He pushed the call button.
“Hallo?”
“Kaptein Halvorsen?”
“Ja. Mikhailov, is that you?”
Mikhailov imagined Halvorsen’s expression, trying to match it with the shock he heard in his Norwegian counterpart’s voice. Terje Halvorsen was a company commander in the Norwegian Army’s Hans Majestet Kongens Garde (His Majesty the King’s Guard) Battalion. The two men had met during the during the battle for the Svalbard seed vault on Spitsbergen the previous year. “Yes, Terje. It is me,” Mikhailov said in English. While he could speak some Norwegian, both men were more fluent in English.
“What in the devil is going on there?” He lowered his voice. “You are lucky you called when you did. We have been placed on alert and are getting ready to deploy. An hour later, and I would not have had my phone.”
“Terje, I do not have much time to explain.” Mikhailov paused, gathering his thoughts. It was becoming more and more difficult to think clearly. “I have Jack Dawson with me. The harvesters, they are back, Terje. And not just a few. There must be thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, in southern Russia and elsewhere. India for certain, and from what Jack heard, probably China, too.”
His phone began beeping a low battery warning.
“But why are you calling me?”
“The FSB, our security service, has posted orders to arrest Jack on suspicion that he caused the outbreak here.” Halvorsen made a rude sound on the other end of the line. “Da. He came to help us, and they want to blame him. He has vital knowledge of these things, as you know, and learned much while here and in India. I am trying to get him out.”
“You are trying to come here? Sergei, the border has been closed and all air traffic between Norway and Russia has been suspended.”
“That is where you come in, my friend. We will be coming by air and will need clearance.”
“I cannot guarantee anything, but I will try. What is your call sign and where will you try to cross?”
“I am not sure where, but our call sign is…”
The phone gave one final beep, then went silent. Mikhailov looked and saw that the display was dark.
Closing his eyes, he stuffed the phone in its pocket and leaned his head back, exhausted.
“It will have to be enough.”
* * *
In a cubicle deep inside a three story complex on a side street known as Bol’shoy Kisel’nyy in Moscow, a young woman wearing high-end stereo headphones sat at her computer. She was a linguist of the Sluzhba spetsial’noy svyazi i informatsii, the Special Communications and Information Service, or Spetsvyaz, of the Russian Federal Protective Service.
Spetsvyaz, the roof of which was festooned with a variety of antenna domes and arrays, was Russia’s Signals Intelligence, or SIGINT, organization, the Russian equivalent of the American National Security Agency. The woman and her coworkers were responsible for intercepting, decoding, and translating signals intelligence from communications intercepts, and forwarding that information on to other government agencies and the military for information or, as necessary, action.
She had been pulled from her normal portfolio that morning and put on a special team providing direct support to the FSB in hunting down the American, Jack Dawson, who was involved in the biological disaster rapidly unfolding in southern Russia. She was one of her department’s best English linguists, and her selection for this particular job had come as no surprise. Unfortunately, her queue so far had contained nothing of interest, and she was not alone in her frustration. The team had nothing to go on with Dawson other than his name, photograph, and some background biographical information. The FSB had yet to obtain any more detailed information from his service in the military or FBI, and there was nothing at all for the year that Dawson had gone missing after his reported death.
That left them with no information they could use to find him. The two phone numbers, old ones from when he’d worked for the FBI, they’d fished out from internet searches hadn’t turned up any results.
As she finished going through the last intercept, a new one popped to the top of her queue on the computer screen. It was associated with Sergei Mikhailov, now known to be in company with the American. While they had nothing yet that would help find Dawson, they had plenty on Mikhailov. She only wished they would have started searching for him earlier than this morning, when the team was formed.
Hitting a particular key, she ordered the computer to play back the audio, and her skin prickled with excitement as she listened:
“Hallo?”
“Kaptein Halvorsen?”
“Ja. Mikhailov, is that you?”
“Yes, Terje. It is me.”
After she listened through the entire intercept, she stood up and walked quickly to her supervisor’s desk. “Norway,” she said, breathless. “They are flying to Norway!”
* * *
Jack was growing increasingly impatient. It was taking forever to fill the barrels in the plane. He knew that filling up ten two-hundred liter barrels, more than five hundred and thirty gallons, was going to take a while, but they were running out of time. He knew their landing here must have been reported by someone, probably the two disgruntled station owners, and was surprised that no police or other authorities had arrived yet. He suspected the only thing that had saved them thus far was that Zadonsk was big enough that the story of their arrival hadn’t spread to everyone in town yet, but small enough to not have many police out and about.
When the eighth barrel was almost full, he leaned out the doorway and signaled Khatuna to stop the flow.
Waiting for her to give him the thumbs up that she’d released the trigger on the pump handle, he quickly pulled the hose out of that barrel and shoved it into number nine. Then he leaned out and gave her the thumbs up to start again.
He noticed that there was a pool of gas on the concrete near the pump that was growing larger every minute. The tape holding the hose to the nozzle was deteriorating quickly. Khatuna kept moving it so she didn’t have to stand in the fuel, but Jack worried about her being so close to it. Many of the people still watching them smoked, and all it would take was a hot ember to light everything off. He could see the fuel on the ground going up, then spreading to the fuel pump and, worse, to the plane.
