And it also told Handon something – that Henno was about to take the shot.
He had maybe a quarter-second to consider this. Once again acting on instinct – it was all happening too fast for methodical thought – Handon side-stepped back toward Henno… and gently but firmly depressed the man’s rifle barrel down toward the ground. He wasn’t trying to shove Henno around the battlefield – it was just the most economical way to tell him to hold his fire.
But instantly Henno’s eyes went wide, he angled his head – and gave Handon a look like he’d just groped his little sister, pissed in his pint, and then shat in his hat. It wasn’t a look anyone wanted to be on the receiving end of.
Henno slapped Handon’s hand away from his weapon and brought it back up.
Now Handon braced himself for this all to kick off – and gave himself maybe even odds that he was about to be ripped into meat ribbons by hundreds of 7.62 rounds spitting from six barrels less than twenty meters away from his face.
If he’d known Henno wasn’t going to be deterred, he would have let him take the shot right away.
Because now it might be too late.
Not Kids Anymore
CentCom - Main Aviation Hangar
Sergeant Mann of the Royal Military Police reached the back wall of the last room they needed to clear in the hangar complex – and with just enough time to finish it before the helos from Edinburgh were due to land.
The lighting in this section was natural daylight, from large and dirty warehouse-type windows way up on the steel walls. The MP’s normal duties rarely called them to the hangar, and never went back in the bowels of the place, so they’d been exploring as they went. Mann hit that back wall and turned back around to face McDonagh.
“Done and dusted,” he said. There was nowhere to go but back. Their sweep had turned up nothing – which was definitely his idea of success. He clapped his mate on the shoulder.
But then McDonagh flipped his light back on – and shone it down at their feet. They were both standing on a metal grate. And down beneath their boots was a whole other dark space. And as far as they could make out, it was mostly filled with hulking steel containers.
Mann frowned. “Nothing down there but the aviation fuel tanks.”
McDonagh panned his light around. “Yeah. But it looks like there’s some crawl spaces around ’em.”
“Seriously?” Mann said. “We can’t be fannying around in every cranny here.” He checked his watch. “Those Chinooks are due in ten minutes. We’re supposed to be out on the helipad for it.”
McDonagh shrugged. “They said check everything. Won’t take me a minute to have a look around down there. Just watch my six.”
Mann nodded and hefted his rifle as McDonagh found the section of grate that came up, flipped it up on his hinge, and shimmied down. In seconds, the beam of his light was moving out of sight through the cramped darkness.
Mann took a look at the room around him and the door at its far end. He wasn’t thrilled about McDonagh going down there alone. Then again, he figured he’d be fine. Both of them were NCOs of long standing, both solid and experienced, and both had been in the forces almost ten years.
They weren’t kids anymore.
Mann touched his radio button. “Don’t keep me in suspense.”
“Yeah, mate, sorry. There’s nothing down here, and not much room for anything. Just gonna follow it to the end and loop back round. Hang about.”
“Roger that.” Mann peered into the darkness – but there was nothing to be seen.
No, they weren’t kids anymore. But most of the RMP soldiers who had gone down earlier that day were – they were much younger, and had panicked when the shit started flying. In all the chaos, they’d been unable to keep their cool and make their shots when it counted. And they had been swarmed and taken down – especially by the runners, who were on them in seconds.
Most of them never had a chance.
Whereas Mann and McDonagh had stayed in tight formation, watched each others’ backs, and kept their heads – carefully aiming and methodically making their shots. So they had ended up with a lot of destroyed Zulus and Romeos piled up around them – unlike so many of the young squaddies, who’d ended up with dead piling up on their heads, and ripping them to pieces.
And turning them to the other team.
* * *
“Major!”
Jameson turned to look back across the JOC. Right now he was trying to get his head around a planned artillery barrage on the advancing line of dead in the south. The idea was to have the infantry on the front lines retreat and pull the dead into a pre-planned kill box. Done right, it should not only destroy a lot of dead in one go, it might even create a significant chunk of no-man’s-land between the living and the dead, so the troopers on the front lines could break contact cleanly.
But, obviously, getting it all coordinated was of some importance – when you had gunners dropping 105mm rounds all over the place, you needed the men on the ground somewhere else.
But Jameson’s half-cocked radio operator was calling for him.
“Got the Kennedy back on the blower for you!”
He figured he’d better take that one.
Making a vague gesture at the two clerks who’d been shanghaied into running the indirect fires control station, he got up and threaded through the general chaos – more and more random officers and men were getting recruited and pulled in for duties in here, and each knew less about what he was supposed to be doing than the last – until he finally reached the radio station near the blown-out windows.
“CentCom Actual, go ahead Kennedy.”
“Jameson, it’s Abrams again. Listen, I’ve got our domain expert up here with me, and I’m going to conference him in so we can all get on the same page.”
Jameson took a deep breath, and tried to muster patience and calmness of spirit. “Sure, Kennedy. Go ahead.”
* * *
“Funnily enough, I don’t see you back up here, mate.”
