Chapter 40- Battle Zero

Chapter 40

Battle Zero

Sat-Com, Somewhere In Virginia

“Is it over?” she asked him.  The old man didn’t reply, sat back in his chair, a hand resting under his chin.

“Sir?” she asked him again.

General Petersen’s mind had wandered back to the year he got his bars.  He was a buck Lieutenant, just graduated from West Point and serving his first tour in Vietnam.  General McDowell had personally pinned his bars onto him and he had felt an intense pride and a sense, this is who he was.

General Petersen had at that time, just Lieutenant Petersen then, decided he would die one day in this uniform.

Of course that had been day one of his near nine hundred days “in country”.  He had seen some awful things, a lot of dead soldiers and a few too many incidents that were hushed up.  He had grown up fast in those three years and over the next thirty five years he had risen the ranks but lost much of that idealism that had gripped him so tightly.

This, this was the first time he had ever felt ashamed to wear the uniform.

“Sir?” she asked him again.

General Petersen turned around in the chair and looked at Lt Walker.

“How old are you Lieutenant?” he asked her.

“I’m twenty two in three weeks sir,” she replied.

“Twenty two,” he said whistfuly.

“Sir?” she asked again.  “Sir what are we going to do?”

After Vietnam had come Germany, the cold war and the Fulda Gap.  He had advised President’s and the Joint Chief’s but never quite been invited to join their illustrious ranks.  He had been considered to be a specialist, too useful to waste on a desk job.

“Sir?” she asked.  She took a step closer to him.

Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq again.  There had been a procession of plans and theatres of war.  Petersen saw them vanish behind him in a blur.

“Sir we need you,” she said imploringly.

Petersen finally opened his eyes to her and her question.  What to do now?

“Have we heard back from Cavill?”

“Yes sir, Captain Thomas has made contact.  The town is infected,”

“Good God,” replied the General.  “And Cyranno?”

“No sign of anyone alive down there sir,”

“I see, “ replied General Petersen.

“Sir?”

“Lieutenant, do you still remember when you got your bars?”

“Sir?”

“Do you remember when you passed Lieutenant?” he asked her.

“Yes sir.  It was the proudest day of my life sir,” she said with a smile.

“Who gave you your bars?”

“You did sir,” she said, the emotion thick in her voice.

“The next orders only I can give,” said Petersen.  Tears stung his eyes for a moment.  He took the radio mic and opened the channel.

“Sabre Four, are you there?”

“Sabre Four here, go ahead,” came the tinny voice.

“Son, what’s your name?”

“Sir?” asked the voice.

“What’s your name son?” he asked again.

“Captain Michael Cappener,” replied the pilot.

“Captain, I want you to do something terrible now.  I’m sorry that this falls on you,”

“Roger that sir,”

“Initiate Plan-Green,”

“Understood sir.  Sir, it’s been an honor serving with you,”

“The honor was all mine,” replied the old General.

He got to his feet and looked around at the young faces that surrounded him.

He walked past them , stopping here and there to speak to one or the other.  He had trained many of them, showing them how to be a better officer, to be a better person.  He walked up the stairs, the pain in his hands forgotten for a moment.

He opened the door to his office, walking across the room and sat down at his desk.  He took a swig of his drink, a last shot of scotch.  He opened the draw and took out his notepad, writing a final note, a summary of his career.

The muffled gun-shot brought them up to the office.  A single line had been written on a blank sheet of paper that was now dotted with blood.

“You already know how this will end,”

Washington, D.C

The door to the oval office opened again.  Hayden couldn’t help it, his natural respect for the office made him straighten up and button his jacket.  He walked in stood near the General, who was still sat on the couch chair rather than behind the President’s desk.

Internally, Hayden realized that he would hate the man that much more the first time he saw him sat behind that desk.  It wasn’t just the symbol of it, it would be an insult to the President and to all of the President’s who had trod this road before this General had come along with his emergency and taken the office for himself.

“Mr McDonald,” said the General, looking up from a report.  “What do you have for me?”
Hayden took a beat, counting to two in his head, and spoke.

“I’ve managed to get you control of all of the civilian agencies you will need during the crisis.  A number of them want reassurance that you will surrender power after the crisis has ended,”

“You can tell them what you need to,” said the General glibly.

“You want me to lie to them?  Or do you really plan on handing back the keys once the Visigoths are gone from our gates?”

“I wish it were the Visigoths,” said Colonel Carpenter, speaking from the other side of the room.  “Then we could just pay them off with Wyoming and a few million dollars,”

“Wyoming is a beautiful state,” said the General vaguely.

