A quick glance at her watch told her they had another thirty-three minutes until it sank below the horizon. They should wait at least another hour before venturing out of the ambulance, but she knew it would be a tough sell. Without even looking at them, she could tell that her team was on the verge of mutiny. They had been trapped in the sweltering, cramped patient-care compartment for most of the afternoon, waiting for dark, when it should be possible for them to move safely on foot to Chang’s apartment. It was definitely not safe for them to transit in the daylight. They’d learned that lesson the hard way, and it had cost them a member of their team.
Ragan didn’t want to think about it. Not that she had the option. She’d hear Boyd’s screams for the rest of her days. They all would. His death had been completely unexpected, and entirely avoidable—if Control had bothered to give them any indication of the true problem inside the quarantine zone. But they hadn’t.
She had been warned to avoid contact with law enforcement or military patrols, and to steer clear of quarantine boundary checkpoints. Control clearly didn’t want anyone questioning their purpose or mission inside the quarantine zone. Maybe that should have been enough of a warning. Then again, how could she have guessed what was truly happening in the city? Even now Ragan barely believed it, and she’d witnessed something unthinkable.
Their mission had proceeded relatively well despite being rerouted twice. They had driven to the recommended point along Interstate 465, where her team crossed on foot with little difficulty. National Guard vehicle patrols were surprisingly predictable and sparse. After hiking several blocks into the northern outskirts of the city, they hotwired a pickup truck parked on the street and carefully made their way south.
A few tense encounters with bands of desperate civilians left them spooked by the time they reached Interstate 65, but they still hadn’t seen anything the team couldn’t handle with the firepower at their disposal. Their brief trip along the deserted highway compounded that false sense of security. When they reached an impassible traffic jam less than a mile from Chang’s apartment, Ragan led them off the interstate on foot. All hell broke loose a few minutes into their trek.
It started with a small group of hecklers in an apartment building, yelling and throwing bottles down at them. Ragan ignored the racket and moved the team down the sidewalk in a staggered column formation, with Boyd walking point. The first real indication of trouble came a few seconds later, when a shirtless man bolted out of the same apartment building, carrying a shovel. Several feet behind Boyd, Ragan quickly halted her team with hand signals and engaged the hostile target.
By the time she had pressed the trigger, Boyd had wandered dangerously far away from the team, unaware that the team had been halted—until he heard that first shot. If he’d sprinted back to the team immediately at that point, he’d be sweating it out in the ambulance. Instead, he crouched and methodically fired at a cluster of lunatics that had sprinted around the corner of the apartment building on the other side of the street, ignoring her frantic order to retreat.
Dozens of frenzied people, many of them armed with household weapons, flooded the team from every direction, leaving her no choice but to fall back to their vehicle on the interstate. When Boyd finally realized his predicament, it was too late. She’d kept the rest of the team in a tight formation for as long as she could, until it was clear that they couldn’t stay in place another moment longer without being overrun.
Unable to divert any of their frantic gunfire to help Boyd, the father of three was knocked down within seconds, vanishing under a mound of bloodthirsty lunatics. His screams distracted the crazies long enough for Ragan’s team to gain some ground and get back to the interstate, where they expended much of their remaining ammunition to cut their pursuers down.
Instead of driving away from Chang’s apartment, they used the long rows of vehicles to channel the few remaining crazies into their gunfire before they took refuge in an abandoned ambulance. The more she thought about it, the less she wanted to step outside this protective metal shell. She wasn’t sure if night would be any different out there. The city’s power grid was still working, from what she could tell, which nullified any advantage their state-of-the-art night-vision gear offered.
Her eyes drifted shut; a light kick to the shin snapped her back in focus.
“Now you’re tired?” said McDermott, her second in command. “You should have racked out all afternoon.”
“Someone had to keep an eye out with all of your snoring,” said Ragan.
“It’s not that bad,” said McDermott.
Pablo Cordova, a former Marine Raider, stretched his arms and yawned. “You were shaking the whole fucking ambulance, hoss.”
“Yeah. I was worried you’d attract some of our new friends,” said Ragan.
When neither of them reacted to her comment, she quickly realized they weren’t ready for jokes about any of the insanity they had witnessed off the interstate. She took another sip of her water, the pressure required to draw another mouthful from the CamelBak increasing. One more swig and she’d be empty. She looked up at McDermott, who spit his water bladder hose out, shaking his head.
“Empty,” he said.
“I have one more sip,” she said. “You’re welcome to it.”
He shook his head. “We’ll grab some water on the way over.”
Cordova pinched the bridge of his nose before running his hand along his shaved head and wiping the accumulated sweat on his pants.
“So what’s our move?” said Cordova.
“We wait until the sun goes down and then follow the interstate to the closest point of approach to Chang’s apartment. The southbound side of the highway is a parking lot as far as I can see. We’ll move between vehicles, watching and listening for signs of trouble.”
“We didn’t get much warning last time,” said Cordova.
“No. We didn’t,” she said. “And they still haven’t said shit. Nothing new on the tablet.”
