A Time to Die Read online

  Her computer chirped, and incoming ‘high importance email’. The technology director at GNN had noticed her accessing their high priced asset and wanted to know what the fuck she was doing. Kathy ignored it as she chewed her thumbnail and thought furiously. A few minutes later her phone rang, also from GNN. She continued to ignore everything. At some point Marc wandered off. He was sitting at his desk on the other side of the room, shaking his head and mumbling something that sounded like a prayer.

  “God won’t help you now,” she said under her breath.

  Kathy accessed the new services and government databases, looking for something about this, anything at all.

  “Mexican diplomats are curiously silent,” one headline read. “Agents of US Customs & Border Patrol have stopped all train traffic through the Laredo port of entry with Mexico,” another announced. “Families complain to the State Department concerning inability to reach family members in Mexico,” was the most concerning headline. It felt like a news blackout to her and made Kathy furious. She couldn’t be the only reporter aware that a crazy war was underway in Mexico… could she?

  She had her phone in hand and the number to her bureau chief punched in, finger over the ‘SEND’ button when she stopped. What if there was a blackout? Maybe the CIA or FBI was halting all news stories for national security? Was this a plague and the people she saw attacking the army by hand, driven insane by some virus?

  Her office, an independent news agency in Dallas, had no real national sway. Once, long ago in its heyday, they’d had a seat in the White House press room. Sure, it was in the last row and the only time a president had called on their reporter for a question his name had been Carter and it had been a slow news day, but they’d been there. The death of print had hit her company hard.

  Kathy was a new breed of cyber-journalist, a specialist in eNews and ways of finding it. She got recordings of scenes from security cameras and found stories through personal blogs or ubiquitous live feeds, like the one she’d found in Mexico City. It was her specialty. This, though, this was world-shaking shit, and she was feeling way out of her depth.

  What if I call Terrence and he pulls the plug? She chewed her already non-existent thumbnail some more. They were small, but well enough known that if a news blackout were under way they would be on the list of agencies to contact. And after her live linking that feed, she knew she would be being watched.

  The phone in her hand rang and she jumped. Glancing down she saw showed “Terrence – Boss” as the calling party. “Fuck!” she cursed and dropped the device on her desk. Either GNN had called him, or the government was on to what she’d just seen. She turned to her computer for a moment before shaking her head and grabbing the little tablet out of her bag instead.

  A minute to make two copies of the Nightwing video feed, one on an SD card, the other to her Ironkey flash drive, and she plugged the ironkey into her tablet. She loaded the video feed, all seven gigabytes of it, through the tablet onto the service’s encrypted server. She typed a hurried story line; “Anarchy and Death on the Road from Mexico City”, and sent it live out onto the web.

  * * *

  The rail hub at Laredo Texas was completely full, something only seen during occasional peak cattle seasons. April was not one of those seasons. Tens of thousands of rail cars sat on the sidings, spread out like the arteries of a body, or the delta of a huge river. At the other end of the sidings engines sat idle, unmanned and without orders.

  Normally they would be taking railcars cleared through US Customs and dispatching them to huge trains heading north to the processing centers of Fort Worth and Alamogordo. Now the only sound was that of the untold thousands of heads of cattle rustling about on their cars. Their moos of complaint were growing ever louder as the meager fodder on the cars was long depleted, and no water was available in the ninety-plus degree heat. Already the smell of rotting carcasses was being carried in the still air.

  “What the hell is going on?” asked one controller from the top of a short tower overseeing the expansive yard. “Four days now, and nothing released by customs. This is going to turn into a scene from hell real quick.”

  “I don’t know,” his buddy said who was using a pair of field glasses to watch as a trio of CBP (Customs and Border Protection) white Chevy Suburbans moved through the yard. They’d been slowly working their way around for two days, obviously looking for something. “But if they don’t start releasing some of this mess, a Quarter Pounder is going to cost $40 next week!”

