A Time to Die Page 5

  The story from Mexico had been simmering for a few days. The news was treating the situation as a drug fueled attempt to pull off a coup, thereby making themselves the legitimate government and thus able to terminate the Americans’ war on drugs.

  “War on drugs,” Vance snorted as he followed the story, “more like a war on liberty and freedom.” He didn’t agree with some of his more radical Libertarian friends that all drugs should be legal. But he did agree that the drug war was being used as a straw man to assault patriotic Americans freedom.

  This particular story was a first-hand account of a man stuck in Matamoros, Mexico and trying to get back into the United States. The border crossing had been locked down and he was sending streaming video across through a hacked connection every few hours. A new video was being uploaded, and it was going viral in a big way. Over a million views in less than an hour. It took Vance three tries before he even got the page to load!

  At first it was just a POV shot from a crummy little hotel room as a man complained that the Mexican army was not allowing any of them to leave the building. Then shots could be heard outside, and the camera was carried out onto the room’s tiny balcony and aimed down to the street.

  Troops had established a checkpoint less than a block from the hotel. Two armored cars were parked nose to nose, effectively blocking the street. In addition, sand bags were piled to create a pair of improved firing positions. Machine guns were set up in each. Vance watched intently. This looked more like Beirut than Mexico!

  It was not readily apparent where the shots were coming from and the camera kept erratically pointing here and there trying to locate where the sounds were coming from. Then a group was captured in the view running towards the blockade. Shouted challenges were issued but the men and women showed no signs of slowing. The image was of poor quality and Vance couldn’t tell if they were attacking, or fleeing something. It mattered not to the troops, who opened fired at fifty yards.

  Vance jerked violently at the first shots – the chatter of an M-16 on three round burst. The bullets met flesh and bone with smacking impacts that even the tiny camera picked up. Two people went down, and the crowd staggered to a stop. Screams of pain and protest rose in the evening. He hadn’t realized the recording was shot at night until then. He didn’t understand any Spanish, but the word ‘No’ was yelled by the troops over and over again.

  Several knelt down to see to the wounded as the crowd continued to grow from behind, more and more people rushing into the street. Vance guessed there were more than a hundred in just ten seconds and still more came, pushing up on the others from behind and forcing them all to creep forward. The soldiers were getting nervous and fired into the air over the crowd’s heads this time. More screams of confusion, but whatever drove them this far had them more scared than the soldier’s guns.

  Then there came new screams. These were around the corner, behind the crowd, and it was like nothing Vance had ever heard. Visceral and primal guttural bellows that were barely human. A hellish grinding of rage and horrible, unspeakable need combined to make the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. The troops fell silent and the crowd roiled like a bucket of worms. Some kicked at locked doors, a few piled into alleyways jammed with overfull dumpsters. Another hideous scream sounded, and the crowd responded to the noise like a trigger, and exploded towards the troops.

  A few small arms spoke immediately and people fell, but only a few. The camera focused on the road block, the machine gunners were looking back at their commanding officer and screaming, their faces a mask of fear and confusion. More orders were made, and one machinegun finally began to roar to life. But the crowd had already reached them.

  “I don’t know what kind of riot this is,” the camera holder said, pulling back in shaky movements as the crowd enveloped the soldiers and their guns fell silent under screams. “Everything just went crazy a few days ago. I’ve been getting second and third-hand reports of riots all over Matamoros and other border cities. With the fighting in Mexico City, we think the legitimate government is hanging on by a thread. A friend thinks it’s Islamist fanatics, but there are no demands, and the Islamic hate sites are all silent. No one knows what to do, no one knows what the rioters want!” It was a plea for answers to the unanswerable.

  The camera focused outside again, at the checkpoint. Some of the soldiers were fighting with the rioters, but most of the civilians were just racing past them on down the avenue. The border crossing was only three miles in that direction and more shots could be heard from that way.

