chinese have
paired MX-489 with a virus. The effect of this is to significantly strengthen
the body’s ability to continue to function despite all of the adrenaline. How
long this will preserve the infected is unknown, and so far we have had no
reports of infected beginning to die off. The only good news is that it is the
nerve agent that causes the change, and the agent is only persistent for 48
hours post release before degrading in the environment. Also, the virus seems
to have no detrimental impact on non-infected people. However, the researchers
aren’t sure. They don’t know what else the virus may do.”
“Where did the MX-489 come from?” Rachel asked. The
Sergeant shot me a look and I nodded my head for him to answer.
“It was originally developed by the US Government in the
early 1960s. Half the missiles we had pointed at Russia during the cold war
were armed with the nerve agent rather than nuclear warheads. During the Cuban
Missile crisis there were four B-52s in the air at all times with tanks full of
it, ready to spray the entire island of Cuba.”
He shuffled through some more note cards, found the one he
was looking for and continued, “The researchers have started calling the
Chinese version the Voodoo Plague.”
The briefing lasted for another hour. The Sergeant
expanding on what the researchers had discovered, and then covering why the two
scientists in New Mexico were so critical to the research efforts. He handed
me a packet with large head shot photos of each scientist and a short biography
on each. The packet also contained details on their location in New Mexico and
how I would find and extract them. I glanced through it then closed the file
and gave him my full attention as he talked about the tactical situation in
Arizona.
Phoenix and Tucson, the two largest cities in Arizona, had
quickly devolved into chaos after the attacks. Thousands had died very early
on in rioting and looting as grocery stores were stripped bare within hours of
the attacks. Then came the fighting between first neighborhoods, then
neighbors, over food, fuel and water. Civilian law enforcement had evaporated
and less than 20 percent of the National Guard had reported when the call up
orders were issued. The two cities had only Air Force bases in or adjacent to
them and both bases were on high alert and locked down with no personnel to
spare to try and quell the unrest. The other two large military installations
in the state were a Marine Air Station 200 miles to the west of Phoenix in
Yuma, and Fort Huachuca which was 90 miles to the south of Tucson near the
Mexico border. Neither had the manpower to help and were also locked down and
using every available resource for their own security.
Reports were filtering out of the state that local gang
leaders had set themselves up as warlords, their ranks swelling with people who
were hungry and scared and looking for the protection the gangs offered. Battles
raged in both Tucson and Phoenix between rival warlords looking to either
maintain or seize control of food, water and fuel stocks. There had been a
mass exodus of people trying to get to safety in the mountains of eastern and
northern Arizona, but many had run out of fuel and were on foot. Adding to the
misery it was summer and the temperatures in the Arizona desert were in the
triple digits. Satellite imagery and drones flown out of Luke and Davis
Monthan Air Force Bases showed thousands of bodies lying in the desert where
refugees had succumbed to the heat, collapsed and died. This wasn’t going to be
a walk in the park. I asked the Sergeant about the use of a helicopter to get
me from Tucson to Phoenix, which is about 110 miles across open desert. He
flipped through his notes before telling me that he had no information about
availability of rotor wing aircraft and it would be at the base commander’s
discretion.
I asked some more questions, as did Rachel, and when they
were all answered I thanked him for the briefing. Rachel, Dog and I followed
him out of the conference room and he escorted us across the air base to a
massive building where the Quartermaster was located. We spent close to an
hour getting outfitted with food in the form of MREs – Meal Ready to Eat - uniforms,
gloves, boots, body armor, new weapons with military grade sound suppressors and
tactical vests, ammunition, comm equipment, night vision gear, first aid kits
and a medic pack for Rachel, combat packs and even a ballistic vest for Dog.
Working military dogs had been a high value target for snipers in Afghanistan
and Iraq and had needed body armor just as much as their handlers.
With everything stowed away I shouldered my pack and slung
my weapons and stepped onto the scale sitting by the Quartermaster’s desk. 348
pounds. I subtracted my 230 pound body weight and wasn’t pleased that I had
118 pounds of gear on my body. I had packed Rachel lighter then myself, but
she refused to get on the scale. Women. Like it mattered if I knew what she
weighed. Taking the pack off her back I piled it and her weapons on the scale
which registered 73 pounds. Lighter than my load, but by no means light when
she couldn’t have weighed more than 150, despite being nearly six feet tall.
After I signed for everything we exited the building into the humid afternoon.
“So what’s the plan?” Rachel asked, struggling to adjust
her pack to a more comfortable position. I stepped behind her and took the
weight of the pack in my arms so she could adjust the straps.
