by David Spell
As they started to go their separate ways, Amir handed Ahmed a small duffel bag. “This contains everything that you’ll need. There’s a pistol with extra magazines and ammunition. There are three vials of the virus. If you can infect three different locations in the city near that university, it will give us maximum saturation.
“There’s a new driver’s license in there if you need to show your ID for anything. It’s a forgery and won’t fool the police but it will work for everything else. I also put three thousand dollars in the bag. That will cover a cheap hotel and your food. Whatever money that’s left over is yours.
“After you complete this assignment, you should try and leave the state. Your work is finished, at least for the moment. There’s also a disposable cell phone with one of my numbers in the contacts. Call me only in case of an extreme emergency. I will use that phone to contact you at a later time for the next phase of the Jihad.”
What Amir did not tell Mohamud was that while he was spreading the zombie virus in downtown Atlanta, he and another accomplice would be doing the same thing in Athens. The home opener football game for the University of Georgia was on the following Saturday. He intended to infect this mall that they were parked at, as well as the university. There would be no interference this time from the CDC Response Teams. Of that, he was sure.
Thirty minutes later, al-Razi parked on the side of the building at the Waffle House just outside of Athens. Terrell Hill took off his apron, walked out from behind the grill, clocked out, and left the restaurant. He was tall and slim and wore his hair in long dreadlocks. He got in the passenger seat of Amir’s car and the men drove away. They had met once before and Terrell would have an important role in this next attack.
Terrell glanced over at Amir. Average height, average weight. He could pass for an Indian, a Latino, or a Middle Easterner. At first glance, Terrell would have even considered him a victim, someone that he would have picked to rob before his time in prison. One of the things prison had taught Hill, however, was how to read people. If you read someone wrong in the joint, you could wind up dead.
Amir was clearly someone that you did not want to misjudge. There was death in his eyes and the bulge of the gun in his waistband just confirmed that. The person who misread al-Razi would also wind up dead.
His imam had spoken to Terrell cautiously, probing to find out the depth of his anger and hatred against America. He must have passed the test because he received a short, cryptic phone call that told him where to be for their first meeting a few weeks earlier. There, Amir had asked him questions and spoken to him about jihad. The questions that he had asked were about his time in prison and the injustices that he had suffered at the hands of a racist criminal justice system, as well as his devotion to Allah.
At that first meeting, Hill was not given any type of assignment. He was just told that he would be contacted when he was needed. He had received that phone call the day before, telling him he was now needed, and asking him what time he got off of work. Now, he was in the car with Amir driving into Athens.
“I understand you work in the stadium at the university when they have football games? You sell food to the infidels?” Amir asked.
“Yeah, Waffle House doesn’t pay a lot and I’m trying to get enough money to buy a car. Working the games pays pretty good.”
What Terrell didn’t say was that he hated every second of it. Every time he worked a football game, it was like ripping a band-aid off of a fresh wound. He had been a promising high school football wide-receiver. He had broken several state records during his senior year at Clarke Central High School and he had accepted a full scholarship to play for the University of Georgia.
Getting arrested for Armed Robbery and Aggravated Assault ended that dream. They were the Crew. Terrell and three of his friends. They drove around on Friday and Saturday nights, looking for people to rob. They preyed mostly on drunk Mexicans walking home from the bar. They always carried cash and seldom fought back. If they couldn’t find any Mexicans, they would rob some white boys. They usually had cash and maybe a nice watch. The Crew could make several hundred dollars apiece on a good weekend.
That one Mexican guy, though, didn’t want to give up his money and tried to fight, even with three Hi-Points pointed at him. He swung a fist and Terrell shot him in the leg. One of the other boys pistol-whipped him, busting his head open. They got a hundred and twenty dollars from him but the police came from nowhere. Five police cars and even an officer with a dog.
The Crew driver had no chance. They yanked him out of the car and handcuffed him. Hill and the other two guys started running. They threw their guns down because they didn’t want to get shot but Terrell knew he could outrun any cop. He couldn’t outrun that German Shepherd, however, and ended up having to get twenty-seven stitches in his left leg and arm. The other two Crew members got tazed and arrested, as well.
The police were able to link them to several other robberies. In all, they were charged with twelve armed robberies and one aggravated assault for the guy they had shot and beat up. Terrell’s white, court-appointed lawyer talked him into pleading guilty to one armed robbery and the agg assault in return for dropping the other cases. He served almost six years of a ten-year sentence in a state prison.
If anything good came out of his time in jail, it was his finding Islam. The Muslims in prison seemed like the coolest guys in there and no one messed with them. After he made friends with a couple of them and went to a few of their meetings, he started to hear about something called jihad. They all felt that they were victims of a rigged criminal justice system and were all looking for revenge. That sounded good to Terrell and he converted.
As he was leaving the prison on his last day, one of the brothers handed him the name and phone number of an imam in Athens. “Call him and go to the meetings. Maybe he’ll be able to give you an outlet for your anger against those who’ve wronged you.”
