A Flock of Ill Omens (3 page)

1.
4. Matt Jacobs:

Miami, Florida

SNAFU Defined

“Fuck!”

Matt Jacobs wasn't a man to mince words. And he wasn't thrilled to work his ass off, only to have some numbnuts screw it up for him. His time in the military had taught him the definition of SNAFU–Situation normal: all fucked up–but he didn't have to like it. He'd made it to Miami four days ahead of schedule knowing he always had to make up for somebody else's bungle. He was ready to be out of the country for a while and there was a high-paying job to do. He'd be damned if he missed the opportunity.

The mission was in Venezuela, but they were flying into Trinidad and taking a boat from there. Or that had been the plan before the fucking National Air Safety Board had grounded everybody. Worse, the people who had means to bypass NASB were suddenly all MIA. He'd checked a map, wondering if it was possible to boat the whole way, but it was way too far and fall wasn't known for kind seas.

He barreled up I-75 in a formerly-military-issue Jeep because he hadn't gotten hold of command on the phone. He'd never seen Eagle Corp run in such a shoddy way, and by the time he took 10W in the Florida panhandle, he was fuming. In Matt's experience, mercenaries normally made the military look like a half-assed Boy Scout troop in efficiency, but every step of this had been botched. In his anger it barely registered how sparse the traffic was.

It took a few more hours of driving, but finally he pulled into the Eagle Corp headquarters in Pensacola, fit to spit. Not even the decency to return his fucking phone calls.

His Army fatigues were way too hot, even in November. A sultry breeze came off the Gulf but it didn't cool him. Sweating gave him yet another thing to be pissed about as he slammed his door and strode to the cinderblock building that could have been any warehouse, but instead housed one of the military's most frequently-used contractors.

Matt scanned his ID for access. When the door opened, not even the air conditioning could hold off the stink of something rotting inside.

“Jesus! What's wrong with you people? Who died?” he shouted, before covering his mouth with part of his sleeve and going in. He pulled out his weapon with his other hand, the silence giving him chills. Something was wrong.

Determining what took only as long as approaching the bullet-proof glass and peering into the reception area. The young man manning the booth had slid sideways off his chair. Matt figured, based on his unnatural position that he'd died and then fallen.

That was disconcerting enough, but the smell suggested it had been a few days and nobody had found him yet, which meant nobody had been here. He tightened his grip on his gun, even though logically the gun was the last thing that would help. Nobody finding this was huge. Catastrophic. At central control, somebody was supposed to be
in control
.

He let himself through the main entry into the line of offices and mission rooms. Three more people were lying dead in their offices on sofas or in chairs, suggesting they'd needed to sit or lie down. A lot of blinking phones suggested people had been trying to reach them. It crossed his mind that just being here was marking himself as a dead man, but there were no bullet wounds or cuts, or signs of fighting, or anything to suggest this was inflicted from an outsider. Maybe someone had leaked a noxious gas in here, but that didn't explain no one finding them.

He finally worked his way back to the central commander's office and found Strauss, dead like the others. Last time Matt had seen Strauss he'd been barking orders to a cadet, using sweeping arm movements and with spittle flying from his mouth. He had a temper and Matt couldn't say he liked him, but he'd always seemed so vital. When he'd died, he'd been poring over a list of soldiers, the only employees Eagle Corp had, and their last known location and status. In what Matt recognized as Strauss's jerky pencil marks, eighty percent were marked dead. The rest, himself included, had been far afield or in locations unknown.

Matt's first impulse was sabotage. Terrorism. He'd seen some headlines. This flu was killing people. But how could it kill this many soldiers? With no survivors to come do what someone
should
do when their colleagues died—call family, have bodies carted away, eliminate the damn confidential files?

Part of him wanted to be that person, the one who made the call and cleaned it all up. But he was too spooked. This seemed targeted, feasibly still contagious. Spending time here might be a death sentence and the last thing he wanted was to be another name on the list of deceased.

He bolted. He'd never be proud of it, but who knew what germs lingered? He regretted it later, not just from an honor perspective, but also from a security standpoint. He should have destroyed records from the secret files, contacted next-of-kin, and burned his colleagues, but his sense of self-preservation was stronger than that. He'd seen a few names of people with unknown status that he might be able to track down from the 'missing' list and knew of another mercenary team called The Kraken—former Navy Seals, for the most part. He would check in with them before making any rash decisions. Information was always the first line of defense.

As he sped out of the parking lot, Matt found a radio station with news, instead of
listening to the CDs he usually preferred. The flu was everywhere. He heard death rates around the thirty percent mark, which was a lot better than what he'd just seen, but still worse than any flu he'd ever known of. Was it even possible that was what this was?

The first buddy he tried, one who lived locally, didn't answer and the fortress he lived in was too much for Matt to bypass, so he backtracked to Panama City. He stopped at a Walgreen’s to buy latex gloves and face masks before he tried the second, fearing the worst. He and Dwayne Paxton had served their time in the Army together and remained friends for the ten years since. If Pax didn't answer, he knew where to find his parents and ex-wife, so he'd track him down one way or another.

The house was locked up. Since the ex was geographically closer and, as he understood it, not hostile, he decided to try there first.

“I was just going out there,” she said. “He was supposed to take Trevor this weekend.”

Pam was a pretty thing. Matt had been best man at their tiny wedding a decade ago, but she looked better with some age behind her—a few more curves and a lot more confidence. Didn't hurt that she seemed lower maintenance with her hair in an casual band instead of the big overwhelming 'do he remembered. Less make-up, too, though she still had taken an effort.

“Might wanna brace yourself,” Matt said.

She narrowed her eyes and Matt could see she assumed this was about a woman or a wild party. “Not like that. Worse.”

