Fury, page 35
Was the occupation truly over? Zhen had indicated his forces were on the verge of defeat. That they were being forced into a tactical retreat, whatever that meant.
The main thing nagging Bryce was the true whereabouts of his parents and uncle. He had last seen them three days ago at the medical facility he and his siblings were just evacuated from. A facility whose location had been kept from them all until just now.
While he wanted further proof that the helicopter transporting the rest of his family, along with several of Zhen’s men, had really suffered a mechanical failure and crashed—killing all aboard—he didn’t want to risk drawing the driver’s ire. And right now, as Zhen had stressed just after informing him he and his siblings were being released, he was the man of the house. The oldest. The only one who could drive them all north—to safety.
“A walled-in city” was how Zhen had described the new Capital. It was sixty miles away, and Bryce had four other family members to worry about.
Getting them to safety was number one, he decided. The rest would have to wait.
The van was coasting to a stop near an overpass when twelve-year-old Brian came to. As he craned around, a blank look on his face, the three-year-old twins, Brie and Bristol, started to come out of their stupor. Then the sight of his other little sister, ten-year-old Bailey, fixing him with a questioning look started a new wave of worry in his stomach. It was compounded by the realization that the twins’ car seats were in the Suburban, which was sitting useless somewhere outside of Taos. The bandits had come out of nowhere, firing their weapons into the tires. As his dad was surrendering, he had pointed out the spidered window glass and announced to everyone in a reassuring tone that they were all lucky to be alive and that God had been looking over them.
The first trip in the helicopter—also the first time Bryce had ever been hooded and flex-cuffed—was an experience he would never forget. It was also the first time he’d seen his parents and his Uncle Jack show any real fear. Word stealing fear. Sure, the meat bags could strike a nerve when they vastly outnumbered a person, but the effect these foreign occupiers had on all of them was not even close. They were nice one moment, brutal and unfeeling the next.
Dad had said they were just trying to keep everyone “on their toes.” That they were maintaining the “upper hand.”
Uncle Jack called it “good cop, bad cop.”
Having been brutalized by some of the soldiers, Mom simply turned inward and stopped talking altogether.
Whatever the strategy, it had worked. It had broken the adults. And up until this very moment, with the driver of the van about to hand it over and just let them all go, it was a mystery to Bryce why they had been brought here in the first place.
When the driver’s seat was turned over with an unsmiling Zhen still in the passenger seat and reiterating his instructions, the wave of worry had grown into a full-on cascade of emotion.
Zhen ordered Bryce not to deviate from the highway. He was to drive all the way north. To the gate outside of a city. A city that Zhen promised had lights and running water. And other kids and teens his age.
Finally, their former captor said that to stop was to die. For if the engine were turned off, the battery wouldn’t have enough of a charge to get it restarted.
“Do you understand?” asked Zhen, a certain menace to his tone. “This is your one and only chance to save yourself. You are very lucky the war ended when it did. You and the rest of your family were one day away from being transported to the fields. Instead of living out the rest of your lives as slaves in service to the Communist Party of China, I’m granting you freedom.”
Bryce didn’t know what to say. He was too busy worrying the twins were going to start bombarding him with questions he didn’t have the answers to—chief among them: Where is Mom, Dad, and Uncle Jack?
Remaining tight-lipped, he nodded that he understood, climbed behind the wheel, and waited for the signal.
The signal came after the soldiers had removed the motorcycle and closed the van’s rear doors. It was a single rap on the sheet metal that was still reverberating in his head as he let off the brake and steered for the nearby on-ramp.
Tears welled in his eyes when he thought of his parents and Jack being thrown around inside the tin can as it plummeted to earth. He hoped they had died on impact instead of having been burned alive as Yong had suggested. Bryce suspected the man was lying. Pushing his buttons. From the first day in captivity, the tall Asian had taken to tormenting Bryce and his siblings.
Though Bryce’s eyes were clouded with tears when he looked at the passenger side mirror, he was certain he saw the bike, complete with rider and passenger, speeding off toward the golf course.
