Before Alexander could answer, the President basically dismissed him as he waved over a timid, brittle young blonde woman who looked as though she was on the verge of breaking into pieces.
“Where are we on apprehending the Vice President?”
The woman, Trista Price looked confused until she realized the question had been directed toward Alexander. “Still missing, sir,” he answered curtly; the urgency to protect both his agent and their one shot at finding a cure made him short. “We’ve brought in his family as you asked.”
“Good. Trista, tell Kazakoff to free up his schedule. Finding him is now his priority. Tell him he has a free hand with his questioning.”
Trista Price’s beautiful face looked like china that had been painted over to hide the cracks. Her eyes flicked to Alexander as if to ask for help, but he dropped his head. “Questioning? Do you mean with the wife?”
“With all of them,” the President answered blithely, shooing her away with the back of his hand. “Where the hell are my damn bombers? Why isn’t this happening yet? I have a full division waiting to attack, damn it!”
While the President ranted, Alexander and Trista stood there, both in a state of shock. The cracks in her face were now running like fault-lines through her makeup; she was being asked to send the Vice President’s children down to be tortured by Kazakoff. The Vice President’s youngest was seven.
“I don’t think I can…” Trista started to say, but Alexander shook his head quickly and started to lead her off by the elbow. Since noon, he had seen three people frog-marched out of the room and sent to the new detention camps. Being right or moral wouldn’t help her if she disobeyed a direct order from the President. He would demand that Alexander arrest her on the spot.
The situation made Alexander sick, especially since he was powerless to stop it. The President had his family in custody, just as he did everyone in the administration, as well as all the power people on the hill. They weren’t in jail exactly, they were in something far more insidious. Under the cover of “protecting” the families, they had been transferred to supposedly safe and guarded hotels in Old Town Arlington, Virginia.
They were so safe and so guarded that they weren’t allowed to leave unless they were dragged out in handcuffs, never to be seen again.
All because the President was a patchwork of paranoia, megalomania, and blossoming evil. He was unstoppable, not that anyone was trying to stop him. The American people were in the dark about what he was really like, and in fact were rallying around him as he stoked their fears and patriotism. The press, instead of reporting actual news was behaving like whipped dogs and accepting the spoonfuls of information without question.
“Don’t do it,” Alexander hissed to Trista. “Don’t say anything. It won’t do you any good. Just bide your…”
“Alexander!” the President barked. “Leave her alone. You have too much work to be doing to waste time flirting.”
The Director of the FBI actually bowed towards the President. “Yes sir. Of course, sir.” He felt like a waiter instead of an FBI agent with twenty-six years of experience.
He turned away but was recalled by the President. “Find out why we don’t have Clarren in custody yet. I want you to make finding Clarren and the VP your number one priority.”
Make useless political vengeance a priority over finding a cure? Alexander should have been shocked and he should have excoriated the President. Instead, he nodded and then hurried off like a little bitch. What was being asked of him was insane. Clarren was harmless now. From everything Alexander had found out, the man was intent on dying on the front lines fighting the zombies. And the Vice President had never been a man anyone could rally around. He wasn’t an opposition leader. In truth, he got to where he was by grabbing onto every political fad under the sun.
And the President wanted Alexander to waste valuable resources on these two? With his stomach feeling like he had just swallowed a greasy turd sandwich, he watched Trista stumble away. She was going to fall apart soon. “Unless I find that putz first.”
Alexander hurried to the operations room with a new purpose. “I have two priority one orders from the President,” he said to the newly appointed Secretary of Political Operations. She was The political officer of the White House and all orders, military or otherwise, went through her office. “The President wants the R&K Building in New Rochelle protected at all costs. The military can level the rest of the city, but that one building is to remain untouched.”
She nodded to one of the fifteen subordinates she had working for her; the stern-faced, apple-cheeked, nazi-looking young man went right to work sending the order down the long, long chain of lesser political officers that stretched across the country. “And the second?” the woman asked.
“The FBI is to use its full force to find the Vice President and Governor Clarren.” This was a huge exaggeration, but a necessary one. If he could find the Vice President, he could stop the torture of his children and save Trista from being sent to a detention camp for disloyalty. And if he sent a hundred agents to Massachusetts to dick around along the line, it would be a hundred fewer agents terrorizing people on the President’s behalf.
The President wanted his people to be almost filled with religious mania when following his orders. Alexander would be the most maniacal of them all if it meant he could thwart the President’s aims at the same time as protecting his family.
2-4:19 p.m.
Newville, Pennsylvania
The eighteen Rockwell B-1 Lancers slated to clear a path up the Cumberland Valley had somehow been re-routed to Gettysburg. The twelve thousand men of the 3rd ID craned their heads back and watched the procession of planes as they swept above them heading on the wrong tack. The grey planes looked old and slow, and seemed to be trudging across the sky rather than soaring, and it was no wonder since each was weighed down with over a hundred thousand pounds of bombs tucked inside them.
“Shit,” Sergeant Farnham drawled in the front seat of the Humvee as the lead “Bone” began to drop its bombs. General Cannan grunted, but not in agreement. He knew about the trapped regiment and if he had been in charge of things, he would have sent those bombers in to help them five hours earlier.
