“That’s right,” Horn said after them. “Keep walkin’.” He took a long drag on his cigarette, then flicked it on the ground.
Horn stomped the cigarette. “We get no respect anymore. I’m really starting to hate this civilian bullshit.”
They continued toward the embassy building at the end of the street. Unlike the pre-fab houses FEMA had shipped to the island, the embassy was a beautiful structure with white columns out front and large windows. Workers on scaffolds were putting the finishing touches on the exterior of the building; those gorgeous windows were all being covered with metal bars.
Two Marines on the bottom steps directed Beckham and Horn into a line. Another set of Marines were checking IDs outside the large steel doors leading into the building. The line inched up the stairs. Beckham kept his hand on his aching back the entire way. His body was falling apart.
At the top step, he pulled his badge from his pocket and handed it over to the stony-faced Marine at the door. The man looked at it quickly, glanced at Beckham’s face, back at the ID, and finally to Beckham’s prosthetics. He was growing used to the judgmental stares now, but this was too much. Now he knew exactly how Fitz felt.
“You want to say something?” Beckham asked.
Instead of a condescending smirk, the Marine offered a warm smile. “I heard the stories about you, sir. Thank you for everything you did to save our country.” He handed the ID back to Beckham.
“You hear any stories about me?” Horn said. He pulled his ID card.
The Marine’s eyes roved to Horn. “Yeah, you’re that star college football player from Team Ghost, right?”
Horn slapped his knee and looked at Beckham. “Hell yeah! Finally some respect.”
The soldiers in the line behind them fidgeted, and the Marine jerked his chin after looking at Horn’s badge. “You’re both clear.”
Beckham and Horn strode into an auditorium packed with soldiers and civilians. Everyone inside had the battle-hardened look of people who had fought the Variants.
“Please take a seat,” came a voice from the front of the room.
Beckham grabbed a chair next to Horn as Mayor Antoine Walker, a tall African-American man with glasses and salt and pepper hair, took the stage. He stepped up to the podium, surrounded on all sides by officers of the Medical Corps. Army Lieutenant General Miles Rayburn stood right behind Walker. They were supposed to share control of the safe zone territory, but there was no doubt who was really running the operation here. Walker was a puppet, a paper pusher. Rayburn, on the other hand, was the one who had ordered the civilians shot on the docks during the attack.
Beckham had a hard time stomaching that, but after the rage had dissipated, he could understand the decision. Rayburn had done what was necessary to save the island.
“Plum Island endured a horrible tragedy yesterday,” Walker said. “We now know this was an act of terrorism, and we also know it was not the only act of its kind.”
Beckham gave Horn a sidelong glance. “You hear anything about more attacks?”
Horn shook his head.
“I’ll let Lieutenant General Rayburn explain,” Walker said, stepping aside.
Rayburn straightened his cuffs and stepped up to the podium. He looked like a career officer with his slicked back hair, neatly trimmed mustache, and sharp gaze, but he had started off as a Delta Operator, just like Beckham. After sustaining an injury that left him unable to fight, Rayburn had moved into commanding a Ranger Unit and quickly climbed the ranks.
Looking out over the crowd, Rayburn said, “Today we received information that SZT 15 in Chicago has been compromised. Everyone there is infected with the Hemorrhage Virus, or dead.”
Raised voices instantly followed this statement. The room broke into chaos.
“How could that happen?” someone yelled.
“They’re all dead?” said another.
Rayburn held up his hands, but he couldn’t get the room under control. He pulled his side arm and pointed it to the ceiling. That got everyone’s attention.
“Calm down!” he shouted.
Mayor Walker crossed his arms nervously.
“I understand that you’re all scared and frustrated, but now is not the time for unrest. We think the same people are responsible for the attack on Plum Island. Their weapons aren’t bombs or bullets. They’re using the virus to commit biological terrorism.”
Beckham shifted uneasily in his seat, not wanting to believe what he was hearing. Horn balled his hands into fists, and Beckham felt phantom pains from his missing hand as he tried to do the same.
