"Okay, you all heard the radio. We're in for some serious s.h.i.t. Commie, no matter what happens, you stay in the center of the triangle that we will form on the way to the beach. Don't get outside, got it?" Commie nodded quickly. "Huck, you take the rear. Me and Rico will be up front. We're gonna move fast when it makes sense and slow when it don't. Everybody just stay alert and we might just get out of this one in one piece, and not pieces. We're not dead yet."

45.

The COG transmitted a message to the carrier ordering Task Force Phoenix to their next target-a crash site co-located with an undisturbed equipment dead drop. Because of the newly found motorcycles, the mission was shortened to only two days as compared to two weeks on foot.

A Warthog patrol sighted burning wreckage on the ground near a parachute two days ago. The COG's plan was to send the team farther north to an airfield near a known aircraft crash site, but the carrier's admiral pushed back, citing that a round trip in excess of four hundred miles would result in the loss of Task Force Phoenix and likely compromise the Hourgla.s.s mission. The COG accepted this reasoning and retracted the order shortly before issuing the new one.

Doc, Billy, and Disco had now been riding for two days, under the cover of night, edging closer to their goal.

"Billy Boy, how far your beads say we got?" Doc asked.

"Over the next finger of terrain, we'll see it. Can't see the smoke because it's dark, but the Hog pilot said it was still burning during their last patrol at five thousand feet last night."

"All right, let's get ready. The sun is coming up in a few. Disco, stop moping because Hawse isn't here. I knew y'all would get too attached if I sent you on too many trips together. My fault."

In a rare display of a sense of humor, Billy laughed.

The men crested the hill and dropped to the p.r.o.ne position as Billy looked through his carbine optic.

"I see the drop. There are . . . I count . . . wait a sec . . . I count about thirty, I think. I can't use my NODs with the binos so I'm not sure."

Light teased the horizon, casting a faint orange glow into the valley. The tendrils of smoke from the wreckage blew in their direction, indicating that the team was luckily downwind. Pieces of wreckage were strewn about the aircraft's meteoric crash path, indicated by a gouge in the earth ending where most of the aircraft now sat forever.

"How far is Houston?" Doc asked rhetorically, pulling his maps from his leg pocket. His finger followed their path of travel and stopped. He double-checked the terrain landmarks, fixing their position. "We're maybe twenty-five miles north. I didn't realize we'd get this close. Those things down there might be from Houston-suppressed guns only, I mean it. If you think you might need to pull your sidearm, use a G.o.dd.a.m.ned knife or sharp stick, or your fist. We can't take a risk this far from home base."

They knew the stakes at play if they were detected; they could inadvertently bring a mega-swarm on top of them.

"We'll move slow, ten meters apart. Low-crawl slide down the hill. Billy will take a peek down his optics every few meters. At the bottom we'll regroup and decide how to advance."

The team did exactly as ordered. At the bottom, they regrouped and discovered that Billy's numbers were accurate-only about thirty of the undead moved around near the smoldering wreckage and nearby drop. Billy was on point and moved in with carbine at the high ready. Doc gave the order to engage at two hundred meters. The predawn light was enough to conceal them while the men shopped for heads. They remained low, under concealment, and picked off the dead slowly and methodically, turning the lights out forever on thirty miserable walking sh.e.l.ls of flesh. The creatures were not fast, but did show signs of radiation exposure. They were well preserved and moved with intent-likely migrants from San Antonio or New Orleans.

Advancing on the crash site, they observed the hulk of a once-airworthy C-130. It was torn in half, but still smoldering. The back half of the aircraft sat a few dozen meters away on its side with its cargo doors locked ajar from impact.

Hanging halfway out the aircraft door was something they had not expected to see-a Project Hurricane javelin weapon. The bottom half of the device was identical to the damaged stinger still embedded deep in the ground back at Hotel 23.

