Jakarta Pandemic, The (59 page)

“Not while any of those fuckers over there are still alive.”

“How are you feeling, hon?” Kate asked, caressing his face.

“Like I’ve been shot. Are you sure Emmy’s okay?”

“She’s scared,” Kate admitted and stood up.

“Kate, have her dress up in her snow gear and head over to our house. Sam and the kids can take care of her while we’re dealing with this,” Ed said.

“All right. I’ll get her over there with Max,” she said and sprinted back to the house.

Charlie and Ed followed her, and Ryan turned toward the house.

“Ryan!” Alex called.

Ryan walked over to kneel next to him, still clutching the rifle. He looked pale and nauseous. He avoided looking at Alex’s shoulder and could barely look at Alex’s blood- spattered face.

“I love you, Dad. You’ll get fixed up quick,” he said.

“Damn right I will. Whose idea was it to use the rifle?” he asked.

“Mom’s, but she didn’t know how to work it. Sorry, I barely hit him. I just kept pulling the trigger. I didn’t want him to kill you, Daddy,” he said and broke down crying, leaning into Alex.

Alex grabbed him with his right arm, grimacing through the pain. “You did great, buddy. Two hits was all it took,” he said and squeezed his son.

“I didn’t know how to reload it, Dad,” he said, sniffling into Alex’s good shoulder.

“You didn’t have to.”

Ryan hugged him harder.

“All right, all right already. You’re starting to dig into the shoulder,” he grunted.

“Sorry, Dad.” Ryan stood back up and picked up the rifle.

“Let me see that for a second,” Alex said to him. Pain shot through his entire left side as Ryan held the rifle out. Alex slowly moved his right arm and pointed to a button on the right side of the weapon, just forward of the trigger well. “Press this and the magazine slides out. Put another one in, and pull back…”

“On the handle,” Ryan said and placed his right hand on the charging handle.

“Right,” Alex whispered as a wave of nausea passed over him.

“I saw that in Modern Warfare. Just never saw the magazine release button,” Ryan said, managing a smile.

“I don’t think your mom’s gonna bitch about that game anymore. Go help her out. I love you, buddy.”

“Love you too, Dad,” Ryan said and disappeared into the garage.

Just as Ryan vanished, Ed emerged from the doorway with a green sled. “This is the biggest one you have in there,” he said as he approached Alex. “Can you fit on this?”

“You calling me fat?”

“Oddly enough, you’re probably the fattest man on the block right now,” Ed said as he carefully lifted Alex and tried to slide him onto the sled.

“Aghhhh. Jesus. Careful, man,” he said, struggling not to laugh.

“Sorry. This might hurt a little.”

“Thanks for the warning. What about Todd?”

“You’re my only priority right now. He can wait,” Ed said, staring angrily at Todd’s motionless figure.

“He won’t make it if we don’t help him. Jordan’s home by herself. She’s gonna be really freaked out,” he mumbled.

“We’ll take care of her. Just stay with me, buddy.” Ed lifted him again. A wave of heaviness dropped over Alex, and he tried to lift his head.

Nope
.

His vision narrowed and darkened, and Alex vaguely remembered being lifted onto the green foam sled. He regained full consciousness a short time later when Ed tugged hard on the sled’s tow line.

They broke through a deep drift, and Alex lifted his head to see where they were. They emerged from between Alex’s house and the Thompsons’. Alex watched as Ed struggled to pull his dead weight forward through the deep snow. His gaze settled on the back of Ed’s dark green jacket as he faded out again.

Chapter Forty-Three

March 2003

Euphrates River Bridge on the outskirts of An’ Nasiriyah, Iraq

“Here they come!” Corporal Reyes announced over the internal communications circuit.

All of the gun turrets in Captain Fletcher’s Amphibious Assault Vehicle (AAV) company start firing at once, sending a continuous maelstrom of heavy caliber bullets and high explosive grenades across the river. A few seconds later, assault rifle fire erupts from the marines along the Euphrates River bank, joined by bursts of light machine-gun fire.

