Payload (2 page)

The manufacturer of the door lock touted its security on the basis of there being only one key-hole and that on the outside, but Addison (under an assumed name) was on their mailing list, and knew that with a suitable pry-bar the stainless steel housing on the inner door handle could be levered off and the lock tumblers pushed out by a steel rod. From there it was a simple task to carefully ease the heavy dead bolt into a retracted position, and the door was open. Re-assembling the lock before closing it, he slipped off down the hall.

He had built his tools on the second day of his incarceration, mainly from the mechanisms in his room’s toilet tank and the faucet assemblies under the sink, replacing them when he didn’t need them. Unlike prisons, minimum security mental care facilities seldom protected the inner workings of plumbing.

Easing down the hallway, he made for the day supervisor’s office whose door was a simple Sargent lock that was vulnerable to the picks he had constructed from the metal-work of hair accouterments lifted from female staff and inmates. Earlier forays had determined that the day supervisor left her keys and a spare key card in the locked center drawer of her desk, along with her current computer password written on the back of a business card.

With the supervisor’s keys in hand, he headed to the Auburn Wing to release his compatriots.

Staff Sergeant Marvin Burleson

Marv dozed in his seat, ignoring the engine noise with practiced ease, a tall man made tough and lean by hard living and rigorous training, his dark brown hair worn in a militant burr much shorter than regulations required.

Aside from the puddle-pirate crew chief the cargo compartment of the Coast Guard bird, which was some CG variant of the UH-60 Blackhawk, held PFC Bardwell ‘Bucky’ Johnson and a Fed named Wilcox who had the payload, making him the quarterback of the operation, as it were.

The payload was a sealed titanium case the size of a lunch box with embossed red biohazard symbols, snuggled into a black nylon carrier with a shoulder strap that could have supported a GP machinegun. It looked for all the world like an unpainted version of the lunch boxes that Marv had lugged to the early years of grade school, except that it weighed about twenty pounds and the lock holding it closed was tooled steel.

A hand slapping his knee brought Marv instantly awake. The red-lit compartment was unchanged and it was still pitch black outside. Wilcox leaned close and yelled to be heard over the engine noise. “We’re off course! Watch the crew chief!”

Marv straightened and touch-checked his gear as he nudged Bucky’s leg, waking the young Ranger.

When Wilcox stood and started making his way forward to the pilots the crew chief stood as if to interfere, but sat back down when Marv slid his M-4’s muzzle up to horizontal. Jerking his head to let Bucky know to watch the crew chief, Marv grabbed a set of commo muffs and donned them.

“…sit back down!” one of the flight crew was demanding. “We’re going to Jacksonville, lift our families out-just four people. Less than an hour lost.”

Wilcox was yelling, but there was too much noise for Marv to hear what was being said.

“One hour! That’s all!” the pilot doing the yelling was trying to sound determined, but to Marv’s ears he just sounded scared. “Put that pistol away!”

The crew chief stood and took a step towards Wilcox, reaching for a pistol in a thigh holster. Marv stated to throw himself forward, only to be stunned by the explosive effect of Bucky’s M-4 firing a short burst, the impact of the rounds knocking the crew chief back against the port cargo door.

“Bucky, damn it…” the Ranger Sergeant raved, trailing off as he realized there was a struggle in the cockpit, screaming coming over the headphones, and that the Blackhawk was tilting forward into a dive. Snapping on his M-4’s tactical light, he saw that one pilot was slumped against his harness, blood pouring from his face, while the other wrestled with the controls. Wilcox had been pitched forward into the windscreen as evidenced by a smear of blood on the Plexiglas, and was now slumped over the control panel-the surviving pilot was trying to get at controls under the Fed’s body.

Cursing, Marv slid down the tilted deck, getting a savage jerk and a bruised ear when the commo set hit the end of its cable and ripped off his head. Coming to rest against the forward bulkhead, he grabbed the back of Wilcox’s belt and managed to drag the unconscious man off the controls. Getting the insensible Fed in sort of a headlock he managed to struggle back across the sloping cargo bay to the rear bench seat and get a seat belt around Wilcox. He hesitated for a second, then slipped the payload off Wilcox and slung it over his own shoulders.

