The Flood (21 page)

He could almost feel her gritting her teeth in response – like,
No shit, thanks for the brilliant advice
– but she didn’t have the time or bandwidth to say it. She was completely occupied trying to drop runners before they overran the team. They kept rushing forward, oblivious to those falling around them, and the danger they were racing into.

But none of the living were the least oblivious to their own peril.

* * *

Back in the safety of CIC on the carrier, Dr. Park and Sergeant Lovell sat side by side at a tactical station, watching runners tear-ass toward them on Sarah’s shoulder-cam video view. They were looking over her rifle, just to the side of it, and watching her engage targets one after another. Lovell seemed calm enough, but Park was crawling out of his skin. He looked over at the Marine.

“Shouldn’t we be
helping
them?”

Lovell shook his head slowly, still seeming totally calm. “No. Unless I’ve got specific intel for them, or they ask for my help, the best thing I can do is stay out of their ears. Believe me – they’re trying to focus on too many things already. The last thing they need is Lieutenant Gorman telling them to lay down suppressing fire with flame units and fall back by squads.”

Park didn’t seem all that reassured. Lovell guessed, correctly, that it was because it was
he
who had sent them out into that situation – and it would be him who had to live with it if they all got killed. Not to mention that he wouldn’t get his DNA sequencer – and might not finish his vaccine in time to save them all.

Someone shouted across CIC at them. “Sergeant Lovell – your air is coming on station.” Lovell’d had to beg, cajole, and wheedle to get time on the Fire Scout helicopter drone for this mission. But now they had it. He got up and made his way over to the UAV control station on the other side of CIC.

This was a tall tan console that consisted of two identical pilot stations side by side and a column of electronics between them. Each pilot station had two stacked monitors up high, two smaller ones side by side below, and finally a console with a control yoke or cyclic (really a glorified joystick) on the right, a throttle lever on the left (used as a collective for the helo drone), and a keyboard in the middle. The center column had a single large map display, beneath which were stacked two radio sets, and then a couple other racks of electronics with hard switches and dials.

Both pilot stations were occupied, but the guy on the right was flying their X-47 UCAV in support of the Somalia mission. Lovell ignored that one and leaned in on the left, where he could already see the aerial view of Jizan Economic City, laid out like the Magic Kingdom and growing as they approached, in the video view before the pilot, whom Lovell clapped on the shoulder. He’d always loved these guys, for the awesome fire support they provided the Marines. But he also envied them, because one of these drone pilots generally wielded more firepower than a Marine infantry battalion – but usually did it from the safety of a trailer in Nevada.

Oh, well
, Lovell thought.
Not my destiny. I’m a ground-pounder – ride ’til I die.

“Want me to put it in a racetrack pattern over the AO for you?” the pilot asked.

Lovell looked confused. “Wait, this is a rotary-wing aircraft, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So why the hell does it have to circle? Just put it in a hover over the spot with the best view – like the center. Train your camera on this building here.” He pointed at the screen and the gigantic power and desal plant. “As soon as any of our personnel come out of there, train it on them. Got it?”

“No problem, Sarge.”

“Okay,” Lovell said. “I’m going to pipe the video to my station over there and leave you alone.” He straightened up and started to leave, but then thought of something else. “Hey, what’s the weapons package on this thing?” He was remembering, very fondly, the seemingly endless strafing of the Advance Precision Kill Weapon System rockets this same drone had fired to blast him and his Marines out of SAS Saldanha.

“Bupkus,” the pilot said.

“What?”

“Sorry, man. The Fire Scout got sent out for that last shore mission with every APKWS rocket left in our armory. And it fired every one of them bailing you guys out.” He paused and flicked at a control switch. “And the South Africans don’t use ’em, so we didn’t get any more from the depot.”

Lovell cursed under his breath. He’d just have to hope this shore team didn’t need close air support – because they weren’t going to get any. And he had already been feeling very uneasy, because he knew the powers that be had consciously chosen to under-support this mission. Rushed planning, totally inexperienced personnel, and now unarmed air support.

