Allegiance
Authors: Shawn Chesser
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author. This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to real persons, events, or
places are purely coincidental; any references to actual places, people, or
brands are fictitious. All rights reserved.
Shawn
Chesser Facebook Author Page
***
For Mo, Raven, and Caden, you three mean the world to me... love
you. And thanks for putting up with me clacking away at all hours... and then
letting me sleep in a
little
. I owe everything to my parents for
bringing me up the right way. Mom, thanks for reading… although it is not your
genre. Dad, aka Mountain Man Dan, thanks for your ear and influence. Cliff
Kane, RIP. Daymon, thanks for introducing me to Grand Targhee
and
Jackson Hole! Thanks to all of the men and women in the military, past and
present, especially those of you in harm’s way. Thanks to all LE and first responders
for your service. To the people in the U.K. who have been in touch, thanks for
reading! Thanks to Tom Leeland for help with questions about det cord, your
service is appreciated. Thanks to Craig Jeffrey for help with military kit and
loadouts. Thanks to Mark Lyon for the awesome image... you make a great Cade
Grayson! Lieutenant Colonel Michael Offe thanks for your service as well as
your friendship. Larry Eckels thank you for your service. Any missing facts or
errors are solely my fault. Beta readers, you rock, and you know who you are.
Thanks George Romero for introducing me to zombies. Steve H., thanks for
listening. All of my friends and fellows at S@N and Monday Old St. David’s,
thanks as well. Lastly, thanks to Bill W. and Dr. Bob… you helped make this
possible. I am going to sign up for another 24.
My idea for the cover was interpreted and designed by Craig
Overbey to perfection. Thank you Sir!
Contact
Craig
Special thanks to Craig DiLouie, Gary Mountjoy, John
O’Brien, and Mark Tufo. One way or another, all of you have helped me and have provided
me with invaluable advice. David P Forsyth, thanks for including me in the
Permuted Press published anthology, Outbreak: Visions of the Apocalypse. Being
published and all of the proceeds going to charity=WIN+WIN.
Once again, extra special thanks to Monique Happy for taking
“Allegiance” and giving it some special attention and TLC while polishing its
rough edges. Mo, you rock! Working with you has been a seamless experience and
nothing but a pleasure. You are the best! If I have accidently left anyone
out... I am truly sorry.
***
Edited by Monique Happy Editorial Services
[email protected]
{
http://www.moniquehappy.com
Outbreak - Day 15
Schriever AFB
Colorado Springs,
Colorado
Cade Grayson hinged at
the waist, snatched the bulky overstuffed duffel bag, and easily flung it up
and into the truck’s bed where it settled with a solid metallic clunk. Two
weeks of running and gunning and surviving on mostly caffeine and sheer will
alone had quickly transformed his physique. The small amount of body fat (love
handles, according to Brook) that had accumulated around his waist during
fifteen months of comfortable civilian life prior to the Omega outbreak had
quickly melted away, leaving him muscled and lean. His face had thinned out,
the tanned skin taut over his cheekbones where gray streaked sideburns were
slowly working their way down to an inevitable merger with his goatee. With the
exception of his cardio, which he was gradually building up through daily runs
inside the base perimeter, he was in the best physical shape of his life and
acclimating nicely to the high desert altitude of Colorado Springs. Thankfully,
he had been spared the intense headaches and bouts of breathlessness that had
plagued him in the Hindu Kush during his first deployment to that beautiful but
Godforsaken country called Afghanistan.
Wiping sweat beads from
his brow, he took a covert glance over his shoulder to make sure Brook hadn’t
been lurking in the hangar, watching, hawklike, as he had just broken one of
her many cardinal rules. Inexplicably the petite woman’s distinctive soothing
voice echoed in his head. ‘
Lift with your knees, not with your back, Cade
Grayson
.’ Thirteen years of marriage to a nurse had been challenging at
times for the hard-headed only child, and over those years he’d found her
ever-changing health-related edicts hard to remember and equally difficult to
practice.
***
Ninety minutes earlier
when Cade had initially arrived inside the hangar and knocked on First Sergeant
Whipper’s door, he had been greeted with silence. Then he’d made a good faith
effort at finding the cantankerous Air Force lifer. He’d walked the flight line,
then nosed around the fuel bowsers and the tool shop, anyplace where he figured
a mechanic might be hiding. And after fifteen minutes of searching aimlessly,
he’d been back knocking on the first sergeant’s door.
