.25 caliber automatic in her bra. Two hand grenades in her cargo pocket. Steel hair pin, which she removed, to let her long red hair down. Punch knife at the small of her back. Another small .22 revolver strapped to her leg, which I hadn’t known about. .45 derringer on her other leg, which I had forgotten about. She looked like Mad Max entering Bartertown as the weapons clanked into a basket. With the same grin on her face, she stepped through the metal detector, without a beep.
The guards pointed us to the elevator, but I stopped Brit. “Give them up!” I said. Her grin disappeared and she looked pissed again, but I stood in front of her, impatiently. The impasse lasted for a good ten seconds, until two ceramic knives appeared as if by magic and were deposited on the basket.
“Such an asshole,” she whispered, and we got on the elevator, followed by an impressed Lt. Rheam.
“Just trying to save your life, honey.”
“Stop being Scarletti’s dog, and think of your FAMILY, and we’ll be fine.”
I had no answer to that. The rest of the ride up was made in silence.
Chapter 238
The top floor of the Corning Tower had been turned into an Operations Center, with video screens and computer workstations being manned by military personnel from what was left of all five services. I recognized a few faces, but had no time for small talk. Rheam led us into Scarletti’s office, then shut the door behind him as he left.
Tacked to the wall was a paper map of downtown Washington DC, and sitting in front of it was General Scarletti. I was shocked at how old he looked; last time I had seen him had been just before the Second Plague. Since then, I had pretty much avoided him.
Scarletti’s face had been burned badly when the Bradley he was riding in had been struck by an RPG in Iraq and caught fire. As a result, half of lower right face was a mass of scar tissue that barely moved. It had never done anything to sap his vitality and drive, though, and after the Zombie Apocalypse, he had taken command of Task Force Liberty, charged with clearing NY and NYC; his predecessor had met an untimely end at my hands. He had also managed to prevent the Second Plague from breaking out in New York, and had been the driving force to restore Vice President Epson to the Presidency.
Now, he looked like he hadn’t slept in a month, and his skin was ashen; his uniform hung on him. Circles were under his eyes and it took him a minute to react to our presence. He just waved us to some chairs in front of his desk, motioning for us to sit down. We did, cautiously. Every time we had dealt with this man, I had wound up in extremely dangerous situations, and both Brit and I feared that this would be a repeat.
Taking a drink of water, the Chief of Staff of the Army opened his mouth to speak, then stopped, looking at Brit. The next words that came out of his mouth surprised me, and Brit, also.
“How are your kids?” he asked, and waited for us to answer. It was such an unusual opening gambit form him that we were both taken aback.
“They’re fine,” said Brit, guardedly, “and if this is some blackmail plan you’ve got involving them, you’re not going to walk out of this office alive.”
“Ms. O’Neil, I’m well aware of the garrote you have disguised around your waist, and the other knife you didn’t give your husband. The one taped to the small of your back. However,” he continued, and smiled a skeletal grin, “I don’t expect to leave this office alive in any case, regardless if it’s you or cancer.”
At my questioning look, he said, “Too much exposure to burn pits and heavy metals in the desert. Nothing they can do about it, and I’m running on stimulants and coffee now. Just have to get through this one last campaign, and I’m asking you for help. Not ordering.”
I took a deep breath, and looked over at Brit. She looked right back at me, face saying nothing. I guess this one was on me. “No field Ops. That baby faced Captain told me you needed me to plan the scout teams. That’s the deal, no field operations.”
His wasted face quirked upward a half smile, and he nodded. “You’ve been through a lot, and I’m not going to ask you for anything more. However, we need to end this quickly. We need the teams to find the MR headquarters, and then we’ll pound them with cruise missiles.”
Brit stood up and walked over to the map. Apparently she had changed her mind about killing Scarletti, just like that. “What’s the deal with these yahoos, anyway?” she asked, tracing her finger across the line of the Potomac. “Another jumped up warlord or former military leader claiming his own kingdom? We’ve dealt with them before.”