Finally, two years later, he was with Amir waiting for his assignment. He had no idea what would be required of him but he’d been following the news and knew that the zombie virus was a product of Iran. It looked like the United States and Iran were about to go to war over the bio-terror attacks. Hill had already decided that he would do whatever Amir asked of him.
Terrell had nothing to hold him back. He didn’t know who his father was. His mother had died of a drug overdose while he was in prison. His seven brothers and sisters were all by different fathers and he wasn’t really close to any of them. Not a single one had even visited while he served his time.
“What do you need me to do?” Terrell asked Amir.
“How would you like to strike a blow for Allah against the infidels while you’re working at the football game?”
“Man, I’d like that but what does my job at the stadium have to do with it?”
Amir gave him the hint of a smile. “It has everything to do with it.”
Forty minutes later, al-Razi dropped Hill off in front of his run-down apartment building on the edge of town. He was carrying a small black duffel bag containing two vials of the virus, a gun, extra ammo, a fake ID, a disposable cell phone and three thousand dollars in cash. For the first time in a long while, Terrell had a smile on his face as he walked into his shabby apartment.
CDC HQ, Friday, 1600 hours
By Friday, the men were physically and emotionally spent. They had been involved in clearing neighborhoods for the last three days. They had been able to rescue over a hundred people from marauding zombie bands. They had killed close to a hundred and fifty infected people. The National Guard had finally moved in and were also working to clean out neighborhoods of the infected. The Guard would help with the removal of the bodies and they would be implementing a quarantine of some areas at the direction of the CDC.
Today, the first order of business for the response teams had been to clean their weapons and to reload their magazines after firing hundreds of rounds of ammunition. They also double-checked all their equi
pment to make sure that they would be ready to go as soon as they were needed again. Chuck had already set aside equipment for their new officer, Chris Rogers, who would be joining them in a few days.
After dealing with their equipment and weapons, the men had all written after-action statements. With the zombie incidents becoming so prevalent, there was no way that the FBI or the police could investigate each officer-involved shooting. Chuck and Eddie each wrote a summary of what their teams had done over the last three days and the men wrote statements of what they had done on each day. These reports would be kept on file in case they were needed later.
The problem was that the incidents had all started running together.
“Was it yesterday or the day before that we had to shoot that grandmother zombie in her see-through nightgown?” Scotty asked over the wall of his cubicle.
“I think that was yesterday morning,” Jimmy answered. “That picture of a see-through negligee on granny will be forever seared into my mind. And what about that big, fat, naked girl zombie that tried to chase down Luis?”
“Fat girls need love too,” said Luis. “In her case, though, she needed a bullet in the head. I think she was more girl than even I could handle. Wasn’t that on Wednesday afternoon?”
Eventually, the paperwork was done and they broke for lunch. When they got back to the office, they could hear the television in the briefing room. Chuck stepped inside to find Rebecca watching the big monitor on the wall.
She looked up at him. “It looks like the war has started,” she said. “We’ve launched cruise missile strikes at key targets throughout Iran. We’ve been building up our ground forces in Iraq and Afghanistan for the last few months so a ground war is probably next on the schedule after we pound them for a while with Tomahawk missiles and establish air superiority.”
The men all slipped into the room and watched the events unfolding on the news. They knew that war had been a very real possibility. If the President could build the case that Iran was behind these bio-terror attacks, he was duty-bound to respond.
With the increase of attacks and their own involvement in trying to contain the crisis, most of the men had not been following the national and international news very closely. They had just been focused on staying alive and winning the battles that they found themselves in. And for now, this news, while sobering, had no effect on their own work and mission.
By 1800 hours, everyone was heading for home. The guys were unusually quiet for a Friday afternoon. Alejandro mentioned that he had a date with flight attendant Isabella Rodriguez in an hour. Scotty let everybody know that he had a date on Saturday. He had finally convinced paramedic Emily Clark to go out with him. She had ridden in the back of the ambulance after he and Andy had both gotten shot a couple of weeks before.
“She has no idea what she’s in for,” laughed Chuck.
“I think the poor girl needs a chaperone,” added Jimmy, as they all walked out the door, heading to their cars.
“Or a bodyguard,” added Andy.
Chuck hung behind. His excuse was to see if Rebecca needed anything else before he left. She was typing something at her computer and did not see him standing in the doorway of her office. He watched her for a minute or two and then cleared his throat.
“I knew you were there,” she said with a smile, continuing to type.
“I must be losing my ninja skills.”
“Well, you’re a pretty big man. It’s tough for you to be too stealthy.”
“How’d the recruiting mission go?” he asked.
Johnson looked at him. “Not too bad. I must be losing a little of my charm, though. I was only able to convince six of the eight guys to sign up.”
“The other two must’ve been gay,” he said. “How could they have possibly resisted your sales pitch?”
“That’s what I’m saying,” she laughed. “No, I get it. Both of them were already negotiating private security contracts and weren’t interested in working for the CDC. And let’s face it. The CDC Response Team just doesn’t sound as sexy as a Security Contractor for Triple Canopy.”
