Turning Point (Book 1): A Time To Die

by Wandrey, Mark

  The C-17’s powerful engines propelled them above the raging storm into clear skies. The sun was past its zenith, throwing gleaming streamers of light that cast pearly opalescence across the tumbled field of clouds. It was an incredibly calming scene, and Andrew found himself sighing in relief. After the wild takeoff, it was strangely calm.

  “How’re our other birds?” Andrew asked Wade, who was acting as their radar operator.

  Wade looked at the radar and its cryptic displays. Andrew doubted the average man, with no experience on military navigation gear, would have been able to make heads or tails of it, but Wade was no ordinary man.

  “They’re circling and waiting for us,” Wade said.

  “It’s called orbiting, in our lingo,” Andrew explained.

  “Gotcha, orbiting then.” Not only was he a quick study, he didn’t resist or protest when someone gave him corrected information. After their rocky start, Wade was growing on him.

  “They’re on the radio,” Chris announced and flipped the cabin’s headset control.

  “23 Papa here, glad you could join us, 44 Foxtrot.”

  “Thanks, Papa.”

  “41 India, what’s the sitrep down on the deck?”

  Andrew turned to the general, who had a UHF military radio and was listening. He’d been quietly talking since they’d taken off.

  “Fort Hood has fallen,” he announced. Andrew relayed the information. “Our losses were light, considering. When that Apache went down, I thought we’d lost it. If it wasn’t for the rapid response teams, we would have been dead meat.”

  “Who was in that Stryker that held the fence while the others evac’ed on the last Chinook?”

  “That was Colonel Pendleton and his men,” General Rose said.

  They all turned at a sob from the doorway. Kathy Clifford stood at the cockpit door, hands to her mouth, tears forming in her eyes. The general proved particularly quick for a man over 60, and he caught her before she hit the deck. He called to the rear of the upper-deck first-class area, and a nurse came running. Andrew turned back to his primary responsibility.

  “All other transports, what’s your situation?” Andrew asked.

  They all reported they were in good condition, with nearly full fuel tanks. They had a range of almost 6,500 miles, if needed. They were easily in range of London, Madrid, or Frankfurt. It was only a little over 1,000 miles to LAX. “Okay, let’s set course for LAX. You have the navigational data already stored. Look for Waypoint 1, that’s just north of El Paso and south of White Sands. That’s our first hold point, while we wait for an update from the helicopters.”

  They acknowledged the orders, and Chris punched in the navigational data then nodded that it was set.

  “I know we seem safe and everything up here, above the clouds and the mayhem. But stay alert. We don’t know what’s going on in the world down there.”

  * * *

  Cobb barely took his eyes from the gunsights as the C-17 roared over, less than 100 feet above his head. The big .50 caliber thumped away, and every bullet killed half a dozen of the zombies, who never once slowed their approach. They waded through the fire with a crazy zeal that made the most wild-eyed jihadi look calm and collected.

  When the Apache went down, he hadn’t hesitated. They were en route to the rally point with the other Strykers, where a Chinook would take them away. The driver glanced over at him, and he’d nodded. The eight huge wheels of the Stryker threw up massive gouts of mud as it spun about and raced down the runway infield at over 60 miles per hour. They’d skidded to a stop, and the four operators piled out, almost falling as they scrambled to ready their weapons. They all knew the last C-17 was preparing to take off, and if the crazies overran the runway before the plane could get airborne, that was it. Cobb knew Kathy was on that plane, along with hundreds of civilian dependents of the soldiers who fought to protect them. So they stayed, and they fought.

  “All the transports are away,” his sergeant yelled.

  “Yeah, and the choppers,” another man said. “Fuck!”

  “We knew what we were signing up for,” said another.

  “Everyone aboard,” Cobb yelled.

  “Why bother, Colonel?” the last man wondered. He dropped a spent mag and fitted a full one.

  “Because we’re not fucking dead yet, that’s why.”

  “So, what’s the op now?” the sergeant asked. They headed for the Stryker’s open door. In the intermediate distance, the zombies sprinted toward them.

