by William Oday
Bryce doubled over and collapsed to the ground.
He was human trash, and he deserved a proper beating. As satisfying as delivering that beating would’ve been, Mason was working and the threat had been neutralized.
Bryce curled up on his side, gagging and coughing for air. Between ragged breaths, he screamed. “I’ll kill you! Kill you!”
Beaten and immobilized, this guy still wanted to attack. Maybe it was empty talk. But maybe it wasn’t. People could do crazy things on drugs. He’d seen it before back in Fallujah. He didn’t think the guy would come back for more, but additional certainty was a simple matter. Mason spun him around, wrenched his hands behind his back, and slapped a pair of plastic looped cuffs on his wrists. He cranked them tighter than strictly necessary because the idiot deserved it.
Mason reached over to the bed and retrieved the clear vial filled with white powder.
Bryce stopped struggling, even as his chest heaved and rattled, gasping for air.
Mason spun the end off and tossed it at a trashcan twenty feet or so away. It sailed through the air leaving a trail of falling white powder behind.
Bryce screamed like a maniac. Foam sputtered from his lips as words choked out of his mouth.
That business complete, Mason turned to Iridia seated on the edge of the bed. Tears splashed down her cheeks, dragging dark streaks of mascara with them. He gently pulled her to her feet and wrapped his arm around her.
“I can’t believe he thought that. I’m not that kind of girl, Mason. I swear I’m not.”
“Not my business,” he said as he noticed the hurt in her eyes. “But I believe you.”
He wasn’t positive he believed her, but it didn’t matter. He needed to get her out of here before this scene got bigger and more dangerous. Already, they’d attracted a small crowd.
“Let’s go,” he said in her ear.
She nodded and looked down at the man she’d pinned her Hollywood hopes on.
“I hate you!” She landed a hard kick to his torso before allowing herself to be dragged away.
Mason would’ve been more than happy to let her kick the stuffing out of him, but his job was to protect her. And that meant keeping her out of court as much as keeping her out of the hospital.
They hadn’t taken five steps when the music crashed to silence. The abrupt transition from overwhelming sound to near silence sent the hairs on the back of his neck tingling.
All the TVs above the bar switched to the same local station. Big, white letters scrolled across a red banner on the bottom edge of the screen—BREAKING NEWS. A reporter read from a paper in her hands. Someone clicked the volume higher.
“Details are incomplete at the moment, but we’re getting reports that Cedars-Sinai and the Ronald Reagan Medical Center are overrun with patients claiming flu-like symptoms. Neighborhood clinics are experiencing similar problems.”
She touched her ear as communication came through the earpiece monitor. “I’m told we have a reporter on the ground at the Reagan Medical Center. Are you there, Kevin?”
An audio feed hissed and then resolved into chaotic shouting.
“Yes, I’m here, Melissa. Just outside the emergency room at the Reagan Center. Sorry, the team is working on patching through a video feed.”
“Can you tell us what is happening there?”
“No one knows, to tell you the truth. There are a lot of scared people. We spoke with—“
Horrific screams momentarily drowned out his voice.
“—urging people to remain calm.”
“We lost you there for a moment, Kevin. Can you—“
The video feed cut from the studio to a scene of barely controlled pandemonium. A young reporter with stylishly coiffed hair stood in front of the entrance to the ER at the Reagan Center.
The scene resembled nothing you ever expected to see in The United States of America.
35
A mass of humanity swirled around the reporter. A throng of bodies jammed the entrance to the ER in the background. Many people in the crowd wore white dust masks. An ambulance with lights flashing sat abandoned by the door. The crowd flooded around it like a river around a boulder.
Husbands and wives. Mothers and fathers. Sisters and brothers. Grandmothers and grandfathers. Babies. The healthy and sick mixed together in a pack of shoving arms and screaming voices. The mass of bodies lodged in the doorway went nowhere. There was nowhere to go. A line of four police officers stood across the interior door, looking overwhelmed and about to crack. They shoved at the crowd, trying to hold their ground. The inertia from the back pushed the people in front forward.
The police fell back another step.
Kevin turned to the camera and swept the hair out of his face. “The authorities are urging people to remain calm.”
A mother separated from the crowd and stumbled into the reporter. She held a young girl in her arms. The girl resembled Theresa at eight or nine. The girl’s face gleamed with a sickly sweat. Her skin shone pale white with irregular, angry red welts. Yellow pus oozed from many of the sores. Her pupils were huge, the empty black nearly swallowing the surrounding brown. The whites burned red with veins like a roadmap.
The mother held a filthy white cloth to the girl’s mouth. Dark stains showed it had been used several times. The woman clutched at the reporter’s shoulder. Her fingers white with desperate tension. “Help my daughter! Please! She’s sick.”
The reporter froze. His mouth open and unmoving.
The girl’s chest spasmed and a dark gout of blood exploded from her mouth. A fountain of gore splashed onto the reporter’s face. The sticky liquid covered him, spilled out of his mouth. The girl continued coughing, sputtering red down her own shirt.
Her mother’s eyes cratered open. Terror. She hugged the listless girl tightly. “It’s okay, baby. It’s okay. You’re going to be fine.”
