Chapter 28- Saxon Justice

Chapter 28

Saxon Justice

Villa Cyranno, Venezuela

The news hit them like a tonne of bricks.  They had seen the explosion and seen the wreckage fall.  For a while they hadn’t been sure what it was.  But when Dietz radioed it in, it was no great surprise to Hannah.

“Shit,” she had said.  Wooderson had looked over at her.

“Shit, we are in serious trouble now,” she had said.

“Lieutenant, this mission is fragged,” he said simply.

“Yes it is,” she replied.

Captain Dietz and the others returned, covered in soot and smoke.  Newman’s eyes were pink, his face was sullen and shocked.  Wharton looked the calmest still.  Lt Chung sat down, his head in his hands.

Dietz took up his radio.

“This is Captain Dietz here.  I’m with what’s left of my team.  We require some advice here,”

There was a crackle of radio traffic.

“This is Hotel Twenty-Nine to ground unit, remain where you are,”

“Copy that but we need advice on how to proceed.  We’ve lost half of our team and most of our equipment,”

“Repeat your last, over,” came the crackling reply.

“Hang on Captain,” said Hannah.

“What>” snapped Dietz.  “We’re in serious trouble here,”

“We could be in even worse in a minute.  Cut the comms,”

“She’s right,” said Chung.  “If you tell them we cant manage the situation here, what do you think they are going to do?”

“What?” asked Dietz.

Hannah looked into his eyes for a moment and tried to make contact with him.  But she supposed it was hard enough being thrust into such a horrible situation.  It was even worse when your best friend had just been killed.

“Captain, we need to sort this situation out right now.  Otherwise someone else will do it for us,” she said plainly.  She looked over at Oscar.

“The situation has gotten out of our hands,” said Captain Dietz.

Sergeant Wooderson took hold of Dietz's arm and walked him away from the others for a moment.

“Snap out of it sir!” shouted Wooderson.  “You’re the CO here.  You fucking act like it,”

Dietz lowered his head for a moment.  Hannah saw that Wooderson was getting ready to slap him in the face when Dietz seemed to come back to life.

“Okay, okay.  What’s the sit-rep here?”

“We don’t know which of the villagers is infected.  Equally there are still four missing villagers,” said Chung.

“Okay, if we cant do the blood test, then how do we test the villagers to see which of them is an imposter?”

Hannah had been thinking about this for a while and she had a theory.  She wanted to prove it first though.

“Have we still got any of the infected blood around here?” she asked.

“It’s dried up,” said Chung.  “I think that means its dead,”

“We need to find something, I have an idea for a test,”

“Okay,” said Chung.  The two of them began to move away.

“Uh uh,” said Wharton.  “No one goes away in a pair.  Three men, minimum,”

“Okay, fine.  Wood?”  Sergeant Wooderson followed them.

As the others began to search, Specialist Storm lit another cigarette.  Agent Wharton was stood with him.  The villagers had now largely sat down on the ground.  They wore sullen faces and were tired and cranky.

Oscar had tried to explain the situation to them but they were running out of time for it.  “You must let us get on!  This is madness,” Don Brazzo had said.  Oscar had tried to calm him down, calm them all down.  But it wasn’t easy.  They were stood outside in a village while there were men with guns stood around.  Then there were huge explosions, shootings and shouting.  It wasn’t a very peaceable situation.

“They will resolve this as soon as they can,” replied Oscar, feeling the tiredness in every limb now.

“You don’t know that,” replied Brazzo forcefully.
“What do you propose then?” asked Oscar.

“We are not prisoners here, we have rights.  We return to our homes and wait this thing out.  How bad can it be?”

“Do you want me to show you how bad it can get?  Didn’t you see that huge explosion?”

“That was them, blowing things up,” barked Brazzo. “This is American madness and we should have no part in it,”

“We are in this, whether we want to be or not,”

“We could rush them,” suggested another villager.

“They have guns and you don’t,” said Oscar, bluntly.  “If you move, they will shoot you, they will shoot us all,”

The argument, the debate ended there.  The villagers moaned and cried, they bickered and glared.  But they were without any further moves.  Oscar looked over at Storm and Wharton.  He was sure that those two would sooner just shoot everyone anyway.

“You know Clarence, we could just solve all of this right now,” said Storm.

“What?” asked Wharton.

“We could solve this right now,” repeated Storm.

“I know we could,” said Wharton.

“Why don’t we?” asked Storm.

