The Flood (23 page)

Wesley gave up on that and moved to help the others, to try to get them up off the ground, and to see who was hurt and needed his help. Miraculously, everyone seemed stunned and deafened, but not injured. Judy was crouched close to the ground with her tail curled around her, but looked okay, too. Wesley only realized his hearing was coming back when he heard the roaring behind him.

When he turned back, he saw that the former location of the power and desal plant, halfway between them and the waterfront, was now the biggest raging fire he’d ever seen in his life – or even on television. It was like a whole world going up in flames. And it only seemed to be getting bigger.

Wesley didn’t have the faintest idea what had happened or what had caused this. He only knew one thing – that they had to get out of there, while steering well clear of
that
. And they had to do it fast.

“What the hell do we do now?” Browning shouted over the roaring of the inferno.

Wesley fumbled for the obvious answer. “We go around it!” He looked for the DNA sequencer on its cart, and belatedly realized where it was. “Give me a hand!” He and Jenson ran through the pools of shattered glass, then manhandled the cart back outside. The device on it looked okay.

“Everyone ready to move?” Wesley yelled, scanning faces. Everyone looked slightly as if they’d just been unexpectedly punched in the face. But nods all around. Wes took a look at his forearm map and considered plotting a detailed route. But it was pretty hard to miss where they were going – straight back down to the marina, by as direct a route as was safe, while skirting around the inferno. They’d know they were too close to the fire if it got too hot.

And then an unfamiliar voice spoke in his ear.
“Mutant from CIC, how copy?”

Wesley didn’t say anything. Then he belatedly realized that was him.

“This is Mutant One, go ahead.”

“Yeah, Wesley, this is Lovell. How you guys doin’? Anybody hurt?”

Wesley puzzled over this – then remembered Sarah’s shoulder cam. They must have seen everything. But when he found her and looked into the camera, intending to wave, he immediately saw the lens was shattered. It must have gotten smashed when the explosion knocked her down.

“Not down there,”
Lovell said.
“Up here.”

Wesley checked the sky but couldn’t see anything. Then he remembered Lovell had said something about drone coverage for the mission, at least part of the time.

“I think we’re okay,” he said into his mic.

“Yeah, we can see you’re all on your feet. That’s outstanding. The bad news is we are starting to see large numbers of Zulus coming into the area.”

Wesley instantly raised his rifle and scanned the flame-lit darkness. Despite the raging fire – or rather because of it – there were now a hell of a lot of shadows surrounding them on every side. And because the light of the fire had constricted his pupils, he couldn’t see a damned thing in the darkness. He panned his weapon in all directions. Nothing seemed to be moving – though everything was moving slightly because of the motion of the flames and the waving shadows they cast.

Somehow Wesley could feel the night rising up around them.

Wesley keyed his mic. “These Zulus – from what direction?”

“Pretty much all of them.”

“Weapons up!” he said to the others. “Eyes out for dead.” The team, which had been facing toward the water, getting ready to move out, now got themselves pointing out in a circle again. Wes thought that was good performance. They were thinking it was good leadership.

Wesley felt fear squeeze his chest as he peered into the shadows of the flame-lit night, trying to look in every direction at once. Feeling the constriction squeezing the breath out of him, he realized he had to get a handle on this. He simply couldn’t let the creeping, suffocating terror reduce him to a quivering pile of uselessness. More than his own life depended on it. Much more depended on it than even the four other lives he was responsible for.

Steadying his voice by sheer will, he keyed his mic and said, “Copy that.”

Lovell came back.
“The good news is they’re not converging on your position. They’re going for that fire, especially from the north and south.”

To Wesley this seemed like a distinction without a difference. His team was only about a half mile from the inferno of the plant. Even worse, if the dead were coming in on it from both sides… what the hell chance did they have of getting around it, and back down to the waterfront?

He keyed his mic. “That’s the good news? Because that fire is directly between us and our boat out of here.”

