Satellite pictures showed someone had enough sense to blow the only bridge linking the spit of land to what passed for “mainland” in the island country. Seventy-five years earlier, a typhoon had washed out the road completely and created a deep, fast-flowing natural channel. Instead of filling the land to rebuild the causeway, it’d been replaced by a bridge, and nature had taken its course. An even deeper, swifter natural channel had developed over the ensuing years, meaning if the bridge wasn’t passable, you had to use a boat to get to what was now an island.
Or a plane.
“I bet the Exhart’s not there anymore,” Alpha said, sounding sad.
Tank turned from the window to look at him. “Come again?”
“We spent our fair share of time there,” Papa said. “Before we shipped out to Australia, we left the Exhart helo here. Victor’s probably up there in the cockpit in tears.”
Tank returned her focus to the window. According to the satellite pictures, the bridge had been blown four months earlier, as Kite ravaged the main city. Over the years, civvie homes and businesses had been phased out on the peninsula, leaving behind an ever-growing military base. When Mother Nature’s temper tantrums claimed more buildings, the military had razed them and frequently left the land to grow wild.
They hit cloud cover, and, for a moment, the ground below them disappeared. Then they dropped and Tank saw what even satellite photos couldn’t do justice to.
They were greeted by the sight of Manila in ruins, smoky, a perpetual haze softening the dead edges and blackened hulks of buildings.
“Holy fuck.” Alpha was staring out another window. “That’s…wow.”
Other than the sound of the engines, the cabin went silent as everyone stared. They’d heard it’d gotten bad quickly not long after the Drunk Monkeys had left on their mission to Australia. Refugees from everywhere had spilled into the region, but even hearing about it and seeing the satellite photos hadn’t prepared them for the reality.
Tank didn’t want to think about anything except the skilled fighter, the wily strategist, the ruthless tactician her father was.
Hell, knowing him, he was probably the one who suggested blowing the bridge when it became obvious they weren’t going to be able to leave the base by air. Escaping by boat wasn’t an option when there wasn’t anywhere safer they could actually go with the range of the boats they had available. It also wouldn’t surprise her at all if she learned he’d been the one to place the explosives himself.
A small contingent of personnel and civvie survivors had hunkered down in a building on the base, stockpiled supplies, and then all contact was lost with them months earlier. No one knew exactly how many, if any, had survived since then. At their last contact, there were still thirty-six alive.
No one could give Tank any confirmation as to her father’s status, because they hadn’t reported a list of survivors’ names before contact was lost.
Annie slowly shook her head as she stared through another window. “That’s…wow.”
“You said it,” Chief repeated. “I spun through here a couple of times while I was in. ‘Wow’ sums it up.”
Tank didn’t speak, knowing her friends were nervous on her behalf and not trying to purposely amp her pucker factor any higher than it already was.
But she wished they’d shut up.
Panda banked the aircraft and started their descent to buzz the field. All eyes focused on the base on the peninsula as they approached from the northeast. Tank grabbed a pair of field glasses and stared out the window. Some of the base’s buildings were obviously burned out from the soot marks around the window openings and at the rooflines. Debris littered the area, including the runway.
Another reason for the initial buzz-by. They might have to leave and return with a helo if Panda decided it was too dicey to attempt a landing.
Not what Tank wanted to do, but she knew she couldn’t risk everyone’s lives, and risk them getting stranded there, over her need to discover her father’s fate.
As they approached, what briefly caught her notice was a ragged US flag flying on top of a building near the airstrip, a building which looked like it’d been heavily fortified by makeshift barriers of fence sections, wood, and even old vehicles.
As she pondered that, several ragged looking individuals burst out of the high brush that had grown up around a burned-out building not far from the landing strip. Ten in all charged toward the runway, and as Tank focused on them she realized they were Kiters.
None of them her father, fortunately, although two seemed to be wearing the remnants of military uniforms.
Then, the head on one of them exploded as another started jerking like he was controlled by a drunk puppeteer.
She pulled the binoculars away for perspective and spotted two soldiers in full riot gear, carbines mounted against their shoulders, approaching and firing at the Kiters.
A third soldier ran up behind them, carbine in one hand, and something in the other. Following the third’s progress—it was impossible to tell if it was a man or a woman from the bulky gear they wore—they headed for a large bulldozer that had been parked near the airstrip. The other two were laying down cover fire, picking off more Kiters.
The noise and activity had apparently flushed out and attracted the Kiters. As three more armed soldiers joined the fray, at least three dozen Kiters appeared and quickly began falling under the soldiers’ fire.
When the plane was less than a hundred feet above the deck, one of the soldiers turned and frantically waved at them. Tank felt Panda dip the plane’s wings back and forth in a wave to let them know they’d seen them before she started pulling up again.
Papa ran forward toward the cockpit, the door slamming shut behind him.
Alpha leaned in, resting his chin on her shoulder. “If he’s there and alive, we’ll find him. I promise.”
