by J. L. Bourne
Crusow kept Mark company as he tuned to 8992 on his planned transmit schedule. “Any station, any station, this is U.S. Arctic Outpost Four, over.”
Static filled the airway right before a very strong HF signal canceled out the white noise, as if the transmission originated from the next room.
“Outpost Four this is USS George Washington, have you weak but readable, great to hear you again.”
Crusow and Marked cheered, filling the room with whistles and shouts in a brief flash of optimism . . . one that soon faded.
14
The military leadership wandered into the briefing room for Admiral Goettleman’s morning update. With the carrier running on a skeleton crew, the senior officers were all able to fit inside the small shipboard auditorium, a place typically reserved for formal briefings. The admiral maintained the morning tradition of keeping full situational awareness of fleet status, what was left of it.
John sat in the back row holding a newly issued hardback green military logbook. He was a recent addition to the morning meeting. His attendance was not by choice; he was now deemed essential to operations. When the admiral wanted answers regarding the status of the ship’s communications systems, he didn’t want excuses. In his short time onboard, John had already mastered many of the complex computer networks and radio systems, as well as the links and nodes between the two.
His notes included proprietary information on frequencies, tuning, and circuit diagrams. Since most of the newer breed of technicians had lost the fine art of radio theory, it was John’s task to return this skill set to the carrier communications department. SATcom circuits were tied up and dedicated to task force missions and could not be used for lower priority ship-to-ship communications.
John studied his notes as he sat in the back row overlooking the auditorium. He traced a diagram with his fingers and thought to himself, Romeo circuit or . . .
He heard someone in the front yell out, “Attention on deck!”
Everyone stood, including John. He had learned of this particular military custom at his first morning meeting a few days earlier.
Admiral Goettleman marched over to his seat at the front of the auditorium. John was one of only a handful of civilians in the room. Joe Maurer, one of the men he recognized, sat in the front at the admiral’s side.
“Good morning,” Admiral Goettleman said.
The room murmured, “Good morning, Admiral.”
The admiral glanced over to the current battle watch captain, nodding for him to proceed with the briefing.
“Good morning, Admiral, COS, staff, and crew. This morning’s update brief has the USS George Washington position of intended movement a hundred miles north of Panama and steaming to an area farther north and off the coast of Texas in support of Task Force Phoenix.”
“How are they holding up?” the admiral interrupted.
“Last communication with Phoenix was eight hours ago. All secure, systems green. Radio informed me this morning that they intend to scout the area tonight, after sunset. Phoenix reports that there has been no sign of unusual activity and no indication of any aircraft in vicinity of Hotel 23.”
“Very good,” the admiral said, rubbing his chin. “Continue.”
“Hourglass is well underway and steaming west to Oahu. They are reporting all systems green, moderate supply of food. They are on three quarters rations as a precaution.”
“Gonna have some grumpy submariners by the time they see Diamond Head,” Goettleman joked.
Some laughs rounded the small auditorium; they were heard less frequently of late.
“That being said, let’s keep them all in our prayers. They are on the most dangerous mission in military history.”
The room’s small amount of positive energy depolarized as if a blanket of seriousness had fallen from the ceiling.
The briefer continued: “Admiral, pending your questions or further comments, that concludes the task force update for today.”
Goettleman’s non-response seemed to indicate that all was acceptable. The briefer continued calling down the list of departments, asking if they had anything to add to the briefing.
“Weps?”
“Nothing to add.”
“Air?”
The acting air boss chimed in, “We’re still working on a plan to restore carrier operations, but only a reconnaissance capability at this point. Fuel and aircraft are a problem. The jet’s maintenance schedules can’t be met; we only have a handful of mission-capable Hornets, and we need to reserve those for any possible incoming UCAVs. We still have a respectable number of helicopters, but we’re short on pilots. The catapults and arresting gear all need depot-level maintenance and we’re down to our last four cross-deck pendants. That’s all I got, sir.”
“Reactors?”
“Both are fully mission capable. No change in status.”
“Engineering?”
“We are having a little trouble machining parts. Nothing critical, but we’re out of some metal stock that we need. Recommend we put the metal on our scavenge list for the mainland runs. Nothing else to report.”
“Supply?”
“Admiral, we have ninety days of food onboard for current crew strength. Situation critical. No change.”
“Always bad news from Supply. Since the Air Boss can’t seem to get fixed wing in the air, why don’t you two start a garden up on the flight deck?” Goettleman teased. “Keep going.”
“Yes, sir. Communications.”
A few seconds went by before John noticed that the COMMO was not in the auditorium.
“Communications?” the briefer prompted again, nervously annoyed.
John stood and opened his green notebook. “Admiral, uh . . . as you know, SATcom is up and stable with Task Force Phoenix. I’ve been working on transmitter theories and different high-frequency RFs to hail the Arctic station again. I have my people trying to contact them in radio right now. We are close to figuring out the wave propagation to allow for signal bounce with that station. Networks are up and stable for local LAN email traffic. I know that was not a priority but it is fixed. I guess that’s all, sir.”
