“I hope he’s right.”
The LAV finally pulled up alongside the other Marine vehicles by the plane. Jack tossed off his helmet and dropped into the guts of the big vehicle where he found Naomi. She was awake, her forehead covered in sweat. “How you doing, babe?”
“Okay.” She managed a smile. Jack looked at her leg. Terje had carefully dressed the wound and applied a splint. Melissa was holding one of Naomi’s hands, and he spied Alexander’s green eyes peering out from under the girl’s seat.
The back doors flew open to reveal Carl, Renee, and a handful of Marines.
“Oh, God, hon.” Renee put her hand to her mouth and tears gleamed in her eyes when she saw Naomi.
“Let’s get her out of here,” Carl said. Looking at Jack, he added, “We don’t have any stretchers.”
That’s when Jack noticed that it was awfully quiet outside. “Hasn’t Ferris started up the plane?”
“Not yet.” Carl’s expression wavered between anger and resignation. “He doesn’t want to start them until he’s taken as much fuel as he can from the tanker.”
Jack glanced over at the plane. A tanker truck, much like the one Boisson had been driving, was parked behind the wing. A thick hose snaked over the runway from the truck to the plane, where the end was plugged into a receptacle in one of the wheel wells. A blond woman in a flight uniform tended the tanker’s controls.
“He knows we have lots more company coming from the south and east, right?”
“Yeah, I told him. I almost threatened to shoot him, but he was adamant about getting every drop he could. But he’s right. We don’t know how far we might have to go.”
“That won’t help us if we never get off the ground.”
Together, the three men managed to get Naomi out of the rear compartment, and with the help of one of the Marines took her over to the forward hatch of the plane.
“Jesus, how are we going to get her up there?” Jack looked up the trunk that led to the flight deck. “We’ll need a rope.”
“I think I have a better idea,” Terje said. He had one of the Marines bring over an LAV, and they carefully lifted her up onto the back deck. Then they backed it up to the leading edge of the port side wing. The LAV’s hull was just high enough that they were able to pass her over to a pair of Marines on the wing. From there, they were able to get her through the over-wing hatch.
“Sorry about that,” Jack told her as they laid her down in one of the fold-down bunks in the rear of the plane.
“It’s okay,” Naomi whispered. Even in the dim light, she looked deathly pale.
He leaned down and dabbed some of the sweat from her forehead with a cloth, then kissed her. “I love you,” he whispered.
“I love you, too.” She managed a brittle smile. “Now get us out of here, please.”
“I’ve got her, sir.” Jack looked up to see the corpsman.
“And I brought someone for you.” Renee was carrying Koshka, who’d been handed up the forward ladder. Naomi reached for her injured cat, who immediately curled up between Naomi and the fuselage.
“Major Dawson.” It was his LAV gunner on the radio.
“Dawson. Go ahead.”
“Sir, we’ve got hostiles breaking through the southern perimeter and heading our way.”
Jack looked at Carl. “Did you catch that.”
“You’re not the only one who has a radio.” He looked at Jack, a sick expression on his face.
“I’ve got this,” Jack said, a sinking feeling in his stomach.
As he headed for the nose hatch, he found that Terje and Melissa, who was holding a disgruntled-looking Alexander, were both right behind him. “And where do you think you’re going?”
Terje just cocked his head and looked at him. “Do you have to ask that every time?”
“Yeah,” Melissa said. “That’s really dumb.”
He looked at her and just shook his head. He leaned down, taking her face in his hands. Despite the disfigurement of the Morgellons disease, he saw nothing but a strong, beautiful girl who deserved more than any of them the chance to survive. “Not this time, kiddo. You stay here and take care of Naomi, okay?”
“But I’m good luck for you.”
“You sure are. But your luck stays here. This plane needs all the luck it can get. Okay?”
“What about Alexander?”
“You keep him here, too. He won’t be able to help me on this one.”