For the next ten minutes, the battle in front of Newville was brought to a halt by the thunder and earth-shaking power of the bombs. The zombies were entranced at the sight and sound, while the soldiers took those precious free moments to reload and stockpile more ammo.
A mile to the rear of the line, Cannan’s command Humvee rocked gently as smoke billowed higher and higher over the hills to their east. It was during the onslaught that General Boggs and his staff finally arrived. Their flight of thirteen Blackhawks swinging in from the southwest, had been forced into a wide detour to keep from being hit by an errant bomb.
“Look at all of them,” Farnham muttered. “Thirteen helicopters, shit. What a waste. Does he have a staff or an entourage?”
This time Cannan’s grunt was in complete agreement. A hundred-man staff to oversee the shattered remains of a single corps was ludicrous, especially since it was probably made up of old friends and Pentagon golfing buddies. Cannan could see them staring through the thick windows of the choppers, looking like tourists.
The only one who wasn’t gaping was Boggs. He was scowling down at Cannan. It wasn’t unexpected. The scowl only deepened as he marched out of the helicopter with his staff, his many political officers, and security detail swarming behind him. Boggs immediately began cursing, though most of what he had to say was drowned out by the Blackhawks which were loud even when they were idling.
Cannan waved Boggs away from the helicopters. “You were asking me a question, sir? I didn’t quite make it out. I thought you called me a pussy and I’m sure I misunderstood.”
“You heard me right. Why the hell hasn’t your division moved out? You had explicit orders. Sixteen-hundred on the dot and it’s now sixteen-twenty-three!”
“You told me that o
nly some of my division had to be on the move and that I was to create an operational order. I’ve begun the attack by moving up some of my reserve units.” Not far away a company of M6 Bradley Fighting Vehicles were moving toward the line that hadn’t budged an inch forward or back.
General Boggs stared at the M6s, his head shaking in disbelief and anger. “Linebackers? You’re going to open the attack with them? They’re almost worthless.”
He wasn’t wrong. Cannan had wanted to leave them in Georgia but had been overruled by Lieutenant General Leonard, who said the President wanted the full power of the 3rd ID. “Really? Are we going to have flying zombies to deal with?” Cannan had asked, running right up to the edge of insubordination, something that was a monthly occurrence with him. Although the M6 Linebackers possessed a M242 Bushmaster turret-mounted 25-mm chain gun and a coaxial 7.62-mm machine gun, the M6s were mainly anti-aircraft platforms and could fire Sidewinders and Stinger surface-to-air missiles, both of which were useless against zombies.
Leonard had won him over by suggesting that what was happening in Massachusetts could spread to other states. That had been at the height of the short civil war and Cannan had reluctantly agreed to take them. Now, the M6s were finally making themselves useful by making Boggs’ blood pressure skyrocket.
“They are just the beginning of the attack, I assure you.” Behind them was an engineer battalion, their bulldozers and bucket loaders painted desert brown.
Boggs was not assured in the least. “The President is watching, damn it!” he said in a harsh whisper with a glance back at his political officer, whose uniform sported four gleaming stars, one more than Boggs possessed. The hyper-ranked PO stood glaring at Courtney Vertanen as she tried to explain the “trust” angle that Cannan had sold her on. Even from thirty yards, it was obvious the lead PO wasn’t buying into its common sense.
“Oh God,” Boggs whined. “There he goes with that damned phone again. Every time there’s a damned hiccup, he calls the President. I warned you, Cannan. I warned you, damn it. Show me the orders you drew up. They had better be good.”
For the last hour, Cannan had struggled over the orders. The idea of committing his men to an attack that he didn’t believe in, that he was sure would end in the death of all of them, was not something he could ever put down on paper. It would have been impossible to. He saw the “battle” in his mind: the initial shock as the artillery rained explosions down in a wide path, the charge of the lead company of Abrams crushing the zombies under their treads, their machine guns spitting fire and their main guns blasting out grapeshot into the masses of undead, like they were fighting in Napoleonic times.
Then would come the Bradleys, the Strykers and the Humvees, all crammed with men; overflowing with men. There’d be soldiers clinging to every surface. Anything to keep from having to tread over the heaps of bodies. His division had already beaten off the attack of an estimated hundred thousand zombies, and their bodies carpeted the land for miles.
They would make it to Harrisburg, and there they’d be trapped, and there they’d die. It wouldn’t be a heroic death, either. They would not be lionized like the three-hundred were in the Battle of Thermopylae. No, his men would be eaten alive. The hundred-thousand they had killed was just the tip of the spear aimed at the heart of America.
That spear would impale his division and then drive through it to slay the country.
Cannan had agonized about writing the order, and he had agonized over not writing it. If he didn’t write it, Boggs would find someone else to send them to their death, while Cannan, at best could expect a life sentence for cowardice, though with this President in charge, being executed was more likely. He and his division were in a lose-lose situation. They were doomed no matter what.
