“Right here, sir.” He took a game trail uphill, off the road, until they came to a small depression where the foliage was squashed flat. The area still held a funky chemical smell that was similar to the cordite of firearms. He pointed at the launcher that had been discarded.
“Shit . . .” Marks was rubbing his face. “That’s a clue, C-L-U, Command Launch Unit for a Javelin missile.”
“How bad is that?”
“Well . . . it’s not standard issue on a submarine, that’s for damn certain. I can’t imagine any use for one at our base in Antarctica. Whoever these folks are, they must have done some foraging on their way home.”
“Could we have missed a base here? I mean locally?”
Marks was shaking his head. “We hit them all, I’m sure of that. South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, though . . . there’s a lot of hardware down there that they could have grabbed on their way north.”
Josh took a knee and hoisted the launcher unit onto his thigh. “Well, maybe they left it here because they only had one missile.”
General Marks was looking down at him and shaking his head. “If you’re going to work with me, you have to get out of the habit of wishful thinking—we have enough of that shit going around already.”
“Yes, sir.” Josh filed away the words for playback later, but as he held the missile launcher that had destroyed the Bradley, he found himself thinking Marks, pretend general or not, might have a valid point.
“We might as well bring it with us. It’ll make a hell of a thermal sight for the roadblock, and I’m pretty sure we even have some extra batteries that will work with it.”
As they worked their way back downhill to the freeway, the general pointed back behind them. “Talk to your teams, Josh. No sense having our scouts within shouting distance of the barricade. Push them out further east, another couple of miles. Whoever these people are, I can’t imagine they’ll come at us directly.”
That made sense to him. He took in the new automobile barricade when they reached the freeway. Sandbags were being placed between the cars, firing steps were being built behind the wall, and there were now three Bradley M2s anchoring the roadblock. There were similar improvements being made at two other roadblocks; one eight miles to the west on I-64 where Highway 29 crossed the freeway, and the third on 29, north of the city. He wouldn’t want to attack something like that.
*
Trey Nathans had watched through his rifle’s scope as the two Charlottesville assholes walked out to where Salguero had fired the Javelin. He could generally find something to hate in any orders, but his current ones really rubbed him wrong; he could have serviced both of the targets with ease. The colonel wanted these assclowns to think they’d been scared off. He’d managed to get a decent photo of the guy wearing stars on the lapels of his BDUs. It wasn’t anybody he recognized, but Skirjanek was an Army full bird; maybe it would be somebody he knew.
*
Chapter 17
For Jason, the last week had been a blur. They’d started moving people and supplies out to the Lansdowne resort and the surrounding subdivisions. The whole area was about fifteen miles northwest of Tysons towards Leesburg, set back off of Route 7 in the direction of the Potomac. There were large cleared green spaces, parks and two golf courses they could farm, with close access to the river for irrigation. All of it was surrounded by a sea of housing anchored by a resort hotel and an upscale retirement home. There was more housing than he thought they’d ever need, but it was spread out and had, compared to the Tysons area, wide-open spaces from which to see an enemy coming.
It was going to be a process. The dead were the problem; their remains “remained,” as Pro had pointed out with a snicker during the first day of the effort. They could only move people as fast as the cleanup crews could “reclaim” the respective housing. Wells were being dug, but the old man, Charles, was really the one who knew what he was doing, and they were running the old coot ragged. For his part, he’d spent the last two days with a large team, patrolling the routes between Tysons and their new home and beyond.
Most of the survivors they’d come across had wanted nothing to do with them and taken off at the first sign their space was being invaded. A couple of the team members had expressed some concern or guilt over the fact that they might be scaring away good people. He didn’t agree. They weren’t forcing anybody out; they were forcing people to focus on his patrols and NOT the growing caravans of trucks moving back and forth on Route 7. Caravans that could have been followed. They wouldn’t be able to keep the new location secret forever, but he wanted to push that envelope as far as he could. Every day they had to work on the defenses and infrastructure was a gift.