“I wish it were so easy. No,” said Scarletti, leaning back in his chair, “these guys are the real deal. The President was content to let them die out as long as they sat there in their mountains, while we absorbed all the European refugees and consolidated our own population.”
After the second plague, England, which had been an unaffected refuge during the Zombie Apocalypse, had fallen, and fallen hard. More than a million refugees had arrived in Providence and New York Harbor, and we were slowly absorbing them into our own culture, settling them up and down the Hudson Valley, and reopening the coal mines in Pennsylvania. They also made up a good portion of the Army; Brits had always been our allies and damn good soldiers.
“Now,” he continued, “the situation has changed. The J-2 think it’s because their leadership is desperate, and needed something bold for their people to rally behind. The second plague hit them hard, and there has been a net outflow of migration back to our settled areas. The Scranton border control point processed almost eleven thousand refugees from the Mountain Republic since the early this spring. Apparently they are having a pretty hard time feeding the people they do have.”
I was following his train of thought, and Brit got it too. “So they attack and seize the FOB in Washington, to distract their own people from their problems.”
Scarletti nodded. “They got over a hundred hostages, and control the bridges over the Potomac.”
“Did they occupy Arlington?” I asked.
“No. They were smart enough to leave them alone. There is still a detachment of the Third Infantry there; they never left, even when the whole world turned to shit. They walled off the Tomb and kept watch, for two years until relieved.”
I figured as much. Those guys were fanatics, and I had heard the story before.
“So we have mechanized infantry, reavers, and undead all mixed up together.”
“Pretty much,” answered the General. “There is a pretty well established no-mans’ land between Federal and MR forces.”
Brit sat down next to me again, and put her hand on my arm. This is how I knew that things were OK now. “How is the morale of our guys?” she asked. It was something I had wondered myself. Fighting the undead was one thing, but we had lost a lot of our professional military forces in the Second Plague, since they had been specifically targeted by the false President.
“So far so good. A lot of people have realized that we have to, what was the expression? ‘Hang together or we will surely hang apart’.”
“I get that,” said Brit; then she leaned forward and looked Scarletti straight in the eye. “I know there is nothing I can threaten you with now, you evil bastard, but if anything happens to Nick, I’m going to follow you to hell.”
“Noted. Now can we get on with the planning? Captain Rheam will be working with you, before the team set out. He seems to have it in his head that he’s going to lead a team, but we all know that this is too critical.” I think one of the things that pissed Brit of the most is that he was unaffected by anything. Here he was, dying of cancer, and plotting how to save the country as if nothing was going on around him.
“What about an airborne insertion?” I asked.
“No way. The MR is carrying a bunch of Stingers, and there are two Patriot batteries operating in Virginia. Remember what happened in Syracuse?”
I grunted, images of a C-130 going down in flames as I tumbled through the air. I hated flying anyway, but it wasn’t going to be my ass on the line. “
OK, I’ll need to meet with the Team Chiefs as soon as possible.”
“They’re here already; you have a conference room available on the fifth floor.” With that he turned back to another set of papers in front of him. I guess we were dismissed then.
Chapter 239
We descended several floors in silence. Brit and I would discuss things later, not in front of Cpt. Rheam. Family matters were family matters. She did say one thing that made me feel like crap, though.
“That was the Benelli shotgun I got that one year for Christmas, you know.” She said it out of the side of her mouth, for my benefit only.
“I was saving your life, dummy.”
“I know. Just saying. I want a new one.”
I hit the stop button, and the elevator slowed to a halt. Brit turned to face me, but I had stopped the elevator to talk to Rheam, who seemed to be fuming silently. “Hold up, Captain,” I said, “no one is disparaging your service, but General Scarletti told me that you’re going to be my aide on this, and I agree with him.”
