Zombie Killers: HEAT (4 page)

Chapter 242

The Bradley stopped first at the Combat Support Hospital and we offloaded Captain Lowenstein and another guy who had wacked his head pretty hard somewhere along the way. Then we headed back towards the staging area, dropping the ramp again and letting the warm Maryland night air roll over us.

I sat down on an ammo crate and started cleaning my weapon. I hadn’t fired it; but the ritual was a way of calming my nerves after the fight. Pop the rear pin, remove the bolt, look down the barrel for obstructions, check the trigger housing for dirt or debris, and make sure the spring rode back and forth. It was calming, and it had saved my life more than once. In the teams, your weapon, and your teammates, was your life. 

“Colonel?” The voice said “Colonel” three times before I realized the young Private was talking to me. My rank was brevet; I was more used to being called “Sergeant” or “Sergeant Major”. Or dipshit, or prick, or cold hearted bastard, or … well, you get the point.

“What’s up, son?” Jesus I was getting old. This kid looked about twelve, but I knew he was at least sixteen.

“Well, I have a question, if you have a minute, Sir.”

“Cop a squat. What’s your question?” In the slowly dawn growing light, I saw his platoon sergeant eyeing him, looking like he was about to jump his shit, but I held up my finger, asking for a minute. The sergeant turned away, but not before letting me get a good look at the disgust and hatred on his face.

“Well, Sir, what you did back in the track. About the flag. I don’t get it. What was that all about? I mean, why are we even fighting these guys?”

Good question. Why the hell WERE we fighting them? I had no love for President Epson, and General Scarletti was a straight up prick. In fact, I was tired of fighting all the time, and each time I went out, the dice rolled. That could have been me in the Bradley that took the tank round, or I could have had my face burnt off like Lowenstein.

I was quiet to the point where the kid almost gave up and walked away, but then I started to speak, and he stopped. “Listen, Private,” I said, trying to read his name tag in the faint dawn light. “Private Baldridge, is it?”

He nodded, and I continued. “Listen. That flag, and what it represents, is our ONLY hope. Our country, what’s left of it, was something unique in history. A chance for people to set their own course. Are you following me?” I wasn’t sure he would, schooling had been pretty spotty over the last eight years.

“I think so, Colonel.”

“You see all these little warlords and big shots that have set themselves up after the apocalypse? If they are allowed to thrive and grow, and our government falls, then there’s no chance for the little guys like you and me. We might not have the best people in government, and in fact, before the outbreak, maybe we were getting away from it, sliding backwards, but without some kind of popular representation, it’s just going to be who is the toughest and baddest, and with the most guns.” Or bows and arrows and swords.

I could see he wasn’t getting it, so I tried a new track. “Listen, kid, you got a sister?”

“Uh, sure, but ain’t you married to that redhead chic, from the TV show? Besides, you’re a little old for her, with all due respect, Colonel.”

“Jesus H Christ on a pogo stick, that isn’t what I meant. Wait, is she hot? No, never mind. Point is, under a warlord, whatever the big man says, happens. If he wants your sister, or your mom, or your land, he takes it. In a democracy, there’s the rule of law, and it offers some protection against that. Our flag, and the idea of America, is that everyone is treated equal and that the law makes us so. That’s why I fight so hard, for the idea of America.”

I could see the comprehension on his face, but then he threw me a curveball. “But those emmers, the Mountain Republic guys, they have a President and all that too.”

“Well, yeah, but they aren’t the United States, and someone named Lincoln settled that question a long time ago.”

He stood up and thanked me, then trotted over back to his guys. I stood up, my uniform grimy with soot and sweat, feeling disgusting, and started walking over to where we had set up a Command Post for the Scout Teams, in an old office building.

Brit was waiting for me, a hot cup of coffee in her hands. I took it from her, and she didn’t say anything, just went over to the Blue Force Tracker and back to monitoring the teams’ locations. I took a minute to enjoy the coffee, and then sat down next to her to watch the screen. Captain Rheam stood off to one side, updating their position on a paper map, just in case, and listening to the Team net.

“Give me a SITREP, Brit,” I asked.

“Well,” she said, head cocked to one side as she also listened to the reports coming in over the squawk box, “so far, Three is in place on the river bank. They’ve holed up in a small house, and are going down until nightfall. Haven’t heard from Five, and their tracker isn’t showing, can’t transmit from the sewers. Had the same problem with Ten, but they just popped back up, coming out of the Metro station. Still waiting on a radio check from them. Eleven you know about. How did that go?”

“The insert went good, but we got hit by an anti-armor ambush on the way to the diversionary attack. The G-2 needs to know that they have some armor, maybe an old M-60a3 or National Guard M1. They can get the grid from the Mech Platoon Sergeant.”

