Plague Years (Book 3): This Thing of Darkness I Acknowledge Mine

by Rounds, Mark

  “That’s the main show anyway,” said Jen indicating the receding helicopters.

  “Yes ma’am.” said Sergeant Finkbiner. “I suspect the resistance will crumble once the Special Ops team goes in. We probably better be ready to roll when that happens.”

  Whatever Jen was going to say was carried away by an earth shattering KABOOM! Once pieces of car stopped falling, Jen looked down the line of the barricade to see that the two cars on the end were little more than litter and the highway beneath where they had been was cratered and blackened.

  “What the hell was that?!” said Jen, her ears ringing from the explosion.

  “Rangers shit, ma’am,” said the Platoon Sergeant of the attached Ranger unit, Sergeant First Class Jameson grinning. “The squad of Rangers we were holding in reserve came up with an idea. I was coming forward to ask you about it, but boyish enthusiasm got the better of them I guess.”

  “Sergeant Finkbiner,” said Jen, ignoring the Jameson for a moment. “Get the Humvees rolling through that hole and have the gunners take the reverse side of the barricade under fire as they go through.”

  “Yes ma’am,” said Finkbiner who turned and started shouting at the drivers to get rolling.

  “Not so fast,” said Jen to the Ranger NCO. “Just what was that idea you were going to spring on me?”

  “Ma’am, the reserve squad was 200 yards back with the semi,” said Jameson. “They were positioned on the bridge over Latah Creek. Rangers always have rappelling gear with them, so they went over the side and moved up through the built-up area along the road. Then they were able to approach the barricade from the flank with their designated rifleman taking out anyone who spotted them. They were able to infiltrate the end of the barricade line and set off several satchel charges.”

  “That was the bowel-loosening explosion we just heard?” asked Jen, eyeing the NCO suspiciously.

  “Yes ma’am,” said Jameson, who was starting to get nervous.

  “Let me make this clear, Sergeant,” said Jen. “I can do a little math and it would take even Rangers significantly longer to rappel down the side of the bridge, sneak through a heavily vegetated draw and make a flank attack on the objective than it would to take you to work your way down two hundred yards of relatively flat highway, even under fire. In future, you will inform me of such things, not so I can rein you in, but so we can coordinate. Am I clear?”

  “Yes ma’am,” said the chastened NCO.

  “Your lieutenant and I will have a little chat once this is over,” said Jen turning back to her map. “But right now, I have an op to run. Go gather up your troops and get them vehicle borne. We have a couple of miles to cover rather quickly if we are going to be successful. Now get out of my sight unless you have something to tell me!”

  July 15th, Wednesday, 9:52 pm PDT

  The Providence Medical Research Center, Spokane WA

  Ngengi barged into Macklin’s office, surprising him as he was gathering up what looked like a hand full of thumb drives.

  “That damned Little Bear,” said Ngengi forcefully. For all his anger, he set Little Bear’s back pack down gently. “He’s been stalling our departure for God knows how long. I bet those snipers are his too.”

  “Shit, we have to cut and run now,” said Macklin, not looking up.

  “How are we going to do that?’ asked Ngengi sarcastically. “He has riflemen covering all the doors. With Carlos out setting up a barricade up the road, we don’t have the manpower to rush one of the exits.”

  “Call Carlos and get him back here,” said Macklin. “If he can get any of his shooters back, great, but get him back. We are cutting our losses.”

  “What about Strickland’s miracle drug?” said Ngengi sarcastically.

  “That’s what these damned thumb drives are for,” said Macklin, who was now more than a little scared of Ngengi. “I have recorded all the steps and missteps his team made. I think they made more of the drug than they let on, but they were clever and I wasn’t sure, so I had to let them finish. But I have the basics. We can recreate this with some reasonably competent lab technicians.”

  “So, what should we do about Strickland?” said Ngengi.

  “Kill him if you have time or abandon him if you don’t,” said Macklin, “I don’t care which but we have to move now.”

  There was an earth shattering kaboom that interrupted Ngengi’s rejoinder.

  “What the heck was that?” asked Macklin.