Chapter 39
Raven, Duncan, and Daymon were still hunkered down in the master bedroom when the dirt bike carrying the two soldiers ripped across the distant fairway.
As Duncan tracked the bike with the Steiners, he concluded that Scarface was in control. The taller soldier, bullpup slung across his back, looked goofy sitting ramrod straight and gripping the underside of the seat with both hands.
Sitting cross-legged by the window, silhouette broken up by the floor-to-ceiling drapes, Daymon was busy looking out over the backyard.
From the time the van had driven off, up until about a minute ago, Bernie had been stretching the tether to its limits and walking a continuous circle. Something out of sight had the Z all worked up.
Over the span of a minute or so, the reason for Bernie’s increasing agitation had been showing up in twos and threes. Now, from the cement pad below Daymon’s perch to the uneven strip of grass bordering the green, the backyard was overrun by Zs.
Clearly, it was the helicopter that was drawing them in from the street.
Daymon did a quick count of the bobbing heads down below. Thirty. It was a ballpark figure, and they were still coming.
Some of the first zombies to arrive had taken an interest in Duncan’s pickup. They were crowding the driver’s door, craning to see inside. Others, their attention drawn to the returning motorcycle, were making a beeline for the green.
Duncan watched the riders dismount the dirt bike and leave it propped up alongside the remaining shuttle van. The subordinate went to work ripping the rows of seats out of the van. When he was finished, the van was gutted, and the jumble of seats discarded on the tee box stood nearly head-high to him.
While the subordinate was busy with something inside the van, Scarface pulled out a satellite phone, tapped on its face, and pressed it to his ear.
Working autonomously, the crew chief had removed the camouflage netting, folded it into a square, and stowed it away in the Z-9’s troop compartment.
As Scarface finished the call and dropped the phone into a cargo pocket, the helicopter’s turbine fired and the rotors started to spin.
A handful of seconds after Scarface had ended his call, the crew chief was inside the helicopter with the cabin door closed.
With the Z-9’s rotor blades picking up speed and beginning to merge into a single blurry disc, Duncan said, “Second helo inbound. Eleven o’clock. Low and slow.”
Since the moment the van with the kids inside had sped off, Raven’s attention had been pulled nonstop in three different directions. There were the dead showing up in the yard below, the activity in and around the helicopter on the practice green, and the Thuraya clutched in her left hand.
The phone to her was like Lord Sauron’s Ring was to Gollum. Though she was aware of the idiom A watched pot never boils, and knew full well what it meant, she couldn’t resist the urge to lift the phone to her face and see with her eyes what her ears could confirm. Though it had been ten minutes since she had sent the lengthy text to her father, the chime to alert her that it had been received still had not sounded.
Bracketed by Duncan and Daymon, the spotting scope peeking between the closed blinds, she pressed her eye to the rubber cup and began searching the sky for the new arrival. When she finally acquired the light gray helicopter, she said, “What kind is this one?”
Duncan tracked the inbound chopper using the Steiners. “Markings are similar to the other. It’s definitely a PLA bird. But it’s a different model. Trade me.” He handed over the Steiners, crouched down behind the spotting scope, then spent a few seconds watching the helicopter orbit the clubhouse. As it slowed and began to descend toward the second practice green, he said, “It’s a Harbin Z-8. Multi-role platform made by Aerospatiale. Looks unarmed. Probably transporting troops.” He rattled off a few more specs then went quiet.
Raven had been composing another text to her father as Duncan was speaking. She left the text unsent and watched the helicopter settle on the green.
The helicopter was much bigger than the first. It, too, had tricycle landing gear and a single rotor overhead. Unlike the Z-9, the Z-8’s tail rotor was not housed inside a protective shroud. It was currently a horizontal black blur scything the air.
Even as the door opened and a pair of soldiers and three other men in civilian attire spilled out, the turbines maintained their high-pitched howl.