Admiral Goettleman raised an eyebrow and nodded in approval.
Today is going to be a good day, John thought to himself as he stood at the top of the auditorium with his green, dog-eared notebook.
“Admiral, this concludes the morning brief pending your questions or comments,” the briefer added.
As if timed with the ending of the brief, one of the radio clerks entered and passed off a paper message to the table of senior officers.
Goettleman slid on his glasses and began to read aloud. “ ‘HF radio contact established with Arctic Outpost Four.’ Good brief. I need senior leadership to remain and all others to carry out the plan of the day. That is all.”
John had renewed feelings of confidence as he departed the small auditorium. He had a little more pep in his step as he made his way to radio to fix more impossible problems and to look into the Arctic dispatch. Good job, radio. Today is going to be a good day, John again thought, as if trying to convince himself . . .
15
December was close at hand. It had been nearly a year since the creatures started showing up in the mainland United States. The air was now cold at night and the sounds were unlike anything that Doc or Billy Boy had heard a lifetime ago in the mountains of Afghanistan.
The Taliban didn’t moan, announcing their position. They did not sit idle or dormant until you passed an open car window at night, inviting their clutch. Although the Russian 5.45-caliber rifle round was dubbed the poison pill by many in Afghanistan, it had nothing on the poison of an undead bite. Nothing could save the infected. The best medical minds on the planet were at a loss. Even top surgeons at the ready to amputate an infected arm or leg could not stop the fever, eventual death, and subsequent reanimation.
The dead didn’t hide in caves or plant roadside bombs. Doc thought about this for a brief moment: At least th
e undead were fair. They never deceived purposely. Like the fable of the Scorpion and the Frog, it was just a matter of their altered nature; they were killers, destroyers of souls.
Doc recalled the days after he and Billy had made the decision to bug out of Afghanistan. Their journey from the southern Afghan provinces across the vastness of Pakistan and eventually to the sea was fraught with peril. It could have been much worse, but the low population density of the region compared to the first world gifted them some small advantage. They didn’t face a hundred thousand creatures—at least not yet.
That did not stop them from racking up undead kill counts that might rival some operations at the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom. The two laid waste to undead Taliban the whole way south, running out of M-4 ammunition halfway. They liberated three AK-47s as they continued their escape, fighting through thickening waves of undead, for weeks.
The terrain and sometimes thin air gave them no quarter. They dared rest no longer than a few hours between movements; any more and the undead would stumble in pursuit from behind a boulder or a finger of terrain. Not since BUD/S training had they been so exhausted. They force-marched for hours at a time over the cold moonscape.
At one point along the way, Doc remembered falling asleep while running. It took a face-plant into rocky terrain to jolt him back into the fight. He and Billy killed intensifying waves, stopping to scavenge magazines from creatures that had died days or weeks earlier, with their AKs still slung across their backs. The numbers of undead increased to dozens and in some cases approached a hundred or more.
The closer they moved to the coastline, the denser the hordes. The anomaly was so new that the creatures had not yet spread out from the coasts; most of the world’s population lived in the littorals, and now the dead ruled these regions.
Fueled by rumors that the fleet might be anchored off the coast of Pakistan in the Arabian Sea, Doc and Billy pressed south. It was not until the day before they reached the coast that radio chatter began to break in on their handsets. They eventually made contact with the USNS Pecos—their ticket home.
Doc adjusted course based on the ship’s transmitted position and they continued to pay their toll in lead to the undead for the last miles to the sea. The sun was setting and their scorched rifles were out of ammunition by the time their boots filled with seawater. They sidestroked away from the massing thousands of creatures that churned the surf with undead footsteps.
The Pecos was the last ship remaining at anchor to take on American evacuees. Billy and Doc soon found that the Pecos’s master was pleased to have the added security of two special operators aboard. After arriving, eating, and taking a shower, Doc and Billy received a current situation briefing.
• • •
Doc learned of deadly piracy taking place on the high seas. The pirates were capitalizing on the lack of maritime security, and ruthlessly attacked all vessels on sight. Chinese, American, British, all were falling prey to Somali warlords and other vile sea vermin. The pirates were cold-blooded in their attacks, using stolen military hardware to sink vessels that didn’t explicitly comply with their demands.
On their way stateside, steaming south, deeper into the Arabian Sea, they verified the worst of the reports. The GPS navigation network was failing. This, combined with a lack of sea charts, forced the Pecos’s master to adjust course west and visually hug the African coastline. Pirates had been a problem in the Horn of Africa region long before the undead, and now they were a force that rivaled them.
Pecos was under attack long before they saw Africa.
The faster pirate vessel approached quickly through the choppy blue waters. As the vessel maneuvered into range, it began firing at Pecos with crew-served machine guns, aiming for the stern just above the waterline. Fortunately for Pecos and her crew, the pirates were not trained marksmen.
