Mark picked up the rolled out plastic explosive and the coil of wire before scooting across the rooftop to the open window and disappearing inside. Sidney listened intently and heard the soft scrape of his tennis shoe on the pavement below the house a few moments later.
He looked up at her and gave her a thumbs up, which she returned. Then he turned and walked cautiously toward the camp. Sidney angled her weapon toward him and smiled appreciatively. The boy had his pistol out, ready to defend himself if it came to that. Good.
She followed his progress across the small neighborhood, alternating between Mark and the guard stationed on the rooftop inside the camp. When Mark reached the last house before the road separating the camp and the clump of houses where she hid, he waved a hand over his head. She scanned the camp one more time, ensuring no one was out and about, then sighted in on the guard’s forehead.
Jake always told her that headshots were stupid. The target was much smaller and very likely to move away, wasting the shot and alerting the target that they were under fire. The Army taught soldiers to go for the chest. It was a big, broad target that was much easier to hit. If you were high or low, the round would still hit the person either in the head and neck area or in the abdomen. It was a no-brainer for the average soldier. But Sidney wasn’t a soldier. She couldn’t afford for the Iranian to simply be injured by a bullet to the chest. He could alert everyone in the camp and then Mark was done for. She had to take the headshot.
She rested the M-4’s handguard on her knee as she sat on her butt with one leg supporting her weight on the rooftop. The plastic handguard was cold on her skin through her jeans as it dug into her knee. She lined up her shot. The Iranian sat on a chair looking out over the road, clueless or careless, Sidney would take either one.
She exhaled and dug the rifle’s stock into her shoulder. The next thing she knew, the rifle bucked gently into her, temporarily breaking her view of the target. She quickly reacquired the sight picture and looked for the guard. He was nowhere to be seen. Had she missed and he jumped down? In a panic, she stood, gaining three feet as she peered through the scope. Then she saw him. The guard’s body was in a heap beside the chair. He wasn’t moving, but the body was threatening to slide off the roof. It would be problematic if it did.
She waved an arm over her head to tell Mark that the guard was down. He waved back and she watched as he edged around the building. Within seconds, he was racing across the blacktop to the fence line. He was completely exposed. If anyone from inside the camp happened to look out and see him, or an infected was nearby, then it was game over.
Mark draped the rope of plastic explosives over the three strands of wire, then pushed the blasting cap into the center of the Play-Doh-like substance. He began unravelling the wire as he walked quickly back across the road.
Then, the shouts of alarm began. She swung the rifle over to where the guard’s body had been. It was gone, fallen from the roof, and someone had found it. Men emerged from buildings, scrambling around in the poor lighting. Most were in night clothes consisting of a mixture of gowns and pajama pants. There were a lot more than seven of them and every one of the bastards carried weapons. They yelled to one another in their foreign tongue, scrambling to take up prearranged defensive positions.
By the time Sidney focused in on Mark once more, he was already behind the building and inserting the wires into the firing device. He didn’t look up to her for confirmation or ask for permission now that the Iranians were alerted to their presence. The boy went ahead with the plan and initiated the detonation.
The explosion wasn’t massive, but it was bright and deafening, even from the two or three hundred feet away that Sidney was. After a moment to rub at her ears, she took advantage of the confusion to sight in on the camp and fire a few rounds at defenders in an effort to even the odds. She only risked the three shots while the smoke and dust helped to obscure her location.
The door in the house below closed and she thought she heard the locks engage. Then footsteps on the stairs. They sounded too heavy for Mark. Had someone found out where she was? She turned her body around, barrel of her weapon pointed just to the side of the window that granted access to the roof. If it wasn’t Mark, the intruder would have an extra nostril to breathe from for the final moments of their life.
“Sidney, it’s me,” Mark’s voice came from inside the bedroom.
“Okay,” she sighed, letting out the breath she’d unconsciously held. “You can come out.”
