by Ricky Sides
“Captain,” Ramon heard behind him. He stopped and turned to face the Havana and saw that the strike team had deployed on the ramp. The doctor stood with them. All seven men saluted the Captain and held the salute until he returned it.
“You are all good men. If I do not return, I know that you will serve the next captain with the same distinction that you served me,” Ramon said and he turned and walked away.
“Go with God, Ramon,” the doctor stated. This time, Ramon didn’t look back.
He heard the Havana lift off as he walked through the first of the trees. He knew what the crew would do because he had given them their orders. They were to patrol the northwestern shore of the island, and at random times, they were to fly inland seeking people fleeing the plague. If they saw anyone on the run, they were to order them to turn back. If they refused, then their orders were to kill that individual.
Ramon walked for two hours before coming to the outskirts of the town. He saw a few people on the streets, but they all seemed to be avoiding each other. As he walked down the streets, he saw an occasional door that had been marked by a black X-shaped symbol. “They remember,” thought Ramon. For a moment, he remembered too. He remembered the plague that the drug cartel had unleashed in his country. He remembered the black Xs that people placed on the doors of the homes of those who had contracted the disease. “Perhaps there is hope that some will survive here because they know what they should and should not do,” he thought.
Then he found the men meeting in the street. “I tell you that we must leave the city and flee to the east!” one man shouted from his position near a parked car.
“We are safe if we do not permit the body fluids of the victims to touch us,” another man countered. “If we flee to the east, some may take the disease to others and it will spread like the wind as it did years ago.”
“You cannot leave this city!” Ramon found himself shouting.
“We must if we are to live,” countered the first man from beside his car.
“If you flee to the east you will find death waiting for you,” Ramon shouted.
“You are dressed as a peacekeeper. Are you the captain of the Havana?” asked a man who had not yet spoken.
Ramon nodded his head and replied, “Yes, I am Ramon Marino, captain of the Havana.
“Is the Havana here to assist us?” asked the man who had addressed Ramon.
“No. I am here to bring you words of life. If you wish to live, you must get off the streets. Go into your homes and stay there.”
“You must help us, Captain. You must take the sick from among us.”
“This I cannot do,” Ramon replied.
“Then you must transport us to safety. It is said that the roads have been blocked not far outside town.”
“Yes, the roads have been blocked, and they are guarded by peacekeepers. You will not be permitted to leave this area.”
“You have no right to force us to stay. We have the right to leave this place of death with our families.”
“If you will not hear my words of life, then hear my words of death,” Ramon intoned in a somber tone of voice. “For not one of you will make it to another city if you flee to the east. You will be killed because you will carry the disease to the rest of Cuba. If you flee east, you will surely die. For the good of the many, the few must perish.”
There were angry words spoken and many of the men began to glare and shout in anger.
“Hear me that I may tell you how to survive!” Ramon bellowed at the top of his lungs. Shocked by the vehemence of his outburst, the men stood silently, waiting to hear what he had to say. “The disease is not the same this time. It has attached itself to the flu. It is not enough to avoid the body fluids now. You must avoid breathing air tainted by the sick as well. If you want to live, you must go into your homes and wait. In fourteen days, the peacekeepers will send a team to check on us. If you have been remaining in isolation, then you will live and they will try to aid us.”
“Us? You are staying here with us?” asked one of the men.
“Yes. I did not come to tell you that you must stay only to flee myself. I will build a small shelter on the edge of town and stay there.”
There was a general murmur of comments made by several of the men. One said, “He is staying here. If the peacekeeper intends to stay, then it must be safe if we do as he says.”
Ramon heard someone he didn’t see shout, “Tell us what we should do, Captain.”
He turned toward the sound of the voice and saw an elderly woman leaning on a cane.
“You should all return to your homes. Stay inside as much as possible. Remain in there for fourteen days. At the end of that period other peacekeepers will come and help those who have remained isolated.”
“And how, good Captain, will these peacekeepers know that we have kept the faith and remained isolated?” asked the elderly woman.
“They will know who kept the faith because they will be alive. Those who do not will be dead.”
“All of them?”
“Yes, in all probability that will be the case.”
“Some of us do not have enough food to last fourteen days,” she pointed out.
“Most of us don’t have enough to last more than a few days,” a man protested.
“Have no fear. I can easily address that problem, provided you all remain inside your homes. I will have the Havana deliver food on the outskirts of town. But you need to know that if they see anyone in the streets, they will not land. If one of you comes outside while they are on the ground, they will board the Havana and leave.”
“How will we get the food if we do not come outside?”
“I will carry packages of food to every door of a home that is occupied.”
“That is too much work for one man,” the old woman observed.
Ramon shrugged and replied, “It will occupy my time.”
“You will weaken your body. A weak body catches sickness where a strong one might not.”
“Yet, if the peacekeepers see more, they will not land. I will use a peacekeeper sled. You have seen those?”
“No. What sort of sled?”