Captain Fletcher turns his attention to the other side of the Euphrates Canal. Two hundred meters back from the opposite side, he sees droves of disorganized enemy fighters rushing forward through the palm groves and dilapidated shacks. Hundreds of tracer rounds reach the onrush, as rifles, machine guns and grenades pulverize the oncoming enemy troops.

“All Zombie tracks, continue to your new positions. I say again, move to your new positions,” Captain Fletcher reinforces.
They have to move.

A salvo of several high-explosive artillery shells lands fifty meters closer than the last barrage, launching columns of rocks and dirt skyward and spraying shrapnel at anything exposed nearby. This encompasses most of the AAVs and over half of Charlie Company’s marines. The shockwave from each successive blast rocks the AAV’s and pulses through the prone marines. The last artillery shell in the barrage lands two meters behind one of the AAVs near the bridge and blasts through the thin armor, shredding the rest of the vehicle with shrapnel. The AAV immediately ignites from the heat of the explosion.

One of the explosions throws Alex sideways, and the right side of his helmet strikes the lip of the hatch opening. Dazed, he regains his balance and spins around to scan the impact area. He can barely see the damaged AAV through the descending dirt and debris.
Shit.
He sees the gunner jump down from the turret onto the front of the vehicle and help the vehicle commander get out of his hatch.

“Zombie Three Eight, this is Zombie Three actual, over.” 
Come on guys. Someone answer.

Captain Fletcher scans the vehicle again and assesses the damage as a mission kill to the AAV. He doesn’t think anyone in the rear compartment could have survived the blast. Several infantry marines rush from a nearby position to the burning AAV, and a corpsman from the nearby aid station joins them. Within seconds, they start to carry the vehicle commander to the aid station. From his stretcher, the vehicle commander frantically points to the back at the AAV, yelling something to the other marines near the vehicle. Two marines enter the damaged rear hatch of the burning AAV, which is consumed with flames, and pull a limp human form back through the hatch. As the group moves to the aid station, several mortar rounds fall into Charlie Company’s perimeter, spraying dirt and creating havoc, but mercifully failing to injure any marines.

The Zombie Three Eight burns fiercely, along with the Zombie Three Nine, the first AAV destroyed, sending columns of thick black smoke into the air.
Maybe someone will see this and figure out we’re in deep shit over here.
With two of his ten vehicles destroyed, and no radio contact with battalion, Captain Fletcher feels an impending sense of doom.

“Gents, I really hope our counter-battery folks take out that artillery,” he says into the vehicle comms.
Not likely.

The volume of fire from the marines picks up after a temporary lull caused by the last series of impacts, and Charlie Company’s mortars fire furiously in response to the enemy mortars. He sees a group of marines carrying disassembled 60mm mortars and moving in the open toward the AAV’s.
Sanchez is spreading out the mortars. Smart.

They make it halfway to the AAVs , when another round of enemy artillery shells lands directly to the north of Captain Fletcher’s AAV, right on top of the marines and the mortar position they just departed. Blast waves from successive explosions jar the AAV, slamming rock and shrapnel into the sides of the AAV. Alex hears a quick buzz near his right ear and ducks into the AAV more out of instinct than logic. Whatever snapped by his head was long gone by the time he reacted.

“Banshee Six, this is Zombie actual, those rounds landed on our mortar position.”

“Roger, sending help.”

“Hillock, Manny, we have marines down just north of the track. Let’s get them out of that kill zone.”

Alex disconnects his helmet comms cable and steps up on the seat to pull his body out of the hatch. His driver, Lance Corporal Manuel Rodriguez, hits the ground seconds before Alex, and they both see that Sergeant Hillock is already halfway toward the downed mortar team. Alex and Manny merge with several marines sprinting over from positions near the canal, and Captain Fletcher tells at least half of the marines to help out the mortar position, which is about twenty meters further along, just past a small rise of ground. Two of the corpsman sprint across the area recently hit by artillery and arrive at the mortar position to assess casualties. They split up and one heads toward Alex.

Alex and the other marines stagger at the sight of the destroyed mortar team. Immediately, Alex can see that at least four of the marines are dead, and the rest are wounded.
Obliterated.
First Lieutenant Dave Pardell, weapons platoon commander, is the only apparently uninjured member of the team. He stumbles onto his feet, face blackened with dirt, and starts to run toward the bridge. He is missing his helmet and rifle.

