“So we leave them? We leave survivors to fend for themselves?” Bannon was incredulous. “What is the plan, if it’s not to rescue the helpless?”
The Colonel’s face turned rigid with indignity. He glared at Bannon and the words seemed to scald on his tongue as he spoke.
“We’re in a containment phase,” he said acidly.
“Containment?” Bannon bunched his fists and put them on his hips, “What does that mean?”
“It means we don’t know what the fuck else to do,” Smith gave the answer gravely. “Except hope and pray these undead infected bodies decompose quickly and the whole epidemic burns itself out.”
Chapter 3.
Rough hands shook Bannon and he came awake with a start. “Sorry, sir,” a young soldier was standing over the cot. “But the Colonel wants to see you. Pronto.”
Bannon sat up. He felt groggy. He slapped a hand to his forehead and squinted his eyes. Sunlight was spilling through the window of the infirmary, painting a bright wedge of light onto the far wall. “What time is it?”
The soldier was standing at attention. “Oh six hundred, sir,” he said smartly.
“Jesus,” Bannon groaned. His few hours of sleep had been tortured by graphic all-too-real nightmares. He rubbed the back of his neck and stood stiffly. He had slept in his clothes. He glared at the fresh-faced soldier. “Where is the Colonel?”
“Waiting in his office, sir,” the man’s rely was crisp. “My orders are to escort you there immediately.”
“Christ! Can I at least wash up first… or get a coffee?”
“Immediately, sir,” the soldier said without any hint of sympathy in his voice.
Bannon grumbled. He shoved on his boots and followed the soldier down the hallway and through the infirmary door into bright morning sunshine.
The base was a hive of activity: troops were exercising between ranks of camouflaged tents, and in the distance he could hear the squeal and grind of mechanical vehicles somewhere below slow rising clouds of dust.
The Colonel’s office was inside a large pre-fabricated building, broken into a hive of administrative and operational segments. Bannon followed the soldier down narrow corridors until they were standing outside the same room he had been escorted to the night before. The soldier tapped politely on the door.
“Come!”
Bannon stepped into the room.
The Colonel was seated at the end of the table, and Smith, the intelligence officer was beside him.
There was no sign of the government man Bannon had met the night before. He went to the end of the conference table and stood, waiting. The Colonel and Smith looked up at him. They were both bleary-eyed and somehow haggard so that Bannon wondered if either of the men had even left the room through the night.
The Colonel sat back in his chair and yawned. He scraped his hands through his hair and then propped his elbows on the edge of the table and laced his fingers together. It was a contemplative gesture, somehow made unsettling by the man’s unnerving gaze. Bannon felt a sudden stir of foreboding.
“We have come to the conclusion,” Colonel Fallow said like a judge about to pronounce sentence, “that we believe you.”
Bannon frowned. “What?”
“We believe you about Sully,” Smith cut in. “We’ve analyzed your information and made an assessment of the circumstances you described. It seems highly probable that you’re telling the truth.”
Bannon recoiled, and narrowed his eyes. “Well fuck you very much,” he said dryly.
The Colonel’s face darkened. “Son, you will watch your tone. Military or not, I don’t like your attitude.”
“Well how the fuck do you expect me to react, Colonel?” Bannon’s voice kept its angry edge.
“Relieved,” the Colonel barked. “Because now we believe you, we are going to send a team in to find this Sully and bring him out of Grey Stone.”
Bannon shrugged. “So?”
The two soldiers exchanged glances. Smith gave an almost imperceptible nod of his head, and the Colonel swung his eyes back to Bannon.
“So, while the special team is in Grey Stone… they also have instructions to look for your wife – and rescue her.”
Bannon said nothing. He felt a strange surge of euphoria – a rekindling of some emotion he thought he would never feel again.
Hope.
The Colonel snatched up a photograph that had been laying facedown on the tabletop. He held it up. It was an eight by ten inch black and white image of an attractive blonde haired woman. The photo looked slightly blurred.