“It can fly, although not very high. I can load the sled to aid in delivering the food.”
“Then we need to return to our homes.”
“Yes, Grandmother. Please do so, and I will signal the Havana and alter their orders.”
Some of the men began to grumble, but Ramon had found an ally in the old woman. She said, “Are you stupid? Did the captain not tell you what would happen if you continue to congregate? Go to your homes and wait the fourteen days, and pray that you have not already doomed yourselves with this foolish gathering.” When she’d said that, the old woman backed a noticeable distance away from the group of men who were standing shoulder to shoulder.
The men began to spread out and one left the group. Ramon assumed that he was heading for his home. Another quickly followed, and then another. Soon the street was deserted with the exception of Ramon and the old woman.
“Thank you for your help.”
“Thank you for having the courage to come here to try to help us,” the old woman said, and then she turned and walked away at a slow pace.
***
“Admiral, you have an incoming call from Captain Barnes of the California,” Jim heard Patricia say over the intercom. He was already on his way to the bridge and was almost there, so he increased his pace and stepped into the room. “Here I am,” he said.
He walked over to the communications station and said, “I’ll take it here.”
Patricia handed him a headset, saying, “The captain said you’d want this kept private.”
When he had the headset adjusted to fit properly, Jim nodded that he was ready and Patricia activated the link. “Captain Barnes, I’m here.”
“Admiral, I have good news for you. Two hours ago, the owner of the manufacturing facility contacted me. He said that some of the stockpiled vaccine survived th
e fire and looting. I had the California on the outskirts of the city monitoring the exodus of the people as you requested, so I decided to do a reconnaissance of the area to see if it would be feasible to attempt to recover the vaccine. To get right to the point, that area is all but deserted now, so I deployed my drones to act as sentinels, had my fighter escort monitor the situation and sent my strike team inside. The boys recovered a substantial amount of vaccine.”
“That is good news,” Jim responded as Cliff paused to listen. “Have you recovered it all?”
“No, not yet. Our ship is fully loaded. I called in our APCs, but there will still be a substantial amount of the vaccine that we cannot transport. The looters only raided what they could easily access. This supply was in a locked storage unit that they didn’t notice.”
“How much more is in there?” Jim asked.
“If you can bring the Valiant, she can probably handle the rest. We’ll need to get the majority of it to you for distribution anyway. We still have to finish transferring our supplies from our bases to the storage points we agreed upon.”
“One moment, Captain,” Jim replied. Looking to Patricia, he asked, “Where is the Valiant now?”
Patricia looked around to ensure no one was listening, and then she whispered, “Evan reported that he was landing to offload the vaccine at the Colorado ark site an hour and a half ago, sir.”
“Contact him. Reroute him to Los Angeles, California at once. Check the computer for the fastest route from his current location and feed him the flight plan.”
“Aye, sir,” Patricia responded and then she went about following his instructions.
“Captain Barnes, I’m rerouting the Valiant. She’s in Colorado, so it will be a few hours.”
“That’s fine. There hasn’t been a sign of anyone near us since we got here. The area looks deserted. But I’ve got a strong security team on hand. We’ll hold this position until you can get help here.”
“How many doses do you estimate are there?”
“The owner said there were two and a half million in that storage unit.”
“Captain, you just saved a lot of lives. Hold that position. No matter what, you hold that position. If you are attacked, you do what you need to do to save that vaccine.”
Laughing, Cliff responded, “I already gave those orders, but I don’t think I needed to because the men here all know what this means.”
“I’ll send word for the Valiant to make best speed possible”
“Admiral, I have an ETA for you,” Patricia said. “Two hours, twelve minutes to the city, and then a few minutes to the exact location. I’m pinging Cliff’s ship to get the exact coordinates.”
“Cliff they are now en route. The ETA is two hours, twelve minutes to the city and a few more minutes to the exact location. Patricia is feeding them the course based on the location of the California. She is at the site, correct?”
“Correct.”
“Done, sir. Two hours, twenty-three minutes.”
***
“Communications, get the strike team leader up here,” Evan ordered.
“Aye, sir,” Lisa responded, and then she instructed the strike team leader to come to the control room immediately.
She had just deactivated the switch to the intercom when Ralph strode into the control room. “I’m here, Captain,” he said briskly.
Amused by his sudden appearance, Evan said, “You must have been lurking just outside the control room.”
“Actually, I’d just gotten back from the head, sir.”
Evan laughed, and then he said, “You’d better get that out of your system because you boys are about to be deployed in LA.”
“We are?” Ralph asked. “I thought we were heading back to the Damroyal.”
“Our orders have changed. We’re going to LA to pick up a large supply of vaccine. I want your men in full armor, and I want you to make certain no one cheats. Oh and, Ralph, you saw the video of the peacekeeper killed by the brick, so make them wear the hard headgear. They may complain, but it’s safer.”
“They’ll wear it, sir. They saw the video too. I used it as a training film during one of our flights.”
