“Fair enough.” Alpha switched back to English. “Eat, piss, and pray, gents. We roll in twenty-five.”
Foxtrot ignored Kilo’s death glares and grabbed a sandwich.
As he’d suspected, once they were underway, Kilo put aside his anger and focused on the mission.
It’s going to be sooo sweet when I finally get to rub his face in this.
They quickly moved through the areas they’d already covered, checking for any new evidence of recent occupation and finding none. Then they spent the next several hours working through more tunnels, coming up on dead ends and backtracking, marking each juncture off with chalk high up on the wall and noting it on the tablet before advancing to the next tunnel branch.
As they headed into another section, they heard a noise some distance ahead of them, like something falling over and a person scrabbling out of the way.
They all wore the FLIR and infrared night vision goggles that allowed them to see in the darkness without using regular lights. The IR lights on their carbines and helmets lit the tunnels up like noon when used in conjunction with the goggles.
In the lead, Alpha stopped and held up a fist, a silent signal to the others to halt.
They waited, motionless and listening, focused in all directions around them.
Out of the darkness they heard someone—or something large—somewhere ahead of them in the passageway, moving through the tunnel away from their location. There were occasional patches of light from street lamps filtering down into the depths from old ventilation and drainage grates still in place on the sidewalks above, but for the most part it was dim, dank, and disgustingly dirty down below. And even through their surgical masks, the place stank to high heaven.
I can’t believe tourists actually paid to come down here and see this shit.
Foxtrot pulled his focus out of his head as Alpha signaled for them to silently ease forward again.
This crazy tunnel had received earthquake damage at some point in the past, but from the design it looked like it was part of the Seattle Underground tunnel system created when the city had raised the street’s ground level over two hundred years earlier. It wasn’t part of the sewers.
They advanced slowly, cautiously, every man now on alert and painstakingly silent.
Another noise echoed off the walls ahead of them and they froze. The construction of this particular section of tunnel didn’t allow for them to spread out more than two abreast and still have room to move. Alpha turned, motioning for Tango to come to the front with him and get his taser and tranq combo gun ready. Whether or not it was their target, they didn’t want to risk killing an innocent civvie.
And if it was their target, a blue-pos Kiter was far safer for the men to handle if the Kiter was unconscious.
Alpha motioned for Foxtrot and Kilo to hang back and watch their six as he and Tango moved forward. The unit coalesced into a single, breathing entity, creeping toward the source of the sound.
They were approaching a juncture in the tunnel that had likely once been an intersection of streets. To their left, an old bricked wall blocked their way. Ahead, the tunnel continued, but to their right lay an opening, a decorative stone archway above attesting to its previous life as part of the Seattle Underground system.
Alpha motioned for another stop as more noise filtered through the tunnel. Definitely from the tunnel to their right. Alpha crouched down low and slowly eased his head around the corner. After watching for a moment, he gave them a thumbs-up, followed by holding up a single finger, and then making a zero with his fingers touching his thumb.
Target ahead approximately ten yards.
Foxtrot tensed, he and Kilo splitting apart to each stand on opposite sides of the tunnel, their backs to the wall and now able to glance both ways without impeding an escape path for the others if they had to beat feet.
Time seemed to slow, drag, every pulse a forever as Tango silently swapped places with Alpha and confirmed the target.
He also gave a thumbs-up.
The unit closed ranks, tightening up just before the tunnel juncture. Tango silently armed his taser gun and flicked off the safety on the tranq function. The combo unit, dubbed the T-Square, was a specialty item they’d picked up soon after TMFU and their mission to find scientists from The List was ordered. They had ten of them, one per team, but because of their size and weight, they didn’t bring all of them on every mission.
They only had two of them down there with them today, Juju carrying the other one. He was positioned three men back. Alpha looked, found him, and motioned for him to move forward and swap out his carbine for the T-Square. Then Alpha stepped back, behind Juju, giving the two men unimpeded access to the tunnel.