Staring out at it, Wesley could now just see the darkness coming to life on both sides of the inferno. Tiny palsied figures, more like a squirming mass of indistinct insects, were coming out of the night and running directly toward the flames. It was like the Zulu home planet exploding, run through the projector in reverse.

Lovell said,
“Understood, Mutant. I’ve got a couple of CIC staff here and we’re going to try to develop some exfil options for you. Stand by.”

Wesley’s face went dark. Just about the last thing he felt like doing was standing by – and waiting for 300,000 dead Saudi workers to find them. He keyed his mic with bloodless fingers. “I’ve got an option for us. Send that helicopter to pick us up – right here. The bloody noise won’t matter now.”

“Not possible, Mutant.”

Wesley cursed under his breath. “We’ve got the DNA sequencer
right here
. Come get us and it the hell out of here.” He hoped that would sweeten the pot. If the lives of his team didn’t count for anything, maybe their mission objective would.

“Negative, Mutant. Firehawk One is over Somalia right now on an urgent medevac flight. Even if they dumped their wounded man out the door they still couldn’t get to you for an hour and a half. We will advise as soon as there is any chance of an air extraction. Right now you need to focus on finding a way overland to that CRRC, and then exfil by water. And you really need to do it before any more of the former residents of that place get between you and it.”

Wesley’s body untensed as the reality of this sank in. They were on their own. In a way, it was terrifically simple. His five-man team. A fire the size of Hades, with 300,000 dead converging on it from both sides. And on the far side of that, their tiny inflatable raft, stowed under a pier, and their only way out of there.

Basically, they were well and truly screwed.

He heard Sarah’s first suppressed shots now. The dead were starting to come at them from the east, the inland side, arriving around the sides of the building. Which meant they were also cut off from behind. Even if they tried to just retreat from this whole horror show, and take their chances on the Saudi Arabian interior, they’d be salmon-spawning against a torrent of Zulus to get there.

Numb, Wesley listened to the peaceful chugs of Sarah’s suppressed shots. It was only a matter of time until all of them were shooting.

* * *

“Back inside,” Wesley hissed.

Wheeling their cart with them over broken glass, the group retreated back through the blown-out facade and into the deeper darkness of the lobby. None of the dead Sarah was shooting at followed them. Wesley seemed to remember they called this “breaking contact.” His idea was that if all the dead were heading for the fire to the west, they might flow right around this building and not look too carefully into the west-facing side of it.

He was right. For now.

But none of this changed the fact that more and more of them were piling up every second – between the team and their ride out of there at the water’s edge. Nor the fact that, at the center of this growing singularity, was the biggest towering flaming inferno any of them had ever seen. Wesley had no idea how long this fire might keep burning. But it was too damned long for his taste.

“Sit tight for now,” Wesley said to the others. “Sergeant Lovell and CIC are going to figure a way out for us. They’ve got a drone up watching the whole complex.” He’d meant this to be reassuring, but now he was afraid it would have the opposite effect.

He’d just told them he had no plan whatsoever for getting them out of there.

Gods and Operators

Hargeisa - the NE Road Into Town

“Unless you’re going to die,” Handon shouted – silence being long out the window, due to the crashing thunder of the air strikes, “you do
not
destroy any dead – not until you’ve verified they are
not
Somali.” He almost added,
human
Somali. The baboons were probably local.

Which would just be their damned luck.

But they were going back in there now precisely to create their own luck. They were going back into Hargeisa – and they were not coming out without their mission objective, namely a first-stage victim and virus sample for Dr. Park.

Which would mean, at long last, an end to the plague.

“They all still look like the damned Arab Legion to me,” Predator said.

Henno spat, while shooting. “The Arab Legion was commanded by Brits.”

At one of the pre-mission briefings, they had all seen photos of typical Somali men and women – their skin color, facial features, and traditional and modern clothing. And so far today, no one had seen anything remotely like that.

