Zombie Killers: HEAT (7 page)

Chapter 249

I shot him. Immediately. My finger squeezed the trigger and the rifle rocked back into my shoulder, the sharp CRACK! echoing across the water. The high velocity 5.56 round punched a small hole in his forehead, and exited out the back, blowing off a fist sized chunk of skull and digging into the pavement. The red light went out of his eyes and the corpse shuddered once and went still.

“What the FUCK!” exclaimed Lieutenant Kilas, and I turned to face him. He looked aghast at what I had done.

“Problem, Lt?” I asked casually, keeping my weapon on my shoulder. Behind him I saw Ziv move out of my line of fire, and my three guys moved off to the left, hands on their weapons, leaving all three infantry exposed.

“You just shot that man!”

“I killed a Z. There was no man left in him.”

“But I HEARD him talk!” he started to protest, and I raised my rifle a little higher.

“Lt. Kilas, if there was a man in there, he’s better off, and no you didn’t hear him say anything. Are we clear?”

“But …”

I raised my rifle barrel higher, and Ryan trained his on the other infantry soldiers, who stood numbly.

“But nothing, Captain. You might have maybe imagined something. Air hissing out of their lungs can sound a lot like speech. I’ve seen it before, it’s just decomposition. You heard NOTHING. Are we clear?”

The man looked very confused. “I guess, Colonel. But ...”

I raised my barrel fully until it was pointed directly at his face. “ARE WE CLEAR?”

“Yes Sir, crystal.” He looked pissed, but stepped back.

“Ryan, escort these men,” I said, gesturing to the specialist and private standing there, “back to their bivouac area. Lt, come with me.” I lowered my rifle and started back towards the house, not looking to see if he followed me. I was pretty sure Ziv would make sure it happened.

We met Brit coming down from the house with Scott and Shona, and I motioned for them to follow me back. When we got to the porch I sat down heavily, dropped my magazine and cleared my weapon, and set it down next to me.

“Lieutenant,” I said to the officer standing in front of me, “let me explain something. What happens if the word gets around that the undead are really still people?”

The kid was smart, I’ll give him that. Once out of the stress of the situation, he quickly came up with the answer. “Some bleeding heart civilian is going to start demanding we treat the undead like people, and try to minimize damage.”

“Right, and they are also going to head back home to try to find the wife or child they lost in the apocalypse, and demand that a ‘cure’ be found. Which is bullshit.”

“There isn’t any cure. Vaccine, yes, but once you’re infected, you’re infected,” said Brit.

“So think about what that means to any combat unit. Think of the fucked up orders that will come down. Avoid casualties among undead, attempt to contain, etc. How many men will you lose if that happens?”

I could see it was sinking in, but he had one last question. “Would you have really shot me if I continued to argue with you?”

“And both your men,” I answered.

“If he didn’t, I would have,” added Captain Lowenstein. She had caught up to us, along with Elam and Obi. “I’ve been in the shit fighting undead for the last year on Bradleys. There is no way in hell I’m letting word of that get out.”

“His men will talk. Maybe we should kill them all,” said Ziv, in his flat, remorseless tone.

“No,” I said, to the young officers’ relief. “They might, but no one is going to believe them, and the Lt here will back up my story. Another month and it will be just a rumor and a legend, and I’m not going to let them leave here for another month.”

“Ah, Nick, there might be a problem with that. These came in on the last boat,” said Brit, and she handed me an envelope with “TOP SECRET / EYES ONLY” stamped on it in red.

“OK,” I said, taking the envelope. “All of you, scram. Ziv, you and Brit and I have some work to do.”

We went inside and I ripped open the letter. Inside was an encrypted flash drive, with, I’m sure, orders and Intel for another operation. Before I opened it, Brit put her hand on mine.

“Nick, we don’t have to do this. If it doesn’t have to do with those traitors, I’m not going, and neither are you. Even if it does, I’m Ok with not going. We’ve got the kids to think about.”

I looked down at her hand, where the finger nails were just growing back, and clicked open the orders file.