The screams of the infected echoed around them as Mark scrambled out onto the rooftop. ”Holy crap!” he whispered, pointing toward the camp.
She turned back. The Iranians had turned on the big generator powered floodlights. They knew they had a hole in their perimeter, so they were going to make their stand with the area illuminated so they could see. It wasn’t a great idea since the lights would just draw more of them in, but then again, it wasn’t a bad idea since they needed to be able to see what they were shooting at. The US Army had experienced the same dilemma down at Fort Bliss when she was there.
A nudge on her shoulder brought her back to the present. “Huh?”
“I said, look.”
The shadows around the house moved as infected streamed toward the sights and sounds. There had to be hundreds of them as they materialized from the long-dead cornstalks that would never be cleared around the little neighborhood cluster outside of town.
“Damn,” she hissed, realizing the folly of her plan. They were going to be trapped here as well.
“I know, they’re gonna fuck those dudes up!” Mark said, laughing.
Rifle fire erupted from the camp perimeter as the first of the infected emerged from the shadows. It was soon joined by the heavier, guttural sounds of Iranian machine guns as they raked back and forth into the crowd. Sidney sighted down on the nearest machine gunner and fired, hitting him in the chest. She quickly switched to the second gunner and realized that he was elevating his weapon in their direction. He’d seen the muzzle blast from her rifle.
“Get down!” she yelled, shoving Mark roughly as the shingles exploded beside them. “In! Get in the house!”
They scrambled for the window and Sidney felt her feet slip on the old roof, loosening thousands of tiny rock granules from the shingles. “Oh…shiiii—”
She began falling. Her weight carried her to the edge, she couldn’t stop herself. First her feet went, losing all traction, as her rifle fell away in the darkness below. Then her legs disappeared into the void. Her fingernails ripped as she clawed for purchase, for any type of grip to arrest her fall.
Sidney knew she was going to die. Either from the fall, the infected, or the Iranian motherfucker shooting at her. She’d never see Lincoln again. It was over.
Hands gripped her wrists like iron. “I’ve got you!” Mark grunted.
She sobbed, thanking the Lord that Mark was there for her. He pulled her and she tilted her pelvis to get her legs up over the edge.
“Stop moving!” he said through gritted teeth. “You think you’re helping, but you’re not.” He pulled and her thighs came back up over the edge.
Another burst of machine gun fire chewed at the roof around them. Mark heaved one final time and they both fell through the window into the house.
17
* * *
BIGGS ARMY AIRFIELD, FORT BLISS, EL PASO, TEXAS
MARCH 7TH
Hannah looked at herself in the mirror. She felt like an idiot. She was all kitted up like a soldier once more. The last time she’d done this, her entire team died and she ended up wandering South and Central America hoping to find safety from the crazies back home. That safety didn’t exist. They were everywhere. Worldwide.
She sat down heavily on the cot the supply sergeant had given her to sleep on. It wasn’t much, but she’d gotten better rest in the past couple of days than she had in over a year on her own. Not that it helped tonight. It was one in the morning and they were planning on leaving in an ho
ur so they’d arrive at the facility around noon, in the heat of the day when the crazies were known to be less active.
What if this operation went the same way as the last one? Could she handle seeing more good soldiers die uselessly? Worse, could her mind cope with the devastation if she somehow ended up alone again all the way back down where she started? Her hand unconsciously fell to the M-4 rifle they’d given her. She’d suck start the goddamned thing before she let that happen again.
“How are you doing, Hannah?”
She looked up to see Colonel King. She wore the Army physical fitness uniform. The woman was a lifelong military helicopter pilot. Her slim body looked like she could run a marathon without any training. Hannah’s hips and boobs had always been too big to make her good at the Army’s style of fitness, which consisted of running and pushups, followed by more running.
