Ranger (The Bugging Out Series Book 5) (17 page)

And at the center of town I stood with Lorenzen, Quincy, and Westin, our weapons held low as we waited. And listened. A few yards away, Schiavo stood with Corporal Enderson, wired phone in her hand, his eyes scanning the night sky above through the bulky night vision binoculars.

“You’re our David,” Lorenzen told Westin.

The communications specialist, holding a SAW, or squad automatic weapon, at the ready, nodded. A boxy magazine hung below the light machinegun, a hundred rounds within to feed the weapon. I couldn’t see inside, but I knew that every bullet was red-tipped. There for a specific purpose.

And that purpose was about to play out.

The phone in Schiavo’s hand, connected to a nearby house by a seventy foot cord, rang.

“Go,” the captain said into the handset, listening for a moment before hanging up. “Sounds coming from the east, moving west.”

Enderson was first to shift his position, bringing the binoculars up to scan the eastern sky as the rest of us, the fire team, readjusted to face the same direction.

“I’ve got it,” Enderson reported, dialing in on the target spotted through the night vision optics. “About five hundred feet altitude. Prop driven. I see weapons beneath the wings.”

Westin glanced at our spotter to get a general idea of the unseen drone’s place in the sky, then brought his SAW up to match and track the anticipated movement. The sound was reaching us now, a fast whine, engine spinning a propeller as it chopped through the cool air, pushing the craft toward us. Closer. Louder. Closer.

“Five hundred yards,” Enderson reported.

Westin steadied his aim, pulling the SAW’s bulk tight against his upper body. The rest of us brought our weapons up, matching Westin’s aim. If this didn’t work, we’d be doing nothing more than taking a shot in the dark. Hundreds of shots in the dark. But if it did work, it would be our first blow against the forces arrayed around us.

“Ready,” Enderson said, the angle of his binoculars putting the drone about to pass just to our south. “FIRE!”

Without hesitation, Westin opened up, firing long bursts of tracer rounds which dragged a streak of fire into the sky.

“Up and to the right!” Enderson shouted, giving firing directions, trying to guide the stream of glowing rounds to an imaginary intersection in the sky.

As Westin followed the directions, the intersection was imaginary no more.

“Hit!” Enderson reported.

In the sky above and just to our south, the effect was unmistakable. The red hot tracers had impacted some part of the drone’s airframe, sending a starburst of sparks into the night, marking its position as it trailed a thin stream of fire behind.

“Open fire!” Lorenzen ordered.

He and Quincy and I squeezed our triggers almost simultaneously, aiming just ahead of the damaged drone, firing as Westin kept up a stream of tracers from his SAW.

“Good hits!” Enderson reported.

We maintained our rate of fire, on full automatic, changing magazines once. Halfway through that second volley we saw a satisfying bloom in the sky, the trail of fire from the drone increasing and the path of its flight altering severely.

“Going down,” Enderson said, lowering the binoculars.

We ceased fire, our barrels steaming. High fives were exchanged for a mission expertly executed. Instinctively I looked for Elaine, realizing after a moment that she wasn’t with me. Wasn’t within half a mile, actually. She’d gone to wait with Grace and the children as our attempt to bring down one of the Unified Government’s drones took place, there to assure them that the fire they were hearing was planned and not some attack.

“That had to come down near the coast,” Schiavo said.

“If not in the ocean,” Lorenzen said. “Let’s go confirm the kill.”

Schiavo looked to Quincy.

“Bring the Humvee up,” she said. “Private Westin, get back to com and monitor reports from the checkpoints. Corporal Enderson...”

Schiavo hesitated there, a sudden cough interrupting her orders. The congestion cleared after a few seconds and she continued.

“Tell the fire crew to stand down.”

The town’s small fire department had been put on alert, prepared to respond if a successful shoot down had resulted in a crash and fire amongst the town’s widely scattered structures. As it appeared, though, any impact with the ground was beyond inhabited spaces.

“Fletch, you coming?”

Schiavo’s invitation was not unexpected, and I didn’t hesitate to accept. I climbed in the back seat of the Humvee as it pulled up, Lorenzen next to me and the captain up front with Private Quincy.

