The APOCs Virus (18 page)

The two Apocs watched the young man drive away.  Phil said, "Somehow I feel Reverend Ira is going to get more than good ratings come next week." 

Abaddon smiled.

CHAPTER 16

A CHANGE IN PLANS

"Ava, I'm so glad I caught you."

"Dr. Puck, I just called the Center. They said they had no way of reaching you."

"I had to go out of town on some urgent business.  Listen, that's why I'm calling . . . it seems as though there has been a change in plans.  I won't be needing that specimen we talked about earlier,  after all."

"But Dr. Puck, I don't understand?  We've had some, what I feel, are real breakthroughs.  I've just finished meeting with a gentleman named Pigott.  He's in complete remission."

"It has nothing to do with your performance Ms. Porter.  In fact your performance has been outstanding."

"Then I guess I don't understand?"

"It's just that there have been some drastic changes in plans and I won't be requiring this Abaddon fellow."

"Then what am I supposed to do, sir?"

"Take a few days off . . . relax.  You've earned it."

"Take a few days off?  In the middle of what is quite possibly the worst virus epidemic ever?  What's going on?"

"I'm not at liberty to say just yet.  But I can tell you that it will all become quite clear to you soon.  Like I said, take a few days off, visit your family."

"I'm not going anywhere!  I was going to go try to meet with Bell, the writer, tonight."

"Well, if you are going to stay in town please promise me this . . . stay away from Oceanview for the next couple of days."  He sounded as sincere as she had ever heard him.  He was more than asking, he was almost demanding.

Ava heard voices in the background from Puck's end of the phone.

"Listen Ava, I have to go now.  Remember stay away from Oceanview.  I'll check in with you again in the next day or so.  But if I can't reach you, have a good vacation."  His end of the phone went dead.

She'd keep her plans all right.  She'd meet with Ethan Bell.  Maybe not to find  Abaddon, but definitely to find out what the hell was going to happen in Oceanview.

She grabbed her stuff for the beach and tried to put her job and her boss's strange behavior out of her mind. Have a good vacation, pfffft.

CHAPTER 17

OCEANA

The C-130 Hercules, C-5 Galaxy, and stretched C-141 Starlifters thundered into Oceana Naval Air Station one after another.  These specialized planes belonged to the SOW and any information, even to the existence of the 1st Special Operations Wing, was highly classified. The C-130s were actually Hercules gunships. The gigantic plane was developed for use in the Southeast Asian wars and armed with a variety of weapons ranging from Gatling guns to 105mm. howitzers. The special operation’s version and has greater range and payload, improved armaments and fire control devices, special avionics, together with other devices to suit it for low level operations. They are able to fire very close to their own troops and with great accuracy.  The pilots fly their machines like fighters flying very low in rough terrain, even though they were built as long-range transports.

The civilians in the flight approach to Oceana found sleep impossible.  During ordinary times the air base was home to the carrier-class A-6 Intruders and F-14 Tomcats and the difference in sound was like comparing a car backfiring to sixteen tons of TNT.  Admiral Tex Prescott watched another C-130 land like a giant elephant belly whopping onto the runway and glanced at his watch; it was 3:15 a.m. and the men and precious cargo had been arriving for two hours.

He was a lone silhouette on the tarmac; standing legs apart, hands behind his back and never moving.  This gave him time to go over his plan’s most minute detail. He was the blood and guts leader of the world's foremost military power.  Now, into the third hour, he was as much apart of the nighttime vista as the landing lights that stretched out hundreds of yards in every direction.  After a while people stop saluting every time they passed by, attentions seemed to focus on the unloading of the big transports.

Admiral Prescott watched as millions of dollars worth of equipment was unloaded and reassembled on the secured quadrant of the airfield.  Secured to keep the occupants of passing vehicles on Oceana Parkway and surrounding areas from casually peering inside. The aircraft were loaded with Apache, Cobra, Chinook and a number of other modified helicopters. Units of this wing took part in the Grenada rescue mission, as well as all the wars in the Middle East .  All the specially equipped rotary-wings had armor protection, self
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sealing fuel tanks, various weapons, rescue hoist, and a retractable in
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flight refueling probe, all optimized for special operations.  The men loaded, assembled and in some cases reloaded the aircraft.  They worked with nearly the same precision and speed as the machines themselves.  And through all the blur of activity the Secretary of Defense kept a silent vigil from the base of the control tower.

