Not even bothering to remove her goggles or riot mask, Tank quickly scanned the room, forcing herself not to react. She grabbed the arm of one woman who’d shouldered a ruck and carried a nine in her right hand. “Is this all your personnel?” There were three children in the group, one of them only a toddler, a little girl.
She shook her head and pointed down a hallway. “One more. CO’s down there. Locked himself in.”
“Wait, I thought that guy was your CO?”
“He is now. He was the second-highest ranking officer left.”
“Why’s the CO locked in?”
“Got bit on the arm this morning. His orders.”
“Where is he?”
“That hallway. Officer’s latrine at the far end, on the left. Locked himself in and ordered us not to have contact with him.”
Tank let the woman go and ignored Alpha asking what she was doing. She raced down the hall and found the door. Trying it, sure enough it was locked, but she pounded on it with her fist. “Exfil team. Sir, we need to go. Now. Open the door.”
“Leave me behind. I’m bit.”
“That’s not an option, sir. We have a Kite vaccine and meds to help treat it.”
“Go! Get them out of here. I heard them say the herd’s moving toward us.”
She shouldered her carbine and flipped off the safety, shattering the lock with one shot before planting a boot against the ruined mechanism and kicking the door in.
Sure enough, sitting in the far corner, his left arm bloody and wrapped in a towel, was the CO.
“What the hell, Tank?” Alpha was yelling at her as she didn’t even hesitate, rushing in, shoving her gun at Alpha to take while she reached for the other man.
The man tried to draw away. “I’m bit, I said! Didn’t you hear me? Leave me! Don’t touch me!”
“Sorry, sir. No personnel gets left behind. Orders.”
She grabbed his right arm and yanked him to his feet. Despite him being just a little taller than her, she draped his right arm over her shoulders and her left arm around his torso and half-forced, half-dragged him toward the door as Alpha scrambled to get out of the way.
“I’m bit!”
“Heard you the first few times, sir. We’ve got a Kite vaccine with us. Let the med officers make the determination. I’ve been vaccinated, so I’m safe.”
“You’re disobeying a direct order from a superior officer. I should report your ass. Have you written up.”
She harshly laughed. “Go right ahead, sir. I have my orders.”
Papa had rushed down the hallway at the sound of the shot and helped her carry the man. “What the hell are you doing, Tank?” Papa yelled at her over the sound of the frantic evacuation taking place and her ringing ears.
“No one left behind.”
“I’m fucking bit!” the man yelled. “I tried to tell her that.”
“Shut up, sir,” she said. “You’re coming with, like it or not.”
Doc saw what was going on and raced in to take over from Tank. “Go. Move,” he said. “Cover everyone else. I’ll help get him to the plane.”
“Don’t you dare leave him behind,” she said. “No matter what he fucking says.” No more deaths on her conscience.
Not today.
“We won’t,” Doc assured her. “Go. Move out.”
She nodded at him and ignored Alpha as he trailed her once he’d handed her the gun back. She belatedly realized Papa must have ordered him to shadow her, because he hadn’t let her out of his sight since leaving the plane.
As they pounded down the stairs and through the maze, she heard him speak behind her. “Wanna tell me what the fuck now, or later?”
“Later.”
They took up positions halfway down the runway, picking off stray Kiters that were still heading their way. It took them twenty minutes, but all of their personnel and the survivors from the base were loaded, the plane’s hatches closed and secured, and Panda was powering up the engines to carry them down the runway for takeoff.
Tank had started to make her way toward the back of the cabin, where Doc was bent over the wounded CO, when Annie screamed, sobbing, scaring the crap out of Tank and several others who immediately reached for sidearms.
Everyone turned to see she’d practically tackled a woman about her age. “Oh, my god!” she sobbed. “Karlee!”
The woman apparently knew Annie, because she was also crying and hugging her back.
Tank looked at Roscoe, who was watching this play out with confusion on his face. “Any ideas?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Nope. I’ll let you know once I find out.”
Tank felt the plane start moving again. She grabbed a jump seat and buckled in, now unable to pull her gaze from the window next to her.
They rolled down the runway and as they lifted off, Tank gasped. A wave of humanity, tens of thousands of Kiters, more, were descending on the peninsula, flowing over each other like a human bridge, the herd streaming over the channel, drowning people as they climbed over them to get to the other side, a mindless mass of humanity.
Next to her, the man she’d thought was the group’s CO shook his head. “Fuck,” he said. “We knew it was bad and getting worse, but thank god you people showed up when you did. We’ve been watching them work their way around the bay from Manila. I didn’t realize they were that close, though. I thought we had more time.”
“Was there any kind of a plan?”
“We’d scoped out a couple of boats and were getting ready to use them. Didn’t know where the hell we’d go, but it was that or saving enough bullets for ourselves. We’ve been out of po-clo for months.”
She unfastened her seatbelt and headed back to where Clara, Doc, and Tango were cleaning the man’s bite wound. The CO glared at her.