McDermott used his rifle to lift himself off the ambulance floor. “I say we follow the yellow brick road right out of fucking town and skip round two of don’t get eaten by your neighbor.”
“They weren’t eating him,” said Ragan.
“Well, they weren’t giving him a neck and shoulder massage.”
“We’ve been given a midnight extract at the top of the parking garage next to Chang’s apartment building,” said Ragan. “That’s a little more than a mile away. Following the yellow brick road out of here, as you so colorfully stated, puts us on Interstate 70 for several miles—through heavily populated areas.”
“At least we’d be on the highway,” said McDermott. “Better than the city streets.”
“I don’t disagree with that, but they know exactly where we are at all times,” she said, removing her CTAB from the pouch on her vest.
“That fucking thing. A lot of good it’s done us,” said McDermott. “This whole thing has been a shit show since we landed.”
“We have a job to do,” said Ragan, firming her tone.
“I know,” said McDermott. “I just don’t get the impression that Control has a good handle on the overall situation.”
“They probably don’t,” said Ragan. “And they probably don’t care. They just want Chang.”
“That’s the kind of myopic vision that gets people killed.”
“It’s in our hands to keep that from happening,” said Ragan. “We’ll approach cautiously. If we can’t get near Chang’s apartment, I’ll pull the plug on this.”
McDermott still looked skeptical. “We’re low on ammo. Keep that in mind.”
“It’s right next to finding us some water,” said Ragan, checking her watch. “Thirty minutes and we’ll recon the area. If all goes well, we’ll be at the target inside of an hour.”
“Or eaten alive,” said McDermott, with a deadpan face.
“Nobody is getting eaten,” said Ragan.
Cordova chuckled, followed quickly by McD
ermott.
“I’m just fucking with you,” said McDermott. “But the first sign of trouble, and I’m hauling ass, with or without you.”
“You’re forgetting something,” said Ragan, drawing a puzzled look from McDermott. “I’m faster than you.”
“Shit. Then you don’t have anything to worry about,” said McDermott.
They all laughed quietly before settling in to wait for the sun to trace its final path below the horizon. It would be a long thirty minutes—spent worrying.
Chapter 42
Larsen and Chang cracked dozens of glow sticks, arranging them on the ground in the shape of an arrow. The ten-foot-long multicolor beacon had been placed in the grass at the center of the flower garden area, pointing east in the direction of the night’s prevailing wind. The air had been relatively calm until about seven, when it kicked up to a steady five to seven knots. Normally nothing to worry about, but they were working with a hundred-and-fifty-foot-diameter drop zone, which didn’t leave a lot of room for error.
They had turned off all of the lights casting illumination on the enclosed common area so the arrow would be visible with night vision from high above. If Terrence’s people were as good as the man claimed, the impromptu beacon should be all they needed to execute a precision landing. Larsen had landed in far tighter spaces, with no ground markers. He snapped the last glow stick, which engulfed his hand in a bright red light, and placed it next to a pale green stick at the tip of the arrow.
He glanced at Chang, who stared up at the dark blue sky. “Any updates from Greenberg?”
“Nothing since the late afternoon,” said Chang. “No news is good news. Right?”
“I guess,” said Larsen, looking east over the one-story structure surrounding the common garden area.
The lighter blue sky blended less and less with the deepening shades of night closing in on the horizon, the scattered clouds no longer reflecting orange or yellow colors. Any remaining vestige of day would be erased within the next twenty minutes. He really had hoped to be on his way to the plane by now, but at this point they had no choice but to wait for their new friends. It was too dangerous to leave on their own.
Not only had Chang grabbed the data he’d hidden in his lab, but he’d also downloaded all of the NT-HSE893 vaccine research, which he intended to deliver to Greenberg, along with his analysis of the virus samples. Even Larsen understood the significance of getting this information into the right hands—and it wouldn’t hurt to have four experienced shooters escort them to Chang’s aircraft. If his limited experience on these mean streets had taught him anything, it was that anything could happen.
A gust of warm, smoky air swept through the garden, momentarily obscuring the illuminated beacon. Anything could happen.
“David, this is Larsen.”
“Go ahead,” replied David, who was situated with the rooftop sniper guarding the fence breach.
“We just had a thick blanket of smoke roll over the drop zone,” said Larsen. “What’s happening out there?”
“Other than fires everywhere?”
“Yes. Other than fires everywhere,” said Larsen, shaking his head. “Unless it’s that simple.”
“I think the wind shifted about fifteen degrees, coming a little more out of the northwest. There are some big fires out that way,” said David.
“Do you think it’ll be a problem for the drop?”
“I don’t think so. It’s a variable wind,” said David. “I’ll let you know if it steadies from the northwest.”
“All right,” said Larsen. “Chang hasn’t received an update, so we’ll hang out here and wait.”
“Are you sure you don’t want backup down there?” said David.
“If we can’t trust these guys, we’re really screwed,” said Larsen.
“I suppose if this was some kind of setup, they’d have flown those helicopters in already.”
“It’s truly out of our hands.”
Larsen sensed a shift in the ambient lighting outside the enclosed garden area. The sky somehow got a little crisper. Almost brighter.