"Let's take pictures and haul a.s.s before it gets too bright out. We need to bivvy high and dry and far from here," Doc suggested quietly, reaching for the digital camera. "I'm going to get shots of the avionics and payload. Leave the place as is, don't want any visual indicator that might tip Remote Six that we've been here."

Doc was methodical in doc.u.menting everything. He used an M-4 magazine so that the COG and others could mensurate the pictures by including a known size quant.i.ty in every photo. With this intel, Doc a.s.sumed that the big brains that remained might be able to figure out the origins of the fiberoptic autopilot and Project Hurricane equipment and other strange modifications to the airframe that Doc didn't understand-and Doc had spent a lot of time in C-130s.

Doc saw something that looked somewhat out of place among the wreckage, a piece of equipment exposed to the elements from the impact-bright orange, rectangular. He quickly reached for his multi-tool, slinging open the pliers.

With pictures done and written intel taken, Doc rejoined Billy Boy and Disco.

"Well, man, what do you think?" Disco asked nervously.

"I don't know, but worst-case scenario?" Doc replied. "This big stinger was meant for us. Best case, there's another manned nuclear missile silo with full up systems they were going after. We should take the most conservative response and get the f.u.c.k out of Dodge and sleep the day for the trip back. Let's get to the motorcycles and set up bivvy somewhere high."

"What's that?" Billy asked in his typical monotone, pointing at the large orange steel box that Doc lugged on his shoulder.

"This is my luggage. It's coming back with us, and trust me, it's worth the extra baggage fee of humping it to the bikes. This here is the little black box for that C-130 over there. Looks like whoever modified that plane didn't want to take it out and have to account for bad weight and balance. We get this plugged into the right system and it'll be able to find out where that bird came from."

The fear from discovering the noise weapon was slightly diminished by the black box that Doc now had in his possession. They had something real, quantifiable. The unknown enemy no longer appeared so ominous and invincible. The bread crumbs had been dropped and would be followed, Doc thought, lugging the heavy steel and composite box up the hill to the motorcycles.

46.

Oahu Rex and Rico formed the front of the security triangle with Huck taking up the back end and Commie in the center. They inched forward into the active zone. To anyone watching, the island's threat pattern looked like a typhoon; radioactive undead circled the outside and the only semblance of peace was the interior. They had the benefit of darkness to shield them from the night-blind dead, but they feared that it might not be enough now-there were too many. Rico had repaired his suit once already with a liberal dose of duct tape, a sober reminder to everyone that whatever radiation remained here was enough to kill them quickly if precautions were not immediately taken.

"Commie, don't shoot unless they get inside the triangle. You'll end up hitting one of us if you do," Rex ordered.

"Roger that."

They pressed forward, checking their wrist compa.s.ses every few seconds, staying on course. The creatures were faster than the mainland ones by far. The undead reacted to every footstep.

A ma.s.sive creature approached the formation from the rear. Huck slammed it with the b.u.t.t of his rifle as it turned to embrace him in a radiation-filled bear hug. The thing must have weighed three hundred pounds and looked like a sumo wrestler. The ghoul reacted to the b.u.t.t stroke, yanking the gun from Huck's grip. The weapon was slung across Huck's chest. Huck fumbled frantically for the sling release to ditch the gun and then reached for his sidearm. It all happened so fast that Rex and Rico had no time to a.s.sist or warn him not to shoot his pistol.

Huck's unsuppressed pistol discharged with a loud bang as the creature ripped the radiation mask and NODs from his face. The ma.s.sive ghoul fell to the dirt, its clenching jaws chewing Huck's radiation mask.

"G.o.dd.a.m.n it!" Huck screamed, wrapping his shemagh around his face and head.

The rest of the undead reacted instantly to the pistol noise, converging from hundreds of yards all around. Huck tore his goggles from the fat thing's clutch, giving them a cursory wipe before putting them back on his head. The others covered him. The semi-auto M-4 shots sounded like automatic bursts as the vast numbers of undead came for their late dinner.

"That fat f.u.c.k ripped my hood!"