Duncan said, “They’re keeping her hot. Ready to launch at a moment’s notice. Better add that to the book you’re writing.”
“It’s a text,” Raven shot. “I don’t want to leave anything out. Quit breaking my …” She left the rest unsaid. Figured Duncan could use his imagination to fill it in.
Daymon was up and pacing a hole in the carpet. He said, “All that noise is just going to bring out more biters. Maybe we should be thinking about getting out of here.”
Duncan said, “And have the Z-9 put a heat seeker up my tailpipe? I’ll take my chances right here. Hell, if the biters break down the door, we can always retreat to the attic.”
Stopping in his tracks, Daymon said, “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
Raven said, “I’m with Duncan. Besides, I think they’re up to something big. I owe it to my dad to pass along as factual a SITREP as possible. If he doesn’t respond soon, I’ll run it up the chain.” She nodded at Daymon. “I have General Nash on speed dial. She’ll know what to make of all this. At the very least, she’ll send in the cavalry.”
Duncan was going to comment on Raven’s perfect use of military nomenclature but was sidetracked when he saw the Z-9’s crew chief run the ramp over to the Z-8. Then, with the help of a crew chief wearing a helmet and identical jumpsuit, they positioned the ramp in the open door. Together, the crew chiefs rolled two more dirt bikes from the helo, pushed them across the green, and left them at the shuttle van with the other two.
With the Z-9 spooling up off his left shoulder, Zhen snatched the ramp from the Z-8’s open door and hustled it over to the van. After bringing the two recently arrived members of his Cobra Force up to speed, he instructed Staff Sergeant Xian Chun to take the wheel. Zhen then ordered Sergeant Wen Bao to help the crew chiefs load two of the dirt bikes into the van.
Everything was falling into place. The Z-8 launching behind him was ranging ahead to scout out a safe place for them to rendezvous once the second phase of Operation Blanket was commenced.
The American spawn were well on the way to their destination. He wasn’t stupid, though. No way he was going to leave it all up to the teenager to unknowingly deliver the weapon. Already going light on her gear, the Z-9 was going to fly ahead and shadow the van to track its progress.
If anything should go awry—if Bryce’s free will got the better of him and caused him to disobey orders, or the van suffered a mechanical breakdown, or a herd of jiangshi got in the way—it wouldn’t be the end. In fact, this was only the beginning. There was still plenty of the new Whirlwind virus to go around. As Zhen mounted his bike and waited for Chun to get the van turned toward the clubhouse, his play on words brought a smile to his face.
The helicopters were thundering off to the west when the pair of riders gunned their bikes and rolled out ahead of the van.
Raven watched until the only thing moving outside the mansion was the parade of Zs streaming toward the clubhouse. After adding a few more lines to the SITREP, she read it one last time. Unable to think of anything else to add, she sent it on its way.
Duncan said, “Now we wait.”
Standing at the window, palms pressed to the glass, Daymon looked to Duncan. “If we do end up in the attic, you better have enough rounds for that shotty of yours to open up a big ass hole in the roof. Because I’ll be damned if I’m putting my back into it like I had to in Hanna. My spine hasn’t been the same since.”
“That’s old age creepin’ up on you,” quipped Duncan. “Get used to it. Ain’t nothing that can stop the march of time. Or keep the Reaper at bay when he comes a callin’.”
Eighty-five miles southwest of New District, Jedi One was clipping along at a hundred and seventy knots. It wasn’t her top speed, but Ari was pushing it pretty close. He was taking very seriously the return-to-base order.
Fifteen hundred feet below the black helicopter, Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve, a three-hundred-and-thirty-square-mile sand deposit, was a mosaic consisting of the tallest sand dunes in North America, grass-covered plains, marshy wetlands, conifer and aspen forests, and the occasional alpine lake.
The beautiful landscape did nothing to assuage the feeling of disappointment that had been nagging Cade since the hasty Albuquerque exfil. The culmination of the mission, spanning two states and hundreds of miles, rang eerily similar to the one at Fort Meade in Maryland.
