The platoon walked cautiously through the trees separating the Brooklyn neighborhood where they’d spent the night before from the freeway. Jake had conferred with Harper and Sergeant Turner regarding their route. Heeding his platoon sergeant’s advice, he’d ensured that the conference took place in plain sight of the men. They decided that the neighborhoods would probably be more dangerous than the highway, which would basically take them all the way to Columbia University, more or less.
It was the “more or less” part that drove Jake insane. At the north end of Brooklyn, they’d have to decide whether to deviate from their course a little further to stay above ground on the Brooklyn Bridge, or if they’d risk going underground through one of the Tunnels. Given what they’d seen so far, it was a no-brainer to him. Going down into an unfamiliar tunnel with only a small flashlight or their NVGs was just stupid. They would stay aboveground and go over the bridge into Manhattan.
As the platoon weaved its way through the rows of cars stuck on the freeway, Jake couldn’t help but feel like it was all too familiar of a scene. He’d grown up watching all the post-apocalyptic movies and had been living and fighting in this world for over a year, but it was still surreal to him. Even here in New York City, which had apparently avoided the outbreak of the infected when they bombed the bridges to the mainland and blocked the tunnels leading out of the city, it was worse than any third world country that he could imagine. They’d probably run out of food quickly without the daily delivery of supplies from the Heartland. Hundreds of thousands of people had probably starved to death within the first couple of weeks. The average American simply did not keep enough food on hand to cover extended periods, and almost no one would have had enough to sustain themselves for this long.
He thought back to the cutthroat thieves who’d attacked them the night before and the women who’d offered their bodies in exchange for food. Was that what America had become? Had our enemies’ plans been so complete and easy to accomplish?
Jake glanced at Taavi, the man who’d been with Grady since they found him in the airport back in Kansas. The Iranian wasn’t all that he appeared to be. He carried himself differently than an average soldier, so what was he? Was he one of the Quds Force—the Iranian special forces—or something different? He claimed to be just a regular Iranian Army officer sent here to secure a foothold in America’s heartland and kill infected, but there was definitely more to him than that. Jake decided that he needed to speak to the man once again to see if his story had changed.
For now, though, they needed to hit their first objective, the Brooklyn Bridge. They’d traveled into a stretch of highway bordered on both sides by fifteen-foot high red brick walls. The terrain was terrible. They were canalized into only being able to move forward or go back the way they’d come. “How much farther, Feliciano?” he asked.
Specialist Kenny Feliciano, a brawny kid from Brooklyn, looked at the surrounding area and then pointed toward the west. “We just passed the exit for the Brooklyn-Battery—uh, I mean, the Carey Tunnel, sir. They changed the name a few years ago. Um… I’d say about two miles, give or take. I mostly took the train into Manhattan as a kid, but my mom drove the Expressway all the time and sometimes I was with her.”
“How much longer are we in this ditch?” Jake asked the native New Yorker.
“The walls?” he asked, laughing.
“Yeah. Whatever. How much longer do these go on?”
“Only a little bit. Probably like less than an eighth of a mile. We need to make sure that we get up on the upper part of the Expressway though. I know how to get to the bridge from there, the lower side is trickier.”
Jake nodded and flexed his fingers on the pistol grip of his rifle. He didn’t like the stretch of road they were on. It was the perfect place for an ambush. The further the platoon walked into the jumbled mess of cars trapped along the Brooklyn—Queens Expressway, the more the hair on the back of his neck stood up. Something was absolutely not right.
A can rattled along the asphalt, causing several of the men to bring their weapons up in response. A shriek echoed down the expressway and a car door slammed.
Soldiers spread out quickly, following Sergeant Turner’s hand gestures to set themselves into a defensive perimeter around Jake and Grady Harper. The platoon’s mission was to get Grady to a scientist who could analyze his blood and determine why the infected avoided him. Keeping him safe was the highest priority.
“Sir!” Sergeant Turner called out.
“Yeah?”
“We got… There’s a kid in this car right here.”