  The horrendous screams sounded again, this time by many more voices raised together. Vance turned the sound down a little: it was inhuman and difficult to listen to. Most of the crowd was past the troops now, who were trying to reorganize and treat their wounded. Vance was surprised to see the men all appeared alive and largely uninjured. A few guns were missing, and even one of the heavy machine guns had been carted off by the crowd. In fact, the mass of civilian wounded far outnumbered the military. They were once again organized enough that they were stopping the crowd. Using batons and tear gas grenades, the soldiers finally regained control.

  That scream, close by now, and the camera moved to the end of the block where the crowd had first appeared. One young woman staggered around the corner clasping an infant to her chest. Blood covered her left side and she was having trouble standing. No sooner did she round the corner than a pair of bloody hands followed her and grasped the infant. She screamed “No, por favor, no!” and tried to hold on. The child’s tiny cries reached the microphone, but only for a second as it was snatched away from her.

  “No!” she yelled again, and was tackled by a man. Vance watched, unable to look away as he suspected he was about to see a rape take place as the man tore at her clothes, exposing one breast and part of her wounded side. Instead the man fell to her and bit the exposed breast, tearing away a huge flap of bloody flesh!

  “Oh,” Vance choked, “oh God what?”

  The woman shrieked and tried to pull free, rolling under the man and pulling at the sidewalk. Vance could see her fingers nails tear away and leave bloody streaks on the cement. The man clawed again, and then bit. This time finding her neck from behind. Vance imagined he could hear the bone crunching as she spasmodically jerked and lay still.

  Two other men appeared, racing around the corner. They paused for half a second to observe the man and his grisly meal before racing up the street towards the stalled mob. They looked like a business man and a waiter, both dressed for work, only both were obviously injured and both obviously insane. Then they screamed, that mind wrecking sound from hell — in person this time. In a moment they fell upon the rear of the crowd, tearing into people with fingernails and teeth like… like… zombies?!

  “No fucking way,” Vance whispered, then looked around as if someone was witness to his insane thought. He was of course alone, and that bothered him too. Was this some sort of elaborate deception?! Was that possible? It would take a Hollywood special effects company a week to do this.

  “They’re… they’re…” the camera man stammered, looking for the words, “they’re eating people,” he almost whispered. The camera fell back to the corner once more where the woman’s killer was back on his feet, blood running down his chin as he chewed a mouthful of flesh and looked around with wild eyes. Vance found himself wishing he could see the look on the man’s face better, then instantly changed his mind. He didn’t think he could survive that look if he were to ever see it clearly. As if the very viewing of that face of malevolent evil would forever ruin a part of his psyche.

  From around the corner came another man, holding something small in his arms he was taking big ripping mouthfuls of flesh from it. Vance tried to comprehend what he was seeing, then recognized a tiny hand as another bite was taken, and he screamed himself this time.

  Vance slammed the lid closed on the laptop and stood with a shudder, backpedaling away from the computer desk, his feet caught on the desk ch
air and he crashed backwards to the floor, smashing his tailbone painfully and making his head slap hard against the linoleum tile. He took no notice, but crab-walked backwards to get as far away from that unspeakable abomination he’d just witnessed. He came up against the opposite wall, tears pouring down his face and shaking his head in utter disbelief. And that was how Ann found him an hour later, knees tucked up under his chin, rocking back and forth while shaking his head and saying “No,” over and over again.

  Chapter 7

  Sunday, April 15

  Wheels up 0645, the orders read. Andrew chewed a protein bar as he walked towards the flight line, the morning sun barely over the armored airbase hangars of Riyadh. A pair of Saudi F-15s sat nearby, their Hadji aircrews working on them under supervision of America Air Force technicians. The crew chief saluted to Andrew with a wrench and he returned it with his helmet. The mission bothered him, but he was back in the pilot seat, so who cares that he had to fly a camera run.

  He came around the end of the hangar and there was his bird, light shining off the raised cockpit and “Lt. Andrew “Switchblade” Tobin” newly stenciled on its side. Two Air Force personnel had lines hooked up to a large, flattened pod latched to the starboard inboard pylon which he immediately recognized as the camera unit. He was surprised to see a pair of air-to-air missiles on the wing tips as well as a trio of cluster bombs on the opposite pylon.