“I’m doing okay, ma’am,” she replied. “Nervous, but I mean…”
Colonel King smiled, with only the barest hint of wrinkles at the edges of her eyes. The only giveaway to the older woman’s age were the streaks of gray shot through her short, brown hair. “You’ll do fine. We’re sending you with the very best soldiers in the division.”
Hannah nodded. “I know, ma’am.” She sighed. “It’s just I’ve been through so much this past year. I kept myself together up here,” she pointed at her temple, “by telling myself that once I made it back to the States that everything would be okay. Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I knew that it was an impossible dream that the border wall had stopped the spread, but I still forced myself to believe it, y’know?”
The colonel nodded, crossing her arms over her chest. “It’s a rough spot the general and I are putting you in. It isn’t fair. Believe me, I understand that it isn’t.” She stepped fully into the room and leaned against the wall, allowing her body to slide down until she was sitting. “I’m not going to bullshit you, Hannah. We are asking a lot from you. You spent all that time just trying to make it back home and now that you’ve made it, we’re sending you right back out into the wild. I could try to give you some false motivational, hoorah kind of message about your patriotic duty and all that, but I’m not going to do that. The fact of the matter is, you’ve done your part, and more. Thanks to you, we have a very good idea of where this facility is. But, very good idea doesn’t mean we actually know where it is. That’s why we’re asking you to go along. We need your familiarization with the area to tell us where the facility is.”
“Familiarization? Ma’am, I was there over a year ago. And, we didn’t exactly go sightseeing. My team leader felt like we were pressed for time, so we went directly there, through the jungle.”
“But you’ve seen the building?” the colonel pressed.
“Yeah, but I mean—”
“Then you’ve got a better sense of the place than anyone else does. Hannah, please. If there’s any chance that there’s a way to reverse this or give the US Government a leg up on research, then we’ve got to take it.”
It’s Groundhog Day, Hanna thought. They wanted to go back to that damned facility to get samples and find evidence in order to stop the virus. Going back scared the shit out of her. Back to where Grady lost his life. Back to where Baz, Chris, Rob, and Alex Knasovich had all sacrificed their lives for the same damn mission.
But she had to. She knew that the best shot at a vaccine would come from the facility. If there was ever a shot at some semblance of normalcy, then this was the first step to getting there. The first step of, like, six hundred and forty-three steps, but they had to start somewhere.
“Fine,” Hannah relented. “I don’t want to go, but I will.”
“That’s all we can ask of you,” Colonel King replied. “Are you ready?”
“Yeah. Let’s get this over with.”
The colonel uncrossed her legs and leaned forward, allowing the momentum to lift her up from the ground without using her hands. Hannah hoped she could stay in as good a shape as the older woman when she reached her age.
If she survived to reach the colonel’s age.
18
* * *
MANHATTAN, NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK
MARCH 7TH
Grady woke from the light sleep he’d forced upon himself. He was so keyed up that it had been a struggle to close his eyes and not strangle Taavi in front of everyone in the apartment where he’d been put up with the Iranian and the two soldiers, Jake Murphy and Sergeant Turner. The rest of the platoon had been split up into two groups and occupied vacant apartments on the same floor as them.
He listened intently to the sound of the men snoring softly from the bedrooms. He’d chosen to stay on the couch, while the soldiers shared the king-sized bed in the master bedroom and Taavi took the guest bedroom with David, the boy they’d found along the highway. When he was certain that everyone was asleep, he rose and put his feet into his boots. Then he turned toward the guest bedroom, slipping a folding knife from his pocket. The little four-inch blade wasn’t much, but it would get the job done.
Grady glided across the carpet, careful to keep his feet from scraping. He edged his way into the bedroom and saw Taavi—or whatever his real name was—lying on his back, his breathing regular and rhythmic. The long dagger that he always had with him lay in its sheath on the nightstand. Lying fucking bastard, Grady thought as he watched the man sleeping.
He crept close and pressed the blade against the Iranian’s throat. The man’s eyes went wide instantly, but, to his credit, he didn’t move.
