“That’s a stretch, Admiral. However, it would seem as if every adult had one.” Zhen frowned and slid his shot glass forward for a refill.
Ignoring the gesture, Qi kept his gaze locked to the video playing on the tablet. Once the screen went dark, he asked, “What do you propose, Captain?”
“We steam up the Chesapeake,” Zhen replied. “Annapolis Military Academy is close to our objective. School was not in session when America fell to the dead. If we make landfall there we can continue onward overland and pick our ingress route from among many. If this small city of two hundred and forty thousand is any indication of the odds we’ll be facing on land, docking in Baltimore would be suicide.”
Qi steepled his fingers. After a moment’s contemplation, he said, “I’ve already ruled that out. The estuary is too narrow for my liking. The entire cruise we will be vulnerable to attack from all sides.”
“With all due respect, Admiral. Protocol says we must monitor the airwaves for enemy radio traffic at all times.” Zhen folded his arms across his chest. “Surely you’ve picked up numerous radio transmissions by American units in the area. Which would explain the quick dismissal of my proposal, no?”
More steepling and contemplation occurred on Qi’s side of the table.
Zhen helped himself to another measure of the still warm baijiu. What can the admiral do? he thought as he reached across the table to refill Qi’s glass. Run me up the mast? Send me home?
Qi nodded. Voice even, he said, “It’s silent out there. Which is why I’m hesitant to chance bringing the oilers, auxiliaries, and landing ships. Perhaps we should recon first with the Lanzhou.”
“And leave the rest of the fleet here like unguarded sheep? I’m certain that if there was enemy activity in Norfolk or beyond, your warship’s sophisticated suite of sensors would have already picked up something.”
Qi set his jaw. Peering out the porthole, his face seemed to go slack. He picked up the direct line to the bridge and said two words: “Drop anchor.”
Though he couldn’t hear what was being said on the other end, Zhen still watched with feigned interest as Qi listened to the commander on the bridge.
“Yes,” Qi said. “We stay the night here. Put fresh bodies on the bridge and tell the others to sleep and be ready to throw lines at 0300.” He hung up the phone and looked Zhen square in the face. “If you ever disrespect me like that again, Captain, I will have you fed to the jiangshi.”
Zhen’s lips were twin white lines. He stood at attention and saw his reflection in the seated admiral’s shiny bald pate.
“Ready your vehicles and weapons and then rest your men, Captain Zhen. We will make landfall at first light and then go into the heart of decadence as saviors in the eyes of her remaining populace.”
Salutes were exchanged and Qi ushered the captain out ahead of him. “I hope your assessment is correct, young Captain. For if it is not, all of those days spent on the open sea will have been wasted.”
Zhen merely nodded and, with the sound of the door closing at his back, stalked off in the opposite direction of the elitist, Communist-Party-loving ingrate.
Chapter 36
Davis left Cade at the entrance to the building housing Nash’s new office. A stone’s throw from the TOC, her new one-level digs reminded him of his dentist’s office back home. With its gently-pitched roof, multi-paned windows and horizontal metal siding, the place looked as if it had been designed in the late eighties when aesthetics of government facilities were, at best, an afterthought.
The pair of doors out front were mostly glass and locked. He pushed the doorbell button next to the jamb and got no results. So he knocked until an interior door sucked in and the diminutive major poked her head out.
Expecting Nash’s face to light up like it always did when any of the boys her satellites followed into battle graced her doorstep, instead Cade saw her swallow hard and take a few tentative first steps across what looked to be some kind of waiting room designed to hold two dozen people and appointed with nearly twice as many magazines all stacked haphazardly on low wooden tables.
Nash wove her way through the two-dozen chairs arranged like a big S with one of the magazine-laden tables at their center. Muttering an apology, she threw the lock and ushered Cade in from the cold.
“Major,” he said, offering up a cursory salute.
“Save that crap for someone else’s daily affirmation,” she said, locking the doors behind them.