The reporter clawed at his eyes, flinging away viscera that stuck to his fingers. He spat on the ground.
The woman grabbed at him again, apparently still convinced the poor guy could help her. He had a TV camera pointed at him, he must be able to save the world.
“Help my baby! Please!”
The reporter recoiled, trying to pull away. “Get away from me!”
He yanked her hand free like it was death incarnate. Maybe it was.
She reached for him again.
“Don’t touch me,” he shouted while stumbling backward.
She moved closer. “Please—”
He screamed and leveled her with a vicious shove that sent her sprawling backwards. She tripped and went down hard. Her arms wrapped tightly around her daughter, the woman had nothing to soften the blow as her head snapped back and slammed into the concrete curb.
Her body went limp as blood dampened her hair. It oozed onto the pavement under her head.
A middle-aged man parted from the crowd and knelt beside the woman. He scooped the girl into his lap and held her close, rocking her gently. The woman next to him tended to the injured mother.
“Oh my God! Oh my God!” the reporter shrieked as he continued digging gore out of his eyes.
The shot cut back to the anchor in the studio. A frozen look of horror stared into the camera. A dark shadow crept in from the side of the screen. A man with a headset stepped into the pool of light and nudged the anchor’s shoulder. He laid a sheet of paper on her desk.
She blinked and slowly came to her senses. She read the paper silently and then turned to the camera, as if suddenly remembering millions watched on the other end.
“We’ve just received a couple of emergency alerts. The Federal Aviation Administration has closed the air space over Los Angeles. No flights will be allowed in or out of the city. No traffic of any kind will be allowed in the air space.”
A thunder from the west grew louder and then the source appeared. A squadron of four F-22 Raptors screamed overhead and disappeared in the distance.
Everyone at the rooftop bar watched them
go.
The news anchor shuffled her papers and continued. “The second alert is from the Mayor’s office. It instructs citizens to remain indoors until city personnel get a handle on the situation. No specific information is given, but it appears some kind of outbreak has occurred. Medical facilities are overwhelmed and turning away people with the help of local law enforcement.”
She glanced at the paper again and then to the camera. “Above all, Mayor Garcia urges every citizen of Los Angeles to remain calm.”
A man at the bar turned away from the TV above his head and stumbled toward a trashcan in the corner. Before he made it, a fountain of vomit spilled out of his mouth, splashing the shoes of those nearby. Whether he was just a drunk who couldn’t hold his liquor or something more serious, it didn’t matter.
The thin crust of civility, the unspoken agreement society made to itself to make modern life possible, cracked and crumbled to dust.
Beneath the fragile crust, a vast subterranean insanity tore loose. The crowd of well-dressed beautiful people broke as one and rushed for the elevator. One thought thundered through the herd.
Escape.
Howling screams pierced the air as several of the weaker or less steady patrons were trampled underfoot.
Mason grabbed Iridia’s arm and dashed for the same elevator, hoping to get in before the mob packed the narrow entrance and made it so nobody could get out. A man shouldered Iridia aside as he ran by. A couple of hipsters bumped Mason from the other side as he turned to her.
A dense group rushed for the elevator, sweeping Iridia forward in their frenzied wave. Her arm yanked free and she bobbed away.
In a flash, Mason had the Bonowi baton out and locked to full extension. With measured swings, he snapped the metal rod down on the shoulders of the people separating him from Iridia. Every swing sent another body crashing to the floor, howling in pain. The calculated strikes wouldn’t break bones, but they were utterly debilitating.
The sea of people parted like Moses with the staff.
Mason made his way to Iridia and halted her forward motion.
The crowd packed closer together as everyone funneled toward the elevator. Elbows flew as people jockeyed for space, trying to push through others already stacked in front.
They weren’t going to make it. He wasn’t going to wade through that mess with Iridia. He turned back and fought to move away. He wielded the baton like a sword, whacking bodies that threatened to bowl them over. He parted the mass of rushing flesh and finally pushed free.
There had to be an emergency exit. Stairs that could get them to the parking garage. A single elevator that could hold five or six with more than a hundred people clamoring for a spot was not an acceptable option.
He pulled Iridia along as he scanned the rooftop. No signs that he could see made it obvious. They ran back to the upper level and turned the corner toward the bathrooms. Still nothing.
Surely this place didn’t get permitted with no emergency escape.
He made it around to the bathrooms and was relieved to see a side door that led to the stairs. Not a single body crowded its entrance. Poor souls. If there really was some kind of outbreak, fighting through a mob of spitting, bleeding, drunken imbeciles wasn’t a good way to avoid infection.
Mason threw open the door and pulled Iridia inside. He looked over the guardrails and down an empty, central column of air. Far below, he saw a few people winding down the steps in a rush.
Iridia pulled back and fought him to a stop. “Where are we going?”
“We’ll worry about that later. Let’s get down to the parking garage and get out of here first.”
Mason looked her up and down. She was dressed for dinner with a director. Not for escaping a hotel filled with an increasingly dangerous mob. “Get rid of the shoes.” She’d snap an ankle in those three-inch heels.
