Cannibal Reign (41 page)

A second later she came back out screaming hysterically. The screams seemed to carry for miles across the barren snowscape.

“Somebody shut that bitch up!” Ulrich hissed.

“Easy,” Forrest said, watching Price running toward her through the snow.

Lynette threw herself into his arms and stood blubbering into his shoulder. After he calmed her down, he took a look inside the Porta-John, then walked her back to the snowcat. He came over to tell Forrest and the others that there was a woman’s head in the frozen slop at the bottom of the toilet.

“How’s
your
head?” Forrest asked, taking a drag from the cigarette and pointing at the goose egg on Price’s forehead.

“I’ll live,” he said. “I’m sorry Lynette’s been such a pain.”

“She hasn’t been a pain for any of us,” Forrest said. “She keeps it interesting.”

Price let out a sardonic chuckle and made his way through the snow back to the snowcat where his wife sat trembling in Taylor’s arms.

Forrest got the map out and took a bearing with a compass. From this point they would no longer be following the interstate. The snow was deep enough for them to drive straight overland toward San Diego, which would save them a great deal of time and mileage as they crossed southern Utah. Forrest also hoped it would decrease their chances of being ambushed by the type of people who chopped off women’s heads and dumped them into Porta-Johns.

It had grown dark again when they reached the Nevada border, where it was time to make a decision: Cross the Hoover Dam or keep heading south to skirt around it?

“I don’t think we want any part of that pass,” Marty warned. “Suppose the dam’s still operationa—”

“The crews would have split ages ago,” Ulrich said, almost dismissing him.

“Yeah, but suppose somebody’s figured out how to run the place? We’re talking about an endless source of heat for that facility, a good place for an army of cannibals to make their home. Tell ’em, Shannon.”

“He’s got a point,” Emory said. “It’s a safe bet that some military unit took it over early on.”

“And what do you suppose they’re doing for food two years into a global famine?” Ulrich asked.

“I don’t know,” she snapped. “Maybe they’re getting fat off the people who are too fuckin’ stupid to stay away!”

Forrest laughed, holding his red light over the map where he crouched in the snow at their feet, tracing his finger southward. “I don’t know what they’d be eating, and I’ve got no interest in finding out. We’ll take your advice and cross the river farther down . . . closer to Needles.”

By first light they were crossing into California, and the Tucker began to have engine trouble again, finally stalling completely and refusing to restart.

“I don’t know what the hell it is,” Kane said after trying for half an hour to get the engine running. “Damn thing’s brand new. If I had to guess, I’d say there’s ice in the fuel line. It can’t be much over five or six degrees out here today.”

“Do you recommend we leave it?” Forrest asked in the middle of playing fetch with Laddie. “Or do you think it’s worth trying to fix?”

“If I’m wrong about it being ice in the line, we could spend another two or three hours and have nothing to show for it.”

“Then screw it,” Forrest said, wrestling the stick away from his dog. “Pack everybody into the Bombardiers and let’s get the hell outta here.”

By the time it was dark they had reached the now deserted U.S. Marine Corps training grounds north of Twenty-nine Palms, where Forrest brought them to a halt.

“Okay,” he announced. “We’re three hours from Oceanside, where the USS
Boxer
is supposed to be anchored just out of sight from the shore.”

“We goin’ in tonight or waitin’ for first light?” Kane asked.

“I’m open to suggestions,” Forrest said, having already made up his mind to press on.

“I think daylight only increases our chances of being spotted,” Emory said. “We should keep taking advantage of our NVDs.”

“That’s where I come out too,” Sullivan said, a glance around telling him that everyone else felt the same.

“Who needs Benzedrine?” Forrest asked.

Everyone needed it, so he dumped three capsules into everyone’s hand.

“Only one at a time,” he reminded them. “The other two are for emergencies only. If all goes well, you’ll be aboard ship long before you ever need them.”

Then he climbed aboard the first cat with Dr. West.

“Okay, ladies, I want you all to listen carefully and not make a sound,” Forrest said, taking one of the titanium vials from his pocket and holding it up for them all to see in the light of the cab. “I’m not going to spell out its purpose for obvious reasons, but there is one NASA approved cyanide capsule inside each one of these vials. Every mom gets one for herself and one for each of her kids. You will keep them in your pants pockets, and you will not take them out unless there’s an emergency. Is that understood?”

The mothers nodded with fearful looks in their eyes, but said nothing for fear of upsetting the children.

“What is that for, Mommy?” one the little girls asked as Dr. West was doling out the vials.

“It’s astronaut medicine, honey. In case we get exposed to some really bad germs.”