  “It came from the highway,” said Ngengi. “I think it might have been the end of Carlos and his barricade.”

  Chapter 15

  July 15th, Wednesday, 9:53 pm PDT

  Above the Providence Medical Research Center, Spokane WA

  “Is it always like this on an op?” asked LT. Jeremy Price, whose stomach was feeling like an erupting volcano as they approached the mission site.

  “Relax,” said LT. Simon Dietrich, the commander of the Ranger detachment who had elbowed his way onto this portion of the op as Price’s second in command “This is what, your second op?”

  “Yeah,” said Price.

  “Don’t worry,” said Dietrich smiling, “it only gets worse.”

  “Aren’t you a bundle of laughs,” said Price with a nervous smile of his own.

  “Anybody who thinks this a fun has a hole in their head,” said Dietrich. “And they likely will get one with that attitude. Fear is your friend as long as you don’t let it take charge.”

  Price nodded. His reply was drowned out by Captain Sines, the UH-1 chopper pilot, over intercom.

  “One minute till insertion,” said Sines.

  In mission planning for this op, Dietrich had opted to take two of the three machine gun teams from his machine gun squad and put one each on the two Little Birds along with a squad in the other UH-1, which made things a little cramped but doable for a short flight. Dietrich rode in Price’s UH-1, along with the rest of Price’s team. This included a PJ named Senior Airman Michael LaPoint and Tech Sergeant Raleigh Winters, who was probably the best combat shooter in the team. Winters was officially a noncom in the Intelligence section of the 92nd Operations group, but he competed regularly in local distance shooting competitions and was the closest they had to a sniper. Senior Airman Peterson was his spotter, also a member of the Intelligence section.

  Master Sergeant Ray Filby was the senior enlisted man on the team. He also trained the Security Police squadron in unarmed combat and at 6’ 5” and 238 pounds, was by far the biggest man in the helicopter. Another member of the 92nd Security Police Squadron, Airman First Class Preston Ireland, who was this year’s Warrior Fitness champion for the base and all around sports fanatic, completed the unit.

  On the approach, they could see an M-2 .50 cal machine gun on a pintle mount with the gunner futilely tugging on the charging handle. He became the focus of the three machine guns on the helicopters and soon he and his assistant gunner were down.

  First the two Little Birds went in hovering just above the top of the roof. The fire teams dropped off one at a time, the first going left and the second team going right. The Little Birds, after dropping off their Ranger cargo, stood off and began applying suppressive fire to any open windows and balconies.

  The door on the landing for the roof burst open and a couple of mercenaries carrying Stinger missiles tried to deploy, but the Ranger teams took them out before they knew they had company on the roof.

  Then Price’s UH-1 touched down and his team, along with LT. Dietrich, exited the aircraft.

  “Follow the plan,” shouted Price. “Bust that door and spread out.”

  Most of Price’s team, save for his sniper and M-60 gunner, were carrying M-870 shotguns so as not to over penetrate the walls and partitions of the lab and potentially hit the hostages they were trying to rescue.

  Filby kicked the door to the stairwell open and was rewarded by a fusillade of small arms fire. Luckily, he had stepped back after kicking the door and was hit by only a few concrete fragm
ents that were moving slowly enough that they hardly broke the skin.

  “Flash bangs!” said Dietrich. Before the words had died away, the two Rangers closest to the door each pulled the arming ring on an M-48 stun grenade and tossed them down the stairwell. It had been decided not to use regular fragmentation grenades for the same reason the Air Force team was carrying shot guns, to avoid injuring the hostages they wished to rescue.

  There was a sharp crack and a shout of surprise from the mercenaries covering the stairwell. Filby again rolled into the doorway and spotted two armed hostiles rubbing their eyes trying to clear the after image. He dispatched both with his shotgun and then threw himself to the side of the landing.

  “Loading!” shouted Filby and he thumbed two more shells into his weapon. The Ranger team behind him rattled down the metal stairs and kicked open the door leading to the third floor. Two went right and two went left, covering the hall which was empty.

