by David Spell
Next, Chuck cleared the first room on the right, an empty bedroom with boxes stacked against the wall. The room and the closet were empty. By this time Luis and Andy had rejoined them.
“There's a lot of blood by the front door and in front of one of the living room windows,” Fleming said.
He and García kept an eye on their flank to make sure that no one snuck up behind them. They stood just inside the hallway, keeping their weapons pointed back towards the right side of the house.
The next room off the hallway was the open door to the left. Scotty cleared this one as Chuck covered him from the doorway. This was the master bedroom. It contained a bed and was sparsely decorated. The closet and bathroom were both clear. The Clean Up Team would search these rooms much more thoroughly after the house had been secured.
McCain stepped over to the last closed doorway in the house. The banging continued from inside the room. Chuck motioned to Scotty to join him back down the hall with the other two team members.
“I'm going to give a verbal challenge and see if they'll come out. If it's another one of those things or if we have to shoot, I’ll take the shot. If it gets by me, Scotty, it’s yours. But please try not to shoot me!”
“I'm a trained professional, boss.” Smith said. “I only hit what I'm aiming at. Unless I miss.”
McCain smiled and shook his head as he approached the closed door. “Federal Police Officers! Come out with your hands up!”
The banging stopped. Then whatever was in the room slammed itself into the bedroom door, startling all of the men. Chuck took a step back. The hinges were on the inside of the room so that the door opened inwards. To open it, Chuck would have to push the door in against whoever or whatever was slamming into it.
“Well,” Smith said, “a few more hits like that and they'll break through that flimsy door.”
He was right. The cheap, hollow door began to crack. The body slamming into the door kept it up. After a few minutes, a leg kicked through the wood and then two arms pushed through. It looked like a small woman wearing jeans and a black blouse. She had one foot through the door into the hallway and one foot still in the bedroom. They could not see her face yet but they could all hear her growling.
Chuck challenged her again. “Fatemah Alamouti? Federal Police Officers. I have a warrant for your arrest. Get down on the ground!”
At this, another growl came from the woman. With one last effort, she smashed through the rest of the door and fell into the hallway. She had her back to the men. The woman turned around to reveal a mutilated face. It might be Fatemah but it was hard to tell. The front of her shirt was bloody. Her mouth was opening and closing and blood oozed out every time it opened. Her nose had been flattened and they could see multiple cuts on her face and scalp.
Less than ten feet separated her from McCain as she moved towards him, continuing to growl. He raised his Glock.
“Get down on the ground!” he ordered her.
She raised her hands and lunged for him. He squeezed off a shot that caught her just above the left eye. Her head snapped back and she fell at his feet. He backed up, continuing to cover her with his pistol. There was no more movement from her.
“Scotty, let’s clear that room."
The two men advanced cautiously towards the bedroom. It was set up like a guest room. It contained a bed and a small table with a chair. A full length mirror was attached to the wall. The mirror was cracked and bloody.
Scotty stuck his head out in the hallway and waved Luis and Andy in. “Check this out, guys!”
They stepped around the body of the woman and entered the bedroom. McCain pointed to the mirror. “That's what we were hearing. She was banging her face into that mirror.”
“Muy extraño,” said Luis. The other three just nodded.
“Can you three go outside and do a sweep of the perimeter and make sure there are no more of these things wandering around?” Chuck asked. “I'm going out to brief the Clean Up Team.”
Outside of Commerce, Georgia, Wednesday, 1815 hours
Team One’s Suburbans had been retrieved from up the street and now all four of the black vehicles were parked in front of the house. A full size, white Chevrolet van was in the driveway, backed up to the side of the house. The members of the Clean Up Team had the rear of the van open and had already started working.
Chuck walked Rebecca and Team Two leader, Eddie, through the scene. McCain had narrated the action and told them how things had transpired. They were all careful not to touch anything. This was a crime scene and no one wanted to do anything to corrupt it or to make it hard for the Clean Up Team to process.
Rebecca took some pictures of the bodies and the scene on her smart phone. She would send these to Washington a little later. She had seen carnage before in the war on terror. This was carnage of a different type, though. She had also seen the results of this bio-terror weapon after it had been unleashed in Afghanistan. These bodies today, however, were lying on American soil. This new war had found its way to the United States.
Chuck and his team were very fortunate that none of them had been bitten or gotten hurt while trying to serve those warrants. Johnson knew it was only a matter of time before her teams would be confronting these monsters again. She already saw some protocols that they would need to change to keep the teams safer.
Safer. Safety. If this bio-terror weapon was released throughout America, who would really be safe? Right now, though, her men were going to be on the front line of this fight and she wanted to do everything she could to help them win this war.
McCain interrupted her thoughts. She noticed that Eddie had wandered off and it was just her and Chuck standing in the yard behind the house.
“So, what’s next?” he asked her.
“What do you mean?”