“Be careful.” The girl’s hoarse words were nearly lost as she hugged him, burying her face in his shoulder. Jack could feel Alexander squirming between them. Then she gave Terje a quick hug before turning and running aft to Naomi.
“Hey!”
They turned to see Ferris leaning out of the pilot’s seat, staring at them.
“Did any of you clowns realize a bunch of bugs are coming at us down the runway?”
“Get going, Jack,” Richards said. He reached out to shake Jack’s hand. “Good luck.”
“Come back to us, you two.” Renee looked like she was about to cry.
“Yeah. Come on, Terje.” He paused in the cockpit before dropping down the ladder to the runway. “We’re not going to be able to hold them for long,” he told Ferris.
“I know, I know! It took us forever just to get the damn pump on the truck started, but I’ll save that story for later. We’re taking on fuel. It’ll take about five more minutes to suck the tanker dry, then I can start the engines and do the shortest pre-flight checklist I can get away with. So, figure maybe ten minutes altogether before I can get us in the air.”
Jack looked out the windscreen at the mass of harvesters coming up the runway. Ten minutes. He swallowed hard. “You’ve got it.”
“And Jack, you’ve got to make sure none of those bastards are on the runway when we roll. If one of them jumps into an engine on our takeoff run, we’ve had it.”
“Right. No worries.” Jack dropped down the ladder, Terje right behind him. “Marines, we need to buy the pilot ten minutes,” he called over the common radio channel as he climbed into his LAV. “I want three Humvees guarding the plane, one on each side and one to the rear, in case we get any company from that direction. Everybody else, mount up and form up in a V formation with the point centered here on the runway and the wing vehicles out on the east and west taxiways. We’ll head down the runway to the south and blast everything that moves. Any questions?”
There were none. No one bothered to ask how they would get back to the plane before it took off. Jack figured they were smart enough to answer that themselves.
As the LAVs and Humvees cranked up and took up their positions on either side and behind him, Jack was reminded of the old poem The Charge of the Light Brigade.
“All vehicles,” he called over the radio. “Commence firing!”
***
The thing that had once been Vijay and was now masquerading as Kurnow watched from her vantage point below one of the main landing gear wells, where the main fueling port was located, as the Marine vehicles began to fire on the non-sentients moving up the runway.
Kurnow had originally planned to do anything necessary to ensure the destruction of the humans at the airport and prevent the escape of everyone who had been at the lab, but that had changed when it saw the humans load a biological sample cooler into the plane. It could only contain one thing: the virus. Spreading the virus now took precedence over killing the humans.
Until then, Kurnow had been stalling the efforts to refuel the plane, giving her non-sentient cousins a chance to draw nearer. It had gone so far as to disconnect one of the electric leads to the pump when Ferris had come down from the cockpit, furious at its feigned incompetence. Kurnow had contemplated killing him, but the FBI agents and, after Richards and the convoy arrived, the Marines, would have killed it, and there was no way to be sure no one else in the group could fly the plane.
After persuading Ferris to go back to the cockpit, Kurnow had reconnected the electrical lead and got the fu
el flowing.
The sound of the pump on the tanker truck changed. Quickly moving to the controls, she saw that the tank was finally empty. She switched off the pump and shouted to one of the FBI agents guarding the nose hatch. “Tell the pilot we’ve got all we’re going to get!” Then she ran to the wheel well, disconnected the fuel hose, and dragged it clear.
As she climbed into the truck to drive it clear of the plane, the number one engine began to turn.
***
“Hot damn, we’ve got gas,” Ferris exclaimed. They’d taken on a hair over thirty-eight thousand pounds, which was a lot less than he’d wanted, but more than he’d hoped for. The truck could have been mostly empty, but instead had been mostly full. He hit the starter switch, keeping his eyes glued to the instruments as the inboard starboard engine began to spool up.
“How far can we go?” Richards asked.