“Get up,” Grady hissed.
Taavi sat up slowly as Grady kept the knife pressed against his neck. “Balcony,” Grady directed as he shifted around, putting himself behind the liar and between the nightstand.
The taller man stood and Grady reached back, picking up the dagger. It was much heavier than he anticipated, the handle felt like it was solid metal, not hollow or plastic like most of the shit on the market before the infected came around. He let the sheath fall to the floor as he released the snap.
They walked to the balcony and Taavi opened the door. They went out and Grady closed it behind them. The sheer silence of Manhattan struck him immediately. They were in a high-rise apartment building in what was once one of the busiest cities in the world and there was complete, absolute silence in the darkness around them. Even before the collapse, you would have heard the sounds of vehicles on the highways or distant police sirens. Now, it was utterly quiet.
Taavi put his arms on the rail and leaned down, staring into the night. “What do you want to know?”
Grady hefted the dagger. “Nice knife.”
“It’s a peshkabz,” he replied. “It was made in the Seventeenth Century and carried into combat against invaders of every kind.”
“I thought it felt old,” the operator replied.
“It is. The pointed tip is designed to penetrate the mail armor worn at the time and the curve of the blade to slide up and in between the links. Very effective and dangerous.” Taavi turned his head slightly and frowned. “You are likely the first person not from my family to touch that peshkabz in ten generations.”
“Huh. Well, all good things must come to an end, right, buddy?”
“Why is it that you have woken me with a blade to my throat?”
“Oh, we both know the answer to that one, don’t we, Major?”
“I must confess, I am at a loss, Grady Harper. You profess to being my friend and yet—”
“Friend?” Grady interrupted, spittle flying from his mouth. “You have the audacity to call me a friend after what you did to me?”
“I do not—”
“Stop with the lies. I remember. It took me long enough after whatever the fuck you people did to me, but I remember now. You were at the facility in the jungle. You were there when I was experimented on. You—” Another piece clicked together in his mind. “That’s how I ended up in Kansas on that stretcher. You were transporting me for some reason. Then the infected attacked and took out all
of the security. You… You bastard.”
Taavi turned back, staring into the night once more. “It is true, Grady. I was there. I—”
“I fucking knew it. Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you right now, you lying sack of shit.”
Taavi let out an exasperated sigh. “Do you want me to tell you how I came to be at Site 53 or do you want continue to interrupt me?”
The name of the facility jogged more memories in his tattered mind. Hannah Dunn and their budding romance. Akram Bazan, “Baz”, the Iraqi-American Special Forces engineer who was probably one of his closest friends. The constant bitching by Knasovich, the team sniper. All of them dead, all at the hands of the infected, which Taavi seemed to be responsible for.
“Go ahead.”
“Thank you.” Taavi’s proper English was an annoyance to Grady now that he remembered the truth. “I was born and raised Qom. When I joined the Army, I was garrisoned in Qom. I’d known—and liked—a girl named Rabbia my entire life, so it was truly a blessing from Allah when my father announced that she was to be my wife. Our love bore two beautiful children, my little desert flower, Yasmin, and Sohail, my boy. We had a good life, and created a loving home. Then I was assigned to a nuclear testing facility. It was while I was assigned there that I learned of my government’s dealings with the North Koreans. At the time, I thought they were working together to develop nuclear weapons. I was wrong… So wrong.”
Taavi sighed once more and spat over the balcony. “I was given the position of the chief of security for Site 53 during the facility’s construction in Brazil. We cleared away the jungle to create a space for the runway and the building. It was a secret project with hundreds of Korean workers toiling away for twenty-four hours a day. Several of them died from heat exhaustion. The facility was completed in just under three months and when it was finished, I was supposed to go home. That’s when things went horribly wrong.”
Five Roads To Texas | Book 11 | Reciprocity [Sidney's Way 3] Page 12