“It’s just a stress reaction, Colonel.”
McDaniels reached for the secure phone on his desk and brought the handset to his ear. “Rapier, this is Leonidas. Go ahead. Over.”
“Leonidas, this Rapier Actual. How are things going over there, Cord? I see you’ve finally lit up the trenches. Over.” General Abelson’s voice was distant and tinny over the secured satellite link, but McDaniels could still read the undercurrent of tension in his voice.
“We’re doing what we have to do to keep on keeping on, sir. How are things in your sector? Over.”
“Things are improving, Leonidas. Any zeds that are still in the area are being mopped up by security forces all along the coast. New York, DC, and all the big cities are pretty much ghost towns right now, and I don’t expect that to change. But the dead are withdrawing. We’re hitting them with as much air power as we have left on this side of the country, and as you already know, there’s a major ground-based initiative building up to your north. There have been some infestations in southern California, but a good portion of the population has been inoculated. I think we have a handle on that, and we don’t expect the infestations to spread in the proportions they did earlier. Over.”
“That’s good news, Rapier. We’ve been keeping an eye on the maps, and we have noticed the infestation cycle in the west is pretty tame compared to what we’ve seen elsewhere. Good to know that our—” McDaniels almost said sacrifices. “—efforts aren’t going to waste. Over.”
“Negative on that, Leonidas. SPARTA is definitely standing and delivering. What you’re doing is what’s going to keep the rest of the nation alive. That being said, I do have some news that I want to report to you directly. Over.”
Here it comes. “Rapier, this is Leonidas. Go ahead and thrill me, General. Over.”
There was a long pause on the other side of the satellite link before Ableson began speaking again. “Leonidas, we’re about eighty percent of the way into replicating your facility’s functionality in Canada. We expect the facility there to come online in the next couple of days. As such, it would be a good time to start evacuating some key personnel from your site so they can take part in the start-up operations to the north. Over.”
“Rapier, Leonidas. That’s already underway, sir. We’ve been sending several folks out with each Chinook, and the aviators have also been hauling out slingloads of drugs. Right now, we can’t make enough in one pass to even begin to push past a Chinook’s gross weight, so we’ve been stuffing personnel inside the helicopters for the past ten hours. We’ve already sent about eight to ten folks to Carson. Over.”
“Leonidas, I hadn’t known that. I’ll make sure I’m more fully in the loop next time. I’m glad you took the initiative on that, Cord. That was quick thinking on your part. Over.”
“Rapier, thanks for the attaboy, but it wasn’t just me.” McDaniels glanced at the monitors, then at the clocks. The trenches had been burning for almost ten hours straight, and it appeared the intensity was starting to diminish. They would have to start the refueling operations soon, and McDaniels wondered if they could add more incendiary mixture while the trenches were still hot. “Is there something else you needed to advise us of, sir? Over.”
“Leonidas, Rapier. Yes, there is. I’m sorry, Cord. I don’t know exactly how to say this, but… well, it appears the Air Force has greatly overpromised when it comes to their ability to maintain the current operational tempo with the firebombs. Over.”
McDaniels felt the hint of a chill run up his spine. “Rapier, this is Leonidas. Uh… roger that last, but could you give me some clarification? In what way will the optempo be altered? Over.”
He felt several pairs of eyes swing his way. The operational tempo, or the pace in which combat operations were being conducted, had been set in stone. All the defenses were constituted around that tempo. For certain, no one expected the synchronicity to remain unbroken, but the general consensus was that a few hours here and there might not make much of a difference. But if the entire pace of combat was altered substantially, it would have a very deleterious effect on the joint task force.
“Leonidas, this is Rapier. The basic truth is this: the Air Force really didn’t know how many incendiary weapons they had available when we did the forecasting. They’re now coming up far short of what’s required, and it appears they had anticipated the necromorphs would react to them the way normal troops would. That is, they would fear the attacks and do whatever they could to avoid the area of operations. I’m not sure how they figured that, as myself and officers even more senior tried very, very hard to educate them on the kind of enemy we’re facing. I don’t know what to say about that, because this is the worst time for this kind of nonsense. According to the best battle damage analysis I’ve seen, we’ve already killed over a million and half necros, but that’s only about ten percent of their numbers here in the lower forty-eight.” Abelson paused for a long moment to snap off an order to someone on his side, and McDaniels could hear the fury in his voice.
