Strands of Sorrow (25 page)

CHAPTER 20

“You’re about to clear Lejeune, Steve,” Montana said. “You’ll find more colonels and sergeants major. So we’ve learned their putative ‘help’ is a myth. People who have long-term careers in training commands tend to be of limited utility in actual operations. There are options: Exile Downing somewhere like the Indian Ocean. Bust him to private and hand him a rifle. Make him something unimportant in an unimportant spot. I suppose we could send him to stand up the base on Greenland, again. Since there are options, my suggestion is to table it and figure it out while he steams to Mayport.

“As to Faith, once we get her back I’d be more than happy to have her as my junior aide. Being a commodore’s aide carries with it an automatic cachet. People won’t tend to look down their noses at her. As much. And when our only remaining SEAL and a former astronaut says ‘She scares me. And I’m not joking . . . ’ people will tend to pay attention. And it will give me an opportunity to train her, and from me she’ll take the training.”

“Thank you, sir,” Steve said. “I’d like to ask to hold on the aide thing until she is back. I’d like to give her some down time so she can make a rational judgment. The one question is can we find her?”

“Lieutenant Lyons is on the way to Parris Island on the
Hampton
, Steve,” Montana said, smiling. “He’s a SEAL. They’re occasionally good for more than swimming long distances and carrying heavy weights. He’ll find her and bring her back. Or he’s not
coming
back. Give Stacey and Sophia my regards and tell them not to worry. Situation under control. CINCPAC, out.”

“Colonel Hamilton,” Steve said. “Here are your orders. The colonel, the sergeant major and the staff sergeant involved in this incident are relieved of all command and authority and confined to quarters during the float. The
same
quarters. They are to be served MREs in quarters. The TV, which they are ordered not to turn off, is to be set to a selection of news reels and other videos, subject: the history of Wolf Squadron. Start with the night sky video, then run all those propaganda news reels Zumwald has been producing as well as the better mashes. You won’t have to select for ones about Faith, obviously. They are to view those videos, which will run in their quarters from zero six hundred hours until twenty-one hundred hours when they are to have lights out. Just cut the power to the damned room.

“Upon arrival at Mayport: The colonel, sergeant major, the staff sergeant DI, all officers and staff NCOs associated with the Phase Three trainees will be separated. Phase Three trainees will be placed under the training direction of Gunnery Sergeant Sands. Training will be conducted by the Wolf Marines. They are to begin active training for post-Fall combat techniques, then organized, sans officers and staff NCOs, into a unit of the appropriate size for their numbers. All the junior NCOs will participate in training
as boot privates
. They will act as boot squad leaders in every way including living with the trainees. They’re going to be the cadre for the unit in combat. That should take very little time, two weeks at most. Their final exam, the Crucible if you will, will be active clearance of closed space environments and towns in small teams, including night ground clearance as a final test. If you have to put some of them in small boats and send them down to the Crib to clear liners and towns, do it. But just send along one or two Wolf Marines to evaluate, not participate.

“Phase One and Two trainees, who should all be at Phase Two, shall go through an abbreviated training schedule to bring them up to Phase Three. At that point, those officers and staff NCOs will be similarly separated and the same thing is to be done with those trainees and junior NCOs.

“Those officers and staff NCOs, with no additional training other than their common knowledge of combat tasks, shall be given a mission similar to the following:

“Upon arrival at Mayport, the colonel, sergeant major, the involved staff sergeant and all staff NCOs as well as surviving officers associated with current Phase Three or supernumerary of a size less than a platoon shall be given one gunboat division and such weapons and equipment as they wish and sent to Canaveral. Their mission is to clear the Cape Canaveral base, close every bridge, find and recover the missing nuclear weapons and clear all the liners alongside to the point that survey and salvage can come in and recover them. We need everything on that island including the POL point intact. You have the requirements for that mission.

“If they are unable to complete the mission in three days, the colonel, sergeant major and staff sergeant are to be stripped of all rank. The remainder of the force shall be reduced in rank to a level to be determined by their actions on the mission. Officers can assume they are going to be starting over as second lieutenants, gunnies will be sergeants and staff sergeants will be PFCs or lance corporals.

“On the way to Canaveral, in addition to their other duties, those who have not seen the various news and propaganda videos should avail themselves of them. Have a class where you, personally, specifically instruct all senior Marines on the reality of the new world. We’re in a zombie fucking apocalypse. People have a hard time getting their heads around ‘no matter how this looks, this isn’t the pre-Fall world.’ This isn’t about a girl’s dad having a hissy fit. I’ve been the voice of
reason
in this.

“Tell the colonel that his actions in keeping so many people alive on Parris Island is the
only
reason he is not being stripped of rank immediately. Again, her ‘Daddy’ has been the voice of reason. The same goes for the sergeant major.

“The point being that the persons involved should have had the good sense to recognize not a ‘salty’ young Barbie lieutenant who was drunk with sudden power but a combat-proven officer who had both the authority and gravitas—and was in the legal and moral right—to dress down the original NCO involved. They assumed. They would make others pay for similar assumptions. They are paying for this one.