“Like the old saying goes, it all depends.” Ferris shrugged. “It’s a matter of air temperature, pressure, prevailing winds, weight, and all the other technical stuff. Remember, in the old world, we’d have all that information at our fingertips and plugged in before I hit the starter switch. Now I don’t know shit. Even trimming this bird is going to be a guessing game. I think I can guarantee five, maybe six hundred miles, and if we have a nice tailwind up our ass we might even make a thousand before we turn into a flying brick. But I’d stick with five hundred to be on the safe side. We could probably stretch it a few more if we absolutely had to, but I really like to walk away from landings.”
Richards looked at him, shocked. “Only five hundred miles?”
“What, you were hoping for a trip to Bermuda? Come on. This plane can hold five times the amount of fuel that dinky truck pumped into the tanks.” He moved the engine’s throttle to the start position and breathed a sigh of relief when the fuel ignited and the engine temperature began to rise. Then he began the start procedure for number two. “We’re lucky as hell we got what we did.” Taking his attention from the instruments for a moment, he looked up at Richards. “When we were bailing out of SEAL-2, you suggested Denver. That didn’t make sense then because we would’ve been eaten along the way. It makes a lot of sense now, because the bugs can’t fly. Better yet, let’s shoot for Colorado Springs. If we have a government left, it’s probably at the NORAD bunker in Cheyenne Mountain.”
Nodding, Richards said, “Then that’s where we’re going. If NORAD’s gone, we’re pretty much screwed, anyway.”
THE LIGHT BRIGADE
The Bushmaster cannon on another of the LAVs went silent. One by one, they were running out of ammunition. But the machine guns kept hammering at the harvesters, continuing to pile them up in a flaming barrier around the southern end of the runway.
The harvesters were oblivious to their grievous losses, but they learned. Some vaulted impossibly high over or through the flames, while more made their way around the ends of the barrier formed by their flaming kin.
“They’re flanking us,” Terje said, pausing to reload the light machine gun he’d liberated from a dead Marine.
“I know.” Over the radio, he said, “Watch the flanks! They’re moving around behind the fire line, trying to get in behind us.”
The vehicle commanders acknowledged, but one ended in a scream. The Humvee on the far right flank disappeared under a mob of harvesters that had poured over the fence from the cover of the Platte River.
The two LAVs on that side hammered the breach closed. Both of them ran out of cannon ammunition.
“Come on, Ferris,” Jack said as he glanced over his shoulder at where the KC-135, looking like a toy, still sat motionless on the runway almost two miles behind him. “Get that fucking plane out of here!”
***
“What’s happening?” Naomi heard the words as if someone else had spoken them. The pain from her leg came through in slow, lapping waves through the fog of the painkillers, and her thoughts were disjointed, unreal. It was hard to focus. “It feels like an earthquake.”
Melissa peered down at her. “It’s the engines. Mr. Ferris is getting ready to take off.”
Groaning with the effort, Naomi propped herself up on her elbows and looked down the expanse of the cargo compartment toward the cockpit. The plane was frighteningly empty. She could see Carl. Renee. A few FBI agents and civilians. Everyone but Carl was strapped into the red fold-down seats along the sides of the fuselage.
No Jack. No Terje. No Marines. The only one in uniform was the Navy corpsman, who was tending one of the civilians.
“Where’s everyone else?”
“Mr. Richards said…he said we had to go. Jack knew…” The tears came then. “He and Terje knew they wouldn’t be coming back.”
Naomi shook her head. “No. No. Come on. Help me.”
Sitting up, she felt like she was going to vomit.
“You shouldn’t get up!”
Naomi got to her feet, hanging onto the edge of the upper bunk that was still folded against the fuselage. “Help me or get out of my way.”
Melissa slipped an arm around Naomi’s waist, helping to support the side with the injured leg, and Naomi began a tortured stagger toward the cockpit.
Behind her, Koshka stayed on the bunk, watching with eyes dilated wide and her ears laid back. Alexander was a dark shadow on the floor underneath.
The corpsman saw her and got to his feet, rushing to her side. “Ma’am, you can’t…”
“I can and I will.” She shoved him away and kept moving. The cockpit seemed like it was a mile away and slowly rotating to the left. She nearly fell, but Melissa managed to keep her up.