  “Morning, Lieutenant,” the crew chief saluted as he approached. The two techs looked up but didn’t stop their work.

  “Morning chief,” he returned the salute and then gestured with his head towards the camera pod. “Problem?”

  “No sir, they’re just updating the software.” Andrew nodded and began his walk around with the chief in tow. He grabbed the air-to-air missile and gave it a good tug to be sure it was properly attached.

  “Why the ordinance for a camera run?”

  “Standing orders for all sorties out of Riyadh,” the chief pointed out. “We had a couple recon flights get locked up by an Iranian Mig last month, so they changed the SOP.”

  “I see. And the clusters? I ain’t planning to be low enough to drop those.” He kept to the ‘official’ story. No need for the chief to know he was going to be airborne for about twenty hours.

  “Well, the camera pod is the newest model and weights out at nearly fifteen hundred, so we figure three 500 clusters would level it out. Couldn’t hurt, just in case, right?”

  Andrew eyed the man and wondered if the CO had let him in on the facts of the mission. There was no drop tank, so he doubted it. This was purely on the down-low. “Good enough, Chief,” he said and pulled on an elevator, checking to be sure nothing was loose. “This bird taken any damage?”

  “She lost an engine six months ago, but not combat related. Just a compressor failure. Other than that, she’s a virgin sir.”

  Andrew nodded again. The F/A-18D didn’t often get low enough to see action. He missed his F-35 already, especially if the Iranians were starting to feel their oats. He’d love the chance to match one-on-one against those MiGs.

  A few minutes later, the techs packed up their gear and Andrew finished his preflight. He signed off on the chief’s paperwork as the ground grew climbed down from the cockpit and one of them stabilized the bottom rung for him. He thanked the man, shouldered his flight bag, and stepped up with his good leg first.

  The chief himself climbed up after him and helped Andrew buckle in and set his survival pack in place so it would eject with him should the unthinkable happen. The man nodded at Andrew’s right leg. A few inches of dull titanium was visible there. “I can’t tell you how much I admire you guys who come back after something like that,” he said and patted him on the shoulder.

  “Can’t leave my friends to do all the hard work,” Andrew winked, “besides, I had a spare.”

  The chief chuckled and locked Andrew’s air supply in place. A couple of last minute checks and he patted him on the helmet. “Safe flight sir, say hello to the Lone Star for me.”

  The bastard did know! Andrew flashed him a thumbs up and waited for him to get clear. The ground safety crew flashed the thumbs up and he started the ignition sequence. As the glass cockpit came to life — he watched the starboard engine spin up and fall into normal operations ranges. A light went out indicating the ground crew had removed the external power. A man stood in front with crossed red batons, indicating he was still chocked. Once Andrew was certain everything was running normally, he cross-linked the starboard engine and started the port. It too came up flawlessly and he gave the thumbs up to the man out front.

  The crossed batons became two held straight up. The chocks were clear. Andrew released the brake and felt her start to roll. The man back at a slow walk, gesturing with the batons until Andrew was clear of the flight line, then pointed them both twice to the right. Andrew began his turn as the man saluted him, and he returned it in kind. He was on his own.

  “Riyadh Ground Control,” he called out and began relaying information.

  Ten minutes later, after waiting for a pair of C-130s to lumber in to the air, Andrew lined up and slid the throttles forward. A hundred thousand pounds of thrust smashed him into the seat as the fighter shot down the runway. He followed protocol and rolled at least twice as far as he needed to before gently lifting off and retracting his gear. He cleared the end of the outer marker at just over four hundred knots and climbing at a leisurely two thousand feet per minute. He sighed contently. This was where he belonged!

  By the time he’d been in the air for a half hour, the F/A-18D had reached 30,000 feet and was traveling two hundred and seventy-eight degrees magnetic at just under Mach 1. Andrew trimmed the speed through the computer to optimize fuel economy, double checked both engines performance, and broke out his tablet computer. The avionics computer said it would be six hours before he rendezvoused with the KC-135 tanker over the northern Atlantic Ocean.

