Once Schiller had left, Angriff threw up his hands. “Who’s going to show up next?” he said. “My next door neighbor? Did the entire country go cold?”
#
Snowtiger was too tired to even shower after coming off watch. She stripped to bra and panties and tossed her sweat-stained ACUs into the dirty clothes hamper. The air conditioning dried the moisture on her back and neck before she collapsed in her bunk and pulled the top sheet over her body. Within seconds she had drowsed into semi-consciousness.
“Stud!” One of her roommates, Amelia Rucker, stuck her head in the door. “Up and at ’em, hero, you’re rotating home. Pack your stuff; takeoff in ten minutes.”
“Huh?”
“Get up!” Amelia grinned. “You’ve served your time in Hell.”
#
0944 hours
Despite wearing another blindfold, Claw visualized the lean woman riding the bench across from him, next to the guard. He’d only had a glimpse of her before they’d covered his eyes, but he doubted he would ever forget the high cheekbones and faraway eyes, or the smooth sheen of her reddish skin. Claw had known many women in his life, none of whom compared to the woman they called Stud.
From studying the blueprints, he knew every detail of Overtime Prime, inside and out, every nook and cranny and piece of equipment, so he knew exactly where they were when he felt the UH-1Y Venom bleeding off speed as it came in to land. After an hour’s flight, a grinding noise heard over the roar of the rotors told him the hangar doors were being opened. Ground crews would be clearing a space for the bird to put down, and an armed guard would no doubt be standing by in case he tried something. He smiled; blindfolded and handcuffed, they still worried about him. Good… they should worry.
They were trying to keep him in the dark, but he knew everything there was to know about Operation Overtime. He also knew virtually every member’s personnel file. Stud could only be the sniper named something-or-other Snowtiger.
A slight jolt told him they’d landed. A few seconds later, the engines shut down and the guard removed the handcuffs. One of his guards told him to remove the blindfold but not to do anything stupid. Once again Claw grinned. When he became head of security, he’d look the man up.
With the blindfold gone, he looked for the hot Indian woman, but she had already dismounted, so he slid to the hangar deck. Work close by had come to a stop as the ground crews gawked at the stranger, and six men with rifles comprised his guard. Everything was exactly as he’d thought it would be, with one exception.
As he scanned the crowd encircling the helicopter, he saw the folded arms and angry scowl of a man he’d thought long dead. His eyes went wide and his voice betrayed his shock. “Green Ghost?”
#
“Man, am I glad to see you. You have no idea. So what’s the story with that gorgeous Indian babe?”
Arms crossed as he leaned against a wall, Green Ghost’s nostrils flared and he scowled at his Zombie comrade.
“Come on, man, gimme the lowdown. I know her name is Snowtiger, although they call her Stud. What’s her deal?”
“She’s a MedOH.” He pronounced it meadow.
“No shit? That angelic vision won the Congressional? Was that in her file?”
“She killed a hundred of the enemy last year and saved the whole brigade.”
“That’s why everybody called her Stud!”
Claw had sat in the square room, spare of anything more than a table and two chairs, by himself for half an hour since being whisked out of the hangar. It had been so quick that he’d been wondering whether he’d actually seen Green Ghost or if it had been just a hallucination. Now the terse answers and tense body language made him grin; it was classic Green Ghost.
Green Ghost sat in the opposite chair and leaned forward on his elbows.
Claw knew that look all too well. “What?” he said, spreading his arms. “What’d I do? Don’t tell me you’re banging her.”
“You let me think you were dead, you prick. You let us all think you were dead.”
“Apparently I wasn’t the only one to go cold.”
“After The Collapse, not before.”
“Yeah… that would explain why you’re not on the manifest. So who else is here?”
“Don’t try to change the subject. Because of you, I had to promote that asshole Adder to command second squad. Do you know what happened? Have you read the reports?”
Claw scowled. “Adder… shit. No, I haven’t heard.”