  Down in the yard amidst the suffering and dying cattle, one railcar was different. It contained a special compartment in the middle of the cargo area. Amidst the heavy steel rails and under all the mass of cattle, it had avoided detection on many crossings between Mexico and the United States. After sitting for days, the compartment finally opened and a hesitant head carefully looked out. The dark skinned man crawled from the compartment, the cows were all silent. They looked to be sick, many lying on the ground making strange sounds. He didn’t mind the manure and straw on the ground, it was a small cost to get his family out of the hell they’d left behind.

  He reached the slatted sides of the car and surveyed the outside before returning. “We are still in the rail yard,” he told his wife below in a hushed voice.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “I do not know. How is Emilia?”

  “No better.”

  The day before, their nine-year-old daughter had not awoken as the morning light came in through the cracks of their smuggling compartment. They’d examined her as best as possible with the tiny LED light they had, and aside from a tiny bite (probably from a mouse), there was no sign of injury. Now she was fevered and shaking. She occasionally mumbled something and shook her head from side to side. “Julio, she needs a doctor.”

  “I know,” he snapped, then apologized. He’d paid ten thousand US dollars for the use of the space, along with its cargo and a promise to see it through. All of that was meaningless now as his daughter suffered from some unknown ailment. He had to find someone, even if it meant being imprisoned. But what if they tried to send them back? Back to the desperate plight of those still in Mexico… and the monsters.

  “Come,” he said and held his hand out for his wife. They extracted themselves from the compartment. He left almost everything they owned behind. Clothes, valuables, even his family Bible. He had his wife carefully arrange their Emilia on the pack frame he carried on his back. On his wife’s was the other pack, with twenty kilograms of cocaine. The other price for their trip to Los Estados Unidos del Norte. Emilia thrashed and moaned for a second, then became quiet again.

  Night was again approaching as Julio used a small metal bar to reach between the slats of the cattle car and break the seal, allowing the door to slide open. The pair with their precious cargos slipped to the ground and made their way north. Security was haphazard at the moment and they found a gap in the chain link fence. Again with the help of the metal bar, Julio widened the gap and the pair managed to slip through and into America.

  Behind them, hours before dawn, the cattle in their abandoned car finally rose from their paralyzed state and looked around at their surroundings. One curiously examined the open smuggling compartment while others gazed out the door. It was over a meter to the ground, far too high for a normal cow to ever consider jumping. In a minute all forty of the animals had jumped out. Eleven sustained serious leg and hoof injuries in the process. None made any sound or cried out in pain.

  A short time later a CBP Suburban came around a line of rail cars and skidded to a halt in the gravel. Its spotlight swung around to illuminate the assembled mass of cows, which turned their heads as one to examine the new arrival. Customs officers climbed out of their truck and started jogging towards the cows. Now seeing the open car, they suspected they’d found what they were looking for. They were already in the midst of the cattle when the first one started biting them.

  Chapter 10

  Wednesday, April 18r />
  “We can control this.”

  “Why am I less than convinced?”

  “Intelligence out of Mexico has been shut down. That reporter, Kathy Clifford, is still at large.”

  “That’s the second feed she sent out. The conspiracy sites are going nuts with it.”

  “Yeah, but GNN panned it, even though the second feed was from their own God damned drone. Who the hell allowed them to penetrate a drone into Mexican airspace anyway?” No one in the circular room offered any ideas. At the two exits, heavily armed Secret Service agents stood guard, with even more outside

  “What about that unauthorized intel flight over Mexico we heard about?”

  “We’ve traced it to a pilot from the Riyadh base, one of Colonel Sommers’ pilots named Tobin. A lieutenant — nobody really. He got back into a plane for the sandbox before we could intercept him. We’ll close that box when he lands.”

  “Who the hell gave him authorization?” someone from the intelligence side of the group demanded.

  “No one,” the answer came right away, this time from the president’s side. “We suspect elements within the military.”

