A Time to Die (47 page)

* * *

General Rose had been half dozing as he listened to the sporadic reports from the helicopters and Ospreys that ranged out ahead of them between Fort Hood and Los Angeles. They covered as many airfields as they could in that distance with low flyovers when it was deemed worthwhile. The C-17s had more than enough fuel to reach the coast, but the Osprey were in the redline and the Chinooks not much better. The gunships were using droptanks and minimal armaments. They had roughly the same range as the Chinooks.

An hour ago an Osprey had reported it was landing at a promising location, Truth or Consequences Municipal Airport, just north of the town by the same name in New Mexico. It was a resort town that traded in tourism to the Elephant Butte Reservoir. They’d never been heard from again. Everyone listened as an Apache entered the area. It was a longbow variant, with special surveillance cameras mounted on a boom sticking out from the top of the rotors.

“Longbow seven reporting,” the radio said.

“Go ahead Longbow, this is Brass Hat,” the general said.

“I have the Osprey. It landed safely.”

“Sitrep?”

“Evaluating,” the pilot said, “wait one.” They were currently circling El Paso as the rest of their airborne convoy continued west. “I have numerous people on foot around the bird. They do not appear to be infected. A semi truck is being used to offload the Osprey of all armaments.”

“What’s the inventory of that bird?” General Rose asked. His aid, always only a few feet away, stepped forward and handed the General a tablet computer, the Osprey preselected. The General made a face. “Any sign of the crew, Longbow Seven?”

“Negative sir. The Osprey appears fine, none of the personnel in sight are in uniform.” There was a pause. “They are finishing their offload. I just got a heat plume from the semi.”

“Understood, Longbow,” the General said. The muscles in his jaw worked for a second.

Splash the bird and the truck. I say again, splash the bird and the truck.”

“Acknowledged, Brass Hat, splash the Osprey and the truck.”

Andrew knew that miles away the Apache would be rising above the ground level where it had hidden while using its camera to observe the scene. Its nose mounted M-230 30mm chain gun could fire only six hundred rounds per minute. But ten 30mm bullets per second, each with enough kinetic energy to blow a modern car in half was a real hell storm.

“Firing,” the pilot said, and they could hear the distinctive chatter of the gun. “The aircraft is tango foxtrot. The truck is running, switching to missiles. ” Another pause. “The truck is destroyed.” There was more firing and Andrew knew he was using the FLIR to pick of anyone still moving. “The targets are neutralized.”

“Acknowledged, Longbow Seven, proceed to next objective.”

“What was on the Osprey?” Wade asked.

“Communications gear, anti-tank rockets, small arms and ammo. We’re going to sorely miss that.”

“But why blow it up? You might have just killed the pilots?”

“They were probably already dead,” the General said. “We can’t take the risk of that kind of ordinance falling into the hands of someone who’d hijack a military combat vehicle.” Andrew nodded, he understood the logic. But to Wade and Chris, it seemed like a cold, bloody, heartless act. “And we don’t have the time to land troops to retake it.”

They orbited around El Paso,whose airport had already been determined to be run by the zombies, and waited for the helicopters to make the next leg. An hour later the three C-17 flew on towards Tucson as helicopters checked it out, as well as Phoenix.

Phoenix was a loss, but Tucson airport was mostly intact. The perimeter fence was solid and there were a couple dozen civilians and police holding it. Several of the Chinooks with capacity landed troops who reinforced while others landed and the thirsty gunships all came in for fuel, followed by the remainder of the Chinooks and the lone surviving Osprey.

The C-17s just orbited, they hadn’t even used a quarter of their fuel, and the Tucson airport wasn’t really suitable for them. Over the next hour the entire fleet of helicopters landed and refueled. The ground personnel there helped, just grateful to be relieved. When the Army birds took off again they took all the civilians along.

With the helicopters safely refueled their ability to reach Los Angeles was no longer a problem, and the C-17s didn’t have to wait for them. General Rose gave the order for them to proceed to destination. It was an hour later when Wade gave a chagrined laugh.