TO: CDR, IRREGULAR SCOUT TEAM 1

FROM: HQ,USJSOC (Z)

DATE: 15 JULY 20—

YOU ARE ORDERED TO PROCEED AT BEST SPEED TO INTERCEPT MOUNTAIN REPUBLIC FORCES ATTEMPTING TO SECURE NUCLEAR WARHEADS FROM THE WRECKAGE OF CVN – 72  U.S.S. ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

WRECK IS CURRENTLY AGROUND NORTH OF MIAMI GREATER METRO AREA. CREW 100% INFECTED. GRID COORDINATES ARE NK XXXX-XXXX.

“Shit,” I muttered under my breath. I doubted they would be able to activate a nuke, but they sure could make a hell of a dirty bomb from it. Pulling up Google Earth, I saw that the location was a small harbor up the coast from Ft. Lauderdale, but south of Jacksonville. Pretty much nowhere. That was going to be hard as hell to get at. Chutes were out; all our gear would drown us in a second if we landed in the water. I was going to have to talk to Ryan about this. I kept reading.

ENEMY FORCES EXPECTED IN PLATOON STRENGTH. MOUNTAIN REPUBLIC MAJOR JOHN STRASSER IDENTIFIED AS TEAM LEADER.

CURRENT CIVILIAN LEADERSHIP WILL NOT ALLOW NUCLEAR WEAPONS STRIKE ON CARRIER WRECKAGE. IST-1 IS TO SECURE VESSEL UNTIL SUCH TIME AS REGULAR FORCES CAN FOLLOW ON. EMPHASIS ON ELIMATION OF INFECTED AND PREVENTION OF MOUNTAIN REPUBLIC ACQUISITION OF WARHEADS.

CURRENT INTELLIGENCE AND STATUS OF MIAMI – DADE AREA INCLUDED IN APPENDIX D.

Appended to this at the bottom was a little note.

“NICK, I’D SEND SOMEONE ELSE, BUT YOU’RE ALL WE HAVE RIGHT NOW. ~ COLONEL FYNN.”

“Haha, fuck that, as you Americans say.” Ziv was looking at the words contemptuously. “I go back to Kansas, get new wife.”

Surprising me, Brit turned to him and said, “Are you … chicken? A little scared, Sasha?”

“You are damn right, redhead demon wench. And you should be too.”

“Well,” I interrupted, “I’m not going to order anyone to go, but we’re going. If they get their hands on a nuke, and blow it in Albany, this place might become uninhabitable. That and, despite what you said, Brit, I’m going to make Strasser pay for what he did to you.”

I closed the laptop and pulled out the stick, slipping it into my pocket, and went out on the deck to think things over. This was going to be tough.

Chapter 250

When you’re a soldier, you often get the vaguest of orders, and are told “go do it.” The problem is, if you do it right, the person who gave you the order gets all the credit. If you screw it up, then you’re the only one to blame, and often the blame comes in the form of a corpse, you or your buddies.

That was what I was facing now. I looked at the orders again. “YOU ARE ORDERED TO PROCEED AT BEST SPEED TO INTERCEPT MOUNTAIN REPUBLIC FORCES ATTEMPTING TO SECURE NUCLEAR WARHEADS FROM THE WRECKAGE OF CVN – 72  U.S.S. ABRAHAM LINCOLN.”

Proceed how? Intercept, how?

ENEMY FORCES EXPECTED IN PLATOON STRENGTH

And we were going to take them on with an eight man scout team. We would have to expect that every guy in that platoon was a combat veteran. Plus the million plus undead that were roaming around the Miami – Dade area.

SECURE VESSEL UNTIL SUCH TIME AS REGULAR FORCES CAN FOLLOW ON. EMPHASIS ON ELIMATION OF INFECTED AND PREVENTION OF MOUNTAIN REPUBLIC ACQUISITION OF WARHEADS.
And what, the fuck, did that exactly mean? Secure the vessel? Was someone going to take a derelict CVN and start it up and sail it away? Did they want us to tie ropes to the nearest skyscraper so it didn’t float away?

None of us knew crap about radiation from warheads, or the reactor, or ships. I was going to have to appoint Ryan our Subject Matter Expert on those areas.