“Mr McDonald, we’re glad you’ve been so cooperative,” said Colonel Carpenter.

“You’ve done what I’ve asked, I’ve honored my side of this.  Is there anything else you need me for?” asked Hayden.

“Yes,” replied the General simply.

Colonel Carpenter walked Hayden out of the oval office again. 

“Forgive the General, he’s tired.  We’ve been working for forty eight hours now with no sleep,”

“We’re all in the same boat in that respect,” replied Hayden curtly.

“True enough.  The pressure on General Pierce is somewhat greater than for a humble cog or gear like you or I,”

“Save it Colonel, I’m not convinced he’s any great hero,”

“Hero’s exist in books Mr McDonald, General Pierce is utterly real.  And real people are falable.  What we need is your help here to make a plan,” stated Colonel Carpenter, those grey eyes boring into Hayden.

Hayden knew enough not to look away.

“You want my help again?  What with now?  You’ve got the civilian agencies,”

“We need a new plan,” Said Carpenter.  “We’ve lost containment in Virginia and there is now an outbreak on US soil.  This requires a radical solution, post haste,”

Hayden drew in his breath.
“Colonel, what is it exactly you are asking for here?  I’m not a solider, I don’t know about battle plans,”

“I know that.  But you do know how to control this country during a crisis.  That’s what we need.  This thing could get away from us.  If the center does not hold?”

Hayden looked out the window, a Stryker armored personnel carrier blocked most of the view of the lawn.

“What rough beast indeed,” he said softly.

Villa Cyranno, Venezuela

Another body was turned over but there was little way of telling who this one was.  The burns were severe.  Oscar had now reached a point where each body was just a pile of rubble, rocks or tree trunks.  They were not people, they certainly weren’t people that he had known.

“No, no survivors,” he muttered to himself.

“What was that?” replied Hannah.

“Nothing,” he said back softly.

“How many?  How many did you find?” she asked him  It had been her idea to make a count of the dead and to see if anyone had managed to escape.  Oscar had known the answer to that without the count but he didn’t want to argue with her.

“I counted eighteen, give or take one.  Some of them are in a very bad state,”

“All of them, really,” she said back.  “I got twelve.  That leaves us at least ten short,”

“Yep,”

The silence blew through the air like a fell wind and Oscar felt his body shaking.  He wanted to close his eyes and sleep.  The air stank in a way that he hoped he would live to forget but something told him that this would be with him for whatever remained of his life.

Hannah looked over at him and a moment passed over them both. The first fragile rays of dawn rose above the mountain and Hannah closed her eyes for a moment.  When she opened them, the moment was gone.

Oscar wiped the tears away from his eyes and sat back against the wall.  Hannah, a soldier and a scientist, began working again.  She dug through rubble and bodies, finding weapons and clues, diamonds on her desert island.

Oscar tried to remember that day when he had decided to leave the village in which he had grown up, he tried to remember the arguments with Don Brazzo and the political conversations with Ivan.  But in the end it seemed like nothing but this night existed in his mind anymore.

It had all been turned into something it wasn’t.

“Okay, can you work a P-90?” asked Hannah, hefting another sub-machine gun.

“Yeah I think so.  Never fired one before but I’ve got some small-arms experience,”

“Good to hear that.  It’s simplicity itself, line up the dot on what you want to die and pull the trigger.  It’ll pull to the left a bit but compensate.  Aim dead Centre, get close and try for battle-zero,”

“What?”
“Point blank to a civie,” she replied with a faint smile.

“Okay, what’s the plan Lieutenant?” asked Oscar.  They had packed up medical supplies and Hannah had a flame-thrower strapped across her back.  Hannah’s face had taken a stark tone.  She had high cheek bones but a vivid bruise stood out under her left eye.  Oscar supposed her body was trying to shut down, shock.  Shock was sure the right word for it.

Oscar had long since given up on the idea that he would wake up and it was all a dream, that the things that had taken over and killed so many people were just a figment of his nightmares and paranoia.  He had given up on that hope.  But now, with a weapon in his hand a sense of direction, he started to feel the first golden touches that it wasn’t all over yet.

“Good to go?” asked Hannah.

“I guess so.  There’s another village over the mountain, it’s nearly twenty miles away,”
“They have a huge head-start over us. I think we’ll struggle to catch up.  But we’ll make good time if we leave now.  We’ll rest soon too,”

Oscar nodded and the two of them got to their feet.  Oscar left his home, a little later than expected but just as finally.