Turning Point (Book 1): A Time To Die

by Wandrey, Mark

  She had her phone in hand and the number to her bureau chief punched in, finger hovering over the “SEND” button when she stopped. What if there was a blackout? Maybe the CIA or FBI was halting all news stories for national security reasons? Was this a plague, and the people attacking the army were acting insane because they’d contracted some sort of virus?

  Her office, an independent news agency in Dallas, had no real national sway. Once, long ago in its heyday, they’d had a seat in the White House pressroom. Sure, it was in the last row and the only President to call on their reporter was Carter, on a slow news day, but they’d been there. The death of print hit her company hard.

  Kathy was a new breed of cyber-journalist, a specialist in eNews and the ways of finding it. She obtained recordings of scenes from security cameras and found leads through personal blogs or ubiquitous live feeds, like the one from Mexico City. That was her specialty. This, though, this was world-shaking shit, and she felt way out of her depth.

  What if I call Terrence and he pulls the plug? She chewed her already non-existent thumbnail some more. Their agency was small but well enough known that, if a news blackout were underway, they would be on the list of agencies to contact. And after her live-linking that feed, she knew she would likely be under surveillance herself.

  The phone in her hand rang, and she jumped. Glancing down she saw “Terrence – Boss” displayed as the calling party. “Fuck!” she cursed and dropped the device on her desk. Either GNN had called him, or the government was on to what she’d just seen. She turned to her computer for a moment before shaking her head and grabbing the computer tablet out of her bag instead.

  It took her a minute to make two copies of the Nightwing video feed, one on an SD card, the other on her IronKey flash drive. She plugged the IronKey into her tablet and loaded the video feed, all seven gigabytes of it, through the tablet onto the news service’s encrypted server. She typed a hurried story line: “Anarchy and Death on the Road from Mexico City,” and sent it out onto the web.

  * * *

  The rail hub at Laredo, Texas, was completely full, something only seen during the peak cattle seasons. April was not one of them. Tens of thousands of rail cars sat on the sidings, spread out like the arteries of a body or the delta of a huge river. At the other end of the sidings, engines sat idle—unmanned and without orders.

  Normally, railcars cleared U.S. Customs and headed north to the processing centers of Fort Worth and Alamogordo. Now the only sound was thousands of cattle rustling about in their cars. Their moos of complaint were growing ever louder as the meager fodder in the cars was long depleted, and no water was available in the 90-plus degree heat. Already, the smell of rotting carcasses was ripe in the still air.

  “What the hell is going on?” asked one controller from the top of a short tower overseeing the expansive yard. “Four days now, and nothing released by customs. This is going to turn into a scene from hell real quick.”

  “I don’t know,” his buddy said, using a pair of field glasses to watch as a trio of white Customs and Border Protection Chevy Suburbans moved through the yard. They’d been slowly working their way around for two days, obviously looking for something. “But if they don’t start releasing some of this mess soon, a Quarter Pounder is going to cost $40 next week!”

  Down in the yard, amidst the suffering and dying cattle, one railcar was different. It contained a special compartment in the middle of the cargo area. Amidst the heavy steel rails and under the mass of cattle, it had avoided detection on many crossings between Mexico and the United States. After sitting for days, the compartment finally opened, and a hesitant head carefully looked out. The dark-skinned man crawled from the compartment; he noticed the cows were all silent. They looked to be sick, many were lying on the ground making strange sounds. He didn’t mind the manure and straw on the ground; it was a small price to pay to get his family out of the hell they’d left behind.

  He reached the slatted sides of the car and surveyed the outside before returning. “We are still in the rail yard,” he told his wife below in a hushed voice.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “I do not know. How is Emilia?”

  “No better.”

  The day before, their nine-year-old daughter had not awoken when the morning light came through the cracks of their smuggling compartment. They’d examined her as best they could with the tiny LED light they had, and aside from a tiny bite (probably from a mouse), there was no sign of injury. Now she was feverish and shaking. She occasionally mumbled something and shook her head from side to side. “Julio, she needs a doctor.”