“A kid?” Jake sighed. That’s all they needed was some kid to be the initiator for an ambush. His men wouldn’t fire on children. “Hold on. The rest of you, stay alert, this could be a distraction before an ambush.”
He made his way to where Sergeant Turner and three others stood around an older Ford Expedition. Jake tried the door handle, but it was locked, so he peeked through the windows. A child, probably eight or nine years old, lay on the floorboard behind the driver’s seat. The inside of the vehicle was a mess of discarded food wrappers, soda cans, and other kinds of trash.
“Hey, kid,” Jake said, leaning close to the vehicle. “Come on out of there. We’re not going to hurt you.” He glanced at the door handle and pulled on it again.
“It’s locked, sir,” Sergeant Turner affirmed.
The child appeared to try to huddle down closer to the floorboard. Jake slapped the window with the palm of his hand. “Come on out or we’re gonna break the window,” he warned. “You want that? You want your… You want your home to have a big hole in it where the rain can get in?”
“Go away,” a small, muffled voice responded. “I didn’t steal nuthin’. Just go away.”
“Steal? I didn’t say you stole anything,” Jake responded. “Where are your parents?” He waited for the kid to answer. When he didn’t, Jake tried another route. “We’re from the Army. We’re here to help.”
“The Army?” The child peeked his dirty forehead up, then a pair of brown eyes appeared in the window. “You guys are from the Army?”
“Yeah. We came all this way to try to figure out what’s happening in New York.”
“Crazy people. There are crazy people everywhere.”
The hairs on the back of Jake’s neck stood on end. He’d been under the impression that the infected hadn’t made it to New York. “Crazy people? Like covered in blood and they eat people?”
A small hand reached out toward the door and Jake thought the kid was going to open the door. Instead, he cranked the window knob to lower it slightly. “What?” he asked.
“The crazy people that you said are everywhere… Do they attack people and eat them?”
The kid shrugged. “I don’t know. They attack and beat up people. Then they drag ’em away. I don’t know what happens after they get taken, but they never come back.”
Jake tried to follow the child’s logic, thinking of a way to ask the question that the kid would be able to decipher. Then, he felt a figure step up close beside him. He turned to see that Taavi had walked over to the car.
“Let me try,” the Iranian said. “I have two children.” His voice cracked a little bit and he cleared his throat. “I have two children—Sohail and Yasmin. They aren’t as old as this boy, but maybe I can talk to him.”
Jake nodded and stepped aside. Taavi inched closer. “Hello, little one. My name is Taavi. What’s yours?”
“Are you with the Army too?”
“Yes. We are here together. We traveled all the way from Kansas to come see New York City. It was very exciting.”
The kid shrugged. “People say that all the time. I think it would be cool to see a cow. Did you see any cows?”
“Yes! Lots and lots of cows,” Taavi replied. “What is your name?”
“David,” the boy responded.
“How old are you, David?”
“I’m ten.”
“Ten? Wow, that’s a big age. You are double d
igits now!”
The boy smiled. “That’s what my dad says too.”
“Where is your father?” Taavi asked.
“They took him. The crazies did. They attacked us and took him.”
“Where is your mother?”
“She died in childbirth. It’s just me and my dad.”
“Do you live here in New York City?”
Jake glanced around at the men while Taavi talked to the boy. He hated to stop for so long, but if the kid had information about what the fuck was going on in the city, then it would be worth it. Although, given the amount of food wrappers in the SUV, he doubted the kid saw more than a couple of blocks at the most.
“We live in Hoboken,” David said, bringing Jake’s attention back to the conversation. “My dad was taking me to school when everything went bad. We tried to turn around to go home, but it didn’t work.”
Taavi circled his finger around in the air. “Everything went bad? You mean all of this?”
“Yeah. There was a big accident somewhere up ahead and we got stuck in traffic. Then the radio said they blocked the tunnels and bridges out of the city. Everything was all messed up.”
“So, what did you do, David?”
