Turning Point (Book 1): A Time To Die

by Wandrey, Mark

  Ann had left that morning for an OB appointment. In the days since he’d found out he was going to become a dad, Vance had made some progress toward accepting the inevitable. The problem was his age, of course. Fifteen years’ difference between him and Ann was not insurmountable in the modern era. It would, however, turn heads, especially her father’s head, and that was bad. Bad enough that he’d never approve of his darling daughter taking up with an aging divorcé. Add to that the fact that her father owned about half of San Antonio and was a Congressman, and it went from bad to worse. He’d have to tell the man he’d gotten his daughter pregnant.

  He turned to an update from a page called Truth_Underground.net. Vance hoped it would be interesting enough to make him forget the situation he’d gotten himself into. It was. The story from Mexico had been simmering for a few days. The news was treating the situation as a drug-fueled attempt to pull off a coup, thereby making the drug lords the legitimate government and giving them the ability to terminate the Americans’ war on drugs.

  “War on drugs,” Vance snorted as he followed the story, “more like a war on liberty and freedom.” He didn’t agree with some of his more radical Libertarian friends that all drugs should be legal, but he did agree the drug war was a straw man to erode patriotic Americans’ freedoms.

  This story was a first-hand account of a man stuck in Matamoros, Mexico, who was trying to get back into the United States. The government had locked down the border crossing, and he was sending streaming video through a hacked connection every few hours. He uploaded a new video, and it was going viral in a big way—over a million views in less than an hour. It took Vance three tries before he even got the page to load!

  At first it was just a POV shot from a crummy little hotel room as a man complained the Mexican army was not allowing them to leave the building. Then there were shots outside, and he carried the camera out onto the room’s tiny balcony and aimed it down at the street.

  Troops had established a checkpoint less than a block from the hotel. Two armored cars were parked nose-to-nose, effectively blocking the street. In addition, they had piled up sand bags to create a pair of improvised firing positions, and machine guns had been set up in each. Vance watched intently. This looked more like Somalia than Mexico!

  It was not clear where the shots were coming from, and the camera kept erratically pointing here and there, trying to locate the source. Then the camera captured a group running toward the blockade. The soldiers issued challenges, but the men and women showed no signs of slowing. The image was poor quality, and Vance couldn’t tell if they were attacking or fleeing something. It didn’t matter to the troops, who opened fired at 50 yards.

  Vance jerked violently upon hearing the chatter of an M16 in three-round burst mode. Bullets smacked flesh and bone with impacts even the tiny camera picked up. Two people went down, and the crowd staggered to a stop. Screams of pain and protest rose in the evening. He hadn’t realized it was night, until then. He didn’t understand Spanish, but he picked out the word “No” as the troops yelled it over and over.

  Several people knelt to help the wounded as the crowd continued to grow; more and more people rushed into the street. Vance guessed the crowd swelled to 100 in just 10 seconds, and still more came, pushing the others from behind, forcing them to creep forward. The soldiers were getting nervous and fired into the air over the crowd’s heads. There were more screams of confusion, but whatever had driven the crowd this far had them more scared than the soldiers’ guns.

  Then there were new screams. These came from around the corner, behind the crowd, and they were like nothing Vance had ever heard. They were visceral and primal guttural bellows that were barely human. A hellish grinding of rage and horrible, unspeakable need combined to make the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. The troops fell silent, and the crowd roiled like a bucket of worms. Some kicked at locked doors, and a few piled into alleyways jammed with overfull dumpsters. Another hideous scream sounded, and the crowd responded like a bomb, exploding toward the troops.

  A few small arms spoke immediately, and people fell, but only a few. The camera focused on the roadblock; the machine gunners were looking back at their commanding officer and screaming, their faces a mixture of fear and confusion. The commanding officer shouted more orders, and one machine gun roared to life, but by then, the crowd had already reached them.

