Zombie Team Alpha

by Yeager, Steve R.

  “I’m Colonel Suvorov.” The man thrust out his hand. “Welcome to my country. I expect you had a pleasant flight?”

  Cutter said nothing while he shook the man’s well-calloused hand, returning the firm grip received and squeezing even harder.

  “You were expected earlier, Mr. Cutter.” The colonel released his grip. “Though, shall I say, we did not expect you to arrive in such a fancy and yet disturbing way. It is a real mess that you have caused for us, yes? I am fully expecting this to cost your employer extra if they desire it to remain private. I hope you can understand.”

  “Expected.” Cutter shrugged and scratched his belly. “Bill them. They’ll pay it.” Frankly, he didn’t much care. He’d make sure all the repairs to the rented G4 didn’t come out of his cut. Those backing this expedition would end up paying for it in one way or another. They always did.

  Colonel Suvorov continued to stare forward, not moving, not blinking, not perturbed in the least. The stare was meant to bore deep into Cutter’s own returned gaze as if the guy were attempting to expose a hidden weakness. When Cutter returned that same steely gaze, the colonel snorted, glanced away, and grinned a thin smile. It had been just like their handshake and was that same butt-sniffing, alpha-dog thing that all men in their line of work did when meeting each other for the first time. The colonel was just testing him, and when the man blinked, Cutter knew he’d passed the test. But the dominance and pecking order between them had not yet been properly assigned. It would—given enough time.

  “Good.” The man nodded almost imperceptibly. “We will get along well, you and I.”

  The colonel snapped his fingers, and the two men to either side of him double-timed it over to the airplane and helped the others to disembark. Dr. Martinez was the last one to get off the plane, bags in hand.

  A few minutes later, Cutter heard the steady whomp, whomp, whomp of a big chopper coming in from the east. Then, from over the treetops came a fat Mi-8—an old Russian helicopter capable of transporting an entire squad of troops.

  “Our ride?” Cutter asked the colonel.

  The big man nodded once and pointed to a spot just off the runway where all of the G4’s cargo was being offloaded by four other men who had just arrived. The colonel’s two aides ran to the helicopter and waved their arms to redirect the big bird where to land.

  The big chopper beat the air into submission as it hovered over the field, first pivoting to face the plane then turning and landing rear wheels first. Cutter shielded his eyes from the kicked up dust and held his ground. The massive twin blades were kept spooled up, which told him that Suvorov was in a hurry to depart.

  A few seconds later, the rear hatch descended on hydraulics, and a group of soldiers dressed in identical camouflage to the colonel’s hustled out and ran to the cargo containers taken from the G4 and quickly manhandled everything back inside the helicopter.

  Less than five minutes later, Cutter and everyone except the co-pilot of the G4 were airborne and heading northwest over the muddy river to their destination, presumably the mine site.

  Cutter glanced out the window as the airport faded into the distance, wondering if they were going to taxi the plane back somewhere and fix it up, or just leave it in the field along with another wreck he’d spotted from the air. The G4 was their primary ticket home, and he hoped it hadn’t broken like Humpty-Dumpty.

  After the airport had vanished into the haze, he scanned the assembled men sitting on the bench seats around him. They were little more than scared and scrawny. The colonel appeared to be cut from a different cloth entirely, but the men under his command had not been fed well or cared for. He’d heard stories that the true Russian military was made up of many of these types, and except for the elite soldiers, or the ones used in parades on television, most of the men that made up their Army were conscripts too poor to know better, finding military service a way of getting out of the squalor in which they were raised. But what they seemed to find by joining up was only slightly better than what they left behind. Which, as Cutter examined each man in turn, meant that these guys were going to be about as reliable as a politician’s promise on election day.

  ~17~

  HOMEWORK

  Under a dull overcast of gray, twilight began to purple the sky. The big Mi-8 helicopter entered the airspace above the mine site and fell into a lazy circle.