Tex Prescott was wrestling in his mind the morality of the mission he and his men were about to embark on.  Oceana was the base of Operations for the attack of the Apocs.  From here the modified transport planes would fly to their destinations across the Eastern Seaboard.  A third of the planes were meant to carry the special forces troops, while the other two-thirds were to carry CDSs.  CDS, is a container delivery system developed originally to enable a fully-stocked resupply container to be delivered to troops of the 82nd and 101st Airborne.  These CDSs, however, had been drastically recast.  Half of these containers were going to be filled with a payload of 20,000 pounds of a napalm-like incendiary containing a mixture of thermite, liquid soap and honey.  Upon exploding, they burned at a temperature twice that of the sun.  

The men who had developed this mixture had dubbed it "sticky-fire" because of its characteristic of adhering to any surface.  The other half of the containers going to be filled with ordinary sea-water.  To the Apocs each would have the same devastating effect.  Each container could cover blanket a 100 x 400 yard area, and the pilots would drop these with pinpoint accuracy.  The C
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130s would carry up to sixteen containers each and C
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141s twenty-eight.

Admiral Prescott had it worked out with his advisory staff that after the "sticky-fire" was dropped and burned itself out, then the containers with the water would drop next. C-130s and Chinook helicopters would then drop in his hand-picked special forces to clean up the area.  The men would go house-to-house, building-by-building, and exterminate all survivors, shooting on sight, killing at will.

The massive operation was coordinated with the police and National Guard units in each of the districts.  Large Apoc congregations were centered in Washington, Baltimore, New York, Philadelphia and the Oceanview section of Norfolk.  While on the West Coast operations were to take place in San Diego and Los Angeles.  The known Apoc centers had been and were being, as inconspicuously as possible, quarantined off and the non-infected people evacuated.  Crews in the infected areas were now stringing razor wire and other restraining devices.  The quarantined areas were much easier to secure than Tex had hoped.  In the heavily-concentrated Apoc sections people had already left on their own accord or had been changed-over.  The Apocs themselves instead of spreading out seemed to flock together in relatively small areas.

Despite the built-in safety precautions designed to protect the general public, Tex and his staff expected widespread collateral casualties.  Hundreds, possibly thousands of innocent, uninfected men, women and children would perish—and death wouldn't come easy.  This was what was weighing so heavily on Admiral Tex Prescott's mind this evening.

It seemed to him even his most hardened senior officers were looking to him for extra support and guidance.  The people around him were growing increasingly edgy, even unraveling as the time for the attack grew near.  They looked to him as the thread that held the sanity of this situation together.  How could he tell them his own rope was beginning to fray?  How could he tell them he found it as intrinsically wrong as they did to kill Americans on American soil?  Yet, the longer the bedlam went unabated, the more innocent people would become entangled in its deadly web.  To Admiral Tex Prescott this was totally unconscionable and unacceptable.

Tex knew what a public relations disaster the mission was going to be.  There were already protesters in many cities as well as the vocal outcries of the liberal press. But with the go-ahead from the President and the backing of the CDC and World Health Organization, the strategy was full steam ahead.

"I really can't believe we're going to go though with it Prescott,"  Dr. Puck said as he approached the Admiral on the darkened tarmac.  "I've just left the men."

"And, what was the mood?"  Tex asked without turning around.

"Anxious, impatient maybe . . . "

"Are they ready?"   His expression held a note of mockery.

"I was going to ask you the very same question Admiral.  Let me change it though, are you?"

"Am I ready?" his eyebrows raised inquiringly.  "Am I ready to send men to their deaths killing people that’s only crime was getting sick?  Am I ready to destroy homes and schools and places of business folks have worked long and hard to build?  Am I ready?  Hell yes I'm ready, ready to clean up the mess you've created."  His dark face was set in a vicious expression, but only for a second and then the familiar mask descended once again.