A few of the people they’d come across had stuck around long enough to hear them out, and signed on. He’d enjoyed being out of the fishbowl that he considered Tysons to be, and spending time with Rachel was a bonus.
At the edge of consciousness, he was aware of her sleeping form next to him. They’d been so exhausted from working a sixteen-hour day that they both had figured they’d pass out after their showers; they’d been wrong. Probably to be expected since they’d shared the shower. He was still worried about how Elsa was going to deal with the fact that he and Rachel had taken over the master bedroom, but Rachel had laughed it off and told him to quit worrying.
None of that helped when the bedroom door opened after a couple of very quick knocks. “Jason, Jason!” He was just awake enough to realize it was Elsa. In a panic, he sat up in the bed just as Loki slammed into him. Loki jumped back to the floor and ran in a circle, barking once.
Awake but still in a fog, he did his best to focus on Elsa. “What’s wrong? You OK?”
“Yeah, Daniel is on the radio. Says you have to come meet him right away.” Elsa glanced over at the lump in the bed that was Rachel. “Sorry, he said it was really important.”
“It’s OK, you did good.” He gave his head a shake. “I’ll be right down. Do me a favor and take him with you.” Loki knew when he was the subject of the conversation and got excited all over again. He made a couple of tight circles and let out another bark in expectation before Elsa could get him out of the room and shut the door behind him. He stared at the closed door, thinking that maybe Rachel had been right. If Elsa was wigged out at the thought of him and Rachel sharing a bed, she’d hid it very well.
“I hate that dog . . .” Rachel mumbled without moving.
“Liar.” He glanced at the clock; it wasn’t even eight a.m. yet. The schedule had them starting at noon today. “Sleep, I’ll be on the radio if it’s anything important.”
The top of the mall’s parking deck looked like the carnival had just arrived. Pallets and piles of supplies were strewn all over in a rough line fronting the entire edifice. Lines of trucks were being loaded to be sent out to the new site later in the day. He was almost amazed at the industry of the place. They were well over six hundred people now, and everyone was working. What didn’t get moved in the next few weeks probably wouldn’t be. Gas was starting to go bad. Tanks of the stuff had been located, but it all had a shelf life; same with the tons of food they were moving.
Crops they’d planted at the nearby sports fields would be tended. They had to be; it was too late in the year to plant all over at the new location. That said, on Charles’s advice, they had already starting plowing and turning over the parkland along the Potomac River in preparation for next spring.
He was staring at a team manhandling a cast iron stove into the back of a panel truck. He could see a half dozen of the things already loaded. More shit he wouldn’t have thought of, he realized. A lot of their people would be in single-family homes whose gas furnaces were never going to run again.
Daniel clapped a hand on his shoulder as he walked up from behind. “When Bauman had us collect those, I didn’t imagine we’d live long enough to need them.”
Jason shook his head. “What’s happened?”
Daniel gave his head a jerk and wal
ked off a few paces. “Ray came up on the radio this morning. He wants to meet with you.”
“He came back?”
“Not exactly.” Daniel shook his head. “He says he ran into another group, led by an ex-Army colonel. They asked him to arrange a meeting.”
Ex-military? How was that possible? People in the service had died along with everyone else. They had been the first group to be hit really hard; they generally lived on top of each other in ships or barracks. They hadn’t stood a chance against the virus.
“Asked him?”
“That’s what he said,” Daniel confirmed. “Ray sounded fine, a little pissed off that he wasn’t on the way to Georgia, but he didn’t seem squirrely.”
“Where?” There was no way he was going to take people to a meeting with someone he didn’t know.
“That’s the part that sounded legit. Ray said the colonel insisted on leaving that to you. He and two others are waiting with Ray at the 66 and Route 28 interchange. Ray said he wasn’t going to bring them any closer.”
“Huh.”
