Kuppers whips out my baton, catching the guy on his ankle and cracking the delicate bone, then very quickly chops a hand across the man’s throat. The man’s eyes bulge and he starts wheezing, trying to pull in a breath or make a sound. Kuppers takes his former position looking down at the rest of the men. “Anyone want to speak up? Or do I need to start cutting things?” He asks again making sure to keep his voice calm and emotionless.
The two men still conscious have murder in their eyes, instead of fear. Kuppers’ shoulders slump and he sighs. “Ok, I tried the nice way guys. I guess I need to do this, the not so nice way.” He hands the baton back to me and I take it, step back. I’m not sure I really want to see this.
“I spent a lot of time overseas boys, places that I can’t officially name, you see. But I met some really interesting people by being in these places. People who, let’s say have some very special talents at getting information from people. Sometimes they left the person a shell of themselves and begging to be killed at the end, instead of living like that. Well these nice guys taught me some of their art, for an art it is. You see, we start with nice things like pulling off nails. You know some hardy men can handle that, so we then move onto the next step, which is to remove fingers. Oh we don’t remove all of them, usually they left the pinkies. I asked why the pinkies once but they never answered me. After the fingers they like to cut the Achilles tendon down at the back of the foot by the ankle. You see, once that is cut, you can’t ever walk right again. So of course they usually leave the rest of the legs alone. Instead they move to the eyes, more to the point they cut off the eye lids, then goes the nose. At this point 90% of the people being asked questions, cave and answer them all, heck they’ll sell out their own grandma. Now for the real tough ones, well I’ll need a blow torch to cauterize all the blood and keep you alive. Just believe me when I say it’s a mess and most of the time kills the person before they can give away their secrets.”
He takes the Kabar and grabs the guy’s hands and moves the edge toward the man’s nail on his left ring finger. The man’s eyes grow huge and he squeaks something out looking at the other two, I can tell he is pleading them for help or to talk. The other two men finally break. Kuppers stands, comes back, hands me the Kabar, and winks at me. I keep my face emotionless and slide the Kabar back into its holster.
“Ok, so one at a time, boys.” He takes a small notepad from his breast pocket and starts writing their story down.
I slink away back toward where Doc is holding position.
“What are those lights shining over there?” I ask him. The lights are strong and come up from down below us.
“There’s a little compound like looking place down there. I wouldn’t worry about it yet. I’m sure Kuppers will let us know soon.” Doc spits a big wad of gum out of his mouth and into the darkness.
Just then Kuppers comes over. “Apache and Senshi are going to take care of those guys. Why don’t we move back to the Beast so we can inform them on the nice story those boys just gave me.” He looks at me and smiles.
Doc and I follow Kuppers back up the road and to the Beast. I can see they closed the rear hatch, I just hope Angel is in there safe. Kuppers make a motion and the rest of the team waiting at the Beast come and form a ring around him.
“So we have four guards back there armed with some pretty nice H&K MP5s and some other nice toys. I had to ask nicely but they finally told me their story. Seems they work for a private security group, called the Ridder Group. They have contracts with worldwide corporations and with some of the foreign governments out there also.
Brian interrupts. “I remember running into those guys in Afghanistan. They are pricks, worse than Blackwater. Rumors over there are that if you interrupted one of their ops they would light you up without even alerting you.”
“Yeah they are bad news. They hire only the worse, and the best part is they hire from any country. They don’t care if your Russian, Iranian, French, American or whatever. If you are good at killing and marauding, they’d hire you. Well it seems they are working for a private firm, which one? They didn’t know, and trust me I asked real nice, but honestly I think these guys are the lowest on the rung of soldiers, pretty much glorified security guards. The tier one teams must be somewhere else. They have a base that they moved into about the same time that the flu took over the East Coast. According to these guys they are not allowed in the buildings, they work out of an office in the cafeteria building. They do say that they send patrols out and round up healthy unaffected people as well as the infected. They bring them back here and hand them over to the people in the labs. The guards never see the infected or other people ever again. But they do say big Blackhawks show up twice a week and deliver supplies. The trash, in the form of big black plastic bags, are just tossed over the cliff into the ocean below. Another helicopter is scheduled to come in tomorrow, and the guards were notified that they didn’t need any more people rounded up tonight, so they have some down time. They figure there must be about 50 personnel down there in that makeshift base, that includes about 11 more guards.” He informed us.