  Chapter 8

  Monday, April 16

  “I’m fine, God damn it!” Vance bellowed at the nurse who was checking his vitals for the ninth time since that morning.

  “The doctor will make that determination, Mr. Cartwright.”

  Vance sighed and allowed her to take his temperature and scribble on a notepad before leaving him alone in the twilight lit hospital room. The truth was he felt anything but fine. He had almost no memory of how he had ended up in the hospital, of how Ann found him in a fetal position, Lexus sitting next to him whining like a puppy because daddy had taken the happy bus to la-la land.

  “Traumatic catatonia,” the doctors told him when he came around. Ann was almost catatonic with fear for him herself, and Vance didn’t blame her. They were still trying to come to grips with being pregnant, and he loses it over some video? He’d been lucky enough that the connection had timed out. He could hardly think about what he’d seen without feeling icy fingers crawling up his spine. He didn’t want to think about her seeing that video, especially with what was growing inside her. But think about it he did. Now that his mind had coped with the initial shock and his emotional state was stable (well, more stable), he was logically considering it.

  Could that have been a hoax? Without access to a computer and the hordes of expert friends on Facebook and other sources, there was no way to be sure. Did he think it was a hoax? Absolutely not. It would require a Hollywood special effects house days or weeks of work to do that, and it had all the hallmarks of a live stream.

  Lightning played across the San Antonio skyline and he turned his head to watch. A titanic struggle was developing in the heavens. He didn’t get any more sleep before morning when Ann showed up to get him.

  * * *

  The RHIB from the Coast Guard cutter U.S.S. Boutwell circled the oil platform once as the personnel on board tried to see what was going on inside. Lieutenant Junior-Grade Grange looked through her field glasses. She could see several windows were broken on the modified rig and dark smoke curled out from what appeared to be a burnt o
ut building the center. No other signs of life were apparent. Her black hair, held a carefully braided regulation tail back under the lid, threatened to come free from the winds slipstream.

  “Anything, ma’am?” asked the man to her left, a combat helmet on his head and headset mike under his chin.

  “Nothing, Boatswain.” She put the glasses back in their holder on the console. “How long has it been?”

  The man consulted a dispatch. “Coastal monitoring station at San Diego received the SOS seventy-seven hours ago. Sent only once, it did not recur. The nature of the mayday was… unusual.”

  Grange snorted. “Right, zombies. I think someone’s pulling our leg.” That had been her thought since she’d seen the dispatch, eight hours ago. The platform was just outside United States territorial waters. Details suggested that some sort of biomedical research was being conducted, of the type that would be illegal in the homeland. That tidbit hadn’t helped with her taking the mission seriously. Rightfully, it should be a naval ship here, but none were available. The old man had been offered the mission, under his discretion. They’d come down from Los Angeles and then west at twenty-seven knots. The log indicated it was the first time the Boutwell had left US territorial waters since she was handed over to the Coast Guard after the Navy had decommissioned her in 1979.

  “So what’s your take, Lieutenant?” the Boatswain asked. “Looks like something is up.”

  “It does at that,” she reluctantly agreed. But what, she wondered quietly.

  “Captain’s on the horn.” The Boatswain said as he cupped the headset to hear over the roar of the twin 150--horse outboards. “He says to stop wasting gas and board that thing.”

  Grange made a face but nodded none the less. Orders were orders. She had eight men, not including the Boatswain and his three men manning the longboat. Because they often interdicted drug runners, there was a twin mount .50 caliber machine gun in the center of the boat. A steely eyed chief sat the watch. Unlike coastal missions, it wasn’t loaded, even though two boxes of ammo sat close at hand. The other two crewmen were driver and assistant. Her eight men were all armed with .40 Smith & Wesson semi-auto handguns. Four of them carried M-16s, four Mossberg 12-gauge shotguns loaded with buckshot and the slings crowded with extra rounds. Standard boarding detail. Standard waste of time, she figured. Looked like someone went crazy and set off a bomb or started a fire, to her.