“Reliable sources reported a nuke being assembled in the Venezuelan jungle, under government protection, to be sold to the highest bidder. Adder took the whole squad in with him to deal with it. The whole squad! He had total tactical authority, planned the whole thing himself down to the last detail. Had all the support he needed and didn’t once ask for my advice. The arrogant prick walked into that green hell with twelve Zombies… and he came out alone.”
“Wedge? Head Case? Stiletto?”
“Dead, all of them. They got the nuke, but when I asked him why everybody else wound up dead, all he could say was bad luck. The bad luck was me ever letting that psychopath into TFZ in the first place, except you vouched for him. The whole thing was his fault, we knew it, and he knew we knew it, but we couldn’t prove it. He got a commendation out of it. I removed him from command and got a lot of shit for it, but I wouldn’t give him his place back and Saint Nick supported me. Eventually the prick disappeared.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah, fucked is right. Especially your whole squad.”
“C’mon, Ghost, what did you expect me to do? Do you know who recruited me to Comeback? General Steeple himself. I don’t know how he found out about me and I didn’t ask, or why he didn’t ask you. All I know is that one day I was ordered to D.C. to meet some CIA guy named Charro at a grubby Italian restaurant. It was this little place, y’know? Grimaldi’s, that was it. Dark, dirty, nobody in there except this spook and me.
“Then all of a sudden in walks the Chief of the fuckin’ Joint Chiefs of Staff. A four-star general in this dump the cockroaches wouldn’t eat at. He pitches this deal to me about the end of the country, and cryogenics, and me being the head of security at some super-secret base out west, and generally makes it clear that I can’t say no. And here I am.”
“What about Scope?”
“Huh. How do you know about her?”
“She flew here with you.”
It took him a second to figure it out. “The body bag?”
“I had to ID her body right before I came here. She’s pretty ripe.”
Claw blinked several times. “So the Indian wasn’t fucking with me.”
“No, he wasn’t. She killed his little brother and he killed her. And that’s a big problem for you, because he’s proven himself to be an ally of Overtime.”
“So I’m fucked.” It wasn’t a question. “Is there a way back?”
“I don’t know, but if you want to start, tell me everything there is to know about Comeback. Everything, hear me? And the first thing I want is to know exactly where it is.”
“So you don’t know its location?” Claw said.
From his tone, Green Ghost could tell he was thinking about whether this knowledge gave him leverage.
“Don’t even think about trying to negotiate this,” Green Ghost said. “You know who the C.O. is here at Overtime. You were in Kenya, and you know Saint doesn’t take shit from anybody. He’s now a five-star, and last year he stood in the middle of a highway and shot it out with about a thousand Sevens, killed God knows how many all by himself, and he won’t think twice about court-martialing a man who ran out on his command.”
“I didn’t run out. I was re-assigned! And Angriff is nothing if not fair. He won’t court-martial me over that.”
“Then I’ll prefer charges! Don’t you get it yet? That world is gone, the rules have changed, and legal niceties are no longer relevant. What matters now is who you can count on.”
“You know I�
�ve got your back. I always did.”
“Did being the operative word. You know how much I leaned on you, even more than I did on Vapor or Wingnut. You were my executive officer. When you went down… well, it hurt, let’s leave it at that. But I could really use you now, if I was sure I could count on you, so against my better judgment, I’ll give you a chance to prove your loyalty. I’m gonna tell our S-2, Colonel Kordibowski, that you’re in total cooperation mode, because you’re going to be. Hear me?”
“I hear.”
“Good. But before you tell him anything and everything he wants to know, you’re gonna write down Comeback’s exact position.”
“Tell me straight, Ghost. If I do it, am I gonna get back in the game?”
“I don’t know. I can’t predict what Saint will do, but if you come clean, and I mean really come clean, I’ll put in a good word for you.”
“I really am sorry about leaving Zombie the way I did.”
