The Malefic Nation (Graham's Resolution Book 4) (21 page)

Chapter 58 Dalton’s Mission

Dalton knew his flight down the coast to California would be a long, daunting challenge. The single-engine Cessna 206 Stationair was up to the task, and given the auxiliary fuel tank, he figured he would have just enough fuel to make the journey. The C206 was a very capable airplane for its class, but the large floats created substantial drag; its cruise speed was around 120 knots, and the plane burned roughly eighteen gallons of fuel per hour.

Although a straight line would be the shortest, choosing that route would force him to cross several mountain ranges in the dark, which would require supplemental oxygen at those altitudes. The substantial drag created by the floats would also hinder his high-altitude performance—not to mention the potential weather hazards created by the moist Pacific air being forced upslope by the southwestern winds; icing conditions and floats simply did not mix.

With this in mind, Dalton opted for a slightly longer but safer route down the coastline. With luck, the moonlight would allow him to visually follow the coast all the way down to California, staying just far enough out to sea to remain out of sight and sound to those who might be watching from shore.

He tried not to let it get in the way, but Dalton couldn’t help but think about what Clarisse had just revealed to him. Now, more than ever, he knew he had to get back to them or die trying.

Not having had the chance to be adequately rested for the journey, the near pitch black darkness and the steady drone of the airplane’s engine had Dalton fighting to stay awake.
Wake up!
he said to himself, smacking a hand across his face. He checked the clock on the instrument panel. “Dammit, it’s only been four hours?” he said aloud. “This is gonna be a long night.”

He looked back at the unconscious prisoner, in restraints and strapped to her seat. “Fun, huh?” he asked, knowing she couldn’t respond. Clarisse had made sure she was completely out for the trip. “Bet you never took a plane ride like this before. I’d love to toss you out right here, but
you
are going to serve a purpose after all, you annoying wench.

Looking to his left and realizing that the light of the moon was not illuminating the shoreline as it had been, Dalton turned his attention to the darkness up ahead.
I didn’t realize just how damn hard it would be to see the coast with no city lights
, he thought.
It’s like vertigo out here sometimes.
The view of the shoreline faded away into the darkness as he found himself entering an area of low visibility. Being an experienced instrument-rated pilot, Dalton was up to the task, but without ground-based navigation facilities transmitting their signals as they would have done in the days before the world collapsed, he had no way to continue to navigate adequately without a visual reference to the shoreline.

Checking the standby compass heading, Dalton adjusted his directional gyro and maintained his last heading and altitude. “We’ll probably fly right back out of it in a minute,” he said, looking back at his prisoner. “Like you care,” he said with a chuckle. “You want to die for Allah anyway.”

After some time had passed, Dalton became unnerved that he was still flying blind inside what had started out as offshore mist but was now a full-fledged cloud bank. Checking the outside air temperature, he thought,
a few more degrees and we’ll be in icing conditions. With no de-ice boots on this old bird, we could be screwed. Hell, for all I know I’ve been steadily drifting off course and heading farther and farther out to sea.

Checking his standby compass against his directional gyro again, he realized the gyro had precessed approximately ten degrees, leading him to drift off course. Correcting his heading back to the left, Dalton struggled to see the shoreline through his left window, but he couldn’t see a thing.

Out of frustration he punched the glare shield and shouted, “Dammit! I don’t have enough fuel to be messing around getting lost. This freaking cloud layer could go on for a hundred miles, for all I know. Screw it!” he said as he began a gentle descent. “Maybe we can pop out of the bottom of it. This crap probably doesn’t go all the way down to the water.”

Dalton descended out of his cruise altitude of five thousand feet with a shallow rate of descent while focusing intently on his instruments, only occasionally glancing outside.
Through four thousand
,
he said to himself as he watched the thousands hand of the altimeter swing past 4 in a counterclockwise motion.
Still nothing. Can’t see a damn thing. Thirty-five hundred. Still nothing. Three thousand. Still nothing. Shit!

His descent passed two thousand feet and approached one thousand.
All right, that’s it. I can’t keep dropping till I hit the damn water. I’m making a turn toward the shoreline. I need to see something, and soon. I’ve completely lost track of my bearings.