“Get us there, private.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

*  *  *

F
ive minutes later, guided by a glow to the west seeming to emanate near the coast road, we found what we’d come looking for, the wreckage ablaze on the sand, just shy of the lapping waters of the Pacific.

“Private Quincy, keep people back,” Schiavo ordered, noting a half dozen curious residents making their way toward the crash site.

Quincy headed off from where she’d stopped the Humvee on the beach and prevented those approaching from coming any nearer.

“It came apart,” Sergeant Lorenzen reported, his flashlight sweeping the shore and lighting up various pieces of debris. “Midair.”

I looked to the spot of the largest fire, the remnants of the drone’s fuselage crumpled and burning there, maybe ten yards from the water. Nearby were smaller blazes, pieces of wire and electronics smoldering. Amongst all these were chunks of the aircraft, some scorched, but most seeming to have been ripped from the airframe by a final, violent explosion as it neared impact with the ground.

“Wing,” Lorenzen reported, focusing his flashlight beam on the long, slender piece of debris. “Uh, Cap...”

Schiavo hadn’t said a word since dispatching Quincy to handle crowd control. She’d just walked amongst the bits of aircraft parts scattered along the shore, not even bothering to use her own flashlight. But at her sergeant’s call she finally activated its beam and joined him where he stood. I followed her a second later.

“That’s not any Hellfire missile,” Lorenzen said, lighting up what was still affixed to the underside of the wing, although bent and cracked.

“What is that?” Schiavo asked.

I approached the sliver of wing and used my own light to examine the slender cylinder affixed to what had been its underside. Its front end, near the leading edge of the wing, was bulbous, and had been a perfect half sphere before the crash deformed it. At its rear, the shape tapered to almost a teardrop configuration, with a slender tube extending from it, some mechanism wired to it as if it were a...

“A valve,” I said, realizing what I was looking at.

“What?” Schiavo asked, seeking clarification.

I stood and took a step back, away from the wreckage. Lorenzen noted my sudden wariness.

“Fletch, what is it?”

I looked to the sergeant, and then to the captain.

“That’s a nozzle,” I said, centering my light on the valve and its actuator. “This whole thing is a spray tank.”

Schiavo stifled another cough that came without warning, looking to her hand as she brought it away from her mouth.

“They haven’t been watching us,” she said.

I shook my head in agreement.

“They’ve been dosing us from the air,” I said.

I
t started without anyone realizing that it had even begun.

Sniffles were the initial complaint, though most had dismissed them. Then coughing, much as had happened for Schiavo. When the fevers began, mid-grade, hardly anything over 101, Commander Genesee sounded the warning that the biological attack we’d expected, feared, and confirmed by downing the drone two days earlier, had taken hold.

“We have thirty cases now,” Genesee told the assembled defense council. “Including yours truly.”

The man looked like death on two feet, skin pale and brow glistening. Elaine had begun to exhibit symptoms the night before, stuffy nose and an infrequent cough keeping her from a restful sleep. When I’d tried to feel her forehead just before we’d entered the town hall she’d gently blocked my hand, signaling with avoidance that her temperature was on the rise.

“I expect we’ll see double that in a couple days,” Genesee said. “And another doubling a few days beyond that. And so on.”

“Until everyone is sick,” Schiavo said.

Genesee nodded. But it was not the gentle bob of his flushed face that drew my attention. His right hand, resting on the table where he sat, tapped nervously, absently upon the wooden top. Soft little pecks, quick and slow, the cadence familiar.

Too familiar.

And I was not the only one noticing. Seated across from me, on the same side of the table as Genesee, Martin’s gaze was angled hard left, fixed very plainly on the doctor’s softly drumming fingers.

“There haven’t been any overflights since we downed their drone,” I said.

“They don’t need any more flights,” Mayor Allen explained. “They’ve introduced enough virus already. The rest will be spread person to person.”

“How bad is this going to get?” Elaine asked through thick sniffles.

“No way to know,” Genesee said. “Some may have few if any symptoms. Most, I believe, will be flat on their back by a certain point.”

“They’ll be incapable of participating in any defense,” Mayor Allen said.

“Then the Unified Government forces just walk in and take us,” Schiavo said. “Without much of a fight.”

“They have to have some treatment for the virus,” Genesee theorized. “Something to bring people back to health. Otherwise they’d just be taking a town of dead people.”

