Precipice: V Plague Book 9 (18 page)

Colonel
Grushkin looked down from the co-pilot’s seat of the Hind.  The helicopter
was orbiting over the town of Mountain Home, flying above the helos that were
part of the search for the missing US Soldier.  The Colonel’s aircraft
wasn’t equipped with FLIR, but he was wearing a set of the American’s latest
generation night vision goggles his aide had liberated from Mountain Home Air Force
Base.  He reluctantly admitted to himself that they were far superior to
anything the Russian military currently had in inventory.

Over his
headset he listened to the AWACS operator coordinating the air search. 
Fuming in frustration, he snapped over to the ground controller’s channel and
listened in as the young Captain directed the building to building
search.  His head ached from the fight with the Major and only soured his
already nasty disposition.

He wanted to
get involved in the search, but was finding very little that his personnel were
doing differently than he would have.  In fact, they were doing a good
job.  A textbook perfect job he grudgingly admitted.  But if that was
the case, why wasn’t the target already in their custody? 

He turned
his head when the pilot tapped him on the arm.  Looking at the man he
adjusted his headset in response.

“Yes?”

“Comrade
Colonel, the AWACS operator is asking to speak with you to give a report,” the
pilot said in a clipped, professional voice.

Finding the
correct frequency, Grushkin identified himself.

“Comrade
Colonel, I have a report from the helicopter sent to retrieve the target’s
wife.  They have been unable to locate her, but did find the vehicle she
was driving.  It was abandoned in a ditch next to the road she was
traveling on when you intercepted the American.”

“Where did
she go, then?  A woman on foot can’t have gone far,” he barked into the
radio.

“They
believe she was picked up by a helicopter, sir.”

Grushkin sat
in stunned silence for a moment.  How the hell were the Americans
operating an aircraft in Russian controlled airspace?

“Explain,”
he commanded in a dangerous tone.  If the Americans had slipped a helo in,
then it was the fault of the AWACS if it hadn’t been identified.

“There was
brass from an American caliber rifle on the road near where the vehicle was
found.  I don’t have an exact count, but at least a full magazine was
expended.  Beyond that are imprints in the road.  It is not
paved.  Comrade Colonel, the imprints match the tire tread pattern and
landing gear configuration of an Mi-24.”

“Repeat
that,” Grushkin ordered, caught completely unprepared for what he’d just heard.

The man
repeated the information before going quiet. 

“Have you accounted
for all of our aircraft?”  Grushkin finally asked.

“Yes,
sir.  All of our aircraft are accounted for.  That doesn’t mean the
Americans didn’t steal a Hind from one of our Forward Operating Bases.”

“You would
have seen an extra helicopter.  Correct?”  Grushkin asked, his anger
threatening to boil over.

“Not
necessarily, Comrade Colonel.  If they flew low, and disabled the
transponder, the aircraft would have been lost in ground clutter on
radar.  They could have gotten in and out without being detected.” 
The terror in giving the news to Grushkin was clear in the man’s voice.

The
Colonel’s initial reaction was to scream at the man, then call the commander of
the AWACS plane and tell him to throw the incompetent fool out of a door. 
But, somehow, he tempered his impulse and after a moment nodded to himself when
he admitted the man was actually helping by being honest with him.

“Are there
any options to try and identify this mystery aircraft and find out where it
went?”

“No,
sir.  There are not.  But I have put an alert out to all commands
that we appear to have an enemy in control of one of our aircraft. 
Transponder and verbal challenge codes are being changed across all of North
America as we speak.”  The man sounded slightly more confident after not
being dressed down for delivering bad news.

Grushkin cut
the connection without saying anything further.  Turning his attention
back to the small town below, he thought about what he’d just learned. 
Somehow an American pilot had gotten his hands on one of their helicopters, and
was apparently helping the Major.  But that didn’t explain the brass lying
in the road which would indicate a fight had occurred.