All of Alpha was now shooting their way through the survivors of the air strikes – and the reinforcements instantly coming their way from the town.

Which was once again their final destination.

Moving, shooting, and communicating – the supremely elite commandos did all three now, as if not their lives, but rather the fate of the world, depended on it. Once again, they were on foot – trying to shoot their way through a perilous urban landscape. Only this time they couldn’t just shoot their way through. It was more like a hostage rescue. Before they got to go home, they were going to have to make a no-shoot decision on one of their targets.

And they were going to have to get that one the hell out of there.

Handon moved closer to Juice and Henno and pointed to the digital map screen on his forearm. “Neither us nor the Marines have cleared any of these three neighborhoods!” he shouted. “Here, here, and here! We sweep all three, then circle back to the hospital.”

Those within earshot nodded. Communicating, organizing, and basically being highly effective while in heavy contact was in their DNA.

Handon pulled Juice in closer. “Get that drone overflying these map squares – and get me some video of them!”

“Already doing it.” Juice now had the UCAV’s video piped directly into the pull-down monocle on his helmet.

“How’s it look?”

“It looks like they’ve got a lot of dead guys there.”

“Outstanding,” Handon said. “Dead guys are exactly what we want.”

Following their commander, Alpha moved straight to where things were worst.

* * *

When Fick heard the rotor noise of the incoming Seahawk medevac, he stopped his team. They set Graybeard on the verge and shielded him with their bodies while Reyes dug out an IR strobe, turned it on, and tossed into the middle of the road twenty meters ahead of them.

As the artificial hurricane of the rotor wash started slinging dust and rocks at them, Fick knew he now faced a major decision point. And he only had a few seconds to grapple with it.

He hailed Handon on the radio.

* * *

Handon, on point for the team with Henno just behind and to his right, shot carefully and methodically. He was worried about their ammo situation.

But a much heavier and longstanding worry had fallen from him.

He was no longer afraid of not having the wisdom to spend the lives of his people only when it really counted. Because, as he’d told them, this was
it
. There was probably going to be nowhere else left to spend them. And if he did it here, to finally get the job done… even if he lost his whole team… then maybe that was the way it had to be. It would be worth it.

And Henno was right: nothing else really mattered.

Well, Henno may or may not have had it right about their morality, and the lives of innocent civilians, and the operators’ immortal souls. But he was sure as hell right about their bodies: their lives were forfeit. They were currency. And maybe today was the day when they all had to pay up. As long as it bought them the mission objective – a cure.

As long as they finally got the job done.

“Cadaver One from Two.”

Handon touched his radio PTT button, still making headshots on the running and stumbling robed figures that filled his NVG tableau with green targets – but taking a careful look at each one first. “Send it.”

“Our medevac’s flaring in now.”

“Copy. Hey – who got hit?” Handon suddenly realized he’d never asked.

“Graybeard. Listen, D-Boy – as soon as we get him loaded up, we’re coming back.”

“The hell you are. Don’t waste my time, Jarhead. You know as well as I do. One team falls, the other raises the banner and carries on. And we’re heading straight into the shit – we’ll either get this done, or we’ll go down. And if and when we do, you need to be anywhere but here.”

One-second pause.
“Copy that.”

“Get your asses on that bird – all of you – and get far away from this place.”

Same pause.
“Wilco. Godspeed, you glorious sons of bitches.”

In his mind’s eye, Handon could see Fick climbing on that helo – last out.

And he knew it would scrape the Marine’s soul to fly away from the fighting.

* * *

Ali had already slung her rifle. Like everyone there, she kind of did everything – but her core job function was always sniping. Or, rather, in the middle of the shit as they now were, her job was that of the DM, designated marksman – which was basically sniping at medium range, but also being ready to scrap when things got up close and personal. And that job might yet become pretty damned important. If and when it did, she damned well wasn’t going to be black on ammo.