Still, there was something eerie and alien about it; something deadly. Perhaps because of the thickness of the glass, it seemed to glide past the R&K Building in effortless silence.
As if they were mice and it a hawk, no one moved as long as it was in sight. When it banked away, Courtney wilted back in her chair, sweat tingling along her scalp.
“Don’t just sit there, damn it!” Taylor snapped. “They could be dialing up a missile any second.”
“It’s true,” Major Palmburg said. “They aren’t quiet about their Reapers. There are two loitering within about fifteen minutes of here.”
She had no idea what a Reaper was, but it didn’t sound pleasant. “Okay, then we have to work fast. General, I need you to be this guy, General Shunneson. He’s the Deputy Commander of Air Combat Command. I’ll call through to the 12th Air Force and if I can’t get them to change the, uh, flight of these things, then I’ll put you on. Try to act embarrassed.”
“Why would I be embarrassed?” He felt like some dippy actor asking what his “motivation” was.
“Because you have to go through all this rigamarole. Tell them that you’ve been waiting on Doss’ PO for half an hour and that we’re in danger of losing the trail.”
“Trail?” He was terrible at lying and now he was being asked to impersonate a junior officer as well. Was that a crime? he wondered.
Courtney was furiously clacking at her computer and for a moment she forgot she was talking to a general. “Yes, the trail! Us. They’re after us, remember? You need to tell them that you have intel that we’re in New York City. Okay, ready?” She didn’t wait, and hit the send button on the phone.
“Hello, this is Marylin Kane, political officer for General Shunneson, Deputy Commander of Air Combat Command. I need Colonel Bell, asap. Hold? You have exactly one minute to get him on the line.”
“Make it faster,” Taylor hissed in that un-whisper of his. “The Sentinel is coming back!”
Axelrod started to look, but Courtney grabbed his arm and shook her head. She needed him focused. Holding up a finger, she snapped, “Finally. This is Marylin Kane, political officer for General Shunneson, Deputy Commander of Air Combat Command. I have PO number 6558, authenticated at 1143 hours. You need to shift all surveillance aircraft south of the New York City area, immediately.”
She paused, listening, then repeated, “That’s the 44th’s search area?” She shrugged at Axelrod, not knowing exactly what to say. He held out a hand. “Hold for the General,” she said, quickly and covered the mouthpiece.
Just then, Major Palmburg announced in an expressionless voice, “Someone just vectored a Reaper our way.”
With his heart thumping madly in his chest, Axelrod took the phone. “Who is this? And don’t tell me this is another political officer. Bell? Thank God. I feel like I’m being fucking babysat over here. The damn Pentagon is crawling with these officious pricks…”
“Langley,” Courtney whispered. “He’s at Langley.”
“ETA on the Reaper is four minutes,” Major Palmburg warned, adding to Axelrod’s anxiety.
“And Langley’s even worse,” Axelrod said, quickly. “No one can make up their minds and when they do, they change ‘em again five minutes later. And you know who has to scramble around like an idiot?” There was a pause and then Axelrod replied. “Yep, and here I am doing it again. The orders from on high have changed again.” He didn’t know his next line and had to pause while Courtney scribbled. He read over her shoulder: “The 44th is being shifted south, so we need you to pick up the slack. You’ll be covering, covering a box encompassing Trenton, Wilmington, Lancaster, and Allentown.”
Another pause. “Hell yeah, it’s a big area. No, I can’t authorize the release of any more Sentinels.” Courtney could hear a tiny voice curse. “Sorry, Bell. Yes, immediately,” Axelrod replied. “Cancel all current operations. Okay, I gotta go. My babysitter is glaring at me.”
Actually, Courtney was chewing on a nail, looking like she was about to drop a litter of kittens in her chair. The moment Axelrod hung up, everyone turned to the window again.
“A Reaper at its cruising altitude could release its GBU-12 at any moment,” Major Iler said. When Courtney craned her head up, he chuckled. “You’d never see it coming. It would be on a glide path and would take a minute or two to get here.”
