Red Hammer: Voodoo Plague Book 4

by Dirk Patton

  “Why won’t they tell me where John is?” She asked, hoping Max could help her understand the military’s stubborn love of secrets.

  “There’s no guarantee the Russians won’t swoop down on us in superior numbers at any moment.” He exhaled a plume of smoke that hung in the still evening air. “And if that happens, the less people that know anything about his mission, the better. Actually, you and I shouldn’t even know he’s on a mission. The Master Sergeant broke protocol just telling you that much.”

  Rachel understood, but that didn’t mean she had to like it or agree with it. Was this how military spouses felt? Not that she was anything to John other than a friend, despite what she felt for him, but this still sucked. How did the wives do it? Their husbands gone who knows where for who knows how long, and no one will tell you anything. Rachel felt a wave of empathy for John’s wife, Katie, followed by guilt over her profession of love to him. She couldn’t help how she felt, couldn’t stop the feelings she had for him, but she finally realized the impossible position she’d put him in. Even if he did love her too, how could…

  Muted screams from the control tower to her rear reached her ears. Fear for the girls churned in her gut as she turned and ran for the door, Dog racing ahead of her. By the time she reached the building she had her rifle up and slowed only enough to yank the door open before charging in. Dog beat her up the stairs and before she reached the top the screaming had changed to a whimpering cry. Pounding up the last steps, Rachel stepped into the glassed in room with the rifle at her shoulder, seeking the danger. She lowered the rifle when she saw Madison curled into Lindsey’s lap, sobbing, one arm wrapped around Dog’s furry neck.

  “She had a nightmare.” Lindsey said, looking up at Rachel.

  Starting to step forward to comfort Madison, Rachel glanced out the window, seeing several Black Hawks approaching over the flooded rice paddies. Deciding a distraction was exactly what the frightened girl needed, Rachel slung her rifle and scooped up the child in her arms. By the time they reached the tarmac, the first helicopter was landing, not far from where Max sat in his wheelchair. Walking up to stand next to him with Madison on her hip, Rachel made sure Lindsey was close, glad to see Dog staying right next to the young girl.

  Jackson was the first out of the helicopter, jumping to the tarmac the moment the wheels touched. He waved at Rachel and turned back into the open side door to help a woman climb down. The first two women off the aircraft were barely even women, looking more like teenagers. Both were white and even at a distance Rachel recognized the haunted look on their faces, their initial flinch when Jackson reached out to help them down. The next woman off was a black woman, medium height with a regal bearing. She took Jackson’s hand as she stepped down, eyes immediately locking onto Rachel’s small party.

  Lindsey squealed with delight and broke into a run directly at the woman. A second later Madison squirmed free of Rachel’s arms, sprinting after her big sister. The face of the woman broke into a huge smile and she raced forward to meet her daughters. The two girls threw themselves at her, nearly knocking her down, then the three of them wound up on their knees, hugging each other and crying. Tears were running down Rachel’s cheeks, and when she turned her head to wipe them away she noticed Max was crying too.

  “What? I’m not supposed to be touched by one of the first good things I’ve seen happen in a long time?” He asked when he noticed her looking at him. Rachel smiled as she leaned down to hug him, then she and Dog walked over to the small family reunion. Lindsey saw her approaching and excitedly started pointing and talking to her mother. By the time Rachel reached them, the woman was on her feet and walked up to Rachel and wrapped her up in a tight embrace.

  “Thank you! Thank you for saving my babies!” The woman’s voice broke with emotion as she spoke, still clinging tightly to Rachel.

  “You’re welcome.” Rachel answered, unable to stop smiling ear to ear. The woman finally released her, grasped each of her shoulders and held Rachel at arm’s length to look her in the eye.

  “I’m Mary Alice. I don’t know how I can ever repay you for what you’ve done.”

  “I… you don’t need to repay me. I just did what any decent person would have done.” Rachel smiled, uncomfortable with Mary Alice’s gratitude.

