“Sergeant Major Turner, reporting as ordered.”
Lee returned the man’s salute. “Sergeant Major, how long have you been in uniform?”
“Twenty-one years next month, sir.”
Lee had to handle Turner with some caution. Not only was he the senior enlisted man left standing, he had a monumental amount of tactical and operational experience that was worth its weight in gold. While officers ran the Army, senior non-commissioned officers ran the men, and without the men behind him, any plan Lee formulated would die like a fish out of water. He needed to get on Turner’s good side, and stay there.
“Another old-timer like me,” he said. “You served Lieutenant Colonel Prince with distinction.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“I expect the same honesty from you. I respect your opinion. Always give it to me straight.”
The big sergeant grinned. “I’m your man for that, sir.”
“What’s the feeling in the ranks? About leaving Boston?”
“They’re happy to be going for the most part. They need a rest. Replace the gear they’ve lost. Retrain if there’s time. They don’t like failing a mission, but the mission ain’t everything.”
“The mission is everything, Sergeant Major. But the mission is changing. That’s how they need to see it.”
“Hooah, sir.”
“Do they still have confidence? I’ll be frank with you. We’re becoming more of a volunteer army by the day. Do they want to be here, or would they rather go home to their families?”
“The older guys, their families are at Drum. So we’re itching to get there. The others, well, they’re from all over, and they know that their hometowns might as well be on Mars at this point. Nobody’s going anywhere except in force.”
“Thank you, Sergeant Major. Please give my compliments to the men for hanging tough these past weeks. They’ve gone through hell, but they’ve got to go a little farther.”
“I’ll do that.”
“We’ll be on the move at eleven hundred hours on the fifteenth. Make sure they’re ready. I don’t intend to stick around any longer than necessary.”
They saluted. Lee watched Turner leave the command post, thankful he had the man on his side. The old-timers were the battalion’s bedrock, the centurions of the Army. If they fell, they could not be replaced.
They would go to Fort Drum. After that, maybe Florida. Maybe not. What happened next didn’t really matter at the moment. Just getting to Drum was going to be hell.
First, they had to fight their way out of the Greater Boston area with its population of five million. The short hop to Route 90 was dense with crazies.
Route 90 would take them all the way across three hundred fifty kilometers of open highway through or near ten large cities and countless small towns: Framingham, Worcester, Chicopee, Springfield, Westfield, Albany, Schenectady, Utica, Rome, Syracuse. Some were controlled by military, others had gone dark and were considered hostile zones.
They could make the trip in two or three days of hard driving if nothing stood in their way, but it was going to be a running battle. Nearly a million people were along the route just in the major metropolitan areas alone. Lee’s battalion didn’t have a million bullets.
The drones and Apaches were key. The drones would recon the road ahead. The Apaches would provide overwatch and security for the column. The Apaches would lay the wrath of God on any major opposition force observed out in the open. After an hour and a half in the air, though, they’d have to land on the highway for refueling and maintenance.
The urban areas would be a different story. The battalion would have to find a way around them or make a hard and fast run straight through, shooting anything that moved. From here on out, they were taking no chances.
War movies often made it seem as if soldiers charged into battle without extensive planning. Lee knew that intelligence was the key to mission planning, and planning was the key to mission success. Officers were trained to accomplish their missions at minimal risk. Heroism, the stuff of movies, was something else. Individuals had it, not organizations. And even then, heroism was only for those rare times one really needed it, and it was done without thinking.
If Lee had his way, they’d accomplish their objective with as little fighting as possible.
The problem was intelligence was never perfect. Plans often failed. And the enemy was everywhere, resourceful and determined.
Once the battalion reached Syracuse, they’d cut north on Route 80 and go about a hundred kilometers up to Fort Drum where, Lee hoped, they’d find survivors and resources.
If the soldiers found their families infected and waiting with weapons they found on base, they’d all end up exploring a new level of hell together.
And if they didn’t find resources, Florida would become a pipe dream.
They’d end up scavenging.
Once an army did that, they stopped being an army.
He wished Walker had never handed him these damned silver oak leaves.
“Colonel?”
Lee smiled. Still unused to the rank, it had taken him a moment to realize he was being addressed. “Yes, Major?”
Walker didn’t smile back. “Major General Brock is on the line, sir. He’d like a word.”
THIRTY-THREE.
A running battle on the streets of Cambridge. A single ragged squad against a city gone mad. They bounded in two groups of six, leapfrogging by sections. One fired while the other ran. They dropped bodies with a sustained rate of fire.
Wade’s M4 ran dry. He patted his vest. Two mags left. “Reloading!”
Harvard Stadium was surrounded by green space—wide open, no cover—but they’d made it to Soldier’s Field Road without contact. They crossed Eliot Bridge, the Charles River below jammed with dead bodies and boats packed with refugees and crazies. The hellish screaming and crackle of gunfire at Harvard Stadium faded to a dull roar as they jogged north into Cambridge.
Ahead, a massive hospital had been demolished by missiles. A vast wall of smoke rolled into the sky above the wreckage. Fresh Pond Parkway was carpeted with red brick, white dust and flattened vehicles. The Apaches had done their work there, just as they had at Christ Hospital.