“Who's going to conduct the investigation? I know we want to keep this under the radar. Most of the local police departments use the Georgia Bureau of Investigation when they have an officer-involved shooting. What are we going to do? Call in the FBI? Also, what happens with the men? Are we on administrative leave until this gets sorted out?”
This was one of the reasons why Johnson was glad she had recruited McCain. He was very thorough and very perceptive. He just did not miss things. When she had convinced him to come work for the CDC, she did not tell him that his rating from the top-secret software program they used had given him the highest score that she had ever seen.
This proprietary software had been designed by the CIA to rate individuals to determine their potential for various jobs within the intelligence community. Chuck and his men had just been through a traumatic situation and he was already dealing with the next steps.
She realized that he was staring at her. She looked into his eyes and saw curiosity as he waited for an answer.
“Right, good questions. I'll be conducting the investigation. I want you to do a video walk-through with the Clean Up Team. I'll take a recorded statement from each of you back at the office and then have those transcribed. The Clean Up Team will process the scene and collect all the evidence. That’ll corroborate your statements. What else?” she asked.
McCain looked away. This was an unusual approach to an officer-involved shooting. Johnson was his boss and he didn’t want to argue with her. He was also very attracted to her but he tried to keep that door shut.
“Are you sure that's all we need? I've been in shootings before. My police department had an entire team of detectives that responded to officer-involved shootings. Our District Attorney usually came to the scene. My weapon was taken as evidence. The interviews were long and thorough. I wasn't even allowed to go back to work until I’d spoken to a shrink and gotten his ok.”
“Chuck, this is a totally different kind of scenario. Do you think that you or any of your guys need any time off or a visit to a psychiatrist?”
Part of the reason that these particular men were selected for this unit was because of how well they dealt with stress an
d traumatic incidents. Everybody handled them differently. This was one of the areas for which the special software evaluated officers for during the hiring process. All of the CDC Response Team members were above average in dealing with trauma. Their personalities allowed them to process it and move on more quickly than most people.
McCain looked across the yard and saw the fat lawn guy that Andy had shot in the head still lying in grass. One of the Clean Up Team was photographing him. He would eventually be bagged up, along with the other three bodies. Autopsies would be conducted and the bodies would probably be cremated to prevent the bio-virus from spreading.
Chuck looked back at Rebecca. What would she say if I asked her out, he thought? She would probably say “no,” dummy. She is your boss. They had just shot some zombies and he was thinking about trying to get a date. He suppressed a laugh.
“Our guys are good to go, ma’am. As long as you're sure that this won't come back to bite us in the butt later…”
“Please tell everybody that they have to keep this to themselves. We don't need any publicity here but we aren't covering anything up, either. We're documenting everything and I'm investigating it, but this is too toxic, pun intended, to let the public know about. I mean it, Chuck. Tell them they can't talk about it with their wives, girlfriends, buddy at the gym, no one!”
McCain nodded. “Yes, ma’am, I'll do that. I guess I'll go do that video walk-through with the Clean Up Team.” He turned to go.
“Hey, Chuck, one more thing.”
He turned back. “After you finish here, let’s have Team One head back to the office. I'll have Team Two stay until the scene is processed. We'll go back and I’ll get everybody’s statement. Then, you guys take tomorrow off. This is not administrative leave. It's just one day to catch up on your rest. I have a feeling that this is just the beginning and you guys are going to be putting in some long hours in the near future.”
Outside of Commerce, Georgia, Wednesday, 1830 hours
Andy Fleming walked around the back of the house looking for McCain. He was going to ask him if he needed him to do anything. When he rounded the corner, he saw Chuck talking to Rebecca. It was clear to everyone except the two of them that they liked each other. Watching them talk, Andy could see how she looked at him and how he looked at her. At the same time, they both worked hard to suppress their feelings. She was their boss, after all.
None of my business, he thought, as he turned around and went back to the front of the house. He sat down on the steps leading up to the front porch. The rest of the guys were standing in a circle by one of the Suburbans. Andy could see Smith talking excitedly as he and García told the Team Two guys about what they had encountered while trying to serve the warrants.
Fleming had been impressed with how McCain had led them today. This was their first combat as a team and it was the first time that he had gotten to see Chuck in action, other than in training. The man was a natural leader.
Andy had had his reservations at first. As a Staff Sergeant in the Marine Special Operations Command, he was an elite operator and had worked with some of the best special forces warriors, from all the different branches of the military, and even from other countries. He wasn’t sure what it was going to be like to be led by a former police officer. As it turned out, McCain was as good as anyone he had ever worked with, and that was really saying something.
He let his mind wander back to when they had met for the first time as a team and went through their two-month training. They had all shown up at the appointed date and time at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Charleston, South Carolina. He had expected the classroom training on law, search and seizure, report writing, interview techniques, and bio-terrorism.