There was still no
answer, so he’d tried the handle and found the dented and battered yellow door
with the sign that read
Authorized Personnel Only
unlocked. Undeterred
by Whipper’s surly attitude and any fallout he might face from what could
easily be construed as breaking and entering, Cade had waded into the cluttered
office with one objective: find the keys to the black Ford F-650 in which the
now deceased terrorist Pug had arrived days ago.
Locating the keys had
been easy; the high clarity diamonds that spelled out
Property of the Denver
Nuggets
on the face of the walnut-sized 24k basketball set them apart from
those to the other military vehicles. The sheer size of the highly customized
4x4, combined with the super expensive bauble on the key ring all but screamed
that it had never belonged to Pug. Who the truck’s rightful owner had been, and
how it came into the murderer’s possession, was a mystery that had no doubt
died along with the little psychopath.
No matter
, Cade had mused.
It’s mine now
.
***
With the rope handles
abrading his calloused fingers, Cade straightened his back, let out a loud
grunt, and clean jerked the cumbersome pine ammo box from the floor and lifted
it level with his sternum. He struggled with the weight for a second and
finally perched one end on the tailgate, then used his shoulder to shove it the
rest of the way in.
“What’s a matter
Captain... lost your edge?”
Cade turned towards the
direction of the approaching footsteps and found himself face to ruddy face
with the man responsible for the verbal barb.
“First Sergeant
Whipper
,”
Cade said, unable to temper the sharp edge to his words. “To
what
do I
owe the pleasure?”
“I want to know who gave
you
permission to break into my office and steal the keys to
this
truck?” the owlish-looking man said brusquely, his pale blue eyes boring into
Cade’s. Then, corralling an unruly wisp of white hair back into its proper comb-over
place, and without allowing Cade time to respond, Whipper continued his rant.
“Some nerve you have, Captain. You send a couple of your civilian friends here
with a
note
from a
general
ordering me to give them one of my
helicopters... and with a full load of fuel to boot. And now you think that
gives you the right to waltz in here and take the rig that I had
my
sights set on?”
“Spoils of war,” Cade
answered matter-of-factly. Because along with the agreement that had him snatch
and deliver Robert Christian in exchange for Pug, President Valerie Clay had also
granted him an honorable discharge from his Delta Unit along with the promise
that he could requisition any ground vehicle that he wanted—thus he chose the
dead terrorist’s gargantuan truck.
“You
Spec Ops
pricks are all the same—and
Desantos
was no different,” Whipper railed.
“You pretty boys take what you want and leave the
scraps
for the rest of
us to fight over.”
With a granite set to
his jaw, and a look that said he could do without the headache, Cade slammed
the tailgate. He let the echo subside and then shot back. “I had
nothing
to do with you losing one of your helos—that was General Desantos’s idea—and a
good one at that.” He wiped his brow on the sleeve of his ARMY tee shirt.
There was a short
silence.
Cade crossed his arms
and leaned against the lifted pickup. “Now,
First Sergeant,
are you
going to quit busting my balls and walk away, or is this going to escalate?”
The rotund man shifted
nervously from foot to foot, his hands disappearing into the pockets of his
grease stained coveralls.
“Sergeant Whipper,” a
voice called from the other end of the hangar near one of the flat-black Ghost
Hawks. “Sergeant... you in there?”
After casting a furtive
glance in the direction the voice had come from, Whipper remained silent, head
bowed as if he was stuck trying to make some sort of a decision. Then he slowly
panned his head back around but seemed unwilling to meet Cade’s steely gaze.
Instead, Whipper studied the gray cement floor.
Cade waited a beat, and
then after reading the man’s body language and interpreting it for what it
was—a sign of weakness—he pressed the attack. He wanted Whipper to leave with
his tail between his legs. Even though he would probably never see the angry
little man again, he thought that if he left an indelible negative impression
on the prick, he would probably think twice before heaping his shit on the
other operators and aviators who would continue running missions out of
Schriever.
“In case you forgot...
Mike
is dead and can’t defend his decision. I should kick your ass just for bringing
him into this conversation. Then I should kick it again for leaving Ari and the
rest of us hanging in
Indian Country
with our ride staying aloft on
nothing but prayers and fumes.” He drew a deep breath. “
Really?
An
important mission like that and you thought it acceptable to have only one
fucking Hercules on the ready line with no other bird standing by as a
backup
?”
“I read the after-action
reports. But it was out of my hands,” Whipper replied.
“
Bullshit
!
Because of mechanical failure and
your
poor decision making, we had no
tanker rendezvous. Ari was forced to put us down at a municipal airport
crawling with the dead. And that was our
second
hot refuel under similar
circumstances in as many days because you sent us out light in the first place.