When he got back to his station, he did what he knew he shouldn’t have – made Park privy to any of that. “Sons of bitches gave us an unarmed drone to support Wesley and his team.”

“What?” Park said.

“Yeah. And that’s not all.” Lovell shook his head. “Abrams made a point of telling me this when you weren’t around, but he specifically instructed me not to send any irreplaceable weapons or gear out with them – nothing the QRF needs, nothing we can’t do without. We didn’t give them NVGs, for one thing – even though there’s almost no chance of them making it back before dark.”

He looked at Park – whose face had now gone dark.

Lovell took a breath. “I defied him by giving Sarah Cameron a SCAR with a suppressor and grenade launcher, which can’t hurt. But it’s only one weapon.”

“Wait a minute,” Park said. “So you’re saying they were set up to fail?”

“No. But they were set up so that if they did fail, we wouldn’t suffer any great losses from it. Basically, Abrams was hedging his bets.”

“Bets?” Park said. “That son of a bitch! This isn’t Texas Hold’em. These are people’s
lives
– people who put themselves into danger because I said they had to!”

The scientist stood up and genuinely looked like he was going to march upstairs to the bridge and personally kick Abrams’s ass. Lovell shook his head. “It’s too late. These cards have been dealt. Now we’ve just got to play them the best we can.”

Maybe, Lovell thought, they would get lucky and things would go smoothly. Sometimes, like today, luck was all you had going for you. And now they at least had ISR up, which meant they could be the team’s eyes, seeing the whole complex before they set foot anywhere in it.

“C’mon,” he said, turning on a second monitor beside the one with the shoulder-cam feed. This one now showed the drone video – currently just the exterior of the gigantic warehouse-like structure the team had disappeared inside. “Now we can add some strategic value for the men on the ground.” Slightly lowering his voice, he added, “As soon as they get outdoors again, at any rate…”

Park sat down, leaned back, and tried not freak out too much.

And he tried to remember the operator lesson that not freaking out was job one.

* * *

At that moment, inside the gigantic power plant room, Sarah could feel Browning, beside and just behind her, exercising all his willpower to stay off his trigger.

“I got ’em…” he said, tracking with his rifle.

And it was true that now the closest runners were all but sliding into Sarah’s kneeling form by the time she dropped them. But she was determined to get this done – without the dangerous noise of unsuppressed gunfire.

“No!” she said. “I’ve got it.”

“Door’s clear!” Jenson shouted from behind. “Move out – come on!”

But Sarah didn’t turn around or lay off. She knew if she didn’t finish this, they’d have the same problem they had before – a mob of moaning dead drawing more – just on the other side of that door this time. So she kept shooting until the last sprinting figure in the crowd dropped and slid across the floor.

There were actually only six of them in the end.

But it had felt like a battalion at the time.

Looking down, Sarah saw her rifle bolt locked back.

That was the last round in the rifle.

As she climbed to her feet, still flooded with adrenaline, but super-pleased that she had done exactly what she set out to do, motion caught her eye – up high this time. It was a Zulu way up on the catwalk suspended over the giant room.

She changed magazines, then took a bead and took two silenced shots. But the damned thing was really far away, and she couldn’t seem to nail it.

Browning stepped forward with his rifle to his shoulder. If Sarah was super-pleased with her performance, he had been super-frustrated – at having to hold his fire throughout the fight. He felt like he brought one real skill to the party – his marksmanship – and he wasn’t being allowed to use it. But he could finish this last one. What would one rifle report matter, after all that moaning?

But as he started to squeeze his trigger, a hand pushed his barrel down.

It was Wesley. “Don’t worry about it, mate. It’ll never get down here, and will probably just go to sleep again after we’re gone. Come on, let’s go.”

Last out into the corridor, Wesley pressed the door closed behind them.

Bingo

Jizan Economic City - Outside the Electrical Plant

And in closing the door behind him, Wesley plunged the hallway beyond, which had no windows, into total blackness.