"Adapt and compartmentalize, brother; we gotta keep moving. Bite that rag in your teeth and spit on it. It might filter the fallout particles better," Rex suggested calmly between carbine bursts as they moved on, bearing to the objective.

Rex knew the truth, but blocked it out.

For now.

Huck was clearly a goner. Rex had paid attention during the briefings on the submarine given by the reactor officers and even read the Hiroshima after-action report archived on the sub's LAN. The radiation dose this island received had devastated the local environment, indicated by the absence of most of the wildlife that once flourished here.

Rex knew, by his observations, that the Kunia tunnel had had no rats, that the situation was bad, and that Huck was likely overexposed. It was now an exposure race for all of them to get off the island and away from the dead-each one a walking f.u.kushima.

Huck's eyes burned and watered as the team sprinted to the sh.o.r.e. Their weapons were searing hot from the ejection ports all the way to the suppressor tips. They handled the guns like red-hot branding irons, avoiding negligent gun contact with one another. They dodged the undead, crawling under arms and behind backs, playing London Bridge with the creatures. They dove under radiated cars to escape the dead that chased them from all directions.

Rico ran dry and dropped his carbine, letting it hang slack at his side. Another obese creature advanced on him, not as big as the sumo one, but close. Rico reached for his personal backup, his sawed-off pump. Positioning the shotgun almost vertically under the creature's jowls, he depressed the trigger, blowing brains up into the sky, decayed chunks raining down all around them.

"f.u.c.k Rico, I'm not wearing a mask!" Huck said, wiping gray matter from his hair and face.

"Sorry, brother, no choice. Dry gun."

The radio cracked and beeped, signaling USS Virginia's incoming transmission.

"Hourgla.s.s, adjust three four zero degrees, you are three hundred yards out. You should hear the surf now," Kil's voice relayed over the radio.

"We can't hear the surf because Rico's shotgun deafened the whole team, but we'll take your word for it, Kil," Rex said, checking his wrist compa.s.s and adjusting their magnetic course over ground. "Make sure you put hands on your frags so you know where they are," he said to his team.

All four of them checked their vest and pockets to make sure they knew where to get their grenades if the need should arise.

Rico prayed as they fought for the coast that he wouldn't need his like Griff did.

They could smell a hint of the surf through their mask filters. Looking up, the team noticed simultaneously that they were much closer to the water than they had suspected; they were just too busy to look beyond the red-dot optics of their carbines. The IR strobe was pulsating-the boat was only a hundred yards or so down the beach.

Who says you need GPS to navigate over ground? Rex thought as he mentally thanked his low-tech wet compa.s.s for getting them to the boat.

Huck was having trouble breathing, his throat raspy from the fallout dust mixed with the lead and barrel blast he'd inhaled. He lagged behind the rest, stuck in the goon squad. This ain't Coronado Beach, he mumbled quietly through his shemagh. The others ran ahead for their lives. Huck lagged behind; the full moonlight reflected off the water and beach sand, revealing the team to the undead. Nearly out of breath, Huck pressed on. A creature in swim trunks gained to within a meter of him when its head exploded.

There was no instantaneous gunshot report.

Dazed by his condition, Huck was about to curse at Rico for the latest dose of brain chunks on the back of his head when the shot's sound caught up with the bullet.

Saien lay p.r.o.ne, just forward of the sail, on the deck of the USS Virginia, with a 7.62 LaRue battle rifle he'd borrowed from the SOF armory. He took shots at the creatures through the sensor-fusion night-vision scope. He could clearly see the white thermal signature of the team moving through the crowds of darker-shaded undead; Huck lagged behind.

Captain La.r.s.en risked running the Virginia aground in bringing her closer to the beach, allowing Saien to provide sniper support. With seventeen rounds left in his magazine, Saien drew and held his breath in time with his shots. The pitch of the deck was a problem, but not enough to sway Saien's. .h.i.t count too far from 50 percent or so.