“A few hours ago, we were informed by Vice President Johnson that the enemy is a group called the Resistance of Tyranny, or ROT,” Rayburn continued. “They are led by a man named Lieutenant Andrew Wood. He is the younger brother of Colonel Zach Wood, a man I believe is familiar to many of you. He claims President Ringgold is not the rightful leader of this country. I’ve also been informed that the same group commandeered the George Washington from Admiral Humphrey and Commander Davis.”
Beckham’s heart stuttered at the news. While he had been busy digging ditches and graves, everything had gone to hell.
“Not all the other territories see ROT as the enemy,” Rayburn said. “Lieutenant Wood has been on the Freedom Air Waves telling a very different story. According to him, Ringgold stole the presidency.”
Beckham rose from his chair. “That is bullshit.”
“Captain, I’m going to have to ask you to sit down,” Rayburn said.
Horn stood as well. “Why the hell would they believe Wood? The guy’s brother was a madman!”
A burly man wearing denim overalls stood. “Can’t we recall troops from Europe?”
Rayburn shook his head. “The war for Europe has just started. Our MEUs and other forces have landed, but they didn’t land to empty beaches. From what I’m hearing, it was a slaughter. General Nixon is busy with the next phase of the war, Operation Reach, and trying to advance east. We can’t count on their support anytime soon.”
Beckham wanted to ask more questions about Operation Beachhead and the crew of the GW, but this wasn’t the time. Rayburn probably wouldn’t know anything about Team Ghost or Davis anyway.
The man in the overalls rubbed the back of his bald head, squinting like he wasn’t sure what to say next.
“So why the hell are we here?” Beckham said. “What’s your move, sir?”
Rayburn grabbed the sides of the podium, locked eyes with Beckham, and leaned forward. “We’re here to start planning a war, Captain.”
They played the video over and over, and each time it ended, Kate told Ellis the same thing.
“Again.”
He hit the rewind button, and then play.
The grainy, green-hued feed had been captured right before a French Unit was overrun by unidentified Variants about one hundred miles south of Paris.
On screen, the six French AMX Leclerc tanks rolled through the countryside at combat intervals, breaching stone walls that had stood for centuries, smashing through barns, and pancaking shrubs.
Seventy years ago the German Tigers had done the same thing. Kate had watched a lot of documentaries with her dad when she was growing up. He was a connoisseur of anything WWII, and this footage reminded her of the black-and-white films from that era. Her dad had always said the Nazis were the worst enemy Europe would ever face.
He had been wrong.
She looked back to the screen, where Reavers were flapping across the sky. If it weren’t for their tails, Kate might have mistaken them for oversized bats. The spiked cords whipped back and forth as the beasts flew in a V formation to meet a squadron of French helicopters.
Missiles hissed from the launchers and fanned out toward the enemy. Explosions bloomed like fireworks as the missiles connected with the armored beasts. Several of the creat
ures wheeled away, wings burning. One dropped into a nosedive and smashed into the dirt not far from the Leclerc tank taking the video footage.
Half the Reavers made it through the barrage. They swarmed the choppers, spraying toxins, wrapping their bodies around windshields, and plucking gunners out of the doors. Fearless, one of the monsters used its armored back to spear the rotors of a chopper. The spike sheared through the blades, sending the bird into a tailspin.
The feed panned back to the battlefield.
Kate chewed her nails as she watched the video for the tenth time, her thoughts turning to Fitz and Apollo. How could they possibly win against an enemy like this?
Dad always said no one thought we could beat the Nazis at first. But we did.
Tracer rounds streaked overhead like shooting stars. On the ground, the tanks plowed through a hedge. They charged through the rubble and advanced across a farm field overgrown with weeds.
A chopper spun from the sky and crashed in a heap of mangled metal a few hundred feet from the lead Leclerc, but the tank didn’t slow. It kept rolling forward, turning slightly to avoid the debris.