“Then we have at least a minute to keep working,” Axelrod said. “Might as well make it count.”
2-12:36 p.m.
Newville, Pennsylvania
The first elements of the 3rd Infantry Division swept along the entire three-mile width of Cumberland Valley. Over two hundred M1A1 Abrams came on in a line with the inevitability of the sun. Each of these monsters weighed 68 tons and were the most feared pieces of machinery on land. Along with their 120mm main gun, they sported a .50 caliber heavy machine gun and two 7.62mm medium machine guns. They could roar into battle at over forty miles an hour and were impervious to most anything short of a direct artillery strike.
Mixed in with the tanks were a few hundred infantry fighting vehicles: Strykers for the most part, but there were also six dozen Bradleys, which looked like smaller versions of tanks, sporting a nasty .30 caliber chain gun.
The division also had some stodgy old M113s, most with only the archaic and poky Browning M2 as their weapon. The M2 was nothing more than a scaled-up version of John Browning’s M1917 .30 caliber machine gun developed in World War 1; they even used the same timing gauges as they had a hundred years before. Still the Browning M2 was reliable, accurate at a long range, and they had immense stopping power. A single bullet could tear through the breastbone of a zombie, rip out its heart and explode its spinal column.
Even a zombie would have trouble surviving that.
Interspersed among all these titans were a veritable swarm of Humvees. None of these were open or soft top and they all had some sort of weapon jutting from the roof. There were M2s, M240s, MK19grenade launchers, and even some with six-barrel miniguns.
And finally, draped on all these vehicles looking like camouflaged parasites, were hordes of soldiers each with fresh Georgia tans. All told, six-thousand men and women took up positions along the west side of the north-south running Centerville Road.
The other half of the division was spread thinly in the hills and forests to the east, guarding his right flank. His left flank, dug in along the face of the next valley over, was held by a Kentucky National Guard brigade that had been talked into joining the 3rd ID by the “Angel of the Airways,” as many people had begun to refer to Courtney Shaw. On the Pentagon and White House battle maps, it was listed as Mil-BTL, making them believe it was a civilian force of battalion size and as such, it didn’t even rate a political officer.
Judging by the recon photos, he didn’t expect a giant surge of undead from that direction, but Major General Thomas Cannan had been studying the reports from the previous battles and knew he couldn’t be too careful. Lancaster, Pennsylvania had been lost because a hundred or so zekes had managed to cross the Conestoga River and instead of dealing with the tiny breakthrough, a militia company had fled leaving a gaping hole in their flank.
“No. It’s far better to be prepared,” he muttered under his breath. “Like a filthy boy scout.” His driver, a headquarters sergeant, who felt he had lucked into the cushiest job in the military, pretended not to hear, just as he had all day. “Where is Colonel Broadhurst?” This was another mumble. Somewhat unexpectedly, he threw open the door to his command Humvee. Mumbling wasn’t the only bad habit the sergeant had to deal with. If they were going slow enough, the general would step right out of the Humvee without the least warning.
He enjoyed watching his useless political officer scramble to catch up. “Broadhurst, when will the Middle Spring line be ready?”
Colonel Kev Broadhurst was in the next Humvee and was prepared for the question he’d been dreading. “Not until four at the earliest, sir. The engineer companies are for shit. They’re still off-loading the
ir equipment. It’s a complete cluster fuck.”
“Do I relieve Heddles?” Cannan asked aloud.
“I wouldn’t, at least not right now,” Broadhurst answered. “His XO may also be inept. And besides, he might blossom under pressure. In Mosul…”
The division PO spoke over him in a shrill voice, “Firing people is not in either of your purviews. I decide who gets canned.” The woman’s name was Courtney Vertanen; she had been handpicked by the President to keep the 3rd ID in check. The President had even listened to her, concerning rank—unbelievably to Cannan, she was wearing a pair of pristine ACUs with three silver stars pinned to her collar.