“Faith has done similar missions with much less in shorter times. If they can prove that with many many more years of training and experience they’re as good as a
seventh grader
, I’ll give them a pass. If not, none of them deserve their current rank. That goes for all the senior NCOs and officers at Parris. If all they’re good for is being training cadre, they’re no good to anyone in this world. We’re not standing up the equivalent of Parris Island again. Not for a century most likely.

“Pass to everyone that Lieutenant Lyons, former SEAL platoon leader, is on the way to Parris Island to find and hopefully recover the lieutenant. And that whatever the colonel might think, Faith is still a Marine lieutenant. When she returns to Mayport she is to have thirty days’ leave. She can go salvaging and zombie hunting in Jax if she wishes and have someplace to sleep that’s in the cold. She’s owed: She and her Marines cleared it.

“We’re taking something resembling a pause. Clearly everyone needs one. Take the time to get more equipment stood up, more people trained, get all the Marines trained in on the Wolf Way and try to give the Wolf Marines as much down time as possible consonant with getting the Parris Marines trained up and dialed in. Tell them that Faith may be going to the Pacific, General Montana wants her as his aide, or she may come back and take a command on this side. That will be determined at a later date. She’s not going to stay in the wilderness. Among other things, she has friends here.

“If the colonel succeeds in three days, good. I’ll send him to the Pacific since he’s massively
fucked
the politics of the Atlantic. Montana has all sorts of nasty jobs for him. If not, send down some, fewer, Wolf Marines and Lieutenant Chen to get the job done. We can’t let nuclear weapons go missing forever and we need the boats. The personnel there are to be temporary privates, whatever their rank, under the direction of the Wolf Marines who will be instructed to treat them like untrained privates. For the sergeant major, colonel and staff sergeant, that will be their permanent rank. They will be transferred to the Navy and assigned as stevedores.

“This matter is closed. Wolf out.”

* * *

“This is fucking insane,” Gunnery Sergeant Brown said. “All this . . . She’s a God-damned
lieutenant
, Gunnery Sergeant! Just some salty newbie. You don’t fucking break a colonel and a sergeant major over a
lieutenant
!”

“So was Presley O’Bannon,” Gunnery Sergeant Sands said coldly. “So was Chesty Puller at one point. And I’m not exaggerating. You got no fucking clue what’s been going on in the world, Gunnery Sergeant. If you don’t want to step in the same steaming pile of infected guts your boss did, you’d better bone up. Fast. I’m not going to hold your fucking hand . . .”

* * *

“Oh . . . Jesus Christ,” Gunnery Sergeant Brown said, watching the videos. “Oh . . . Fuck me.
And
a split? Fuck me . . .”

* * *

“This is at least a company objective, Colonel,” Colonel Downing said, looking at the mission requirements. “Certainly to do it in three days.”

“You are not being asked for your opinion, Colonel,” Colonel Hamilton said. “Similar missions have been completed, in less time, by the young officer you castigated then relieved of her commission. Clearing the liners should be simple; they indicate low infected presence and there’s a possibility of survivors. Nine Marine officers and staff NCOs should have no issues. If the special weapons are not in the magazines, you are not required to find them. They’re just gone for the time being.

“You are to clear all the boats and prepare them for survey, salvage and recovery teams from Gitmo, raise the bridges for which you have equipment and supplementary trained personnel who can figure out the bridge systems, and clear the island to chartreuse. This is a
simple
mission, post-Fall, Colonel. You’re not trying to do it with gear stripped off of boats, boarding the liners at sea and in a storm. You have one day to requisition anything you need from the base for this mission. That, right there, makes this so easy it’s insane. This is
baby
steps, Colonel. Lieutenant Smith would do this mission in her sleep, having completed ten
harder
missions in the previous week, while singing the ‘Star Spangled Banner’ to the zombies, Colonel. As LantFleet put it, time to prove you’re better than a seventh grader.”

“Very well, Colonel,” Colonel Downing said, standing up. “I’d better get started.”

* * *

Lieutenant Lyons shook the can of spray paint and started spraying the wall.

He’d considered being an artist growing up. He was one of those kids who was always getting in trouble in school for drawing artwork in class instead of paying attention to the teachers. Of course, that was because he was bored: He was generally ahead of the class.

But he also was physically active and athletic. Which had stood him in good stead during his teenage years when you could often find him in dark clothes in an alley with a bag full of spray paint. When he’d gone through his poly for his TS they’d asked him not only had he ever been arrested or convicted of a crime but did he ever commit one. You got a free pass on most of those. This was the only crime he’d ever committed and he’d done it quite a bit over the years. Even after becoming a SEAL officer. Many an alleyway in foreign countries had his art on the walls. And NASA had even let him do so “officially” a few times, doing murals on some of their walls. Having an astronaut who was a known graffiti artist was sort of a cachet. Showed NASA was hip or something.

In this case, all he was writing was letters . . .

* * *

Faith took a step, paused, took a step, paused, rustled the undergrowth at her feet for a moment, took a step . . .

It was the way that animals moved. They weren’t silent. They made a little noise. Unless startled, they didn’t move fast. She could move so carefully and so naturally that the birds didn’t do alarm calls when she approached. And they generally were her first warning there were infected in the area.

She stayed in the open. Moving around corners kept you out of observation for a longer time but limited your own views. Deer do not sneak around corners. Rats do, but she wasn’t a rat. She was a hunter.