  “Filby!” shouted Price as he cleared the doorway, “Take LaPoint and Ireland and start kicking in doors down the east hall, I’ll take the rest of the team west. Rangers, start on the next floor.”

  “Airborne!” shouted Detrich and he and his Rangers headed down to the next floor.to begin searching the building for the hostages and neutralizing any hostiles.

  July 15th, Wednesday, 9:59 pm PDT Madigan Medical Center, Nurses Station for the Isolation Ward, Joint Base Fort Lewis-McChord, Tacoma WA

  Mary Kline was becoming agitated. She knew in her heart that using Slash was wrong. She had just about made up her mind to tell Nurse LT. Nora Trickle about her Slash habit, when Nora herself spoke up startling Mary.

  “Mary, can you watch our patient for a few?” said Nora who was the duty nurse tonight and technically in charge of patient care for their single charge. “I need to use the Ladies’ something fierce.”

  “Sure,” said a startled Mary. She continued to ruminate on her Slash usage and felt sorry for herself and pity for anyone who was foolish enough to get addicted the way she had.

  “That’s bad enough,” thought Mary, “but this poor wretch is having it forced on him.”

  Then she knew what she had to do. Mary called up the screen that monitored the drug increments for Nergüi’s IV and completely shut off the flow of Slash.

  July 15th, Wednesday, 10:01 pm PDT

  One Mile West of the Providence Medical Research Center, Spokane WA

  It took Jen longer than she thought it would, getting her troops back in the vehicles, because the mercenaries opposing them continued to snipe at them. It had taken Sergeant Finkbiner and two Humvees with M-240’s mounted on the roof to shift them. They were still under sniper fire as they moved down the partially obstructed freeway.

  “Finkbiner,” said Jen into her radio looking at the two motionless Humvees in front of her. “What’s the holdup?”

  “Ma’am, the driver on the other Humvee is a casualty,” said Finkbiner. “Someone is shooting with a pretty high-powered rifle and while the windshield didn’t break, there was some spalling of the inner layer of Plexiglas. Archer wasn’t wearing his goggles so he’s combat ineffective until we get someone to look at his eyes.”

  “Clear his seat and keep rolling,” said Jen. “Put Morton in his place. If we stall, they’ll fort up again. I have the PJ in my rig so as soon as we stop, we’ll get Archer looked at.”

  “Yes ma’am.” said Finkbiner as the first vehicle started moving.

  The mercenaries had been falling back in good order, something the Infected had not done before. The chaos that was the freeway wasn’t helping as there was often only one lane and they were wandering from side to side like drunken sailors making a path down the highway. The setting sun had also meant that they were using night vision goggles to select targets. Jen was still expending a lot of ammunition reconning by fire as they drove, figuring that the owners of the cars on the highway probably weren’t going to complain.

  “Any word on the extraction team?” asked Jen, who was getting nervous as she wasn’t actively in the fighting but trying to control her team.

  “Ma’am,” said Finkbiner in the lead vehicle, “we saw them go in a bit ago. The aircraft have cleared the area. No word from the troops inside, but since they carried mainly shooters in and they are probably busy with everything, it’s not a surprise.”

  There was an earsplitting explosion that cut off Jen’s next remark.

  “Ma’am, we have a situation up here,” continued Finkbiner. His voice was still well controlled but M-240 fire could be heard in the background. “Our vehicle has detonated a mine. We are all ok, but we are taking a ton of fire. The front wheels were completely blown off the vehicle so it’s combat ineffective. We would appreciate some support.”

  “Roger that,” said Jen who then rolled down her window and shouted to the Rangers who weren’t on the command net. “RANGERS! deploy forward and build a base of fire. We need to extract the troops from the first Humvee!”

  Two fire teams of Rangers rushed forward and took up positions of cover in and among the various wrecked cars and began returning fire with a vengeance.

  Jen had her remaining gun vehicles roll up to support them. But taking a page from the Rangers book, she called Senior Airman Morton over. His fireteam wasn’t too badly beat up, apart from Morton himself, and she knew that ever since he had tried to save Airman Fraser, Morton was a changed individual and gung ho enough to tackle something a little out of the ordinary.