Forrest left and gave the same presentation to the mothers aboard the second snowcat, and then they were off.

No one realized that it was Christmas Eve.

Sixty-Five

“C
aptain to the bridge. Captain to the bridge.”

Captain Bisping trotted up the ladder and onto the bridge less than a minute later. “What do you have, Mr. O’Leary?”

“
Algonquin
reports a Chinese sub coming to periscope depth ten miles off the port bow, sir.”

“Jesus Christ!” Bisping said, stepping to the far window for a look. “Make sure this ship is blacked completely out. How did a sub get so goddamn close without
Algonquin
hearing it?”

“It’s a Song Class, sir. Diesel-electric.”

“Shit,” Bisping said in disgust.

“Bridge, Radar,” came the voice of the radar operator. “Periscope out of the water ten miles off the port bow. She’s not moving, sir.”

“Duncan, I want a pair of Sea Kings armed and in the air yesterday—and without lights.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Mr. Brooks, find out if
Algonquin
is disposed to destroy that submarine. I can’t see her in this ink.”

“Sir,
Algonquin
advises she has loaded war-shot into her tubes, but she’s not at optimum angle for launch. She’s asking if you want her to come about.”

“Negative!” Bisping said. “I don’t want anybody doing anything to tip them off.
Algonquin
isn’t to even flood her tubes.”

“Aye, sir . . .
Algonquin
advises she is standing by.”

“We’re a sitting duck,” Bisping muttered. “Be sure that
Algonquin
advises us the second that sub moves or opens its outer tube doors.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Duncan, quietly spread the word that I want the crew ready to abandon ship,” Bisping ordered.

“Aye, Skipper.”

“We can’t even run the engines up to full power without them hearing us,” Bisping grumbled. He took the phone from the wall and called down to the engine room.

“Chief, it’s the captain. Listen, there’s a Chinese electric resting at periscope depth ten miles off our port bow. She’s got us dead-nuts with both bow anchors on the bottom. We can’t even slip the chains without tipping them off. I want you to do everything you can down there without making any goddamn noise so you’ll be ready to get those engines up and roaring in full reverse the second I give you the word. Understood?”

“I’ll have her ready to pull a hole shot, Captain.”

“That’s what I wanted to hear, Chief.” Bisping hung up the phone and grabbed the one next to it. “Radar, I want to know if that periscope moves even an inch. Understood? . . . Good.”

He went back to the window, making doubly sure no was smoking down on the flight deck.

“Captain, both Sea Kings report ready for takeoff.”

“Get them into air.”

“Captain!
Algonquin
reports the submarine is blowing ballast and coming to the surface! . . . And she’s opening her outer tube doors!”

“Stay those helicopters!” Bisping ordered. “That sub captain so much as hears a rotor blade and he’ll launch.”

Bisping stood trying to figure a way out of the mess. We can kill them, he thought to himself, but not before they’ve killed us.

“Maybe they don’t want to fight,” O’Leary said. “They’ve had plenty of opportunity to fire.”

“After what we did to their destroyers? I find that very hard to believe.”

Ensign Allister Miller cleared his throat. “I don’t think she knows we’re here, sir.”

Bisping turned to him in the red dim. “Explain yourself, Mr. Miller.”

“Well, sir, we’ve been resting quietly at anchor all day,” Miller replied. “Only
Algonquin’
s had her boilers up to steam, so she’s the one the bastards are likely homing in on. They’re probably hoping she’ll lead them to us in the dark. And they can’t go on active sonar without tipping their hand any more than we can power up or launch our choppers without tipping ours.”

“Which is why they’ve come to the surface,” Bisping said. “To use their eyes and ears. Very good, Mr. Miller. You’re a lieutenant jg now. If we get out of this without losing the ship, I’ll promote you to first.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Duncan, get Commander Reese up here on the double.”

“Aye, sir.”

Reese was the commander of the ten-man SEAL team aboard the
Boxer
. He was a short, hard-bodied sailor who had been in the Navy since John Paul Jones was a baby, and he was known for getting the job done under very sticky circumstances.

He stepped onto the bridge, announcing: “Commander Reese reporting as ordered, Captain.”

“Mr. Reese, has your team ever rehearsed the taking of a Chinese submarine resting quietly on the surface?”

A grin spread across the commander’s face. “Not exactly, sir. Though similar scenarios have come up in conversation once or twice.”

“So you have some ideas on how such a feat of arms might be accomplished?”

“Oh, I’ve got some very definite ideas, Captain. How close is she?”

“Ten miles at the moment, but I expect that to change as soon as this captain I’m up against begins to grow some balls.”