“First I’m taking you by the firing range to spend some time
with an instructor, then I’m going by flight operations,” I answered, still
supporting her pack. “Need to know exactly what time our flight to Arizona
leaves tomorrow morning. I also want to check and see if they’re running any
SAR – Search and Rescue – operations. I can’t stop thinking about those kids
we left behind in Atlanta.”
When Rachel and I were fighting our way out of the Atlanta
suburbs we had encountered three teenagers that were holed up in their house,
waiting for their parents to come home. This was a couple of days after the
attacks and we hadn’t been able to convince them to come with us. We’d left
them enough food for a week or two if they were careful with it, then when it
became clear that we could only get them to come with us by force we had driven
off without them. I wasn’t regretting our decision, there was no other option
at the time, but if they were still there and alive I wanted to see if I could
get them some help.
I didn’t know where either the range or flight operations were,
but it didn’t take long for a Security Force Humvee to drive by and I flagged
it down. The young Airman driving the vehicle was happy to give us a ride when
he saw the Oak Leaf on my chest. Rachel and Dog piled into the back seat and
after dropping my pack in the cargo area I climbed in next to the driver. He
drove aggressively, probably in a hurry to get an officer out of his vehicle,
and in only a few minutes we arrived at the base’s small arms training
facility. A squat cinder block building fronted the parking lot, several dozen
300 yard shooting lanes carved into the terrain stretching out behind it.
Every 100 feet a tall tower looked down on the firing line. These were where
the Range Masters observed and controlled all activity on the range. I told
the Airman to wait and motioned for Rachel to follow me. Dog stayed behind,
pushing his head forward to get a neck scratch from the driver.
Inside the building I quickly found an Air Force Master
Sergeant and Chief Master Sergeant in a cramped office. They were sitting with
their feet up, cigarettes burning in an ashtray that was made from a cut down
artillery shell. They both stood up quickly when I stepped into the door of
the office, the Master Sergeant stubbing out the smokes before coming to
attention. I waved them back into their chairs, pulled out my own cigarette,
lit up and plopped into the visitor’s chair. The two Sergeants grinned and
relit their smokes. They had heard about Rachel and me – any military
installation is the biggest gossip exchange you will ever find – and I
patiently answered their questions and gave them enough juicy details to make
them feel like they were on the inside. Steering the conversation I explained
to them that Rachel and I were hopping a flight into hostile territory in a few
hours and she needed a crash course on the firing range. They took one look at
Rachel who was beautiful even in all her combat gear and eagerly agreed. When I
left Rachel was smiling, flirting and being fawned over by both of them. She
certainly knew how to play the game.
Back in the Humvee I had the Airman drive me over to Flight
Operations, again telling him to wait, and went into the large building that
was immediately adjacent to the flight line. On the opposite side of the
building a tall Control Tower soared into the air, commanding a view of the
entire runway and taxiway system. The building itself was a hub of activity,
Air Force enlisted personnel working on computers and walking from office to
office in a quick and efficient manner. It didn’t take long for a young female
Airman to stop and ask if she could assist me. I asked to speak with whoever
was in charge of flight operations, then followed her down a long hall, up a
flight of stairs and into a large room where she pointed at a small, Asian woman
wearing an Air Force uniform with a Major’s oak leaf. Three walls of the room
were covered with large flat panel displays that appeared to monitor everything
from the weather to air traffic as well as several with constantly updating
information that was Greek to me. The fourth wall was all windows that looked
out onto the flight line.
I was surprised a Major was running flight operations as I
would have expected this to be the job of a Colonel, but I wasn’t going to
complain. I was a Major too and was happy to not have to deal with an Air
Force officer that out ranked me. Not that this woman couldn’t just dismiss me
out of hand, but it was less likely for her to ignore a brother officer of the
same rank. I walked up and paused a few feet from her while she finished a
conversation with one of her staff before introducing myself.
“Oh, yeah. You’re the guy that flew in last night, right?”
She was tiny compared to me, five feet tall at the most, and had to crank her
head way back to look up at me. The name tape on her uniform read Masuka.
“That’s me,” I answered with a grin.
“So what can I do for you?” She asked, picking up a
clipboard and scanning through a couple of pages before finding what she was
looking for. “Looks like we’ve got you on a flight to DM tomorrow at 0730.”
“You do, and the first thing I need to ask is are there two
seats and room for a dog?” I grinned what I hoped was a charming grin, but
either it wasn’t or she didn’t care. Brad Pitt I’m not.
“The aircraft has been reconfigured for this mission. No
seats, just web slings.” She put the clipboard down and looked back up at me.
“Why? Who are you taking with you?”