“What is it with you and engines?” he asked Andrew.

“What’s wrong?”

“Number two is running hot.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Andrew said and examined the controls. Engine #2, inboard port side, was noticeably hotter than the other three.

“How bad by the book?” Andrew asked.

“About 250 degrees below automatic shutdown, four hundred degrees below danger level. It’s been increasing at a rate of five degrees a minute.”

Andrew did the math in his head, fifty minutes until auto shutdown. If he overrode that, another thirty until he risked wasting the engine. And that assumed it didn’t get any worse. He glanced back at the general.

“It’s your plane, Lieutenant,” that man said, “but I don’t like walking. Or crashing.”

“Shut down #3,” Andrew said, and Wade went through the inflight shutdown. The RPM gauge showed the engine spinning down and the ‘Power Loss’ light came on over the engine’s status readout. Immediately the autopilot increased the elevator angle as their speed began to decrease.

“23 Poppa, what’s going on, Foxtrot?”

“We’ve had an engine overheat,” Andrew said to the other plane.

“Want us to slow down?”

“There’s no reason for that. You and Indigo proceed to Los Angeles. Relay any radio contact, if you get it?”

“Affirmative, Foxtrot. Good luck.”

All told they lost forty-two miles per hour. The other two planes quickly began to leave them behind. Andrew watched through the windscreen as they began to grow steadily smaller. In half an hour they were just a dot on the radar.

“I’m taking us down a few thousand,” Andrew told them, “to compensate for the lost engine.”

“There are mountains ahead,” Chris reminded him.

“We’re still at 28,000 feet,” Andrew said.

The Laguna Mountain range only averaged 6,000 feet, so navigating it would be no problem. But they weren’t very far from the coast, so the transports would begin their descent before reaching the mountains. More than thirty miles ahead, 23 Poppa, in the lead, began to clear the mountains and promptly started getting transmissions on military channels. They created a line of sight relay and informed 44 Foxtrot.

“We’ve got relayed coms from the coast,” Chris said excitedly.

“Let’s hear it,” General Rose said.

“CSG 8, commander actual,” the voice came through with a small amount of static. “Rear Admiral Lance Tomlinson.”

“III Corps actual, Major General Leon Rose,” he replied, “good to know we’re not the only operating military unit.”

“General Rose, good to hear you as well. We have a few Guard units here, but you’re the first regular Army to turn up.”

“Who’s ranking officer there?”

“As of now, you are. Vice Admiral Prescott was in route to meet up with the Ford but his chopper went down off the Oregon coast. We think one of the crew turned.”

Rose cursed off the radio. Andrew could tell he’d been hoping for someone of a higher rank. That a two-star general was the senior officer spoke volumes.

“Civilian leadership?”

“Nothing right now, General. We’ve been trying to establish a link with the Pentagon or any of the fallback bunkers, but no joy.”

“Understood. I have about five hundred soldiers and seven hundred dependents en route. Can you have LAX prepare for our landing?”

“No possible, general. We lost LAX sixteen hours ago. Combination of infected civilian aircraft and perimeter failure. Guard units did a bangup job, but ran low on consumables. We evacuated them.”

“Alternative landing site?”

“We have two Marine Amphibs here, the
Essex
and the
Malkin
, plus three Nimitz class, including my
George Washington
. The
Ford
is just tying up. Should be plenty of room.”

“What about land side?”

“General, we’re entirely ocean based at this point. I’m sure you’re aware of how this plague has spread. You’re out of Hood, right?”

“Evacuated eight hours ago. But we need a ground base.”

“General, the biggest helo you will fit on any of these platforms. We even have room on the cruisers and destroyers.”

“You don’t understand, Admiral. I have three, repeat three C-17s loaded with passengers and consumables, including all the civilian dependents on the bird I’m talking from.”