Not quite sure where this was coming from, Cade put his hands at his sides. “You wanted to chat before the pre-mission briefing?” he asked, his tone conveying the concern he was feeling.
“Come,” she said, pointing him into her office, which at first glance appeared three times the size of her previous one.
Instantly it struck Cade that he hadn’t once been in Nash’s office—at least here at Schriever—when the AC unit wasn’t cranked so high that his nipples could cut glass. In fact, it was warmer inside her central office than the childrearing magazine graveyard he had just been ushered through.
Nash closed the door and stood staring up at him. She was wearing a long-sleeved shirt that looked to have been taken straight out of the Air Force Academy gift shop. The official flying eagle image was emblazoned on it in silver and gave him the impression someone had painted a crude target on her chest. She wore the same camouflage ABU pants as the emergency personnel. Tucked into her black boots and bloused to perfection, the contrast the two articles of clothing presented was telling: part civilian soccer mom and part soldier.
She said, matter-of-factly, “I hear you had a close call with a PLA missile on your way here.”
“Nothing Ari and his aircrew couldn’t handle.” He let his gaze roam the plaques on the wall as Nash circled around behind her desk.
Seeing the Delta operator inspecting her inner sanctum, which was painted in muted pastels and walled in on one side by half a dozen four-drawer, steel filing cabinets, Nash said, “This used to be the family services building. Although I would benefit from both these days, I got rid of the anger management and AA pamphlets when I moved in.”
Duncan’s recent successes in that arena on his mind, Cade said, “Lots of people could benefit from those kind of pamphlets.” Steering the conversation to the Eden survivors, he gave the Cliff’s Notes version of how they were sitting going into winter. When he began to shower Nash with thanks for giving his family the antiserum injectors that had recently saved Brook and Gregory’s lives, the woman made a face and raised a hand, stopping him mid-sentence.
“Sit,” she said, motioning at the modern chrome and leather chair sitting front and center before her white ash desk. Pulling her rolling chair from the knee well and dragging it across the carpeted floor, she added, “We’re both going to have to be sitting for what I need to tell you.” She parked her leather high-backed chair beside her desk, sat down hard and swiveled it so that she faced him at a slight angle.
Cade’s mind raced, trying to determine what piece of information might be so dire in nature that he needed to be sitting to hear it.
Nash said, “We’re finding that the antiserum for Omega isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.” There was a pregnant pause. “What we thought was shaking out at a roughly fifty-percent success rate early on has dropped off to half of that.”
“Better than the alternative,” Cade said pragmatically. “Before Taryn found the doctor’s thumb drive a Z bite meant certain death. Now it doesn’t. If you ask me, I’d rather put a revolver with just one round in the chamber to my head than one with a full cylinder. And I’m pretty damn sure anyone else finding themselves staring down a fate like Desantos suffered would be singing the same tune.”
“Me too, Cade. But what I’m trying to tell you is that even the patients the antiserum worked on initially are starting to show side effects. Some of the early trial survivors have died of complications we’re attributing to Omega’s introduction into the system.”
“What about
antibiotics? That’s usually the go to where viruses are concerned, right?”
Nash shook her head. “Antibiotics work on infection.”
“Some of these early survivors … did they turn after they died?”
“The doctors are in the habit of destroying everyone’s brain. It’s become routine no matter the cause of death. Call it superstition. I don’t know.”
“I hope you’ve changed that practice on the previously infected.”
“New protocols are in place,” Nash said. She grimaced and added, “However, a week ago a soldier from the 4th ID who was infected weeks ago and saved by the antiserum—.” There was a long pause. “He just up and died.”
“And?”
Nash shook her head. A slow, sad, side-to-side wag.
Incredulous, Cade asked, “They didn’t take him to the morgue. Open him up and see why?”
The major shook her head. “They didn’t know to.”
