Vampire's Day (Book 2): Zero Model (22 page)

80. Radical solution-5

This horror will never end, thought Natasha, allowing Boris to drag her forward. Her fear was gone; she was just numb, especially after almost getting her throat torn out. Boris had shot two assailants, then shot someone else, and continued to shoot and shoot, while dragging them. When they met with a group of armed men, they seemed to be marines, but then tried shooting them like madmen, and the battle began again. Again there were bullets flying everywhere, and she and Donahue tried to hide. Boris had disappeared, and then came back with a small group, led by an Asian man in a pilot’s suit.

“Where is my helicopter?”

“Crocodile stands on the runway. I'll show you there, but you take us with you!”

“Well, let's go now!”

They returned to the runway, carefully making their way between the burning barracks, and she covered her face from the intolerable heat. Somewhere near there was the clanking tracks of some heavy vehicle, machine guns fired, and ahead was a huge bulk, which she identified as a large helicopter with long blades.

“Why haven’t they tried to steal it?”

“No pilots, no one can fly Crocodile.”

“Take the guns; cover me while I start it!”

Ahead, at the control tower, wa
s
heavy fighting, trying to break the remains of the garrison, punching their way with automatic cannons. In his night sights, Boris could see hundreds of infected going there. A few madmen tried to attack them, but they killed them easily; it seemed they were former civilians from the refugee camp.

“What? I can’t hear you.”

“It’s on the radio – the infected have captured the helipad.”

“I wonder if any of them are pilots? Everyone get on board!”

“Crazies on right!”

Boris threw Natasha into a narrow landing bay. The girl hurt her head on the low ceiling, but nobody heard her plaintive cry in the roar of an automatic grenade launcher - a large group of infected rushed at them as soon as they heard the engines. Crocodile started to run for takeoff, as the burning control tower collapsed ahead of them.

The gunners were firing, punching Crocodile’s way among hundreds of infected; a few seconds and the helicopter left the concrete, nearly crashing with an armored car rolled out on the runway.

“Helicopter at two o’clock,” Boris shouted into the microphone, as he spotted another helicopter, which rose above the burning hangars. The gunner opened fire, stabbing Crocodile with a couple of bursts. Nguyen turned to the right, allowing his operator to catch the enemy in the bow gun’s sight. A short burst chopped off the Black Hawk tail, dropping it onto the burning command post. Having destroyed the enemy aircraft, Crocodile dived towards the ground, and headed to the mountains on a low-level flight, leaving behind hundreds of enemies who continued fighting.

Beneath them swept the field of cannabis, the mountains a dark wall in front. The gunners looked out for enemies, Nguyen talked to someone on the radio, and Boris found out how his team going.

“All alive?”

“Yes, I'm all right, although she is bleeding!”

Natasha clamped a handkerchief against the deep scratch on her head, while Boris looked for a first aid kit.

“Donahue, get me a flashlight.”

It wasn’t needed. A moment ago they were flying in the dark, but then a blinding white light poured into the narrow landing bay portholes, like liquid sunshine. Despite the short-term loss of vision at the moment of explosion, Nguyen kept the heavy helicopter from a collision with the mountain slopes when the blast hit them.

“All right, we are now going over the pass.”

The intensity of the glow was fading rapidly, the color changing from white to deep purple. Boris looked back, where the naval base had been. There, on the border of land and sea, rose the high mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion.

“No trace. No witnesses.”

81
.
Future plans

“…State Department spokesman, in a statement to the press, emphasized the inadmissibility of speculation about the causes of the incident at the naval base Alverde. I quote: ‘The official investigation found that the cause of the recent tragedy at the naval base in Alverde, which killed the entire garrison, as well as the staff of the LNG plant, was a catastrophe of natural origin. A strong quake led to the detonation of natural gas fields, which are located close to the surface. This explosion, estimated by experts at two point four kilotons of TNT, completely destroyed the base and factory, along with everyone who were there. I want to emphasize this - the use of tactical nuclear weapons on our own base is nothing more than a figment of unscrupulous journalists, unfortunately supported by the governments in some countries. Out of respect for more than three thousand victims and their families, I urge we have an end to this unsubstantiated innuendo.’ The State Department spokesman declined to comment. She also refused to answer reporters' questions…”

“…we demand an independent investigation of the incident in Alverde, and an explanation for why international inspectors have been prevented from entering the valley. We require a sampling of the soil, water and air for contamination by radioactive materials.