As he was
thinking he watched one of the foot patrols engage a small group of
infected.  With his bird’s eye view, he could see the larger group of
females racing around the side of a building, about to come out on the
soldier’s blind side.  He reached for the radio to switch to the ground
command channel and shout a warning, but the females were moving fast and
slammed into the group of Russian soldiers before he could begin speaking.

With
terrifying swiftness, the men were taken to the ground and ripped apart. 
Aborting his call to the ground troops, Grushkin switched to the air control
frequency and ordered one of the Hinds beneath him to take out the
infected.  The helo was only one block away from the scene of the massacre
and was on target in moments, shredding infected and Russian corpses with canon
fire.

Grushkin had
found an outlet for his frustration.  With a terse command he ordered the
pilot to take him to the command post where the Captain was overseeing the
search.  He had resisted as long as he could.  It was time to take
personal command.

I woke to
the smell of bacon frying.  Exhausted, I had been in a deep sleep, and for
a moment was completely confused.  My mind was somewhere else, battling an
unending and unstoppable herd of infected.  I was covered in a sheen of
sweat, sitting bolt upright when a pan banged loudly on a cast iron burner
grate.

Looking
around, barely under control, I saw Titus working at the propane fueled cooktop
in the kitchen.  He didn’t seem concerned with keeping the noise down for
my benefit and I suspected he had decided it was time for my ass to wake up.

“What time
is it?”  I asked, failing to see a clock.

“Don’t much
matter down here, does it?”  He didn’t bother to turn around.

“Humor me,”
I grumbled, swinging my feet onto the floor and standing up.

“It’s eleven
AM up top,” he said after glancing at a large watch on his left wrist. 
“You been sleeping about six hours.”

He shoveled
some bacon out of a skillet and added some more.  It didn’t look like
normal, uncooked bacon and I guessed it was cured or freeze dried or something
to preserve it.  It still smelled wonderful.  I walked over to see
what else he was preparing.

A plainly
labeled container of powdered eggs sat on the counter next to a bowl full of
water.  An amount had already been measured out and he poured the contents
into the water and quickly stirred until it resembled a real, freshly cracked
egg.  As soon as it was ready he poured it into another skillet and began
scrambling it.

“Sleep
well?”  He asked, concentrating on his work.

“Unnn,” I
answered with a non-committal grunt.

He finished
up what he was doing and portioned out steaming eggs and mounds of bacon and
biscuits onto two plates.  Handing one of them to me he gestured at a
small table.  A carafe of fresh coffee rested on a hot-pad and I didn’t
waste any time pouring a cup and digging in.  Everything may have been
preserved for long term storage, but it tasted wonderful and I realized I was
famished.

“As you were
falling asleep last night you said something about tunnels,” I said once I’d
eaten enough to be able to slow myself down.

“Yeah, what
about ‘em?”  He asked around a mouthful of biscuit and eggs.

“What kind
of tunnels?  How do we get to them and where do they go?”

“Storm
tunnels,” he said, chewing and swallowing.  “This whole area used to flood
every time it rained more’n five minutes.  Town’s built in a small
depression between a couple of low hills and water just rushes right
through.  Back in the late ‘70s the city cut some kind of deal with the
Army Corp of Engineers and they came in and built a whole shitload of ‘em.”

“Under the
whole town?”  I asked.

“Yep, and
extending way out of town to drain the water.  Actually, they just kind of
funnel it into a big tunnel to the south that disappears into the ground. 
Rumor has it there used to be a big underground bunker at the air base, you
know in case of atomic war, and the run off was being stored in a huge
underground reservoir that would supply the bunker once the water was treated.

“Don’t know
if there’s any truth to that or not, but I can tell you the Army came in and
built one hell of a tunnel system.  And they did it fast.  Took them
less than a year to cover the whole town and a big part of the valley.”

“Can I get
to those tunnels without having to go back up top?”  I asked, finished
with my breakfast.

“Yeah. 
There’s another vault door I had put in the back wall of the pantry that opens
into one of them.  Had to pay the goddamn contractor a fuckin’ boatload of
cash to do it.  He was afraid the government was going to find out he was
breaking a hole in the tunnel wall and come take him away.”  Titus said,
pushing his plate away and lighting a cigarette.