Turning twenty degrees to his left, he knew this new heading would eventually intercept the shoreline; by his own estimates he had only been drifting off course ten degrees to the right. Stopping his descent at a thousand feet, Dalton strained his eyes in an attempt to see anything at all out the windows. After a few minutes, his frustrations began to get the best of him.
Dammit! Surely I didn’t drift that far off. “
Shit!” he exclaimed, aggressively shoving the control wheel to the right, narrowly avoiding a cell phone tower when his surroundings began to slowly come back into view as he exited the cloud bank.

With his pulse racing from the near miss, he pushed the throttle forward and began a climb back away from the terrain while keeping it in sight. Looking back to his prisoner, he said, “Sorry about that, sweetie. That was a close one.”

“Okay. Game face!” he said to coax himself back into the proper mind-set. Scanning his instruments he thought,
The main tanks are down to fumes. I’ve stretched them as far as I could. Time to switch to the ferry tank.

Reaching over to the makeshift fuel selector they had rigged up in the floor next to him, Dalton flicked on the auxiliary fuel boost pump in an attempt to maintain fuel pressure during the swap, then turned the valve.
So far so good
,
he thought to himself, staring at the gauges. Then the fuel pressure suddenly dropped, causing the engine to stutter.

“Dammit!”

As he reached down to ensure that the fuel selector valve was rotated properly, the engine went silent, the propeller now only windmilling as the airspeed began to bleed off from the loss of power. Dalton immediately pitched the nose down slightly to maintain airspeed and avoid a stall while he worked the valve with his free hand.

With a pop and a shudder, the engine coughed itself back to life. The gauges all returned to their normal operating ranges as Dalton added power to recover his lost altitude. “I guess I should have tried that valve on the ground first,” he said with a chuckle.

~ ~ ~

Then, before he knew it, Dalton approached his target, only to realize the place was swarming with what looked to be military vehicles. He circled back, deciding that before he attracted their attention he should land somewhere quickly. He kept to the coast and soon found the right spot.

Once in position and seeing no one around, Dalton brought the plane in. Landing on the ocean waves was rough, but not as bad as he thought it might be. He landed south of Topanga Beach and inflated the raft. Hoisting his prisoner into it, he said, “Come on darlin’; time for you to meet up with some old friends.” Then he put on his survival pack and rowed them to shore after disabling the plane and setting it to drift out to sea.

Dalton realized he only had about an hour to get the woman into a public position and get the hell out of there before the light of dawn. He looped the gagged, restrained, and unconscious body over his shoulders and ran up the beach.

He hoped he had picked the right spot, because this was his only chance. He saw what looked like an abandoned restaurant and a parking lot and headed that way. Once his feet hit the asphalt of the parking lot, he looked around. The place looked deserted. There were cars parked all over the roadway. He looked north and only saw a cliff of rocks; above that, a residential neighborhood.

“Great!” he said in frustration and out of breath. He needed to get her into a populated area. He eyed one of the cars left abandoned and headed for it. He opened the backseat and unceremoniously dumped her inside.

He checked her restraints and they were secure; the last thing he needed was to deal with her tricks, and he knew the drug would wear off soon. He felt around for keys, but there were none. Luckily he knew how to strip wires with his teeth and cross the exact two that would make the engine start.

In no time they were traveling down the Pacific Coast Highway. He couldn’t believe his eyes at the devastation he saw. Whole neighborhoods were blocked off and burned to a crisp. Dead, decaying bodies littered the streets. Theirs deaths had to be from something other than the pandemic because by now, those bodies would be skeletons. These were hold-out carriers struck down by the terrorists.

He continued on and passed Will Rogers Beach, a few roadblocks, and more bodies along the roadsides. The night was dark, and he drove on without headlights, his NVGs firmly in place. He just needed to get her closer to where he suspected they were bringing in more personnel, and that meant closer to Los Angeles International Airport.

He’d be able to leave her there with the confidence that he’d gotten her as close as he could to their enemy and to do the most harm. But when he neared Santa Monica, it occurred to him that this was the closest he might be able to get. The roadway ahead was blocked off.

This is where they’ve taken up residence. Perfect.