“Grab him,” Alex shouts to one of the marines closest to the lieutenant.

Mortar rounds start to hit the area south of the marines and straddle the AAVs next to the canal. All of the marines hit the ground, except for Pardell. A sergeant pulls him to the ground by his left arm, and Pardell screams. Alex now sees that his left forearm is bent at a right angle.
Jesus.

“That might’a hit some of 1
^st
platoon,” one of the Marines says, still hugging the ground.

Alex looks past his debris-sprayed vehicle to the canal. He sees one of the 1
^st
Platoon radiomen give a “thumbs up” to the group.

“2
^nd
squad just checked in. They got dusted good, but no injuries,” says a marine crouched down with a radio.

Alex considers their position in the open. This is not where he wants to be when the next round of artillery crashes in. He waves to Zombie Three Three. The vehicle immediately springs to life and rumbles toward them.
Three is now the official medevac vehicle.

“Load all of the dead and wounded in that track, and get them back to the aid station!” Captain Fletcher says.

Captain Fletcher turns to Gunnery Sergeant Fitzgerald, a hulking black marine feared by every marine in Charlie Company, and Alex himself.

“Fitz, get ’em moving.”

“You heard the Captain, load ’em up and get back to your positions! Let’s go people!” Gunny Fitzgerald says and slaps one of the marine’s helmets.

Alex meets the AAV as it approaches and heads over to the right side of the vehicle. He bangs on armor and yells up at the vehicle commander, who leans down over the side to hear him. Bullets ping off the vehicles near Alex and crack overhead. He doesn’t flinch anymore.

“You’re the medevac track. Load them up, and get back over to the aid station.”

The vehicle commander nods, and Alex looks back at the marines helping their wrecked comrades. He sees a lone rocket-propelled grenade fly several feet above the marines and trail off north, heading toward nothing. He stares at the trail of white smoke, waiting for it to explode in the distance. Out of the corner of his eye, he catches another flash of smoke. He never really sees the rocket propelled grenade that strikes short of the AAV and detonates against the hard ground several feet in front of him.

Chunks of rock and steel slam into Captain Fletcher and hammer him against the side of the vehicle. For a few seconds, he feels like he’s been submerged underwater. Then nothing.

Chapter Forty-Four

Saturday, December 14, 2013

Captain Fletcher rose slowly and suddenly broke through the heavy surface sheet of unconsciousness, kicking his legs and straining against a weight on his chest. His eyes struggled to focus, but all he could see was a shaky, blinding light above him.

“Hold his legs down,” someone yelled.

He felt something heavy wrap around his legs.

“So much for that plan,” the same voice yelled.

“Alex? Alex? It’s Ed,” he heard.

He was confused. “I need a… corpsman?” he said doubtfully, suddenly aware that his request didn’t make sense given his surroundings.

“What are you doing?” he asked, looking up at a vaguely familiar man with a medical mask over his face.

“Alex, I’m Dr. Glassman, and I’m trying to remove the shotgun lead from your wounds, then I’m going to clean the wound and stitch it back up.”

“Without anesthesia?” Alex asked lucidly.

“He sounds like he’s back,” he heard his wife say.

He looked around him. He saw Kate holding his legs down with a strained smile. Ed loomed above him again, pinning his right arm and chest down on a hard surface. A thin towel or shirt rested under his head. He could tell that he was in someone’s formal dining room, but not his own, or Ed’s. A young, dark-haired woman stood next to Ed holding a bright flashlight.

“Alex, I can give you some Percocet for the pain, but it won’t kick in for a little while. I need to get you stitched up pretty quickly. You’ve lost a little more blood than I would have hoped.”

“How much would you have hoped for?” Alex asked and realized that he was fading again.

“Ah…I don’t know what…”

“He’s fucking with you, Ben,” Kate said.

“All right. Okay. He’s got a strange sense of humor,” Dr. Glassman whispered. “Okay, so we’ll give him the Percocet, and then I’ll start. Alex, this is going to hurt…I wish I had some anesthetic to give you, but obviously I don’t. I have to dig the pellets out and then close you up. Ten to fifteen minutes tops.”