  “I don’t know what kind of riot this is,” the camera holder said, pulling back in shaky movements as the crowd enveloped the soldiers and their guns fell silent. “Everything just went crazy a few days ago. I’ve been getting second- and third-hand reports of riots all over Matamoros and other border cities. With the fighting in Mexico City, we think the legitimate government is hanging on by a thread. A friend thinks it’s Islamist fanatics, but there are no demands, and the Islamic hate sites are all silent. No one knows what to do; no one knows what the rioters want!” It was a plea for answers to the unanswerable.

  The camera focused on the checkpoint again. Some of the soldiers were fighting with the rioters, but most of the civilians were racing past them down the avenue. The border crossing was only three miles that way, and there were more shots from that direction.

  The horrendous screams sounded again, this time carried by many more voices. Vance turned the sound down a little—it was inhuman and gruesome. Most of the crowd was past the troops, who were trying to reorganize and treat their wounded. Vance was surprised to see the men appeared alive and mostly uninjured. A few guns were missing, including one of the heavy machine guns the crowd had carted off. In fact, the mass of civilian wounded far outnumbered the military, who had organized again and were stopping the crowd. Using batons and tear gas grenades, the soldiers finally regained control.

  The screams were closer now, and the camera moved to the end of the block where the crowd had first appeared. One young woman staggered around the corner clasping an infant to her chest. Blood covered her left side, and she was having trouble standing. No sooner did she round the corner than a pair of bloody hands followed her and lunged for the infant. She screamed “No, por favor, no!” and tried to hold on. The child’s tiny cries reached the microphone, but only for a second before the hands snatched the child away from her.

  “No!” she yelled again, before a man tackled her. Vance watched, unable to look away. He suspected he was about to witness a rape as the man tore at her clothes, exposing one breast and part of her wounded side. Instead the man fell onto her and bit the exposed breast, tearing away a huge flap of bloody flesh.

  “Oh,” Vance choked, “oh God…what is happening?”

  The woman shrieked and tried to pull free, rolling under the man and clawing at the sidewalk. Vance could see her fingernails tear away and leave bloody streaks on the cement. The man pulled her back and sank his teeth into her flesh yet again, this time finding the back of her neck. Vance imagined he could hear the bone crunching as she spasmodically jerked and lay still.

  Two other men appeared, racing around the corner. They paused for half a second to observe the man and his grisly meal before racing up the street toward the stalled mob. They looked like a business man and a waiter, both dressed for work. Both had injuries, and both appeared insane. Then they screamed that mind-wrecking sound from hell. In a moment they fell upon the rear of the crowd, tearing into people with fingernails and teeth like…like…zombies?!

  “No fucking way,” Vance whispered, then looked around as if someone was witnessing his insane thought. He was alone, and that bothered him. Was this some sort of elaborate hoax? Was that even possible? It would take a Hollywood special effects company weeks to do this.

  “They’re…they’re…” the camera man stammered, looking for words, “they’re eating people,” he whispered. The camera panned back to the corner once more where the woman’s killer was back on his feet, blood running down his chin as he chewed a mouthful of flesh and looked around with wild eyes. Vance found himself wishing he had a clearer vie
w of the man’s face, then instantly changed his mind. He didn’t think he could survive that look if he were to encounter it in person. It felt as if just looking at such malevolent evil would forever destroy what little innocence he still had left.

  From around the corner came another man, holding something small in his arms. He was taking big ripping mouthfuls of flesh from it. Vance tried to comprehend what he was seeing, then recognized a tiny hand as the monster took another bite. This time, he screamed.

  Vance slammed the lid closed on the laptop and stood with a shudder, backing away from the computer desk. His feet caught on the desk chair, and he crashed backwards to the floor, smashing his tailbone painfully and smacking his head hard on the linoleum tile. He took no notice, but crab-walked backwards to get as far away as he could from that unspeakable abomination he’d just witnessed. He came up against the opposite wall, tears pouring down his face and shaking his head in utter disbelief. And that was how Ann found him an hour later, knees tucked up under his chin, rocking back and forth, shaking his head and saying “No,” over and over again.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 7

  Sunday, April 15

  Wheels up at 0645, the orders read. Andrew chewed a protein bar as he walked toward the flight line, the morning sun barely over the armored airbase hangars of Riyadh. A pair of Saudi F-15s sat nearby, their hajji aircrews working on them under supervision of U.S. Air Force technicians. The crew chief saluted Andrew with a wrench, and he returned it with his helmet. The mission bothered him, but he was back in the pilot seat, so who cared that he had to fly a camera run.