  Inside, arrayed on twin benches running the entire length of the craft, the young men sat with their hands folded across their packs, some stoic, some showing fear, which didn’t fill Cutter with much confidence. But he had Gauge and Morgan to rely on, so as long as these young guns kept their weapons on safety, there shouldn’t be any troubles. In fact, it should be a simple shoot and scoot mission. Get Dr. Martinez in, scoop up the artifact, and get the hell out. Maybe then find a ride back to Texas and figure out what the hell the FBI and Homeland Security had up their collective asses.

  He sat forward, near the cockpit. Gauge was directly across from him, slumped low, next to Dr. Martinez. The man was still about a head taller and a foot wider than her. Morgan rested next to him, separating him from Colonel Suvorov.

  In a voice loud enough to cut through the whine of the twin turboshaft engines, Cutter leaned across Morgan and asked Colonel Suvorov, “What can you tell me about this place?”

  Shaking his head, the colonel grunted his disapproval and said nothing more, so Cutter leaned in close to Morgan’s right ear, and asked her the same question.

  She turned and said in his ear, “Didn’t you do your homework?”

  Cutter glanced away then back. “And start doing something new?”

  Morgan pulled back a few inches and stared at him. She most likely hadn’t heard him, but she’d read his lips and had probably understood his meaning.

  “This installation is not supposed to be here,” she said in his ear. “It’s an illegal mining site.”

  “Come again?” Cutter said, and she shook her head. He bent closer to her to repeat it in her ear.

  She said in return, “This whole adventure is illegal, Jack. The mining operation. What we are doing. Everything. The Komi Forest is a World Heritage Site. Which means that any kind of mining in the area is strictly prohibited.”

  “Then why hasn’t someone put a stop to it?”

  She nodded toward Colonel Suvorov. “How much do you think he gets paid?”

  Cutter had no idea, so he shrugged.

  She frowned, then said into his ear, “The equivalent of about fifty bucks a month by the Russian government. That’s all they pay for a colonel like him this far out on the fringes of their former empire. The others make even less. Many far less, and probably gamble it all away first chance they get.”

  She took a breath before continuing. “How much do you think he makes doing whatever chores Mr. Moray’s operation has him performing on the side?”

  Again, Cutter didn’t know, but he could guess. He shrugged. “More. A lot more. A hell of a lot more.”

  “Right. A heck of a lot more. Same with the miners. And with most of Russia in the same miserably corrupted state, it is easy to overlook a single mining site that is making money in defiance of the UN’s various decrees. Even one this big. Plus, those pompous fools at the UN are too busy hosting dinner parties to notice what is going on anyway. As long as their checks clear.”

  Grinning wryly, Cutter pulled away and glanced at Gauge, who remained unmoving and poker-faced with his arms crossed over his chest and thumbs pointing upward. Morgan really knew her shit, even though she would never use such a foul and nasty word to describe it.

  He let the matter drop as the helicopter continued to circle above the mining site.

  Colonel Suvorov shifted positions and slid the forward side door open, creating a loud rush of wind that filled the interior. The air smelled dusty and slightly of pine. The man grabbed the side rail next to the door and hung out over the edge, looking downward.

  Cutter moved into a squatting position next to t
he man and squinted against the onrush of air as he peered through the open doorway and down at the site.

  Below him, nothing was stirring.

  This late in the day? Something should be moving. Trucks hauling supplies? Men going to and fro? Some smoke or dust trails at least. He followed the two narrow roads leading out of the area with his eyes, searching for any vehicular traffic along them.

  Nothing. Nothing at all. Weird.

  Then, catching his eye, he spotted something. There was a figure moving far down below. It was running across a barren stretch of gray, which could only be crushed gravel.

  What the—?

  The hairs on Cutter’s arms all stood on end at once, and an icy chill tickled his spine.

  It was a guy. He was running for his life.

  What the hell was he running from?