  “Don’t blame my staff,” the JCS representative snapped. “We’ve been playing ball all along!”

  The President’s man gave a dismissive gesture. He knew it wasn’t any of them.

  “Look,” chimed in the Surgeon General, the only actual cabinet official present, “we can control this,” he insisted again. “My people with the CDC assure me. We just have to keep a lid on it long enough to avoid a panic.”

  “Intel is suggesting another outbreak in Australia this time,” someone from that side of the room said. There was a buzz of angry conversation that the SG tried, and failed to quell.

  “We’re running out of time,” the President’s chief representative demanded. “Other nations are demanding to know what we know.”

  “Another two days?” the Surgeon General asked, almost sounding like a child wanting more ice cream.

  “That might be the most we can offer,” the Joint Chiefs man said and consulted a computer. “The wave from Mexico is going to hit the border in about forty hours.”

  * * *

  Andrew had just stepped off the bottom rung of the ladder to his fighter when someone grabbed his elbow. He pulled away and turned to see a pair of MPs standing there. “Lieutenant Tobin?” one demanded.

  “That’s what it says on my flight jacket.”

  “Please come with us, sir,” the younger of the two said. The both carried M9 pistols in holsters and the older man, a buck sergeant, had an M4 on a single point sling.

  “I formerly request your orders, Sergeant.” The man chewed his lip and reached into his pocket for a piece of paper. It was a properly signed arrest warrant for Lieutenant Andrew Tobin, 332nd Fighter Wing. The charge was AWOL and disobeying a direct order. He had his flight orders in his pocket, so he knew both charges were bogus. But it was a legitimate warrant. He’d have to deal with it from inside the stockade. “Very well,” he said and allowed the sergeant to take his holstered Sig.

  While they were cuffing him, he turned to the ground chief. A senior airman, who just so happened to be the same one that buttoned him into the ship two days ago. He caught the man’s eyes, looked at the photography pod hanging under the center of the fighter, and back at him before nodding. The airman winked and Andrew sighed. The crew chief would make sure that it made it to Sommers. It had to. The film was nothing short of spectacular. Some sort of plague was underway in Mexico, and it was heading for the United States as fast as legs could carry it.

  Three hours later he was still sitting in one of the airbase’s tiny cells. He’d been given a bottle of water a few degrees cooler than lava and a stale croissant to keep him company. He’d been nursing the water, but the croissant had been declared a battle casualty and left for dead. He was just eyeing the less than comfortable looking bunk when the door opened and a pair of guys in Army ACUs stepped in. He noticed right away that they had no unit insignias and both wore a sidearm in a detention area.

  “Military intelligence, eh?” he said as they closed the door behind them.

  “Where’s the photo pod, Lieutenant.”

  “I don’t know who you are or what you are talking about,” he replied and kept his seat. Their uniforms were bereft of rank as well. “Until I see some ID or at least proper decorum, you two can go fuck yourselves.”

  The two looked at each other and the one on the left shrugged. The one on the right stepped forward and put a forearm into Andrew’s face.

  He went over backwards from the blow, caught completely off guard, and hit the concrete floor head first. He was about to roll over the get to his feet when the other man’s knee landed on his neck, pinning him painfully to the floor. “We need your cooperation, Lieutenant Tobin.” He spat something that could never be considered cooperative and felt someone step on his artificial leg where the ankle would be. “One leg not enough for Uncle Sam?”

  The weight lifted. His attackers had obviously been taken aback. “We just want that intel, Lieutenant.”

  “Does it look like I have it?!”

  “We went and checked your plane after you landed—”

  “Fighter,” he corrected.

  They both glared at him for a moment then the one who’d done most of the talking nodded. Andrew smiled from the floor and they turned on their heels and left. An hour later he was informed that his commanding officer had been relieved of his command and that they were both to be transported Stateside for formal charges.