“Hit by an ambush? What happened?” I thought about Lowenstein’s burned face, and the other Bradley’s turret flying up through the night air, and Brit saw the look on my face.

“That bad?”

“It was pretty bad. Lost two tracks and a dozen guys, plus some serious injuries.” I left it at that, and she knew not to pursue it further. Since my almost breakdown a few years ago, she knew that I just buried things like that deep. Maybe I’d pay for it later. In fact, I knew I would, but right now, there was a job to do.

“Captain, let me know when you hear from Teams Five and Ten. I’m going to take a nap. Wake me up in two hours, or if anything changes. Who else do we have to pull watch?”

Brit checked the clipboard hanging on a peg. “A Sergeant First Class Harlan, and a Captain Strasser. from 1
st
ID G-3 OPS. Both due here at 1300.” That would work; I didn’t expect any action until the teams started the hunt tonight.

“Cool, let’s grab some breakfast and find our own quarters. I’ll be a little better off then.”

“I’ll hang out here till the relief shows up,” said Brit, handing me a ham egg and cheese sandwich. “You can rack out in the back there,” and she pointed to a door off the main room.

I set my watch to wake me, and went to a cot in a back room. I closed the door against the blare of the radio, not even bothering to take off my boots, and fell into a deep sleep, punctuated by dreams of blood and gunfire. 

Chapter 243

My watch went off, beeping next to my head, and I jumped up in bed, not knowing where I was for a minute. Then I groggily sat up on the cot, and proceeded, out of habit, to tighten the straps on my leg. That done, I went over to the non-working bathroom and took a piss, trying to hold my nose. Too bad for Brit, thank God I was a guy.

While I was pissing, something bothered me. It seemed too quiet. In an operations center, even in a little two man shop like we were running, there were always noises. People moving, chairs creaking. Soldiers farting, coughing, sneezing, little conversations to alleviate boredom. I could still hear the radios constantly muttering to themselves, the beep of comsec opening a channel on the radio. From behind the closed door, I heard no human sounds though.

“Brit!” I called as I buttoned up. No answer. “RHEAM!” I called louder. No answer. I hurried over, put on my armor, picked up my rifle, raised it to my shoulder, and flicked the selector from SAFE to FIRE. Then the smell hit me. Blood and shit.

I reached over and slowly, gently turned the knob, as quietly as I could. I opened the door a fraction of an inch, and looked into the room. All I could see was a sliver of empty space. I used my other senses, mostly my hearing, to try and determine if there was anyone else in the room. Nothing.

“Fuck it,” I whispered, stood up and pulled the door open as hard as I could and stepped into the room in a crouch, sweeping with my weapon from left to right.

At the Blue Force Tracker console, Captain Rheam’s body lay sprawled across the screen. The wall in front of him was splattered with bright red, slowly drying, and bits of bone and brain. The smell of blood and shit and piss was coming from him.

At that second, the Team Net burst into life. Startled, I turned and almost fired into it. “
LOST BOYS, THIS IS JESTER, AND WE ARE IN THE SHIT!”
I could hear gunfire in the background, Jester was Team Eleven’s call sign. Even though Scotty Orr’s voice was loud, he didn’t sound panicked.

Almost cutting him off came the call,
“LOST BOYS, THIS IS POTSHOT SIX, MY TEAM IS IN CONTACT, REQUEST EXTRACTION! ESTIMATE COMPANY SIZ …”
and Ryan was cut off in mid transmission.

I grabbed at the handmike, squeezing it hard. “CLEAR THE NET, THIS IS LOST BOYS SIX, GIVE ME A SITREP, IN ORDER!”

“Lost Boys, this is Eightball, we are watching Mike Romeo elements probing our old position. We lost our Bravo Foxtrot Tango and repositioned before dawn, over.”
That was Scott Balls’ team, the one that went through the sewers.

“Roger Eightball, go to ground, BREAK,” and unkeyed the handmike. “Jester, Potshot, Blackhorse, report, over.”

“THIS IS POTSHOT, WE ARE ATTEMPTING TO BREAK CONTACT. POTSHOT OUT.”
Normally, he should have said ‘over’ but it was Ryan’s way of telling me to leave his team the fuck alone and let him concentrate on the situation at hand.

“Jester, Blackhorse, this is Lost Boys Six, sitrep, over.” I tried three more times, no answer. Slamming the handmike down on the radio in frustration, I let it hang from its cord, and looked wildly around the room, then rushed out into the street. Soldiers were walking by unconcerned. In the distance, over the wind, from deep in the city, I could hear the faint rattle of small arms fire, followed by the BOOM of a tank cannon.

