Red Hammer: Voodoo Plague Book 4 Read online

  Flying in formation over Canada, nearly into US airspace, were 1,200 Sukhoi and Mig fighters, 200 aerial tankers for refueling, and 140 cargo planes. Looking like toys on the display, everyone in the room knew that the cargo planes were the massive Antonov AN-124 aircraft, loaded with troops, helicopters and supplies for the invading army. In 2001, Barinov had acquired the Antonov aircraft manufacturing enterprise and had been building the massive planes, capable of lifting nearly a quarter more weight than the venerable American C-5A Galaxy, preparing for this day. Every man in the invasion, as well as 75% of the Russian population, had been vaccinated against the virus that had been unleashed on the Americans. He smiled as he watched his planes enter American territory, unopposed.

  4

  I had time to see two of the Russian Mi-28 ‘Havoc’ strike helicopters explode in mid-air along with one of the Apaches before our pilot reacted. A Havoc was coming down the river, straight for us, and he spun us into a nose dive for the water, flaring and jinking to the left at the last second. A missile streaked by close enough that it seemed I could touch it, then we were gaining altitude and turning so fast I was pinned at the end of my safety tether. A moment later a hellfire missile leapt off the right pylon with a roar, tracked the Havoc for a couple of seconds and detonated as it impacted the Russian’s tail rotor. The back half of the helo sheared off, the remainder of the aircraft spinning out of control and crashing into the Mississippi River.

  The pilot continued to fly an evasive pattern and I crawled my way to the door mounted minigun and started trying to strap in. Blanchard saw what I was doing and made his way across the tilted deck to help. Finally secured in place I grabbed the headphones Crawford held out to me and slapped them on my head.

  “Come on you fucking bastard, hold still for Daddy!” I heard the pilot’s voice over the intercom a moment before another missile roared off its pylon, destroying another Havoc that was pursuing a Black Hawk. Unfortunately the Russian had launched at the same time we had, the Black Hawk exploding into a ball of fire a heartbeat before the Havoc died.

  We headed north, following the river, directly towards the main air battle that had quickly developed. I wasn’t able to count aircraft, but it looked at first blush like the Russians were getting the worst of it. Roaring under the bridge, we cut speed and suddenly popped straight up a couple of hundred feet, two more missiles streaking away and finding their targets. Another Black Hawk and an Apache exploded and both fell burning into the tightly packed mass of infected at the eastern entrance to the bridge.

  Tearing my eyes away from the dog fight I looked for the train. After a moment I spotted it still rolling west. Whoever was driving, Jackson I presumed, had the diesels at full throttle. Thick, black smoke belched from each of the locomotives and the train appeared to be rapidly gaining speed as it fled the battle. Two Havocs peeled away from the fight after dropping another Apache into the river, pursuing the speeding train.

  “Two hostiles going after the train.” I shouted into the intercom.

  Immediately the pilot threw us into a stomach clenching turn and we accelerated to fall in above and behind the Russians. Ahead I could see the lead Havoc launch a pair of missiles. I followed their smoke trail with my eyes, holding my breath as they closed on the back of the train. The first missile struck the tracks just behind the rear car. The explosion shredded the metal sides of the car, and I was certain the tightly packed bodies inside, and lifted the rear of the car into the air. The second missile arrived, slamming into the undercarriage of the damaged car. Bodies, body parts and metal shards flew in every direction as the car disintegrated.

  Four missiles sped away from the Black Hawk, two for each Havoc. The Russian closest to us reacted almost instantly, pulling up and to the right while deploying magnesium flares in an attempt to decoy the missiles away. As he tried to evade the attack he kept pulling through his turn, speed bleeding off and lined up beautifully with the Black Hawk’s open side door. I had a perfect sight picture on him and squeezed the trigger on the door mounted minigun and held it down. My aim wasn’t as perfect as I thought, red tracers flying underneath the desperately maneuvering helo, but I kept firing and adjusted until I pumped a couple of hundred slugs into the helicopter. Engine knocked out and black smoke billowing, he started falling and I turned my attention back to the train just as the other two missiles impacted the lead Havoc and blew it out of the sky.