“The female team member that made it out of Georgia with me,
and my K9.” I was stretching the truth here, making it sound more official than
it really was. I was hoping she wouldn’t ask for specifics about Rachel and
Dog and find out neither was military.
“There’s room,” she answered after a long pause. “I’ll note
it for the load master. Was there anything else? I’m a bit busy here.”
She started to turn away to speak with one of the enlisted
staff that was waiting in line for her, but I spoke up before I lost her
attention.
“Yes, there is. What’s your SAR capability at the moment?
I had to leave some civilians behind north of Atlanta and I’d like to get them
evacuated.” For this request I figured the whole truth was the best approach.
I gave her the story about the three teenagers Rachel and I had encountered,
telling her about their refusal to come with us and that we’d left them enough
food that they could still be alive if they’d stayed indoors and quiet.
“Show me on the map,” she said, stepping over to a computer
terminal and clicking a mouse. I followed her line of sight and watched one of
the flat panel displays show an image that looked at first like Google Earth.
As she clicked and scrolled it became obvious we were looking at real time
satellite imagery as you never see clouds when using Google. A couple more
clicks and a street map was superimposed over the satellite image and she
motioned for me to take control of the mouse.
“It’s just like Google,” she said. “Use the mouse to scroll
around, double left click to zoom in, double right to zoom out.”
Using the mouse I navigated around the screen, zoomed in a
few times then back out when I didn’t recognize the area. The third time I
zoomed I was pretty certain I had the right location. As the screen refreshed
I recognized the neighborhood with just the one street that fed in and out.
Clicking to zoom further in I didn’t realize at first what I was looking at,
then the screen did a final refresh into sharp HD clarity and I muttered a
curse. Several blocks of the neighborhood were packed with infected standing
shoulder to shoulder, all of them pushing forward towards a small two-story house.
“That’s got to be them,” I said, eyes on the screen showing
a throng of infected that had to number several thousand.
Major Masuka took control of the computer back from me,
clicking and typing faster than I could even think about. After a few moments
of furious work she hit the enter key and looked back up at the screen, arms
crossed across her chest. At first nothing happened, then the screen blinked
and the same shot of the neighborhood was displayed only this time there were
no infected in the shot. A date and time stamp in the upper right corner
indicated this was 48 hours ago. The screen blinked again, and the indicator
changed to reflect 47 hours ago. This continued to happen, the images progressing
forward an hour at a time until we reached 31 hours ago. In that image a few
dozen infected surrounded the house, frozen in the image with arms raised as
they pounded on the siding, doors and windows. Another blink. 30 hours ago.
There were now hundreds of infected and more could be seen in the surrounding
streets and yards as they streamed towards the house. Blink, 29 hours.
Thousands and still growing.
Masuka paused the replay with a click and entered some more
commands, hitting the enter key with a flourish. The time stamp rolled back to
32 hours, blinked and started progressing forward in one minute increments. At
the 31 hour and 38 minute mark a lone figure was visible moving towards the
house and Masuka reached forward and hit a button that changed the replay to
normal speed, paused it, rolled it back two minutes, zoomed in a little and and
let it roll. Soon the figure appeared in the image about a block away from the
house. I recognized Kevin, one of the three siblings I had met. He was
running and kept looking over his shoulder. Rounding a house he nearly ran
into the arms of an infected male, stumbled backwards, pulled out a pistol and
shot it. I sighed. The sound of the gun shot. That had brought every
infected in a large radius down on their heads.
Kevin kept running and now other figures were entering the
frame of the shot. Some of them were shambling males, but there were also
females. The females sprinted after Kevin. He was not in good shape and his
run looked like a slow jog compared to the speed of the females. Two of them were
only yards behind when he stumbled on the lawn of his house, going to his knees
only feet from safety. He was immediately tackled from behind by both
females. The front door of the house opened and Gwen ran out onto the lawn,
pistol held at arm’s length, but it didn’t look like she fired. Probably
afraid of hitting Kevin. As she watched the females ripped into Kevin, his
bloody death displayed in high definition on the flat panel. Gwen slowly
lowered the pistol and seemed to be rooted in place until more females
appeared. She turned and ran back into the house, slamming the door behind her
moments before infected started pounding on it.
“Can you go to real time?” I asked. Masuka hit a few keys
and the image blinked before sharpening back to clarity. The house was
absolutely mobbed with infected trying to force their way in.
“They’re still alive in there,” I said, eyes glued to the
screen. “How soon can you get a rescue bird in the air?”
