“I can see why you’re glad to have us here, then,” Jensen said. “If Dr. Lovato is right—and she has been about most everything so far—then you’re going to need every single one of us.”
Gates’ shoulders sagged and he reached up to massage his temples. It was a look Beckham had seen before, the look of a commander who had shoddy intel. Outside, the diesel engine of one of the Bradleys snorted. Beckham’s blood tingled at the sound of the 600-horsepower engine. It was the most reassuring noise he’d heard all morning.
Gates checked his watch as another noise replaced the Bradley. The tent shook and trembled. “Right on time,” he said, moving away from the table. “Follow me. I think you’ll want to see this.”
Beckham and the others filed out of the tent just in time to watch a squadron of F-22 Raptors screaming over the ocean. He counted six of the black dots as they roared through the storm clouds and vanished. A second later the jets reappeared. Every man and woman on Pier 86 stopped what they were doing and followed the planes as they swooped through the city and released their payloads.
The ground rumbled as the bombs and missiles found their targets, a deafening explosion draining out the cheers and shouts from the Marines standing on the dock. Beckham’s ears popped. The vacuum from the blasts sucked away the air at ground zero. Rain beat down on his helmet, and he squinted to see the explosions.
“Incoming!” yelled a Marine on top of one of the Bradleys.
Everyone dropped to the ground and covered their eyes to prepare for the shockwave. The gust broke across the pier. The heat from the explosions burned Beckham’s exposed skin, the wind so powerful it swept up the tent and sent it sailing.
Even from blocks away, the aftershock was enough to disorient the most experienced soldier, including Beckham. Shaking his head, he rose to his feet. Flames licked the sky, forming crimson skyscrapers. He pulled his scarf over his mouth and nose, in preparation for the incoming smell of burning rubber, charred metal, and the awful stench of burnt corpses, mixed in with the sour scent of rotting fruit.
“We start moving in fifteen,” Gates yelled. He walked back to the now exposed command post, barking orders at staff scrambling to collect equipment toppled by the shockwave.
Beckham checked the deck for Horn and the others. His team waited at a crate of ammunition.
“Need some grenades?” Horn asked. He reached in and grabbed several, clipping them to the only real estate left on his vest.
Another detonation in the distance rocked the concrete.
Beckham reached into the box and pulled out two grenades. “Chow, you’re going to be on point. Jinx, you got rear guard. Timbo, Ryan, you make sure nothing sneaks up on us from above and to the left. Horn, you’re with me on right.”
The rain let up, now just a drizzle. Beckham clipped both grenades to his vest and considered a few words to get the team riled up for action, but the stone-cold looks they all wore told him they were ready. Gripping his MP5, he eyed the swirling smoke one more time and wondered exactly what the hell they were about to walk into. He didn’t trust Command’s long-term strategy, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it now.
Eyeing his team, he said, “You all heard the man. We move in fifteen.”
-14-
Hours had passed since Beckham and the other men left for New York City. Kate stood on the concrete steps of Building 1 with Ellis, her chaotic thoughts threatening to take over. She’d left Jenny and Tasha with a technician named Leila, who’d offered to look after the girls while Kate spent a few hours working.
The whipping of helicopter blades pulled Kate’s attention to the skyline. A Chinook raced toward the island and then hovered over the tarmac as the pilot waited for permission to land.
Two Medical Corps guards shouldered their rifles at the bottom of the steps. One of them glanced up at Kate and Ellis.
“Doctors, you better go inside,” he said.
Kate crossed her arms. She needed to see this. To remember what they were dealing with.
A few minutes later and the bird touched down. The doors opened and six soldiers in what looked like riot gear emerged. Working together they pulled three stretchers from the belly of the chopper, split into two-man teams and then hurried across the runway.
Kate couldn’t see much, but she could glimpse the Variants. They were held down by blue restraints that covered their arms, chests and legs. She watched with fascination as the teams moved closer. A Medical Corps guard met them at the edge of the tarmac and pointed toward Building 4.
