In Harm's Way (10 page)

***

The Traveler estimated he had fifty yards to traverse between the truck and the top of the hill, with only a sagging barbed wire fence and foot high grass for cover. To keep a low profile and remain unseen, he moved in a combat crouch and followed the shallow culvert paralleling the road. The Traveler’s head and eyes were constantly on the move, taking in his surroundings and watching his six. When the hill began to crest, he dropped to his knees and elbows and low crawled the last thirty feet.

Carefully he parted the damp stalks of alfalfa, creating a suitable spot for surveillance. The man settled into the grass, flipped his ball cap around with the brim facing backwards, and brought the binoculars to his face.

The rest area was nestled in a shallow depression just off of the two-lane black top. A gray cinderblock bathroom stood in the middle of a sea of lush green lawn peppered with picnic tables. Multiple empty parking spots angled in towards the structure. Swaying slightly with the breeze, mature Ponderosa pines and Box Elder ringed the site. Four vehicles were parked in formation in the center of the grassy area. The entire rest stop was ringed by a neatly maintained circular drive allowing easy access to and from the rural highway.

His thickly calloused fingers worked the focus ring, bringing the distant vehicles into sharp detail. They were arranged in a crude square, bumper to bumper, forming a sort of corral. The former owners obviously parked them that way to provide a barrier to keep stray walkers out of their little camp. A pair of tents stood in the midst of the circled vehicles. Both were empty, their unzipped flaps fluttering in the wind. Hanging on a line strung between two of the pines, assorted articles of clothing ruffled and popped with each new gust. He panned the scene from left to right, pausing on a tangle of unmoving bodies. A man, woman and child, their eyes frozen open in death, stared back at him. A flash of red drew his attention. Trapped behind the steering wheel of a mud-spattered SUV, a lone zombie tap danced on the brake pedal, reliving some tucked away scrap of memory. The Traveler stood up, twisted the ball cap around, and loped back to his truck.

He drove over the crest and down the hill and parked his truck near the exit. Leaving the nose pointed towards the road, he stepped from the cab and slowly circled the parked vehicles on foot, methodically checking each one. When he rounded the back of the SUV, its brake lights suddenly erupted in a flashing orgasm of red. The Traveler got a chill when he realized that the monster had been watching in the rear view mirror and lying in wait. Not wanting to get near the grab zone, he gave the Jeep a wide berth and approached the dead family. Each one of them had the betraying defensive bite wounds indicative of a zombie attack. The woman and boy were locked in a loving embrace. Both of them had been headshot, and, judging by the powder burns and the amount of blood present, they were still alive when they were put down. The man was missing the rear half of his skull. Gelatinous lumps of his brain littered the grass in an arc that spread ten feet behind him.
What a way to go
, the Traveler thought as he searched for the suicide weapon. The Saturday Night Special was half buried in the grass, next to the dead man. He inspected the weapon, quickly decided it wasn’t worth keeping, and tossed it to the ground.

Next he siphoned enough gas from the abandoned vehicles to fill all three of his five gallon plastic jugs. Then he approached the mud spattered Jeep Commander, grinning as he screwed the can onto the business end of his .22 semi-auto pistol. He liked shooting walkers; it was almost a form of therapy. He tapped the silencer on the driver’s side glass. “License and registration please.” He laughed out loud at his own joke.

The zombie raged and moaned, straining against the seatbelt, all the while banging its head against the top edge of the half open window.

The Traveler moved in for a closer look. A half-eaten dead woman was lying face down in the zombie’s lap. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Road head for the undead.”
Good name for a band
, he thought to himself.

The stunted man moved back two steps and leveled his pistol at the driving ghoul. The creature stopped thrashing and focused its milky orbs on the gun. The Traveler hesitated. He had a creeping feeling the former human was exhibiting some semblance of awareness, almost like it knew it was about to be released from its hell on earth.
Bullshit
, the Traveler thought as he put three rapid-fire shots into the monster’s head.