“We stayed with our car for a few hours, but the traffic never moved. After a while, people got out of their cars and started walking so we did too. There weren’t any hotels or anything, so we stayed in our car for a couple of days. Then my dad found a family with a house who let us stay with them for a while…”
“What happened to the family, David?” Jake asked.
“The crazies came and took them.”
Taavi glanced at Jake and tried to convey a message with his eyes, but Jake didn’t know the man well enough to understand what he meant. The Iranian looked back at the boy. “These crazies,” he said, “do they scream like animals and bite people?”
“No. Never seen them bite people. They do scream though. They sneak up on you, then scream when they attack. I almost got caught, but I was too fast for them. I hid in an old dumpster until they were gone. Then I came back here to our car.”
“I don’t think he means infected,” Jake offered.
The Iranian shook his head. “Neither do I, Lieutenant Jake. I think he is talking about murderers and rapists, not the Cursed.” He looked back to the car. “How long have you been alone, David?” Taavi asked, concern in his voice.
“A long time. I don’t know. I see some people sometimes, but I don’t tell them where I live.”
Taavi put a hand on the SUV’s window and leaned in close, resting his forehead against the glass. “I’m truly sorry this happened to you, David,” he said in a lowered voice. “I swear by Allah, that I did not know this would happen.”
Jake couldn’t hear everything the man said, but he heard an apology, so he figured that Taavi was trying to comfort the kid. The man spoke quietly to the boy for a little bit, then turned back to Jake and Sergeant Turner.
“I told him that we could keep him safe. He wants to come with us.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, sir,” Turner grunted. “We aren’t a daycare.”
Jake looked at Taavi, then over to where Grady Harper sat, chewing contentedly on a fig bar from an MRE. They’d come on this journey because of the secret that flowed through the man’s veins. He and Taavi seemed to be a package deal, even though they’d allegedly only met in that Kansas airport a few weeks ago. He glanced back at the SUV, where David sat, staring wide-eyed at all the soldiers surrounding the vehicle.
“Goddamn it. Fine,” Jake grumbled. “We can’t leave this kid all alone again. Tell him he can come.”
“Jesus H. Christ, sir,” Turner groaned, turning away from the car and walking off toward their little perimeter.
“Well, we know where the platoon sergeant stands on my decision,” Jake said dryly under his breath. “Can he be ready to go in about ten minutes?” he asked Taavi.
“He will be ready. I will ensure that he is no burden to the platoon. He is my responsibility now. I will not fail him.”
Jake nodded and called out to the rest of the platoon. “Take a quick ten minute piss break. We are in hostile territory. Nobody goes anywhere alone. Always have a buddy.”
“Welcome to New York City!” one of the men said loud enough to elicit laughter from the entire platoon.
“Yeah. The sooner we can leave this place, the better,” someone replied.
Jake laughed at this other statement. The men would have preferred to be out there, fighting the infected instead of in New York, where the enemies were human. Come to think of it, he said to himself, I agree with them.
5
* * *
PIÑON, NEW MEXICO
MARCH 4TH
“What an utter shit hole,” Sergeant Pollard grumbled, dropping the binoculars from his eyes.
“Agreed,” Cooper said beside him. Andy Cooper—no relation to the news correspondent of the same name—was the company JTAC, or Joint Tactical Air Controller. The JTAC was an Air Force position assigned to an Army unit and this was the first time that Pollard had actually seen one of the JTACs in real life. He’d been assigned to the sergeant’s team in case they stumbled across a target worthy of being blasted to smithereens by the Air Force.
Sergeant Will Pollard was a big guy from New Hampshire. He was used to small towns with little-to-no appeal for anyone who didn’t live there, but the “town” they observed was beyond anything he’d ever experienced. It was more akin to a collection of mud huts in Afghanistan than a town in America, but this was where their signal nerd, Private Valencia, said that the jamming equipment was probably located based on signal triangulation.