He stopped there, just out of sight in the dark. He pulled the woman out of the back and sat her up in the front seat. He had to draw attention to her, so he turned up the radio, which was playing something in Arabic—a mundane speech, not remotely entertaining. He then ran off, climbed a wooden embankment, and headed into the night with nothing other than his survival pack. He hoped it would be enough for him to make his way home—or die trying.

Dawn light began to spill over the horizon. He turned one last time to view his handiwork as he reached the top of the embankment and glanced at the coming dawn. He saw men coming, and watched from his hidden location as one soldier approached the car, armed, and yelled to another guard. He hoped the words said in Arabic were something indicating the woman was drunk or somehow incapacitated. They guy lowered his weapon and felt for her pulse. Then he yelled for the other guy to come help, and they carried her out of the vehicle.
Bingo, two more infected. Let the death begin!
he thought when he heard a shot fired in his direction.

After a few close calls of his own and a tough time traversing the Rockies, James edged close to Denver. Having thought a lot about the plan on the way, he now tweaked it a little to gain his best advantage. He was familiar with the Denver area; his daughter had met and married a fellow from there. He and his deceased wife had visited her there on many occasions before the world failed them all.

He aimed not toward his original destination, but straight for Denver International Airport, which he knew from radio communications had been taken over by the terrorists.

A radio call interrupted his thoughts, in a language he didn’t care to understand, but instead of answering, James flipped the switch off. He’d prepared himself for death. He knew it would happen, and now he intended for it to happen
this way
. It was the only thing he
could
control. His only concern was to save the life of the fellow in the cargo area. He wanted to make sure Omar lived at least long enough to infect a few of the others.

James circled around the airport, and though the runway was cluttered with military vehicles, he knew he could land even in a leveled grassy area. He lowered the plane and attempted a landing just past an army truck that had been set ablaze. It was a bumpy landing swerving at the last minute to avoid another flaming truck. Whatever was going on here had all the signs of utter chaos. Guns fired in the distance. There was fighting still going on, perhaps a resistance. He heard more shots and could tell they were getting closer. He quickly sprung himself out of the cockpit, grabbed his backpack, and then went to open the cargo area.

Omar was awake and seemed oddly contented. He had apparently resigned himself to his fate and had willingly cooperated out of what they all had assumed was remorse
.

James helped him out and cut his restraints. He knew his prisoner was complicit in this plan, but even so, he didn’t completely trust him. James and Omar scanned the wrecked airport, and when they saw soldiers running their way, they weren’t sure what to do. Omar recognized them as his own people, and without warning he pulled James’s weapon out of his holster and drew it on James. He gave him a reassuring look, but James already knew he was dead man. This was the best plan he could have made, however: there were five terrorists running their way, and they slowed as they approached him, shouting words he didn’t understand. Omar shouted something back and nudged James to start walking.

One of the terrorists began arguing with the others, pointing at the airplane. Then more shots rang out from behind them, and everyone ducked. Soon they were following the terrorists toward a portion of the burned-out terminal.

Omar stopped for a second as the terrorists continued on and wiped his sweating brow; James could tell he now had the fever too. Omar stared into James’s eyes and nodded back toward the plane. James had less than half an hour of fuel left; it was barely enough to get out of there and he had no idea where he might land before he ran out of fuel.

Again, Omar hurriedly glanced at the plane and pushed James to go. James nodded. He’d done his duty, Omar would do the rest. He’d have to trust him. James watched as Omar wiped the fevered sweat from his forehead and smiled at him. He nodded again and James took off as fast as he could run. Shots rang out. Omar covered him as best he could, only pretending to shoot at James as he fled.

I might just make it out of here
, James thought. He had no idea how he’d made it back into the plane and got it going, but now he was set to take off. Shots were fired upon him again, bullets pinging off the metal. When he looked back, it was war not unlike he’d seen in Vietnam many years ago, with everything on fire and a land you felt that hell had given birth to. But this was his own country. He only hoped the virus worked. Almost a half hour later, as James searched for a level landing area, he spotted a convoy of military vehicles on the highway below. The last truck pulled what looked like shrouded human beings behind it, each tethered to the truck by ropes. Someone fired upon James as he swooped down for a closer look. James turned the plane around and aimed for front of the convoy, away from the prisoners. In the end, James took out four of the five military vehicles in a fiery but effective crash. The prisoners behind the final vehicle escaped, though James didn’t live to see it.