“If their hatch is open, Captain, I guarantee we’ll take the con. What I cannot guarantee is taking it before they fire their torpedoes.”

“What do you need?”

“We’ve got everything we need in our kit. We can power right out to the boat below the surface on electric motors.”

“This kind of darkness won’t be a problem?”

“For the Chinese, yes. Us, no. All we’ll need from
Boxer
is a comm link to find out whether the sub is moving. I’ll break the surface every ten minutes to check in on that.”

“How soon can you be in the water?”

“From this moment? Less than twenty.”

“How long to the sub?”

“If she stays right where she is, an hour.”

“Let me know when you’re ready to get wet, Commander.”

“Aye aye, Skipper.”

Bisping noticed the concern on Commander O’Leary’s face. “Something on your mind, Duncan?”

“No, sir.”

“If we’re torpedoed, Duncan. They’re going into the water anyhow, only
without
their wet suits.”

“Aye, sir.”

F
orty minutes later Commander Reese carefully broke the surface of the water in total blackness to check in with the
Boxer
about the position of the Chinese submarine.

“Be advised,
Aqualung
, the target has closed to within five miles and is sitting still once again.”

“Clear,” Reese murmured, raising his infrared scope to see that the sub now lay only a couple of hundred yards ahead of them. “I have visual.”

He then slipped silently back beneath the water.

Below the surface, neither Reese nor any of his men were able to see anything that wasn’t lighted or glowing, and with the murk of ash and sediment now spoiling the seas, they weren’t even able to see that beyond ten feet or so.

He wrote a short message on a diving board in fluorescent chalk telling his men that the target now lay only a couple hundred yards ahead of them. He then wrote in a kind of shorthand that they would motor past the sub fifty yards off the port side, then circle around to approach her from the stern.

Sixty-Six

A
bout the same time that Commander Reese and his SEAL team were first getting wet, Forrest and his flock were turning down a side street in the outskirts of Oceanside. They were still running without lights to avoid being spotted as they drew closer to the shore, all of the fighting men wearing NVDs. The snow was only inches deep in Southern California, but the snowcats ran equally well on dry land.

The women in the lead transport began to notice a dim glow illuminating the street ahead of them.

“What’s that light?” someone in the lead vehicle said as they rounded a corner.

“What light?” Forrest answered, reaching to lift his night vision device so he could see what they were talking about.

A Molotov cocktail exploded on the roof of the snowcat. Another exploded on the hood of the vehicle behind them, momentarily engulfing both cats in bright orange balls of flame.

Laddie started barking furiously, and the women and children screamed in horror as both Forrest and Ulrich applied full throttle in an attempt to get clear of what was obviously an ambush.

Ulrich shouted for everyone aboard his cat to get down, even as Sullivan, Emory, and Marty were shooting out the windows and pouring fire into the three-story apartment building on the left side of the street.

“How are they seeing us?” Marty shouted, spotting a man step from a doorway and taking careful aim at the lead snowcat before pulling the trigger on a hunting rifle.

Sullivan flipped up his NVD and looked around, now seeing that every building along the both sides of the street had been painted with a fluorescent green paint, which even late into the night was casting a dim glow over the entire street.

“Wayne, back up!” he shouted, realizing that to continue down the street would spell certain death. “The street’s illuminated!”

“What?” Ulrich flipped up his own NVD, immediately seeing the paint. “Jesus Christ!”

He got on the radio and told Forrest what was going on, but it was too late. Grenades went off beneath the engines of both snowcats and knocked them out.

“Everybody out!” Ulrich shouted, seeing their worst nightmare unfolding before his eyes. Bullets struck him in the center of his back, impacting against his armor, but none of the women or children were hit as they jumped from the vehicle. “Sullivan, they’re targeting the men!”

The fire was coming from the left side of the street, so they were momentarily shielded in the lee of the snowcat. Ulrich could hear Laddie barking down the street as he took a quick head count and saw that he was missing two civilians. Ducking quickly back aboard, he found that both Liddy and Natalie had bitten into their cyanide capsules.

“Goddamnit!” he muttered, scrambling back to the sidewalk.

“We gotta get under better cover,” Sullivan said, scanning the darkened street around the corner with the NVD. “Wayne, there’s a pharmacy around the block. It looks deserted.”

“Get the women and children to cover,” Ulrich ordered. “I’m going to try to link up with Jack’s group.”

“Sir!”

Sullivan, Emory, and Marty began to herd Erin, Taylor, Lynette, Tonya, Maria two, Jenny, Michelle, West, Price, and all of the children around the corner toward the pharmacy.