  * * *

  Vance had shuddered just to look at the computer. He’d stare at it for a few minutes then go get some coffee, then stare at it some more. He was sitting in the kitchen watching the quiet computer down the hall from his chair when Ann came home. She looked at him from the kitchen door and frowned. She’d stayed with him since he’d returned from the hospital in the hopes that her presence would bring him around. It hadn’t worked.

  She started dinner and went into the living room to watch the evening news. The lead story was an investigative report of disturbing video images coming out of Mexico. She stopped halfway back to the kitchen and spun around as the high-definition images came on of what the network was calling the ‘Highway of Death’ between Mexico City and Monterrey.

  The government was refusing to comment and the original feeds were no longer available, but a small amalgamating service had put the images up hours ago and they’d been copied by a thousand smaller web services before the alamgamating service could be taken off the air. She dropped to her knees in front of the TV as analysts tried to make sense of the crazed minutes of footage. Vance’s stories of the horrors he’d seen in Mexico City on the web seemed to out of the realm of the possible only days ago. Now here was proof that he wasn’t unhinged by some outlandish conspiracy.

  “Now do you understand?” Vance asked from the other room, obviously hearing the reports over the TV.

  “I think so,” she replied.

  “We better call Tim and Nicole, tell them to head this way.” She turned around and saw that most of her boyfriend had returned to her at last. “We might not have a lot of time.” She nodded and headed for the foyer to make the call. ”Oh, and Ann?”

  “Yes Vance?”

  “Will you marry me?”

  * * *

  Later that evening, just before they closed, a small chapel outside San Antonio that specialized in ‘quick weddings’ got a couple of visitors. The pastor, defrocked from the Roman Catholic Church for improper relationships with a nun whom he was now married to, had been ordained as a priest of a small Christian sect in Texas and now made his way performing marriages and unconventional religious services. He was in his office and just thinking of closing the door when the late model pickup pulled up to a stop in the parking lot.

  Always wary of the locals who sometimes didn’t appreciate the city slicker sort-of pastor, he checked to be sure his pistol was in
his pocket before going out into the chapel proper from his office. He found an older man, slightly overweight and balding, with a younger lady on his arm. She had that all too obvious glow of a pregnant woman on her face and was also obviously overjoyed.

  “Can you marry us quick like?”

  The pastor nodded. “If you wish, son. Why the hurry?”

  “Zombies are coming, Father!”

  “Okay then. Step on up here and fill out this form.”

  A half hour later Vance slung gravel out of the parking lot and set course for the discount big-box. There was just time for a quick stop before heading to the gun store.

  Chapter 11

  Thursday, April 19

  The Coast Guard cutter USS Boutwell (WHEC 719) was at station-keeping 200 meters from the modified oil platform. After responding to the SOS more than three days ago her crew had assisted in repairs to the facilities basic electrical and sea water desalinization system which were reportedly the results of pirates.

  “You understand, Dr. Breda, that the command authority in San Diego is going to be quite alarmed that a pirate attack happened so close to territorial waters.” Lieutenant Junior-Grade Grange consulted her notes as she waited for the doctor to reply, absentmindedly tucking a loose curl of hair under her cap.

  “If you ask me, they were narcotics traffickers.”

  “We have you down on record with that opinion.” The doctor nodded when Grange glanced up from her notes before continuing. “We’ve reviewed our radar logs and verified that a boat approximately the size of a Boston Whaler departed your facility about an hour before our arrival.”

  “What direction did it head?” the doctor asked.

  “Towards the mainland.”

  An hour later, Lieutenant Junior-Grade Grange departed with the last of the Coast Guard mechanical specialists. Dr. Breda never even met the ship’s commanding officer. She’d spoken once to him via radio, but only for a minute. He’d informed her that Lieutenant Grange would handle the investigation and offered his condolences for her lost personnel. He promised the government would follow up on the raid, likely with the FBI in short order. She had her doubts.