“This is your wife, right?”
Bannon nodded, not trusting his voice.
“Last night a witness who escaped Grey Stone three days ago says he saw your wife, alive.”
Bannon blinked. The surge of relief came sweeping over him so that he clutched at the edge of the table to support himself.
“Where was that photo taken?” he asked, his voice choked.
“We picked it up off some surveillance footage,” Smith said vaguely, “and then verified it with the witness.”
“Who?” Bannon felt his senses swimming. “Who is the witness? Can I speak to them?”
Smith shook his head. “Sorry,” he said, his facial expression tight. “It was a local man, but he was evacuated last night.”
The Colonel’s voice interrupted before Bannon could speak again. The big man’s tone was abrupt… and ominous.
“But there’s a catch to all this,” Colonel Fallow said.
Bannon flinched. “A catch?”
The Colonel pushed his chair back and stood up suddenly, as though his imposing size and weight would somehow lend persuasion to his next words. He walked the length of the long table until he was standing close to Bannon, staring at him.
“We want you to join the team.”
“The rescue team?”
“Yes.”
“And go back into Grey Stone?”
“Yes.”
Bannon felt a sudden heavy sickness of fear slide around in the pit of his guts. “Is that necessary? You have a photo of Maddie…”
“But we don’t have one of Sully,” Smith said from the far end of the table. “Not a current one. You said that yourself.”
“We need you with the team,” the Colonel said slowly, measuring out every word for emphasis. “You’re the only one who can positively identify Sully.”
Bannon closed his eyes for long seconds and felt something lurch in the back of his mind. He opened his eyes again, slowly.
“You bastards,” he said in an appalled whisper. “Oh, you cunning, clever bastards!”
Colonel Fallow didn’t move. Smith stood up from the table and came quickly.
“You’re playing me,” Bannon said as the realization struck. “You don’t give a fuck about Maddie. You’re using her as bait – bait to get me to go back and identify Sully.”
The Colonel’s face remained impassive. “That’s right, son,” he said, and his voice turned suddenly cold. “We’re giving you no option. If you want your wife rescued, then you join the team and you help us find John Sully. That’s the deal.”
“Why” Bannon snapped.
“Because we need Sully,” Smith crowded close and thrust his face into Bannon’s. The intelligence officer’s eyes glowed with some kind of fanatical flare. “He’s crucial to our nation’s survival.”
“How?”
“Because he is somehow immune from the virus. We need him in a lab, immediately. We need to know what makes him tick. It’s America’s only hope.”
Chapter 4.
There were four soldiers and two men wearing flight gear waiting quietly in the conference room when Bannon answered a summons from the Colonel at midday.
Smith and the strangers were pouring over maps that had been spread across the long table, and pinned haphazardly to walls. The Colonel was nowhere to be seen.
“What’s this about?” Bannon asked. He stood in the doorway, and his eyes we
re wary.
Smith looked up from a map. “We’re planning the op,” he said. “This is the team that is going into Grey Stone to get Sully and your wife… and these two men are helicopter pilots,” the office nodded. “I thought you would like to meet, and help with some local intel.”
Bannon regarded the four soldiers bleakly. “Where are the rest of them?”
“Rest?” Smith lifted an eyebrow in question.
“The rest of the rescue team?”
Smith shook his head. “This is it.”
“Just four men?”
“Yes.”
“But… I thought you would send in a whole… like a hundred or more.”
Smith shook his head. His voice was flat and emphatic. “This is the team,” he said. “We can’t spare any more men, or the equipment.” He stepped away from the table and crossed the room. He took Bannon by the arm and steered him into a corner, away from the others. “Our best hope is to get in and get out again quickly. This has to be treated like a snatch, not an attack,” he dropped his voice, so that Bannon alone could hear. “We believe it’s the best chance of success. A larger force means more noise, more co-ordination, more elaborate communications… and use of choppers and hardware that, quite frankly, we just can’t spare.”