"I don't know how I could be any sorrier than I already am, Admiral."  The tensing of his jaw betrayed his deep frustrations.

Admiral Prescott turned to look at the man responsible but Puck was looking away.  He saw Puck reach into his back pocket and pull out a handkerchief.  Tex couldn't see the doctor’s face but he seemedto be wiping his eyes.  Tex could hear the ever-so-slight sobbing.  He believed the man to be truly sorry; his help in the technical planning of the mission had been invaluable, but he was not about to let him off the hook so easily.  There was still one thing left he needed from the overachieving scientist.  

"There is one thing you can do . . . "  his words were as cool and clear as ice water.  "I need you to hold a press conference."

He turned and faced the Admiral still wiping the tears from his eyes.  "And announce our plans for the mission?"

"No," his voice was stern with no vestige of sympathy in its hardness, "I'll do that.  I need you to announce the Center for Biological Warfare, a division of the United States Army, has discovered the biggest medical breakthrough since Salk and the polio vaccine.  I need you to announce the cure for Cancer.”

After leaving Puck with his mouth hanging open and a blank stare on his face, Admiral Prescott went to the aircraft hanger.  The men that would take part in tomorrow night's mission code
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named "Iron Fist" were busy at work prepping their gear. He walked silently observing the   best killing machines in the world.  The divisions would have sufficient materials and supplies, ammunition, rations, water and fuel, for three days, but the best estimates said they'd be in and out in under twelve hours.

The men of different ranks and service branches all had a specialized skill.  Admiral Prescott, himself, had insisted on very high shooting standards for each volunteer.  For example, snipers must achieve 100 per cent shots on targets at 600 yards and 90 per cent at 1,000 yards.  Much use was made of the "shooting house" in training the men to deal with Apoc terrorists in buildings and urban environs.  This was to ensure that the Apocs and not innocent bystanders were killed.  Very little was known by the general public about the equipment and weapons his teams would use.  He was proud to supply his men accouterments only the most technologically advanced country in the world could provide.  The snipers would use the Remington 40xb rifle with 12x Redfield telescopic sights. Two out of three of the machine
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gunners would have M60s and the remaining third a Heckler and Koch HK21s.  

The weapons of choice for the SEAL units were Stoner Mark 23 Commando MGs and M16A1 rifles, both with about 800 rounds at their disposal.  The pistol were US navy Model 22 Type O 9mm. silenced pistol developed by Smith and Wesson and specially made of stainless steel to prevent rust.  The pistol was nicknamed the "Hushpuppy”, from its designed role of killing guard dogs and tomorrow night, guard-Apocs.

He had a special plan for his beloved SEAL team and he had his nephew Lieutenant Bill McCullough to thank for it.  Bill had informed his uncle that the Apocs including their leader would be attending a protest at a rock concert in Hampton on the Virginia Peninsula.  Hampton is only accessible from Norfolk by crossing under the Harbor of Hampton Roads via the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel and Interstate 64.  Members of the SEAL Underwater Delivery Team, with their swimmer delivery vehicle would plant underwater explosives in the westbound tunnel.  Admiral Prescott had reasons to believe that the leaders of the Norfolk Apocs were also the brains behind the destruction taking place in the other east-coast cities.  So while the C-130s and ground troops leveled the section of town called Oceanview, the warlords could be wasted at the same time in a flood of fire and water.

He was banking heavily on the hope that Puck's announcement of the cancer cure could keep the hounds of the press off his back long enough to finish their objectives.  He couldn't go on watching and waiting for more people to die.  Tomorrow night would be the end of the nightmare . . . or he would die trying.

CHAPTER 18

IRA GETS A CALL

The Reverend Ira Swanson was sitting in his expansive office gloating.  He would set new records—TV-wise and money-wise—with the Abaddon Broadcast.  The production crew was putting the final voice-over on the video.

"Have them bring it right up when they finish,” he said to his secretary over the intercom.