“Here we go,” Ellis said. His finger hovered over the computer mouse, ready to pause the frame.
Another tank pulled out in front of the Leclerc taking the footage. It curved around a mound of dirt, then jolted to a halt. The tracks were stuck. It sat there for several moments trying to back up, move forward, and back up again.
Two minutes into the effort, dirt exploded around the tracks. The earth gave way and the tank sank, leaving only the cannon turret above ground. Another blast of dirt, and then the ground swallowed it whole.
The Leclerc capturing the footage halted, and the cannon roved across the green-hued view for a target. The gun shifted back to the left, where another tank was rolling across the field. The tracks had crushed a fallen fence post, and it was dragging tangled wires behind it.
The video feed began to pan away when the ground sank in front of the Leclerc dragging the fence. The cannon speared into the hole, wedging the tank in. The driver tried to reverse, but the tracks kicked out dirt like a dog digging a hole.
The hatch opened, and a French soldier jumped out. He bolted across the field, weaponless and without his gear. In a blink of an eye, the ground swallowed him too. A geyser of dirt rose into the air above the area where he had been standing a moment before.
A third Leclerc moved across the feed, the cannon firing on a target out of view. The camera swiveled to follow the gunfire as it peppered an embankment that shouldn’t have been in the center of the field.
Kate stopped chewing on her nails and folded her arms across her chest to rest on her belly. She was already shaking in anticipation of what came next.
She almost missed it this time, but Ellis slowed the video down. The Leclerc firing at the embankment rose slightly on a mound of dirt. At first Kate could hardly see it, but something massive was pushing up on the tank, slowly lifting it into the air.
“Those things have to weigh fifty tons,” Ellis said.
“More than that.”
In slow motion, the feed showed the tank tipping onto its side, the tracks continuing to run. A pair of massive creatures pulled themselves out of the ground, but the video was too grainy to see them in detail.
The Leclerc taking the footage fired on the monsters. The gunfire ricocheted off the armored flesh of the abominations. It fired its cannon with a jolt. The blast and the following explosion blinded the night vision feed. Sparks rained down in the green-hued view.
“Now,” Kate said. “Pause it.”
Ellis paused the frame and they both stared at the silhouette of a monster unlike any they had encountered before. It looked a little like a beetle, with its rounded back and small, bulb-like head, but the thing was massive.
“We’re sure that’s it?” Kate asked.
Ellis kept his gaze on the screen. He was inches away, studying every pixel. “Yeah, that’s it,” he said. “A French recon unit collected a blood sample a day after the battle when they went to search for survivors. That sample made it back to a lab in Paris, where the EUF then entered it into the shared database.”
“So besides the blood, this video is the only evidence the creature even exists.”
“Yup,” Ellis said. He leaned back and scratched his chin thoughtfully. “We better put this in the report to Vice President Johnson.”
“And say what? There are insect-like Variants in Europe?”
Kate noticed the gleam in Ellis’s eye. Her partner had a theory.
“What are you thinking, Pat?”
“That type of genetic change…I don’t know. Whatever caused those mutations wasn’t just the chemicals in VX-99. There’s something else going on here. And we need to figure out what it is before the Americans advance east for Operation Reach.”
-11-
The Sikorsky CH-53K King Stallion rose into the eastern sky and lifted Team Ghost’s new MATV off the sandy beach. It was still technically in development, with the first production model still years away, but the military had needed every resource it could get. Fitz reached for his seatbelt as the bolts tightened. He wouldn’t ever tell his team, but he had an aversion to heights. He was fine on flights when the plane was already in the air, and skydiving didn’t bother him for some reason, but there wasn’t much in life that made his stomach drop like standing on the edge of a tall building or watching the ground sink below him like this.
Something wet brushed Fitz’s hand, distracting him from the view. He looked down at Apollo, nestled between his blades on the floor. The dog nuzzled his hand again. Fitz wasn’t the only one who didn’t like heights.
