Forces of Destiny

by Robert Maxwell

  Matthew laughed shaking his head looking down. He needed that pause to collect his strategic thoughts.

  Matthew after a long silence looked up at David and said, “Part of the Arc Light mission is to secure the United States nuclear weapons if the military fell. With no manpower, we are mission ineffective to prevent foreign Special Forces teams from stealing the nuclear material in the warheads and putting their own triggers on them. If terrorist nations recover faster than us, they will be a nuclear power, at least with short range strike nuclear weapons.”

  David had to get his mind back into the immediate mission of retaking the base but he had a troubling thought to inform Matthew about.

  David said, “Ben told me about the compartmentalized arm of the Arc Light program that protects the program’s most classified sensitive items. He said your predecessor General Hillsome was given the order to destroy a classified sensitive item in his possession with a portable backpack nuke. Ben said he found him dead with no backpack nuke found. If Ben was lying to me and found that backpack nuke already armed by General Hillsome before he died then Ben by himself without needing the consent of two authorized people could have detonated it remotely by encrypted satellite uplink.”

  Matthew with narrow eyes asked, “Are you accusing one of our own Arc Light members of nuking an American city?”

  David said, “He wanted to strike the undead while they massed before we lost the chance. With the fall of the United States military, that may have pushed his hand. If you can access the communications logs of our satellite phones over the last few hours, Ashley saw Ben on a satellite phone and computer in our jet ride back from Los Angeles.”

  Matthew understood how important the securing of this base was and said, “I look into it and deal with other nuclear threat contingencies. Good hunting on your mission to secure the base.”

  Matthew shook David’s hand and turned back to the base commander's office.

  David stayed behind to search the video feeds deeper for the most important part of the base for the safety of his team.

  David scanned every available feed twice. He opened the command map of the base and looked at the farthest, most remote plateau from the entrance. It was the longest of all the rock plateaus but there was no video feed of that area. David double checked if a video feed was damaged but it looked like by security design this area could not be observed by camera. David decided he would recon and secure that plateau himself.

  ***

  Tom sat the Ex-Secretary of Defense inside a medical containment room in a mini emergency medical operating room located in the command and control facility.

  Before closing the containment door, Tom asked the Ex-Secretary of Defense, “Were there plans to nuke American cities if they became overrun by millions of undead?”

  The Ex-Secretary of Defense paused for a long moment and said, “No, we would want to be able to retake the cities and all their valuable assets including survivors. Can you loosen my handcuffs, my wrists are going numb.”

  Tom didn't answer as he just stared at the ground lost in thought with a troubled look on his face.

  ***

  Ashley and Jason jumped off the quadcopter that had barely just landed on the medical facility plateau. Ashley made Jason sprint their way across the fifty meters to the two story medical complex north wall.

  Ashley shouted out, “Like we trained, watch for snipers and fast moving undead!”

  Jason looking to his left spotted a trail of blood that looked like someone or something had dragged a bloody body to the inside of the medical compound. Fear started to well up in his throat as he ran towards the possible den hiding the undead. Everything was so quiet and abandon. Jason couldn’t get the image out of his mind of the undead waiting for them to come into their web.

  Ashley had memorized the clear entrance and hallways from the video feeds in the command center. As they entered through the west door with a RFID chip David had found to open doors, Ashley listened for a minute once they got behind cover. This was to see if the noise attracted the undead but it was also to let Jason get control of emotions.

  Ashley and Jason leapfrogged down the hallways. One saying behind cover providing overwatch to the other as they moved. Ashley figured Jason would be more likely to hit what he shot at if he was kneeling versus shooting on the move if they both moved together.

  As Jason moved up to Ashley and kneeled at the edge of a hallway corner to cover her, his breathing was panicked and near hyperventilation.

  Ashley put her hand up under his chest plate onto his chest and whispered, “Look at my face and match my slow breathing.”

  Jason was having trouble slowing his breath as his eyes were looking down both hallways of the L intersection.

  Ashley whispered, “You have the skills to prevail. Replay the training in your mind on squeezing the trigger and moving slow around danger areas. Focus on matching my breathing.”

  Jason felt the calming effect of Ashley’s soft voice and the reassurance of her human touch. After a minute Jason was matching Ashley’s breathing and he now noticed for the first time the adrenaline coursing through his body with his senses on fire from being in a combat unit where he could die closing towards the enemy.

  Jason felt his emotions back off from the edge of facing the fear of the slaughter they may be walking into and said, “Maybe I should put my hand up your shirt to calm you down?”

  Ashley laughed softly, glad that Jason was calmed down enough to crack a joke.

  Ashley smiled and said, “I’ll tell you what, next time I need to calm you down why don’t I stick my boot up your ass. We make it through this mission and you can put your hand anywhere you want. Now cover me.”

  Jason covered the area Ashley was bounding to her next place of cover. He was no longer focusing on the fear of dying. All he wanted to do now was complete this mission.