“What? That’s a good thing, right?”
“Yeah. It also means whoever has Ray isn’t stupid. Either a good thing, or a very bad thing.”
“What do you want to do?”
He thought for just a moment. “I’ll need Reed’s team. Gather them up quietly, stay off the radios. Have them meet me at the Reston Town Center, at the fountain in an hour. I’ll call in Rachel.” Part of him didn’t want to involve her, but there wasn’t anyone he’d rather have watching his back through a rifle scope.
“I’m on it.” Daniel made to move away.
“Daniel?”
“Yeah?”
“Have you told Michelle?”
“She was the one on the radio with Ray. Something about how this was your rice bowl.”
He shared Daniel’s grin. “Good.” The last thing he needed was another pissing contest with Michelle.
“He looks to be alone.” Rachel’s voice in his ear was welcome. He found himself wishing they were on a private channel, but Reed and his twenty-person fire team were all listening in back at the Reston Town Center, a mile and a half away. He’d set up to meet Ray, alone, at the toll road’s interchange with the Fairfax county parkway. Rachel, with Pro acting as her spotter, was set up on the roof of an adjacent office building, and they had a line of sight back down the parkway.
He heard Ray’s motorcycle before he saw it appear at the bottom of the overpass. Jason knew he was exposed in the worst way, but he was putting his faith in Ray. The guy could have screwed them over a number of times by now, starting with the whole Carla thing. He’d told Ray to come alone, and it looked like he had.
That said, as Ray came to a stop in front of him and pulled off his helmet, he very much wanted to raise his rifle. He settled on the crosshairs that he knew Rachel had painted on the man’s back.
“Didn’t expect to hear from me, did you?” Ray grinned.
“Can’t say that I did. I’d be a lot more welcoming under different circumstances.”
“Yeah . . . I get that,” Ray said slowly.
“How far did you get?”
“Ran into their roadblock on 15, about four miles north of I-64. They thought I was with Charlottesville. A couple of Marines almost punched my ticket.”
“Marines?”
Ray looked at him and shook his head, smiling to himself. “You aren’t going to believe this, but . . .”
Ray’s story was beyond incredible, but he figured if anybody had outlasted the virus, they would have had to have been somewhere like Antarctica or sealed deep underground in a bunker. He’d listened to everything Ray knew about this Colonel Skirjanek, but it was at the point where Ray had handed over his gun and radio to him, saying it had been the colonel’s suggestion, that he started to hope he wasn’t being played.
Ray had followed him back to the Reston Town Center on his bike. Jason waited for Rachel to report that the toll road and parkway remained clear of traffic and then ordered her to keep a watch as he picked up Ray’s radio.
“Colonel, do you copy?”
He was about to repeat the question when the radio sparked to life.
“Copy, this is Andrew Skirjanek, formerly an Army colonel.”
Jason held the radio to his chest, thinking, and looked at Ray.
“I think you can trust him,” Ray said.
“Colonel, you and your two men are clear to proceed to the Reston Town Center. Are you familiar?”
“Affirmative, I’m familiar with the area. I did a tour at the Pentagon. Lived in Arlington for a time.”
“Copy,” Jason said back. “I’ll meet you at the main fountain.”
“Do you have a preferred route for us?”
“If you are not playing straight, Colonel—your route is unimportant.”
“Understood. Proceeding toll road. Myself, two passengers. Twenty mikes.”
“Copy, twenty mikes.”
He sat Ray’s radio down on the lip of the fountain and relayed the arrangements to the rest of his team on his own radio.
“We are going to play it straight. If they roll in here with just three people, fingers off triggers unless something happens. We’ll have them surrounded, and they know it. Let’s give them a chance to say their piece.”
He turned to Ray. “What are they driving?”
“Ford truck, one of those Raptors—all black, shiny wheels. The Russian’s evidently a huge fan.”
He did a double take. “Russian?”