As the bird bucked and heaved he managed to get his crash harness buckled into place. Bracing his feet against the floor, he pressed himself against the bulkhead and strapped his helmet on.

He guessed Bucky’s burst had startled Wilcox, who accidently shot one of the pilots, but at this point it didn’t really matter. If they made it to the ground without dying he would worry about it, but right now there were more important issues afoot.

The bird was steadily leveling out, he realized, and hope flared; for several agonizing seconds the deck slowly moved degree by degree to level, until the shell casings started to roll back from the forward bulkhead.

Even as Marv started to breathe a prayer of thanks there was a sudden metallic scream from outside and an explosion of sparks erupted outside the left side of the bird. The big Ranger had time to think “Power lines” before the world spun out of control and a giant fist smashed him into eternal darkness.

Jefferson ‘JD’ Davis

JD eased off the gas as a snarl of lights came into view, and tapped his brakes as he drew closer and saw that it looked like nothing so much as a traffic jam, except that cars were in the ditch in addition to being all over the road. His caution wasn’t usual-normally the pro wrestling promoter was an aggressive driver, but tonight’s events had chilled him to the bone.

He had been in the Miami area checking out a pair of Cuban brothers who he had heard might be getting close to being ready for the big time, but not so close that they couldn’t be huckstered into a good contract. He hadn’t been able to focus on the job, though, because reports of the flu outbreak and rioting in the barrios. On impulse he had decided that the Cubans would get their break later and headed north in his Cadillac.

He had pushed it hard, rolling north fifteen miles over the limit, Christopher Cross on the sound system singing about getting to the border of Mexico. He drove non-stop until his gas gauge dipped down to a quarter tank. At the next truck stop he fueled up, hit the head, and bought a take-out burger and fries.

An hour ago he had pulled into a rest area gas stop to top off his tank and stretch his legs. Coming out the store with a bottle of water and four energy bars in a plastic sack, he saw a beat-up-looking drunk come staggering across the asphalt and dive onto a woman standing next to a blue mini-van filled with suitcases and bags. The guy was biting like he was in a screen-test for a remake of
Jaws
-a lifetime in the wrestling business and JD had never seen anything even remotely like it.

Without thinking he had rushed over and given the guy a full-leg kick, putting the toe of his five-hundred-dollar Gucci dress loafers just under the drunk’s floating rib with all of his six-foot-two frame behind it. JD hadn’t wrestled in nearly twenty years but he still had a lot of the beef, and the kick sent the drunk crashing into the min-van’s front tire.

The woman’s husband dragged her away as JD leaned in, concerned he might have seriously maimed the drunk. The guy looked more dead than alive, so gray-skinned that JD had mistaken him for white when in fact he was a light-skinned black man, wheezing like he had a severe case of asthma. Sucking wind or not, the drunk immediately rolled to his side and started clawing his way back to his feet.

JD yelled at him to stay down, and finally kicked him again, a good heel-shot to the kidney which should have put him down for the count, except it didn’t: he just crashed to the asphalt and immediately started clawing for handholds on the tire to drag himself upright. Watching him JD was reminded of a machine mindlessly trying to accomplish the same task over and over.

Watching the drunk with horrified fascination, JD didn’t realize someone was yelling at him until a hand grabbed his shoulder. Looking up, he saw a heavyset older man in jeans, tee shirt, and a green John Deere cap with a pump-action shotgun braced on his hip.

“Son, you better get into your car and haul ass-they’re here!” The man turned and repeated his message to the husband of the stricken woman, who had a plastic first aid kit open and was bandaging her wounds. John Deere than stepped forward and shot the drunk point-blank in the head, blowing brains and blood all over the tire.