“Well, shit,” the Admiral said.

Chapter 29

Tuesday, April 25

Evening

Andrew listened to the flag officers discuss options. The Marine senior commander, Brigadier General Coleman, was brought into the discussion. It was agreed that they could secure a landing site with the personnel and assets on hand, but not in the time remaining. The three C-17s had no more than five hours of flight time remaining. While the discussion went on, the first two arrived over the Los Angeles basin and began orbiting. Andrew’s plane cleared the Laguna Mountains and began to descend.

He’d flown into LAX many times, even flew a fighter there once years ago. In the late afternoon you could see the lights of LA from a hundred miles away. The complete lack of those lights was disturbing.

“How much of the country still has power?” Chris wondered.

“No way to tell,” the General said during a lull in their discussion. “Andrew, what’s the probable outcome of an ocean landing?” Andrew considered it for a moment.

“Well, you’d lose all the cargo on the other two, of course. These planes are a lot more robust than civilian airliners. But they aren’t designed to stay afloat for more than a few minutes. Ours is the most heavily loaded. We have hundreds of people sitting on the floor down there. We’d have dozens of critical injuries, maybe hundreds. People would be flying around down there like beans in a can kicked down a hill.”

“Not an appealing mental image.”

“It wasn’t meant to be, Sir. If this crate had a structural failure, it would probably go down in less than a minute.”

“We only have fifty or so life preservers on board,” Wade chimed in. “It’s not configured for passengers. Even when it is, normally it only carries 177 troops in seats.”

“What about shooting our way out of LAX or San Diego?” the General asked.

“Possible,” Andrew said. “We could land right through the crazy fuckers. They won’t pose a huge threat at that point, even if we ingest a few. The problem is the numbers. The Admiral said there were thousands on the field. That suggests the perimeter is shot. It’s going to be damned hard to get them off us after we land, even if Chinooks are standing by. I don’t even know if we’ll have enough time, the helicopters are hours behind us. The Marines might have enough if they got in the air fast, but still…”

“After they rescued all these civilians, they’d have to move them off shore then come back for the soldiers,” the General said. Andrew gave a sardonic thumbs up. “Come on Lieutenant, find us a way out of this.” They flew on for a few more minutes as the general conferred with his equals on the carriers while Andrew thought.

“Wade, what’s the minimum realistic landing distance for these?”

“About 1,500 feet,” Wade said almost immediately.

“How long is a Nimitz class carrier?”

The General’s head came up. “Oh, you must be kidding me.”

“Do you have a better idea?” the general asked the admiral on the
George Washington
. Needless to say, he thought they were crazy too, but gave them the data. The flight deck was 1,092 feet long.

“Not long enough,” Wade said.

“Aren’t there three supercarriers there?” Andrew asked.

* * *

Two hours later the three C-17s were circling the area of the flotilla, as it had been dubbed, at only 5,000 feet. Everyone was staring in disbelief at the thousands of boats and ships that had gathered only a mile off shore from San Diego harbor. The Marine carriers were dwarfed by some of the container ships, tankers, and one Supermax cruise liner. But all were eclipsed by the three supercarriers.

The first challenge the naval staff faced was extracting the carriers from the flotilla. No thought had been given to keeping their mobility in the midst of the greatest seaborne evacuation in history. All the carriers were surrounded by every matter of ocean craft, and it could have taken hours to get them clear. That much time wasn’t available. So two destroyers from each Carrier Strike Group maneuvered in front of their carriers and began pushing. Loudspeakers were used as a warning. Most of the boats and ships moved out of the way. Some had to be towed. A few were pushed.

One megayacht that had arrived was out of fuel and couldn’t be moved in time. The USS
Russel
and USS
Harvey W Hill
, both Spruance class destroyers displacing more than 8,000 tons and with 4 gas turbine 80,000 horsepower engines were able to move a megayacht twice their size with surprising ease, though not without considerable damage to the much more lightly built megayacht. The billionaire owner had to be evacuated by the Coast Guard cutter USS
Boutwell
. It would sink an hour later. The
Harvey W. Hill
had minor structural damage that didn’t affect its mission ready status.

