Part 8 (1/2)

The closer they moved to the coastline, the denser the hordes. The anomaly was so new that the creatures had not yet spread out from the coasts; most of the world's population lived in the littorals, and now the dead ruled these regions.

Fueled by rumors that the fleet might be anch.o.r.ed off the coast of Pakistan in the Arabian Sea, Doc and Billy pressed south. It was not until the day before they reached the coast that radio chatter began to break in on their handsets. They eventually made contact with the USNS Pecos-their ticket home.

Doc adjusted course based on the s.h.i.+p's transmitted position and they continued to pay their toll in lead to the undead for the last miles to the sea. The sun was setting and their scorched rifles were out of ammunition by the time their boots filled with seawater. They sidestroked away from the ma.s.sing thousands of creatures that churned the surf with undead footsteps.

The Pecos was the last s.h.i.+p remaining at anchor to take on American evacuees. Billy and Doc soon found that the Pecos's master was pleased to have the added security of two special operators aboard. After arriving, eating, and taking a shower, Doc and Billy received a current situation briefing.

Doc learned of deadly piracy taking place on the high seas. The pirates were capitalizing on the lack of maritime security, and ruthlessly attacked all vessels on sight. Chinese, American, British, all were falling prey to Somali warlords and other vile sea vermin. The pirates were cold-blooded in their attacks, using stolen military hardware to sink vessels that didn't explicitly comply with their demands.

On their way stateside, steaming south, deeper into the Arabian Sea, they verified the worst of the reports. The GPS navigation network was failing. This, combined with a lack of sea charts, forced the Pecos's master to adjust course west and visually hug the African coastline. Pirates had been a problem in the Horn of Africa region long before the undead, and now they were a force that rivaled them.

Pecos was under attack long before they saw Africa.

The faster pirate vessel approached quickly through the choppy blue waters. As the vessel maneuvered into range, it began firing at Pecos with crew-served machine guns, aiming for the stern just above the waterline. Fortunately for Pecos and her crew, the pirates were not trained marksmen.

Doc, Billy, and the s.h.i.+p's master-at-arms took down the pirate vessel in a flurry of accurate sniper shots. Anytime a head popped up above a catwalk to man a machine gun or peek through a porthole, Billy put its lights out. The s.h.i.+p soon surrendered to Pecos and her superior firepower and was boarded.

Doc remembered when he and Billy had boarded the s.h.i.+p all those months ago. It was one of those things that would be difficult, if not impossible, to forget.

”Doc, look at that,” Billy said, pointing to the pile of shoes six feet high, near the pirate s.h.i.+p's bow.

”Let's take a look down that hold,” Doc said, hoping his first instinct was wrong.

”Chief, you open that hatch, me and Billy will be ready to spray whatever's down there.”

”Aye, sir.”

The chief master-at-arms jerked the hatch open, exposing a putrid and h.e.l.lish pit to the East African sun. The stink was so intense that the chief dropped the hatch cursing and gagging. He poured canteen water on his face and covered his mouth with a bandana before making a second attempt.

Doc stepped up to the edge.

The hold was filled with barefoot, half-naked creatures. They reached up to the light seemingly asking for help, just a hand. Doc felt the heat from the open hatch radiate from the baking and bloated corpses. The men examined the pulley boom and tackle mounted over the hatch; it stank, covered in sun-scorched human remains. Its purpose was clear.

The pirates lowered victims into the pit after robbing them of everything from gold fillings to the very shoes on their feet. The brigands likely used the pit as intimidation to force their victims to tell them where valuables were hidden. Doc, Billy, and the chief tried and executed the remaining pirates. A burial at sea was held before they opened key valves belowdecks, eventually sending the pirate vessel to the bottom.

Months had pa.s.sed since, but time would never fade the horror of that dark hold.

There was no moon when Doc and Billy rolled out into the Texas badlands. Disco and Hawse stayed back to provide security and monitor the radio while the others were outside the wire. During their mission brief before they boarded the C-130, Task Force Phoenix had been provided copies of maps indicating the positions of air-dropped equipment originally intended for Hotel 23's former commander.

Based on what had been recovered from the other drops, Doc thought this equipment would prove useful to his team and possibly shed some light on what the intelligence reports did not reveal-the ident.i.ty of the organization responsible for the airdrops, and for wreaking utter mayhem on the former occupants of Hotel 23.

According to the briefing, the previous equipment recovered consisted of some rather advanced hardware. This hardware was described in reporting as ”surpa.s.sing current technology by ten years” and ”things you might find in an agency directorate of operations back room inventory.”