Cade saw her hands begin to tremble. He looked her in the eyes and saw they were misted over.
Nash swallowed hard and said, “There were a whole bunch of dropped balls. To the doctors it appeared as if he’d died of a heart attack. IT folks are in high demand elsewhere. Means the hospital staff are all still charting on paper. And this soldier’s chart was misplaced by someone. So they put him aside and started in on a civilian who had been crushed by a mishandled section of freeway barrier.”
Seeing where this was going, Cade leaned back against the leather chair-back.
Nearly crying now, Nash said, “The previously fit thirty-eight-year-old soldier reanimated on the gurney after showing a near full recovery from his bite wound.” Another pregnant pause. “And the antiserum he had been saved with came from the same batch as Brook’s.”
The last sentence hit Cade like a gut punch.
“Brook is on the road to a full recovery. I’m sure of it,” he said, trying to ignore the niggling sensation that he might be lying to himself.
Sensing a widening channel of denial concerning Cade’s perception of the ramifications of what she’d just divulged and, though she was certain that nothing she would say or do could divert the human missile once he’d been launched, Nash still said what was on her mind. “I totally understand if you want to get on the next bird to Bastion. I would expect no less.” She quickly dried her eyes on her sleeve and met his gaze.
Seeing the look of concern parked on the usually stoic Air Force officer’s face, Cade said, “Thanks for the heads up, Freda. But I’m a big boy. And Brook, she’s a nurse. She’ll catch anything strange going on inside her own body. And if she already had suspected something was up, she would have said something to me about it.”
“How can you be certain she’ll know what it means? This is all uncharted territory.”
Cade said nothing.
“I think you should tell her,” Nash pressed. “It’s the right thing to do for all parties involved. For Raven, especially.” She dug in her desk drawer and came out with a pair of satellite phones complete with power cords and the factory-provided paperwork. “These are charged. You asked for them last time we spoke.”
“I’ll take them,” Cade said, ignoring the timing. “We gave up one of the others so we could keep in touch with our new allies in Bear River.” Feigning a smile, he handed back the warranty information. “No need for this.”
Nash took the papers and tossed them on her desk. “The phones come with a couple of conditions,” she added.
Cade arched a brow. “Everything with you comes with at least one.”
Nash’s expression didn’t change.
He asked, “What are your conditions?”
“You have to tell Brook and at least one other person at Eden who you can trust about the 4th ID soldier.”
“And let them draw their own conclusions?”
Nash nodded.
Steering the conversation away from this new curveball served up by Mr. Murphy, Cade said, “New office. Springs walled in and Z free. Seems like things are changing real quickly in your neck of the woods.”
“Things are changing all over the United States. We are starting to hear from communities like Bear River that are springing up all over the country. And around here,” she said, drying her eyes on her sleeve again, “up until now, with the some of the Joint Chiefs recovered and bending the President’s ear on matters of the military, I’ve been left to my own devices. Kind of set adrift, if you will.”
“We’re lucky to have gotten a healthy Tommy ‘Two Guns’ McTiernan back in the fold. He is the man, Freda. He’s Devil Dog through and through. Be glad he’s running the show now. Besides, you’ve been assigned to head this one up.”
“Still makes me feel like the kid who gets picked last at recess.”
“So how have you been earning your pay?” Cade asked.
“I just send the sats where I’m told and the imagery is piped directly to Cheyenne where I understand IT folks have been working round the clock to upgrade and EMP-shield the computer servers.” She looked at the clock on the wall. “We better be getting to the TOC.”
“I’ve got an idea where we’re going,” Cade said, before divulging the where and why and then, finally, how he’d come to the conclusion.
“The Long Beach mission played a big part,” Nash conceded. “Eavesdropping on Ari and Haynes during the flight over from Bastion … that’s dirty pool.”
“By any means necessary,” Cade said flatly.