“Well look at that,” a voice said from the doorway. Kate hadn’t heard Major Smith open the doors. He stepped outside and joined Kate and Ellis on the stoop. He chuckled and said, “I hope their passengers are sleeping.”
“I’m sure they used tranquilizers on them,” Kate replied. She took a step back as the men approached Building 1. She stared at the stretchers, studying each one. The creatures’ mouths were covered with a metal contraption that looked a lot like the grill from a football helmet.
The soldier helping carry the first stretcher looked up at her, his eyes hidden behind a mirrored visor. Before he could react the Variant he was helping carry shook in its restraints, jerking from side to side.
“Shit! Put it down!” one of the men screamed.
The stretcher toppled over and the Variant fell face first onto the ground. The other soldiers put their loads down and retreated from the squirming creature. They formed a perimeter and then aimed their weapons.
For a moment the men just stood there, waiting, like none of them knew what to do. The Variant fought against its bands, twisting and shaking. It let out a muffled shriek that made Kate’s heart leap.
She covered her ears and backed toward the door of Building 1. When her back hit the metal, a gunshot rang out. One of the Medical Corps guards on the bottom step loped forward, emptying his magazine into the creature. Blood pooled around the Variant as its body was riddled with bullets.
“Let’s go,” Smith ordered, suddenly very stern. “You don’t need to see this.” He opened the door and gestured for Kate and Ellis to go inside. When they were clear he shut the door. Kate watched the major through the glass windows as he pulled a pistol and ran down the steps.
“Shit,” Ellis said. “That’s one less specimen to study.” He turned away from the view and walked toward the hallway.
“One less specimen?” Kate replied, her arms trembling. She focused on her breathing and her pounding heart. Ellis had seen a lot over the past month. They both had, but his lack of emotion bothered her.
Ellis stopped and then walked back to her when he finally realized what she was thinking. “Sorry, Kate. I know that must have been hard for you to see after what happened.”
She held up a hand. “I’m fine.”
He nodded and twisted his lips to the side, like he wanted to say something else. Then he continued down the corridor.
Thirty minutes later, and Kate was holding out her arms, waiting for Ellis to zip up the back of her suit. Her racing heart had finally calmed to a normal level.
“There you go,” he said. “You sure you’re ready for this?”
Kate shrugged and then helped secure Ellis’s suit. “We have no choice. It’s the only way we’re going to learn more about them. I just hope to God they don’t get out again.”
She thought of what Gibson had said about Lieutenant Brett as she finished assisting Ellis.
He was an animal. Rabid, deadly and forever changed. We couldn’t control him.
The words chilled Kate to the core, but there was no turning back. She zipped Ellis up, patted his shoulder and then checked her suit one last time. When they were ready she held her keycard over the security panel.
The doors whispered open to the lab where she’d spent so many hours over the past couple weeks. White light from the overhead LEDs blinded her for a brief moment. When her vision cleared, she saw her pale reflection in the glass wall across the room. She looked pas
t it and watched the scientists and technicians in CBR suits moving back and forth in their individual chambers.
The dead Variant outside, the motion, the bright lights, the chill of the oxygen filling her suit—it was all too much. Kate could hear Ellis’s breathing behind her. Then there was a hand on her shoulder.
“You okay, Kate?” he asked.
She didn’t reply. Her mind was a scrambled mess. She was overwhelmed with flashbacks of the horror she’d seen since the outbreak began, all of them as vivid as if she were watching a video of her past. There was Dr. Allen holding his injured arm back in Atlanta. She heard his final words before he jumped from the chopper: In order to kill a monster, you will have to create one.
She pictured the twisted face of her brother, Javier. Bloody saliva webbed across his mouth. Although she hadn’t seen him succumb to the virus, she had heard his agony on the phone just before she lost him forever. Kate shivered and blinked rapidly. She wanted the thoughts to stop, for everything to just stop.
“Kate,” Ellis said.
Closing her eyes, she inhaled filtered air through her nostrils. The anxiety slowly diminished.