“And those
tunnels can get me anywhere in town?”

“Oh yeah,
that they can do.  What you thinking, son?”

“I’m
thinking I can use the tunnels to get to the edge of town and slip away from
the Russians.  And you should come with me,” I said.

“Fuck that,”
he snorted.  “Got food, water, power and shelter right here.  And I’m
too goddamn old to be out running around the countryside.  Think I’ll stay
put.”

I nodded,
understanding his sentiment.  He was surviving, but that was all he was
doing.  There was no doubt that the infection of his family had taken away
whatever reasons he had for living.  Now it was just surviving, one day at
a time, until he either drank himself to death or couldn’t take it any longer
and finally decided to eat his shotgun’s barrel.

“Will you
show me the tunnels?”  I asked.

He watched
me for a long moment, squinting through blue cigarette smoke that curled
towards the ceiling before being whisked away by the air filtration
system.  Finally nodding, he crushed the butt out in the remains of his
breakfast and stood up.  I pulled my boots on, lacing them tight, then
followed him into the pantry.

The back
wall was covered by a large rack of shelves, stacked full of supplies.  The
shiny chrome vault door I’d seen the previous evening was set into this wall,
partially hidden by supplies.  Reaching out he grabbed one of the vertical
braces on the shelving and tugged.  The whole unit was attached to a hinge
at the far end and smoothly swung away from the wall.

“We’d better
check before opening the door,” he said, pausing as he reached for the locking
wheel.

Leading the
way to the surveillance room, he took a seat and began working on the
keyboards.  The monitors changed view, one at a time, and I was surprised
to see night vision enhanced images of what were clearly smooth sided, concrete
lined tunnels.  He clicked around for several minutes, not finding
movement in any of the images.

“Just how
many cameras do you have?”  I asked.

“Enough to
see what I need to see,” he replied cryptically.  “Here.  Keep
watching.”

He kept
clicking away and began rotating through street views of different areas of
town.  In many of them I could see Russian foot and vehicle patrols moving
about as they continued to search for me.  This was an incredibly
impressive setup he had.

“Titus,” I
said carefully.  “I mean no disrespect, but you and this whole setup don’t
seem to go together.  This is pretty sophisticated and again, no
disrespect, but you’re more the type to be holed up in a cabin in the mountains
with a rifle.”

He stopped
what he was doing and swiveled the office chair so he was looking up at me.

“Was my
son-in-law put the whole thing together,” he said.  “I paid the bills, but
he designed it all.  Started work on it about eight years ago.”

“You just
paid the bills?  How’d he convince you to spend the money?” 

“He was in
the Air Force.  Worked in intelligence at the base.  About ten years
ago, a few years after 9/11, he comes to me one night and says he’s scared to
death.  Says there’s some really bad shit being worked on by our enemies
and we need to be prepared.  Wouldn’t give me details, but he’d been
married to my girl for a while by then and I’d gotten to know him pretty
well. 

“He wasn’t
the nervous type and didn’t get scared easy.  If there was something
coming bad enough to worry him, well, I got more money than I could spend so we
talked about it for a bit.  Couple of days later he brings me all these
plans for a bunker and they’re marked “Top Secret” with Air Force stamps all
over them.”

“It took him
a while, but he modified them to work for this place, then it was up to me to
find the contractors and get to work.  Never really thought anything would
happen that we’d need it, but my daughter got pregnant so it was for my
grandson too.”

“What
happened to your son-in-law?”  I asked.

“Don’t
know,” he said, lighting a cigarette.  “He was at the Pentagon for some
conference when the attacks happened.  Never saw him or heard from him after.”

I nodded,
glad I’d asked.  Not that finding Titus and the shelter wasn’t a godsend,
but it was almost too good to be true.  At least now I had an explanation
for why it was here.

“Let’s go
look at those tunnels,” he said, getting to his feet.