by Dirk Patton
“Why don’t we try English,” she said. “Your Russian is horrible. Where did you learn it, anyway? US Army’s language school? I always thought they did a better job.”
Actually, I had never learned Russian. I had wanted to rotate through the Army’s language school in California, but it seemed there was always one more mission and never time for me to go immerse myself in a foreign language. Besides, we’d always had someone on our team that could speak the language in whatever region of the world we were operating in.
My few, crude Russian phrases came from a drunken leave in Bangkok where I’d run into some Russian soldiers on leave. After we sorted out who could fight better, known as who has the bigger dick, we became drinking buddies for two days. They’d taught me how to curse in Russian. I’d taught them how to not scare off the Thai bar girls. We’d not exactly become friends, but had reached a friendly truce for a long weekend. Détente, I think they used to call it.
“What do you want?” I asked her.
“I want to help you.” She said. “I’m going to have my men lower their weapons so we can talk. First I want your word that you won’t fire on us as soon as we do.”
I stared at her for a long moment, trying to figure out what she was up to. They needed something from us, otherwise we’d be dead already. She had us cold, and she knew it, but she was willing to compromise her position to gain my trust.
“You have my word.” I answered, then I ordered Martinez and Scott to stand down.
She looked in my eyes for another moment before lowering her rifle. The two Russian soldiers followed her example without having to be told.
“My name is Captain Irina Vostov.” She introduced herself, stepping closer to me. “I’m with the GRU. I’m sure you know what that is.”
The GRU is the largest intelligence agency in the world. The KGB, and it’s successor the SVR, was made popular in movies as the Russian bad guys, but they were small in comparison to the GRU. Part of the Russian military and also the directorate that controlled all Spetsnaz troops, they were responsible for all Russian military intelligence. It made sense that the GRU would be very interested in the toys housed at Los Alamos.
“I know what you are.” I answered.
“We were here ahead of you.” She explained. “We watched you approach in the truck, MRAP you call it? Something like that? When it became apparent you would make it inside, I found these clothes and ID in an office so I could find out why you were here. What are you planning to do with those bombs?”
“Planning to fuck you with one of them, caja.” Martinez said under her breath, but the Russian Captain heard and turned to look at her.
“What is that? Caja?” She asked.
“It’s not important.” I interrupted before she found out Martinez had just called her a cunt in Spanish. No reason to keep poking the Russian bear at the moment. “We need them to fight the infected. Leave them in the path of the herds to slow them down and thin them out.”
She looked at me, blue eyes locked on mine. Would she accept my lie? I was pretty sure she was smarter than that. A woman became an officer in the GRU one of two ways. Either she was incredibly beautiful and willing to seduce and sleep with any man who had information her service needed, or she was very smart and ruthless.
Captain Vostov certainly had the looks to be used as what is know as a honey pot, seducing and using foreign men, but she wouldn’t be here with two Spetsnaz soldiers if that was her specialty. That meant she was even smarter than she was beautiful. Great. A smart and beautiful woman. How many of those had changed the course of world history?
“I don’t think I believe you.” She smiled. “But we can discuss that further after I tell you what I have to offer. Perhaps we can make a trade.” She moved cautiously, slinging her rifle and holding her hand out to her soldiers. One of them reached into his pack and handed her a small box, about the size of a box for a pair of children’s shoes. She held it up in front of her in both hands.
“This is enough vaccine to inoculate 100 people against the Chinese virus. There is also a flash drive with the technical information needed to allow your scientists to synthesize more vaccine. This is what I have to offer.”
I was stunned. I don’t know what I expected, but this was as about as far from it as possible. A vaccine? But did we need it? There had been a second outbreak already. I kept hearing that there were people that were immune to the nerve gas/virus combination. Wasn’t that what was left alive?
“I don’t understand.” I said. “We’ve already had the nerve gas kill or turn millions, then there was a secondary outbreak from the virus. Those of us that are left are supposedly immune.”
“No, they are not. The virus acts faster in some people than others. There will be another outbreak in less than a week. The virus is airborne. Everyone is infected now. When the next outbreak happens, there will be no one left that has not been vaccinated. Russia will rule the world, or what’s left of it. All we’ll have to do is clean out the infected, then everything is ours.”
Was she telling the truth? A third outbreak? A thrill of fear ran up my spine and on either side of me I could see Martinez and Scott exchange worried glances.
“Why?” I asked. “Why would you give this to me? Isn’t this what Russia’s always wanted? Wipe out America and rule the world?”
“Why? You confuse Russia with the corrupt, power mad few that rule our country. You think this is what the Russian people want? To see millions, no, billions of innocent people turned into raging monsters for us to gun down? To watch the world die around us? Nyet!”
As she spoke I could hear the anger in her voice and see it flash in her eyes. Was she sincere, or was she just one hell of an actress?
“As it has been for generations, you American’s do not understand the Russian people. Does your current president accurately reflect the hearts of the American people? Does he care about what is best for America, or is he as corrupt as I think he is? Power hungry and making decisions that only stroke his own ego and promote his personal agenda?”