“Sorry,” she said. “I’m okay. Just needed a minute.” She crossed the lab and paused behind Cindy’s station. “Do we have a live feed?”
“Yup,” Cindy replied, swiveling the right monitor in their direction. “Both patients are in their cells and are coming to. Check this out.”
The display showed a video of holding cell 14. A female Variant huddled in a corner of the room away from the bulk of the bright light. She clawed the wall sluggishly. The tranquilizer still hadn’t worn off completely.
“Never seen one of them do that before,” Cindy said. “Interesting.” She keyed in several strokes, and the video camera zoomed in on the creature.
“Check out her arms,” Ellis said. “Are we seeing more of the epigenetic changes?”
Blue veins bulged from exposed skin. Not the thin blue ones she’d seen before; these were thicker and more wormlike. Kate had never seen a Variant with such pronounced veins.
“Can you get someone on the comm?” Ellis asked. “See if they can redirect the lights.”
Cindy typed in the request and brought up a feed to the lead guard at the isolation facility. The face of a young soldier filled the left screen.
“Station 2,” he said.
“Yeah, this is Dr. Pat Ellis. We’re watching the feed to cell 14 and are having a hard time seeing anything.”
“Our instructions are to keep the lights dimmed,” the man said.
“I’m overriding that,” Kate said. “You can tell your CO.”
The man shrugged. “She ain’t going to like it…”
A few seconds later the right monitor brightened as the LEDs intensified inside the cell. The creature let out a pained shriek, clawing at the light. Hunching down into a ball, the female covered her eyes with an arm, her body trembling.
“That good?” the guard asked.
“Yeah,” Kate mumbled, captivated by what she was seeing.
“Anything else I can do for you, Doctors?”
“Nope, that’s it,” Cindy replied.
“They must be forming a sensitivity to light,” Ellis said.
The patient peered up through a gap in her fort of limbs, focusing on the camera. Kate gasped as the subject’s vertical slits widened, focusing in the extreme light like she could see them.
Kate looked away and tapped Ellis on his arm. “Did you see anything in the report we received from Central about a response to UV radiation or bright lights?”
Ellis shook his helmet without taking his eyes off the monitor. “Could be another change we haven’t seen before.”
With a nod, Kate said, “Cindy, bring up the feed of the other specimen.”
With a few clicks, the woman’s gloved fingers moved from the mouse to the keyboard and then back to the table, tapping nervously. “This is cell 15.”
The monitor showed another female patient on the floor. Agonized shrieks filled the audio as she distorted her body. She fell to her stomach, squirmed, and then clambered on all fours. Her arms and legs cracked and popped as she scuffled forward and launched herself onto the wall with a raucous screech that hurt Kate’s ears.
“God, turn the volume down,” Kate said, cupping her hands over her helmet.
“Sure, sorry about that,” Cindy replied.
The audio feed cut out and Kate could only hear her own breathing. The Variant clawed at the lights and then dropped to the ground and darted to a corner, shielding its eyes with a naked arm.
“This is amazing,” Ellis said. “The sensitivity to light and UV rays is remarkable. I think we finally found a weakness!”
“What’s causing it?” Cindy asked. “Do you think it was from the Ebola infection? The virus could have damaged their optical nerves.”
“No,” Kate said firmly. “These Variants have all recovered from the virus. What we are witnessing is a result of the epigenetic changes from the nanostructures found in VX-99.”
In the blink of an eye, the creature hunched, coiled, and sprang toward the ceiling. Her rigid fingers grasped the bank of lights and tore them out of the ceiling. She hung there, swinging back and forth by a single cord before it snapped and both creature and the lights crashed to the floor. Glass shattered into hundreds of tiny fragments.
The woman darted into a dark corner and Kate lost sight of her. Her heart leapt. She tried to convince herself the creatures couldn’t get out again, that they were locked away in cells that would hold them this time. But deep down, she wasn’t convinced. The longer she watched, the more she realized how insane holding them on the island was. They’d gotten out before. What would prevent them from doing so again?