“So, what about the six new guys?”
“They start training in a couple of weeks. They’ll do the full two months of training and then join you guys. Three for you and three for Eddie. After you work together for a couple of weeks and get them up to speed, you and Eddie pick one of the new guys you want to keep. Then I’ll give a team of two to Andy and a team of two to Jimmy. It isn’t perfect but it’ll allow us to be in more places at once.”
McCain nodded. It made sense and Andy and Jimmy would be great team leaders. They both had a lot of real world experience and were excellent leaders.
“Where’d these guys come from?”
“They’re good.” She held up her index finger. “An army SF guy. He had his twenty years in and his wife told him that he needed to retire and stay stateside.”
She held up a second finger. “Another army MP turned police officer. He’s been policing in Dallas, Texas for a few years.”
She held up two more fingers. “Two Marines turned police officers with different departments. One had an app to go to the ATF and the other had an app to go to the DEA.”
She held up a fifth finger. “A SWAT officer with LAPD. He had applied to go to the FBI. He had his heart set on joining their Hostage Rescue Team.”
“Wow, LAPD’s SWAT Team is really good. And the FBI’s HRT is world class. How’d you convince him to give up wanting to go work with them?”
“An extra fifty thousand dollars a year and the promise that after working with you guys, he’d forget the HRT ever existed.”
Chuck laughed. “Nice. And what about the last one? That was just five.”
“A Navy SEAL. He’d gotten busted up a bit on his last couple of deployments. His humvee hit an IED and he was shot a couple of times. Now, those SEALs are tough and none of his injuries were enough to get him to take a medical discharge but after almost fifteen years as an active duty SEAL, he jumped at the opportunity to come work with us. And the pay raise helped. And guess what? He’s also a sniper.”
“That’s excellent,” said McCain. “I was thinking we need to invest in a sniper rifle for Scotty. I have a feeling a couple of snipers might be a big help in the near future.”
Rebecca nodded. “You know what helped convince most of these guys to come work with us? I showed them some of the video those news helicopters shot of Scotty, Andy, you, and me taking out those zombie terrorists on the interstate a couple of weeks ago. When they saw that footage, they were hooked.”
“That’s impressive. I think your charm is working just fine.”
“Does that mean you’re going to ask me out again?” she asked.
“I, well…I, of course. I just didn’t want to be pushy.”
Rebecca stood up and walked over to Chuck. She stopped just in front of him and looked up into his eyes.
“Do you remember last Friday night?” she asked.
“How could I forget?” he smiled.
“I kissed you, Chuck. I couldn’t help myself. Now, I’m giving you permission to take the initiative. You…”
Before she could say anything else, he took her face in his hands and kissed her gently on the lips. She looked at him with surprised eyes. Then she closed them and let him kiss her again.
“How was that?” he asked.
Instead of answering, she wrapped her arms around his neck and they kissed again.
“How about tomorrow night?” he asked.
“I’d really like that,” she answered.
Rebecca’s apartment, Saturday night, 0030 hours
They had another wonderful evening together. This time, they went to a restaurant that specialized in fresh seafood cooked with a southern flair. They held hands and talked quietly as they ate. They both sensed that their relationship had gone to a new level and they didn’t want to rush their time together.
“I have a confession to make,” Chuck said, as they
sipped their wine.
“Do tell. I’d love to hear it.”
“I fell for you the first time I saw you, when you came to my house to recruit me. I didn’t want a job. I wasn’t even thinking about looking for a job. But when you showed up, I would’ve talked to you about anything. That was why I offered you coffee. I didn’t want you to leave too quickly.”
Rebecca smiled and looked down. “I have a confession to make, too.”
McCain’s eyebrows rose. “Oh, well let’s have it.”
He saw that she was blushing and smiled.
“Remember when I told you that I saw you in Afghanistan?”
He did. She had been a CIA case officer in Afghanistan and had worked closely with some of the special forces soldiers whom Chuck was embedded with as their police liaison. He had never met her there but she had seen him. The SF guys had to go by their house to pick something up. Johnson had stayed in the car and had seen Chuck lifting weights in their outdoor gym.
He nodded.
“I think I fell for you then,” she said. “Is that bad? All you had on were a pair of gym shorts. You were sweaty and your muscles were all pumped up and bulging. When the SF guys got back in the Land Rover, I asked them who you were. They told me that you were a former cop now working with them for a year. The team sergeant told me that you were really an SF guy in a SWAT cop’s body. The team leader caught me staring at you and told me he could set us up.”
McCain laughed. “You should’ve let him. That would have made those two contracts in the sandbox go by so much faster.”
“Well, anyway, that day I came to your house to try and hire you, I was so nervous. And, of course, you had to come to the door half dressed.”
“With my muscles all pumped up and bulging after working out. At least I was wearing jeans. I had just gotten out of the shower.”
“I think I did a pretty good job of keeping my composure.”