  Dodging around the plume of smoke from the destroyed helicopter we caught up with the train. All that remained of the rear car was a few feet of the steel frame at the front, still on its wheels and coupled to the next car. I wondered how many people that Russian pilot had just killed, but put the thought out of my head as we spun around and headed back east. I leaned forward as far as possible, trying to see ahead of us, but I couldn’t get a view of the battle we’d left behind to save the train. Tilting my head back I hoped for a view out the windscreen, but couldn’t see around Colonel Crawford whose broad back completely blocked the narrow access into the cockpit.

  I wanted to ask what was going on, but since I didn’t need that information at the moment I decided to stay off the intercom and not distract the pilots. Instead, I busied myself with checking over the minigun to make sure it would be ready when needed. Satisfied with its status I leaned forward and scanned all of the sky that I could see. No other aircraft were visible, ours or Russian. Our direction and speed changed a few moments later and I found myself looking down at the Havoc I had shot up. The helicopter was sitting in a rice paddy at a severe tilt, rotor slowly turning and black smoke still billowing from the destroyed engine. I knew helicopters that lost power could uncouple their rotor from the engine and let the air flow of their fall spin the rotor and slow them down so they would have a relatively soft landing. This is called auto-rotation, and my best guess was the Russian pilot had pulled it off.

  Three Russians stood in knee deep water a hundred feet from their downed aircraft, heads tilted up watching us as we orbited the crash site. I tracked them with the minigun, hand on the trigger, ready to reduce them to pulp if they did anything I didn’t like.

  “Hold fire.” I heard Crawford’s voice over the headset. “We’re going to have a chat with our visitors.”

  We orbited two more times, then stabilized into a hover with the side of the Black Hawk with the minigun towards them. I held them in my sights as we landed fifty yards away, the pilot keeping the rotor spinning at near take off speed.

  “Major, you and the Captain switch places and let’s go greet the Russians.” Crawford ordered.

  Blanchard stepped up and quickly unstrapped me. When I could move freely I vacated the door gunner’s spot, the Captain quickly slipping in and gripping the minigun. I strapped him into place and looked around for the Colonel. He was standing behind me, holding out an M4 rifle. Grabbing it, I slipped the sling over my head and dropped the magazine to check the load. Satisfied, I slapped the mag back into place, made sure a round was chambered and set the selector to burst mode. A quick pat-check of my vest to make sure I still had spare magazines on my body and I was ready to go.

  Moving to the edge of the cabin I jumped to the ground, splashing into two feet of water and stepping forward to make room for Crawford. Rifle up and sighted on the three Russians, I heard the Colonel splash to the ground. He stepped next to me and raised his pistol. We started wading towards the waiting men.

  “How did we fare?” I asked as we walked, referring to the air battle.

  “All the Russians are down. We lost eleven aircraft.” As he spoke an Apache roared into a hover a hundred yards to the left of the enemy soldiers, chain gun trained on their position.

  Moving across the flooded rice paddy wasn’t easy. Footing was slippery and the uneven ground under the water kept us from moving very fast. Treading carefully, we crossed the open space, spreading apart as we approached the men and finally stopping a dozen feet from where they stood waiting. My rifle was up and trained on the senior m
an present, a Captain if my memory of Russian insignia and rank was correct. He stood holding his left arm tight across his body, the limb obviously broken. He bled from numerous cuts on his face. The other two were a Sergeant of some rank and an enlisted man that I guessed was the equivalent of a Corporal or Specialist in our Army. Each of them were banged up and bloody, but neither seemed to have any broken bones.

  “Do you speak English?” Crawford addressed the officer. He glared back for a moment before nodding his head. “Good. Then you’ll understand this. I’m Colonel Jack Crawford of the United States Army and you are my prisoner. Any resistance or failure to immediately cooperate and I’ll put a bullet in your head. I don’t give a fuck about the Geneva Convention. Do you understand?”