Outbreak - Day 8

Over Casper, Wyoming - 300 Nautical Miles North by Northwest of Colorado Springs

“Jedi flight, this is Oilcan Five-Five. Maintain heading and airspeed. We are on your six and open for business in five mikes.”

“Roger that, Oilcan Five-Five. This is Jedi One-One, be advised you have four thirsty birds.”

Ari Silver held the Ghost Hawk steady while the USAF HC-130J Hercules overtook the helos and matched their speed and heading. He watched the refueling probe retract from the tanker’s wing-mounted pod and slowly reel out towards the front of his ship. Ari pushed a series of icons on the glass cockpit to release the refueling probe from its internal bay. A soft clunk, followed by a flashing green star on the touchscreen, assured him that he was go for refueling. “Jedi One-One ready to engage.”

“Copy that Jedi One-One. Be sure to pick up a Slim Jim when you pay the lady.”

Ari broke protocol and replied informally, “Don’t you know what they put in those things?”

The Herc pilot replied, “Lips and assholes.”

“That is correct, Oilcan Five-Five. I owe you a beer when we get back to Schriever.”

“Copy that,” said the Herc pilot.

The other three helos went through the same routine to top off. The first of the flight’s three scheduled aerial refueling rendezvous went off without a hitch.

“90 mikes out,” Ari informed everyone onboard.

“How on earth did you get ahold of these birds?” Cade asked Desantos.

“They just showed up on our doorstep. After we popped Bin Laden, the Pakis shut down
all
of our hot ground ops; after that, there weren’t any missions that required an invisible insertion or extraction,” Desantos explained.

“I thought they used the H-60 Stealth Hawks for the Bin Laden raid. And correct me if I’m wrong--didn’t we lose one of them?” Cade asked.

“Affirmative. We had these two Ghosts flying over watch... ready to take out any reactionary forces. But when the Stealth Hawk crashed--instead of relying on the Ghosts to destroy the downed ship and risk losing one of them--we opted to use C4 to finish the job. Theory was, if the Pakis couldn’t see ‘em... and couldn’t hear em, and the birds leave no hits or EMR (electromagnetic radiation) trace on the radar, were we even there? Turns out the Pakis had no idea we were there until we were gone.” Once again reliving that history making mission in his head, Desantos’ kid-like grin filled up the space under his smoked visor.

“Plausible deniability... very nice.” Cade looked out the side glass. Down below, a petro-chemical tank farm belched flames. The tops of the gigantic holding vessels had already burned through, and like a glacier calving icebergs, the sides of the steel tanks were sloughing off. A massive blight on the earth started near the molten metal from the tanks and stretched as far as the eye could see, thousands of blackened acres rendered useless from the fire and settling soot. Cade was witness to the final death throes of one of man’s many industrial accomplishments as the side effects of Omega took the world one step closer to the Stone Age.
The entire country is falling apart
, he thought,
and the only thing we can do is wait for the dead to rot and then try to pick up the pieces
.

Cade snapped out of his melancholy moment when Desantos resumed his story. “The Jedi rides had been wrapped up nice and tidy and were supposed to be rotated back to Fort Campbell, but when Omega hit we had more pressing matters to attend to. They finally made the trip back from the ‘Stan onboard two C5 Galaxies that eventually ended up here at Springs.”

“Why didn’t they return home to the 160th at Campbell?” Cade asked.

“All of our large military installations are no longer responding. They are either abandoned or overrun by the dead. Thanks to President Odero ordering the rapid troop withdrawal from both theatres of war, Colorado Springs dodged the bullet, because if it wasn’t for the added combat troops, the walking dead would have already stormed our gates,” Desantos replied.

“You saw how many walkers were streaming out of Denver...
this had better work
or eventually Springs is going to suffer the same fate as Bragg,” Cade said pessimistically.

The spook twisted in his seat and peered at Cade from behind his mirrored Oakleys. “I’ll do
my
job and you Delta boys do yours, and we’ll all be OK,” he stated matter-of-factly.