For a while, they didn’t see any Klowns. Then their luck ran out.
The crazies came from the east. Swarms of them fleeing the big fires. They ran at the soldiers from front yards and parking lots.
The M4’s recoil hummed against his shoulder. Crack crack. Brass rang on the asphalt. A body dropped, a woman coming at them swinging a shovel. Then another.
Wade stumbled. His ankle hadn’t had time to heal, and it flared with pain at each step. Rawlings put her arm around him and took some of his weight.
The bulldozer was gaining on them, a big yellow John Deere machine with glaring headlights. The squad’s rounds pinged and sparked off its massive steel blade. Klowns hung off the sides, waving spiked bats and Molotov cocktails.
Young set up his SAW and started hammering. One of the crazies tumbled off. Otherwise, the fire had no effect.
“Cease fire!” Wade called. “Save the ammo!”
Young glared at him as if to say, Who are you to give orders? But he did as he was told.
The bulldozer was coming fast.
“Gray! Hit it with the two-oh-three!”
Gray kissed a forty-millimeter grenade and loaded it into the launcher tube attached to his carbine. He took careful aim while the squad halted to provide security. “Firing!”
The bulldozer’s cab exploded in a massive fireball. Bodies cartwheeled through the air. The smoking rig veered off the road and plowed into a cluster of abandoned vehicles with a metallic crash.
The soldiers sent up a ragged cheer. They were panting with exhaustion. At last, night had come. The men flipped their helmet-mounted NVGs over their eyes. Wade did the same. The world brightened and shrank to a bright green circle.
“Booyah,” Gray said.
“Good shooting
,” Rawlings said.
Gray frowned at her and spit. “Happy now, Sergeant? We had a good position back there. We could have held that place. Instead, we’re out here holding our dicks.”
Wade and Rawlings exchanged a glance. Was he kidding?
She said, “You can always go back, Gray.”
The soldier grinned. “Why would I do that? This is my squad, Nasty Girl. You’re a fucking reservist.” He pointed at a blocky building in the distance that looked like a school. “We’ll hole up there for the night.”
“That’s a no go,” Wade told him. “We’ve got darkness on our side. We need to find a car dealership or something and get some vehicles. We’ll be back at Hanscom by morning.”
Gray grinned. “You can always go on ahead by yourselves.”
He started walking toward the school. The rest of the squad followed. They were smoked. Whether they were stopping for the night or pushing ahead, they needed a rest.
Rawlings touched Wade’s shoulder. “Let’s move.”
They had to stick together, and they had no time for a pissing contest.
Gray signaled the squad to a listening halt outside the school. They heard nothing. He smashed a window with the butt of his carbine. The squad piled into a classroom. They cleared it and the hallway beyond then barricaded the door.
Wade sat on the floor and propped his swollen ankle on his helmet to elevate it. The right side of his face felt heavy and foreign, as if his cheekbone had doubled in size and turned to rock. His disjointed muscles protested every movement. His body felt broken.
Fisher sat next to him and lay on his side with a groan, shivering.
Rawlings sat on his other side and removed her helmet with a sigh. “We’ll get some vehicles in the morning.”
“No, we won’t,” Wade murmured with his eyes closed.
“Don’t give up on me, Private Wade. We can do this. Don’t worry about Gray. His M203 made him the hero of the hour. But he can’t lead this squad. He couldn’t lead ants to a picnic.”
“We barely made it three klicks in two hours. We burned through most of our ammo. Tomorrow, we’ll be traveling again in broad daylight, fighting for our lives. There won’t be any chance to find vehicles. Besides all that, by morning, I’ll barely be able to walk.”
“We can leave tonight,” she whispered. “Rest up. Hit the road.”
“We have to stick together. Maybe Gray was right. We shouldn’t have left the stadium. We left good men to die back there.”
“We would have died with them. What would be the point of that?”
“We’re dead anyway. At least at the stadium, we could have died with some honor.”
“Screw that and screw you. You can’t put that on us. We tried to get them to leave. Staying was their choice. Their blood isn’t on our hands. Me, I’m not interested in suicide. Where’s the honor in that? I’m not interested in dying for something.” Her hand probed until it found his. “Right now, I’m a hell of a lot more interested in living for something.”
They held hands in the dark. For the first time in weeks, Wade felt a sense of calm. He’d reached a decision. He’d tell her. She deserved to know.
“Even if we make it, I’m not sure I’m going back,” he said. “All my friends are dead. Sergeant Ramos is dead. He wasn’t like a father to me because my dad was nice, but he cared. He was tough, but it was because he cared. All he cared about was keeping everybody in the squad alive. He saved my ass more times than I can count in Afghanistan.”
He paused and went on, “I remember this one time, the Taliban totally lit us up. A textbook L-shaped ambush. Men went down instantly. Our lead element was cut off from the rest of the platoon. I dove behind a log and couldn’t raise my head. A PK ripped that log to shreds. Somebody shouted, ‘They got Esposito! They got him!’ Then Sergeant Ramos ran past me. We all got up to provide cover fire. A couple of Taliban had Esposito down in the gully. He was wounded, and they were dragging him away as a prize. Ramos chased after them, shot them down, and brought Esposito back. I don’t know how he did it. But it was something to see. It was really something.”