A flash of motion on the monitor caught her attention. The female Variant crawled out of the shadows and crouched at the edge of light and darkness. Tilting her head, she sniffed the air and puckered her lips. Her pupils dilated, focusing in the darkness.
“What’s it doing?” Ellis asked.
“Hunting,” Kate whispered. She brought a hand to her helmeted head, an epiphany hitting her so hard she could hardly breathe. “My God…I was right."
Cindy rose from her stool. “About what, Kate? I’m not following.”
Kate hurried toward the comm panel to call Major Smith, talking as she moved. “The Variants have acquired a sensitivity to UV rays, and they’ve developed night vision to compensate.” She turned and searched her colleagues’ eyes. They still didn’t understand.
“The Variants have gone underground,” she said. “Beckham and his team are heading into a trap!”
Fifteen minutes turned into four hours. Lieutenant Gates ordered 1st Platoon to stand by and wait for the smoke to clear. Command had picked a really shitty day to launch Operation Liberty; the wind had shifted almost immediately after the bombing, carpeting 1st Platoon’s path with unpredictable smoke. Beckham was surprised Command hadn’t delayed the mission further, but General Kennor had a hard-on for killing the Variants. He wanted his streets back, and he wanted them back yesterday.
The wait provided every man on the pier the chance to soak in the sporadic rain and the apocalyptic view of Manhattan. Black plumes blew across the skyline, rising from a smoking crater of rubble where the Rockefeller Center buildings towered just hours before.
When the armored vehicles finally choked to life, the morning had turned to afternoon. “Move out,” Gates yelled. He climbed inside one of the Humvees marked with a medical cross and slammed the armored door.
Horn huffed as they followed the convoy off the pier. “Man, I told my girls monsters weren’t real.” He shook his head and then regarded Beckham with a wolfish grin. “Doesn’t matter. We’re going to kill all of ‘em.”
“Don’t be overconfident. That’s killed plenty of men before,” Beckham said sternly. “And wipe that grin off your face.”
Horn pulled his skull mask over his nose. “Just gearing up
for the mission, Boss.”
“This isn’t Fallujah or the Sudan,” Beckham said. His knife hand shook, his fingers trembling. He didn’t want to be back out here again; he didn’t want to be leading these men to shallow graves. And now was not the time to fuck around. Horn should know better.
“Hold up,” Beckham said. He waited for Jinx, Chow, Timbo, and Ryan. They formed a circle at the edge of the pier, a phantom border separating them from the decay and death of Manhattan. Beckham caught a glimpse of Jensen leading his team across the street. His posture reflected a combat vet, but Beckham didn’t remember the man ever mentioning having seen action.
Turning back to his men, Beckham said, “You all know that we could very well be walking into a trap. Those things could be anywhere, and those Bradleys,” he said, pointing. “They only have so much ammo.”
He studied each face, stopping on Horn’s. The man’s eyes were focused above his bandana. That was the Horn he knew; that was the man he needed right now.
The sound of metal crunching and grinding announced Operation Liberty was officially underway. Marines rushed past Team Ghost, their helmets bobbing up and down as they followed the armored vehicles into the street.
“Let’s move,” Beckham said. “Straight line. Combat intervals.”
The cough of diesel engines, pounding of boots, and rustle of gear would have made Beckham’s skin crawl on other missions. Any enemy within a square mile would hear them coming. But Operation Liberty wasn’t about stealth. It was about firepower. General Kennor had made sure of that.
The Bradleys groaned and snorted as they smashed abandoned vehicles out of their path. Beckham pulled his scarf up over his nose and braved the street. The moment he stepped off the pier, an overwhelming draft of decomposing bodies and waste penetrated the cotton. He stifled a gag and secured the scarf with a tight knot.
Everywhere around him Marines removed gas masks from their rucksacks. Beckham ordered his team to do the same. Across the street to his left, Timbo and Ryan were one step ahead of him and had their masks in hand already.
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