“So what do we do? Should we find another place to move to?” Cupcake asks.
“What worries me is that they are taking in infected and non-infected and yet no one comes out of there. My suggestion is that we send in Apache and Senshi to do a little sneak and peak, information is key here, before we make any other decisions.” Vic points out.
“Do we all agree?” Kuppers asks.
We all nod yes, Kuppers clicks on his radio. “Bravo, have you taken care of that little problem?”
“Alpha, we took care of the problem.” Apache answers back.
“Bravo, listen, we need some more information on what’s going on down there. I want you two to do some sneak and peak. Doc, provide over watch and back them up.” Kuppers orders.
“Alpha, roger that. We will keep it low and slow. Be back with some gossip.” Apache radios back.
Cupcake looks around and then gets our attention. “We need to get the Beast under wraps or at least off the road. I feel naked out here.”
“No one wants to see you naked Cupcake. Ok let’s move down the road there and park where we found the guards.” Vic suggests.
“No good, that road is narrow and I don’t think I could turn the Beast around very easily down there. There is a hill to our left and a pretty big drop off on the other side.” Cupcake counters.
I stop and think for a bit. “Why don’t you back up the Beast and park her around the first bend? No one from the road will be able to see us, plus we will be able to boogie if we need to. Plus, we can support Bravo.”
“I can do that.” He climbs into the Beast as we move away to give him some room. He fires up the powerful diesel and turns her around. He slowly backs her up as though he does this a thousand times a day. Soon he is around the bend and we cannot see him anymore. Well that has been taken care of I think to myself.
We make our way to the beast and I give Cupcake a thumbs up. “That is some awesome driving my man.” He smiles, does a little exaggerated bow and shuts down the engines.
“Brian, set up guard at the head of the bend just off the road. Alert us if anyone comes looking. You will also be our first level in defense so be prepared.” Vic orders. Brian garbs his Zomgo bag, gives me a mock salute and disappears around the bend.
I climb into the back with Angel and we open some MREs and warm up our food. I knew she must be hungry, last time we ate, felt like yesterday. She has raviolis again and I chow down on some chili. But this time I find the plates Apache has secured under her seat and we eat cleanly and happily. Afterward I take out my dessert and give it over to her. She giggles and thanks me. While she devours that, I use some water to wash our plates, and stow them back so Apache wouldn’t kill me.
“We need to find you some real clothes kiddo. That dress doesn’t seem to be holding up to well. And if we have to run, those shoes, which are very pretty, will fall apart within minutes.” I point to her wardrobe as I talk.
“Yeah some pants and some running shoes would be nice.” She runs her hand down her dress trying to smooth the wrinkles out of it. “Uhm I need to use the restroom.” She asks with a red face full of embarrassment.”
“Oh yeah, hold on.” I open my Zomgo pack and root around till I find some toilet paper. I pull it out and hand it to her. I open the back of the Beast and she jumps out. We walk over to an area surrounded by boulders. I turn my back to her to give her some privacy.
A couple of minutes later I hear her come up on me. I reach into my pocket and take out some hand sanitizer. I turn to her and she hands me the left over toilet paper. I take it and put it in one of my vest pockets, squirt some sanitizer on her hands allowing her to clean them. We walk back together to the Beast and climb inside to relax and wait.
I look through some of the hatches and drawers in the Beast and find a pack of cards and a small sweater, that has the words SWAT emblazoned on the front. I give the sweater to Angel and she slips it on over her dress and rolls up the sleeves to gain access to her hands. We end up playing fish, crazy eights and my favorite, war, from when I was a kid. Two hours go by as we wait for bravo to return or report in.