Bannon was appalled. “Four men won’t be enough,” he heard the bitter heaviness in his own voice. “They’ll be overrun.”
Smith’s expression tightened. “Mr. Bannon, these men are JSOC – do you know exactly what that means?”
Bannon shook his head.
“It means they’re the best,” Smith said simply. “The Joint Special Operations Command teams are made up of SEAL’s, Marine Special Ops and the Combat Applications Group… the new name for DELTA. They’re the best in the world – and they’ve operated on missions like this before in hot-spots around the globe. They have to be enough, because there is no alternative.”
“Then we’re all fucked,” Bannon snapped acidly. Suddenly he was shaking with anger. “Didn’t you hear a damned thing I told you? These undead bastards have an incredible sense of hearing – they sense sound and movement before we can. As soon as they pick up the vibrations of your helicopter, they’re going to start swarming towards the sound. When we set down, they’ll come from everywhere!”
“I hope so,” Smith said softly.
“What?”
“I said, I hope so,” Smith’s voice was unnaturally calm. “It’s part of the plan. And so is fitting a speaker to the helicopter. We’re going to fly over Grey Stone and broadcast.”
“You’re fucking what?” Bannon’s voice rose sharply.
“We’re going to circle the town and broadcast an announcement before landing.”
Bannon said nothing. He felt the blood drain from his face and a creeping chill of shock.
Smith smiled mirthlessly and spoke with small sharp stabbing gestures of his finger for emphasis. “Sully is still part human. He hasn’t turned. When we fly over the harbor we’ll broadcast a message to him. We’ll tell him we are a rescue force coming for him. We’ll tell him where we are going to land. He’ll meet us there. And so, hopefully, will your wife.”
“And about a thousand fucking undead zombies!” Bannon hissed.
Smith nodded, conceding the point. “But we’re sending two Black Hawks, and one team, Mr. Bannon. The second helicopter will fly over and land, then take off and land somewhere else – and keep repeating the process in a series of false insertions to lure the undead towards it… and away from the team. That distraction is going to clear most of the undead away from the LZ. And the team will take care of the rest.”
Bannon sighed. He took a long deep breath. “What’s an LZ?” he muttered with resignation.
“Landing Zone,” Smith said. “In fact that’s one of the reasons you are here right now. We want your local knowledge of Grey Stone. We need to locate a suitable site to set the chopper down. Somewhere with a clear field of fire, in case things don’t quite follow the script and we need to be on the ground longer than expected.”
He took Bannon’s arm again and led him towards the long table. The six assembled men stopped speaking and looked up. Their eyes were hard, and steady. The soldiers looked Bannon over with a veiled group hostility that was a reflection of their team’s tight, closed bond. He was an interloper, an unwelcome intruder.
And an untrained civilian.
Bannon returned their frank scrutiny with a calm steady gaze, meeting each man’s eyes, before moving to the next. The men were unshaven, dressed in an assortment of clothes and fatigues that gave them the unkempt arrogant air of men who did not readily conform to normal military regulations. Their faces were intelligent, their eyes alert, and they carried themselves with the unaffected confidence of elite athletes.
The group opened up grudgingly for him. Smith hovered in the background, excluded by body language, and made introductions.
“Mr. Bannon, this is Paul. He is the team leader.”
Bannon shook hands with a tall muscular man who had square faced features and a jaw like an anvil. Bannon guessed the man to be in his early thirties. He was lean and muscular, with an unruly mop of dark curly hair. He had an inch-long scar on his cheek, the discolored skin puckered and in the final stages of healing.
“Howdy,” the man said in a broad Texan drawl.
“And these other characters are the rest of the spec ops team,” Smith’s tone became amiable. He clapped a hand on one of the men’s shoulders. “John, George and Ringo.”
Smith did not introduce the two helicopter pilots.
