V Plague (Book 11): Merciless Read online

  “Once. Had this new kid on his first rotation. We were out with a group of scientists, watching over them while they took samples from the ice. Well, it took them a while, and the kid got bored. Wandered away from the group to sneak a smoke. Climbed over a ridge and came face to face with one about the same size as that one out there.

  “He fell backwards. Tumbled down the slope. Probably all that saved his life. But the bear had seen and smelled him, and wanted some fresh meat, so here he came. Had to shoot him to save the kid. Felt bad about it for quite a while. The bear was just being a bear.”

  I nodded, exactly understanding his sentiment. We watched the bear as we smoked. Eventually, the animal wandered away, disappearing in the snowy environment as soon as he moved away from the lights. Cigarette finished, I crushed it out in the ashtray and looked around when the door clanged open.

  “Major,” Captain Dumas stuck his head in. “There are some questions. Could you join us, please?”

  I followed him to the cafeteria, feeling a little self-conscious as all eyes turned to me the instant I walked through the door. Resuming the same seat at the table, I patiently answered the assembled peoples’ questions as best I could. Unfortunately, most of my answers consisted of “I don’t know”. To their credit, they didn’t blame me for this.

  Finally, they ran out of things to ask. After a long stretch of silence, Captain Dumas cleared his throat. Everyone turned to look at him.

  “I believe it is our best option to take the Americans up on their offer,” he said. “Yes, there are many unknowns. However, if we stay here, we will most likely be on our own. I, for one, do not relish the idea of spending the rest of my life on the ice. Any objections?”

  I looked around at the faces as they thought about what Dumas had said. Movement caught my eye and I glanced at the door to see Skelling leaning against the jam, listening and watching. After nearly a minute of silence, Dumas nodded and got to his feet.

  “Very well, then. Get all of your people ready to move. One personal bag, small enough to be held in their lap. We don’t know the size of the aircraft, but even if it’s large, there will be concerns over fuel consumption. The less weight we bring, the better.”

  Everyone slowly began nodding, understanding the instructions. One by one, they stood and filed out of the room.

  “Warrant Officer,” Dumas said, calling Skelling over. “Get the men ready to move. One sidearm with a hundred rounds, and rifle with three hundred rounds each. No personal items. And have a squad check the generator for the fueling pumps and deicer. We don’t want to be wasting time when our ride gets here.”

  “Sir!” Skelling acknowledged the order and hurried out of the room.

  “I hope there’s a safe place for these people, Major.”

  “Captain, there’s no such thing as a safe place anymore. Just a safer place.”

  14

  “Admiral, Commander Detmer to see you,” the disembodied voice of one of Packard’s aides came out of the speaker on his desk phone.

  He tapped the screen on the tablet computer he was holding. A bookmark appeared on the text, a report on the devastation sweeping across Russia as a result of the massive attack by the Thor system. He was happy to have a reason to be distracted.

  All of Russia’s nuclear generating stations had been destroyed, releasing massive amounts of radiation into the atmosphere. There was no power, other than random, isolated pockets, anywhere in the country. Food distribution had already ceased. In the cities, domestic water no longer flowed through the pipes that delivered it to every home and business. Communications, other than a few specialized military units, had gone offline.

  At each target, ICBMs released their payloads of MX-489 nerve agent. Tens of thousands of affected people began raging through the population. Killing anything that moved. In the process, they spread the chemical compound that was on their skin, hair and clothing. Russia was quickly tearing itself apart from the inside.

  “Admiral,” the Commander announced his presence in the office.

  He worked for Naval Intelligence as a liaison with the Defense Intelligence Agency and the CIA.

  “Commander,” Packard acknowledged the man, rubbing his eyes as he leaned back in his chair. “I was just reviewing the damage to Russia.”

  “Still doesn’t compare with what they’ve done to the rest of the world, sir.”

  “I don’t disagree with you, Commander. Operation Merciless was tactically successful. We’ve denied them the majority of their capability to wage war. Unfortunately, it was necessary to decimate the civilian population to achieve this.”