“It’s okay, boy. Don’t worry. This won’t take long.”
Fitz turned to check his team. Tanaka, Dohi, and Rico were in the back seat, prepping their weapons and double-checking their gear. Stevenson sat behind the wheel, absent-mindedly twisting it like he was actually driving.
“They see me rollin’. They hatin’.” Stevenson was muttering with a goofy grin as he continued to turn the wheel.
“Thought you didn’t like rap,” Tanaka said, looking up from his rucksack with a wounded expression. “I feel like I’ve been lied to.”
Fitz couldn’t help but chuckle along with his team.
He looked out the passenger window at the FOB they were leaving behind. The tents and vehicles were like toys from this height. Abrams tanks and Humvees snaked up the beach; Marines the size of ants trailed the mechanized units. Behind them, the fleet glided through the now calm water. The beach ended in cliffs sharper than Variant teeth. The MATV cleared the rocks, and the green French countryside rolled into view.
Fitz brought a hand to his face to shield his eyes from the afternoon sun. A transmission crackled into his earpiece, bringing with it the first shot of adrenaline through his fatigued body.
“Ghost 1, Lion 1. We just made contact with the EUF. They gave us coordinates for the Ombres. Last known location was the Basilica of St. Thérèse. EUF hasn’t been able to raise anyone. Nothing on the comms for over forty-eight hours.”
The message was from Colonel Bradley. Between the static and his rough voice, Fitz couldn’t get a read on him. Normally he could tell by his CO’s tone how bad things were going to get. Forty-eight hours was a long time to be silent.
There was a long pause before Bradley said, “Ghost, watch your back. Good luck.”
Fitz almost sighed with relief. For a moment he had thought Bradley was going to kill the mission, and he was itching bad to get back out there.
The King Stallion’s main pilot, Delta 1, informed Team Ghost that they were thirty minutes away from the insertion point. Fitz sat back and breathed deeply, mentally preparing himself for the mission. The MATV rattled as the helicopter pulled higher into the sky.
“You sure this thing can suppor
t our weight?” Stevenson asked, looking out the side window.
Fitz checked the cables attached to the front bumper that angled back up toward the belly of the chopper. The big gray bird continued to ascend, and their escorts—a pair of Apaches—rose with them. Fitz threw up a two-finger salute to the pilot of the chopper to his right. The man nodded back, then pulled ahead to scan the flight path for threats.
Clouds drifted across the horizon and then parted to make way for the blazing sun. The rays beat down on their MATV, and Fitz flipped his sunglasses down over his eyes. He was glad to be fighting in the daylight. The Variants hated the sun, and he hoped the evolved beasts were sensitive to it. They needed every advantage they could get.
“Pretty deserted down there,” Tanaka said. He had his face pressed against the back window.
The shadow of the King Stallion, the two Apaches, and their MATV crawled across overgrown fields. Tractors and other machinery sat rusting where their owners had left them. There wasn’t an animal in sight. Frayed ropes hung loosely from posts where livestock had been tied up. The pens were empty, and Fitz imagined the horror the poor creatures had felt, trapped like worms on a fishhook.
Although Fitz couldn’t see them, he knew the Variants were still watching, their bellies empty and their reptilian eyes constantly searching for their next meal.
Seven months ago Fitz would have felt the prickle of fear.
Not today.
The faster he started killing the monsters, the faster he could return to his friends at Plum Island.
All it takes is all you got, Fitz thought. Do what Beckham trained you to do: Lead and sacrifice.
He watched the landscape and tried to recall as many details as he could about his previous missions. They’d all been successful, even the one that took his legs from him. He’d come back missing part of himself, but he’d lived to fight another day.
Fields and farms turned into a solid green blur as Fitz stared out the window. Would he come back from this one? Would any of them? One day, he knew, his ticket would be punched. Men like him didn’t die in their beds of old age. But he’d keep fighting until the end.
Extinction Aftermath (Extinction Cycle Book 6) Page 16