  “I know,” he snapped, then apologized. He’d paid ten thousand U.S. dollars for the use of the space, along with carrying some cargo and promising to see it through. All of that was meaningless now as his daughter suffered from some unknown ailment. He had to find someone, even if it meant imprisonment. But, what if they tried to send them back? Back to the desperate plight of those still in Mexico…and the monsters.

  “Come,” he said and held his hand out for his wife. He pulled her and their daughter from the compartment, leaving almost everything—clothes, valuables, and even the family Bible—behind. He had his wife carefully arrange Emilia on the pack frame he carried on his back. On his wife’s back was the other pack, containing twenty kilograms of cocaine, part of the cost of their trip to Los Estados Unidos del Norte. Emilia thrashed and moaned for a second, then became quiet again.

  Night was again approaching as Julio used a small metal bar to reach between the slats of the cattle car and break the seal, allowing the door to slide open. The couple and their precious cargos slipped to the ground and made their way north. Security was haphazard, and they found a gap in the chain link fence. Again, with the help of the metal bar, Julio widened the gap and they managed to slip through and into America.

  Behind them, hours before dawn, the cattle in their abandoned car finally rose from their paralyzed states and looked at their surroundings. One curiously examined the open smuggling compartment, while others gazed out the door. It was over a meter to the ground, far too high for a normal cow to ever consider jumping. In a minute, all 40 of the animals had jumped. Eleven sustained serious leg and hoof injuries in the process, but none made a sound or cried out in pain.

  A short time later, a CBP Suburban came around a line of rail cars and skidded to a halt in the gravel. Its spotlight swung around to illuminate the assembled mass of cows, which turned their heads as one to examine the new arrival. Customs officers climbed out of their truck and started jogging toward the cows. Seeing the open car, they suspected they’d found what they were looking for. They were in the middle of the herd when the first one attacked.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 10

  Wednesday, April 18

  “We can control this,” one of the attendees announced.

  “Why am I less than convinced?” asked another voice.

  “Intelligence out of Mexico has been shut down. That reporter, Kathy Clifford, is still at large.”

  “That’s the second feed she’s sent out. The conspiracy sites are going nuts with them.”

  “Yeah, but GNN panned it, even though the second feed was from their own goddamned drone. Who the hell allowed them to send a drone into Mexican airspace anyway?” No one in the circular room offered any ideas. At the two exits, heavily-armed Secret Service agents stood guard, with even more outside.

  “What about that unauthorized intel flight over Mexico we heard about?”

  “We’ve traced it to a pilot from the Riyadh base—one of Colonel Sommers’ pilots named Tobin. A lieutenant—nobody really. He got back into a plane for the sandbox before we could intercept him. We’ll pick him up when he lands.”

  “Who the hell gave him authorization?” someone from the intelligence side of the group demanded.

  “I said it was unauthorized,” came the swift retort, this time from the president’s side. “We suspect elements within the
military.”

  “Don’t blame my staff,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff representative snapped. “We’ve been playing ball all along!”

  The president’s man gave a dismissive gesture. He knew it wasn’t any of them.

  “Look,” chimed in the Surgeon General, the only actual cabinet official present, “we can control this,” he insisted again. “My people at the Centers for Disease Control assure me we can. We just have to keep a lid on it long enough to avoid a panic.”

  “Intel is suggesting another outbreak in Australia,” someone from the other side of the room said. There was a buzz of angry conversation that the SG tried, and failed, to quell.

  “We’re running out of time,” the president’s chief representative announced. “Other nations are demanding to know what we know.”

  “Another two days?” the Surgeon General asked, almost sounding like a child wanting more ice cream.

  “That might be the most we can offer,” the Joint Chiefs’ man said and consulted a computer. “The wave from Mexico is going to hit the border in about 40 hours.”