  “Three hundred and nineteen million, sir,” the Commander said, still standing at rigid attention in front of the Admiral’s desk.

  “I’m very well aware of what the population was in America before they attacked, Commander,” Packard grumbled. “That does not ease my conscience. Not after ordering the deaths of millions of innocent civilians.”

  “Sir, if I may, that is exactly why every officer is glad to have you in command.”

  Packard looked up in surprise, meeting the younger man’s eyes for the first time. After a moment, he nodded and waved the man into a chair.

  “What do you have for me, Commander?”

  “Sir, I’ve been working with Seaman Simmons to use the imaging capabilities of the NSA satellites. Attempting to locate any remaining Russian subs. And I think I’ve found something you should know about. If you’ll bear with me, I’d like to walk you through the steps.”

  “Proceed.”

  “Well, sir. Those NSA birds are really quite amazing. Frankly, if I’d learned of their capabilities before the attacks I’d have been screaming bloody murder that they weren’t sharing.”

  “Commander, are you getting to the point anytime soon?”

  “Sorry, sir,” the man looked down, thankful the Admiral hadn’t taken his head off for not staying on topic.

  “What did you find, Commander?”

  Packard leaned forward, curious, resting his forearms on the desk. Letting the man off the hook.

  “That’s the funny thing, sir. I don’t know what I found.”

  “Explain,” the Admiral growled.

  “I found an offshore oil rig that appears to still be in operation. Fifty point two miles off the Texas coast. I only found it because it showed up like a sore thumb on a thermal scan of the area. But it’s not the rig, itself, that caught more than my passing attention.

  “There are nearly 1,000 manned and over 4,000 unmanned rigs in the Gulf. Many of the unmanned, and several of the manned are still showing signs of habitation or operation. It was only dumb luck that I found this one in the first place. We accidentally caught something on the far end of the EM spectrum.”

  The man paused and opened a manila file folder, extracted a glossy, eight by ten photo and handed it across to the Admiral. It was an image taken from orbit, comprised of shades of blue and grey. Except for a single hot spot in the middle with a cherry red ring surrounding it.

  “What’s the scale?” Packard asked, staring at the photo in his hand.

  “That ring has a diameter of forty miles, sir.”

  The Admiral looked up in surprise, then returned his attention to the image.

  “What is it?”

  “That, sir, is the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. I have no idea. I’ve run this by every expert I can find, and they’re as stumped as I am. I’ve looked through the databases that are still available to us, and cannot find even a veiled reference to anything like this. I attempted to identify the registered owner of the off-shore platform, but those records were held by the Department of Energy and are no longer available.”

  “Explain something to me, Commander. We’re the United States Navy. We routinely listen to, map, plot, chart and image every square foot of ocean on this planet. How is it we’ve never seen this before?”

  “I had the same thought, sir. So I started looking through archived imaging. T
his was taken from one of our aircraft tracking a Russian sub, six months ago.”

  He retrieved another photo from the file and passed it across. Packard placed it next to the first one, in the center of his desk, and looked back and forth between them. The platform was visible in both, a dark blob representing the sub showing in the second. The glowing ring was noticeably absent from the older image.

  “Is it in the water?”

  “No, sir,” the Commander handed over a thin stack of photos showing the same area of the ocean. “All different spectrums of light, including infrared. The water is surprisingly clear and in some of these we can see nearly all the way to the seabed. It’s definitely buried.”

  “New construction?” Packard tapped the photo that showed the ring.

  “The first two photos I showed you were taken just over six months apart, sir. Something that large couldn’t be constructed beneath the ocean floor in that amount of time, especially since much of that time has been post-attack.

  “Seaman Simmons explained to me that there are additional spectrums of electromagnetic energy that the NSA system is capable of capturing. Spectrums we’ve never been able to see before.