Doc, Billy, and the ship’s master-at-arms took down the pirate vessel in a flurry of accurate sniper shots. Anytime a head popped up above a catwalk to man a machine gun or peek through a porthole, Billy put its lights out. The ship soon surrendered to Pecos and her superior firepower and was boarded.
Doc remembered when he and Billy had boarded the ship all those months ago. It was one of those things that would be difficult, if not impossible, to forget.
“Doc, look at that,” Billy said, pointing to the pile of shoes six feet high, near the pirate ship’s bow.
“Let’s take a look down that hold,” Doc said, hoping his first instinct was wrong.
“Chief, you open that hatch, me and Billy will be ready to spray whatever’s down there.”
“Aye, sir.”
The chief master-at-arms jerked the hatch open, exposing a putrid and hellish pit to the East African sun. The stink was so intense that the chief dropped the hatch cursing and gagging. He poured canteen water on his face and covered his mouth with a bandana before making a second attempt.
Doc stepped up to the edge.
The hold was filled with barefoot, half-naked creatures. They reached up to the light seemingly asking for help, just a hand. Doc felt the heat from the open hatch radiate from the baking and bloated corpses. The men examined the pulley boom and tackle mounted over the hatch; it stank, covered in sun-scorched human remains. Its purpose was clear.
The pirates lowered victims into the pit after robbing them of everything from gold fillings to the very shoes on their feet. The brigands likely used the pit as intimidation to force their victims to tell them where valuables were hidden. Doc, Billy, and the chief tried and executed the remaining pirates. A burial at sea was held before they opened key valves belowdecks, eventually sending the pirate vessel to the bottom.
Months had passed since, but time would never fade the horror of that dark hold.
• • •
There was no moon when Doc and Billy rolled out into the Texas badlands. Disco and Hawse stayed back to provide security and monitor the radio while the others were outside the wire. During their mission brief before they boarded the C-130, Task Force Phoenix had been provided copies of maps indicating the positions of air-dropped equipment originally intended for Hotel 23’s former commander.
Based on what had been recovered from the other drops, Doc thought this equipment would prove useful to his team and possibly shed some light on what the intelligence reports did not reveal—the identity of the organization responsible for the airdrops, and for wreaking utter mayhem on the former occupants of Hotel 23.
According to the briefing, the previous equipment recovered consisted of some rather advanced hardware. This hardware was described in reporting as “surpassing current technology by ten years” and “things you might find in an agency directorate of operations back room inventory.”
The Task Force Phoenix operation orders were clear:
Primary mission objectives: Secure Hotel 23, verify her systems are in the green, verify remaining nuclear warhead viability in support of Task Force Hourglass.
Avoid detection.
Secondary mission objectives: Recover abandoned hardware for exploitation, assess the origin of Remote Six, recover supplies for ongoing support of Hotel 23 launch activity.
There was not much left for ambiguity. His primary tasking had been met. Hotel 23 had been secured, secure communications had been established, all networks checked green, and the nuclear payload had passed all function bit checks.
Although unclear as to what exactly the mission objectives of Task Force Hourglass might be, he knew it was something big and something far above his snake-eater pay grade. No matter what the mission of Hourglass, he still had his team’s remaining objectives to meet. Doc never fell short of tasking.
Their target for the evening, an airdrop eight and a half miles east of Hotel 23, was the closest drop identified on the maps. Working east they moved wall-line abreast of one another. No point man, no straggler. They knew they didn’t have enough people to run this excursion safely, so they evolved tactics to mitigate the extrem
e threat.
Their sleep cycles and circadian rhythms had already adjusted to night operations. Normalizing their bodies to their new living conditions was necessary before heading out. They needed maximum awareness and attention for night reconnaissance like this. Their night observation devices were functioning literally in the green, with fresh lithium batteries as well as back-ups tucked in their packs. Neither Doc nor Billy observed anything out of the ordinary in the night sky. They scanned overhead from time to time, always aware that there might be air assets collecting on them from above.
They hadn’t brought enough water, as they hadn’t wanted to hump it sixteen miles round-trip. The iodine tablets they carried would kill any bugs in the stream water they collected along the way.
They were only five hundred yards outbound from Hotel 23 when they had their first encounter.
Billy whispered to Doc, tapping his shoulder. “Three tangos caught in the fence about a hundred yards.”
The field was shaped in such a way that the men had no choice but to pass close to the creatures to stay on course. The other option was to avoid them by taking the adjacent path through the woods. Not a choice, since both men knew that option would be much more dangerous than just engaging these immobile undead. Leaving them flailing about in the fence would draw too much attention—quick kills were the only option.
Approaching cautiously from the west, they switched on their lasers and each took to their targets. Billy Boy took the two on the left and Doc took the right. There was no real need to count down and execute a time-on-target kill, but they did so anyway out of habit.
Doc whispered back, “Three, two . . .”
Thunk, thunk.
The first two shots occurred simultaneously; Billy had an extra shot for the remaining third creature. Clockwork. All three lay caught up in the barbed-wire fence and would stay that way until they decomposed to dust. Strange, but wild animals wouldn’t generally eat the dead.