Abelson came back to him a moment later. “Sorry, Leonidas. As I was saying, we’ve serviced only about ten percent of the necros out there. That leaves in excess of ten million walking your way, and according to the satellite coverage over your zone, you’re already surrounded by three to five million stenches. The state of Texas is literally black with them, like they were locusts or something. Because of this, we’re going to start the ground attack earlier than we’d planned. Forces out of Carson are just about fully repositioned now; they’ve been on the move for two days straight. The thing is, the stenches are turning away from them, and heading into Texas. So it looks like the 4th Armored is going to have to drive after them to fight the entire time. Over.”
“Rapier, this is Leonidas. Roger all that, sir. But I’m not sure how that’s going to change the tactical picture from our perspective. Over.”
“Leonidas, this is Rapier. We’re hoping that the 4th will be able to take some of the heat off of you. Whatever is happening seems to have put a real bug in the necros, and they’re just not responding to external events. They still stop to feed, but they’re no longer actively spreading out and hunting. They devour anything in their path, but they don’t deviate from that path. And from what we see, they’re heading straight toward you. All of them. We don’t know why. We’ve heard from some subject matter experts that, in their opinion, something is absolutely influencing the zeds. But we don’t know what it is, where it is, or how it’s operating. If we could define that, then maybe we could do something about it. But the truth is, that’s probably not going to happen anytime soon, so all we can do is try to take the fight to them.
“And that might be where the tactical picture changes for you, Leonidas. We’re going to do our damnedest to thin out the herd. We’ve got air operations going against them right now with every conventional weapon we can get our hands on. Not just the Air Force, but the Navy and Marine Corps as well. Every attack platform we have is going to see action in the next few days. If things go right, we’ll be able to attrit the necromorphs substantially and reduce their capability to reinforce their siege around the task force. Over.”
McDaniels didn’t know what to make of that. Despite everything, even his criticism of the Air Force for not thinking out of the box, Abelson was suddenly doing the same thing himself. He’d reverted back to the old mindset, that firepower would be able to make a difference to the necromorphs.
The damned things don’t recognize firepower!
“Rapier, this is Leonidas. General, you’ve got to get your arms around this, sir. The stenches don’t care how much firepower you throw at them. We just dropped a MOAB on them last night, and it killed a lot of them, but it didn’t matter. Incendiaries are the only things that make a difference. They have to be burned to the ground where they stand. High explosives, antipersonnel weapons, and munitions like that have a greatly reduced effect. You’d probably get better results driving over them with big trucks than by dr
opping JDAMs on them. Injuries don’t stop them, and artillery bombardments don’t frighten them and make them take cover. They just keep walking until something kills them. It’s just that simple, Rapier. Over.” McDaniels couldn’t stop the irritation from creeping into his voice, and by the time he was finished, he was practically shouting into the phone. He became aware that everyone in the TOC was looking at him—not because he was about to blow his lid, but because they had no idea what was being said on the other side of the link.
“Leonidas, this is Rapier. I hear everything you’re saying, Cord. We’re doing the best we can from this end, and we’re not about to sacrifice the facility SPARTA is manning.” If Abelson was at all annoyed with McDaniels’s attitude, he didn’t allow it to show in his voice. “We know the tough spot you’re in, and we’re working to get you out of it. Anything we can throw at the zeds that might slow them down is a good thing, and we’re going to continue to hammer them on every flank. But we all knew going into this that your position was going to bear the brunt of it. I hadn’t thought it would be this soon, but…” Abelson paused for a long moment. “Colonel, if you have any guidance on how we could best prosecute this engagement, I’m all ears.”
