Authors: James Cook
Gabe was the only one with optics.
It was a Leupold hunting scope, the kind thousands of people owned before the Outbreak. The accessories Gabe used to mount it to his AK could have been scavenged from virtually anywhere—very plausible if we ran into an Alliance or ROC patrol. He peered through it at the rendezvous point, looking for our contacts.
“Don’t see anyone,” he said.
He put the rifle down, dug around in his pack, and came out with an infrared scope. If the wrong people found that one, plausibility would no longer be a problem. Who could shoot fastest, however, would be.
Gabe peered through it for several long minutes. I sat and waited with Great Hawk and Hicks. Bugs swarmed around us, buzzed in our faces, and tried to climb in our ears. Mosquitoes had already raised several bumps on my neck and hands. Oddly, the normally stoic Great Hawk seemed the most irritated. He slapped, and gesticulated, and muttered something about missing the goddamn desert. I would have laughed if I was not sincerely worried he might cut my throat for doing so.
“Got ‘em,” Gabe said. “They’re under a tarp near the waterline.”
“Where?” Hicks asked.
Gabe pointed. “See that clearing just south of where the river starts bending east?”
“Yep.”
“The treeline just north of it. Looks like they’re waiting for us.”
“Just to be safe,” I said, “why don’t we swing around and come up on them from behind. If they spook, we have the pre-arranged code word.”
“Just thinking the same thing.”
It took us most of an hour. The ground got softer and squishier the further down we hiked. There were fewer trees and more undergrowth, both a good thing and a bad thing. I had a feeling we were standing in a flood plain that had not flooded in a few months, and hoped it was not raining up north. If it did, things could get bad in a hurry.
We got to within fifty yards before Gabe held up a fist. He motioned to Great Hawk and pointed in front of him. The Apache nodded and went ahead. I tried to follow his progress, but he was too good. In seconds, he was just another shadow among the trees and bushes. A few minutes later, movement caught my eye. I couldn’t hear it, but I had a feeling Great Hawk had just made contact. If he had, it meant he was looking at whoever was out there through the aperture of a gun sight.
There was a little more movement, but no gunshots rang out. So far, so good. A couple of minutes later, Great Hawk emerged from the undergrowth.
“It is them,” he said.
“Great,” Gabriel replied. “Let’s get the fuck out of here. I’m starving.”
We approached and gave the password. The voices ahead of us answered with the correct response and emerged from cover. I could not tell much about their appearance. One was a little taller than me, and the other was around five-foot eight. Both wore ghillie suits and NVGs, their faces painted so dark they disappeared beneath their hoods.
“Come on,” the shorter one said. “Give us a hand.”
He led us to a large lump a few yards away and pulled aside a few tarps to reveal a black boat. It was long, more than long enough for the six of us to fit comfortably, and had low bulkheads and a fiberglass hull. There was a blanket-wrapped bundle in the middle I assumed contained oars. At least I hoped it did, since there was no outboard motor.
We helped the two special ops guys drag the boat out of the woods, down to a narrow strip of muddy riverbank, and climbed in. Gabe stayed out to push the stern until we were afloat, then hopped in. One of the men in ghillie suits unwrapped the bundles and handed out oars.
“Head straight for the opposite shore,” he said. The rest of us acknowledged and began paddling.
Rivers are deceptive, as are lakes and any kind of flat water in general. You look across to the opposite shore and it does not seem very far away. You tell yourself you could probably swim it. If you are smart, you do not try. It is always farther than it looks.
We paddled and paddled, but the other shore never seemed to get any closer. A few times, we had to make course corrections. The current beneath us was strong, but not too swift. I figured we must be on one of the wider parts of the river that could be over half a mile across. If I remembered correctly, there were places where it was a full mile or more. I hoped we were not on one of them.
I looked behind me after what felt like forever, and where we had left seemed equidistant to where we were going. A few minutes later, I thought the trees on the bank ahead looked taller. The more we paddled, the taller they got. At long last, we finally felt the hull bump against the muddy bank.
We jumped out into ankle deep water. There was a layer of sediment beneath me, but it was mercifully shallow. It only sucked at my boots a little until we finally hauled the boat ashore.
“Help us hide it,” said the same guy who had spoken earlier. I figured he must be in charge. We dragged the boat well behind the treeline, then covered it with camouflage tarps. That done, the short guy addressed us again.
“Follow me,” he said.
We went.
*****
The base of operations was a two-story house built far back from a winding country road. The driveway was white gravel and must have been over half a mile long. The windows were dark, the paint peeled, and the wide front porch had begun to sag in places. To me, it looked like the Ritz Carlton.
“We got nothing going on tonight,” the short guy said. “We’ll get you settled in and introduce you to everybody. Don’t worry about standing watch tonight, we got it covered.”
I thought I detected a trace of California in his speech. The taller one had yet to say anything. Up close, I noticed he had broad shoulders and looked to be about Great Hawk’s size. Not a small man.
From the outside, it looked like there was no light in the house. But once we were through the door, I saw someone had nailed thick black blankets over the doors and windows. I had to push one out of the way to get inside.
The front door opened into a living room. The living room contained folding tables littered with guns, packs, ammunition canisters, LAW rockets, and a radio and satellite array. There were several plastic olive-drab crates stacked along one wall. The room was dimly illuminated by a couple of low-banked propane lanterns that did not quite reach the blackness to our left. If the island counter in that direction was any indication, I was looking at the kitchen.
I saw no furniture aside from a few green camping stools and some lawn chairs. We stood on dingy yellow carpeting that had probably been white a few years ago, but now it was covered in muddy boot prints, dirt, leaves, and other detritus. There was a large bloodstain to my right by the window and rusty brown spatter on the walls. I breathed in through my nose. Yep. Someone died in here. The place smelled faintly of death and strongly of mildew. We were the only people in the room.