Brit was gone, and the Teams had been ambushed.

I ran back inside and picked up the radio that was tuned to the 1
st
ID TOC. “Danger Ops, this is Lost Boys Six. I have an incident at the Scout Ops Center, I need the FOB locked down, ASAP.”

The RTO came back immediately. “
This is DANGER OPS, nature of the incident.”

Trying to be patient, I answered, “I have one KIA and one MIA, possible infiltrators.”

I heard a siren start to blare, and a wave of relief washed over me. Rheam’s’ blood had been drying, and, as I looked down at the floor, I saw another spot of blood on the floor. I hoped to God it wasn’t Brits, and that we were in time to lock down the base. It turned out that we weren’t.

“Colonel, the front gate reports that your wife and two others drove out of the gate fifteen minutes ago, with a Captain Strasser and a Sergeant First Class Harlan.” The Base Force Protection Commander, a Major, looked apologetic. I didn’t blame him; the gates were designed to defeat outside attackers, with guard towers and zig zags to prevent car bombers. They weren’t designed to stop people from leaving.

I sat down on the steps and hung my head, letting my rifle slide off my shoulder, and started to weep. Only Team Five, led by Scott Ball, was still in contact, and Brit was missing, assumed captured by the enemy. I had let her down, and I had never felt so alone in my life.
 

End, Part I

Part II
 

Chapter 244

“Dad,” said my son Nate, “when are you going to get mom?”

“Soon, buddy, soon. I’m waiting for someone.”

He sat down next to me on the porch. I hadn’t really told him what had happened to Brit, just that she was off somewhere on a mission. He had accepted that until she showed up on TV, in front a news camera. The kid had freaked out, even if he hadn’t understood the context of why she was on the news. 

She looked battered, but defiant. A line of prisoners stood in a compound, rounded Appalachian Mountains in the background. The only one I recognized besides Brit was Ryan Szimanski, and he was sporting a bloody bandage on his leg.

The interview was conducted with “Captain” Strasser, who now wore the green BDU uniform of the Mountain Republic and sported the rank of Major, and crossed arrows of a Special Forces officer. Apparently he and Harlan, his Team Sergeant, had spent the last two years infiltrating the Federal Army. Both had been US Army soldiers before the Apocalypse, but they had decided their loyalties lay with their home states, not with the Federal Government. There was a witch hunt on for more traitors, and the battle for Washington had ground to a standstill over the last week.

“We are perfectly willing to let the Red Cross visit Enemy Prisoners of War. Those caught fighting in uniform will be duly exchanged. Those caught in civvies will be hanged as spies, just like the Geneva Convention states.”

“But Major,” said the pretty blonde reporter, “the government of the United States is denying the legitimacy of your country all together. How can you talk about the Geneva Convention when, by some accounts, you don’t even represent a sovereign government?”

He looked like he wanted to choke her, but bit back his anger and answered. “Legitimacy is conferred by the people. Where was the Federal Government when we were all starving and fighting the undead? They didn’t do BLEEP for us and our people.”

“I think that’s a question for politicians, Major. So you are going to hang people?” Her blonde head shook in disapproval. “Do you mind if I talk to some of the prisoners?”

He made a ‘be my guest’ motion, and the reporter walked over to the line of prisoners. She stopped, of course, at Brit, first.

“You look very familiar. Do I know you, Miss?” Her only answer was a stony glare from Brit’s eye. She was zip tied with her hands behind her back, and her bad right eye had no patch anymore. It moved, but was milky and dead. 

“Anything you want to say to the people back home?” asked the reporter, shoving the mike in Brit’s face.

“I got one thing to say.” She turned to face Major Strasser and said, “When my husband comes for you, you BLEEPING piece of  BLEEP, I’m going to hang YOU from the nearest telephone pole, you BLEEPing traitor piece of BLEEP.”

He laughed and slapped her across the face. Ryan tried to jump him, but Harlan, who had been standing behind him, hit Ski on the back of the head with his rifle, and he went down on his face. The cameraman cut it off, and they switched to the studio.

“This is video from our reporter at the Salem, Virginia, Prisoner of War Camp. The actual camp is located somewhere in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Sporadic fighting continues amid the ruins of Washington as Federal forces advance in house to house fighting.”

The first time I had seen the video on TV, I was pissed. Someone sent it to me in an e-mail, and I had watched it over and over, looking for details in the setup. Although the camp was located in the vicinity of Salem, Virginia, it had taken our satellite guys a few days to find it. Scarletti had wanted to immediately launch a raid to recover the prisoners, but, remembering the failed Son Toy raid in Vietnam, I had asked him to let me check the site out first.

