Miller paused, then looked at the Secretary for Homeland Security. “That brings me to the third thing: have there been any indications of this sort of thing going on here?”
“No, sir. We haven’t come across any indications of anything like what’s in that report. Not yet, at least.”
“Good. Because I do not want to have whatever is going on in these places,” Miller tapped on the PDB, “to happen here on our soil. I don’t care who or what is behind it, we’re not going to let it happen. The country was hit bad enough by the Sutter Buttes disaster, and by God I’m not going to let something like this take place on my watch.” He looked every member of his cabinet in the eye. “I want this nailed down, and fast.”
“What about Dawson?” Harmon asked.
“What about him?”
“From what I gathered from Richards, it sounded to me like he’s in a position to gather a lot of information, but he’s running loose as a free agent. I’m not so sure that’s in our best interest.”
Miller shrugged. “Then try to get him back on the payroll, and get some other eyes on the ground in these places. In the meantime, he’s an asset. Use him. And if necessary, use him up.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
After Jack and the others had piled into the waiting Mi-17 transport helicopters, they took a short ride to the nearby Shpakovskoye Airport, which was a joint military-civilian facility. While Mikhailov had explained that there was normally only a small contingent of Air Force training units there, Jack saw that a line of An-12 four-engine turboprop transports was waiting on the tarmac, propellers spinning and ready for takeoff as soon as their human cargo was loaded.
“I thought we were going to make a helicopter insertion.” Jack had to shout to be heard above the roar of both the helicopters and the engines of the big transports as he followed close behind Mikhailov in the line of men who ran to board the lead aircraft.
“We are airborne troops, Jack. We jump out of perfectly good airplanes, remember?”
“Ah, shit,” Jack cursed.
“Do you want to stay behind?”
“Hell, no.” He took a closer look at the men around him, who seemed to have more gear strapped to their bodies than he, Mikhailov, or Rudenko. “But we don’t have any parachutes!”
“They are on the planes.”
Jack was aghast. Preparing for an airborne jump wasn’t something you just threw together at the last moment. Everything was checked, rechecked, and checked again before anyone ever set foot on the plane. “Oh, great.”
As they ran up the rear cargo ramp, thankfully getting out of the frigid pouring rain, a senior NCO led them forward to a group of seats, each of which held a parachute. They struggled to get the rigs on over their soaked uniforms.
“The others had time to prepare properly at the base,” Mikhailov explained as Rudenko helped him into the parachute harness. “We did not, obviously.” Seeing the pained expression on Jack’s face, he said, “You are jump qualified, are you not?”
“Yes, I am.” Jack had gone to the Army Airborne School — Jump School, as it was more popularly known — at Fort Benning, Georgia, while he’d been an Army ROTC cadet. “I was gung-ho about jumping until my first time out of the plane. I absolutely hated it, and have every jump since.”
“You are smart man, Jack.” Rudenko slapped him on the back after finishing his check of Mikhailov’s chute. “Much smarter than certain Russian Army captains I have known.”
“But why are we jumping in? Why not just take a nice comfy helo ride to the target?”
Mikhailov shook his head. “Not enough lift capacity. The polkovnik wants the whole battalion on the ground as quickly as possible. We would have to make several lifts with the helicopters we have on hand. That would not allow us to concentrate our troops as quickly. We should be able to get everyone down in two drops with the planes.” He smiled. “Look at it this way: at least you do not have to stand in the rain and wait like the other half of the battalion.”
“It’s a good thing. I forgot my umbrella.”
Done with pulling on the parachute and having Rudenko check him over, Jack, shivering from the cold rain that had penetrated to his skin, sat clumsily on the seat beside Mikhailov. Most of the other men on the plane had taken their seats as well, and the loadmaster and officers were making sure everyone was accounted for. Looking out the yawning rear cargo door, Jack could see the An-12 in line behind them, and the navigation lights of that aircraft and those behind it, winking in the darkness. Over the steady drone of the engines he could hear another sound that he recognized as the rain beating down against the fuselage and wings. The plane stank of oil and jet fuel, of exhaust and the ozone smell of the storm outside.
The men around him were quiet, their faces calm but alert. Most of them had never seen combat, he surmised, but from their expressions and demeanor, an outsider would have thought this was nothing more for them than the routine exercise that the public was currently being led to believe it was.
Kuybishev and two other men strode up the ramp at the rear of the plane just as it began to rise with a high-pitched whine from the hydraulics. He moved past Jack to the cockpit, and a moment later the roar of the plane’s turboprop engines rose in pitch and they began to move.
The plane turned onto the active runway and the pilot pushed the throttles all the way forward. Kuybishev came back and took his seat across from Mikhailov as the plane accelerated. He looked closely at Jack in the dim light of the cargo bay. “You do not like to jump? Mikhailov assured me you have done this before.”
Jack offered him a grin that was more an exercise in gritting his teeth and pulling his lips back. “Is it that obvious, sir? I’ve done this plenty of times, and have never stopped hating it.”
Kuybishev leaned over and slapped Jack’s knee. “You are smart man.” He and the others laughed.