And though it might not be clear to your superiors, Mister Cover-Your-Own-Ass,
it is
crystal
clear to me where your priorities lie.”
“Couldn’t be helped,”
Whipper mumbled.
“
A man died
,”
Cade hissed through clenched teeth.
“Sooner or later
all
of these birds”—the Air Force first sergeant made a grand sweeping motion that
encompassed the static aircraft on the tarmac outside and the stealth
helicopters sitting nearby—“are no longer going to be airworthy. I have limited
manpower, and lubricants and spare parts are harder and harder to come by.”
“So you have a hard job
here, huh? Tell that to Sergeant Maddox—he died so the rest of us could make it
home. The fact that you only held
one
Hercules back for us is borderline
criminal. And for that I hold
you
fully responsible.”
Silence.
Whipper stared daggers
at the Delta operator, and then suddenly the 5-foot-5 mechanic rushed Cade, who
fluidly pushed off the truck and went into a half crouch with his arms at his
sides, hands balled into fists. Then, like a bull and a toreador, the two men
crabbed counter-clockwise in the center of the hangar.
With no will to initiate
a fight with a superior, Whipper smugly said, “You first, Captain.”
“I’m no longer a
Captain,” Cade stated, a sly smile curling the corners of his mouth.
At once, Whipper’s face
blanched and his wrathful expression morphed to one of bewilderment. Then his
head whipped sideways as Cade’s lightning quick rabbit-punch clipped him on the
chin. The single powerful blow dropped the first sergeant to the floor, where
he lay on his back contemplating the pulsating blue tracers darting amongst the
rafters.
“I’d stay down if I were
you,” Cade said. “Because if you do get up... it will be for the last time.”
Glancing at the tall
slab-sided rig with its elevated cab and enough ground clearance to drive over
a Yugo, it suddenly dawned on Cade why Whipper seemed to covet the truck they
had just come to blows over.
Small man syndrome
, he thought to himself.
Just
like Pug
. Then he realized why the first sergeant wanted the Ford as
his
bug out vehicle. And it was probably the only thing the two of them saw eye-to-eye
on.
“So Whipper, tell me
something. Where were you planning to go in this rig?”
Slowly massaging the
side of his chin where Cade had delivered his
message
, Whipper lifted
his head from the concrete and regarded the operator with a bland look before
answering the question. “Nowhere in particular. But definitely away from here
when the dead return. And to be honest with you... I just wanted a little
insurance. That’s all.”
“You make me sick,
Whipper. So you’re telling me that if another herd of dead happens to come this
way, maybe from Pueblo or another mega horde from Denver, then your plan is to
bail out? Leave the SOAR (Special Operations Aviation Regiment) guys and anyone
else that relies on your expertise to just fend for themselves?”
Whipper’s eyes narrowed
to slits. He stabbed a thumb towards the black truck. “I saw all of the
supplies that
you
loaded into the back of that thing,” he said
accusingly. “You,
Sir
... are the fucking
hypocrite
here.”
The truth in Whipper’s
statement caught Cade by surprise; hitting him like a one-two punch to the
midsection. And as bitter a pill it was for him to swallow—the man did have a
point—his decision to quit Delta, no matter the motives behind it, did contain
a fair amount of hypocrisy. Furthermore, there was no way he could hide behind
the fact that Brook had been the driving force behind turning in his captain’s
bars and walking away from the men he would gladly die for, the very same men
that he knew would willingly sacrifice their lives for him on the field of
battle.
But he didn’t have the
time to debate the first sergeant over semantics, nor did he want to bring up
one-tenth of the sacrifices he had made for his country while wearing the
uniform. In fact, he had nothing to prove to this puke. No need to go there, he
thought to himself. Right now, the only thing that mattered to him was to get
his ducks in a row and hit the road. He knew that eventually the dead were going
to return and in much larger numbers than before. Whether they came from
Pueblo, Denver-Aurora or some other direction didn’t matter, for he was certain
the double-wall of fencing around Schriever had no chance of stopping them. And
he wanted to be on the road with his family before they arrived. To go
somewhere far from Schriever. Far from the big cities and off the beaten path.
“I’m taking the truck,
Whipper,” Cade said with a no-nonsense tone to his voice. “And if you have a
problem with that, you can take it up with President Clay.”
Whipper said nothing. He
remained on his back, staring at the shadows in the rafters.
Giving the supine man a
wide berth, Cade strode over to the truck and finished stacking the remaining
Pelican boxes into the bed, arranging them snugly so they wouldn’t go sliding
around.