Ulrich didn’t make it more than a step down the street before taking a round in the gut just below his armor. He dove behind a stack of trash cans and began crawling down the sidewalk toward Forrest’s group, where Laddie was still barking wildly. They were all still trying to work their way back to the corner, moving from parked car to parked car, but then they came to a gap far too wide for them to cross.

“You’re cut off, Jack,” Ulrich told him over the radio.

“Any suggestions?”

“Take cover in one of the buildings on this side of the street and escape out the back. We’ll try to link up with you on the next street over.”

“Roger that,” Forrest said, signaling for Kane to break into one of the buildings. “Watch your ass, Stumpy. They’re only shooting at the men.”

“I know,” Ulrich said before getting painfully to his feet and scrambling back to the corner and down the block to the pharmacy where Sullivan and the others had taken cover.

“We won’t last here,” Sullivan said. “They’re already taking up positions across the street.”

“We need to get out the back and link up with Jack’s group on the next street over,” Ulrich said. “Otherwise we’re looking at a complete goat fuck here.”

The women and children were in the dark again, so the soldiers gave them a couple of red lights, telling them not to shine them unless they were moving and needed to see where they were going.

Ulrich and Sullivan went to the back door and opened it to a hail of bullets.

“Fuck!” Sullivan said, reeling away from the door. “Got my fuckin’ arm!”

“Well, I’m already gut shot,” Ulrich said.

“You’re shitting me!”

“Jack,” Ulrich said over the net. “We’re cut off. Stuck inside the pharmacy.”

“Don’t feel bad,” Forrest replied. “We’re stuck inside a goddamn porn shop. Never seen so many dildos in my goddamn life.”

Everyone on the net chuckled in spite of the tense situation.

“Listen, Stumpy,” Forrest said. “You have to get out of there on your own somehow. Work your way to the beach and declare Rotten Dog.”

“Why me?” Ulrich said. “You’re half a block closer and I’m missing a fucking foot.”

“The three of us are already shot up too bad down here,” Forrest said. “And Mike just isn’t the man for the job.”

“Listen, Jack, I’m gut shot. I’ll never make the beach. I’ll have to send Sullivan.”

Forrest was silent for a moment, asking finally, “How bad, Stumpy?”

“Bad enough. The Navy’s our only chance now, Jack. We’ll never fight our way to the beach with all these women and children.”

One of the women screamed from the front of the store.

“Gotta go, Jack.”

Ulrich and Sullivan moved to the front of the store to find West and Price kneeling behind the counter beside the bodies of Tonya and her son Steven.

“Everyone needs to move into the back now,” Sullivan said quickly, herding the others into the storeroom.

The baby was crying in Erin’s arms, and Taylor was hovering close by her, keeping her own two children close. Marty and Emory covered the front of the store from behind a makeshift barricade of overturned shelving.

“What the fuck happened, Sean?” Ulrich asked, painfully taking a knee beside West in the red glow of two flashlights.

“She used the cyanide,” West said quietly.

“Goddamnit,” Ulrich swore. “Liddy and Natalie did the same fucking thing. I’m taking it away from the others.”

“No,” West said, grabbing his arm. “It’s their right, Wayne. We all agreed.”

“But goddamnit!”

“What’s going on with Jack’s group?”

“We’re all cut off from the beach. And we’re cut off from each other. Sullivan’s going to make a run for the beach.”

“No, I’m not,” Sullivan said, standing in the doorway. “I just lost the use of my right hand.”

West examined his wounded arm to find that the bullet had shattered his ulna.

“I guess that leaves Marty,” Ulrich said. “Unless you want the job, Sean.”

“I can’t leave Taylor or the kids,” West said. “I promised them. Besides, Marty’s better with a weapon than I am.”

“We have to send Shannon with him,” Sullivan said. “Marty won’t make it alone. His instincts aren’t good enough. But he listens to Shannon.”

“All right, then,” Ulrich said. “You and Sean replace them up front and send them back here.”

“Just how bad are you, Wayne?” West asked, pissed that Ulrich hadn’t told him he’d been shot.

“It’s bad enough that I’ll croak if we don’t make it to the ship,” Ulrich said.

“How much Benzedrine have you taken?”

“Enough to see this through one way or another.”

West asked Price to take his place up front so he could bind Ulrich’s belly wound.

Emory and Marty came around behind the counter where a blanket now lay over Tonya and her son.

“You two have to make a break for the beach,” Ulrich said. “Find lifeguard station number six. A SEAL team has buried a radio in the sand beneath it. Our call sign is Halo. Be sure and tell them that our condition is Rotten Dog. That will tell them to send the Marines in, expecting a fight.”