  He came around the end of the hangar, and there was his bird, light shining off the raised cockpit and “Lt. Andrew ‘Switchblade’ Tobin” newly stenciled on its side. Two Air Force personnel had lines hooked up to the large pod latched to the centerline pylon, which he immediately recognized as the camera unit. He was surprised to see a couple of air-to-air Sidewinder missiles on it as well.

  “Morning, Lieutenant,” the crew chief, a staff sergeant, saluted as he approached. The two techs looked up but didn’t stop their work.

  “Good morning, Staff Sergeant.” He returned the salute and then gestured with his head toward the camera pod. “Is there a problem?”

  “No sir, they’re just updating the software.” Andrew nodded and began his walk around with the crew chief in tow. He grabbed an air-to-air missile and gave it a good tug to be sure it was properly attached.

  “Why the ordnance for a camera run?”

  “Standing orders for all sorties out of Riyadh,” the staff sergeant replied. “We had a couple of recon flights get locked up by an Iranian MiG last month, so they changed the SOP.”

  “I see.” He kept to the “official” story. No need for the crew chief to know he was going to be airborne for about 20 hours.

  Andrew eyed the man and wondered if the CO had let him in on the facts of the mission. He doubted it—this was purely on the down-low. “Good enough,” he said as he continued his preflight, checking to be sure nothing was loose. “This bird taken any damage?”

  “She lost an engine last month, but nothing combat-related. Just a compressor failure. Other than that, she’s good, sir.”

  A few minutes later, the techs packed up their gear, and Andrew finished his preflight. He signed off on the crew chief’s paperwork as the last technician climbed down from the cockpit. He thanked the man, shouldered his flight bag, and stepped up with his good leg first.

  The crew chief himself climbed up after him and helped Andrew buckle in. The man nodded at Andrew’s right leg. A few inches of dull titanium were visible. “I can’t tell you how much I admire you guys who come back after something like that,” he said and patted him on the shoulder.

  “Can’t leave my friends to do all the hard work,” Andrew said with a wink. “Besides, I had a spare.”

  The staff sergeant chuckled and attached Andrew’s air supply. A couple of last-minute checks, and he patted him on the helmet. “Safe flight, sir. Say hello to the Lone Star for me.”

  The bastard did know! Andrew flashed him a thumbs up and waited for him to get clear. The ground safety crew flashed the thumbs up, and he started the ignition sequence, watching as the left engine spun up and fell into its normal operating ranges. Once Andrew was certain everything was running normally, he started the right engine and got a good start on it as well. When he was ready, he gave the thumbs up to the man in front of the plane with crossed red batons.

  The crossed batons became two held straight up. The chocks were clear. Andrew released the brakes and felt the aircraft start to roll. The man backed at a slow walk, gesturing with the batons until Andrew was clear of the flight line, then pointed them both twice to the right. Andrew began his turn as the man saluted him, and he returned it. He was on his own.

  “Riyadh Ground Control,” he radioed and began relaying information.

  Ten minutes later, after waiting for a pair of C-130s to lumber into the air, Andrew lined up and slid the throttles forward. Almost fifty thousand pounds of thrust smashed him into the seat as the fighter shot down the runway. He gently lifted off and retracted his gear, sighing contently. This was where he belonged!

  By the time he’d been in the air for a half hour, the F-15 had reached 30,000 feet and was traveling 278 degrees magnetic at just under Mach 1. Andrew trimmed the speed through the computer to optimize fuel economy, double-checked both engines’ performance, and broke out his tablet computer. The avionics computer said it would be just over five hours before he rendezvoused with the KC-135 tanker over the northern Atlantic Ocean.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 8

  Monday, April 16

  “I’m fine, goddamn it!” Vance bellowed at the nurse who was checking his vitals for the ninth time that day.