  Understanding her discomfort, Mary Alice pulled her into another hug, then released her and turned to her girls. Rachel bent to hug each of them, surprised at the sense of loss she was already feeling. Good byes said, their mother gathered them up and followed the other women who were being escorted by a Ranger to the evacuee camp next to the train. Rachel watched them walk away, happy for them and trying not to start crying when a large man that had just jumped out of a different helicopter ran up and scooped all of them into his arms.

  By now the last Black Hawk had unloaded and the flight lifted off to go pick up the Army personnel that had stayed behind to make room for the rescued captives. Jackson wasn’t making this trip and walked up to Rachel, rubbing Dog’s ears and looking her in the eye.

  “You OK?”

  “I’m good.” Rachel answered, turning her attention away from the happy family. “Now, you’re going to tell me exactly where John is, what he’s doing and if I’m ever going to see him again.” Rachel circled her arm through Jackson’s and started leading him towards the makeshift mess tent that had been set up.

  25

  I was more than a little freaked out by the female I had just encountered. I’d seen the same level of intelligence in the warehouse back in Nashville, but it hadn’t really sunk in just how effectively they could coordinate their efforts. I wouldn’t be caught with my pants down again. As soon as I saw a female, she was going to die, otherwise I was going to wind up someone’s tough, stringy dinner.

  We had quickly finished off the remaining infected with our rifles, then climbed over the crest and down onto the road where the abandoned vehicles sat. With Scott and Yee on security, Martinez and I started checking them. The first MRAP had skidded off the pavement and into a ditch. The ditch was deep enough that the two passenger side tires were hanging in the air and the truck rested on its frame. It wasn’t going anywhere without help from another large vehicle.

  The second MRAP was sitting in the middle of the road, driver’s door open. And it was out of fuel. I looked around and guessed the drivers had felt ill and stopped the convoy. They had apparently managed to get out of the vehicles before turning, but they’d left the engines running, which had eventually consumed all the diesel fuel in their tanks. I expected to find the same problem with the Humvees, and did. OK, Plan B. I checked the jerry cans mounted on the back of each vehicle, finding plenty of fuel. It would just take time to fuel one of them up.

  Pointing at a rack of four cans on the back of one of the Hummers, I grabbed one and handed it to Martinez, grabbed another and headed for the MRAP. The fuel transferred slowly, and I heard five suppressed rifle shots from behind me while I was holding a can up to the side of the big truck. Martinez was busily bringing me more full cans of fuel.

  “Status?” I asked over the radio, not stopping my work.

  “Four males.” Scott answered. “The first round was a body shot. Center mass. He didn’t even flinch.”

  “Everyone remember your briefing.” I said, lowering an empty can and lifting up a full one. “Head or heart shots, or they don’t go down immediately.”

  I received three acknowledgements, then snapped my head up at the faint sound of jet engines. It had to be the Russian CAP. Were they only up looking for other aircraft, or was the pilot bored and scanning the area with FLIR?

  “Make dumb!” I said into the radio and quickly lowered the can of fuel to the pavement, spilling half a gallon or so onto my boots.

  Make dumb was our pre-arranged signal to try and fool any aerial observers. On FLIR at night, as long as we weren’t doing anything other than just standing or walking around randomly, we would look just like any other infected. However, fueling a vehicle
, or holding a rifle would give us away to any reasonably sharp observer. I slowly shambled away from the MRAP, Martinez slowly walking over to stumble around with me. I couldn’t see Scott or Yee, but they should be doing the same, their rifles hanging from their slings.

  The noise grew louder as the jet approached, but the way sound bounced around the adjacent canyons I couldn’t tell from which direction it was approaching. Eventually it passed over us, traveling east to west. It wasn’t showing any light, which didn’t surprise me for a military aircraft in a combat zone. But even without being able to see it, I could tell when it flew over us and the direction it was going. Giving it a few minutes to get out of range, I dashed back to the MRAP when I felt it was safe, calling an all clear to the rest of the team.