“Got it,” Emory said. “Come on, Marty, let’s rock and roll these motherfuckers.”

She took him into the stockroom to check him over with a flashlight. “Nothing rattles and nothing shines. Got it?”

“I’m cocked and locked,” he muttered. “Let’s get the fuck outta here.”

“The back door is no joy,” Sullivan said. “You’ll have to go out the front. But we’ll pop smoke both front and back to keep them guessing.”

“Fuck it,” Emory said. “You can hardly fucking see out there as it is.”

“I think there must be one or two out there with night vision,” Ulrich said, grunting as West bound his middle with a cotton wrap. Erin came from the stockroom and knelt beside him, crying into his neck. “Where’s the baby?” he asked.

“With Taylor.”

“Well, get on back there,” he said. “I’ve still got work to do out here. And don’t worry, I won’t be dying in the next ten minutes.”

“I have O-negative blood,” Erin told West.

“If he ends up needing it, honey, I’ll get some from you. I promise.”

A pair of smoke grenades were tossed out the front and back of the store a short time later, and gunfire filled the air as the clouds began to grow.

Emory grabbed hold of Marty’s jacket at the shoulder. “When they stop to reload, we move.”

“Right behind you.”

The firing slacked off and they made their break, running left down the sidewalk into the darkness.

A shot rang out and hit the sidewalk, a piece of a bullet ricocheting up into Marty’s rump. “I just got hit in the ass!” he swore, grabbing at the seat of his pants.

“Better than your balls. Keep moving!”

They stopped at the end of the street to catch their breath.

“You know what?” he said, panting. “We can see better with the night vision now than we could last year. That means there’s more ambient light. The sky’s beginning to clear.”

Emory raised her NVD and held her hand up in front of her face, unable to see it.

“Whatever you say, Marty.”

Half a block down they spotted a band of six men using a single weak flashlight to make their way toward the porn shop where Forrest and his group were holed up. They were a motley crew, dressed piecemeal in military clothing, but there was no telling whether they had ever been Marines. They were scrawny and wore long scraggly beards. One of them had a LAW rocket slung over his shoulder.

“We have to take them out,” she said. “That rocket will kill everybody in Jack’s building.”

The two of them hustled off through the snow after their prey, and Marty stepped on a soda can beneath the snow, its muffled crunch just loud enough for the men to hear.

They spun around as Marty and Emory dove for cover behind a burned out car.

“Who’s behind us?” one the men asked the others, their flashlight too dim to penetrate into the murk. “Any of our people?”

“Maybe Wallace and Cutter. I ain’t sure.”

“Wallace!”

“What?” Marty shouted.

“You comin’, asshole?”

“Go ahead! Sprained my fuckin’ ankle!”

The men moved on, and Emory punched Marty in his helmet, hissing, “You ever do that again, I’ll kick the shit outta you!”

By the time they worked their way to within fifty feet of the men, the man with the rocket was down on one knee, about to fire it into the back door of the porn shop. Emory fired a burst from the hip in a vertical arc, stitching the rocketeer up the spine. The man folded over backward and the rocket went streaking off into the sky over top of the buildings, detonating three or four blocks away.

“Wallace, you dumb fuck!” shouted the man with the flashlight.

Emory shot him next, and the flashlight fell into the snow, leaving the remaining four to fire blindly into the black. Emory and Marty lay prone watching their prey make idiots of themselves. They each fired two quick bursts and sprang to their feet.

More men came running toward the sound of the fight, dim beams of light searching wildly about, but Emory and Marty withdrew to slip away undetected. They quickly covered the half mile to the beach, meeting no further resistance before reaching the surf and running to the closest lifeguard station.

It was number nine.

“North or south?” Emory said. “You pick.”

“North.”

The next station they came to was number eight, and within a few minutes they arrived at station six. They kicked away the snow and Marty began digging in the sand while Emory kept watch. A foot down he found a sealed, black polymer case the size of a large tackle box and pried it from the ground.

“You keep an eye out,” Emory said, kneeling in front of the case to open it. She turned on the radio and took out the hand set, holding it to her head the way you would a regular phone and depressing the button. “This is Halo calling
Boxer
. Do you read? Over.”

There was no reply.

“Halo calling
Boxer
. Our condition is Rotten Dog. Repeat. We are Rotten Dog. Do you read? Over . . .”

“Maybe you should try switching channels.”

“No, Marty, you don’t fuck with a preset frequency. It’s probably just some squid asleep at the radio. They don’t have anything else to do out there.”

“Halo calling USS
Boxer
. Do you read? Over . . . Halo calling
Boxer
. Do you read . . . ?”