  “The doctor will make that determination, Mr. Cartwright.”

  Vance sighed and allowed her to take his temperature and scribble it on a notepad, before leaving him alone in the twilight-lit hospital room. The truth was he felt anything but fine. He had almost no memory of how he had ended up in the hospital, or of how Ann had found him in a fetal position, Lexus sitting next to him whining like a puppy because daddy had taken the happy bus to la-la land.

  “Traumatic catatonia,” the doctors told him when he came around. Ann, herself, was almost catatonic with fear for him, and Vance didn’t blame her. They were still trying to come to grips with being pregnant, and he lost it over some video? He could hardly think about what he’d seen without feeling icy fingers crawling up his spine. He didn’t want to think about Ann seeing that video, especially with what was growing inside her. But think about it, he did. Now that his mind had coped with the initial shock, and his emotional state was stable—more stable, anyway—he was logically considering what he’d seen.

  Could that have been a hoax? Without access to a computer and the hordes of expert friends on Facebook and other sites, there was no way to be sure. Did he think it was a hoax? Absolutely not. It had all the hallmarks of a live stream.

  Lightning played across the San Antonio skyline, and he turned his head to watch. A titanic struggle was developing in the heavens. He didn’t get a wink of sleep before morning when Ann showed up to get him.

  * * *

  The rigid-hulled inflatable boat from the Coast Guard cutter U.S.S. Boutwell circled the oil platform once as the personnel on board tried to see what was going on inside. LTJG Grange steadied herself with one hand as the RHIB rocked in the waves while she held her field glasses in the other, scanning for signs of human presence. She could see several broken windows on the modified rig, and dark smoke was curling up from what appeared to be a burnt-out building in the center. No other signs of life were apparent.

  “Anything, ma’am?” asked the man to her left, a combat helmet on his head and headset mic under his chin.

  “Nothing, Bosun.” She put the glasses back in their holder on the console. “How long has it been?�
��

  The man consulted a dispatch. “Coastal monitoring station at San Diego received the SOS 77 hours ago. They only sent it once; it did not recur. The nature of the mayday was…unusual.”

  Grange snorted. “Right. Zombies. I think someone’s pulling our leg.” That had been her thought when she’d seen the dispatch eight hours ago. The platform was just outside United States territorial waters. The information suggested someone was conducting some sort of biomedical research there—research of a type that would be illegal inside the U.S. That tidbit hadn’t helped her take the mission seriously. By rights, a naval ship should be investigating this, but none were available. The chain of command had offered the old man the mission, at his discretion, and they’d come south from Los Angeles and then west at 27 knots. It was the first time the Boutwell had left U.S. territorial waters since she was handed over to the Coast Guard after the Navy decommissioned her in 1979.

  “So, what’s your take, Lieutenant?” the bosun asked. “Looks like something is up.”

  “It does at that,” she reluctantly agreed. But what?

  “Captain’s on the horn,” the bosun said as he cupped the headset to hear over the roar of the twin 150-horse outboards. “He says to stop wasting gas and board that thing.”

  Grange made a face but nodded nonetheless. Orders were orders. She had eight men, not including the bosun and the three men manning the longboat. Because they often interdicted drug runners, there was a twin mount .50 caliber machine gun in the center of the boat, with a chief manning it. On coastal patrol missions, they didn’t load it. For today’s wild goose chase, it was not…though two boxes of ammo sat close at hand. The other two crewmen were the driver and an assistant. Her eight men carried .40 caliber Smith & Wesson semi-auto handguns. Four of them also carried M16s and the other four held Mossberg 12-gauge shotguns loaded with buckshot, their slings crowded with extra rounds. This was the standard boarding detail, and a waste of time, she figured. It looked like someone had gone crazy and set off a bomb or started a fire.