  The jet was flying away from Kirtland AFB, most likely on the outbound leg of its patrol. Would it follow the same path back to base? Was I worrying over nothing? No, I wasn’t. We had to plan for the worst and hope for the best. Assuming the Russians weren’t keeping an eye on the ground this close to their captured base would be foolish. I would, and no matter what one might think of the Russians, they weren’t stupid and they sure weren’t incompetent. We had to assume they would be back.

  Hoisting up the can of fuel I thought about what I’d once known about Soviet military protocol and procedures. They would typically establish a 200 mile CAP around any operating base. I knew we were about 70 miles from Kirtland, so I could expect that pilot to travel another 130 miles before turning around. When any nation is flying patrols, they fly slow to conserve fuel, but fast enough to cover their assigned areas in a reasonable amount of time. I had been able to tell from the sound of the jet that it was just cruising along, not in a hurry to get anywhere. He was probably flying at about 300 knots, or about 345 miles an hour.

  Lowering the empty can and grabbing another full one, I did the math in my head. It should take him roughly 25 minutes to fly the remaining 130 miles. 50 minutes until he was potentially back over our heads. 45 to be safe. I may have mentioned that I’m not one of those people that can do math in their head quickly or easily, and by the time I had figured all this out the new can of fuel was empty. Sitting it down I decided we were good with the 25 gallons I had poured in.

  We were just over four miles to our target. Ten minutes at the most in the MRAP. That would give us 35 minutes to locate, retrieve and load the SADMs before we needed to either take cover or make dumb again. Calling the team in I hopped behind the wheel, hit the starter and checked my GPS. We were already pointed in the right direction and as soon as Scott and Yee piled into the back and slammed the door I started us moving.

  Within the first half a mile we started smashing infected under the armored bumper. There were a lot of males, but there also seemed to be a lot of females charging us out of the dark. A few of them acted like the ones I’d encountered during the original outbreak, running straight at us and slamming into fenders or doors. But there was a large contingent of smart ones that chose to try and run alongside us, just watching and waiting for an opportunity. They recognized we were secure inside the big vehicle and weren’t going to sacrifice themselves in a futile attempt to get to us through the armor plating. We quickly outdistanced them, but I could see them following in the mirror, the crowd growing as we drove.

  Topping a small rise in the road we were suddenly in town. Los Alamos isn’t large, barely boasting 12,000 full time residents, and like many small towns it has a sharply defined edge where all signs of civilization other than a road just stop. This was where we found ourselves, driving by a fenced county maintenance yard, then a small strip mall. Right after the shopping area the road forked and Martinez checked her GPS and told me to go right. Wheeling onto the new road we quickly entered an area with 12 foot tall chain link fences on either side, the coiled razor wire that topped them gleaming faintly in the moonlight. On each fence, at fifty foot intervals, groups of three large signs were attached.

  US Government Property – Deadly Force Authorized Beyond This Point, Electrified Fence – DO NOT TOUCH and ACTIVE LAND MINES - DO NOT ENTER were the warnings in both English and Spanish. Behind each fence was a fifty yard stretch of flat, open ground covered with neatly raked sand that ended at another equally tall fence. Both fences also had cameras mounted on the top of every post. Behind the second fence were large, paved parking areas that were mostly full of cars, squat buildings barely visible beyond. I had been here before and had seen the signs.

  On one trip I had stopped into a local Starbucks and had overheard a group of college aged tourists talking about them. They were laughing and joking, saying they didn’t believe them, that the government would never put out land mines or shoot a trespasser inside an American city. I had kept my mouth shut and shook my head. I didn’t know what government they were talking about or what they thought went on in Los Alamos. Guess they didn’t pay attention in history class.

  “GPS says it’s that building right there.” Martinez pointed at a large, single level structure on our left, hardly visible behind the two fences and full parking lot.

  I braked to a stop, staring at our target. My eyes were drawn to all the vehicles in the parking area. Lots of vehicles meant lots of people had been at work. That meant lots of infected inside the fence, and that probably was really bad news in the case of the females. Los Alamos employed some of the smartest people on the planet. If these females had retained their higher brain functions they were probably still smarter than half the surviving population. Great. I took a moment to share my thoughts with the team, then drove forward, looking for a gate into the complex.