“You haven’t got enough bullets for that.  And what if some of them are infected?  We’ll be overrun while you reload.  No we’ve got to wait this out now.  Believe me, we’ll have to shoot some of them by the end of this,”

“The thing that’s worries me is that if the brass think we’ve blown it, they’ll just napalm this whole fucking ville back to the stone-age,”

“Yes,” said Wharton simply.

“That’s what I’d do if I was them.  I’ve been wracking my brains for why they’ve not done it already,” said Storm.

“I think they may have other problems to deal with tonight,” said Wharton, his voice tired.

“Worse than this?” asked Storm.

“I don’t think so.  But closer to home.  I was sent out here because we believed that there was a rogue element within the military.  A rogue element giving orders.  I think this unit was sent out by that rogue element,”

“So you think we’re rebels?” asked Storm with a grin.

“No I think that your team was assembled without knowing who you were taking orders from exactly.  But “Briar” was deactivated a long time ago. And to my knowledge no one has put it back into action,” said Wharton.

“Why are you telling me all of this?” asked Storm.  “I thought you Gee-Men were tight lipped?”

“I think that those back in the US are caught up in figuring out who is on who’s side.  They’re all scrambling to find Briar and to see who is involved in this.  But they don’t realize that the real enemy is right here,”

Hannah’s team came back, a lit flamethrower between them.

“Find what you needed?” asked Wharton.

“No we didn’t,” replied Hannah.  “But we’ve got an idea for something we can try.  It’s a bit primitive and may not work.  But I think it will,”

“What’s the plan?” asked Dietz.

“We use the flamethrower,” she said bluntly.

“Now you’re talking,” chuckled Storm

“Each of them, we burn there hands with the tip. It’ll hurt like hell,” she said.  “But you saw how Hunter reacted to fire; he broke apart to get away from it.  My guess is that they wont be able to subject themselves to fire,”

“That’s fucking brutal,” said Newman.

“Can you think of another way?” snapped Hannah.  “We’ve got to figure out which of them is human and which aren’t,”

“You’re mad,” said Oscar.  “You think these people are going to volunteer to be burned, one at a time?”

“They’ve got no choice,” explained Dietz.

“Put it this way Oscar,” said Storm. “Either they get burned one at a time or all at once,”

“Storm!” yelled Dietz.

“He’s right, we’re out of time here,” exclaimed Wharton.

“This is unbelievable,” said Oscar.  “I thought you were here to help us!”

“I’m sorry Oscar.  We’ve got to do this, there’s no other way,” explained Dietz.

Oscar turned around to the crowd.  He took in a deep breath and prepared to explain.  His voice cracked before he could speak.  Wharton stepped forward and explained to the crowd, in fluent Spanish.

“Form a line.  I don’t care what order you come in.  Each of you will be tested to see if you are infected.  It’ll mean a small burn to the hand.  If you are clean, you’ll be treated and be allowed to move to the Church.  If you are infected, we’ll move you to one side and treat the infection,”

The crowd expressed their disapproval.

“This wont work,” said Newman, hefting his flamethrower.  Wooderson tilted the other one so that there was just a thin flame coming up from its barrel.

Storm and McPherson had their P-90 submachine guns on the crowd as they began to form a line.  The small stocky one, the head man, kept shouting at Oscar.  He offered to go first but gradually seemed to vanish into the crowd.

The first person was a man, a tall man with graying hair.  Wharton explained what he had to do.  The man looked at him like he was insane.  Wharton pushed him forward.  The man held his hand slowly towards the fire.  Wharton watched him for a moment.

Then he grabbed the mans wrist and pushed his hand through the fire.  There was a shout and a yell; the man wheeled away holding his hand.  Storm trained the machine-gun on him.

“Wait”” yelled Oscar.  Oscar ran over to the farmer and looked at his arm.

It was a simple, horrible pink burn.

“He is burned,” said Oscar to the others.

“Okay,” said Dietz and moved forward to apply medical care.

“One down,” said Storm.  The other forty looked on with nervous eyes.

The next three came through the fire and then ended up being treated by Dietz.  Accusing, reproachful stares burrowed into the Captain as he continued to subject people to the fire.

“This is nonsense,” shouted Brazzo.  Oscar wondered if he was right, whether the test was really working or not.  A young woman was next.  She walked towards the fire and paused.  Wharton pushed her towards the flame-thrower.

She stopped dead in her tracks and Oscar felt the tension rise.  But who wouldn’t pause when offered to burn themselves.  Who wouldn’t want to avoid the fire?