Mann heard McDonagh’s tone of voice change over the radio. “Yeah, well I can hardly breathe from the stench of aviation fuel down here. Whoever tops these tanks either has the shakes, or very bad vision. Speaking of which, I can hardly see my own hand in front of my face down here…”
Mann touched his radio button. “Still got any of those magnesium road flares? Those should help you see much better.”
“Very fucking funny. Hang on… there’s some sort of gunk spread around down here at the far end. Seems kind of bodily in nature… no idea how it would have got down here.”
“Yeah, what say you don’t mess with that?”
“Roger. But there’s also another above-ground crawl space up there, with access from where I am. Just going to stick my head up there to be thorough.”
Mann didn’t like that one bit. He wanted them both out of there, and he particularly wanted them back in each other’s sight. But before he could formulate his objection, he heard what sounded like a series of loud grunts, and then some kind of hissing noise – none of it over the radio, just echoing up from the underground space.
Mann keyed his mic. “McDonagh, what the hell’s happening?” He gave him one second to respond. “McDonagh, status.” Nothing came back – only silence. With no further hesitation, Mann hefted his rifle, squatted down – and jumped down to the bottom of the underground room.
When he got his light on and pointed it forward, he found it was both damned close and damned spooky down there. So he started moving forward at a measured pace—
When something else came across the radio.
It sounded like gurgling.
Fuck caution. Mann put his head down – and ran.
Sequences
JFK - Bridge
Doctor Park touched the corner of his plastic-framed eyeglasses, an habitual gesture of nervousness, as he was hustled onto the bridge. He’d actually just been hustled all the way up here from his lab at the back of the hospital on 03 deck, a
nd across most of the aircraft carrier.
Which was a lot of hustling.
Now as he spilled out into the big bridge, which was naturally lit by wide windows on all sides, his head turned automatically to the view out the front. They were 150 feet above the ocean surface and the view out over the sparkling Gulf of Aden stopped him in his tracks. In the distance he could see twin arms of land enveloping the gargantuan ship and their patch of ocean from both sides – the Horn of Africa on the left, the Arabian Peninsula on the right.
It was a stunning, and actually somewhat bracing, sight. It made a hell of a change from his windowless bunker forty feet below the gray cityscape of Chicago. But, mainly, it underscored the reality of things. They were really here. This was happening. And out there on the land somewhere, the same men who had fought their way into Chicago to save him were now fighting their way into an even more dangerous place.
And they were doing it solely because he, Simon Park, said they had to.
The sailor who had chaperoned Park now handed him off to a light-skinned African American in a senior officer’s uniform. With close-cropped hair, dark with a hint of red, and strong, square lines to both his face and body, he was holding a phone handset to his head, looking serious and attentive, but not anxious or worried.
Which Park figured was probably pretty good for a guy in his job.
Judging from his seat at the center of the bridge, Park also guessed this was Commander Abrams – the former commanding officer of the destroyer, who had assumed command of the Kennedy after Drake got injured and stepped down. Park had heard all the scuttlebutt. And he had seen Drake around the ship a few times since he’d been aboard. But this was his first visit to the bridge, and his first time meeting Abrams. He was slightly intimidated by both the duty station and the man running it.
He was now inside the head of the giant robot.
And the Kennedy was the biggest robot humanity had ever built.
Abrams motioned him over, and when Park stepped up, he hit a button on his station then put the phone down. To Park he said, “This is CentCom on the horn – Britain’s central military command, responsible for running the defense of the whole country.” He leaned toward the speaker. “Major Jameson, I’ve got Dr. Park here. Doctor, the major here would like to know how soon your vaccine will be ready.”
Park took a breath and considered.
He knew the last two things either of these two wanted to hear right now were “It’s complicated” and “It depends.” The fact was that it really was complicated, and it really did depend. But with the fate of the world on the line, and him being stared down by two of the men who had much of the responsibility for saving it, he figured he’d better come up with a straight answer – and ideally a very specific one.
“As soon as we get our early-stage virus sample… the next, critical, and potentially last step is sequencing its whole genome.”
There was a distinct pause on the other end. And as Park looked down toward the speaker, a confident voice with an English accent came out of it. “Right. And how long will that take?”
“With whole-genome amplification and direct sequencing techniques, elution of small amounts of RNA and optimized primers—”
Park wasn’t cut off by Jameson or Abrams. He cut himself off. He belatedly realized that none of this would be of the least interest to these men. None of it would even make sense. “Two to four days,” he said. “Once I get it in a DNA sequencer, two to four days.”
There was an audible exhalation of breath from the other end. “Is it two – or is it four? Because two days might be the difference between Britain standing or falling.”
Park stammered. “I… I didn’t know it was that ba—”
Now the Brit cut him off. “It’s that bad. So I trust you won’t waste any time.”
Park blinked slowly, formulating his answer. “No. Of course not. Just, as soon as we get there, can you please make sure and have a suitable device ready?”
“A suitable device.”
“Yes. An Ion Torrent NGS would be great if you have one. The Applied Biosystems 3700 series would be fine, or even GE Megabase—”
Park found himself cut off again. “You’re saying you don’t have one. A DNA sequencer.”
Park’s face started changing colors. “No. We did have one, briefly – you guys sent it, along with your scientific team.”