Rather than being offended, Jack was relieved. Involving him in jokes, even at his expense, made him feel like he was part of the team. Kuybishev could have easily shut him out and ignored him.
They were quiet for a moment as the plane began to vibrate, shimmying slightly from side to side as the pilot fought the crosswind while the An-12 transitioned from earth to sky. The nose suddenly rose, and they felt the momentary pull of gravity in the pits of their stomachs as the plane left the ground. With a series of whines and thumps, the landing gear came up. Then the plane banked sharply to the left until it was headed east, toward Ulan-Erg. Their target.
“Concept of operation is simple,” Kuybishev told them, speaking in heavily accented English for Jack’s benefit as he unfolded a tactical map wrapped in a nylon case with a clear plastic face. One of the officers with him, probably the executive officer, Jack thought, held a flashlight to better illuminate the map. “There is road that runs east-west, three kilometers south of Ulan-Erg. We will drop most troops on this first lift just to the south of this road, da?” Everyone nodded. “We will sweep north through village, driving any enemies against river north of village. We will also drop one platoon north of river to secure road bridge, here.” He pointed to where a paved road crossed the river to enter the town from the northeast. “Anyone,” Kuybishev glanced up at Jack, “anything we flush from town is most likely to go this way. We will drop troops of second lift to either reinforce us, platoon holding bridge, or both, as needed.”
“Where do you want me, sir?”
“You and Mikhailov stay with me. We will also keep men with thermal imagers to scan citizens of Ulan-Erg to make sure everyone is who and what they are supposed to be.” He looked hard at Jack. “Now you tell me what we are fighting, and how we kill them.”
Jack returned Kuybishev’s stare, and decided to go for broke. “They’re not human, colonel. We call them harvesters. They can take the shape of a man or woman and mimic them perfectly, not just in appearance, but in how they talk and act.”
“Like Putin.” Kuybishev spat the man’s name.
“Yes, sir, like Puti
n. Normally they kill the people they mimic, so we can assume that Putin is dead.”
“How do we kill them?”
“Fire is the best way. The outer part of their bodies are covered with flesh that can change shape, but it’s highly flammable.”
“That is why we burned the facility,” Mikhailov interjected. “We learned this from Jack during the Spitsbergen operation. White phosphorous works quite well against them. Tracers also work, and the Dragon’s Breath rounds from the shotguns do quite well, but only at close quarters.”
Jack nodded. “Aside from fire, you just need to hammer them hard with the biggest guns you can. Their skeletons are as strong as reinforced carbon fiber. Your assault rifles can take them down, but you’ll need to hit them repeatedly. These,” he pulled out the .50 caliber Desert Eagle and handed it to Kuybishev, who turned it slowly in his big hands, studying it, “can take one out with a single shot. If you’re lucky.”
Kuybishev handed the pistol back, a look of envy on his face.
“And colonel, these things can move fast, a lot faster than a man. They’re extremely strong, and they also have a stinger that can kill a man at a distance of more than ten feet. Three, maybe four meters.”
After a moment of silence, Kuybishev said, “You expect me to believe this?”
“Every word is true, polkovnik,” Rudenko told him. He had served under Kuybishev in Chechnya, when Kuybishev was a company commander, and they had come to know one another well. “Kapitan Mikhailov and I have seen these things with our own eyes. And you know what happened to Polkovnik Zaitsev.” He shook his head. “No man could have jumped ten meters to the ground, then escape from airborne troops chasing him. Not possible.”
“You are asking me to believe in aliens?”
“We don’t know where they came from, colonel,” Jack explained. “We killed all the original harvesters, which we believe were around for a very long time, maybe centuries. The ones we’re facing now are a new generation. But trust me, they’re just as deadly as the old ones. Maybe even more so.”
Kuybishev grunted. “I will leave such details to men with imagination. I simply want to kill them. Perhaps we do not have best weapons, but we will leave none alive when we are through.”
* * *
Forty minutes later, Jack was on his feet, his hand clinging to the static line that ran from his parachute and was clipped to a cable that ran the length of the An-12’s cavernous cargo hold. He and the others had followed Kuybishev to the rear of the plane. The polkovnik always insisted on being the first out the door, and Jack found himself number six in the drop order on the starboard side, right behind Mikhailov and in front of Rudenko. Another line of men stood on the port side, ready to jump.
He felt his stomach fall away as the cargo ramp opened and the frigid air of the slipstream hit his face. He felt like puking, but wasn’t about to give his Russian friends any last minute entertainment.
“You okay?”
Jack felt a reassuring hand on his shoulder and turned to see Rudenko peering at him.
“Yeah, I’ll make it.”
Rudenko grinned. “At least there are few trees here for us to land in!”
“Thank God for small mercies.”
The jump indicator light on the side of the fuselage suddenly changed from amber to green. It was time.
The men ahead of Jack leaped out into the darkness. He kept pace with them, shuffling forward as his old training and experience overrode the more sensible part of his brain that was screaming in abject fear.
Ahead of him, Mikhailov leaped from the ramp, and with one final step, his breath coming in rapid heaves, Jack followed him, stepping into space. He felt a slight nudge against his back: Rudenko, making sure Jack didn’t balk at the last second. Jack would have laughed had he not been so scared.