“Where is everybody?” I asked.
“Outside,” Short Guy said. “They’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“What are they doing?”
“Watching.”
I walked to the stairs and peered upward into darkness. “Yeah. Sure.”
“Take a lantern and head upstairs,” he said. “Second door on your right. The bedrooms are pretty big, so you’ll have plenty of space for your bedrolls.”
The two men pulled back the hoods of their ghillie suits and began stripping them off. The first thing that struck me was how young they were. The shorter one was the older of the two, and I would have been shocked if he was a day over twenty-five. Short guy had a medium build, brown hair and eyes, and a full, dark beard. The face was square and the eyes held a striking combination of strength and intelligence.
The taller one was blond, blue eyed, longish hair and beard like his counterpart, and had a distinctly Nordic look to him. Where the short one’s expression was thoughtful and curious, the big one’s was insolent and cocky. I sensed the potential for trouble there.
“I’m Anderson,” Short Guy said. “He’s Bjornson.”
“Nice to meet you,” I said. “Eric Riordan.”
Anderson nodded politely. Bjornson snorted.
“Sergeant Caleb Hicks, First Reconnaissance Expeditionary.”
“Heard of you guys,” Anderson said. “New unit. Been through some shit.”
“Indeed we have.”
“Staff Sergeant Gabriel Garrett. Marines.”
Both men nodded. Bjornson seemed less scornful of Gabe.
“Chief Petty Officer Lincoln Great Hawk.”
“Great Hawk?” Bjornson said. “You Navajo?”
“
Mashgalende
. Or Apache, for the ignorant.”
“I’ve heard of you. You’re a SEAL.”
“Not anymore.”
Anderson said, “I’ve heard of you too. Good to have you on the team.”
“I did not come to join your team.” Great Hawk dropped his pack and removed a green metal tube from one of the pockets. He handed it to Anderson. “I came to lead it.”
I had known this was coming, but had not thought much of it. From the look on Anderson’s face, it was not welcome news.
“I wasn’t told about this,” Anderson said.
“I am telling you now. Read the orders. They are from General Jacobs himself.”
Anderson unscrewed one side of the tube and pulled out a rolled sheaf of papers. There were three pages. He read them all carefully. When he was finished, he took a butane lighter from a vest pocket, carried the papers over to the fireplace, and burned them.
“A little dramatic, don’t you think?” I said.
“It is procedure,” Great Hawk said.
“Oh.”
Bjornson snorted again and pointed at me. “Who the fuck is this guy? He a spook or somethin’?”
Southern accent. Deep South. I could practically smell the kudzu and humidity.
“He is a civilian contractor,” Great Hawk said. “As for who he is, he gave you his name. And, technically, he outranks you. So play nice.”
“I don’t answer to fuckin’ civilians.”
“I am a civilian. As is Mister Garrett. So yes, you do answer to fucking civilians.”
Bjornson clamped his mouth shut.
“To clarify,” Anderson said, “It’s Captain William Anderson. Loudmouth over there is Sergeant Hans Bjornson. He’s annoying, but he does his job.”
“Very Icelandic name you got there,” I said. “First generation American, I’m guessing?” Bjornson did not answer, and did not look amused.
A strange pattern of knocks sounded at the door. Anderson walked over and knocked back. The door opened and four more men in ghillie suits filed in.
“LaGrange and Stewart take the watch?” Anderson asked one of them.
“Yes sir,” came the reply.
The four men took off their ghillie suits. There was a round of introductions. May, Liddell, McGee, and Taylor. All of various ranks that meant little to me and did not seem to make much difference to the spec-ops guys either. Anderson appeared to be the only one who warranted a nod to the rank system. Taylor asked me if I was a technical consultant. I told him I was not. He asked if I was an intelligence operative. I said I could tell him, but I would have to kill him. He did not think this was funny.
The four men would have been tough to tell apart in a police lineup. Between the camouflage and the face paint, they all looked the same. Except for May, whose dark brown skin and shiny bald head set him apart. They were friendly to me in a reserved way, and respectful to the other three.
Gabe once told me military guys can spot one another in a crowd, and most can tell if someone has never served. Something about a tension in the shoulders, a straightness to the posture, a certain look in the eyes. I don’t know anything about it, but the men of Task Force Falcon could tell immediately I was not one of them.
Going to have to prove yourself, Riordan.
“It has been a long day,” Great Hawk said, indicating Gabe, Hicks and me. “This will probably be our last chance for a full night’s sleep for the next couple of weeks. We should take advantage of it.”
We raised no argument. Great Hawk said he would give a briefing at 0900 hours. He wanted everyone there. Anderson said he would make it happen, and we all dispersed to our rooms.
Anderson had not been lying when he said the bedrooms were large. I had seen apartments smaller than ours. And like the downstairs area, there was no furniture. I wondered what had happened to it.
As I lay down in my bedroll, I thought I would have trouble sleeping. I still felt amped up from fighting the infected earlier. Turned out I was wrong. I closed my eyes, and roughly four seconds later, a hand grabbed my shoulder and shook it. When I opened my eyes, expecting to see darkness, I was greeted by dim light filtering through the blanket over the window. The hand belonged to Hicks.
“Rise and shine, amigo. It’s 0830. Just enough time to get ready for the briefing.”
“I feel like I just fell asleep.”
“Yeah, that happens sometimes. See you down there.”
As I sat up stiffly, body sore from the previous day’s exertions, I began to wonder if I had made a mistake coming here. Then I thought of Allison, and my baby, and I stood up and got moving.