He started to protest, but I held up my hand. “Listen. In order for this plan to work, I need someone who has intimate familiarity with this battlefield. I don’t know DC very well, and I haven’t been there at all since the plague. I assume you’ve been involved in this from the get go?”
He nodded. “Chief Szimanski and I conducted a recon up from Hampton Roads to the first bridge, getting a structure assessment. We also placed charges under water to blow the bridge if necessary.”
That spoke a lot about the man’s courage, and I upgraded him a notch. “Sounds like a tough job; but I need someone who knows the enemy order of battle, and is familiar with the terrain. I expect casualties, but we can minimize that with careful planning and timely support. Welcome to being a staff weenie.”
He sighed and said, “Well, Tommy this and tommy that, right?”
“Exactly.” I punched the button to get us started again, ignoring the fish eye from Brit. I don’t think she liked the guy very much. The doors opened and we flowed Rheam down to a conference room, the long hallway showing tracks of muddy, booted feet. My heart picked up a beat, then I frowned, realizing that I had just become a staff weenie.
Rheam boomed out “COMMANDER, JSOC (Z) IRREGULAR SCOUT TEAMS!” A crumpled piece of paper bounced off him, and a spitball shot past my head.
“BRIT! SHOW US YOUR TITS!” yelled Scotty Ball.
“SHOW ME YOURS, FAT MAN!” she yelled back, and rushed over to give him a crushing hug. Ryan Szimanski came over and gripped my hand. Master Sergeant Scott Orr sat with his muddy feet up on the table, and Captain Hideyoshi didn’t look up from his manual. Everyone ignored Rheam.
“Hey Ryan, How are you feeling? Finally enlisted?” Ryan and his brother, who had been killed outside Seattle*, had been civilian scout team members forever, and never joined the military, despite all their salt water experience. In the same battle that had killed his brother, Ryan had taken a serious wound. I had seen him last year in a small town in Upstate NY, and he seemed OK then, but bullet wounds have a way of following you for life. It’s not like the movies, where the hero gets shot, and a few weeks later is back in action. Bullets and shrapnel carve pieces of meat, bone and internal organs out of your body, and if you’re lucky, the body adapts to function without those missing pieces. If you’re lucky.
“Scarletti forced it on me, but I told him to take his Army stripes and shove it. I’m a sea dog, always will be.”
“Well, I’m going to need you to get wet. One of our options is up river, so that will be you.”
“Of course,” he answered. Ryan and his team had been involved in an epic battle not far south of there, when we started moving back up the Potomac in Year Two, and again in scouting Andrews Air Force Base. He knew the area better than anyone else.
WE spent the day hashing out a plan of action. There was sarcasm, joking around, and even a heated argument or two. It just a way for these guys to hide the tension that wound in each of them like a coiled spring, and a lot of the team planning meetings often went that way. This was going to DANGEROUS, and they knew it. I had to say it, though.
“Listen, guys. The reason the four of you were picked is that you’re the most experienced team leaders we have left. This isn’t going to be some walk through the park. From what I’ve been reading, the two sides have been going at it hammer and tongs, creating a no man’s land through the center of the city. I’m talking some serious World War One shit. Flares, barbed wire, heavy mortars, machine gun emplacements, you name it.”
“Just like Call of Duty,” said Orr.
“Except no respawn, dumbass,” said Brit.
“Well, except no respawn.” Orr grinned at her, and she smiled sweetly back.
“I’m serious, fucktards. This is going to be a tough one to crack. Night time quiets things down a little, but then the undead are free to roam, and there are a LOT of them. Supply runs are being done by armored train up from Hampton Roads.”
“UAV support?” asked Hideyoshi.
“All the big stuff got shorted out by a virus inserted into the controller stations in Syracuse. Little stuff like Ravens have been hit by radar guided anti-air sniper fire.”
“Well, that leaves us to operate like we always do. Blind and dumb.” Scott Ball was a hard man, a Special Forces veteran who had transferred over to the Scouts. His brother Bill had saved my life last year, losing his own in the process.