The Task Force Phoenix operation orders were clear: Primary mission objectives: Secure Hotel 23, verify her systems are in the green, verify remaining nuclear warhead viability in support of Task Force Hourgla.s.s.

Avoid detection.

Secondary mission objectives: Recover abandoned hardware for exploitation, a.s.sess the origin of Remote Six, recover supplies for ongoing support of Hotel 23 launch activity.

There was not much left for ambiguity. His primary tasking had been met. Hotel 23 had been secured, secure communications had been established, all networks checked green, and the nuclear payload had pa.s.sed all function bit checks.

Although unclear as to what exactly the mission objectives of Task Force Hourgla.s.s might be, he knew it was something big and something far above his snake-eater pay grade. No matter what the mission of Hourgla.s.s, he still had his team's remaining objectives to meet. Doc never fell short of tasking.

Their target for the evening, an airdrop eight and a half miles east of Hotel 23, was the closest drop identified on the maps. Working east they moved wall-line abreast of one another. No point man, no straggler. They knew they didn't have enough people to run this excursion safely, so they evolved tactics to mitigate the extreme threat.

Their sleep cycles and circadian rhythms had already adjusted to night operations. Normalizing their bodies to their new living conditions was necessary before heading out. They needed maximum awareness and attention for night reconnaissance like this. Their night observation devices were functioning literally in the green, with fresh lithium batteries as well as back-ups tucked in their packs. Neither Doc nor Billy observed anything out of the ordinary in the night sky. They scanned overhead from time to time, always aware that there might be air a.s.sets collecting on them from above.

They hadn't brought enough water, as they hadn't wanted to hump it sixteen miles round-trip. The iodine tablets they carried would kill any bugs in the stream water they collected along the way.

They were only five hundred yards outbound from Hotel 23 when they had their first encounter.

Billy whispered to Doc, tapping his shoulder. ”Three tangos caught in the fence about a hundred yards.”

The field was shaped in such a way that the men had no choice but to pa.s.s close to the creatures to stay on course. The other option was to avoid them by taking the adjacent path through the woods. Not a choice, since both men knew that option would be much more dangerous than just engaging these immobile undead. Leaving them flailing about in the fence would draw too much attention-quick kills were the only option.

Approaching cautiously from the west, they switched on their lasers and each took to their targets. Billy Boy took the two on the left and Doc took the right. There was no real need to count down and execute a time-on-target kill, but they did so anyway out of habit.

Doc whispered back, ”Three, two . . .”

Thunk, thunk.

The first two shots occurred simultaneously; Billy had an extra shot for the remaining third creature. Clockwork. All three lay caught up in the barbed-wire fence and would stay that way until they decomposed to dust. Strange, but wild animals wouldn't generally eat the dead.

Doc held down the bottom wire with his boot and pulled the second wire up with his fabricator-gloved hand-no point in risking teta.n.u.s or even a simple infection. Billy quickly ducked between the sharp wires and held them wide for Doc. They both continued to move.

”What's your pace count, Billy?”

”About six hundred, you?”

”Yeah, about that.”

Moving east they noted possible shelters and egress routes in the event they were swarmed or stalked by any foe, dead or otherwise. Thinking back to the briefing, Doc remembered, Stay off the roads. It's okay to use them as a guide but remain offset at least twenty-five meters. The roads just aren't safe. The dead congregate there.

The intel report from the former Hotel 23 commander was useful as h.e.l.l. Some of it was common sense but Doc was fine with that. There was valuable intel in the reports that he was glad to have for his team, like the detailed written account of the base commander's helicopter crash and subsequent journey back to the compound. In reading the reports, Doc could not help but notice interesting patterns of thought in the man's mind-set and methods of survival.

It was nearly midnight. They stuck to the preplanned route. Doc didn't want to risk detection by whatever it was that had attacked Hotel 23; this meant that radios were out, no omnidirectional RF communications. The burst unit set up back at Hotel 23 would evade detection if proper comm discipline was observed, but their Motorola brick units could easily be intercepted and were subject to direction finding (DF) by the most rudimentary SIGINT collection capabilities.

This was Doc's reasoning for religiously sticking to the planned route. If Doc and Billy didn't return by daybreak, Disco and Hawse would lock up and search for them at next nightfall, following the trail.

Doc wasn't thrilled about being clueless about the contents of this airdrop or the other drops marked on the map, but mission was mission.