Tango in the lead, he and Juju crept forward, staying low, until they rounded the corner out of sight with Alpha following so close his nose was nearly up their asses.
Another noise, followed by the creepy sound of a woman’s giggle that made them all freeze in their tracks. Foxtrot didn’t know about the other guys, but it had sent his pucker factor of nine on a scale of one-to-ten up to about an eleventy-thirty-eight.
Foxtrot and Kilo locked gazes. Foxtrot wondered if he wore the same wide-eyed expression Kilo did.
Foxtrot tugged down his surgical mask. “Da fuck was that?” he mouthed before pulling it back into place.
Kilo shrugged, returning his focus to the tunnel ahead of them while Foxtrot kept watch on their six.
They’d all started easing forward again when another giggle, even more disturbing than the last, echoed through the tunnels, freezing the men again.
Gooseflesh rippled up Foxtrot’s spine.
Then they heard the sound of a long, ripping fart, followed by more maniacal giggling.
Despite his fear, Foxtrot had to clamp his lips shut not to start laughing.
Kilo glowered at him but from the skewed cant of his partner’s jaw, Foxtrot knew he was having a hard time keeping it together, too.
The giggles turned into singsongy words.
“Bless us hiiiigh, bless us loooow. Bless us all, Fatheeerrrr Siiiillooooo.”
Like an icy cold wave, the off-key tune washed any humor out of the situation for Foxtrot.
Foxtrot and Kilo reached the tunnel juncture. A long, straight section of passageway between old boarded-up building fronts, wider than the branch they currently stood in. About twenty feet ahead of them a small grate allowed a little light to filter in from the street level lamps above it. Enough they could see the woman just past it, but also enough that it would fark her ability to see them through the darkness. In their goggles, it appeared like a bright beam of sunlight focused directly on the tunnel floor.
Despite her appearance, they could tell it was Korey. She looked emaciated, sunken, hollow cheeks under wide, glassy eyes. Her long, naturally blonde hair hung dirty and matted down her back. Squatting barefoot on the tunnel floor, she wore a shapeless dress of indeterminate color.
She played with something on the floor, giggling again as Foxtrot could now hear the soft clinking of glass, almost like marbles being bumped together, but different.
They wouldn’t give her a chance to react.
Tango and Juju signaled they were a go, meaning the others would hang back and give them room in case they needed to retreat. Next behind them, Alpha and Delta had their carbines up, locked and loaded, safeties off, fingers laid alongside the triggers and ready to fire.
Papa had made their mission clear—bring in the woman if they found her, but first and foremost, bring everyone else back alive and healthy. If they located her and couldn’t take her down without risking the safety of their personnel, then they were to take her out.
If the two T-Squares didn’t immobilize her so they could safely handle her, Tango and Juju would dive off to the sides, giving Alpha and Delta clear kill shots.
They’d all seen what raging Kiters could do, some of them firsthand. Hell, an young child caught in a Kite rage could rip an adult’s arm right out of the sock
et.
No one was interested in engaging in a hand-to-hand combat skirmish with a Kite-positive adult woman in a dark underground tunnel.
They all flinched as she stood, but she turned away from them, her attention on the floor as she looked for something. “Where’d you go, you silly, silly, silly thang, you?”
Now Foxtrot could hear the Kentucky drawl Ak had described to them. Ak’s brother, Marvin, had been a volunteer in the program and trying to strike up a relationship with Korey. They were supposed to be sent out together to Seattle. Then he was killed by a gunman going after Ak. Ak had met Korey face-to-face and had spoken with her at the church facility.
The men were fifteen feet from her when they took their tranq shots first, a rapid-fire burst of three darts from each gun, peppering her back and ass with the projectiles, which were each filled with enough of a ketamine-like drug to knock down three adult men twice her size.
She let out a cry and wheeled around, but before they could tase her, she crumpled facedown onto the tunnel floor and lay there, still.