“Did something just happen out there?” said Larsen.
“The city just lost power,” said David. “But NevoTech is fine.”
“All stations, this is Hoenig. The campus is running on auxiliary power from battery and generator backup. Security systems are unaffected.”
“Gary, this is David. You might want to figure out how to kill the external campus lights. My guess is that this blackout will empty out every apartment and house in the city. Those fancy Central Park-looking lamps inside the fence will attract a lot of unwanted attention.”
“Shit. I don’t know the first thing about the auxiliary or emergency lighting,” said Hoenig.
“Then you might want to consider dispatching teams to shoot out the lights,” said David. “We can take care of about two dozen from our rooftop perch.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea with our new friends arriving any minute,” said Larsen.
“This is a matter of life or death for the campus in the long run,” said David. “Not to mention our little escapade out of here.”
“I agree,” said Larsen.
“What’s happening?” said Chang, from a nearby stone bench.
Larsen took his hand off the transmit button. “Power grid failed in the city. We’re trying to figure out how to shut down the external campus lights.”
“Jesus. They’ll be all over this place,” said Chang.
“My sentiments exactly. Maybe we should just head to the plane right now. You can leave the thumb drives and stuff with Hoenig.”
His earpiece crackled. “This is Fitzgerald. I’m down in the cafeteria. One of the women here works in facilities maintenance. She doesn’t deal with the power, but she knows where we might be able to figure something out.”
Hoenig answered before Larsen could comment. “Mitch is on his way. When he arrives, I want the two of you to figure this out.”
“Understood,” said Fitzgerald. “She seems to think this is going to take a while, so you might want to go with David’s plan for now.”
“Roscoe, David, hit as many lights as possible from your position. When you’re done, I’ll send out a team with one of the suppressed rifles to clear the eastern lights. Give you guys a break when you make your run for the plane.”
“Thanks, Gary,” said David.
A string of gunshots echoed through the common area.
“If Chang’s friends don’t hurry the fuck up, we’re leaving without them,” said Larsen. “Lights or no lights. Things are about to get busy out there.”
“Does anyone else hear that?” said David, over the net.
“Hear what?” said Larsen.
“Sounds like an airplane,” said a voice that Larsen was pretty sure belonged to Roscoe.
“Definitely an airplane,” said David. “Coming in fast.”
Larsen cocked his head, finally hearing the deep buzz of an approaching aircraft. If this was the team sent to escort Chang, they were flying way too low for a parachute jump. He flipped his night-vision goggles into place and ran toward the luminescent beacon in the center of the garden, craning his head skyward.
“Son of a bitch!” he yelled.
“What?” said Chang, jumping to his feet.
The night-vision goggles caught the silhouette of a uniquely designed aircraft, which streaked directly overhead before pulling into a steep climb.
“Hot damn!” said Larsen. “Where the fuck did they find one of those?”
“One of what?” yelled Chang, sliding into place next to him.
“It’s hard to explain. Ever hear of the OV-10 Bronco?”
“I’ve had a private pilot’s license for more than twenty years,” said Chang. “Civilian OV-10s are pretty fucking rare.”
“Well, that’s what you’re hearing right now. An OV-10 Bronco in a steep climb,” said Larsen. “Powerful fucking aircraft. I saw the twin boom and stabilizers
. Unmistakable.”
“So much for the corporate jet.”
“No way they could have pulled off a high-altitude jump from a civilian jet without hijacking it,” said Larsen.
“I got the impression that was part of the plan,” said Chang.
“This is better,” said Larsen, studying the vague outline of the aircraft.
The murky green aircraft grew smaller as it climbed, eventually disappearing into the dark green sky. Four dark objects took its place a few moments later.
“I have four parachutes,” said Larsen. “Do you know how they jump out of a Bronco?”
“Through a door?” said Chang. “Like every other aircraft?”
“Not exactly. The Bronco has a small cargo area, with a rear-facing hatch, which can accommodate five paratroopers. Jumpers sit nut to butt in the cargo hold and basically slide out of the aircraft when it climbs. Gravity does all of the work.”
“Nut to butt?” said Chang.
“Just like it sounds,” said Larsen. “Snuggled tightly. Nut to butt.”
“I see,” said Chang. “Where are they now?”
“Headed right toward us,” said Larsen, backing up quickly. “Let’s give them some room.”
They retreated to the doors in front of the two-story glass lobby, Larsen watching the amorphous dark shapes morph into square parachutes supporting heavily laden parachutists. The parachutists executed a lazy circle over the drop zone, settling in for an easterly approach, directly into the prevailing wind. The four heavily laden operators released their combat equipment loads when they crossed into the open area, the bundles pulling taut under them—seconds before they landed. The team hit the drop zone a few seconds apart, none of them straying more than twenty feet from the ad hoc beacon. As their parachutes deflated, Larsen put a hand on Chang’s shoulder.
“Stay here. If anything happens, run inside and head to the security hub.”
“Nothing is going to happen,” said Chang.
KILL BOX: A Post-Apocalyptic Pandemic Thriller (The Zulu Virus Chronicles Book 2) Page 21