By Presidential order, POs were now a rank above the officers they were supposed to be reporting on. In Cannan’s view, it was a dangerous, dangerous situation.
“Sure, missy,” Cannan said before walking back to his Humvee and telling the driver to get moving. He didn’t move fast enough and the “three-star hunk of PO” as Cannan referred to Vertanen both in a mumbling tone and completely out loud, was able to jump in.
Vertanen began to fume at almost being left behind, again, only to be cut off by Cannan. “Your role here is not advisory and nor is it in any way a leadership position. You’re something like a telephone wire. I speak in one end and you relay my message to the person I want answers from on the other. That’s it. Now if…”
The first thump of artillery sent goosebumps across his flesh. It was always this way when he went into battle. He had been a wet-behind-the-ears lieutenant in the first Gulf War, racing his platoon of M1 Abrams across the sands and thinking nothing could touch him. Now, twenty-six years later, he had the same sensation.
“To the front!” The sensation was doubly pleasurable as he watched General PO’s face go the color of chalk.
There wasn’t much to see at the front. The artillery was landing three miles away—in truth none of the shells actually landed since they were fused for airburst to cause maximum casualties. Still, it was good for the men to see their commanding officer walking among them unafraid.
His normal jokes about food, sleep and broads wouldn’t cut it now that battle was in the offing, so he made sure to find only compliments to give. Now was not the time to point out a zigzagging gig-line or a haircut that wasn’t quite regulation. Now was the time to fire them up.
He spent an hour touring the line, which wasn’t a line at all, as it didn’t run along a linear path from one point to another. He wasn’t a stickler for such simple things. What mattered to him was that his men had clear fields of fire. If the line had to loop around a barn or a little pocket of homes, then that was the way it was.
Of equal importance to him was that their avenue of retreat was clear. He had no plans to wreck his division for an empty town, a town of such little consequence that none of the residents had cared enough to stay and help defend it.
His soldiers were ready to fight, but what about the rest? At the end of the line, he turned and, as he expected, his Humvee was right there. Cannan was back on the phone, ignoring the PO completely as her voice rose almost to a screech concerning “priorities.” He could care less what she felt was a priority. Just then it was precision logistics that was a priority; they would lose unless each man always had bullets to shoot, food in his belly, and gas in his tank.
From an officer’s point of view, logistics came first, communication second and unit coordination third. Taken together, these things meant the difference between winning and losing. And they did not happen because one idiot in Washington wished it. These things happened because of constant training, attention to detail, and years of experience.
It was why the political officer’s rank was so galling to Cannan. It wasn’t just that those stars were an affront to everything he and his men had worked so hard for, they were also a sign that the snake was withering from the head down.
The PO, somehow making her camouflaged uniform look frumpy, glared as he rattled off orders. The glare was shaken out of her as a flight of Apaches roared overhead. Strange to Cannan, she looked nervous instead of thrilled. “Doesn’t she understand this was the fun part of it all?” he muttered. “When I saw my first…” The sudden thundering appearance of thirty F-15 Strike Eagles made speech impossible.
The F-15s easily overtook the buzzing helicopters, passing over the top of them along the same line. Brumm! Brumm! Brummmmm!
The valley shook with the violence left in the wake of the F-15s, which rocketed out of there, breaking into two elements. They curved away effortlessly into the sky and in seconds they were loitering at five-thousand feet, waiting as their next run was being plotted.
Now it was the Apaches turn. The helicopters stayed so low that they were hidden by the folds in the land. Gradually the explosions from their underwing missiles rippled back to the front line, going on for the next minute. Cannan grinned, reassured by the sound. “I say we go a little further,” he said, and with one arm out the window, he smacked the side of the Humvee, making Vertanen jump.
“Wait, where are we going?”
“Just a little closer, you know, to see our enemy face to face.”
Her face was the color of old cheese as the driver eased the Humvee between a pair of sharp-nosed Strykers, rolled down an embankment and set off across a fallow field. He glanced up as the Apaches came roaring back, barely fifty feet over their heads. Higher up, the first flight of four F-15s were banking around, setting up their next bombing run. Although his heart had begun to triphammer, the sergeant pretended not to even notice them.