  * * *

  Andrew had just stepped off the bottom rung of his fighter’s ladder when someone grabbed his elbow. He pulled away and turned to see a pair of airmen in navy blue berets standing there. “Lieutenant Tobin?” one of the Security Forces personnel demanded.

  “That’s what it says on my flight jacket.”

  “Please come with us, sir,” the younger of the two said. They both carried M9 pistols in holsters and the older man, a staff sergeant, had an M4 on a single point sling.

  “I formally request your orders, Sergeant.” The man chewed his lip and reached into his pocket for a piece of paper. It was a properly signed arrest warrant for Lieutenant Andrew Tobin, 332nd Fighter Wing. The charge was absent without leave, AWOL, and disobeying a direct order. He had his flight orders in his pocket, so he knew both charges were bogus. But it was a legitimate warrant. He’d have to deal with it from inside the stockade. “Very well,” he said and allowed the sergeant to take his holstered SIG.

  While they were cuffing him, he turned to the crew chief, who happened to be the same one who sent him on his way two days earlier. He caught the man’s eyes, looked at the photography pod hanging under the center of the fighter, and back at him before nodding. The crew chief winked, and Andrew sighed. The crew chief would make sure the images made it to Sommers. He had to. The film was nothing short of spectacular. Some sort of plague was underway in Mexico, and it was heading for the United States as fast as legs could carry it.

  Three hours later he was still sitting in one of the airbase’s tiny cells. They gave him a bottle of water a few degrees cooler than lava and a stale croissant to keep him company. He’d been nursing the water, but he declared the croissant a battle casualty and left it for dead. He was eyeing the less than comfortable looking bunk when the door opened, and a pair of guys in Army ACUs stepped in. He noticed right away they had no unit insignias, and both wore side arms in the detention area.

  “Military intelligence, eh?” he asked as they closed the door behind them.

  “Where’s the photo pod, Lieutenant.”

  “I don’t know who you are or what you are talking about,” he replied and kept his seat. Their uniforms were bereft of rank as well. “Until I see some ID or at least proper decorum, you two can go fuck yourselves.”

  The two looked at each other, and the one on the left shrugged. The one on the right stepped forward and slammed his forearm into Andrew’s face.

  He went over backwards from the blow, caught completely off guard, and hit the concrete floor head first. He was about to roll over and get to his feet when the other man’s knee landed on his neck, pinning him painfully to the floor. “We need your cooperation, Lieutenant Tobin.”

  Andrew spat something uncooperative and felt someone step on his artificial leg where the ankle would have been. “One leg not enough for Uncle Sam?”

  The weight lifted. The artificial leg obviously stunned the men. “We just want that intel, Lieutenant.”

  “Does it look like I have it?!”

  “We checked your plane after you landed—”

  “Fighter,” he corrected.

  They glared at him for a moment, then the one who’d done most of the talking nodded. Andrew smiled from the floor, and they turned on their heels and left. An hour later they informed him they had relieved his commanding officer of his command, and that they were transporting both of them stateside to face formal charges.

  * * *

  Vance shuddered, looking at the powered-down computer. He’d stare at it for a few minutes, then go get some coffee, then stare at it some more. He was sitting in the kitchen watching the quiet computer down the hall when Ann came home. She looked at him from the kitchen door and frowned. She’d stayed with him since he’d returned from the hospital in the hopes that her presence would bring him around. It hadn’t worked.

  She started dinner and turned on the kitchen TV to watch the evening news. The lead story was an investigative report of disturbing video images coming out of Mexico. She stopped halfway back to the kitchen and spun around as the TV showed the high-definition images of what the network was calling the “Highway of Death” between Mexico City and Monterrey.