Everyone there had either a flashlight or, in the case of Wesley and Sarah, weapon-mounted lights. But not one of them knew how to get to them or turn them on by touch. Everyone fumbled. While they were doing so, the overhead halogen lights came on – revealing Jenson standing there with his hand on a wall switch.

“Didn’t think that would work!” he said. He was smiling big, thinking he’d done good by finding the light switch in the dark.

But then there was an extremely loud pop – and the overhead lights sparked and sizzled and went out again. They had been on just long enough for some of the others to find their own lights and those came on now, illuminating the corridor, albeit starkly and unevenly.

“How does this place even have power?” Browning asked.

Burns said, “It’s an oil-fired power station – which means this city is its own grid.”

Sarah nodded. “Which also means it would have had grid storage against peak demand – battery arrays or hydrogen storage – so the plant wouldn’t have to surge every time usage did. There might be power hiding out in this place for years.”

“Either way,” Wesley said, “it’s out again now, and it’s not our problem.” He turned and moved out, leading the group down the corridor by the light spilling from underneath his rifle barrel.

Burns, at the rear of the column, sniffed once at the air before leaving. He was pretty sure he could detect a burning smell, but that could be accounted for by the fluorescent lights popping from the power surge. He considered saying something to Wesley and the others. But in a long career of doing this kind of thing – namely sneaking into places he wasn’t supposed to be – he’d learned that the really important thing was to get in, move fast, and get the hell out again.

He exited the door at corridor’s end and shut it behind him.

* * *

Ten minutes later they were in another corridor, one on the desalination-plant side of the complex. It was darker here. Much darker.

Now that everyone had more or less worked out their flashlights and weapon-mounted lights, they were using them. Their narrow cones of lonely illumination lit up the long stretches of dark and cramped corridor ahead.

Soon the team emerged into another cavernous open area – but one more complex, elaborate, and filled with hazards and hiding places. Wesley figured this was the desalination plant itself. Trying to make it out through the small cone of his light, one tiny patch at a time, was like a blind man trying to identify an elephant by touch.

But he could vaguely work out that it consisted of three extremely large pipelines running down the center of the room, two of them green and one gray. Somewhat smaller pipes led off these at intervals, disappearing into either large boxy machines, or else arrays of vertical tubes. Walkways, presumably for workers, snaked above, beside, and around the pipelines in the center. Out on both edges of the blimp-hangar-like space were towering stacks of what looked like hundreds and hundreds of horizontal blue tubes in racks.

There was more, but it was all kind of overwhelming – and Wesley had no idea how a desalination plant worked, so he didn’t know what any of it was anyway. Really, he was much more worried about running into more dead in here – where there was very little open space, and thus no time to react. Any attacking Zulus would be on them nearly instantly.

On top of that, Wesley didn’t even really know what the hell his job was in here, trying to do LT Campbell’s mandated recon. All she’d told him was that she wanted to know if it looked “intact and functional.” So he told his team to stay together while they walked the length of it, occasionally ducking their heads under big pipes or stepping over others, all the while making as little noise as possible – and checking every corner and cranny, as best they could, for dead. Along the way, Wesley tried to shine his light in various directions. None of the crazy towering machinery looked obviously broken or decayed.

And that would have to do for Campbell’s intel.

When they finally reached a door at the far end, Wesley was relieved that they had accomplished his main goal: not getting anyone killed or turned in there.

He opened the door and led them back outside.

And while they had been indoors, the sun had gone down. Night had fallen.

After letting the others out, he turned back to the door. The security guard in him wanted to secure this outside entrance. But the ascendant military leader in him hesitated – and told him they might need to quickly get off the street again, and might not have time to pick the lock.

He compromised – unlocking the door, but pulling it shut behind him.

* * *

The door was actually on the long side of the plant building, but right at its very end – and they emerged into the deep shadow of one more giant structure, which they could just make out in the last glow of twilight.