Abrams cleared his throat and chimed in. “But then it all kind of went to the bottom of the ocean. Along with that first aircraft.”
Now there was an actual chuckle from the other end. “Oh, this just gets better by the minute…”
Park mastered his discomfort and spoke up again. “You must have one there. Professor Close said you’ve got complete drug discovery and fabrication facilities. There must also be DNA sequencing equipment.”
“I don’t know. Probably is. I gather they’ve got every damned thing under the sun over at that biolabs complex. But the one thing we don’t have is time. We’re SERIOUSLY RUNNING OUT OF TIME, mate.”
Park nodded and swallowed. “Okay. I could do the sequencing work here, or while we’re traveling back there to you. Can you airlift us another sequencer? That could shave days off the total time to a working vaccine.”
This next pause was the longest yet. “Yes, we surely could have done. But here’s the thing.”
Abrams and Park just looked at each other, the former leaning back as if getting out of the way.
Now it sounded as if Major Jameson were speaking through gritted teeth. “The thing is this: It was not two hours ago that we launched just about our last aircraft rated to land on your bloody flight deck. And it was accompanied by our ONE AND ONLY working tanker/refueler, without which the plane can’t fly that far, never mind fly back – and which is even now winging its way to you. So my question to you is: why the bloody sodding hell did you not bring this up two hours ago?”
Abrams and Park eyed each other.
Neither dared speak, each hoping the other would first.
Cataclysm I
CentCom - Main Aviation Hangar
After five seconds of sprinting through the shadows of the underground space with the aviation fuel tanks, Sergeant Mann reached the far end. There was light coming down from above, and he could see the open section of grate that McDonagh must have climbed up through. He ascended using the rungs welded into the wall and stuck his head out. Eyes at floor level, he checked down one way – nothing – then the other.
And there was McDonagh – down on the deck.
Breath ragged and pulse pounding, Mann hauled himself up into the narrow corridor, brought his SA-80 to his shoulder and fast-walked to where McDonagh lay. Looking behind him again, then forward, he lowered his rifle and knelt down to check his teammate’s pulse and breathing.
But he could already see: McDonagh had neither.
Mann stood up and checked both sides of the hallway again. Still nothing.
He knelt down again and made himself look at what was left of his friend. His throat had been ripped out – and his lifeblood still spilled over his neck and cascaded through the grate below.
Oh my God. That was what the gurgling sound had been. McDonagh had been trying to radio for help, with his throat torn out.
“Oh, no, mate,” Mann said, still kneeling down by his friend, his head and shoulders sagging. “Not like this. Not after all this.” Tears fell from the corners of his eyes, and he cursed himself. He hadn’t been there when his friend needed him. It was all too damned much to bear—
Something sounded in the corridor behind him.
He rocketed to his feet and spun round while bringing his rifle up.
There was nothing there.
He spun in place – nothing in the opposite direction either.
* * *
“Yeah,” the JFK commander finally said. “We kind of fucked up there.”
“Yes, I guess you did.” Jameson stared around the JOC. There were still a thous
and things that urgently required his attention, and this call wasn’t really getting him anywhere.
“In Dr. Park’s defense,” Abrams said, “he didn’t know the clock was running down so quickly – he thought there would be time to complete his vaccine once we got it and him back to Britain. And he obviously feels like shit about it. But listen, surely you can find another suitable aircraft to fly us a DNA sequencer on – from somewhere in all of Britain?”
Jameson all but bit his tongue. “I’m afraid Britain’s getting smaller by the minute. And the bits left in our control are in chaos.”
“Can’t you just go to Heathrow?”
Jameson ground his teeth. “No, I cannot just pop down to Heathrow. I’m not in a fucking position to drive out to sodding Heathrow, commandeer a plane, and hijack it to the Gulf of Aden.”
Jameson looked balefully around him, where a dozen people now urgently needed his input – not least on the artillery barrage scheduled to take place within the hour. He needed to be ten places at once. And it was becoming impossible to keep this train on the tracks.
Even for the short time remaining he had to do so.
* * *
Mann froze, feeling the sweat chill on his face.
He started to spin around again, one last time – but too slowly. Something was already leaping on his back, knocking the breath from his body and smashing him down into the unyielding steel grate below.
He instantly felt the terrible pain of teeth ripping into the flesh on the back of his neck, and saw his scarlet beret go flying – and wished, too late, that he’d worn his combat helmet. Writhing and flailing, he couldn’t get the manic thing off his back. And he couldn’t get out from under it – it was pressing him down, and hanging on tenaciously as hell. He managed to get his knife out and stabbed frantically over his shoulder. He hit something, but it wasn’t stopping it.
Mann knew two things now: one, from the speed this thing had hit him, and from the maniacal way it was tearing into him, it had to be one of the crazy new fast ones. Two, he was bitten, and thus already dead. He could even then feel himself weakening from blood loss and shock. Soon he’d pass out – and this thing would devour him. And then it would run off to kill and infect more – maybe right in the middle of the arriving command element landing on the helipad.
Arisen, Book Nine - Cataclysm Page 10