At the head of the table, Mayor Allen agreed. He’d not yet been affected by the sickness. His decades around sick people, perhaps, had granted him some tiny modicum of resistance, though expecting anything such as that to last, if it existed at all, was foolish.

“We have to find some way to weather this outbreak,” Martin said.

“Palliative care is all we can do,” Genesee said, looking directly to Schiavo next. “Without undertaking more drastic measures.”

Her refusal to allow any removal of the implants still inside Grace, Krista, and Brandon, had been based upon a moral code which, to me, seemed unwavering.

“We keep people hydrated,” Mayor Allen said, laying out a course of treatment. “That and rest. The sickest we’ll monitor either in the clinic, or on home visits.”

Genesee’s fingers stilled atop the table and he regarded both Schiavo and his predecessor with a look of plain disagreement, shaking his head as he stood.

“Just so you know, people are going to die from this,” the Navy doctor said. “They will die. And we could stop that, maybe, if we introduce a diluted vaccine. The effects could be lessened.”

“We’ve already discussed this,” Schiavo reminded him, her reddened eyes fixed on the man as she fought to suppress still another cough.

Genesee looked away, just standing there for a moment, trying to summon some argument, it seemed. But after a few seconds he simply turned and made his way along the conference table’s long edge and through the door past its end, leaving us, the Defense Council, to deal with the issue on our own.

“Would that work?” Elaine asked, repeating the question she’d raised when Genesee first proposed his idea after examining Grace and the children upon their return.

We looked to Mayor Allen, who was clearly stepping back into his role as Doc Allen during this medical crisis.

“It could work,” the mayor said, his gaze fixing on Schiavo. “But I agree with the captain. Some things just aren’t right.”

I didn’t disagree with her decision, or the mayor’s concurrence. The possibility of a diluted vaccine did, however, leave me wishing that what had been implanted in me was still in place so I could volunteer its removal and use.

“So we treat the symptoms,” Martin said. “Keep people comfortable.”

“Yes,” Mayor Allen confirmed.

“Our fighting ranks are going to suffer,” I said, directing the appraisal at the one person I knew had already come to that conclusion.

“We do the best with what we have,” Schiavo said, stopping when a wet coughing fit prevented any further discussion for the day.

*  *  *

“G
enesee,” I said, cornering Martin outside as the others drifted away from the town hall.

“What about him?”

“You saw the same thing I did,” I reminded the self-appointed spy hunter. “The way he was tapping the table.”

“Maybe it was just tapping.”

“There was a rhythm to it,” I said. “Like he’s used to doing that.”

“Fletch, let me handle this,” Martin chided me mildly. “I told you early on that I was afraid of a witch hunt, so let’s you and me not start our own.”

I understood where the man was coming from, but that didn’t negate the oddities which cast suspicions on the man.

“And let’s not forget,” Martin began, “he’s sick.”

“He’s also a doctor,” I said. “He could have the vaccine stashed somewhere so he can give himself occasional shots. Just enough to not get too sick. He wouldn’t even need to have an implant.”

“He wanted to cut the implant out of Grace and her children,” Martin reminded me. “Why do that to make a vaccine if you’re here to help bring us to our knees?”

“He would control it,” I said. “He could make it ineffective. Look, if things get bad enough, people will be clamoring for a vaccine, even if it’s a longshot. Do you think Allen and Angela will be able to stop a mob from demanding that they take the implants out of Grace? Out of the children? There are other children here. Children whose parents will be desperate. Genesee knows that, and he could negate any helpful effects by controlling any vaccine that would be made.”

Martin nodded, accepting what I was theorizing. Mostly.

“Fletch, even if you’re right, we need proof,” he said. “I need proof. Absolute proof. And you know why that is.”

I did.

“Because Angela will have whoever it is shot,” Martin said.

That sober reality gave me pause for a moment. I had to consider that my personal feelings toward the generally unlikeable Navy doctor might be clouding my assessment of him as a possible traitor. He was most definitely a difficult man to like, or even get close to. That, in itself, didn’t make him a traitor. And his actions, the tapping of his fingers, was that really enough that I could say, with any level of certainty, that his persona fit the profile of one who would turn against his countrymen?