Masuka puffed out her cheeks then let the air out slowly,
“Two days before I have anyone available. Plenty of birds available, but we’re
low on personnel and every pilot I have is supporting the build up at the state
border to defend against the herd that’s moving towards us.” She looked up at
me defiantly, expecting an argument.
I stared at her for a long moment then turned my eyes back
to the scene on the display. “What if I can get my own pilot and door
gunner?” I asked. “Will you let me have a helicopter that can make the trip?”
“One pilot? No co-pilot? Only one crewman? That’s against
every policy the Air Force has.” She answered, facing me with her arms crossed
again.
“What’s the Air Force policy on leaving two teenage girls to
be torn apart by infected?” I asked in a low voice, leaning towards her. Part
of my strategy was to not make a scene and put her on the defensive in front of
her staff, but I also know I can be fairly intimidating when I want to be and
with 15 inches of height and probably 130 pounds on her I hoped my physical
presence would help change her mind.
Masuka stared right back at me, head turned up to meet my
eyes like a child looking up at her parent, and she never blinked. We stared
at each other like that for a bit before she uncrossed her arms and broke eye
contact.
“Tell me what you have in mind,” she said.
“The pilot that flew me in last night, Lieutenant Anderson,
and the Senior Airman that was part of his air crew. They can’t be assigned to
anything yet. They fly, I get the kids out of the house and we bring them back
here to safety.” I straightened back up, giving her more space and shut my
mouth. If she said no I’d find Anderson and steal a helicopter if I had to.
She looked back at the display, the mass of infected bodies
choking the streets and lawns around the house and shook her head. “How do you
think you’re going to get them out of that?” She gestured at the satellite
feed.
Got her! She was in.
“That’s a two story house. I fast rope down to the roof,
punch through a window and winch the kids back up. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.”
Shaking her head and making a decision she called one of her
staff over, a young, gangly kid wearing an Airman’s stripe on a uniform that
looked almost as new as mine. He dashed across the room and came to attention
in front of us. Masuka looked up at me and gestured to the kid, “Tell him who
you need and he’ll go get them.”
“Lieutenant Anderson, he’s probably in the BOQ – Bachelor
Officer Quarters – and Senior Airman Mayo. Don’t know where Mayo is, but the
LT will know.”
The kid stood there as if waiting for something else until
Masuka barked at him to get his ass in gear. He turned and ran for the door
and Masuka grabbed another staffer and started issuing orders to get a Pave
Hawk fueled and on the flight line, ready to go, then turned her attention to
the line of people that had been waiting for her. I left her to it and went
down the stairs and back outside to where the Security Forces Airman was
waiting with Dog. They were outside the Humvee and Dog had convinced him to
throw a stick he’d somehow found. I told him to take Dog back to the firing
range and deliver him to Rachel and let her know that I was taking a short
flight and would be back in plenty of time for our flight to Arizona. I knew
Rachel would be pissed at me, but I didn’t really see that she could be
anything more than a passenger on this trip and she needed the time on the
range. The Airman sped off and I lit a cigarette, enjoying the warm afternoon
sun. Behind me on the flight line a jet engine throttled up and screamed like
a banshee. The smell of jet fuel was heavy in the air. I already missed
Rachel and Dog.
Two cigarettes later the gangly Airman wheeled into the
parking lot in an Air Force blue pickup truck. Anderson sat in the front
passenger seat and Mayo was sprawled out in the back seat. I walked over to
greet them as the driver pulled into a parking space and shut off the engine.
When they stepped out of the truck and spotted the rank on my uniform both of
them looked at me with quizzical expressions on their faces.
“Recall by order of the Commander In Chief,” I explained,
shrugging my shoulders and grinning.
Anderson and Mayo came to attention but I waved them off,
forestalling the salutes that I knew were coming. Motioning for them to follow
I led the way into flight operations, explaining what was going on as we
walked. Reaching the large operations room I introduced Anderson to Major
Masuka and faded into the background while they talked. Masuka handed a small
flash drive to Anderson and waved me over.
“Major,” she said. “I think you’re a damn fool for going
out there. Pave Hawks need a crew of at least four, preferably six, but I
admire you for not just walking away from these kids. But you do need to
know. If you run into trouble I don’t have anyone available to come get you.
I’ve told the Lieutenant and Senior Airman that this is voluntary. I won’t
order them to do this so severely undermanned. You’ll be glad to know they’ve
both volunteered. Good luck to you, and I hope I see you in a few hours.” She
stuck her hand out and I took it, thanking her. The same Airman that had
retrieved Anderson and Mayo was tasked with getting us to the Pave Hawk that
was waiting on the flight line and we followed him out of the building without
any further discussion.