When that struck him, it did so with surprising gentleness. “If I am to die, it will be on my terms,” he decided. It was then that he wrote his twenty-three page operational order. In his opinion it was some of his best work; twenty-three pages was amazingly succinct, especially as it contained six annexes and a half-page “personal” note. The entire operation rested squarely on the note which had been read to each of the companies twenty-four minutes previously.
Neither the order or the note mentioned attacking Harrisburg, Gettysburg or any other burg for that matter. It was a completely defensive order that supposed escalating attacks along the front lines as well as a growing threat from opposition forces from the southeast along the I-70 corridor—estimated at brigade strength. At the same time a separate force of regimental size which would likely be heading down from the northwest along the 522 Highway.
“What the hell is this?” Boggs demanded, holding the orders in a fist. “What brigade are you talking about? And this on airpower…” He flipped the order open to the seventh page, “this makes no sense at all.”
“Sorry sir, but I think you blew right past the suppositions I had listed, and the third one down presupposes that the President will not observe the common sense of staying, at least for the time being, in a defensive posture. It’s why I had the M6s brought up.”
Boggs stared at him in complete amazement. It was so comical that if twelve-thousand lives weren’t on the line, Cannan would have laughed. “I’m sure you understand that your order would necessarily end in the destruction of the 3rd ID and that…”
“Stop talking!” Boggs seethed.
“And that if we fall there is nothing, nothing standing between twenty million zombies and the heart of…”
“I said shut the hell up!” Boggs screamed, a cold light in his pale eyes. “You’re disobeying a direct order.” It wasn’t a question; Cannan nodded. “You snake. You cowardly snake! Do you have any idea what you’ve done? I told you he was watching and now…of course you’re under arrest.” He paused and glanced upwards. “No, that’s not enough. It can’t be enough. Damn it, Tom, you’ve forced my hand.”
Cannan nodded again, he was at the point where his own hand was about to be forced. “Do you not see the tactical situation here? Do you not see how it will become a strategic loss on an epic scale?”
“That’s not the point.”
“Just tell me if you see it or not!”
Boggs took a deep, deep breath, sucking air in as if it was the last on earth. When he let it out again, it was surprisingly controlled. Almost as if the air was strangling him, he choked out, “I don’t see it. Orders are to be followed without question. There’s no other way an army can be run.”
A heavy sigh escaped Cannan.“In that case, I relieve you of your command. You are egregiously incompetent and sycophantic to a dangerous degree.” Boggs began sucking in another long breath and Cannan was sure that he would be covered in a wave of expletives when Boggs expelled it. He lifted a hand to forestall it. “You and your staff will be held on a temporary basis and released unharmed, possibly in the next day or two.”
This time the pent-up breath exploded out of him in a scream. “Held! Who are you to hold me?” He actually looked as though he wanted an answer. Cannan was done talking. He nodded to his XO, who held up a single finger high over his head. With this, the line of M6s turned suddenly and converged on the group.
“What is this?” Boggs demanded in disbelief. “You’ve turned them? My God, Cannan. Cowardice is one thing, but this is mutiny. Your men won’t stand for it. Your officers…”
“My officers and my soldiers are completely behind me, one hundred percent.” This was not hyperbole. The personal note had laid bare the situation and, in the most unprecedented move in the history of American warfare, it had given each man the option to follow the President’s order to attack or to stay with the doomed division. In plain language, Cannan made sure that his men understood that staying was no salvation. The President would not just brand them as cowards and traitors, he would, in all likelihood, find them guilty of treason and order them killed.
There was no middle ground offered. They couldn’t abstain. Just like Cannan, they had to make a choice. T
hose that chose to attack were to march out of the lines as ordered and die with their honor intact. Those that stayed, would stay and fight, knowing full well that they’d be fighting both the zombies and their own countrymen.
It was not an easy decision for any of them. In the end, it came down to numbers and time. Cannan estimated that by attacking, the 3rd ID would destroy approximately 300,000 zombies before they were finally overwhelmed. By staying on the defensive, he calculated that he could hold out for three days and destroy over a million of them.
Those three days would also give the army time to bring up another division or two, so that when the last of his men went down fighting, there wouldn’t be a gigantic hole in the lines.
Cannan didn’t normally carry a weapon, but he felt it would send a strong message if he took Boggs and the others into custody personally. He slid an M4 off his shoulder and aimed it at his commanding officer’s midsection. When he clicked off the safety, Boggs sneered, “You don’t have the guts to shoot me.”
All around the group, hard-faced men appeared between the line of Bradley Fighting Vehicles. “Actually, I do,” Cannan answered, with the smallest of shrugs. “I’ll be dead soon one way or another. I am without fear.” Deep down, he was at peace with his decision and would carry it out to its logical conclusion.
The 2nd Corps commander, as well as his staff and the division’s political officers, were taken into custody, stripped of their weapons and communications and herded into a tent that was marked with a red cross. One of the 3rd ID soldiers, joked, “Luckily for you, the President would never bomb a medical facility. He’s just too honorable for anything like that.” The gallows humor had the group looking upwards in fear. They knew the truth, even if they’d been lying to themselves for the last five days.
War of the Undead Day 5 Page 24