I thought about what she was saying and found I couldn’t disagree with her. But just because she had a good picture of American politics didn’t mean she wasn’t running a game on me.
“Say I believe you. That there really is another outbreak coming and there is a vaccine in that box that will save what’s left of America. What do you want in exchange?” I asked.
She smiled. This time a genuine smile, not the one from earlier that reminded me of a shark getting ready to bite my ass off.
“I want the nuclear bombs and their keys.” She said, gesturing at the two carts Scott and I were standing behind. “They are what we came here for, but hadn’t found them before you showed up.”
“What do you want them for?” I was confused. Russia had at least as many, if not more, nukes than the US. These bombs were 50 year old technology. What could they possibly need them for?
“It is time for a, what do you Americans call it? Regime change? Yes, regime change. It is time for that in Russia. But the Kremlin is heavily guarded, and we cannot get close enough to arrest or kill our corrupt leaders. Neither can we gain access to Russian munitions. Too many people who would betray us in an attempt to curry favor. So, we decided to use American bombs. Poetic justice to use bombs from America, is it not?”
The information she had given me raced through my head. Did I believe her? Yes, I did. Everything rang true, right down to the emotion in her voice as she spoke. Besides, she didn’t need to trade anything for the SADMs. They could have shot us and taken them without saying a word, but they didn’t.
“And that’s why you were here when we arrived? To get the bombs?” I asked.
“We knew there were bombs here. We’ve been here for two days looking for them. I had hoped to find some scientists or military still alive in the building that I could make the trade with, but there were only infected when we arrived.”
I had a decision to make. The
plan, the mission, my orders were to retrieve the SADMs for use against the Russians that were on American soil. We were supposed to penetrate Kirtland AFB and leave two surprise packages for the Russians before beating feet to rejoin the Colonel at Tinker AFB in Oklahoma City. From there, other teams would be dispatched with nukes for Montana and South Dakota. If I agreed to Captain Vostov’s proposal, none of that would happen.
But what if I didn’t agree and there was a third, and potentially final outbreak? Other than killing a few thousand Russian airmen and soldiers, what would we accomplish by deploying the nukes only to fall victim to the Voodoo Plague virus? When I laid it out in its simplest terms, it was an easy decision to make. For not the first time in my career, I decided to willfully disobey orders.
Colonel Crawford might stand me up against a wall and put a bullet in my head, but I had to take the opportunity the Russian woman was offering. But first things first. My dad had always told me to never trust a beautiful woman making an offer that sounded too good to be true. Once I was in my thirties and realized Dad wasn’t the dumbest person to ever inhabit the planet, I understood what he’d been trying to tell me.
“How do I know there isn’t a vial of saline and a flash drive full of Russian folk tunes in that box?” I asked.
She smiled and slid the lid open and held the box up for me to see. Inside was a foam block with cutouts for four large vials of a reddish tinged liquid. A small USB flash drive rested on top of the foam between two of the vials.
“What can I do to prove it to you?” She asked.
I was stumped. Even researchers would need specialized equipment and training to know what was in those vials and to make sense of the data on the flash drive. I was in way over my head and had two choices. Trust the Russians, which went against everything I’d ever believed, or turn them down and start a firefight that most of us wouldn’t survive. But could I risk passing on the opportunity of a vaccine?
I decided to trust my gut. I’m usually right when I do. I had known Katie less than three weeks when I asked her to marry me. Still don’t know if that was my gut, or another part of my anatomy a little bit lower, but it was the right decision.
The worst case scenario was that she was playing me and I lost all the nukes. Best case, she was telling the truth and if I didn’t have that vaccine there really was no point in worrying about Russians on American soil. Time to trust my gut.
“Three of them.” I said. “That should be more than enough for your purposes.”
“And what do you really plan to do with the rest?” She asked, closing the lid on the box. “You really don’t expect me to believe they’re just for the infected. Perhaps you’re planning to sacrifice a few American air bases and their Russian captors along with them. No?”
“Three for the box, or we can see who has the faster trigger fingers.” I said, staring into her eyes. She stared back for nearly a full minute, then smiled.
“Agreed.” She said. “As long as I have your word that they won’t be used on Russians. Our troops have been told that they are here at the request of the American president because the military is trying to take over. It’s not the fighting men, it’s the Kremlin. We have a common enemy, Major.”
“How is it you know the truth?” I asked.
“I am GRU. I know everything. Besides, my uncle is… well, he’s very high up and is helping with bringing down the madman that occupies the Kremlin. Barinov makes Stalin seem like a disciple of Gandhi.” The look on her face told me she was afraid she’d said too much about her uncle. No one is that good of an actor.
“How long for you to get this done and your uncle to seize power?” I asked.
“My, but you are smarter than you look.” She laughed. “Yes, my uncle plans to step into the power vacuum left when the Kremlin is destroyed. Four days.. That’s what we need.”