“Uncle, forward!” Alpha yelled.
When Uncle moved in to take Tango’s position next to Delta, Alpha advanced, flipping his safety on his carbine before shouldering it and taking the T-Square from Tango to cover him. The medic pulled on heavy-duty vinyl gloves and eased forward, just out of the woman’s reach.
She let out a low, soft gurgling moan.
Tango pulled handcuffs from his waist kit and quickly cuffed her wrists behind her, adding another pair to her filthy ankles, before leaning forward and plucking the darts from her.
“Juju,” Alpha said, “don’t blink. If she so much as burps, tase her.”
“Just make sure I’m not touching her when you do, dude,” Tango said, now kneeling next to her. He took her carotid pulse and nodded. “She looks like she’s in bad shape, definitely dehydrated, but her pulse is strong, racing. I should have to be administering a counter drug by now to keep her respiration up based on her size alone.” He held out an open palm. “Someone hand me a test strip. I think we all know what it will show, but, procedures.”
Uncle reached into his pocket and pulled one out of his travel kit, dropping it into the man’s palm without making contact. They all knew there was no sense needlessly exposing more personnel than necessary.
Tango jabbed her in the upper arm, the stick already turning colors before he even withdrew it from her arm. They all knew it was blue but in the IR goggles it appeared black.
“Answers that question with certainty,” Alpha said. “Get the sling ready.”
They’d brought a hammock-style litter with them and prepared it while Alpha handed the T-Square off to Uncle. He unzipped Tango’s ruck for him and pulled out a body bag. It’d be easier to put her in that and leave the zipper partway down so she could breathe than to risk her infecting anyone.
Alpha donned a pair of heavy-duty vinyl gloves to help Tango get her into the body bag. Leaving her on her side, they eased her onto the litter and then used several turns of duct tape to keep her in position and secure her to the litter.
“Foxtrot, Kilo, Delta, you three stay in front of us. When we hit the surface, return to base with Yankee,” Alpha said. “You haven’t been close enough to warrant any decon. We’ll be right behind you.”
“What was she playing with over there?” Uncle asked.
“Go look.”
He did, toeing at something with his tactical boot. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered.
“What is it?”
“Looks like the rest of the boluses. Empty.”
Alpha walked over. “I’ll bag ’em. I’m gloved.” He looked around, found a canvas bag that they suspected had been hers, and dumped them in there with the dirty clothes already inside. He tied the handles to keep the bag closed and shoved it into the body bag with her, behind her. “There. Let’s move out.”
Chapter Seventeen
I hope they’re okay.
That was Kyong’s first thought as she awoke at 05:00 hours that morning and lay in her bedroll.
Canuck, of course, wasn’t there.
Her dreams had been filled with thoughts about Kilo and Foxtrot. Was she being stubbornly stupid for not throwing herself into their bedrolls?
When she thought about the other available pairs of men she’d met, including Papa and Alpha, she knew she didn’t feel the visceral attraction to any of them that she did to Foxtrot and Kilo. If it was going to be with any of the guys, it would be those two monkeys.
After a shower and grabbing her gear, she headed downstairs for breakfast. As usual, Pandora was there, getting their chow ready.
“No pancakes?” Kyong teased.
Pandora snorted. “No, scrambled eggs and bacon. I decided to take it easy on Roscoe today.”
Victor, Zed, and Echo soon joined her downstairs for breakfast, full of more questions from their overnight reading.
“I applaud your study skills,” she said, “but I hope you all are getting sleep.”
“No worries there,” Victor assured her. “We’ve done a lot more on a lot less.”
They’d finished up and were preparing to leave when Kyong heard a flurry of activity from the garage level below and stepped out of the way as one of the men burst through the stairwell door and into the main level.
“Papa! Target acquired!” He ran back out before she could figure out which man he was, but his declaration set the rest of them into motion.
The CO started barking orders, and less than a minute later, she saw several people dressed in full bunny suits bolt toward the stairwell, medical gear in their hands.