  The government was refusing to comment, and the original feeds were no longer available, but a small aggregator service had put the images up hours ago, and a thousand smaller web services had copied them before officials could take the aggregator service off the air. She dropped to her knees in front of the TV as analysts tried to make sense of the crazed minutes of footage. Vance’s stories of the horrors he’d seen in Mexico City on the web seemed out of the realm of possibility only days ago. Now she saw proof that some outlandish conspiracy hadn’t unhinged him.

  “Now do you understand?” Vance asked from the other room, obviously hearing the reports over the TV.

  “I think so,” she replied.

  “We’d better call Tim and Nicole, and tell them to head this way.” She turned around and saw that most of her boyfriend had returned to her at last. “We might not have a lot of time.” She nodded and headed for the foyer to make the call. “Oh, and Ann?”

  “Yes, Vance?”

  “Will you marry me?”

  * * *

  Later that evening, just before it closed, a small chapel outside San Antonio that specialized in “quick weddings” had a couple of visitors. The pastor, defrocked from the Roman Catholic Church for improper relations with a nun to whom he was now married, was now an ordained minister of a small Christian sect in Texas, and he made a living performing marriages and unconventional religious services. He was in his office, thinking of closing the door, when the late-model pickup entered the parking lot.

  Always wary of locals who didn’t appreciate a city-bred, sort-of pastor, he checked to be sure his pistol was in his pocket before leaving his office to go into the chapel. He found an older man, slightly overweight and balding, with a younger woman on his arm. She had that all-too-obvious glow of a pregnant woman and was obviously overjoyed.

  “Can you marry us quick-like?”

  The pastor nodded. “If you wish, son. Why the hurry?”

  “Zombies are coming, Father!”

  “Okay, then. Step on up here and fill out this form.”

  A half hour later, Vance slung gravel out of the parking lot and headed for the discount big-box. There was just enough time for a quick stop before heading to the gun store.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 11

  Thursday, April 19

  The Coast Guard cutter U.S.S. Boutwell (WHEC 719) was holding 200 meters from the modified oil platform. After responding to the SOS more than three days ago, her crew had assisted in repairs to the facility’s basic electrical and sea water desalinization systems, which were reportedly the results of pirate damage.

  “You understand, Dr. Breda, the command authority in San Diego is going to be quite alarmed a
pirate attack happened so close to territorial waters.” LTJG Grange consulted her notes as she waited for the doctor to reply, absentmindedly tucking a loose curl of hair under her cap.

  “If you ask me, they were narcotics traffickers.”

  “We have your opinion on record.” The doctor nodded when Grange glanced up from her notes before continuing. “We’ve reviewed our radar logs and verified that a boat, approximately the size of a Boston Whaler, departed your facility about an hour before our arrival.”

  “What direction did it head?” the doctor asked.

  “Toward the mainland.”

  An hour later, LTJG Grange departed with the last of the Coast Guard’s mechanical specialists. Dr. Breda never met the ship’s commanding officer. She’d spoken once to him via radio, but only for a minute. He’d informed her that Lieutenant Grange would handle the investigation and offered his condolences for her lost personnel. He promised the government would follow up on the raid, likely with the FBI not far behind. She had her doubts.

  Back inside the main building, she met one of the few surviving research assistants. “Have you confirmed the number?” she asked.

  “Twenty-one, Doctor, including you and me,” the man said after consulting his tablet.

  She nodded and sighed. Seventy-two men and women had been on the installation before the insanity began. Fifty-one people she’d known and worked with for almost a decade were gone. And, forced into it by the panicked call from a scared tech to the Coast Guard, they’d all gone down the trash chute to the sharks. “You deserved better than that,” she silently told their ghosts. But, considering what she’d found…

  “Is the team in the lab?”

  “Waiting for you,” he said. She nodded, and he stepped into the lift with her. Like most of the rest of the facility, it stank of bleach. They’d used almost five hundred gallons of the stuff, working in respirators to wash down the halls. Lisha told the Coast Guardsmen it was because of their research work. Lucky for her, they’d bought it.