“Then you have my word that I won’t use these on Russian troops for four days. Tell your uncle that he has that much time to either begin removing every last Russian from American territory, or to place all the troops and equipment that are here under American command to help knock down the infected and retake the country.”
After a moment she smiled and nodded her head. “Agreed, and I will be sure to communicate your message. Word for word.”
She held the box out toward me.
Removing my rifle from where it rested on the cart’s handle, I held a calming hand up to the Russians when they started to raise theirs. Lowering my weapon to hang on its sling, I shrugged out of my pack and placed it on the cart on top of a bomb. Removing the boxes of keys from the pack, I picked out three, then stepped forward and held them out to Captain Vostov.
“Do you need me to show you how to use these things?” I asked.
40
Rain suddenly started pounding on the windshield. Not a few drops to warn of what was coming, not even a steady downpour. Torrents. Like someone turned on a fire hose and aimed it directly at them. Jackson cursed and hit the brakes to slow down as visibility went from the limit of the headlights to zero in less than a second. Dog whined his anxiety as the rain pounded the roof of the truck with a ferocity that neither Jackson nor Rachel had ever experienced.
Fumbling for the wiper controls, Jackson finally got them going, but to little effect. Now he could see the end of the hood instead of just the curtain of water on the windshield. He glanced down at the speedometer, unhappy they were only going 15 miles an hour but having to slow even further because he couldn’t see the road in front of them.
“How are we going to find anyone in this?” Rachel asked, holding Dog tight and staring at the water being pushed around by the wipers. Jackson checked his watch and shook his head.
“How long?” Rachel had seen him look at the time.
“17 minutes. At the most. They’ll leave sooner if they have everyone loaded.”
“What do we do? I want to find those girls parents, but we aren’t going to find anything in this storm.” Rachel said.
“We’ve got a full tank of gas,” Jackson said after checking the dash. “If we miss the train, we drive. They’re heading to Oklahoma City. We just get on I-40 and head west.”
Rachel nodded, not thrilled with the idea of being on their own for a several hundred mile trek across the country. She trusted Jackson, knew he was probably just as capable as John in a fight, but wasn’t sure he had the same resourcefulness they might need to survive the journey. Dismissing the thought, she focused her attention on trying to see through the storm.
“Light ahead.” Jackson said a couple of minutes later, leaning forward over the steering wheel to peer through the windshield.
Rachel saw it too. At first she thought it was a car approaching with only one weak headlight, but as they slowly drew closer she could see the light bobbing up and down. What the hell was it? She leaned forward and turned the defroster on high to help see through the glass.
As suddenly as the rain had started, it stopped. It didn’t lighten up or trickle out, it just stopped. Rachel remembered tropical storms roaring through the Carolina’s where she grew up, and how bands of clouds would pass over and bring sudden downpours that would stop just as quickly. Grateful for the relief, she could suddenly see clearly and the light resolved into two figures on the side of the road carrying a flashlight. One of them was large and bulky, the other tall but thin.
“No way we get this fucking lucky!” She said as Jackson accelerated to cover the final distance to the people walking.
He slowed as they approached, headlights picking out the two pedestrians. It was the girls’ parents! The woman had a flashlight in one hand as they walked side by side on the shoulder of the road. Rachel smiled and gave Dog a hug in celebration of something being easy for a change. He returned the affection with a big, wet lick across her face.
Rachel cranked her window down and leaned out when they were only a few yards away.
“Am I ever glad we found you! We’re pulling out ahead of the sto
rm and your girls were afraid you’d get left behind.” She called out.
There was no response from either of them. The brakes squealed as Jackson brought them to a complete stop, the parents standing a few feet beyond the right front fender of the truck. There was enough light from the headlights to see and recognize them, but little more. Rachel frowned, thinking they were scared and didn’t recognize her. The mother’s name finally popped into her head and she opened the door and stepped out onto the road.
“Mary Alice, it’s Rachel. I found your girls…” She never finished her sentence, starting to turn to the truck when she realized something was very wrong. The instant she looked away, Mary Alice leapt with a scream, tackling her to the ground and lunging for her throat with bared teeth.
Dog responded instantly, launching off the truck’s bench seat and slamming into Mary Alice’s side, ripping her off the top of Rachel. They rolled across the shoulder and into a ditch full of water, Dog’s snarls and Mary Alice’s screams loud in the night. Her husband stepped forward and reached for Rachel who was already scrambling away.
When the female attacked, Jackson threw the transmission into park and jumped out of the driver’s door. By the time his boots hit the ground, Dog had already joined the fray and the male was stumbling towards Rachel. Jackson ran around the hood of the truck, drawing his pistol. Coming up behind the male he fired a round into the back of its head, the body crashing down on top of Rachel’s legs.
Whipping the pistol around when he heard a noise, he lowered it as Dog clambered out of the ditch, blood dripping from his muzzle. Rachel was trying to kick the dead infected off her legs and he bent and lifted the body with one arm and tossed it into the ditch with the dead female. Extending his hand he hauled Rachel to her feet and looked around for any more threats.