The RHIB was prepped and shoved off into the surf. The team onboard fought off the advancing hordes in knee-deep water; they waited for Huck.

"What the f.u.c.k is he doing?" Commie asked. "Is he playing around? I don't get it."

"Shut the f.u.c.k up-didn't you notice his mask? He's probably dead already," Rico snapped, still in shock brought on by Griff's selfless heroism back at the cave entrance.

Huck kept moving to the RHIB with an undead army in tow. Rex nearly jumped out of the boat, but Rico restrained him. To leave would prove more than foolish.

Saien's sniper shots rang true, leaving a trail of pieces and piles of radiated corpses parallel to the waterline behind Huck. Saien was careful to shoot around Huck, the lone white figure inside his thermal/IR hybrid optic.

Rex and Rico took their shots. Using their lasers, they knew that the submarine sniper would pick other targets, maximizing efficiency. Rex ordered Commie not to shoot; he didn't trust Commie's marksmanship with Huck mingled among the mob of undead. As far as Rex knew, Huck hadn't been bitten. Yet.

"I'm out!" Rico yelled, again grabbing for his pump shotgun.

Commie tossed a full mag at Rico. "Take mine, it's full."

Rico slapped the mag in the mag well of his M-4 and released the bolt, driving the 5.56mm round into the carbon-caked chamber. Huck reached the water line when his legs failed, causing a perfect face plant into the water.

"Grab him, Rico!" Rex ordered, engaging the undead that chased just behind Huck.

Despite thruster control inside the conn, the Virginia's deck angle shifted with the current, making additional shots from the deck too dangerous. The risk of friendly fire was severe. Saien watched through his fusion optic in horror as Rico jumped overboard after Huck.

Feeling sunken bodies in the surf beneath his boots, Rico moved quickly, hoping that none of them was still animated enough to bite through the leg of his exposure suit. Reaching Huck, he slung him over his shoulder in a fireman's carry and slogged back to the rocking RHIB.

With all four onboard, they raced back to the Virginia. The beach behind them boiled over with the walking dead, seeming somehow outraged that they had allowed the last living humans on the island of Oahu to escape their unholy grasp.

Huck was dead when they boarded the submarine. After Rex reluctantly ensured Huck wouldn't come back, the boat's chaplain administered a prayer on the bow of the ship as they wrapped Huck in a clean sheet, sewing it shut with a sharpened marlinspike and some paracord.

The team gathered around Huck's burial shroud to pay their last respects to both Huck and Griff.

The boat shifted positions away from the sh.o.r.eline so that the team could discard their exposure suits in the ocean. They stood naked on the bow as the ship's decontamination crew scrubbed them down with large nylon brushes, soap, and cold potable water. The team was administered radiation medication and monitored closely for signs of sickness.

A short, modest announcement was made on the 1MC before getting underway: "All hands not on watch, muster abovedecks for burial at sea."

One of the enlisted men-a high school bra.s.s player-played "Taps" as they lowered Huck into the deep. They all said nice things, plat.i.tudes like His death will not be wasted and He served his country heroically.

Rico didn't care for the words. He'd lost two friends in twenty-four hours and wished he could trade places with either of them right now.

As dawn kissed the once beautiful Oahu horizon, USS Virginia was underway. At a depth of one hundred meters and a speed of thirty knots, her bow now pointed to China, minus two Hourgla.s.s Operators.

Remote Six Today "Sir, I'm sure you've heard, but the checklist says I need to inform you anyway," the technician said.

"Go ahead."

"We observed a team at our crash site. There is a possibility that-"

"Yes, I'm aware. Get on with it."

"Yes, sir."

G.o.d sat in his chair in the middle of the operations center, staring at the center screen that streamed a realtime feed of Hotel 23. Hours before, he'd monitored the team as they moved about the C-130 crash site, where one of his Project Hurricane weapons now resided. They were smart in remaining in emissions control status, as G.o.d had no idea what their intent might be.