“That makes everything better.”
“Come on, man, don’t be like that.”
“One last thing. No more cracks about brigade personnel, especially Snowtiger. Saint Nick watches out for her personally. That’s why she was stuck at an FOB; he didn’t want to be seen as favoring her. But I’ll tell you what, if you really want to hit on somebody, try Glide. She’s new in First Squad since you left.”
“She’s hot?”
“Yeah, she’s hot, but if she shoots you down, or breaks your jaw… you can always try my sister.”
“Oh, fuck no.”
#
Chapter 24
When there’s no clear option, it’s better to do nothing.
Erwin Rommel
Operation Comeback
1429 hours, April 15
“Calm down,” Tom Steeple said to the slim woman sitting against the side wall of his Spartan office. LED lighting shone harshly on her dark skin. “We’ve got to let things play out as they will. There’s no way to hurry them.”
Amunet Mwangi had never been a patient woman. In the previous world, her restless energy had served her well as a high-level fixer. She’d wielded power far beyond her colonel’s rank, but the inactivity of the post-Collapse world drove her mad. Unlike the sprawling comforts that were a major component of Operation Overtime, Operation Comeback was utilitarian in design. There were only so many places to inspect, so many diversions to keep the mind occupied, and ten months after wake-up she had a bad case of cabin fever.
“I can’t take it any more, Tom. You know me; being cooped up isn’t my style.”
“Be thankful the useless mouths aren’t awake yet.” Useless mouths was their term for the politicians still sleeping in their CHILSS.
“Oh, God, this place is already overcrowded. If I had to listen to President Mememe,” she pronounced it me me me, “all day, eventually one of us would have to die.”
“Well, let’s hope they never wake up, then. Because I’d hate—” The ding of the intercom stopped him.
It was the corporal seated outside his office. “General, we just received an uncoded over-the-air message from Overtime.”
Mwangi raised her eyebrows. “Bring it in, please,” Steeple replied.
Once he had the printed message, Steeple read it aloud. “To our brothers and sisters in arms at Operation Comeback, greetings from General Angriff and the entire Seventh Cavalry. Welcome to the fight! We are sending a delegation by air to arrive your location oh nine hundred hours tomorrow. Suggest you reciprocate. General Angriff invites General Steeple to be his guest for brunch, followed by tour of facilities and wide-ranging discussions. Please respond soonest.”
She leaned forward on her elbows. “I didn’t see that coming.”
“Once they planted that virus in our computer system, it was just a matter of time.”
“Should we wait to hear from Claw before we respond?”
He chuckled. “I doubt we’ll be hearing from Claw any time soon.”
#
Operation Overtime
1635 hours
The Crystal Closet was crowded again, this time without Dupree but with Nipple.
“Here’s the plan,” Angriff said without preamble. “Ghost, you stay here. I want you to keep an eye on whoever Steeple brings with him. Make sure they only see the big stuff. You know what I mean, the hydroponics fields, the hangar deck, that sort of thing. Take them into Prescott if you need to, show them the battlefield in the valley. Just don’t let them wander at will.
“Norm, I want you to lead the delegation. Take Rip, Morgan, and Nipple with you—”
“Hey!” Nipple said. “I don’t want to ride with Blondie.”
“Tough,” Angriff said, and this time he gave her the full force of his scowl. “I have a specific job for Morgan, and you’re the only one left in this room with the skills to watch her back. You’ll do what you’re told and like it; is that understood?”
Much to her brother’s surprise, Nipple nodded.
“Sir,” Rip Kordibowski said, “I’ve begun debriefing Mister… Idaho Jack. No offense to General Tompkins, but the man knows every grain of sand in the desert around here. He’s going to give us the location of Shangri-La plus a few other places we don’t know about yet. I’d prefer to stay and work with him while he’s in the mood to talk.”
“I’ll go if it helps,” Dennis Tompkins said.