The small team was ninety-seven miles from Fort Bliss, all of it covered on foot to avoid detection, well outside the range of the big guns there. They had MLRS rocket launchers, but there wasn’t anything besides training ammo for them. Those “flying telephone poles,” as the troops called them, were devastating to the infected, but didn’t have any type of warhead that could do much damage beyond that created by the laws of physics. Their best bet was going to be support from the Air Force at Holloman.
But first, they had to get closer and ensure it was the correct target. Without a rock-solid positive ID, there was no way the First Armored Division staff at Bliss would authorize the release of anything bigger than the M240 machine gun that his team carried. After seeing the collection of antennas and strange green military vehicles, Pollard knew that they’d found the right place.
“Valencia,” he grunted, waving his hand to get the kid’s attention. “You one hundred percent sure that the jamming equipment is located somewhere in this town?”
“Yes, Sergeant,” the diminutive private replied, holding up a small, handheld device. “We’re within five kilometers of the source in that direction.” He pointed directly at the town. “The equipment that’s jamming the signals between Bliss and Holloman may not be directly inside the town, but it’s all right around here somewhere.”
Pollard nodded. “Good enough for me. We need to get a better look.” He dug in his pocket for the satellite phone, but stopped when the private held up a hand. “What?” he asked menacingly. He hated signal weenies. They were always messing shit up.
“You can’t make a call, Sergeant. They’ll ID the source within seconds and then triangulate the location in under a minute. If they have security, they’ll be coming our way before we can move.”
Pollard pushed the satellite phone back down into his pocket. “Okay, fine. We need a better look before I make a decision.” He thought about what he needed to do, but was coming up empty handed.
He was woefully underprepared for this type of responsibility. Three years ago, he’d been in high school, now here he was, leading a small strike team on a secret mission in the New Mexico desert. He was given the task just two weeks ago, but had settled into his role as the only noncommissioned officer on a team of signal weirdos, artillery and Air Force observers, an engineer wi
th a bunch of C-4 explosives, and a small 4-man infantry contingent. There’d been several similar teams heading out from Fort Bliss with the intent of finding and possibly destroying foreign army elements who were jamming communication signals, but none of them had been in communication after the first week. To Pollard, that meant they were either being jammed themselves, or dead.
“Jacobson?” Sergeant Pollard called out softly.
“Yes, Sergeant?” the specialist responded immediately.
“You see any infected on our trail?” While most of the team was facing forward, looking to their potential objective, Specialist Jacobson and Private Brachear were the rear security, focused on making sure no one—or no thing—snuck up behind them.
“Nope. Those four we killed this morning were the last ones we saw.”
“Alright. I want you to set up a small ORP right here,” Pollard said, directing Jacobson to establish an objective rally point. “I’m going forward with Valencia and Cooper to see what we can see. I want to scope out this town and those vehicles. The place isn’t that big, so we should only be gone for about two hours. Three max. Watch our backs. We won’t have comms, but I have a red star cluster for a last-ditch visual signal. If you see the star cluster, we’re in trouble and need support. Any questions?”
Specialist Jacobson thought about it for a moment, then shook his head. “No, Sergeant. We’ll keep an eye out and straight up murder any infected that may wander toward the town.”
“Damn right you will, but do it quietly,” Pollard replied, grinning at Jacobson. They’d both been specialists together for over a year until Pollard got promoted. While Pollard had outranked him, they’d been able to stay friends without any of the usual tension that occurs when one person is selected for promotion and the other wasn’t. Jacobson didn’t care about making E-5 since he was supposed to get out only a few weeks after the infected came along and fucked everything up. Now everyone was staying in the Army for the foreseeable future.
The two men grasped hands, then Pollard and his small, two-man observation team moved toward the town. There was plenty of desert scrub brush along their route to give them excellent concealment, even in the daylight. If there’d been time, everyone would have preferred to wait until the nighttime, but that’s when the infected became more active and anyone watching the perimeter for intruders would be on heightened alert.
Five Roads To Texas | Book 11 | Reciprocity [Sidney's Way 3] Page 4