  “For now?” Cobb asked as the last of them climbed in and slammed the steel door shut. The first zombies threw themselves, without effect, against the hardened structure of the armored vehicle. “For now, we survive.”

  He tapped the driver on his helmet and pointed at the breach in the fence, then stuck his head out the turret hatch. A zombie was climbing up the side, white hot rage etched into the man’s face like it was laser cut. Hands curled into claws and reached for him. Cobb drew his personal UCP .45 caliber and blew the top of the thing’s head off. “Move out!” he yelled as he spun the turret and began firing, cutting a path for them to follow into the storm.

  * * *

  General Rose dozed as he listened to the sporadic reports from the helicopters and Ospreys, ranging out ahead of them, between Fort Hood and Los Angeles. They covered as many airfields as they could with low flyovers when they deemed it worthwhile. The C-17s had more than enough fuel to reach the coast, but the Ospreys probably wouldn’t make it, and the Chinooks weren’t much better. The gunships were using drop tanks and minimal armaments; they had roughly the same range as the Chinooks.

  An hour earlier, an Osprey reported it was landing at a promising location, Truth or Consequences Municipal Airport, in New Mexico. It was in a resort town that traded in tourism to the Elephant Butte Reservoir. They’d never heard from the Osprey again. Everyone listened as an Apache entered the area. A Longbow variant, it had special surveillance cameras mounted on a boom above the rotors.

  “Longbow Seven reporting,” the pilot said.

  “Go ahead Longbow, this is Brass Hat,” the general said.

  “I have the Osprey. It landed safely.”

  “Sitrep?”

  “Evaluating,” the pilot said; “wait one.” They were currently circling El Paso as the rest of their airborne convoy continued west. “I have numerous people on foot around the bird. They do not appear to be infected. They’re using a semi-truck to offload the armaments from the Osprey.”

  “What’s the inventory of that bird?” General Rose asked. His aide, always only a few feet away, stepped forward and handed the general a tablet computer. The general made a face. “Any sign of the crew, Longbow Seven?”

  “Negative sir. The Osprey appears fine, but none of the personnel in sight are in uniform.” There was a pause. “They are finishing their offload. I just got a heat plume from the semi.”

  “Understood, Longbow,” the General said. The muscles in his jaw worked for a second.

  Splash the bird and the truck. I say again, splash the bird and the truck.”

  “Acknowledged, Brass Hat, splash the Osprey and the truck.”

  Andrew knew that, miles away, the Apache would rise from behind the hill where it hid while observing the scene. Its nose-mounted M230 30mm chain gun fired six hundred rounds per minute—10 per second—each with enough kinetic energy to rip a modern car in half. It was a real hell storm.

  “Firing,” the pilot said, and they heard the distinctive chatter of the gun. “The aircraft is tango foxtrot. The truck is running, switching to missiles. Woosh! Another pause. “The truck is destroyed.” There was more firing, and Andrew knew the pilot was using his infrared sensors to pick up anyone still moving near the targets. “All targets are neutralized.”

  “Acknowledged, Longbow Seven, proceed to next objective.”

  “What was on the Osprey?” Wade asked.

  “Communications gear, anti-tank rockets, small arms and ammo. We’re going to sore
ly miss that.”

  “But why blow it up? You may have killed the pilots!”

  “They were probably already dead,” the general said. “We can’t risk having that kind of ordnance falling into the hands of someone who’d hijack a military combat vehicle.” Andrew nodded; he understood the logic. But to Wade and Chris, it seemed like a cold, bloody, heartless act. “And we don’t have the time to land for the troops to retake it.”

  They orbited around El Paso, whose airport had already been determined to be under the control of the zombies, and waited for the helicopters to finish the next leg. An hour later the three C-17s flew on toward Tucson as some of the helicopters checked the airport, and some proceeded to Phoenix.

  Phoenix was a loss, but Tucson airport was mostly intact. The perimeter fence was solid, and there were two dozen civilians and police holding it. Several of the Chinooks carrying troops landed to reinforce the defenses. The thirsty gunships all came in for fuel, followed by the remainder of the Chinooks and the surviving Osprey.