Now I was waiting for the people I needed to come together. Angelo Redshirt had volunteered to go with me, but I had asked him to stay and keep an eye on the farm and trading post. Red had caught some grenade fragments in his foot several years ago, and it had gotten worse, to the point where it was more of a liability than my missing leg. Jimmy Bognaski was at OCS, and Lisa Capocci was caught a round in the stomach a few weeks ago. She was out of the fight for quite a while.

No, there was only one person I wanted with me on this. He would come, if only for Brit’s sake. Sasha Zivcovic was one of the most intense and brutal men I knew, and, although he and I didn’t always get along, he had some weird kind of respectful relationship with Brit. I didn’t even know how to reach him; but I know that when he saw the news clip, he would show up here. I figured it would take a week; last I heard he had been in Kansas with his wife and child. We had run into him last year during the failed Air Force coup attempt, but I had no idea what he was doing now.

Sure enough, even as I sat there on the porch with Nate, a small power boat pulled up to the dock, and a burly, scarred figure stepped out after throwing a rucksack onto the dock. Nate jumped up and ran down to him, yelling “UNCLE ZIV!”

Uncle Ziv? As far as I knew, the kid hadn’t seen him in more than three years. I really wanted to know how Brit kept in touch with him. I got up and walked over to the former Serbian Special Forces Major, and offered him my hand. He took if for a second, which for him was an overwhelming show of emotion.

“I knew you’d come, Ziv. How’s the wife and kid?”

He put Nate down and told him to go run and get Uncle Angelo. After my son took running for the adjacent farm, he said, “They are dead. I was away working a job in Arizona, and raiders attacked our home. It was a large group, and she fought well, but in the end, there were too many. Last month.”

“Oh Jesus, Ziv. I didn’t know. Brit never told me.”

He scowled and said, “I didn’t tell her. They are dead, and there was nothing you could do to change anything, any of you, so why tell you?”

“Because we’re your friends, Sasha. We would have come to see you.”

He smiled a bitter smile. “Always the sentimental ass, Nick. It would have done no good. I was busy hunting.”

“Did you get them all?” I asked, but I already knew the answer. He said nothing, just grabbed his pack and his AK and walked to the house. We sat down at the kitchen table when Red came over, and started planning.

Ziv was insistent that Red come with us. “Nick, I know you,” snorted Ziv when I explained my plan. “We are supposed to be reconing, and you will get there and you will start thinking with your dick and go all Rambo and try to rescue the devil woman. I need someone who will help you think rationally. The Indian will help, and it will be easier to keep watch.”

“Hey!” said Red. “Native American.”

“Whatever, savage. You see my point.” I almost laughed at the irony of Ziv calling anyone savage, especially Red, who was as good natured of a person as I had ever met. The Serb was, in turn, the most naturally cold blooded killer I had ever met.

“I kind of agree with him, Nick. With a small team like this, you can’t afford to play hero.”

“Are you up to it?” I asked.

“Are you?” he shot back. “Last I checked, I have more body parts than you, and I’m fifteen years younger than you are.”

“OK then. We can do this two ways. A straight up recon of the camp, or we can play mercenary and attempt to get hired on and infiltrate.”

Ziv pondered the map, looking at the terrain. “A hide site will be difficult, I expect that the people down there will know their woods. On the other hand, you and Red are fairly well known from newspapers and television.”

“Compromise then. Red and I do an outside recon, but not too close, to get the layout, count the guards, everything else. You got to the local town and try to get hired on as a guard or something.”

“I have even better idea,” said Ziv. “YOU get yourself captured. This way, you will be on the inside, and Red and I can break you out.”

“This is supposed to be a Recon, not a breakout.”

Red snorted and answered me. “You know how stretched thin forces are with the fighting in DC. Do you really think that Scarletti will chop us a half dozen choppers and a company of SF dudes? If you’re lucky, you’ll get a Chinook and a squad of infantry.”

“Well, he promised,” I answered, rather weakly.

“No offense, pale face, but I don’t trust white men and promises. Why is Scarletti going to help you rescue a woman who has told him numerous times she is going to kill him?”

Ziv was more to the point. He only said “Sucker.”  

I sighed. They were both only saying what I knew was probably true. “So how fast do we do this? They’re going to hang her, and Ryan too.”

“No they are not,” said Ziv. “She is valuable hostage. They will not hang her anytime soon. The Pollack, well, they might hang him, he is no one, but it will take a while.”

“So then we have time to get down there. Red, pack your stuff, and ask Joe to come over and talk to me. Ziv, do you need time for anything?”

“I want time to teach your son how to break down and reassemble an AK. Not your piece of shit M-4. He needs to know how to use real weapons.”

“COOL!” yelled Nate from the kitchen, where he was supposed to not be listening to us. Brat.