  26

  We found the gate easily enough, but driving through it was a different story. Actually, there were two gates. The first one sat parallel to the outer fence, the second to the inner fence, the driveway between them fully fenced on each side. The outer gate was the same 12 foot high chain link mesh with razor wire on top, hinged to swing in towards a small guard shack offset to the side. If it was just the gate, we wouldn’t have had a problem, but leading up to the gate were half a dozen bollards sticking up out of the asphalt. I was familiar with this type of security measure. The bollards were retractable via hydraulic rams underneath the street and were made of reinforced concrete wrapped in cast iron. They were two feet in diameter, and when extended stuck five feet up into the air creating a barrier that not even a tank could break through. Unfortunately for us, they were fully extended and completely blocked our progress.

  “I’ve got this,” Scott said from the backseat. “I paid attention when these were being installed at Fort Drum. Just need someone to watch my back.”

  I glanced at my watch, noting we had about 25 minutes before the Russian should be back overhead. Looking around I saw multiple males and several females converging on us.

  “How long will it take you?” I asked as I made sure my rifle was ready.

  “Two minutes, maybe. There should be a maintenance hatch in the ground next to the guard shack. Once I’m inside I can release the pressure on the hydraulics and they’ll retract under their own weight.”

  I nodded, checking on Yee before we stepped out to meet the infected. He had been bitten on the arm when we were fighting the infected earlier. The bite hadn't broken the skin, but it had damaged some of the tendons in his forearm. He demonstrated his readiness by holding up the hand and opening and closing his fingers. Telling Martinez to slide behind the wheel, I popped my door open and stepped out, Scott right behind me. Yee went out the far side of the MRAP and took up station there, opening up with his rifle a moment after I did.

  As we engaged the approaching infected, Scott ran a slalom pattern through the bollards and up to the gate. He already had a pair of short handled bolt cutters in hand that he’d dug out of his pack, immediately setting to work cutting an opening in the chain link. I didn’t have time to watch him, but could hear the snip of the cutters as I acquired and fired at my targets.

  A large group of femal
es was approaching at a sprint and I decided to try a different tactic. If these were smart ones, which I had every reason to expect they were, as soon as I shot the one in the lead, the others would peel off and start trying to flank me. Not that there was room for them to go anywhere with the road fenced on both sides, but I wanted to test a theory. The first female I targeted was running at the back of the group. I fired and she tumbled dead to the pavement, the ones in front of her continuing their charge without missing a step. Smiling, I kept firing, working my way forward until there was only one female left.

  She sprinted at me, still not screaming. I held my fire, rifle ready but not pointed directly at her, waiting until she was only 20 yards away. I had been on my knee so I was in a more stable shooting position, and as she approached I stood up, took a step away from the MRAP and aimed directly at her face. She looked around, and not seeing any other females skidded to a stop, no more than 10 yards from me.

  “If you can understand me, turn around and walk away and I’ll let you live.” I said. Other than curiosity, I couldn’t explain why I was messing around like this. The female just stood, staring at me, opening and closing her hands much like a big cat sheathing and unsheathing its claws before attacking. My aim didn’t waiver. My finger was on the trigger, half the travel already taken up. If she even twitched in my direction she would die. She looked like she was thinking. Weighing her options. But she didn’t seem like she had understood a word I’d said. A long moment later she tensed and opened her mouth to scream. I shot her between the eyes before she was able to utter a sound.

  While I was testing my theory, Yee had been firing steadily, keeping the infected at bay on his side of the truck. Now I had to start engaging the males that were approaching. There were a lot of them, a rough guess putting the number at over 100. I started working on thinning them out, pausing and looking to my right when a loud explosion sounded. I could see a cloud of smoke and dust hanging in the air in the no-man’s land between fences, debris raining down in the area of the blast, and it took me a moment to realize an infected had gotten in there and stepped on a land mine.