“You’ve put everyone on this plane in jeopardy by doing this.”
She pulled her goggles up and her face mask down as she grinned. “Shut up, Daddy. They know what they’re doing. I told you, we’re all vaccinated.”
He finally offered her a smile. “I didn’t want to believe it was you. I was afraid you’d died in LA or Barstow.”
“Yeah, well, Mom gave me orders. She would have skinned me alive if I hadn’t brought you home, and I’m more afraid of her than you.”
Now his facade shattered. “She’s alive?”
“Better off than either one of us were. Buttoned up tight and safe and just waiting for an all-clear. I talked to her before we left Canada.”
“Canada?”
“It’s a long story, Daddy.” She turned to Doc, who was studying the tester he’d used on her father. “Well?”
“What’s your blood type?”
“A+. Same as his. We’re compatible.”
“Roll up your sleeve.”
She did. “Why?”
“I’m going to give him the vaccine and serum, but your blood already has the antibodies in it.”
She stomped out the hope that threatened to flare in her soul. “You think it’ll work?”
“I make no promises, but it can’t hurt.” He tied a tourniquet around her arm. Then he swabbed her with an alcohol pad and got a line started, hooking her up to a bag while Tango and Clara focused on her dad.
“Hey,” her dad said to Doc. “I start getting sick, I’m ordering you to po-clo me.”
“Shut up, colonel,” Tank said. “We’re still OTG. Your rank is irrelevant right now. And we’ve had people catch Kite and survive it.”
Her father looked at Papa, who’d joined them. “You her commanding officer?”
He smirked. “Not exactly. Why?”
“She needs to get written up for insubordination. She disobeyed a direct order.”
“Yeah? Well, since I’m in charge of this mission, and the CO of the pilot of this plane, I’m going to overrule you on this one, sir. Besides, no offense, but she sort of out-ranks you, in my mind.”
He frowned. “What?”
Before she realized what Papa
was going to say and she could stop him, he dropped the bomb. “While I will protect the safety of the people on board this aircraft, no way in fucking hell will I authorize the euthanasia of my girlfriend’s father without the med staff saying it’s mandatory.”
Well, something, at least, could shut her father up and rattle him.
He stared at Papa for a long moment. “Your girlfriend?”
Tank felt her face heat, but before she could interrupt and say something, Alpha grinned and chimed in. “Our girlfriend. Sir,” he added.
She groaned, covering her face with her free hand.
Her father sat up and glared at her. “Both of them?”
“It’s a really long story, Daddy,” she managed, beyond any hope of salvaging her pride or her stoic self-control.
Her father, Colonel James Tanakasawa, finally leaned back against the pallet of supplies he’d been sitting against. “Then I suggest you start at the beginning, Major Tanakasawa.”
“Shit,” she muttered.
Alpha actually giggled.
She shot him a glare.
“Oh, no you don’t, sugar,” Alpha gleefully said. “I’m enjoying this too damn much.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Tank didn’t get to have a long reunion with her father, because once they reached McChord, he and the other exfils were quickly flown back to Pilot Mound in the Zeus by Panda and a skeleton crew, along with Doc, Tango, and Clara taking care of them.
Now their reduced group was in Victor’s capable hands. Mal had gotten them another Exhart. Not the Exhart the Drunk Monkeys had flown before, but an identical model. They and two other SOTIF units were slated to make a run down to the LA area, the other two teams flying in from Edwards, and would meet them at dawn at the designated coordinates.
It’d be Tank, Papa, Alpha, Victor, Uni, Juju, and Delta, along with Annie, Roscoe, Niner, and Karlee. This wasn’t a rescue mission, unfortunately.
Strictly a recovery operation.
They’d already loaded the three metal coffins into the helo’s cargo bay and secured them. They had three American flags folded and waiting.
This wasn’t a conversation Alpha wanted to have with Tank, but he knew he couldn’t let any of them get on the chopper without at least trying.
“You don’t have to go,” he said.
“I know I don’t have to,” Tank shot back. “I want to. She was there to help me find Dad. I owe her this.”
“You don’t owe—”
She wheeled around and glared at him, silencing him.
Papa snickered, watching them with his arms crossed over his chest. “You know, this is a lot of fun,” he said. “Watching her take you down a peg or two.”
Alpha sneered at him. “Heh heh heh.” He turned back to Tank. “Sugar, it’s going to be dangerous. The area hasn’t been fully contained yet. There might still be bands of Kiters in the region. Or thugs with guns.”
She shrugged. “I can say with no bragging on my part that I can probably outshoot them.”
Alpha turned back to Papa. “You’re really not going to ask her to stay behind?”
“She’s got a mind and can make it up for herself.”
“Won’t be nearly as dangerous as rescuing Dad,” she countered. “And we’ll have two other SOTIF teams at our disposal.”
Alpha ran his hands through his hair. “I’m not in favor of this.”
“You don’t get a vote,” she said as she grabbed her ruck, her carbine, and headed for the helo.