  ***

  Tom walked up to the command and control center. He looked around and realized he was alone with Matthew isolated in the base commander's office. Tom walked up to the computer screen that David had used during his briefing. He was able to access the base menu. Tom found the software menu he was looking for and started typing for a minute.

  Tom was done setting up what he wanted to do. All he had left to do was hit the enter key to complete his task. Tom just looked at the enter key and stared at it lost in thought, his hands frozen as his mind raced through all the options in his mind. None of them were clear but he could no longer let the voice of redemption in head go unanswered.

  ***

  Ashley walked into the dark thirty foot by thirty foot medical containment ward which had smashed walls and no working cameras. Ashley shined her weapons light along the blood-smeared walls and up onto the smashed cameras and thought, no wonder we missed this slaughter. Ashley had kept Jason back at the mangled hallway door entrance to the ward to defend her avenue of escape and not shoot her in the dark if a close-quarters firefight broke out. She scanned the floor with her light for bodies but there was nothing but blood, a shoe, and a discarded rifle.

  Ashley walked across the room and came up to a clear glass window. Shining the light she was able to look inside and see a medical operating room with a dead naked six foot three inch women with red hair with a bullet hole in her head laying on a medical table with a robotic medical arm scanning her. On the floor was the pistol she shot herself with and a tablet computer. Ashley looked at how peaceful the woman’s pale face looked even with blood running down the side of it.

  Ashley shined a light on the computer screen next to the table. It was still powered on and was showing what looked like a log of the medical status of the body currently on the medical table.

  Emergency DNA mapping complete...

  Gene sequencing complete…

  Protein mutation identified …

  Signal transduction inhibitors administered …

  Emergency laparoscopic superior lobe, right lung repair successful..<
br />
  Stem cells repair of upper lung tear unsuccessful…

  Autoresuscitation overwritten by Doctor Deekson...

  Patient deceased....

  Medically induced hypothermia protocol activated...

  Brain oxygen level below 5%. No brain activity detected…

  Brain oxygen level 0%. No brain activity detected…

  Ashley saw an empty M-4 rifle in the room that was empty with an empty magazine a few feet from the rifle. Ashley thought, do they have an automated medical treatment machine? This person must have been infected and killed themselves after treatment didn’t work.

  Ashley shined her light to the left of the window onto the next wall in the containment ward room. She saw a closed six-foot wide metal morgue door with a bullet hole through it. There was a blood trail going through to the other side of the door. Ashley turned her light off and moved near the door and listened. Seconds passed by with no sounds of activity on the other side of it. Ashley thought, what is lying in ambush? What thing dragged bloody bodies into the room on the other side of this door? The silence meant Ashley was going to have to open the door to see what was behind it.

  Ashley turned her light on, stood on the other side of the door hinges and pulled on the bar like handle outward which took all her weight to unlatch the door which was most likely bent. She pulled the door open and shined the light into the room. There was a long hallway twenty feet long with three closed doors each on each side of the hallway with signs on the doors that said “Surgical Room” on them. Each of the six doors was labeled one through six. The door at the end of the hallway had the sign “Containment Bay 1”. There were hundreds of bullet holes in the metal walls and doors. The walls were dented and the blood trail on the floor led right up to the “Containment Bay 1” door.

  Ashley took a few steps into the hallway and opened the door to “Surgical Room 1” to the right. She shined her light into the room and saw the dead red-haired woman on the operating table. Ashley cleared the whole room and held her rifle at the dead red haired woman waiting for her to open her eyes at any second and attack. Seconds in silence passed and it seemed the woman was truly dead but Ashley did not lower her rifle pointed at the woman’s head.

  Ashley walked over to the computer table and picked it up with her left hand while still holding the rifle with her right. She then backed out of the room and closed the door. She backed out the way she came into the hallway and closed the big morgue door.

  Ashley walked out of the room towards Jason and said on their team radio, “I am coming out, put your rifle on safe and finger off the trigger like I trained you.”

  Jason said, "Roger."

  Ashley walked twenty feet down a dark hallway and turned the corner to see Jason relieved to see her, smiling and letting out a sigh of relief.

  Ashley said, “Cover the hallway. The blood trails led to a medical containment bay with hundreds of bullet holes and a closed door which my gut says there is something undead and very dangerous inside of it.”

  Ashley turned on the computer tablet with bloody fingerprints on the screen. A word document was open with a log of what had happened in the medical containment ward Ashley was just in.

  As Ashley read the log she said out loud, “Hollyshit!”

  Ashley said on the team radio, “David come in, I know what happen to the crew of the Eden base. We’ve got a Goddamn problem!”

  ***

  David was on a quadcopter hovering a hundred feet over the last plateau at the furthest edge of the base. Looking down at the complex built in that last plateau David was confident he had found the resources critical to the survival of the team. He was about to command the copter autopilot to land on this last plateau when he received the call from Ashley that she discovered what happen to the crew of the Eden base. David commanded the copter to the medical research plateau Ashley was on.