Her face screwed up in horror, like he’d suggested she abandon her only child. She reached down and slipped out of them. She looped them on a finger.
“I’m not leaving my Manolos,” she said with a look that dared him to cross her.
“Fine. Let’s go.”
He took her hand and headed down the stairs as fast as she could follow.
36
November 2004
Fallujah, Iraq
MASON approached the next house to be cleared, his M16 in the low ready position. Third squad stacked up at the closed metal door in the concrete wall that fronted the property. A big padlock secured the door shut. Houses here weren’t anything like back home in California. Here they were mini-fortresses surrounded by concrete walls six to eight feet high and a foot thick.
Mason waved to LCpl. Channing. “Channing, you’re up.”
In addition to his service rifle, Channing carried a Mossberg 500 twelve gauge shotgun. It could blast a crater in a body, and it also functioned well as a lock pick. Channing came to the front and aimed at the lock, less than a foot from the muzzle. He turned his face away and blasted the lock to bits.
Lucky had point and rushed through the open gate with his rifle up and ready to fire. It followed his eyes as he scanned the area.
“Going right.” He turned right and disappeared into the courtyard.
Lopes pushed in with his M249 SAW sweeping the courtyard. The light machine gun could send lead downrange at eight hundred rounds per minute. It was a monster. And Lopes wielded it like a true artist. A deadly proficient one.
“Going left.” He hooked left.
The rest of the team filed in, clearing their sectors and setting up their fields of fire.
Mason scanned the area. A two-story concrete house sat back fifty feet. He eyed two dark windows, but didn’t see any movement. He scanned the roof. It looked like so many houses in Fallujah. A three to four foot high concrete wall surrounded a large, flat rooftop used as an outside patio. It was also a protected shooting position. Perfectly suited to rain down fire on anyone crossing the courtyard below.
Not a situation he wanted to end up in.
Third squad hugged the inside of the perimeter wall scanning for threats. None appeared. They hadn’t encountered any resistance yet. Aside from the haji that ran across the street earlier in the day, they hadn’t seen anyone. It was strange. Everyone knew it couldn’t last, but it was hard to stay switched on every second of the endless day.
After clearing twenty or thirty houses with no contact, the brain got complacent. It expected the next room to be clear just as the last hundred had been. But that couldn’t be true forever.
Mason wiped sweat out of his eyes. The searing overhead sun almost made the dark interior of the house appear inviting. Almost. He waved the breach team forward while the rest of the squad provided cover.
Channing examined the door and then slung the Mossberg to his back. He rigged some C4 to the door and strung wires out as he stepped away, hugging close to the house’s exterior wall.
“Fire in the hole,” he shouted.
The wooden door exploded inward and the breach team swept into action. They disappeared into the darkness as the rest of the squad followed on. After clearing a large living room, they stacked up and proceeded down a hallway. Two men peeled off to clear the kitchen and Lucky took point. He moved down the dim hallway with his rifle at the ready.
They came to a closed door on the left. Channing kicked it in and Lucky went in and hooked left. Miro followed in to the right.
“Clear.”
“Clear.”
Mason rolled in behind them and noticed an attached room through an open doorway. He crossed the room and peeked around the corner. It was too dark to make out much. He reached up to his helmet and pulled down night vision goggles. The NVGs flared to life and a high contrast, green and black picture emerged. He leaned around the corner and took another look.
It was a small, bare area with a single item of interest. A large oak armoire on the far wall. Easily big enough to hold a man. Easily big enough to hold trouble.
He cover
ed the closed doors and approached. With the rifle in one hand, he reached out and pulled the handle to open it. His Nomex glove glowed bright green. Images of a smoking barrel flashed through his mind. The brain anticipating death.
The door swung open and no hidden insurgent popped out ready to take them both to Allah. That was not to say the armoire was empty.
It wasn’t.
Mason shook his head. They’d seen it too many times already. Though this was the biggest so far.
“Miro, take a look at this.”
Miro pulled up behind him.
“Whoa! Nice find.”
Inside was a stacked pyramid of RPGs. At least fifty. Next to them were twenty or so AK-47s. Along the floorboard sat a Russian RPK machine gun. Cans of 7.62 ammo waist-high. That much firepower could’ve done some serious damage. It was crazy for it to be abandoned.
But that wasn’t the craziest thing.
The craziest thing was that they’d found weapons caches tons of times already. This was the biggest so far. Mason was shocked by the level of organization. The degree of preparation.
“Get Channing to blow it in place,” he said.
“Copy that,” Miro replied.
Gunfire erupted from the hallway. The sound was deafening. A Squad Automatic Weapon in action.
Mason ran back to the hall and found Lopes on point, his SAW probing the darkness further down the hall.
“I saw something, Sarge,” Lopes said.
“Define something.”
“Muj, I think.”
Mason stared down the hall. Aside from the chewed up walls, the green and black picture showed nothing out of the ordinary.
As long as you didn’t count hunting down killers in the dark corners of a strange desert city as out of the ordinary.
A bright green form flitted across the hall between two open doorways. The distinctive shape of an AK-47 at waist level.
Lopes opened up on the apparition. The muzzle flash lit up the corridor in blinding flares of brilliance.