  The Russian’s eyes shifted from Crawford to me, looking down the barrel of my rifle which was solidly trained on his face. He glanced up at the hovering Apache before turning his attention back to the Colonel.

  “Da. I understand.” He replied in surprisingly good English.

  5

  Captain Lee Roach struck the surface of the Mississippi at a bad angle, getting the wind knocked out of him. He plunged deep, but didn’t try to swim or reach the air. The shock of first the impact, then the cold of the water had stunned him, slowing his racing mind. Water that was at first cold was now comforting, and for a moment Roach didn’t care if he lived or not. But, like any predator, he was first and foremost a survivor and eventually started stroking towards the light. Breaching the surface, he looked around for the bitch, but didn’t see her or the damn dog anywhere. Just steel grey water in every direction.

  The current was strong, the river swollen from the storms upstream, and he was swiftly carried south. Something bumped hard into his back and turning his head he saw a wooden shipping pallet, floating low in the water. Grabbing on he was able to pull his upper body onto the pallet, grasping each edge and shifting until he was balanced. The wood sank a few inches deeper into the river, then its buoyancy overcame the added weight of Roach’s body and he rested as the mighty river swept him along.

  It wasn’t long before the sound of high explosive ordnance reached his ears. Using his legs as a rudder he was able to steer the pallet into a spin in time to see the mid-span of the bridge collapse into the river. Relieved to have escaped, but frustrated that he hadn’t had time to play with the bitch, Roach relaxed and watched the shoreline slip by. He guessed the river was moving him at four or five miles an hour and decided to stay in the water no more than an hour. He wanted to get away from the Major, but not too far.

  It wasn’t long before he heard a helicopter approaching, but there was nothing he could do, caught in the current in the middle of the river. But the helicopter never came as far downstream as he was floating. Spinning the pallet, he watched it hovering, a long rope dangling into the water. After a moment the aircraft rose and headed for the western shore, a figure clinging to the end of the line. Was it the bitch? Had she survived the fall? He couldn’t tell, and soon the pallet spun again and he lost sight of the rescue.

  He entered a sharp curve and started paddling and kicking frantically as the current took him within a dozen yards of the eastern shore which was lined with a wall of infected. Coming out of the curve the river immediately bent again, the current sweeping him close to the western shore. This time he paddled and kicked, aiming for a sandbar that stuck out into the water. When he realized he couldn’t free the pallet from the force of the water, he slipped off and swam as hard as he could, angling for the sand. He had a bad couple of moments when it looked like he was going to be swept past his goal, but suddenly he was out of the pull of the current and able to swim the final few yards.

  Crawling onto the dry sand, he collapsed face down and rested. Catching his breath, he lifted his head at the sounds of an aerial battle to the north. Who the hell was fighting? Roach was curious, but not too curious, standing up and running across the sand to the shoreline where he disappeared into a narrow strip of trees growing along the edge of the river. Pausing, he checked himself over, dismayed to find he had lost every weapon other than a small, four inch folding pocket knife tucked into a pouch on the vest he still wore.

  Roach pushed through the trees and came up against the slope of the levee. He crawled up it, cautiously poking his head above the edge to look around. To the south a few hundred yards, sunlight glinted off the windshield of a vehicle. It was too far away to tell what kind of vehicle, but it was sitting on the gravel roadway that ran along the top of the levee and Roach needed transportation. He knew his limitations, and walking across open country, living off what he found and fighting the infected with a four inch pocket knife was not something he even imagined he was capable of doing.

  Following the river south, he walked along the lowest edge of the levee to stay hidden from any of the vehicle’s occupants. When he thought he’d covered enough distance he slowly crawled to the top and looked along the levee. His estimation had been good and he was pleased to find that he had walked past the vehicle’s position by ten yards. As he hid in the weeds and surveyed the area he detected a faint electronic beeping sound. Carefully he looked all around, but couldn’t identify the source of the noise.