JD staggered back, stunned. John Deere racked the shotgun and fired again-looking in the direction of the shot JD saw a young, sick-looking Hispanic woman in a soiled waitress uniform knocked off her feet by the shot. John Deere ejected the shell, hesitated, then racked open the breech of his weapon and cursed. “Out. You gotta shoot ‘em in the head. Better haul ass, son.” John Deere promptly took his own advice.

Dazed, JD shook his head, utterly confused. His disorientation only intensified when he saw the waitress climb to her feet and resume her advance, her uniform blouse and her chest mauled by the impact of the buckshot. Looking beyond her, JD saw the chain restaurant whose uniform she wore and realized there was a vehicle embedded in the front of the building. More figures were crossing the grassy expanse between that parking lot and this one, all moving with the same staggering gait as the drunk and the waitress.

He had absolutely no idea what was going on-the entire world had come unshipped from its moorings, but in the vortex of confusion JD seized upon John Deere’s words and took to his heels.

He had driven half a mile before he realized he was still clutching the plastic bag.

Staff Sergeant Marvin Burleson

Consciousness returned slowly. Marv hung in weightless limbo, confused thoughts of burning microwave popcorn and summer hammocks rambling around in his dazed consciousness. Very slowly reality seeped in and the confusion eased back until he realized that instead of a hammock he was hanging from the crash harness in a motionless helicopter that was nose down. The image of burning popcorn was prompted by the smell of burning plastic and electronic beeping coming from the cockpit.

The red cargo lights were still on, and the right cargo door was gone; it was dark outside, but he could see grass through the open doorway, and smell freshly turned earth under the cloying smell of aviation fuel.

Synapses closed and he realized that avgas fumes and the smell of melting plastic meant he was sitting at ground zero of a pending bonfire. Instinctively he touch-checked for his weapon and was stunned to realize it was gone. Fumbling with clumsy fingers, he discovered that his one-point sling had been cut, and his magazine pouches were open and empty.

At least the payload was in place-that was something. He managed to unfasten and wriggle out of the safety harness, losing his helmet in the process-the chin strap had come unsnapped, and the Kevlar brain bucket bounced out into the darkness.

Free, he took stock: Wilcox was still strapped in next to him, the crew chief was still dead, and the left-hand pilot was dead in his seat. Bucky and the right-seat pilot were gone.

Wilcox was gone, too, Marv realized: someone had shot him in the head at point blank range. Struggling to maintain his position on the high end of the sloped cargo bay, Marv patted the Fed down, locating the man’s sat phone in the left cargo pocket of his 511 tactical pants, as well as three magazines for the Fed’s H&K USP, although the pistol was gone. He figured that Wilcox must have lost it when the whole mess went down.

Sliding down to the forward bulkhead, Marv cursed: his pack was gone. Casting about, he was struck by inspiration and rolled the dead crew chief over, recovering the man’s sidearm and a spare magazine from the thigh holster. He started for the dead pilot, but the avgas fumes were growing stronger so he ducked through the open door and headed out into the night air, reflexively reaching for his night vision googles, only to blurt a curse when he discovered they were also missing.

Pulling out his tactical flashlight, he staggered off across what looked like a pasture, his first goal to get clear of the wreck, second goal to find a place of concealment, and third goal to make contact.

His second goal was realized when he found the rusted hulk of a 50s-era pickup two hundred yards from the crash site. Heaving himself up into the bed, he paused to listen closely, and then dug out the sat phone.

He had watched Wilcox program it before they took off, so it only took a couple tries before he heard the purr of a phone ringing, and then a man answered, crisp and authoritative. “Control. Identify.”

“This is Fastbox Two. Situation critical, over.”

“Hold on.” Marv slumped against the cool metal of the truck bed and watched the blanket of stars overhead. The phone beeped twice, and someone else picked up. “Section D. Identify.”

“This is Fastbox Two. Situation critical.”

“Fastbox, you’ve missed two sitreps. Where are you, and who are you?”

“This is Staff Sergeant Marvin Burleson, Alpha Company, First of the Seventy Fifth. I was NCOIC of the security detail. I don’t know where I am-the bird is down, sir.”