  “At my request, she demonstrated by limiting the satellite to only show what Navy surveillance was capable of recording. The ring disappeared. We were unable to see it. When she added in the NSA enhancements, it reappeared. That’s how we’ve never spotted it before. However, I’m sorry sir, I have no explanation for what it is.”

  Packard sat quietly for a few minutes, looking at the image. Picking up the photo, he leaned back in his chair and blew out a sigh. Finally, he placed it back on his desk and looked at the Commander.

  “We need to know what the hell this is,” he said. “What assets do we have in the area?”

  “None, sir. The Reagan was heavily damaged in the nuclear attack on the Bahamas.”

  “Talk to Captain Wayne. Tell him this is coming from me. I want a recon flight to check out that rig. He’ll make something work.”

  “There’s a large helipad on the rig. Large enough to take an Osprey if we have one available, sir.”

  Packard rocked back in his chair, thinking for a moment.

  “We’re too thin,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t want to risk the loss of another asset unless we’re certain there are survivors present. Survivors that wouldn’t pose a threat to the aircraft or crew.”

  “Yes, sir,” the man said, standing. “I’ll speak with the Captain right away and keep you informed.”

  15

  Several hours later I stood in the shelter of an equipment shed next to Alert’s primitive runway. The wind still howled, curling around the edges of the building and adding to my misery. I was cold. No, I was flat out, fucking cold! Colder than I’d ever been in my life.

  I’m not a cold weather guy. I grew up in the American southwest. Snow was something I saw on TV in cheesy Christmas movies. Hell, the first time I ever experienced temperatures below 20 degrees Fahrenheit was when the Army sent me to Germany.

  Screwed to the wall behind me was a thermometer. It read negative 26 degrees. I was in Canada, so of course it was Celsius, which didn’t translate well in my head. I didn’t know what that was in Fahrenheit, and didn’t really care. I didn’t need a number to know I was freezing my big, white ass off. If there were brass monkeys about, they wouldn’t have any balls.

  Stamping my feet, I shut down my internal bitching and looked around first one edge, then the other, of the steel shed. I was close to where the polar bear had been sniffing around. Skelling had succeeded in putting a scare into me with his story. I hadn’t survived everything and come this far to wind up coming out of the south end of a northbound bear. So, as we’d gone outside to meet the inbound plane, I’d volunteered to carry the Weatherby.

  The rifle was a beast. Easily twice as heavy as an M4, it had a long barrel with a good scope mounted on top. Bolt action. I wouldn’t be able to put a lot of rounds downrange in a hurry, but that wasn’t the point. The point was the impact energy of the huge bullets the thing fired. Whatever you hit, if you hit your target, is going to go down and stay down.

  Scattered around me were half a dozen men from the RCAF detachment, Captain Dumas and WO Skelling among them. A generator that powered the refueling pump and the deicing machine was already running, though I couldn’t hear it over the mournful sound created by the Arctic winds. That reminded me to take another look around. I couldn’t depend on my hearing to alert me to the presence of a bear.

  All was clear and I turned back to see Dumas walking towards me. He leaned forward, into the wind, as he trudged across the ice.

  “They’re on final approach,” he shouted to be heard, turning and pointing to the northeast.

  I looked where he indicated, unable to see anything. A moment later, the pilot activated his landing lights. Slowly they drew closer, appearing to be simply hanging in the sky above the wave tossed ocean.

  As suddenly as the lights had materialized, the outline of a large plane emerged from the blowing snow. I blinked in surprise to see what at first looked like a commercial jetliner. I’d expected a C-130, but as it bumped down onto the ice and approached, I saw the paint scheme and realized this was a Navy transport.

  Skelling ran over to where Dumas and I stood. Leaning close to his CO’s ear, he shouted over the roar of the jet’s thrust reversers.

  “We don’t have stairs or a ladder, sir. I’ll have one of the men bring the Hummer around. We’ll have to climb onto its roof to access the aircraft.”