  ~18~

  SHARON CUTTER

  Seeing the guy below, running for his life, reminded Cutter of the day he’d lost his wife. It was hard not to be reminded of her. But, sadly, she’d never had the opportunity to run, and he could imagine hearing her anguished cries over the beating of the rotors and the whining of the twin engines of the Mi-8.

  Those same screams had cut off so abruptly when she’d died, but those screams had not died out in Cutter’s mind. Never. He heard them day and night, awake or asleep.

  Only the alcohol helped keep them at bay.

  On that terrible day, he’d tried to get to her. Hell, he’d tried to with every fiber of his being, but Gauge and Morgan had stopped him and dragged him away before the final explosives had gone off and brought the entire mountain down on top of them. Only later had he realized he’d broken his arm at some point along with two ribs. And, somehow, he’d also cracked open his skull in a futile attempt to save her.

  There was blood everywhere—all of it was his.

  Sharon had repelled deep inside the mine, down to where the artifact had supposedly landed after they had been attacked by some kind of crazed people. Those people looked human, but they didn’t act human.

  Cutter had said he would make his descent first, but she argued how he barely knew his elbow from his asshole when it came to this kind of thing, and he would not be able to properly handle the artifact, so he capitulated, and she had gone before him.

  That had been his mistake.

  When Morgan’s call had come over the radio to evacuate immediately, he was ready to make the climb back to the top. He urged Sharon, who was below him, to climb up to him so they could both get out together. But she’d yelled back up to him that she was almost to the artifact. She could even see it a few feet below her in the mineshaft and only needed to descend another few feet to reach it.

  Morgan’s repeated radio calls then became more and more insistent.

  Still, Cutter trusted his wife completely. She knew what she was doing. If she said it would only be another few seconds, he could give her that time. So, against his better judgment, he ignored Morgan’s cries of alarm and let Sharon finish her work while he began to climb in anticipation of pulling his wife up when she had the artifact in hand. There was still plenty of time. There always was. He was certain of it. He’d set the charges himself, so he knew just how long they had before they were scheduled to go off.

  But he was wrong. The clock in his head had been wrong. And everything from that point forward had gone so terribly wrong.

  He’d just started to pull her up when the concussion wave from the first charge knocked him flat on his ass. He lost control of the rope that held her, letting it slip right through his fingers before realizing what had happened. He tried to lunge for the rope and snatch it. But, before he could reach it, the line went taut, and the first anchor cam jerked free. Then another blast wave hit, and he fell again and the second cam broke free. And as that shiny metal anchor disappeared over the edge and into the gloom, so too went his wife, Sharon.

  ~19~

  CHUDOVISHE

  Cutter’s eyes focused on the man running below across the large stretch of gray. The man fell. Got up. Ran faster, arms pumping hard. Tiny puffs of brown dust followed his footsteps as he raced across the open space. It appeared he was heading for the thick line of trees at the edge of the clearing.

  What the hell are you running from?

  Cutter suddenly had a very bad, bad feeling about all this. It was all eerily similar to what had happened in Ecuador when they’d been attacked by those crazed people hopped up on some kind of drugs. Cutter had no idea how many of them had died when the mountain came down on top of them, but they had tried to kill him, so they had gotten what they deserved.

  The helicopter continued to circle above the cluster of buildings while Cutter and Suvorov watched the man below. With a jolt, the helicopter nosed over and plunged into a steep descent.

  Cutter lost sight of the man as the Mi-8’s heading changed to intercept the guy near the tree line. When he glanced over at Suvorov again, the colonel was speaking into the microphone of his headset while balanced on the balls of his feet and peering out the open doorway.

  Suvorov was directing the pilot. Chase that guy, he was probably saying in Russian. Cutter returned to his seat and pulled his own headset on to listen to the conversation. It did him little good as they were conversing only in Russian. He waved for Morgan to slip hers back on and interpret what was being said.

  With another shocking jolt, he felt his stomach float into his throat as the helicopter fell from the sky into an even faster descent, sinking like a stone. His stomach began to settle down right as Morgan managed to get her headset on. He shook his head at her and removed his headset and hung it on a hook above his shoulder.