Andrew watched this clusterfuck from a mile up and shook his head in amazement. It was a profound statement on the state of their nation. Never before would US military units have acted with such heavy-handedness. Of course what they were about to attempt was an even more profound statement.

Lacking unlimited time, the aircraft carriers USS
George Washington
and USS
Carl Vinson
came clear first and began to align tail on to each other. It wasn’t unusual for ships even that big to be tied up at a pier side by side. But that wasn’t in the open ocean. It took time. Andrew watched the fuel consumption instead of the clock as the sun fell towards the western horizon.

The mating was accomplished first by using ballast tanks to bring the two ships to the same exact height. Even though they were the same class,
George Washington
was ten feet higher in the water than the
Carl Vinson
. With that accomplished, the two carriers aligned back to back with the
Carl Vinson
facing into the prevailing wind The GW moved backwards as slow as the engineers could manage. On the fantails, hundreds of sailors stood by, eyes huge, ropes in hand, for what would not be a delicate maneuver.

Despite every effort, the impact was at nearly two miles an hour. While two miles per hour might not seem like much, it was nearly three feet per second. Cross three feet in a second. It’s an average walking speed. Now bring two 100,000 ton ships together, back to back, at walking speed. With a thunderous crash and grinding. The flight deck overhung the open lower decks of the fantail by ten feet. The flight decks smashed together. Several feet thick of honeycomb reinforced steel, under the incredible mass of the carriers still gave.

The sailors on each open fantail were only twenty feet apart as the two ships came together. A few seconds before the impact, chiefs yelled to throw and ropes crisscrossed from both ships. The teams were the same ones that usually tied the ships up when they were in port, so this drill was at least somewhat familiar. Lighter ropes were slid through winches and in turn pulled over much heavier ropes. The ships collided halfway through winching over those ropes. The impact above them caused metal to spall from the superstructure, some of it launched at extremely high velocity. One sailor was nearly cut in half by a two foot long razor sharp flake of steel. A dozen others were hit with much smaller pieces. Several ropes were also cut.

The two ships rebounded apart, but the engines weren’t cut, so they came back together. Though slower this time. The ropes were winched over and as medics arrived to tend the wounded, others raced to belay the huge mooring ropes. Dozens of men held on for dear life as the ropes went taunt with ominous whines. The lengths of synthetic fibers hummed dangerously, but held as more and more were tied off. The two ships were, at least temporarily, one. From a mile up, it appeared to be a rather flawlessly executed maneuver. There below them was a 2,000-foot-long runway. Just not a very wide one.

The fantails weren’t a perfect match, they weren’t square but rather cut forward at a 20° angle going forward on the starboard side. As the ships were back to back, this reduced some of the mismatch, though not all. Time continued to tick by as moving equipment on the carrier decks raced to push heavy steel plates in place. Special thermite spot-welding charges were used to fuse the plates to the leading edge on the GW’s deck.

All the while Andrew could see the decks of the carriers furiously abuzz with movement as the flight crews struggled to clear them. Carriers that were deployed almost never had clear decks unless most of their planes were in the air. The hangar decks, while huge, were not big enough to store every aircraft. With the ships aligned, the rest happened fast. They needed to, as the light was fading.

“This is Commander Martinez, Air Boss for the
Carl Vinson
. We’ll be controlling this… operation.”

“
Carl Vinson
, this is Lieutenant Tobins in 44 Foxtrot, nominally in charge of this airborne circus.”

“Wish we were meeting under better circumstance, LT.”

“Me too, Sir.”             

“How do you want to proceed, pilot?”

“My bird has the most issues. We have over 700 souls on board and a fucked up engine. The risk is highest, and I believe I’d benefit from letting the other two go first. The pilot of 41 Indigo is the only one of us experienced in flying Air Force transports, but with prop job C-130s.”