Wade paused again, lost in the memory. “He was like that. He gave the orders, but we always came first. He has a sister and a nephew here in Boston. He wanted to protect them because they were the only family in the world he had left. He could have walked off the job, but he stayed. He put us first. He put the Army first. And now he’s dead. He died in a fucking hospital we had no business being in. Now his family is stuck in this city. I tell you, if I get out of this, I’m going to pay him back. I’ll go Elvis. I’m going to find them and protect them.”
Rawlings squeezed his hand. “I understand.”
“You do?”
“Yeah. But don’t do it.”
“No?”
“We need you, Wade. I need you. Come here.” She touched his head and guided it to her shoulder. She stroked his hair.
“I’m so fucking tired,” he said. His mind began to slip away.
“Sorry to interrupt, lovebirds.”
Gray grinned down at them, still wearing his NVGs.
“Wade, you take first watch.”
“Go to hell, Gray,” Wade told him.
He closed his eyes and fell asleep in seconds.
THIRTY-FOUR.
Hanscom Air Force Base. Oh-dawn-hundred. Already hot and humid. The day was going to be a scorcher. First Battalion kicked off their fartsacks and got to their feet.
Lt. Colonel Lee searched for the big sergeant the men called John Wayne.
Sergeant Andy Muldoon, First Platoon, Delta Company. His squad was a rough bunch of bad apples. He had a reputation of taking misfits and turning them into hardened killers. He’d served seven tours on and off in Afghanistan and had been decorated three times. The Taliban knew his name, and they’d been afraid of him. The war had turned him into the type of man who knew he could never go home. He was on American soil again, but home was gone.
He and Lee had history in Afghanistan. They held no special love for each other. But Lee needed his help.
Lee found the sergeant sitting on a crate with his back against a palette of bottled water, whittling a piece of wood into what looked like a chess piece. Lee once again found himself impressed with the man’s colossal size; he was a virtual giant. His squad loitered around him with their shirts off, trading desserts from MRE pouches, lifting weights and sharpening their big knives. A boom box pounded out Iron Maiden’s “Run to the Hills.”
“Sergeant Muldoon, a word.”
The big sergeant squinted up at him. “Captain Lee. Or is it Colonel Lee now?”
Lee crouched next to him. “Your men are fit? Ready to move?”
Muldoon grinned. “Always. You tracked me down just to check up on me?”
“They don’t look like they’re in a state of readiness.”
“They’re ready.”
“There’s a mission.”
“There always is, Colonel. The second I laid eyes on you, I knew you needed my help.”
“Believe me,” Lee said, “I don’t like it any more than you do.”
“Then it must be a real choice mission, one you wouldn’t do yourself.”
“I’d do it if ordered, and you wouldn’t see me bitch.”
“You really think you’re better than me, don’t you? Now that you’re in command, you need somebody to do your dirty work for you, so you don’t get dirty yourself.”
Lee sighed. It was like Afghanistan all over again. The mission that went wrong in every way possible. The kid. The long hours spent under the hammer. What happened between them there had turned into a never-ending pissing match that had no respect for decorum or rank. But Muldoon was the best man for the job he had in mind, and as always, the mission came first.
“No, Sergeant. We’re all just different tools for the job. And when did you start caring what I think of you? You might be surprised to know I came here for your skills, not your morality.” He paused then added
, “And definitely not for your personality, in case you were wondering.”
“All right, Colonel. Fair enough. Give it to me. Straight, if you don’t mind.”
Lee took a deep breath. “Major General Brock knows we’ve pulled out of the city. He says we work for him now. And he’s pissed about us blowing up the hospitals. Real pissed. He wants us to fall in line, go back to our original positions, and hold whatever ground we can.”
“Yeah, well, he’s nuts. So?”
“So he said he’ll prevent us from leaving Massachusetts by whatever means necessary.”
“Which means what, exactly? Talk is cheap.”
“Our drones identified two companies of infantry moving west out of Newton along Route 90.”
Muldoon grunted. “That’s only like ten, twelve clicks from here.”
“Most are on foot. Fuel must be a problem for them. But they have some vehicles. Humvees. A few five-tons.”
“Armor?”
“Negative.”
The sergeant snorted. “Doesn’t sound like a fair fight to me. Let them come.”
“It’s an opening move. Brock wouldn’t have sent them if he weren’t committed. More are probably on the way. He’s got four thousand men in the Greater Boston area. Armor, airpower, arty. We can’t watch them all. In any case, it’s a fight we don’t want even if we can win it.”
“You know, there’s another way out of this.”
“What’s that?”
Muldoon grinned. “We hand you over and join the Guard.”
Lee stared the man in the eye. “Is that what you want to do?”
“Nope. Just throwing it out there. Because it sounds like what you want is for me and my boys to go down that road and risk our lives slowing them down.” He spit a stream of tobacco juice onto the ground. “Fighting our own guys.”
This Is the End: The Post-Apocalyptic Box Set (7 Book Collection) Page 26