What he had not expected, however, was the amount of shooting that they would do. A full three hours a day was allotted for firearms and tactical training. Their firearms instructor was named, Roy. Just Roy. Andy figured him for a Navy SEAL but he never confirmed it. Whoever he had worked for, he was a fantastic instructor. All of the men were already experienced shooters. Roy worked with them and made them much better.
On the first day of their firearms training, Roy wanted to see how well they shot with their Glock pistols. The targets that he had posted were circles six inches in diameter. The men had expected silhouette targets. Those were the normal police and military targets. Instead, Roy had them shooting circles in every session.
On their second day, Roy had them do the same thing with their Colt M4 rifles. After a week, the circle dropped down to five inches in diameter. Eventually, they would be shooting four-inch circles with both their pistols and their rifles.
Roy didn’t just have them shooting in the indoor range. The team spent many days working together in the shoot house. Every day the targets, the furniture, and the set up inside the house was a little different.
Oftentimes, there were shoot and don’t shoot targets side by side. They had to evaluate in an instant and eliminate the threat. They worked on room entry and room clearing. They practiced using flash bang grenades. They practiced with their rifles and with their pistols.
Roy also worked them hard on transitioning from rifle to pistol. He would load their rifle magazines with varying numbers of rounds so they never knew when the M4 would lock open empty. When that happened they had to let the rifle drop on its sling to their chest, draw their pistol, and continue fighting.
They practiced their building and room entries, as well as their movement inside the house or building. The team’s movements became smooth and fluid. Every man knew his role and where he should be. They got to know each other, trust each other, and depend on each other.
The targets they were aiming at inside the shoot house were silhouettes with a four-inch circle in the head area. Roy told them that shots to the body did not count. Only shots to the head, inside the circle, would be scored.
As they progressed through their training, the competitive juices began to flow. As a Marine, Fleming prided himself on his shooting, especially with his rifle. By the end of their two-month course, Andy had a slight edge over Chuck with the rifle. Chuck had a slight edge over him with the pistol. The other guys were not far behind.
All of the men were crack shots to start with and had gotten even better under Roy’s tutelage. The surprise for everyone was when they spent a day on the long range course. Roy told them that they would not be shooting much there because it wasn’t practical for what they would be doing. He just wanted to expose them to some long distance shooting.
As they shot at targets at three hundred, five hundred, and six hundred meters, Smith outshot everyone. He even grouped his shots tighter than Fleming at that range. Andy congratulated him at the end of the day for his excellent marksmanship and asked him where he had learned to shoot like that. Scotty had casually mentioned that he had been a sniper when he was an Army Ranger.
Looking back now, Fleming understood what Roy was preparing them for. At the time, he thought it was odd that they were not training to shoot center mass. The center mass torso shot is what all law enforcement and military train their people to focus on. It is the easiest shot to make under stress and is designed to stop most enemies.
Instead, he now realized that they were being trained to kill zombies. That was six months ago. Six months ago, they were getting us ready for today, Fleming mused. How long have they known about this bio-terror threat?
The defensive tactics part of the course had also been a lot of fun. He remembered when he was in the Marines that on days when they'd practiced DT, the testosterone and tempers got to flowing and guys ended up with bloody noses, swollen eyes, dislocated shoulders, and other assorted bruises. And they loved every second of it.
This time, though, the DT instructor should have probably stayed home. He worked for the FBI and taught new agents and local police departments how to subdue violent criminals and how to handcuff them. He took one look at McCain and Smith and decided to use García as his demons
tration dummy.
Luis was fine with that until the instructor got a little rough with him and took him down hard. He shook it off the first time. After the second time, however, García casually got to his feet, did a double-leg takedown on the guy, straddled him in a full mount, and then slapped him lightly in the face a few times. The rest of the guys thought this was hysterical. The FBI Instructor didn’t. He called for a fifteen-minute break and never came back.
García had a black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and had studied several other styles and really should have been teaching the class from the get-go. McCain had been a professional MMA fighter and had also studied a variety of martial arts, as well. From then on, their DT class consisted of Luis teaching ground fighting or Chuck teaching standup fighting.
And now they were shooting zombies.
Interstate 85 Southbound, Wednesday, 2015 hours
When they were getting ready to leave the target location at 2000 hours, Chuck went over to say goodbye to Eddie and to thank his guys for staying until the scene was processed. Jimmy Jones, the Team Two assistant leader, was standing with Eddie. Jimmy nodded at Chuck as he walked up. “Chuck, that sounded like some crazy stuff, huh?”
“Hey, Jimmy. I've never seen anything like it. I've dealt with people on PCP, cocaine, meth, even animal tranquilizers. But I’ve never seen anybody with their throat ripped out trying to kill me.”
Jimmy and Eddie just shook their heads.
“I think if this stuff spreads,” Chuck continued, “you'll get your chance to meet some of these guys, too.”
As McCain walked over to his Suburban, he saw one of the other big SUVs pulling away from the house.
When he got into the driver’s seat, he saw that Rebecca was already seated in the passenger seat. Chuck looked behind him and saw that the backseats were empty.