What Alpha didn’t know was that she fully intended to try to find him even if he wasn’t still alive. To at least put eyes on his body, if nothing else, to have an answer.
To bring his dog tags and wedding ring back to her mom.
On their second pass over the airfield, the solder on the bulldozer had started clearing debris from the strip. It looked like another couple of armed soldiers had joined the fight to cover him or her as they frantically worked to create a safe landing path.
Panda again dipped their wings on that pass before pulling up. Tank guessed they hadn’t made radio contact with the ground yet, or the maneuver wouldn’t be necessary.
It was a long fifty minutes, and several more wide passes around the base, before Panda once again came in on approach. This time, Tank heard the distinctive thump of the landing gear settling into place. She instinctively tightened the jump seat’s seatbelt and turned her back to the window, facing the plane’s interior.
Papa emerged from the cockpit and retook his seat next to her. “We’re going in hot, people. Light ’em up and stay frosty. Only take down unfriendlies. Anyone who hits the dirt, or anyone who’s firing at Kiters, make sure not to shoot them. Med staff hang back until the all-clear’s sounded.”
“How do we know who’s clear?” Uncle asked.
“We don’t. Take no risks. No physical contact with anyone until we can do a full med eval. Mama said she’s not one-hundred-percent sure the virus didn’t mutate to strains outside our vaccine’s abilities to protect against because they haven’t had contact here. Take zero risks, even if it means putting people down. If they don’t comply with commands to stop—drop them. Extreme prejudice.”
Tank closed her eyes and tightened her grip on the barrel of her carbine, which she now had propped between her knees, as did everyone else.
By the time the landing gear kissed the tarmac for the first time, Tank had already imagined twenty different ways she’d break the news of her father’s death to her mother and how to get through it without losing her mind in the process. With that worst-case out of the way, she pulled her goggles down over her ey
es and the protective riot mask up into place over her lower face before tightening the chin strap on her helmet.
Papa and Alpha were up and moving a breath before she was, already heading toward the rear hatch and calling out orders. Doc and Tango would hang back with the med crew and cover them and the plane, along with Annie and Chief. Tank would follow the men heading out on point, hanging back as support cover fire while letting them do the grunt work.
If it wasn’t for Tank standing up to Papa, she wouldn’t even be doing that and would be stuck in the plane with Victor, Zed, and Panda.
Forcing herself to shut down her brain, Tank focused on the mission and flipped the safety off on the carbine as she cradled it across her chest in her right arm, finger laid alongside the trigger guard. It’d been a long time since she’d been on an assault team. Trying to pre-plan this mission would have been impossible beyond the initial landing since they had no intel on what to expect.
Panda reached the end of the runway and turned the plane around before coming to a stop. But she didn’t shut the engines down yet. They’d go out the plane’s small rear port hatch and head around the back of the plane to avoid the props. Papa didn’t want the engines shut down until they were sure it was safe and they didn’t have to make a hot take-off immediately.
The soldiers from the base were quickly making their way down the center of the runway toward the plane, dropping any Kiters who appeared. Those seemed to be fewer in numbers now. Doc and Tango would grab blood samples from some of them to take back with them for study to see how they compared to known Kite samples.
A reduction in the Kiters’ numbers would be too much to hope for. The noise of their arrival, and their circling of the base, even over open water, likely attracted plenty of unwanted attention.
Papa held up a hand and made a fist for them to stop and maintain their position. “Hold up,” he called out to the other group. “No closer.”
They stopped, other than one turning to take out yet another Kiter running toward them from across the runway. Some of the people they’d shot seemed fairly put together, and others were little more than walking skeletons wearing dirty, ripped, and even missing clothes.
The one thing that clearly marked the unknown soldiers from the Kiters besides their appearance was the deliberate movements, smooth, responding instead of reacting. Tank counted eleven soldiers in the group.
She tried not to do the math compared to the last number of known survivors.
“We have to test you all for Kite and mutations before we can have any kind of contact,” Papa told them. “Do you have a designated medic?”
One of the soldiers slung their carbine over their shoulder and walked forward, but no farther than their leader. Everyone else maintained their focus on the edge of the runway.
“I was a civvie veterinarian,” the man said, pulling down the shemagh he wore so it was around his neck and they could see his entire face. “I’ve been the only thing passing for a medic since the base hospital fell several months ago. I served several years ago, so I sort of got unofficially re-drafted.”
Several of the other soldiers also pulled down their shemaghs, revealing both men and women. Others pushed up goggles or pulled down face masks.
None of them were her father. Despite having steeled herself against that, pain still wrenched Tank’s soul. She started chewing on the inside of her lip to shove away the emotions threatening to overwash her.
Papa signaled to Doc, who hurried forward with a large duffel bag. “Stay where you are,” Papa warned the other group.
Doc walked the bag forward, within ten feet of the man, and set it on the ground before retreating to stand next to Papa.
“Go ahead,” Doc told him. “Inside are modified tests that will cover most of the protein strains.”
The man knelt and unzipped the bag, pulling one out. “How do I do this?”