“Come on, dammit.”
Khatuna checked the pump handle, then jogged up to him so she could talk to him without anyone else hearing. She couldn’t exactly call out to him in English. That would give just a bit too much away. “How are we to refuel in the air? You said you had idea. Now might be good time.”
“Don’t worry. The main thing we need to do is get this hose connected back up to the onboard pump like it was when you filled the main tanks.”
She looked at him, hands on hips, a frown on her face. “And then?”
“Then I’m going to smash out one of the windows so we can bring the other end of the hose in here and stick it in the barrels.”
Shaking her head, she stomped away, cursing under her breath.
“Jack!”
He looked up at Mikhailov’s shout. “What is it?”
“We will have company shortly.”
Scrambling over the barrels, Jack joined him in the cockpit.
“There.” Mikhailov pointed to the east, across the river.
Jack caught sight of a white car and a flashing blue light, then another. They were hard to make out through the trees that lined this side of the river bank near the bridge that carried the M4 highway they’d landed on.
“They are coming from Zadonsk,” Mikhailov told them. “They will be here in a few moments.”
“Shit.”
Jack scrambled back over the barrels and leaned out the door. “Khatuna! We’ve got to go!”
The people around the plane looked at him in shock, as if he were a three-headed alien. Only then did Jack realize that he’d shouted in English.
Khatuna stopped the pump, then used a pocket knife to slash the remaining t
ape holding the end of the hose to the pump nozzle. Dragging it back to the plane, fuel spilling out the end, she began to attach it to the external fuel pump.
“I’ll do that! Get in the cockpit!” He pulled the end of the hose out of the barrel and tossed it to the ground. The ninth barrel was maybe two-thirds full. The tenth was empty.
It’ll have to do, he told himself.
As he jumped down to help Khatuna into the cargo hold, the plane’s big four-bladed propeller started turning with a high-pitched whine. Mikhailov was starting the engine, which suddenly coughed into life.
Ignoring the momentary blast of smoke from the exhausts, Jack grabbed one end of the hose and quickly secured it to the external fuel pump’s inlet. Grabbing the other end, he clambered onto the plane’s lower wing. He twirled one hand in the air and shouted to Khatuna. “Let’s go!”
She disappeared inside, and the plane began to taxi back out onto the highway.
While holding onto one of the cross braces supporting the wings, he pulled out his combat knife and used the butt end to smash through one of the round porthole-style windows. Then he pried and chipped away any sharp bits that might have damaged the hose before shoving it inside, taking up as much slack as he could.
Khatuna gunned the engine, and he fell onto the wing, almost losing his grip on the cross brace.
The sudden gust of the prop wash startled some of the people who were gawking, and Jack shouted a warning that was lost in the roar of the engine. He watched as one of the two men who ran the station raised his hand to his face to ward off the dust and dirt kicked up by the propeller, and the cigarette he’d been smoking twirled away to land in the pool of gasoline.
The fuel ignited, and in the blink of an eye the entire island area of the station was engulfed in flames. Fortunately, all the onlookers had been far enough away not to be caught in the maelstrom.
Looking back down the highway toward the bridge, he saw four police cars speeding toward them.
Khatuna obviously saw them, too. Instead of turning that way, which would otherwise have been best for their takeoff run, she swung the plane out onto the highway in the opposite direction, heading west.
Jack immediately saw that there was one minor problem. There was an overpass maybe three hundred meters away. “Shit, shit, shit,” he breathed as he held on for dear life to the cross braces. There was no way he could get back into the plane until she stopped. If she stopped. The plane accelerated down the highway toward the overpass. He knew she couldn’t hear him, but he couldn’t help shouting. “Khatuna, don’t even try it!”
Behind them, there was a tremendous explosion as the fuel pumps at the station went up. The police cars screeched to a halt on the far side of the conflagration as burning gasoline and debris were strewn across the highway, which, fortunately, was empty of traffic.
The plane was still heading toward the overpass, beyond which the highway disappeared to the right in a gentle curve. He couldn’t imagine what Khatuna was thinking.
She surprised him: the plane suddenly veered to the right, taking the exit from the highway onto the road that passed over the M4. When she reached the end of the ramp, she slowed, then turned the plane onto the road, pointing back toward the overpass, and stopped.
Jack slid to the ground and then leaped into the still-open passenger door.
He dogged the door shut, and Khatuna pushed the throttle forward. The old biplane shook and rattled as the one thousand horsepower Shvetsov radial engine roared. Khatuna held the brakes until the engine’s power peaked, then let them go.
The plane began to move, but much slower than Jack had expected. The sight of the fuel drums in the cargo compartment made him understand why. He suddenly hoped they’d be able to get off the ground at all.
As he moved forward toward the cockpit, climbing over the barrels, he glanced out one of the starboard windows. The police cars had crossed over to the other side of the highway and were coming toward them, the few oncoming cars dodging out of the way.