“Naomi!”
She looked over to see Renee, who also got up and limped over.
“Don’t try to stop me.”
“I’m not.” Renee put Naomi’s other arm over her shoulder and wrapped her own arm around Naomi’s waist to help Melissa. Melissa had managed to hold back her tears, but Renee was making up for her. “This whole thing is insane, but I don’t know what else we can do.”
They finally made it to the cockpit, giving Carl, who was standing between the pilot and copilot’s seats, a scare when Naomi reached out and touched his arm.
“What the hell are you doing up?” He demanded. “I was just going to call up the Marines from our guard detail. You need to strap back in. We’re taking off.”
“No, we’re not. We’re not leaving the rest of them behind.”
Behind him, through the windscreen, she could see flames licking the sky near the end of the runway and the threads of the tracers the Marines were firing into the dark, undulating mass of monsters that were trying to slip by them. “They’re buying time with their lives so we can get the virus out of here,” Carl told her. “That’s the only thing that’s important now, Naomi. The virus. All of us are expendable.”
“No, we’re not!” She wanted to slap him, but was afraid she’d fall. “With every one of those things that’s spawned, every human life becomes more precious. Every single one, Carl. We’ve left enough people behind. I’m not leaving anyone else.” She remembered all the people they passed by on their way to Lincoln from SEAL-2. They couldn’t have taken many into the convoy, but they could have taken some. There were empty seats in the Humvees, the trucks, and the LAVs. They didn’t stop because it might have endangered the mission. But if their mission didn’t include saving people, especially their own, then what was the point? “I’m not leaving without them. If you want to go, that’s fine. But I’m staying here.”
“Jesus, Naomi, don’t you dare pin that guilt trip on me! You know what’s at stake here. We’ve got the entire world riding on our backs.”
“I hate to break up the debate,” Ferris interjected, “but every second you two stand there pissing on each other is that much more fuel we’ve burned. Make up your goddamn minds!”
“Naomi…”
She turned away. Shaking off Renee and Melissa, she staggered toward the trunk that led to the nose hatch. Her leg gave out, and she
would have fallen had Carl not grabbed her.
“Goddamn you, woman,” he muttered, helping her into the empty navigator’s seat. “Ferris, get Dawson on the radio.”
***
Jack was reloading his machine gun with the last box of ammunition when Carl’s voice came over his helmet earphones.
“Dawson, do you read me?”
Jack glanced behind him at the gray shape at the far end of the runway. “Why the hell haven’t you taken off, yet?”
“There’s been a change in plans. Pack your bags and get your asses back here. You’re coming along after all.”
Holding back a bitter laugh, Jack told him, “Thanks for the offer, but there’s no way. If we try to break contact and hightail it back to you, the bugs will follow right on our heels and the plane’ll be overrun.” There was no reply. “Richards, did you copy?”
Another voice came on the radio. “We’re not leaving you and the others behind, Jack.”
“Naomi, listen to me! There’s no other choice!”
“Yes, there is. Just hold on. We’re coming to get you.”
“Naomi…Naomi?” He slammed the receiver on the machine gun closed, pulled the charging handle back, and squeezed the trigger just in time to blast a pair of harvesters about to hop into the Humvee to his left. “Naomi, did you hear me? Don’t do this! Just take off and get out of here!”
There was no answer. Glancing back to the north end of the runway, he thought he saw the big jet move.
***
Ferris shook his head. “I don’t have enough curse words to use for this level of stupidity. You idiots are going to get all of us killed.”
“Just shut up and do your job,” Richards told him.
“Yeah, I can do my fucking job, Richards,” Ferris replied angrily. “You want me to taxi down to the south end of the runway, pick up our gang, and then just turn around and take off. But what you don’t understand is that we may not be able to make that damn turn. This pig with wings doesn’t have thrust reversers.”
Reaping The Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 3) Page 35