“I think we hit this as many different ways as possible. Ryan’s team goes up the Potomac, or better yet drifts down to get behind the lines. We can get a diversionary attack to allow the rest of the teams to insert though the lines, maybe use the subway or sewers.”
A general chorus of “FUCK NO” and a “What is this WE shit, white man?” from Hideyoshi. I knew what they were complaining about. Under the remains of the cities were millions of undead, inhabiting the subways, service tunnels and sewage lines. Few people ever went down there, and even fewer came back.
“Listen up, the fighting has pretty much drawn out the undead from their holes in the vicinity. It might work, especially if you only take three man teams and make it fast.”
In the end, they agreed to split the risk. One team for the river, one for the subway, one for the sewers, and one to jump the line with a diversionary attack carried out by Federal forces, mixing into the fighting and dropping out into an abandoned building.. I would be providing command and control in a forward located CP, which meant mostly calling for fire support and coordinating regular army support. This way, at least one of them had a chance of success.
“Once the MR HQ is located, you guys will provide a grid and then unass the area. I’m thinking we can hit them with an ATCAMS strike, since Close Air Support can’t get a shot. The idea is to minimize damage to the city and hopefully take them all out in one strike. Once that happens, Federal forces will launch an attack down New York Avenue, while also advancing up the western side of the river.”
“What about extraction? After the fact, and in case something goes wrong,” asked Orr, who still hadn’t taken his feet down off the table.
“Like what? You run out of tacos, silly Mexican?” said Brit. “And get your greasy feet off the table. Don’t you have landscaping to do?”
“I’ll never run out of taco while you’re around, chica,” shot back Orr, who was proud of his heritage and never let us forget it. While they exchanged insults, I reviewed the Operations Order Rheam had supplied me, making notes, and then answered him.
“You’ll stay in place until the attacking force reaches you. In event of a compromise, break contact and got to ground. There’s no air extraction due to enemy SAM threat. No fire support beyond mortars due to ‘risk of damage to historic buildings’.”
“What a crock of shit, as usual,” said Ball.
“Agreed, but then that’s why they’re sending you guys, instead of the Rangers or some other super-duper high speed operators. You’re both the best, and expendab
le. It’s a quite a conundrum.”
“That means a problem, Scott. Nick, use small words around him, remember? He was a paratrooper.” Brit actually laughed out loud at Orr’s one fingered salute.
Rheam did have one other thing to contribute, seeming to have recovered from his sulk about not actually leading a team in. “Counter intel thinks there might be some spies in our own forces, people with family on the other side or who grew up in the area. We have to keep this very close.”
“No offense, Captain,” said Brit, “We have been to hell and back with these guys, and none of them would betray us.”
“That’s not what I meant. I just wanted to remind everyone not to discuss it. There have been three people caught passing information to the Mountain Republic, and there are many in our own Army who feel sympathy towards them. Information flows freely between both sides.”
“That’s why our op-order doesn’t go past this room.”
We spent the next hour trying to think of ways we could mitigate risk and gaming out the scenarios; then I dismissed the guys to meet us at 0500 for a flight down to Norfolk. From there, the teams would go by train to the 1st Infantry Division FOB outside Washington, to rehearse and get ready.
Brit and I spent the night in a decent hotel room; probably the last good night’s sleep we would get for a week, at least. As we lay there in the darkness, her head on my chest, I thought furiously about the plans we had come up with, looking for holes or weaknesses.
“It’s killing you, isn’t it?” she asked me, quietly.
“What?”
“Don’t play stupid with me, Nicholas David Agostine. Not going with them is eating away at you.”
I let out a deep breath that I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. “Yes, it is. It’s one thing to go out and risk my life alongside everyone else’s. It’s a whole other ballgame to be ordering men and women to their possible deaths, and sit back in a nice air conditioned TOC.”
Zombie Killers: HEAT Page 2