“No, that’s too much of our leadership on one bird. But thank you, Dennis.”
Green Ghost spoke up during the pause. “Send Glide, Saint. You can never have too much security and she’s hell on wheels in a fight.”
“All right then, done. Rip stays here, Glide goes to Comeback.”
“So do I still have to—” Nipple started.
“Be quiet!” Angriff pointed at her.
Kordibowski intervened before it got nasty. “Just so you know, sir, I asked Claw about the two John Does. He said he did not know that Comeback even had two unidentified Long Sleepers. I think that he thought I was trying to trap him.”
“Thanks for thinking of that, Rip. Now, as I was saying, Norm, take those three and anybody else you think you might need. Joe, I want you to fly them in Tank Girl.”
“As you wish, sir, but isn’t a Comanche overkill for transport duty?”
“No. You never can tell when firepower might be needed, or speed. And you’re the only pilot I can trust one hundred percent.”
“What about my co-pilot, Bunny Carlos?”
“Don’t tell him more than necessary. But have him standing by ready to go, just in case this goes south.”
“Aren’t we talking about fellow Americans?” Fleming said.
“We’re talking about Tom Steeple, who is capable of anything. Let me emphasize: I don’t expect trouble. I think Steeple will be all shits and giggles, but we need to plan for all contingencies. Morgan, I want you and Nipple to break away from the group and find their CHILSS chamber. I don’t care how you do it, I don’t even care if you get caught, so long as you find out who the two John Does are. For all I know, Stormin’ Norman is over there frozen, and if he is, I want to know it.”
“I thought he died,” Rip said.
Angriff leaned back and spread his arms, meaning that’s what everyone thought about all of us. “Take your time looking the place over, be pushy, find out everything you can about everything. Talk to the enlisted personnel, leaf through papers, be nosy. Try to be back at Overtime before dark. Any questions?”
“I want to bring my chief with me,” Fleming said.
“Sure, take Alexis if you need her. Are there any other questions?”
Nipple was the only one to raise her hand. “Do I have to sit next to Blondie?”
#
Chapter 25
Perception is the mother of deception.
William Blake
Operation Comeback
0450 hours, April 16
Tom Steeple stood in front of a full-length mirror, inspecting his uniform. He’d rejected more formal wear in fa
vor of ACUs because the Seventh Cavalry was a combat formation, with a hyper-aggressive CO who famously hated formal occasions. To earn their respect as the supreme commander of all U.S. military forces, he needed to look the part. “How do I look?”
Mwangi raised her eyebrows. “Like it’s Halloween.”
“I’m not wearing my class A’s, so quit mentioning it. These people are combat-hardened veterans and I don’t want to give the appearance I’ve got a flagpole rammed up my ass.”
“Right… and spotless ACUs with a sharp crease in the pants makes you look just like one of the boys.”
Steeple changed the subject. “You wanted excitement, Amy, and now you’re going to get it.”
“What do I do if they start nosing around too much?”
“Stop them.”
“How? Norm is a three-star general. I’m only a colonel.”
“In my absence, you’re the base commander. Rank doesn’t matter. If it comes to it, stand your ground and I’ll back you up.”
“You make it sound easy, but you don’t know my cousin very well if you think that will work.”
“You can do it. I believe in you.”
“What if it comes to shooting?”
“Why would that happen? We’re all one big, happy family who’ve found each other again at the end of days.”
“Is that the line you’re going to take with Angriff?”
“No, that would never work with such a sanctimonious prick. He’ll want to hear about how we’re going to kick some more ass and I’ll be right there with him.”
“Whose ass are you gonna kick?”
“I don’t know and it doesn’t matter, as long as he has other targets to focus on than us. But give me time to figure out the situation and I’ll find somebody for us to fight.”
#
Chapter 26
The fickleness of the women I love is only equaled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.
George Bernard Shaw
Operation Overtime
Standing at the Edge Page 13