Zhen and his Cobras had slipped the noose that day, too. The Pale Riders had missed the special forces team by a matter of minutes. President Clay diverting the Pale Riders to the Archives Building in Washington D.C. to retrieve the founding documents had just added insult to injury. It was a side trip Cade had not foreseen. Still, serving at the pleasure of the president, he had swallowed that bitter pill and executed the new orders to the letter, bringing the documents home for the people to see. To derive hope from. Hope that America would soon push the People’s Liberation Army into the sea, defeat the zombie scourge roaming the nation, and then rise again from the ashes, stronger than ever.
An incoming text vibrated the Thuraya clutched in his hand. He’d been checking it every fifteen minutes or so since boarding Jedi One. He was about to do so for the fifth time when the tremor coursed his glove.
As he read the pair of long, detailed messages, he sensed all eyes on him. Finished, he looked around the cabin. Judging by the looks directed back at him from behind their D50 masks, to a man, his teammates’ curiosity had been piqued.
Cade texted back: Stay put! Sending help. Hailing the op center at Peterson, he reread Raven’s texts with both Nash and Smokey on the line. After the oration, he reminded them of the van full of kids that had been saved by the Stryker crew. Letting that sink in, he mentioned the PLA scouts Raven had caught on video shortly thereafter. He then posited his theory that the van full of kids witnessed leaving the golf course was the delivery system. They were infected, and the van was a modern-day Trojan Horse.
“Every one of them passed quarantine with flying colors,” Nash said. “We’re days out from that incident, and New District isn’t in the grips of a new pandemic.”
Cade said, “That was a dry run. What my daughter witnessed today is the real thing.”
Nash said, “Agreed.” There was a short pause, after which she added, “Smokey concurs. We’ll bring POTUS up to speed.”
Though neither of them had asked Cade for his input, he recommended an interdiction force of medical personnel and shooters be formed. Agreeing, Smokey indicated he would get the 160th SOAR assets lined up and two teams of shooters to the tarmac.
Nash promised, come hell or high water, the birds would be wheels up in ten. She also indicated that one of her satellites had been re-tasked and would soon be passing over Arizona and New Mexico.
While the satellite might be on station in time to help, Cade knew the ball was in his hands right now. Ending the call, he started crunching numbers. Concluding that the first van’s thirty-minute head start should put it nearly equidistant to Pueblo and New District, there was no way his team was going to be involved in the interdiction. With that in mind, he decided it was on them to find and intercept the responsible parties. With two enemy helicopters already in the air, a van and two riders on the move, the search was going to be akin to searching for needles in an Everest-sized haystack.
Having been listening to the SITREP and follow-on conversation, Ari didn’t need anyone to tell him what to do next. Working the pedals, stick, and collective in unison, he got the bird tracking for Pueblo at top speed.
QSZ-92 pistol clutched in his left hand, Zhen steered the softly idling Yamaha with the other. As he closed the distance to the pack of dead, he threw the safety and thrust the pistol out over the handlebars.
The creatures were spread out across the entrance to I-25 southbound, leaving only a yard or so between the shoulder and right-side guardrail. Their appearance was a direct result of the earlier activity on the overpass. Zhen had spotted them wandering the streets a few blocks west of the highway and had expected them to follow the retreating van.
That they didn’t was not a problem. Because if all went as planned, there would be thousands of jiangshi streaming north, their arrival at Colorado Springs timed to coincide perfectly with the start of the massive die-off wrought on the Americans by the aptly named Whirlwind virus.
Adjusting course to avoid a miasma of pulped flesh and splintered bone spread across the eastbound lane, Zhen pressed the trigger, sending the jiangshi nearest to him crashing to the road. Slow-rolling the bike forward, he shifted aim and sent a second monster to its final sleep. Expending the entire magazine, Zhen left a trail of jiangshi bodies in his wake and opened up a path wide enough for the van to safely pass.