“We demand you explain the reason why the country banned the purchase of personal dosimeters. We demand an investigation into the deaths of the city residents. We demand the return of the bodies to their homeland, so that families can bury them, as required - if there is no radioactive contamination, then search, identification and burial will not pose a threat, therefore it must be done as soon as possible.

“We demand a thorough check of the dead American citizens’ bank accounts – we have information, confirmed from many independent sources, that large sums of money were taken from these accounts after the incident in the Alverde. If they are dead, who is taking the money, and where is it going…”

“Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, as agreed. Once again, thank you for saving us.”

“I was glad to help. Here our paths diverge. It would be better for all of us to keep quiet about what happened and try to forget everything. Farewell.”

“…Don’t shoot, I'm coming out, I'm not armed. I offer no resistance! I need help…”

The helicopter went down, and from the landing bay came fighters in biological protection suits. A man in a tattered and burnt suit offered no resistance, but they hit him with stunners, knocked him to the ground and then shackled his hands and feet with thick plastic ribbons.

“Who are you? Where did you come from? How long have you stayed here?”

The oxygen mask transformed voice into an angry hiss.

“I came from the city, my name is…”

“Where did you get that scar, are you infected? Infected, I see. OK, gag him!”

They put a bright red gag in his mouth, a black bag on his head, and then he was thrown into a large plastic box, which was immediately loaded into the helicopter.

“This is the Third. We’ve found sane infected; I repeat, we’ve found sane infected! He has fully preserved his memory, and is capable of clearly answering questions. He gave his name. He’s American, but not from the factory, he has no documents. I don’t know how he survived. In the morning, we found only a few walking dead: their brains were completely destroyed, so we erased them all. What do we do with him, kill him? Deliver him to the base, got it…”

Tall steel gates, thickly entwined with barbed wire, silently rolled away, letting the SUV into the mine. It began a long way up the serpentine road, past the motionless excavators and graders, going to the mountain’s flat top. At the office of the mining company, built from shipping containers, there was no one in sight, but Bronson knew that snipers constantly kept him at gunpoint.

“Well?”

“Your equipment will come in five days, all as agreed.”

Chief just wanted to stay in the chair with a bottle of cold dark beer and relax a bit, but the tasks of the joint venture wouldn’t release him.

“And where we will install this equipment?”

“It’s already at the new location, and then it will be necessary to make a mobile laboratory in a truck or bus. How long do we have stock for?”

“Enough for two weeks, and then we require new sources, if you don’t want to increase the number of donors. If we have more donors, we can keep them constantly and not change them. At the moment they die quickly, despite being given good food. We take too much. But if we have two donors for each one of our fighters…”

“And where will we keep this horde? What do we feed them? How do we transport them?”

“This is the calculation that you asked for.”

Palmer passed Bronson the financial report; she was an effective accountant among her many talents.

“So bad?”

“And what do you expect? The money has come to an end, especially when there is no income from outside. We can no longer use the accounts of our hostages; any money transfer will now be visible. We now need not only donors; we urgently need a source of external finance. Of course, you and your thugs could rob a bank or gold mining company, but it’s petty. It's time to take more money; we need to start our business.”

“And how we will build this business, if we have to change our shelter every two weeks?”

Palmer lit another cigarette, the sunlight playing on her long red hair. Real hair.

“Chief, I'm not saying that this will be easy. We can’t hide forever, so, eventully we have to come to light, albeit not immediately. In the meantime, we need to find a steady source of income and a place where our presence will not cause much noise. I think you know where we will be able to gain a foothold. It’s time to move to the north…”

THE END