“They brought a bunch of Russian scientists with them from Antarctica. Sorry, I should have mentioned that.”
“You think?”
“He’s a soldier like you. The colonel guy seemed to trust him. He was a Spits nast, or something like that.”
“Spetsnaz?”
“Yeah, that sounds right.”
Jason rubbed at the bridge of his nose, thinking that he really could have used another hour or two of sleep this morning.
Shit . . . “People, be advised. They are driving a black Ford pickup.” There were so many ways this could all go wrong.
Pavel brought the pickup to a stop on Reston Parkway in front of the Town Center. They could see into the large courtyard surrounded by high office buildings. Ray was in plain sight, standing next to his motorcycle and beside another man with an M4 harnessed to his front, two hundred meters down the far-too-narrow bricked roadway.
“Colonel? You are certain you want me to drive in there?”
There wasn’t anything to like about the tactical situation. The courtyard was a killing ground surrounded by bunkers. Drew had figured on something like this. Whoever this Jason was, he was playing this smart.
“This is their show, Pavel. And we will play it very cool, gentlemen.”
Lieutenant Bruce spoke up from the back seat. “Not like we have a choice, sir.”
He didn’t have a choice. They had to find an ally, someone they could trust, or he might as well give up on what he was trying to do and live out his days in The Hole as the world’s most heavily armed shut-in.
“Go ahead, Captain Volkov.”
Pavel patted the steering wheel once. “Is pity to destroy such a wonderful machine.”
“Oorah, sir.” Lieutenant Bruce at least pretended to be a little more enthusiastic.
“What are they waiting for?” Ray and he were looking at Skirjanek’s truck, sitting in the median of Reston Parkway, pointed at the entrance to the Town Center.
“He’s taking a big risk,” Jason answered. “Tactically speaking, this place is the barrel you shoot fish in—and your friend knows it.” He had every intention of hearing the guy out and playing it straight, but he hadn’t asked for this meeting; the other guy could take the first step.
“Not my friend,” Ray countered. “Just the guy who abducted me and plied me with some good scotch.”
He was about to make a joke about how he hadn’t figured Ray for a cheap date.
“
Doesn’t look like the driver’s too excited about this.” Reed’s voice in his ear was comforting. He knew Reed was watching with binoculars from the fourth story of the office building directly behind him.
I wouldn’t be either. “Copy. Remember, we play it straight.”
“Here they come,” Ray said.
Jason made a show of rotating his M4 around to his back, where it was far less accessible. “I sure hope you’re right about these guys.”
The truck came to a stop twenty feet away. Ray let out a breath that sounded like he’d been holding it. “Me, too . . . that’s the colonel riding shotgun. The Russian is behind the wheel, and the guy in the back seat is one of the Marines.”
Here goes nothing. Hyperaware of his sidearm in its holster, he took a step forward and beckoned them with a wave. He let out his own held breath when the doors opened slowly and the three men landed in the roadway with empty hands, except for the laptop held by the guy Ray had said was the colonel.
His worst fear had been one of the many versions of asshole full birds he’d come across while in the service. The type of officer who’d memorize a new power word for each morning’s briefing and then use it repeatedly during what followed. Or the guy whose grandfather had gotten men killed in WWII, before fathering a son who had been fragged by his own troops in Vietnam—but not before siring the asshole who thought he was the second coming of Napoleon, fighting insurgents in the Ghaki pass in Afghanistan while holding to a belief that they could “win these people over.” He’d dealt with all types, and even a few he’d have followed into hell on a word.
Skirjanek didn’t look like a colonel—period. Holding the laptop, with a pair of reading glasses lassoed around his neck, if it hadn’t been for the boots and BDUs, he’d have guessed he was some ultra-fit college professor. Just shy of average height, with a slim wiry build and a hawkish-looking face that was all sharp angles, the guy looked like a triathlete.
Seasons of Man | Book 2 | Reap What You Sow Page 16