The moment of nauseating free-fall abruptly ended as the static line yanked the parachute open. After the chute deployed, slowing Jack’s descent to a speed that was merely insane, rather than suicidal, he looked up to make sure the canopy had opened properly. He could barely make anything out in the dark and rain, but from what he could tell, all was in order. While night jumps were something all airborne troops trained for, Jack thought the Russians were complete loons for dropping in weather conditions like this.
“At least there aren’t many trees to land in.” He laughed as he repeated what Rudenko had told him, sure that if there was a single tree down there, with his luck he’d land right on top of it.
He didn’t have much time to worry about such things. It was hard to judge distance under these conditions, but the ground, a vast stretch of deep black beneath him, was coming up fast. Off to his left, beyond a group of his fellow paratroopers, he saw a slightly less dark shape that ran in a straight line, parallel to the path the aircraft were flying. That must be the road south of the village, he thought. Looking a bit to the north, he could make out a few scattered lights that he thought must be Ulan-Erg.
The ground rushed up quickly enough during daylight drops. At night, to Jack it seemed like at one moment he was hundreds of feet in the air, and the next the ground was right there. He judged his landing more by the grunts and curses of the men who landed before him than by sight. His feet slammed into the wet ground and he fell to his side, absorbing the impact through his right calf, thigh and hip before rolling over onto his back.
Breathing a sigh of relief, he hit the quick disconnect on his harness and shucked it off as he got to his feet. Checking that his shotgun was ready for action, he trotted through the muck to where he heard Kuybishev shouting orders.
Mikhailov and Rudenko appeared out of the darkness beside him. As poor as the visibility was, Jack could see that Mikhailov was in pain.
“Did you twist something?”
“Nyet,” Mikhailov told him through gritted teeth. “My ribs, from the battle at the facility. Perhaps I should have stayed in bed.”
“Stupid bastard. You could’ve wound up with a punctured lung.”
Mikhailov’s teeth flashed in the darkness. “Thank you for your sympathy. You are a true friend.”
“Come on, you lunatic. There’s Kuybishev.”
The three stood by as the colonel got the two companies of the battalion’s first drop organized. Above, the An-12s droned away, turning back to the west to pick up the rest of the battalion for the second wave.
Quickly and efficiently, the Russians spread out according to Kuybishev’s orders and moved north to the road that served as their first phase line. Jack was thankful that the Russian pilots managed to drop them right where they were supposed to. It was a short walk to the road.
After everyone had reached the edge of the pavement, Kuybishev whispered a brief order through the radio carried by one of the soldiers. As one, the men of the battalion started moving north toward Ulan-Erg.
It was three kilometers of slogging through wet muck before they reached the edge of the town. Jack’s anxiety grew with every step, because he remembered all too well the horror that had greeted him in the village outside of Koratikal in India.
At least this time we’ve got some real firepower, he consoled himself. Even if they did run into harvesters here, he knew that a few companies of airborne troops would kick some serious ass. There’s nothing to be afraid of. We’ve got this.
Despite his internal pep-talk, he was shivering. He tried to convince himself it was just the cold.
Kuybishev called a halt as they reached the southern edge of town, and the men dropped to their knees or lay prone in the mud. Pulling a set of binoculars from his combat webbing, he carefully scanned the nearest houses. Some still had lights on, others didn’t.
Jack was listening carefully, but he didn’t hear anything over the rain. No screams, human or otherwise, reached his ears.
Beside Kuybishev, the two soldiers with the thermal imaging sights mounted on their rifles swept their electronically enhanced vision over the nearest houses.
“Nichevo.”
Jack turned to Mikhailov, who whispered, “They see nothing.”
Kuybishev spoke again into his radio, then said, “Vperyod.”
“Forward,” Mikhailov translated for Jack’s benefit as the men got back to their feet and marched onward. “He ordered the company commanders to halt as they reach each major east-west street to help us stay on line.”
“So no one can flank us,” Jack added. “How big is this place?”
“Not big. A hundred buildings, maybe more.”
“A hundred buildings? We’re gonna be here a while.”
Kuybishev turned his head in their direction, and both men clamped their mouths shut.
As they reached the first line of houses, a squad surrounded each one, with three men at the front door. One knocked while the other two covered him.
No one answered at any of the houses.
As if on cue, there were multiple cracks as the first man in each entry team kicked in the door, and the other two ran inside, weapons at the ready.
After a few tense minutes, the radio operator murmured something to Kuybishev. Turning to Jack and Mikhailov, he said, “No one is in any of these houses.”
“Any signs of a struggle?”
“Da.” Kuybishev said nothing more before he turned his attention back to the radio. All along the first street his men broke down doors and swept through the houses.
By the time they had made it halfway through the town, without having found a single person, alive or dead, or any sign of harvesters, Jack was deeply worried. “Something’s not right,” he told Mikhailov. Beside him, Rudenko grunted his agreement. “You can feel it, too, can’t you?”
The Last Days: Six Post-Apocalyptic Thrillers Page 19