“Shit,” Vertanen whispered. She had her head craned up at an angle so she could see the F-15s swooping down like dragons. “What if they miss?”
Normally Cannan would have said something to reassure the woman; she was a civilian after all and he knew that his job, his one ultimate directive, was to protect the weak. Deep down this was the essence of a true American soldier. And this woman was terribly weak, and she represented the weakest president that had ever disgraced the Oval Office.
“Thank God I never voted for that dumb fuck,” he muttered as the jets released their bombs and shot overhead, rocking the Humvee on its springs. “Green this, green that, pathetic. Diversity for the sake of diversity. What a bunch of miserable…” The valley in front of them was suddenly lit by brilliant explosions and when the sound pulsed over them, it came with a wave of heat. “What a bunch of bullshit,” he finished loudly.
When they came to a rise, Cannan tapped the sergeant at the wheel on the shoulder. More bombs fell half a mile in front of them. The power of the cluster munitions was shocking and yet some of the zombies had managed to live through the holocaust. They were close enough that their horrible inhumanity could be both seen and felt on a gut level.
Beyond this first straggling line and beyond the fields of fire and smoke was a grey horizon—millions of zombies were swarming over the remains of Harrisburg, Mechanicsburg, and only a few miles away, Carlisle and the Army War College, where Cannan had been a guest speaker for three semesters.
“Dead on,” Cannan muttered, nodding appreciably. “Those fancy little pilots know a thing or two about…” A new roar drowned him out and all three of them stared up as the F-15s made their final run straight at the horde, dropping lines of bombs, killing thousands. The millions simply marched over their burning bodies.
The closest of the dead were only the length of a football field away and Vertanen was eyeing them nervously. She pretended she wasn’t afraid. She knew she was being tested. She knew that Cannan was trying to scare her off, but she had been appointed by the President, and no two-bit general—in her D.C. skewed mind there seemed to be more generals than there were privates—was going to make her sit in the corner like some wayward child.
“Diversity is our strength,” she quoted the President’s favorite line. “I heard what you said earlier. It’s the thinking of a neanderthal.”
The driver’s eyebrows shot up and he had to bite the inside of his cheeks
to keep from smiling. He had seen General Cannan rip into people before and it was always highly entertaining
“Is that so?” Cannan asked, rounding on Vertanen.
“It’s common knowledge.”
“Too bad it’s also grade-school bullshit. You D.C. pussies are always desperate for polls and consensus. It’s almost like you’re afraid to have an idea that differs from anyone else.” The driver nearly snorted. With his underlying tan, he was a shade of brick from the effort of holding back laughter.
The snort had been loud enough to catch the general’s attention. “Sergeant Farnham, do you have a quarter I could borrow?”
The sergeant had to take a long, slow breath before he could answer the general and even then, it came out somewhat strangled, “Yes sir.” He fished a quarter from the pile of dusty change in the cupholder and handed it back to his CO, making sure not to look at the PO.
Cannan held it up. “Do you know the Latin words on it, Farnham?”
“Yes sir; E Pluribus Unum. Out of many one.”
“Exactly fucking right!” Cannan cried, slapping his hands together. “Diversity isn’t a strength, it’s a weakness. Unity is strength. A unity of purpose is strength. A unified people is strength. Look out the window, Vertanen. That ain’t Washington where everyone bickers and backstabs. That’s the real world where there are real consequences to being weak. Do you get that?”
Vertanen nodded, feeling the sand erode from beneath her feet. “I do, but…”
“There are no buts in this. There are no exceptions. Look at our ‘union.’ We have fifty states going in fifty different directions. It’s pretty damned diverse out there, wouldn’t you say? And look at our politics. It’s every man for himself. Now, look at our military. Until a few days ago we were a well-oiled fighting machine. Now what are we?”
War of the Undead Day 5 Page 18