  The engines on the Mi-8 raced, and the pitch of the whine grew higher and higher, almost screeching, and about a second later, a green light winked on near the rear hatch, and the hinged back door released downward before the helicopter had even set down. The men onboard remained seated until touchdown, then all of them stood up and filed out two at a time and spread out, crouching low, guns raised, nervous, but ready.

  They looked as if they had practiced the maneuver before, but it was also easy to see that they weren’t very good at it, either, because one guy stumbled and the rest piled up behind him causing them all to nearly fall over like toppling dominos.

  Cutter glanced at Gauge, who was drawing his polished Desert Eagle and grinning with pleasure as he followed behind.

  Morgan rose from her seat next to Cutter and prepared to exit, but he indicated for her to stay behind with Dr. Martinez. Stay there, he gestured in his haste, like he was commanding a dog to obey. She looked wounded by the order that he had meant to be a suggestion. Sorry. He grinned an apology at her then grabbed his gear. After exiting the helicopter, he ducked low on instinct and jogged to where everyone was assembling outside the rotor wash. The man who had been running across the field stood on a patch of grass, surrounded by Suvorov’s men.

  The frightened man had his hands on his knees and was bent over panting. He was covered in dirt and muck and filth as if he had come from the mine. There were also wet streaks that were probably blood.

  Flailing his arms, the guy came alive and spoke rapidly in highly-animated Russian.

  “What’s he saying?” Cutter asked as he closed in on Suvorov.

  “It is nothing for you to be concerned about,” the colonel said from the corner of his mouth.

  The man continued to point back at the cluster of blue buildings in the distance, stabbing his finger repeatedly at them and saying, “Chudovishe. Chudovishe.”

  Colonel Suvorov left Cutter standing with Gauge and grabbed the gibbering man firmly by the shoulders, held him still, and then shook him hard, snapping the guy’s neck like a kid shaking a rag doll. The colonel then forced the man to remain still and spoke in slow and reassuring tones. The guy calmed somewhat, coughed, and resumed stabbing his finger in the direction of the buildings making up the mining complex. There was blood under three of the man’s fingernails, an
d two of them were completely missing.

  “What’s going on?” Cutter asked as he stepped alongside the colonel.

  Suvorov did not initially answer. Instead, he made a series of hand gestures that sent four of his men running toward the cluster of distant buildings. The soldier’s boots crunched with each double-time step they took, and their heads swiveled left and right, and their guns came up, and their backs were bent as if they expected to encounter trouble at any second even though the way ahead was clear.

  That earlier bad feeling Cutter had had was growing worse by the second. “We should get out of here. No amount of—”

  The colonel cut him off with a snort and hand wave. He then said something in Russian to his remaining troops. A laugh rippled through the men.

  What? Cutter could not understand what was being said, but he could discern the meaning. It wasn’t good.

  “He’s calling you a coward,” Morgan whispered in his ear. “Specifically, he’s calling you a ‘trusikha,’ which means a fema—”

  Cutter whirled on her. “I thought I said for you to stay behind and keep an eye on Dr. Martinez?”

  She smirked. “And when have I started listening to you when you didn’t make any sense?”

  Never, was what came to mind. When it was truly important, she listened. Both she and Gauge did. Still, she should have remained behind in the helicopter. Someone needed to watch Dr. Martinez carefully until they knew if she could take care of herself and not jeopardize the entire mission.

  “Okay, then,” Cutter said. “Suvorov can think whatever he damn well wants, but I’ll tell you this. We need to scoot on out of here, and do it now.”

  “Should we call you a ‘trusikha’ as well?” Morgan said. She waited a beat and added, “Just suck it up, buttercup.”

  Cutter looked to Gauge for support. He found none there either. And they were right. He was acting far too fearful for the facts that they knew to be true. Shit. He’d lost his nerve for a moment. That was all, yeah. God, I want a drink. A double, maybe. Or triple.