And the last one. Elimination of the infected. Last I knew there were hundreds of compartments on a supercarrier, and the crew was roughly six thousand. The
Lincoln
had been operating right up until the second plague, but had been a target for the dictator’s weapons. That had been almost two years ago, and although we had recovered the
Washington, Reagan, Stennis
and
Roosevelt
, each one had had been a bloodbath that decimated the Navy SEALS sent in to clean them out. The effort was given up when it was realized there was only enough trained personnel left to man two carriers, and the rest of our fleet floated around the world, home to thousands of undead.

I took out my little green notebook and started to plan. The first priority would be the Mountain Republic guys. Quickly, what came to mind were three things:

First, it would have to be an ambush. We were never going to stand up to these guys in open combat. I made a note that Ziv would start training the team on concealment and ambush procedures. If we could catch them in the open, then shock and firepower would do.

Second, how the hell were we going to get there? I need to know exactly WHEN the MR guys were supposed to show up. “Proceed at best speed” was often code word for “go get yourself killed”. If they got there first, then we would figure out how to take them on from there.

Matter of fact, maybe AFTER they secured the weapons might be the time to hit them. Kill a couple birds with one stone. Let them take on the undead in the carrier, take casualties, and hopefully fail. We could hit them on the way out.

I got back to the how we could get there, and started thinking of the assets we had. Brit always knew everything that was going on in the military, don’t ask me how, so I would task her with figuring that out. Best speed implied aviation, but there was a Surface to Air threat all the way up and down the East Coast. I made a little star next to it and wrote “Brit”.

Last, I ran down the team in my mind, thinking of who could do what. An ambush meant some heavy weapons, but fighting undead meant lots and lots of ammo. Rather than compromise between the two, I decided that a cache for ship clearing could be buried until after the ambush phase of things. Until then, 5.56 ammo instead of .22, a heavy machine gun, maybe a mortar or two.

I called on the radio for everyone to meet me in the dining room, to discuss my plan, and looked at the slowly growing corn fields on my farm. It seemed like every single time things were going well here, something called me away. Were it not for the fact that a nuke being set off, or even a dirty bomb, would directly affect us here, I’d say screw it.

“OK, listen up,” I said when everyone had taken a seat. “Some of you already know, but I’ll recap the mission we were given.” Then I told them all what we were being asked to do, and watched for the reaction on each person’s face.

Brit remained impassive. I knew that later she would talk things over with me, but one thing I loved about her was that she didn’t go against me in public, unless it was a no shit you’re going to get us killed moment. My worry about her was that she was going to make things personal with Strasser and his goon.

Ziv also said nothing, merely took out his knife and began scratching his initials into the rough wooden table. I had put it there because he ALWAYS did that when he was bored, and I didn’t want Brit to kill him. We had a nice table once, and she flipped her shit when she saw him gouging it.

Scott Orr merely took notes, probably thinking of what he was going to need in his aide bag. He was an old hand at mission planning, but I could see some relief in his eyes that he wasn’t in charge of this one. Ryan Szimanski, however, almost wet his pants with glee at the thought of doing any maritime stuff. My concern was most with the three newest members of the team.

Shona Lowenstein was a soldier through and through, and I could see that she was running the tactical problems through her head like it was a field exercise at OCS, making notes and jotting down ideas. Not worried about her, though there would be some transition from armor to being light.

Elam Yasir said nothing, merely drummed his fingers on the table. If he was anything like his father, he would be a quiet man, and one didn’t get to be a sergeant in the US Infantry nowadays without skill and intelligence. He had said little since he had shown up, being sparse with words, but had also thrown himself into training, and run hundreds of rounds through every long rifle we owned. If anything, he was BETTER than his father. He and Ziv had disappeared for a week, heading across the mountains to hunt undead over in Vermont.

Obi … well, the kid almost jumped out of his seat. “Hot frigging damn! We get to kick some ass!”

“Sit down, child,” said Ziv in his flat, dead calm voice, not even looking at him. Obi was still covered in bruises from their ‘training’ session, and resented the Serb.

“Who the fuck are you calling a child, old man?” said Obi, turning to face Ziv.

Eyebrows went up around the table, and I honestly wanted to see what would happen if the two of them went at it, so I let them glare at each other for a bit. Well, Obi glared at Ziv, and Ziv continued to scratch at the table.