  David was about to ask Ashley over the radio for specifics on her discovery of the new threat she found when suddenly the lights in the whole base went out.

  David looked around only to see it was pitch dark in the underground base. David’s adrenaline surged as he sensed something was wrong from the magnitude of such a sudden power shutdown.

  A call came over the private command radio channel from Matthew, “We are being infiltrated! I locked down the command center and activated the silent base alert protocol. Video feeds show Tom activated the elevator and he picked up a group of six Russians and dropped them at the fusion reactor plateau. He stayed on the plateau and a Russian went back with the copter to the elevator, probably to taxi more of an assault force. They shut off the reactor so only critical systems may be on backup power. I am guessing our command channel is secure from Tom but we should not talk on the radio after this to be safe from communication intercept.”

  David said, “Rally on me at Ashley’s last known location and then the team will all fall back to a defensive position at the last plateau at the furthest end of the base.”

  Matthew said, “Negative, my research of classified information since we got here shows a critical classified intelligence server I must retrieve with the base being breached by the enemy. According to self-destruct protocol it takes both our authorization codes. I am entering my authorization code now so you have the ability to self-destruct the base if you cannot contain this assault force. If I make it I will see you at the last plateau, out.”

  David could hear gunfire over the radio as Matthew was speaking. David said over the team radio, “Defensive operations, radio silence in effect, out.”

  David thought, we didn’t find any friendly forces in our searches of the base. If I have to destroy the base, I hope there is not a group of friendlies hiding somewhere in the base because there is no way I am going to leave this base intact for the Russian’s to take over. It would be the end of the country.

  He couldn’t reveal any details of what he knew to his team because Tom was on the radio channel but in essence, he cut off the communication intercept by the enemy by the team going radio silent. The whole team by now could hear the gunfire and figure out to protect themselves.

  David thought, Tom informed the Russians of the secret location of the Eden base when I found out from Matthew. He turned off the advanced perimeter sensors to the air corridor approach to the town, let them down the elevator and provided them a copter to transport their assault force. I should have not opened the security protocols to the whole team for the sake of speed, bypassing the two-person authorization protocol.

  David turned on his night vision monocular and commanded the copter to take an evasive route deep down in the valleys that separate the rock plateaus and land on the furthest tip of the nuclear power plateau. It was a large risk landing into a hostile landing zone but popping up at the last second from down below the valley to land may buy him the seconds he needed to get clear of the copter and to cover.

  It was a calculated risk he needed to take for his team. He wanted to hit the infiltration force hard before they organized a stable defensive perimeter. Landing on the nuclear fusion plateau would also be the fastest way he could hunt Tom down and kill him for his betrayal of treason to the country. David felt Tom’s betrayal overwhelm his consciousness with the desire to kill him in revenge.

  ***

  Ashley and Jason were running to the door closest to the copter using their night vision monoculars. Ashley just received the radio silence command from David. Ashley thought, that command most likely means the base had been infiltrated and Tom, Matthew or Ben were captured before they could lock their radios.

  Ashley scanning the open ground between them and the copter said to Jason, “We may have to defend in this building if the infiltrating force has air superiority else we make a run for the copter.”

  Jason said, “We can’t leave this medical facility until we get inside that medical containment room you backed away from.”

  Ashley sharply turned her head and asked, “What?”

 
Jason said, “When I was waiting outside the medical containment bay, guarding the entrance, I could feel it. Literally in my mind, like a lost memory. My ears were ringing so bad I could barely hear you when you first came out. They are hiding it in the containment bay.”

  Ashley asked, “Hiding what? What did you hear?”

  Jason said, “It was more of a vision, like a lost memory becoming clear. I looked at the report on the computer tablet. They make reference to what they call an ‘Artifact’. It is an Arc Light energy source but it is ancient and intelligence. It is more than an energy source. It was like the one in the jet we got from the crater but this one I sensed was a thousand times stronger. The closer you get to it the stronger the thoughts and the ringing in my ears. Now that we are further away from it, the effects are fading.”

  Ashley and Jason were interrupted in surprise as they heard gunfire come from the nuclear fusion plant plateau.

  Ashley turned to Jason grabbing his arm and with an intense aggression in her eyes said, “In a minute we are going to be hunted by men that have infiltrated this base. We make one mistake and they are going to rip the life from us. We aren’t going back for shit! Do you understand me?”

  Jason ripped his arm away from Ashley and ran back into the medical facility into the darkness towards the blood-stained walls of the containment bay and the world’s most classified secret.

  ***

  David brought the copter from down below the valley upwards to land in the most likely spot on the nuclear fusion plant plateau any air defense guards could not see. The copter came up behind a twenty foot wide steam exhaust stack on the roof of the plant and hovered as David jumped off the copter ten feet in the air from the roof. He hit hard but rolled his body to take the pressure off his ankle.