“Well, spit it out.” Her southern accent was the Florida 'only shows up with emotion' version. He wished he didn't find it hot. The timing was bad.

“Most of our unit in Pensacola has been wiped out. Dead.”

“Not you, though?”

Matt shook his head. “Haven't seen anybody in a month. I've been prepping for a mission that just fell through yesterday—meeting some guys in South America to get something done.” Even that was more detail than he normally would have given.

“So are you in danger, too?”

“I don't know. I need Pax–Dwayne–to find out. He was on the list of people they didn't know about at command.”

“He has leave until January. Spent all summer cleaning up some mess in Afghanistan. Trevor's been out there several times, spending time with his daddy. Dwayne swore he was here for months.”

“Well, let's go see, then,” Matt said.

Pam settled Trevor in at a neighbor's, with a friend and a lineup of video games. Then they drove to Dwayne's place in two cars, Pam with the key.

The place seemed more ominous now that Matt knew he'd be able to get inside. Finding dead colleagues was one thing. A dead friend would be another.

His feet felt like lead as they climbed to the porch. He took the keys from Pam to open the door and was greeted with a smell several times worse than headquarters had been. It wasn't unusually hot, but Matt guessed the time since Pax died was longer than what he'd found at headquarters.

“You don't need to come in for this,” he told Pam. She'd stood back for safety reasons because he'd suggested the place was booby-trapped, but short an explosion, she wasn't having any of it.

“Yes, I do. I was married to him for six years. He's the father of my son. I owe it to Trevor.”

Matt thrust the face mask he'd grabbed from his Jeep at her. “Cover your mouth. This may be that flu.”

“Flu? You're kidding, right? Wipe out an entire company?”

“Better than sixty men.”

“And you think it was the flu?” The disdain in her voice was clear, but Matt didn't back down.

“I don't know
what
it is, but if I let you and Trevor be exposed, whether it's an illness, a poison, or a bio-hazard, Pax is going to haunt me. Cover your mouth or I'm not letting you in.”

“You fucking asshole! I brought the key!”

Matt sighed. “And I thank you. For Trevor? Come on. Work with me.”

She rolled her eyes but went to her car and grabbed a bandanna to tie around her mouth, scowling as he adjusted it to make sure she was really covered.

Matt put the face mask on and the two of them ventured inside together. Pax was in the bathtub, head propped against the corner. Matt thought maybe he'd been trying to cool a fever because a thermometer was out on the counter. Whatever the case, he'd never managed. Matt picked it up, hoping to see what it had last read, but didn't believe it could have reached 106—that had to be faulty.

He pulled a latex glove from his pocket and used it to push down the lever in the tub. No reason to let the poor sucker bloat any more. Pam looked like she might be sick; she’d gone green at the gills. “Pam, I can take care of this.”

“Shouldn't we call... I don't know. Whoever?” She was working hard not to cry.

“You can try.” It was probably better if she had something to do.

She dialed and the two of them went outside and stood as she waited half an hour, her grief turning to anger, and then she was cut off.

“What the fuck!” she shouted.

“With the number of bodies I've seen today, they have to be swamped. Keep trying. This will give me some time to make sure there isn't anything people shouldn't see, but if you reach somebody, call me. If not, I'll handle it.”

“What about a burial?”

“Keep trying. Let his parents know. They can try, too. But Pam?” he said. “I'm starting to doubt anybody has time.”

“Then what do we do?”

“This is his land, right? And I'm sure he left it to Trevor. You keep trying, but if you don't get through, I'll find a pretty spot. I'll call you when it's time to say a few words—if you haven't gotten a hold of anybody by tomorrow night—sooner is better. I'll make sure the body is secure so Trevor isn't exposed to whatever this is—bomb the house so any contaminants are gone.”

“You'd do that?”

Matt touched her chin with his thumb. “Who was the best man at your wedding?”

“It didn't last long.”

“It's who he was. Wasn't your fault and he never thought it was. I promise I won't take anything out of here but work stuff, but I gotta get rid of that.”

They'd reached her car and she pulled the bandanna down. Sandy curls escaped her ponytail and she hugged him. “Thank you, Matt. You're a good man.”

“No. Never as good as Pax. But I cared. I can do this for him.”

And that wasn't a lie. There was no good reason to tell Pam he had a dozen other things to check out while he was there. Or that he had nowhere else to go. He'd planned to be out of the country for the next six months and had let his lease expire. This would work as a home base, at least for the next week or so.

Matt used a blanket to leverage Pax out of the bathtub, then wrapped him in that, followed by a plastic tarp sealed with duct tape. Finally, he put a nicer sheet around him—less tacky than the plastic, even if it wasn't a proper coffin. Finally, he set off a bug bomb in the house, just the store-bought variety, but the strong version—no living thing inside for four hours. It was probably overkill—bleach would do it. But he figured nothing would remain alive inside, including whatever bio-hazard this might be. Because that's what this had to be. Something like Anthrax would have thrown up warnings that would allow it to be contained and there would have been a lot of noise about it—emails and texts to avoid the facility until it was clear. This had to be natural—perhaps spread in an unnatural way—but there was exposure, then an incubation period that had made it so no one knew until they were sick.

While the bug bomb was blasting, Matt went for more normal supplies: food, and some basic hardware. He would do a thorough search; Pax probably had most of the stuff he would need, but who knew how long it would take him to find it? And at the moment, efficiency mattered. Something had killed almost his whole unit and he had to learn what because it was possible he might not be safe, either.

The hardware store he went to was beginning to look picked over—another sign things were bad everywhere—but Matt managed to get all the things he needed. Once he was supplied, he called Pam to see if she'd had any luck reaching a coroner or some other official.