But instead of turning onto the ramp Khatuna had taken, they took the one on the other side of the highway. He could see that it would put them on this road up ahead, on the far side of the overpass the plane was about to cross. They’d be right in the plane’s takeoff path.
“They’re trying to cut us off!”
“I know!” Khatuna’s shout was barely audible against the roar of the engine as the An-2 gradually gained speed up the incline that led to the overpass.
“Are we going to have enough room?”
“I don’t know! Shut up and let me fly!”
He held onto the backs of their seats as the plane crested the overpass, then started down the other side, now gaining speed more quickly.
The first of the police cars emerged from behind the line of trees that separated the road from the highway exit. It turned and accelerated fast, right toward them.
Khatuna cursed, but there was nothing she could do.
The plane’s tail came up, but Khatuna held the control yoke forward to keep the plane on the ground, trying to build up airspeed.
The other police cars emerged. Two of them parked and blocked the road, while another chased after the first toward them.
“Come on,” Jack growled, urging the old plane into the sky. “Come on!”
At the last second, Khatuna hauled back on the wheel, and the overloaded biplane staggered into the sky, the big propeller and main landing gear missing the top of the first police car by a hand’s breadth.
Jack saw the police standing by the two blockading cars draw their weapons, and the spark of muzzle flashes were accompanied by several pings as bullets hit the plane.
But what drew his attention was the trees just beyond them. There was a junction where this road narrowed, and on either side was a thick stand of trees that would swat the plane from the sky.
“Khatuna!”
“I know!”
The trees grew larger and larger as the ancient plane clawed for altitude.
“Pull up!”
“I cannot, or we will stall and crash!”
Jack held his breath as the treetops came straight for the windscreen.
Khatuna pulled back ever so slightly on the wheel, easing the nose up. There was a loud boom and the plane shuddered as one of the landing gear whacked into a treetop. Her lips pulled back in a grimace of desperation, Khatuna eased the wheel to the right, turning over a vast open field.
“After having a full bladder and then nearly crashing into the trees, I think I just wet myself.”
Jack turned to Mikhailov and chuckled. When he saw that Mikhailov wasn’t joking, he couldn’t help himself. He burst out laughing.
Khatuna, turning to look, also began to laugh.
“I am glad I could provide you some entertainment,” Mikhailov said, a sheepish grin on his face. “So much for the honor of the Russian airborne troops.”
“I can’t believe we made it.” Jack felt a huge surge of relief. He looked out the window at the flames blazing from the wrecked fuel stop. “I hope nobody got hurt.”
Mikhailov grunted. “I think you should worry more about how long it will be before we are shot down.” He glanced to the north. Lipetsk Air Base was only fifty kilometers away. “I hope the Air Force has forgotten about Mathias Rust.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
As the helicopter headed east across the city, Angie Boisson said, “No offense, Mr. Morgan, but by all rights you should be in jail.”
Morgan turned around in his seat. “No offense taken, Agent Boisson.” He smiled. “By all rights, you should be dead.”
“So what’s going on?” Naomi asked. “Why are you here?”
“Let’s just say that I was in a unique position to offer my services to the United States Government at a time when they had precious few alternatives. Not only to help rescue you, but to get the research effort against these creatures jump started.”
“But you destroyed everything in Lab One! And who
knows how long it will take to get the archived data we had from the EDS and SEAL. That’s assuming they reopen the SEAL facility.”
Morgan shook his head, still smiling. “My dear, we have backups for everything. Nothing was lost in Lab One except whatever was physically there. All of your data is still safe, believe me. I invested far too much to toss it all away, even under threat of Agent Boisson’s wrath.”
Next to Naomi, Boisson rolled her eyes.
“And SEAL won’t be reopened. I’ve already spoken to the powers that be about that. We’ll be using one of our facilities that’s at least as well suited for the job and isn’t in the middle of a heavily populated area.”
Naomi frowned. She wasn’t happy about being under Morgan’s control again, even indirectly, but that had been a major issue with the location of the SEAL facility when it had first been established: if something ever did go wrong, the people of San Antonio would be at risk. But for a variety of reasons, some good and some bad, that’s where they’d put it. Now it was nothing more than an empty shell, and apparently would remain that way.
“Where is this place you’re taking us to?”
“You’ll find out.”
Naomi looked out the still-open door as the helicopter headed east. A heavy pall of smoke lay over the Los Angeles basin from dozens of fires across the metropolitan area. Nearly every street was backed up as people tried to flee the city. “Where are we going now?”
“San Bernardino Airport,” Ferris answered. “We’ll fly out a corporate jet with the rest of your research team.” He shook his head. “All the other airports from San Bernardino west to Oxnard have been closed. Even LAX. And once we fly out, San Bernardino will be closed, too.”
“They’ve ordered a quarantine?”
Ferris nodded. “Yeah. All flights in or out of the LA area are cancelled. Planes already in the air are being diverted to Air Force bases by friendly neighborhood F-16s. It’s the same sort of thing with maritime traffic with the Navy and Coast Guard sealing the ports, and all the roads have been closed.”
The Last Days: Six Post-Apocalyptic Thrillers Page 34