Bannon gave Smith a dry, withering glare, and then shook hands with each of the special forces team. Smith went on quickly, snatching at a large map of the Grey Stone coastline and smoothing it out flat with his hands.
“Now – help us,” he said. “We need to find a suitable LZ.”
The special forces men gathered around either side of Bannon as he scanned the map, locating local landmarks. He stared at the marina complex, and stabbed at it with the tip of his finger.
“Those buildings along the waterfront are destroyed,” he said. “Sully and I saw them explode. This whole area around the waterfront is chaotic, and was crawling with undead.”
On the map, the harbor looked like the shape of a horseshoe, with the long arms reaching out into the ocean, and the marina complex built around the broad end of the bite. Bannon traced the line of the road, following it towards the coast.
“Here is the actual town,” he said. “There are maybe fifty small businesses along this strip of road, and the ground rises as it nears the coastline.”
The team leader leaned in closer and narrowed his eyes. “So the population base is along the contours of the coast?”
Bannon nodded. “It’s about a mile from the marina to the business area,” he explained. “The coast beyond the harbor to the south is rocky – lots of high ledges.”
“And what’s this?” the man Smith had named as Paul tapped a clear area of featureless terrain.
“That’s the lookout,” Bannon explained. “It’s a high hill that overlooks the harbor. You can see the road into town branches off and leads to a loop at the top of the crest. It’s a tourist drive for visitors that doubles back on itself.”
“Wooded?”
“Some,” Bannon said. “But the best place for a landing zone is between the rise of the lookout and the business strip. There is a sporting field right… here…” he tapped the map. The soldiers all craned forward, their brows furrowed with deep concentration.
“Tell us about it.”
Bannon shrugged. “It’s a sports field – a large flat area with a good line of sight to the road and the businesses, but it’s also protected by the high cliffs on the coast side.”
The soldiers all exchanged glances, secret messages sent with their eyes.
“What about the other direction – heading out of town?”
Bannon shook his head. His finger went back to the m
arina. “If you imagine the harbor being the center of Grey Stone, then it’s about a two mile drive before you get to the bridge,” he explained. “The river winds its way down from inland and spills into the harbor here,” he scratched a mark on the map with his thumbnail. “But the bridge was built to cross the narrowest point in the river, so it’s further away from the waterfront.”
Smith hunched his shoulders and leaned over the map, studying it closely. “Is there any clear ground between the marina and the bridge?”
“No,” Bannon was emphatic. “Houses mainly, some small clearings but not enough for your purposes.”
“But enough clear ground to land a chopper?”
“Sure – but not enough clear land for a good field of fire when the zombie fuckers come to kill us.”
Smith grunted. He turned to the two helicopter pilots. The men wore serious expressions. They poured over the map.
“Clearings along the roadside aren’t going to work for the false insertions,” one of the pilots stared at Bannon as he spoke. “Every tower and every road is a strike zone – too many wires, and too much risk. We need you to identify areas we can land a chopper between the marina and the bridge that are isolated from obstruction.”
Bannon frowned. He went back to the map and thought for a moment, and then drew a circle with his fingertip. “That’s a hill,” he said. “It’s a camping area.”
The pilot who had spoken looked up at Bannon and fixed him with a withering look of contempt that every man in the room recognized. “I can see it’s a hill, dumbass,” the pilot said dryly. “I can read a map. What I want to know is whether it’s a clear area or not.”
Bannon nodded. One of the special forces soldiers grinned. Bannon felt his cheeks flush. “There’s another clear area there,” he pinched off the words, “but I imagine it would take some pretty precise flying. It’s surrounded by trees.”
Smith smiled to himself mirthlessly. “Don’t worry about that, Mr. Bannon,” he said. “These pilots are from 160 SOAR – the Special Operations Aviation Regiment. They’re the best chopper pilots in the US military. It was helicopters from the 160th that flew our SEALS in to get bin Laden. Precision will not be a problem for them.” Smith straightened slowly and glanced at the team leader.
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