  Ignoring the sound for the moment, Roach concentrated on the vehicle. It was a fairly new, four wheel drive Ford pick-up, painted white with an orange lensed light bar on the roof. A large spotlight penetrated the roof in front of the light bar, two smaller ones sticking out from the pillars on either side of the windshield. The truck was facing north, the passenger side towards Roach, and in big, red letters on the door closest to him he read ‘St. Francis Levee District – Official Use Only’.

  When Roach saw the lettering he smiled. No one was going to be checking on the levees after everything that had happened. What was the point? Even if they found a major problem, there wasn’t anyone left to fix it. This truck had to have been abandoned, or maybe the driver got infected and wandered off. Regardless, his usual good luck was back. He’d just found the transportation he needed to survive.

  Climbing to his feet, he fished out the folding knife, flicked it open and carefully walked up to the truck. As he approached the beeping sound grew louder, the source becoming apparent when he was close enough to see the driver’s door standing open. Smiling again, he trotted the rest of the way, hopped into the cab and closed the door, silencing the alert tone for keys having been left in the ignition. Roach twisted the key and the truck’s engine rumbled to life. A quick scan of the dash showed he had a nearly full tank of gas. Now. Where to go?

  The road on top of the levee was narrower than the truck was long, so there was no way to turn around and go back. That meant there was either a turn-around on ahead, or a way off the levee. Shifting into drive, Roach accelerated down the gravel road, keeping his speed low to prevent creating a dust plume that could be seen for miles in the flat terrain. As he drove, Roach kept an eye on the river below, hoping to spot the bitch. If she was in the water he didn’t know how he’d get to her, but he still wanted to feel her squirm under his hands as he violated her in every way imaginable.

  6

  Rachel came out of unconsciousness with a start. Face down in mud, she was cold, shivering, her body screaming in protest when she tried to roll over. Her head pounded and every inch of her ached, making her catch her breath and stop trying to move. Slowly, she gently started moving different parts, just a couple of inches, testing for injury. When everything seemed to move ok, even though it hurt to just wiggle a finger, Rachel steeled herself for the pain and rolled onto her back. She wanted to cry out, but bit down on her lip and stayed silent. With no idea if there were infected close by she wasn’t about to announce her presence.

  Lying there, Rachel managed to get her breathing under control and looked up at the night sky. Night? It had been early morning the last thing she could remember. What was the last thing she remembered? The train derailing. Fighting through the infected as they ran for the bridge. The terri
fying helicopter flight back to get the train. Driving the train to the bridge, then being attacked by Roach. Roach! Rachel involuntarily sat up, stifling a groan of pain as she wrapped her arms around her bruised body. Dealing with the pain she looked around frantically, fearful that she would see Roach standing there with a smile and a knife.

  Not seeing any immediate threats, Rachel climbed onto her knees and slowly raised her head up to survey her surroundings. She was kneeling on a narrow strip of mud, the waters of the Mississippi lapping against the bank only inches from her feet. The shoreline was on the outside edge of a sharp bend in the river and Rachel could only assume the current had washed her onto the bank. But where was she? How far downstream had the river taken her before mercifully depositing her in the mud? And which side of the river was she on? The sun wasn’t up to tell her east from west, then as Rachel sat there shivering she realized all she had to do was look at the river. As she faced it, it flowed from her left to right, which put her on the western bank. Thank God for that small mercy. She didn’t know how many infected were on the west side of the river, but she sure new how many were to the east.

  Dog! Where was Dog? His rescue of Rachel from Roach’s knife was what had knocked all of them off the train and into the water below. Where the hell was he? And why hadn’t John found her? Rachel felt herself slipping into despair and mentally chastised herself. She didn’t have time to feel sorry for herself or worry about why something hadn’t happened. Even if they weren’t right on top of her, there were likely infected in the area and she needed to start thinking and acting before she became a late night snack.

  Checking her holster, she breathed a sigh of relief to find her pistol still firmly secured to her body. She had learned a few things from living with John for the past few weeks and drew the weapon to make sure it hadn’t become fouled or blocked by mud and debris. Satisfied with the results, she ran her hands over her body and found three of the five spare pistol magazines were still with her.