  Dumas nodded as Skelling turned and grabbed one of the waiting men, holding his head close to deliver instructions. A moment later the man turned and ran for the large garage where we’d parked a few hours earlier.

  I understood the problem Skelling had identified. Remote outposts are normally resupplied by some sort of heavy lift, cargo plane. C-130s are almost ubiquitous, especially if the US or one of its allies is involved. A C-130 has a rear ramp that lowers to the ground for ease of loading and unloading. No air-stairs or ladders needed.

  This thing, I didn’t know the Navy designation, but it looked just like a Boeing 737. It had a passenger door near the front, and another behind the wing, that were both a good ten feet above the ground. Maybe the military personnel could have scrambled up a rope, but I doubted any of the scientists regularly practiced climbing.

  One of Dumas’ men stood in the middle of the runway. He held a large flashlight in each hand, long orange cones attached to each lens. They glowed brightly in the polar twilight as the jet slowly taxied to where he waited. Using the lights, he guided it to a stop next to the fueling point.

  Remembering what my job was, I took another look around the area as power lines and a fuel hose were dragged across the ice to the parked aircraft. Nothing was moving other than the ground crew. Turning back, I looked up as the door opened. A man I didn’t recognize, wearing US issue winter gear, looked out and waved. Dumas returned the wave.

  The man withdrew and a slighter figure stepped up to the edge. Long, brown hair whipped in the wind and my breath caught in my throat when I recognized her. Rachel! She was alive!

  Thrusting the Weatherby into Dumas’ arms, I hurried forward, removing the cold weather mask the Canadians had given me to protect my face. Rachel saw me before I made it to the plane. She turned and shouted to someone inside the aircraft, then dropped to a seat on the floor, scooted forward and jumped.

  Her feet went out from under her on the ice and she wound up on her ass. By the time I reached her, she was back on her feet and slammed into me, arms going around my neck like a vice. Neither of us said anything, just stood there holding each other until the Hummer arrived and the driver beeped the horn to get us to move. Holding her hand, I walked Rachel a safe distance away.

  “How?” I shouted to her.

  “We had engine trouble, so the pilot landed in Pensacola. While we were there fixing it, he got the call about you. We diverted.” />
  She smiled a bright smile, then wrapped her arms around me again and buried her face against my neck. I held her tightly, afraid at any moment I would wake up and discover this was all a dream.

  “Excuse me, Major.”

  I opened my eyes and looked at WO Skelling. He was standing a respectful distance away, a small smile on his face.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” he said. “But the pilot insists on speaking with you before allowing us to board.”

  “Let’s get out of the weather,” I said to Rachel, leading her to the Hummer which was now parked directly beneath the jet’s door.

  There was a short ladder attached to the rear of the vehicle for access to its roof. From there, it was an easy climb up into the aircraft. I sent Rachel first, following close behind. Coming through the door, I smiled when Irina stepped forward and hugged me.

  “Good to see you,” she said, a big smile on her face.

  I smiled and hugged her back, then looked at the pilot. He was an Air Force Captain and looked about as tired as I felt.

  “We’re evacuating the station personnel with us, Captain,” I said, before he had a chance to speak. “Fifty-six souls, half of them Canadian military.”

  “Yes, sir. That’s not a problem. We’ve got room.”

  “Then why the delay?”

  “Where do we go, sir?” He asked, a distressed expression on his face.

  Shit! That was a damn good question that I hadn’t even thought about. The Bahamas were gone. That left Hawaii. Or Australia.

  “Wherever it is, we’d better decide quickly.”

  I turned to see Captain Dumas standing in the door behind me.

  “Why?” I asked, fully expecting to hear that there were Russians on the way.

  “We only have enough deicer for one go. Were supposed to get more two supply runs ago, but…”

  The pilot’s eyes grew wide and he stepped forward.

  “He’s right, Major. In this weather, we’re going to ice fast. We’d better get moving.”

  “OK,” I said. “Do what you need to do. I’ll have a destination for you by the time we take off.”