  The C-17s orbited. They hadn’t used a quarter of their fuel, and the Tucson airport wasn’t suitable for them. Over the next hour, the entire fleet of helicopters landed and refueled. The ground personnel there helped, grateful for the rescue. When the Army birds took off, they took all the survivors along with them.

  With the helicopters safely refueled, their ability to reach Los Angeles was no longer in doubt, and the C-17s didn’t have to wait for them. General Rose gave the order for them to proceed to the destination. It was an hour later when Wade laughed nervously.

  “What is it with you and engines?” he asked Andrew.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Number two is running hot.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Andrew said, and examined the instruments. Engine #2, the inboard port-side motor, was noticeably hotter than the other three.

  “How bad by the book?” Andrew asked.

  “About 250 degrees below automatic shutdown, four hundred degrees below danger level. It’s been increasing at a rate of five degrees a minute.”

  Andrew did the math in his head, fifty minutes until auto shutdown. If he overrode that, another thirty until he risked wasting the engine. And that assumed it didn’t get any worse. He glanced at the general.

  “It’s your plane, Lieutenant,” General Rose said, “but I don’t like walking. Or crashing.”

  “Shut down #2,” Andrew said, and Wade went through the inflight shutdown. The RPM gauge showed the engine spinning down, and the “Power Loss” light came on over the engine’s status readout. Immediately, the autopilot increased the elevator angle as their speed began to decrease.

  “23 Papa, what’s going on, Foxtrot?”

  “We’ve had an engine overheat,” Andrew said to the other plane.

  “Want us to slow down?”

  “There’s no reason for that. You and India proceed to Los Angeles. Relay any radio contact, if you get it.”

  “Affirmative, Foxtrot. Good luck.”

  All told, they lost 42 miles per hour, and the other planes quickly left them behind. Andrew watched through the windscreen as they grew steadily smaller. In half an hour, they were just dots on the radar.

  “I’m taking us down a few thousand,” Andrew told them, “to compensate for the lost engine.”

  “There are mountains ahead,” Chris reminded him.

  “We’re still at 28,000 feet,” Andrew said.

  The Laguna Mountain range averaged 6,000 feet, so avoiding them wouldn’t be a problem, but they weren’t very far from the coast, so the transports would have to begin their descents before reaching the mountains. More than 30 miles ahead, 23 Papa, in the lead, cleared the mountains and began receiving transmissions on the military channels. They created a line-of-sight relay and informed 44 Foxtrot.

  “We’ve got relayed comms from the coast,” Chris said, excitedly.

  “Let’s hear it,” General Rose said.

  “CSG 8 Actual,” the voice came through with a small amount of static. “Rear Admiral Lance Tomlinson.”

  “III Corps Actual, Major General Leon Rose,” he replied, “good to know we’re not the only operating military unit.”

  “General Rose, good to hear you as well. We have a few Guard units here, but you’re the first regular Army to turn up.”

  “Who’s ranking officer there?”

  “As of now, you are. Vice Admiral Prescott was en route to meet up with the Ford, but his chopper went down off the Oregon coast. We think one of the crew turned.”

  Rose cursed off radio. Andrew could tell he’d been hoping for someone of a higher rank. That a two-star general was the senior officer spoke volumes.

  “Civilian leadership?”

  “Nothing right now, General. We’ve been trying to establish a link with the Pentagon or any of the fallback bunkers, but no joy.”

  “Understood. I have about 500 soldiers and 500 dependents en route. Can you have LAX prepare for our landing?”

  “Not possible, General. We lost LAX 16 hours ago. Guard units did a bang-up job, but ran low on consumables. We evacuated them.”

  “Alternative landing site? What about Ft. Irwin?”

  “Overrun. We have two Marine Amphibs here, the Essex and the Malkin, plus three Nimitz class, including my George Washington. The Ford is just north of us. Should be plenty of room.”

  “What about land-side?”