“Good. Remind them to be extra careful. I want no embarrassing incidents. It’s my understanding that a large group of California peacekeepers will be there, but we do it by the book regardless of their presence. Meanwhile, I don’t want anyone’s weapon accidentally discharging. We have a two hour flight. Perhaps a refresher course in safety might be advisable.”
“That’s a good idea. Thank you, Captain. I’ll see to it at once.”
Chapter 15
Tim was impatient to begin the test. He had wanted to try it hours ago, but Pol had insisted on a safety inspection first. He wanted to be absolutely certain that the ship would remain watertight so that it wouldn’t flood and seal Tim in a watery grave.
Pol had good reason to practice an abundance of caution. Few people had ever seen Patricia angry, and no one could ever recall a time when she’d said a cross word to Pol, but when she learned about the test, her face went a livid shade of red and she demanded, “Pol, how could you?! Are you trying to get my husband killed?!”
Pol had been left speechless for a moment, but then he responded, “My dear, you know I’d not let Tim do this if I thought for a moment that his life was in serious danger.”
“You’d better be right, because if you aren’t, I will never speak to you again,” Patricia had said in a more normal tone of voice, and then she had said, “Tim, I want to talk to you in our cabin.” Without another word, she turned and left the mess hall where Tim had told her about the plan to test the Peacekeeper.
When Tim walked hesitantly into the cabin behind Patricia, she turned to him and asked, “Are you trying to get yourself killed?”
For twenty minutes, the couple engaged in one of only a handful of arguments they had ever had during their marriage. Finally, Patricia relented, but only after repeatedly telling him, how foolish she thought the whole proposition really was.
Confused, by her attitude, Tim said, “I don’t get it. You’ve known for weeks that we were considering linking the ships to the hull of the Damroyal and going underwater to wait out the worst of the plague. Yet, not once have you voiced a complaint. Now all of a sudden it’s a lousy idea?”
“I always thought it was a bad idea. It’s more dangerous than just flying all the ships to a common location in some out of the way wilderness, and to be perfectly honest, I was reasonably sure that the idea would be discarded at some point as insanely dangerous and impractical.”
“I thought you understood all the reasons why being under the surface of the sea is preferable,” Tim said.
“I’ve heard the reasons, but I’m not sure I agree with them. I know flying autos complicate things, but we could defend ourselves if someone found us in a car.”
“Could we? Are you certain? Remember, it only takes one sick person to contaminate a community. Remember New Orleans? One Cuban caused the first plague there, and he walked part of the way. Let’s say for the sake of argument that we disabled the cars with our defensive screen. What’s to keep the people in them from getting to the ground and simply walking in on foot? Sure we could all constantly hover, but what’s to keep a small army from coming after us in trucks and or the converted APCs they are using for public transportation now in half a dozen cities?”
“We don’t know that people will start doing that sort of thing,” Patricia countered.
Tim shook his head in the negative and said, “We know that it’s already happening. There have been five separate incidents in different locations around the country. Paramilitary groups are seizing such vehicles and forming caravans.”
“I hadn’t heard that,” Patricia stated suspiciously, adding, “That’s odd, because I have handled the majority of the messages.”
“You must not have read the report from the Captain’s Council then,” Tim stated with confidence because he knew
that report contained the information he was referencing.
“I seldom read those dispatches. They are usually overly long, and full of such things as reports on the maintenance of the ships and requests for promotions to lieutenant.”
Tim smiled and nodded. “They can be tedious, but we council members are obligated to read them. Well, their last report contained the information about the new activity that is beginning to emerge as the plague spreads. That information was gathered in the eleven-day period prior to the report. So you see, just finding a remote location on the surface or above it doesn’t guarantee the safety of our people.”
Patricia, frowned and said, “Even if they found us, they’d be no match for us. We could defeat them easily.”
“If they fought us in a conventional manner, then I agree that that would be the outcome, but they might not fight conventionally. They’d be fools if they did. They’ve already used the plague to defeat one community.”
“They did what?!”
Tim nodded his head. “It’s true. They stopped in a city that fought back when they tried raid them for food and other supplies. They killed a lot of people as they were taking what they wanted, and then they contaminated the city with blood they’d taken from some plague victims. Delivering it was as easy as opening a door and dumping the blood bags from altitude.”
“That’s horrible. I hope they were caught and punished.”
Tim nodded and said, “Captain Young caught up with them. They won’t be doing that to anyone else. You know Bill when someone gets on his bad side. But as you can see, it doesn’t take a high tech attack to cause a world of trouble. You know as well as I do that not very many peacekeepers are taking the vaccine. Some because they feel others have a greater need and the rest because they don’t like the odds. They are prepared to trust our technology to save them rather than play Russian roulette with the vaccine. You should understand that reasoning. It’s why we won’t be taking it ourselves.”
“All right, you’ve convinced me. I guess we’d better go and see to the test.”