“Like a stick test, but leave it in for thirty seconds, don’t just prick the finger like you would for the old stick tests.”
Old. That struck Tank that “old” meant barely a year.
The guy did it to himself first, talked through the procedure by Doc. Then he repeated it on all the others. Only when all of them were clear did Doc noticeably relax. “Okay. Chances are, you’re all clear. There’s a box of vaccines in there. Each of you get one in the shoulder.”
The man looked. “How about the others?”
“Others?” Papa asked.
One of the guys in the back turned and took the head off a raging Kiter running at them, a man who was completely naked and looked like he was covered in dried blood. His or someone else’s, Tank didn’t know and didn’t want to.
But he wasn’t her father.
“We’ve got twenty-nine others back in our base camp.” He pointed at the reinforced building where the ragged flag flew on the roof. Tank now noticed snipers on the roof there.
“Civvie and military. A couple of kids. We never let everyone come out at once. Reduces our exposure and to guard our supplies and the civvies.”
Papa turned to Tank but she looked away. She didn’t want to know…and of course she did. But she didn’t want to find out here. They had a job to do, lives to save, personnel and civvies to exfil.
Once everyone in that group had been given the vaccine and Doc had run to the plane to grab more supplies for the people in the building, Papa split their group and sent three more men back to guard the plane, even though he told Panda over their two-way to go ahead and shut the engines off to conserve fuel.
As they followed the soldiers toward their base camp, Papa walking with their leader and talking, Tank didn’t miss how the other soldiers were on high alert, even more so than their own group.
Alpha dropped back to speak with her. “You all right?”
“Not now,” she snapped. Immediately regretting her tone, she added, “Please?”
“Fair enough.” He slowed his pace slightly to walk with her.
Her father wouldn’t want her to jeopardize the mission, her unit, the personnel they were there to exfil. She needed to keep her head and focus on what they were there for. No one left behind.
Another group of Kiters, seven of them, poured out of a gap between a ruined fence and a burned-out hangar and headed toward them. Tank didn’t even think as she smoothly swung her carbine around, flipped the safety off, and took one down as others cleared the group.
“Fuck,” Alpha muttered next to her. “They’re like cockroaches.”
“Those were people,” she reminded him as she lowered her carbine and scanned for more of them, refusing to let her mind drift in that direction.
Of the fact that maybe her father had been one of those people at some point in time.
“Dammit. Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.”
She faced forward again and picked up her pace to catch up with the others. “How’s that foot tasting?”
“I’m getting used to it, sugar.”
She glanced over at him. “Good thing I’m used to you, captain.”
He stuck his tongue out at her.
To get to the building, they had to navigate a warren of chain link and razor wire fencing passages, each covered on top with more fencing panels.
The leader pointed up, where two snipers stood on the top of the building, guns up and ready. “They cover us going in and out. Buys us some time. The farther along the Kiters get in the disease, the less able they are to think and reason. The maze slows them down so the snipers can watch our six.”
Tank didn’t relax until they’d been let through a makeshift double gate at the bottom of a set of concrete stairs that had likewise been modified, walled in and covered. The building sat on solid concrete pillars and was about fifteen feet off the ground, with a covered balcony that encircled the entire building. As they walked around the balcony toward what was their main entrance, she spotted a network of makeshift PVC piping and tanks snaking across from other buildings to barrels set up all arou
nd the balcony.
“Rainwater collection,” the guy explained. He’d shouldered his carbine, so Tank assumed it was safe enough to do likewise. “We have a cistern and catch system on this building, and the base’s water tank still has some in it, but we weren’t sure how long we’d be stuck here and didn’t want to risk running out. We still have solar power for the pumps, but it’s only a matter of time before it gives out.”
One of the snipers, a woman, scrambled down a ladder from the roof. “Sir, you need to see this.”
“What?”
“You…you need to come look.”
Tank exchanged a quick look with Alpha and immediately followed everyone else up the ladder, including Papa.
When Tank emerged on the flat roof, she jogged across to join the two snipers and the CO at the southern edge. They had binoculars.
Tank shouldered her carbine and used the scope to take a look.
She didn’t understand what she was seeing, at first. It resembled an anthill that someone had stepped in, a writhing, seething mass of activity.
Except on a human scale.
All heading up the peninsula from the mainland and toward the channel where the bridge had been destroyed.
“Fuck! All personnel, evac now,” the guy screamed. “We have to go! Move out!” He raced back toward the ladder, barking orders, everyone running in his wake.
“The noise of the plane and the bulldozer probably attracted them,” Tank heard one of the snipers say. “The gunfire.”
Tank headed down the ladder and burst into the building to find a mini anthill of activity already churning in there as people scrambled to grab what they could and head out.
“What about testing and vaccinations?” Doc yelled at Papa.
“No time. Get them all on board and let’s go. We’ll sort it out once we’re in the air.” He barked orders at Panda over the two-way to get the plane restarted and positioned for immediate take-off.