“And they’ve actually landed those on carriers,” the Air Boss replied. “Okay, I can see it both ways, having you go first instead, but considering you have all the civilians, if this goes south you can always opt for a water landing I guess.”

“Most of our passengers are sitting on the deck, sir.”

“God above,” the Air Boss hissed. “Okay, Mr. Tobin, call the ball.”

“41 Indigo, you’re up.”

“You got it,” the other pilot said. “I’m coming around now, already in my glide path.”

Andrew watched the radar and effected a gradual turn five miles out, keeping his engines at a point to hold them just above stall speed. He increased flaps to 40% and their altitude remained steady at 4,250 feet. The carrier was four and a half miles ahead of him, and 41 Indigo two miles past that. He would have a ringside seat at history.

“41 Indigo, one and a half miles out, air speed 155.”

“Roger that, we have a 15 knot headwind, altitude 75 feet,” The Air Boss told them.

“One mile out, airspeed 145,” 41 Indigo said. “Full flaps. I don’t know if I can get any slower.”

“He can,” Wade said. “Tell him to ride the stall alarm. Even loaded he should be able to get down to 130. Maybe 120!”

Andrew relayed the information.

“Okay, if you say so,” the pilot said. “That’s almost as slow as the C-130! Slowing… slowing. 140… 135… I have a stall alarm at 132, damn, these throttles are sensitive. Half a mile out, 133, stable.”

“Stall as you cross the threshold!” Andrew barked. “You’ll hit hard but you’ll be going slower.”

“Got it,” the other pilot said. “Prepare for impact!” they heard him yell on the plane’s PA. “Brace, brace, brace!”

Even from over 4,000 feet they had a wonderful view. From the high angle Andrew had no indications of the height of their approach. For a horrifying second he thought the other plane would just slam into the nose of the carrier. Then it was over the nose. Then he did see vertical movement. The C-17 visibly dropped and Andrew saw the wings flex with the impact.

“Jesus Christ,” Andrew hissed, “that had to hurt!”[][]

Sparks flew from under the plane and he knew the undercarriage was likely damaged as the huge transport spun up its powerful turbofans and began braking. The angle of approach had been vitally important. While the flight decks of the carriers were 238 feet wide, the metal island where Flight Control operated was thirty-seven feet wide, leaving only 200 feet. And the C-17’s wing span was 170 feet! A margin of thirty feet might sound like a lot, but to a huge plane like the C-17 Globemaster, it was more like inches.

Sailors had slopped white paint on the calculated midline for the landing at the much narrower bow. That line was only thirty feet from one side on the eighty-foot-wide bow. This point was designed to have a wide margin on the
Carl Vinson
’s island, but a much closer one on the
George Washington
’s. Andrew could see he missed his mark and hit almost dead center.

As the plane cleared the nose and slammed down onto the deck, Andrew could see crewmen scrambling into recessed hollows and diving through hatches on the island to get out of the way. The C-17 raced down the
Carl
Vinson
’s deck in under six seconds, cleared its island by mere feet and was bouncing over the temporary joining plates holding the two ships together. One of the one-ton steel plates had its weld blown and it was send flying like a Frisbee off into the ocean.

The carriers had multiple arresting systems to stop landing aircraft. Primarily the huge steel cables that planes caught with a reinforced tail hook. The C-17s were not equipped with one, so the cables were left flush on the deck for the Globemaster to just roll over.

They also had a safety barrier, a huge net, that when erected covered the entire width of the flight deck. They were, however, designed to stop carrier-based aircraft. The heaviest plane onboard was the E-2 Hawkeye, an electronic warfare craft with a crew of five. It weighed in at a substantial eighteen metric tons. Hefty for a carrier based aircraft. Nothing compared to a C-17’s 140 tons. And the nets were only twelve feet tall, which wouldn’t safely reach the nose of the C-17.