Eyes still glistening, Nash said, “Very perceptive. You know we can’t let the PLA get there first. They’ve already made landfall once. You’ll see all of the latest satellite imagery at the briefing. Short of Pearl Harbor, these are the boldest moves an enemy of the United States has ever taken against her. They know we are severely hamstrung and that’s emboldened them. We have very few pilots and to a person they are exhausted and, pardon the metaphor—flying on fumes just like their aircraft. Air and ground resupply missions are still ongoing, however, not with a frequency that’d make me comfortable. The latter have suffered huge rates of attrition. And where the flights in and out of Schriever and Carson were practically nonstop in August and September”—she shook her head—“the pace of air operations here in October has slowed to a trickle.”
“Mother Nature?” Cade said.
Nodding, Nash answered, “She’s a bitch. We’ve had one major snow event here that grounded everything. Without the necessary number of weather sats to keep us connected to NOAA’s ground-based observatories, high-atmosphere weather balloons, and the picket of buoys deployed in territorial waters, there’s no way for the TOC to accurately predict what kind of conditions our air assets are likely to face when they do go out.”
“If the Farmer’s Almanac is anywhere close to right in its prediction for this winter we’re going to be snowed in at Eden and you’re going to be hard pressed to get birds in the air in order to watch your flanks, let alone keep tabs on the enemy and Zs migrating the warmer climes.”
“Way too many variables to worry about now,” Nash conceded, just as the phone on her desk emitted an electronic warble.
Nash snatched the handset off the cradle, announced herself and then listened intently for a handful of seconds. Without saying a word, she ended the call and replaced the handset.
“Lopez?”
She said nothing.
“It’s bad, isn’t it?”
She nodded again. “Ruptured appendix. He’s in surgery as we speak.”
Knowing that likely meant he was leading the mission, Cade hung his head and said a silent prayer for Lopez and the men he was about to take down range with him.
“The TOC awaits,” Nash said. “And after the briefing see about having Davis outfit you with everything you’re going to need … starting with a proper set of fatigues.”
Recalling Duncan’s quip, he said, “What … you don’t like the Mission Impossible look?”
“It is slimming on you, Wyatt. But if you’re going to be leading
a team into battle …”
Confirmation, he thought. “Copy that,” he said, thumbing on the sat phone and dialing a number from memory.
Pursing her lips, Nash rose from her chair.
“Go ahead without me,” Cade said, thumb hovering over the illuminated Talk button.
With Brook and Raven and Cade occupying her thoughts, Nash padded from the office, leaving the man alone to make what she guessed to be the toughest phone call of his life.
Chapter 37
Wilson had been taken completely by surprise when the front door suddenly swung away from him. To make matters worse, he had also been leaning forward and about to apply a technique he’d seen Cade employ to gain entry through a locked door when the human silhouette materialized in the very point in space the door used to be. With all of his weight in the middle of transferring off his back foot and into the forward kick, he was left totally vulnerable to whatever bad intentions the armed person had in store for him.
As he pitched forward, a gnarled hand slick with what smelled like blood grabbed his gun hand and pressure was applied to the rifle, causing the sharp iron sight atop the slender barrel to cut into his neck. At the same time the camouflage boonie hat slid backward off his head and settled softly between his shoulder blades, its fall arrested by the leather chinstrap.
Furious at himself for succumbing to the same fate that had already befallen Taryn two times now, he began pleading for the shadowy figure to let go of him.
***
Behind the wheel of the Raptor, Taryn had given up on her bid to snatch the radio and call down to Daymon for help. Instead, she powered down her window and thrust her face and both arms through the opening. “It’s me,” she said. “Taryn, from the compound west of here.” She watched the face at the end of the AR-style carbine go slack for a quick second. Then the woman brandishing the gun raised her cheek off the stock and glanced at the tattoos encircling Taryn’s forearms. When the woman finally flicked her gaze back to Taryn’s face, the blank look was gone and in its place one of full recognition.
District: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse Page 21