“Rapier. This is Leonidas.” McDaniels took a moment to get himself under control. He had to spell it out as succinctly as possible. “Incendiary weapons are the key, General. If we don’t have those, then we’re going to need something with a lot of bang potential. I’ve been told the Air Force only has about fourteen MOABs available. Is this true? Over.”
“Leonidas, this is Rapier. That’s a roger, I’ve been told the same thing. Over.”
“Then start using them, Rapier. They’re not doing us any good sitting in a bunker somewhere. If we can’t get our hands on enough incendiaries, then we’ll need to use some MOABs to buy us some time. We should start dropping them on the horde surrounding the camp—not so close that they ring our bell, but close enough to give us some breathing room. But one thing, Rapier—I’d like to hold two in reserve. Over.”
“Leonidas, this is Rapier. Explain the reason for the reserve. Over.”
McDaniels looked around the TOC. Everyone was watching him expectantly. “Rapier, this is Leonidas. If you can’t get the Air Force to find some more incendiaries, then in a short time we’ll probably have to evacuate this facility. And I’ll need a couple of MOABs to blast a parking lot in the desert so we can make our move.”
***
“So what’s the op?” Switchblade asked. He followed McDaniels, practically trotting to keep up as the colonel set an aggressive pace. Haley and Gartrell walked beside him. Rawlings had been left in the TOC to keep things moving while the others were away.
McDaniels pointed at the row of MRAP vehicles parked off to one side of the airfield. “We need to take a crash course in driving these things. They showed up, but we have only a handful of maintainers who can drive them.”
“Ah, Colonel, this probably isn’t the best time to be thinking about a road trip, sir.”
“I’m pretty plugged in to current events, Switch. But thanks for the reminder. The long and short of it is this: the fucking zoomies apparently can’t count how many incendiary weapons they have in their arsenal, and they’ve come up short. We’ve got enough juice to keep the trenches burning at our current rate for about four days. After that, we’ll be down to physical barriers and bullets. Given that we’ve got millions of stenches outside, we’ll be lucky to hold out for another couple of days before things start getting tight. So we’re going to use that time to evacuate all the civilians we can, then fight a rearguard action until we run out of luck. After that, we mount up and hit the desert.” McDaniels pointed to the MRAPs again. “In these. They’re big enough to carry a squad of Rangers each, and they’re heavy enough to roll over most of the stenches.”
“Is it just me, or am I having a fit of severe déjà vu?” Gartrell said.
“Sometimes the simplest plans are the best ones, Sarmajor,” McDaniels answered.
Haley glanced over at Gartrell. “What do you mean, déjà vu?”
“We made our run out of New York City in a hopped-up four-wheel drive van,” Gartrell said. “One of our guys went ahead in a big wrecker and blasted through the traffic for us, and we cruised through the zeds in the van. It mostly worked out for us.”
“Define ‘mostly,’ Sarmajor.”
“We had active combatants pursuing us the entire time, which kind of threw a monkey wrench into things,” Gartrell said.
“OMEN team.” Haley nodded. “They were still able to fight.”
“And they were just as lethal dead as they would have been alive,” McDaniels said. “There are plenty of other super zeds out there. We just haven’t seen them yet.”
“I wonder why that is,” Switch mused.
“Because they’re using the rest of the stenches to soak up our munitions, so they can take us down once they get ready,” McDaniels told him. “That would be my guess.”
Switchblade snorted. “Kind of giving them a bigger hand than they might be worth, don’t you think, sir?”
McDaniels stopped and turned.
Switchblade almost ran right into him. The soldier took a step back, his eyes wide beneath his helmet.
McDaniels glared down at him. “Major Lewis, it seems you might have your head shoved up your ass. I need you to correct that condition right now. Don’t try and second guess me on this. Whether or not what I said will come true is pretty much beside the point. We need to plan that it will and stage our actions accordingly. Good copy on that?”
“Roger that, Colonel. Sorry, sir, didn’t mean to imply you didn’t know what you were talking about.”