Papa paused in the stairwell. “Everyone else, upstairs and in quarters until the all-clear. Now.”
Kyong didn’t need to be told twice. She ran for the stairs leading up, taking them two at a time and happy to be nowhere near whatever or whoever it was they were bringing up.
Below, she heard more activity, orders and directions being barked, until about ten minutes later it sounded like the door to the lab was slammed shut on some of the ruckus.
Finally, Alpha’s voice rang down the halls. “All clear, folks.”
She emerged from her room, looking around to see others curiously sticking their heads out, too.
Pandora caught up with her. “They really found her, huh?” the redhead asked.
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
They gathered downstairs with the others. Kyong wouldn’t deny she felt relief to know Kilo and Foxtrot were safe and sound, even though she didn’t see them in the assembled group. She also didn’t see the three scientists, Doc, Tango, or Clara, or a couple of the other men.
“We got her,” Papa announced. “She’s in pretty rough shape, apparently. And she is blue. Needless to say, no one goes in or near the lab unless they have a reason to do so. She’s been sedated, because she was up and moving when they found her. None of our guys were directly exposed that we know of, but better safe than sorry. The ones who had contact with her, they’re going to wait it out down in the garage for a couple of hours, just to be safe.”
“She going to make it?” Ak asked, her expression a dark, unreadable mask.
If Korey had known Ak’s brother, Kyong imagined it was an emotionally mixed bag for Ak.
I know it would be for me. Hell, just hearing a guy who sounds like Tuan messed me up.
“Don’t know,” Papa said. “Looks like she’s emaciated, dehydrated. If we hadn’t located her, Doc says she likely would have died in another day or two. And from the old needle tracks on her arms, it looks like she didn’t infect anyone else with the stuff.”
“Wait a minute,” Kyong said. “You’re telling us it looks like she took all of that shit herself? And she’s still alive? Kite kills in, what, a couple of weeks, tops. And she was injecting not only the virus, but the drug?”
“Exactly,” Papa said. “Which is why she’s so important. Somehow, it appears she’s got a natural immunity to it.”
&
nbsp; “Holy crap,” Pandora muttered. “This will be a chapter in my future book no one will believe.”
“She might be our Patient Zero in terms of fighting this,” Papa continued. “This could be the break we’ve needed. If she doesn’t die on us.”
“What a kick in the nuts that would be,” Kyong said.
“I’ll keep everyone posted,” he said. “Right now, we’re going to stay buttoned up tight, double watches, and no one goes outside without permission or a damn good reason.” He caught sight of Kyong and the three guys. “Except for you four, of course. We need the training to continue.”
“Like I want to go out there,” Pandora quipped. “Just give me my garden on the roof.”
Papa smirked. “We know, snowflake. We know. All right, that’s all. Dismissed.” He walked over to them. “Beginning to regret you agreed to throw your hat in with us?” he asked Kyong.
“Not like I had much of a choice either way,” she said, “but no. If you guys are going to save the world, that sounds like a worthy cause.” It also meant she could stay busy enough not to think about her three missing crew.
She didn’t have the heart to think of them as dead…yet.
“This is the best break we’ve had in a long, long while. Lima’s already let Bubba know about it.”
Kyong was never so glad to be a pilot and not a medic or doctor. “All things considered, feel free to tell him to put my request about my brother on the back burner. This is a little more important.”
“Don’t worry. He’s a multitasker. I’m sure he’s got things under control and will dedicate assets to it if and when he can.”
“I appreciate it.”
“He did pass on something about your parents overnight, though. He confirmed they’re safe with family in New Hampshire. He’s working on arranging something for them all and will make sure he takes care of them for you. They’ll be safe and provided for.”
Gratitude threatened to well up and spill over inside her. “Thanks.”
“Hey, you’re one of us. We take care of our own.” He hooked a thumb toward the door. “Just stay clear of the guys doing decon down in the garage when you leave.”
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