***

Cutting through the sky with their wheels and guns retracted, the Ghost Hawks appeared to have been honed from solid slabs of black obsidian. They passed over the truck stop low and slow; the high tech helos were so stealthy that the zombies below didn’t react until they had already been overflown and blasted by rotor wash.

Ari put the Ghost into a slow lazy orbit so the operators could recon their objective. Jedi One-Two split off and escorted the Chinooks to their landing zone, out of sight but close enough to help the instant they were called on.

Durant, in Jedi One-One, brought up a live streaming feed from the Predator drone which was flying a racetrack pattern 20,000 feet over the approaching convoy, ten nautical miles from the Ghost Hawk’s position.

“Durant... split the incoming feed to the aft monitors,” Ari said.

The LCD screens in the troop compartment powered up, glowing brilliant blue at first and then the feed was visible in full HD.

Cade watched the slow moving six-vehicle convoy for a moment before making his battle assessment. “The lead vehicle is a surplus Humvee.” The flat black truck had a turret-mounted large machine gun on top. “The two tractor trailers in the two and three slots hold the cargo. The vehicle in the five slot is an Oshkosh heavy fuel tanker.” The low slung truck, painted desert tan and stenciled with military markings, could be mistaken for nothing else. “The trailing Humvee is identical to the lead. I estimate a total of sixteen personnel... unless there are guards inside of the trailers.” Cade finished his observations and waited for a second opinion.

“I concur,” General Desantos stated.

“I estimate, at their rate of travel, you have forty... maybe forty-five minutes before the convoy crests the hill,” Ari added, pointing at the hillock in the distance. “It looks like Major Nash’s Intel was right on the money. Where do you want me to set her down?”

Desantos pointed out the truck plaza below. “Good a place as any.”

Cade silently nodded in agreement.

“Durant... how far out are the targets?” Desantos asked.

“Eight klicks,” came the co-pilot’s  reply.

“Ari, I need you to get me as close to that brown semi-truck as you can,” Desantos ordered.

“Yes sir, port side, or starboard?” Ari queried.

“Can you put us on top of the trailer without fast ropes?” Desantos asked.

“Roger that,” Ari replied.

The semi-truck, with the UPS logo emblazoned along the side of the trailer, was parked far enough away from the fueling island that the roof covering the pumps wouldn’t be a danger to the spinning rotor blades.

Ari nosed the Ghost Hawk down and dove toward the parking lot, flared at the last second and hovered a few feet over the tractor trailer.

“Wheels down,” Ari said into his boom mic.

The helo’s internally stowed landing gear rotated down with a barely perceptible whirr followed by a solid clunk as the wheels locked into place.

The crew chief, Sergeant Hicks, hauled open the door on the starboard side of the ship, letting eddies of wind invade the interior of the hovering Ghost. Thanks to Ari’s precision flying the helo’s landing gear hovered less than a foot above the UPS trailer’s roof. Desantos went out first; he hopped onto the roof and went down to one knee, waiting for Cade to join him. Once both operators were on the truck, Ari pulled the helo into the same orbit as before, staying below two hundred feet so that Hicks could provide covering fire with the door gun if necessary.

Durant’s voice sounded in both Desantos’ and Cade’s ear buds. He used the call sign that the ground element had been assigned for the mission. “Archer, be advised you have multiple Z’s, one-zero-zero meters on your nine o’clock... vectoring to your position.”

“Archer Actual here, copy that. Keep us updated but hold fire,” Desantos ordered.

“Cowboy, I’m checking the cab for hostiles,” Cade said. He padded along the top of the trailer and dropped onto the roof of the tractor, hung his head over and peered through the flat windshield. The front part of the cab was empty, but from his upside down vantage point he couldn’t see past the curtain shrouding the entry to the sleeper cab. Cade drew his Glock and tapped the muzzle on the glass. Nothing stirred inside.

“Seven-zero meters,” Durant warned over the net.

“Wyatt, let’s get a move on,” Desantos said calmly as he watched the dead close on them with a steady determined pace.