“Like hell you didn’t. Tell you what, let’s make it easy on everyone: I tell, you do. Simple, right?”
Switchblade looked from Haley to Gartrell, but found no support. He straightened and nodded to McDaniels. “Hooah, sir. I’m with that one hundred percent.”
McDaniels turned back to the row of waiting MRAPs. “Let get this done.”
The heavily armored Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles weren’t all that difficult to figure out. After synching up with the lead vehicle maintainer and getting a quick orientation on how to handle the vehicle, McDaniels started one and took it for a spin around the perimeter of the aviation assembly area. It was hardly a Corvette. In fact, it didn’t handle even half as well as a big SUV, but it had plenty of ground clearance and its ensemble of blast-rated armor made it tough as hell. As it was mostly impervious to small arms fire, McDaniels was confident in the vehicle’s integrity even if they came across a group of armed zeds. After all, it was designed to survive rolling over an antitank mine.
“Gotta be careful taking it overland though, sir,” said the NCO responsible for keeping the vehicles maintained. He was an older sergeant first class in his forties with a red face and grimy hands, the kind of maintainer who was a hundred percent hands-on. “It’s got a high center of gravity, which means it can roll over faster than a whore in heat.” He seemed to think about what he’d said, then added, “Pardon my French, sir.”
“Not a problem, Sergeant. You keep the bon mots coming. I’ve got other things to worry about at the moment. How steep a grade can it climb?”
“Depends on the composition of the terrain, sir. Around here, I don’t think we’ve got a lot of things to worry about, but there might be some washes and gullies that could ruin your day. Let me tell you something else, you do not want to get one of these things stuck. I’m sure the zeds can’t get inside, but something tells me it’s going to take more than a call to AAA to get some help.”
“Roger that.” McDaniels stomped on the accelerator and found the MRAP was not only ungainly, but also didn’t exactly have warp speed. “How fast do you think we can make it overland?”
The maintainer shrugged. “Fifteen miles an hour, maybe. Maybe less, since you’ll be plowing through a few thousand bodies. You probably won’t feel much impact
when driving over the bastards, but I’ll tell you this, if you stop, you might not be able to get going again. These things were built to operate in Iraq, but one good thing about Iraq was that there were lots of roads, lots of hardstand to operate on. Out here in the desert, I’d be worried about the wheels getting enough traction to move the rig after a few hundred stenches have gathered around it. Not to say we can’t recover the vehicle with another one, but I wouldn’t be eager to dismount in the middle of stench city with a tow chain in one hand and a weapon in the other.”
“Hooah. I wouldn’t want to do that, either.”
The maintainer pointed at the roof. “Overhead in the cupola’s a .50 caliber, air-conditioned like the rest of the vehicle, with a flex chute that evacuates the casings. And there are firing ports on either side of the vehicle as well. The seating arrangement can be reconfigured to turn this tub into a battlewagon if necessary. But don’t make the mistake of thinking it’s better at that kind of mission than a Stryker.”
“That hadn’t crossed my mind, but good to know,” McDaniels said as he steered the MRAP into a right turn. He cranked the wheel hard, trying to get an idea of how stable the vehicle was in a tight maneuver. It heeled over sharply, but remained upright, even at almost thirty miles an hour. “So if one does become stuck or otherwise disabled, it can still lay down covering fire?”
“Oh, yeah. And packed to the gills with Rangers? I’d imagine it’d be pretty good at that, even if it couldn’t move.” The maintainer coughed and glanced back at the MRAP’s interior. “Hey, sir, you realize not everyone’s going to be able to fit inside these things, right? I mean, even if we use those trucks the Rangers showed up in and the HEMT tankers, I don’t think we have enough rubber wheels to roll out of here with everyone.”
“I know. We’ll be evacuating the civilians out by helicopter starting tonight.”
“Really? Any chance I can get a seat on one of the Chinooks, Colonel?” The enlisted man looked at McDaniels with a toothy grin.
The Rising Horde, Volume Two (Sequel to The Gathering Dead ) Page 16