  “General, we’re entirely ocean-based at this point. I’m sure you’re aware of how this plague has spread. You’re out of Hood, right?”

  “Evacuated eight hours ago. But we need a ground base.”

  “General, the biggest helo you have will fit on any of these platforms. We even have room on the cruisers and destroyers.”

  “You don’t understand, Admiral. I have three, repeat three, C-17s loaded with passengers and consumables, including all the civilian dependents on the bird I’m talking from.”

  “Well, shit,” the Admiral said.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 29

  Tuesday, April 25, Evening

  Andrew listened to the flag officers discuss options. They brought the senior Marine commander, Brigadier General Coleman, into the discussion. He said they could secure a landing site with the personnel and assets on hand, but not in the five hours of flight time the three C-17s had remaining. While the discussion went on, the first two planes arrived over the Los Angeles basin and began orbiting. Andrew’s plane cleared the Laguna Mountains, and he began to descend.

  He’d flown into LAX many times, and he had even flown a fighter there once, years ago. In the late afternoon, you could see the lights of LA from a hundred miles away. The complete lack of those lights was disturbing.

  “How much of the country still has power?” Chris wondered.

  “No way to tell,” the general said during a lull in his discussion. “Andrew, what’s the probable outcome of an ocean landing?” Andrew considered it for a moment.

  “You’d lose all the cargo on the other two planes. These planes are a lot more robust than civilian airliners, but they won’t stay afloat for more than a few minutes. Ours is the most heavily loaded. We have hundreds of people sitting on the floor down there. We’d have dozens of critical injuries, maybe hundreds. People would be flying around down there like beans in a can that was kicked down a hill.”

  “Not an appealing mental image.”

  “It wasn’t meant to be, sir. If this crate had a structural failure, it would probably go down in less than a minute.”

  “We only have fifty or so life preservers on board,” Wade chimed in. “It’s not configured for passengers. Even when it is, it only carries 177 troops in seats.”

  “What about shooting our way out of LAX or San Diego?” the general asked.

  “Possible,” Andrew said. “We could land right through the crazy fuckers. They wouldn’t pose a huge threat at that point, even if we ingest a few. The problem is the numbers. The admiral said
there were thousands on the field. That suggests the perimeter is shot. It’s going to be damned hard to get them off us after we land, even if the Chinooks are standing by. I don’t even know if we’ll have enough time; the helicopters are hours behind us. The Marines might have enough, if they get in the air fast, but still…”

  “After they rescue all the civilians, they’d have to move them offshore, then come back for the soldiers,” the general said. Andrew gave a sardonic thumbs up. “Come on, Lieutenant, find us a way out of this.” They flew for a few more minutes as the general conferred with his equals on the carriers, and Andrew thought.

  “Wade, what’s the minimum realistic landing distance for these?”

  “About 1,500 feet,” Wade said almost immediately.

  “How long is a Nimitz-class carrier?”

  The general’s head came up. “You must be kidding.”

  “Do you have a better idea?” The general posed the question to the admiral on the George Washington. Needless to say, he thought they were crazy, but gave them the data. The flight deck is 1,092 feet long.

  “Not long enough,” Wade said.

  “Aren’t there three supercarriers there?” Andrew asked.

  * * *

  Two hours later, the three C-17s circled over ‘the flotilla’, as they’d dubbed it, at 5,000 feet, 6,000 feet, and 7,000 feet for separation. Everyone onboard stared in disbelief at the thousands of boats and ships that had gathered off the coast of San Diego. The container ships, tankers, and one Supermax cruise liner dwarfed the Marine carriers, and the three supercarriers eclipsed them all.

  The first challenge the naval staff faced was extracting the carriers from the flotilla. No one had thought to keep their mobility during the greatest seaborne evacuation in history. Every manner of ocean-going craft surrounded the carriers, and it could have taken hours to get them clear. That much time wasn’t available. So, two destroyers from each carrier strike group maneuvered in front of the carriers, and began pushing. Loudspeakers issued warnings. Most of the boats and ships moved out of the way; they towed some and pushed others.