  “Morton, I want you to take your squad and get behind the bad guys,” said Jen.

  “Yes Ma’am,” said Morton who thought for a moment and then said. “If I can use the Rangers’ rappelling gear we can just hop over the side of the freeway.”

  “Make it happen!” said Jen as she turned her focus toward the battle. “I’ll move up as much as I can to get their attention.”

  “Yes Ma’am,” said Morton who gathered up his troops and headed for the edge of the freeway.

  The highway was still elevated at this point, but it was only fifteen feet to the ground so they rappelled down to Walnut Street. Then they hustled down 4th Street to the freeway entrance and came up behind most of the mercenaries’ positions. Morton maintained rigid fire discipline and only let the designated rifleman snipe at the exposed mercenary positions from the rear. It took their adversaries several minutes to notice that they were receiving fire from two directions. The mercenaries tried to take cover from both sources of fire, but the confusion meant that more of them were killed and ramped up the panic.

  When Morton was sure that they were spotted, he released the rest of his team to begin a “mad minute” with all of his troops firing on full auto. This ramped up the intensity of fire dramatically, causing the mercenaries to cower rather than return fire.

  It started slowly, but the mercenaries began to creep away, unwilling to be subjected to a crossfire.

  Carlos, watching the disintegration of his forces, realized that perhaps time had come to make a decision. With Nergüi in captivity and his support growing weaker by the hour, Macklin’s star was no longer ascendant.’ Carlos was considering other options.

  Unlike Ngengi, who had only been Nergüi’s follower, Carlos had worked for several other patrons. He decided it was time to find another home and headed for Geiger Field, the municipal airport for civil aviation in Spokane. He had found a Piper Cub there that he had provisioned with fuel and had made airworthy for just such an emergency. As the last of his command melted away, Carlos took cover and let the soldiers pass. Then he slipped off into the darkness.

  July 15th, Wednesday, 10:02 pm PDT

  Headquarters Building, Joint Base Fort Lewis-McChord, Tacoma WA

  General Antonopoulos was still sitting in the dark room adjacent to the interrogation room. He wasn’t really watching the interrogation any more, just waiting. The sound of a cell phone’s ring tone brought his focus back to the interrogation.

  “Marie? Is that you?” said Hansen into his cell phone. “
Are you ok?”

  Lassiter had his hand on his ear listening to the technicians in a nearby room who were tracing the call, using the sensors planted by the Special Forces team on their most recent recon into the target area. Hansen was briefed to stretch out the call as long as he could so that they could get a really tight fix on the location of the cell phone.

  Antonopoulos watched nervously as Lassiter first nodded and then gave a thumbs up.

  “Williams,” said Antonopoulos urgently, “send the location from the tracer team and give Major Eveleth the go ahead. Let’s see who we can capture.”

  Williams nodded and then spoke urgently into his headset microphone for a few seconds.

  “They are inbound sir,” said Williams.

  “Any reports on the op in Spokane?” asked Antonopoulos.

  “They are on the roof of the medical building,” said Williams. “The ground element is within a mile of the site but reporting heavy casualties. No reports on the location of Strickland or his lab team yet.”

  “Keep me posted,” said Antonopoulos, “but don’t bug them for sitreps. They have enough on their mind.”

  July 15th, Wednesday, 10:09 pm PDT Madigan Medical Center, Nurses Station for the Isolation Ward, Joint Base Fort Lewis-McChord, Tacoma WA

  Mary Kline was agitated. Her supervisor, Nora Trickle, had gone down to the restroom and she was left alone with the poor unfortunate that they were shooting up with Slash. She had already cut his dosage and she could see that he was starting to stir. Mary was caught in a web of indecision. She knew that she should keep the dosage high enough that her patient was incapacitated, but she also knew, through bitter experience, that he was becoming addicted to Slash and that wasn’t right. She was feeling a strange compulsion to release his bonds and let him go.

  Mary began slowly walking towards the door of the isolation suite. Her intent was to release the man and get him away from his bondage from Slash. She was just about to the door when Nora came through the door.