The back door of the beast opens and Vic motions me to come out and follow him. “I’ll be right back Angel; I want you to stay here, got it?”
She sticks her tongue out at me and giggles. “Ok I’ll wait for you to come back so I can beat you some more at war.” I stick my tongue back at her and secure the Beast’s door.
I jog to catch up to Vic. We walk up to the full team minus Brian and Doc. Kuppers looks up at me and nods at my presence. “Team we have some decisions to make. I have Brian and Doc on the radio so they can hear us and chime in.” Kuppers looks to Apache and hands off the discussion to her.
“Senshi and I made it down to the facility unseen. We discovered 13 permanent buildings, mostly small looking cabins, but two others are much bigger. We gained access to one of the cabins and found it to be a bunk room holding enough beds to sleep 8. We checked them and found half occupied by what we think are scientists, we came to that conclusion after listening to a couple of conversations and reading through some notebooks. Unfortunately, we have no idea what it said, it seemed to be outlining some kind of bacteria, or biological, we can’t be sure though since neither of us have ever been exposed to that subject. We then made our way to the 2 larger buildings and gained access, these are being used as locker rooms and showers in the smaller of the two and the biggest is a cafeteria. We kept the big prefab tent in the middle for last.”
Apache pulled out her smart phone and passed it around to show pictures she had taken on her mission. “That place is scary, seems they are experimenting on the infected, on one picture you will see that they are doing dissections on them while they are still alive. You will also see that they are experimenting on the healthy also. From what I saw I have to say it looks like they are infecting the healthy in different ways. I actually saw them force feed dead flesh to a healthy young woman and inject fluid from an infected into a middle aged man. Senshi counted 20 healthy prisoners being held for their turn in the experimentation rooms. I gotta say it took a lot out of me to not just go in killing everyone, I know Senshi feels the same.”
“Thanks for the briefing, so now we need to decide what we should do. We could just pack up and move on, this isn’t our problem anymore, we are no longer police officers.” Vic explains.
“Bullshit, we made and oath to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves. All of us, whether we are paid or not, we have a duty. I say we go in there and kill everyone and release those poor people.” Apache answers him.
Kuppers looks at everyone and each person nods affirmative. Over the radio Brian and Doc throw in their agreements. “Ok, let’s start working on a plan. The first problem I see is what to do with the healthy people once we liberate them. We have a new mission and destination. We also have very tight resources, and none to share.”
“I have a great answer to all those questions. Call Captain Phillips from the 129
th
. Advise him of what we found and what we are planning to do. See if he can send some helicopters over to pick these people up. His job is to protect California citizens and he did offer to help.” I lay out.
“You know I keep saying it but I’m really happy we kept you around. So far you have done a good job pulling your own weight. Does everyone agree on Dan’s plan?” Kuppers looks around and sees everyone agreeing. “Alright, I’ll make the call.” The team gathers around the Beast going through their equipment and making sure they have what they need to do the job. Apache removes her M4 and lies it in the Beast along with the ammo in her pouches. She catches my inquisitive looks. “I’ve already been down there. All I need is a pistol, and one of your batons and lots of zip ties.” I hand her one of my batons and she opens a small door on the side of the Beast, reaches in and removes a bag of zip ties, and hands them out to everyone.
Kuppers comes walking back up with a smile on his face. “The Captain is pissed over what we found. He says he will fly in a small force of MPs to hold the area after we have liberated the captives. He will be on his way in 30 minutes with a flight time of fifteen. Listen close this is what I want to happen.” He opens another hatch on the Beast and removes a small white board and dry erase marker. He draws a section of small cabins, the 2 bigger buildings and the prefab tent. Our first objective needs to be the individual cabins, showers, and cafeteria, then we can move onto the prefab tent. Do not fire unless fired upon, I want these people trussed up and waiting for the MPs when they get here. After we have secured the captives just leave them where they are. You know how to handle the infected.”