Alpha turned to Papa. “Really?”
He shrugged and leaned over to grab his own ruck. “Really.” He shouldered it, and his own carbine, and headed across the tarmac toward the Exhart. “You coming?” he called over his shoulder without stopping.
“Dammit.” Alpha grabbed his shit and followed them.
It wasn’t until they were strapped into jump seats, Tank with a pair of dark sunglasses firmly over her eyes, that she spoke again. A little difficult over the sound of the engines, and barely loud enough for him to hear her.
Certainly not loud enough for Karlee, Annie, Roscoe, or Niner, who sat farther forward, to hear.
“I was stuck for two years babysitting those college kids,” Tank said. “I know what I did was important, but honestly? I felt like I had it cushy. I want to help. I need to help. This isn’t just tying up loose ends for her, but for me, too. All the way across the board. You all—the women and the men—risked your lives. The least I can do is help with this recovery operation. It won’t make up for the six deaths I caused, but it’s a start.”
Alpha had never thought about it like that. He reached over and captured her hand, squeezing. “Okay, sugar,” he said. “Then let’s do it.”
She stared down at her lap. “I had it lucky. Far luckier than a lot of people. Not helping isn’t an option. I got Dad back. Mom’s safe, for now. I’m safe. They were my immediate family. I didn’t lose anyone like a lot of people did. I gained. I got you two. And the rest of the unit. Friends. Family. I’m damned lucky.”
As the helo lifted off, Alpha glanced out the window and saw the ground peeling away below them. “I feel damned lucky, too, sugar. Damned lucky.”
* * * *
After one refueling stop, the three helos converged at 0530 on the designated LZ that a couple of drone scouting flights had picked out. They were two blocks from their target, and with teams from the other two SOTIF units staying back with the three helos and pilots to guard them, the rest of them cautiously made their way through eerily deserted streets.
Annie, Karlee, and Roscoe led the way.
Papa and Alpha helped carry one of the coffins, Uni and Juju another, and Delta and Niner the third. Members of the other SOTIF units helped keep a look out, on guard and watching their six as they proceeded, knowing the way.
Not even birds or insects made noises. Some of the valley’s areas had burned out, but Tank couldn’t tell if it was from fires due to riots, the earthquake, or from the military systematically trying to burn out survivors and make them leave.
A sign hanging askew from the chain link fence identified the work yard as having been a CaliTeleSatCom facility. Burned out vehicles littered the yard, and the building’s front door was askew.
They hung back as a team of the other SOTIF men swept the building and declared it safe. Then, following Annie, the others made their way through the building and downstairs, past long-dead bodies, to what looked like it’d once been a server room.
Annie broke down crying as she knelt next to one body, Karlee and Annie’s men consoling her. This was when Papa took charge of the operation.
After he and Alpha donned disposable gowns and gloves, one by one they carefully placed each of the three women in body bags that they then transferred to coffins.
The rest of them stood at attention, except for Roscoe, Niner, and Karlee, who comforted a distraught Annie.
Tank somehow managed to not start crying, even though she spotted misty eyes in some of the men also standing at attention, men who hadn’t even known the three women. Only a cold bastard with a heart of stone wouldn’t be moved by Annie’s grief.
Sarah, Colleen, Desiree. Only Sarah had been in the military, but they would all be treated with full honor and respect. Normally civvies didn’t get military honors, but not a single damn person in that group was about to object. The women had died doing their jobs, trying to keep LA going.
That made them heroes in their minds.
Once all three sets of remains were stowed in the coffins and Papa and Alpha had discarded their gowns and gloves, Tank, the other senior officer of the group, called it.
“Ten-HUH!”
The men who’d been carrying the coffins properly draped the flags over the coffins, then lifted them and began carrying them out to everyone else snapping and holding a salute as they passed. Tank and a man from one of the other SOTIF teams took the lead, on guard as they exited the building with their precious cargo, Karlee and Roscoe keeping A
nnie upright and moving as they returned to the helos.
There, everyone snapped to attention, full salutes as Tank supervised the loading and securing of the coffins.
Less than an hour after they’d landed, they were in the air again.
Annie sat on the floor next to the coffins, sobbing as her men and Karlee silently surrounded her, holding her and trying to ease her through this.
They flew to Edwards where a full military honor guard met them and conducted the unloading of the coffins as the rest of them saluted.
Tank knew that Karlee would be reuniting with her mom and little brother. As for Annie, Roscoe, and Niner…
The Drunk Monkeys were officially back on the grid now. They had a couple of easy stateside missions to run to help Arliss tie up a few loose ends related to Reverend Silo and Jerald Arbeid’s fuckery, but nothing dangerous. They would all return to the base at Pilot Mound shortly, but Annie, Roscoe, and Niner would have a couple of days to deal with this first.
Talk of them standing down had started to bounce around the unit.
Mission accomplished.
But as Tank watched them walk away, following the three flag-draped coffins, she wondered how her two men would take the news she knew she had to break to them, that her enlistment wasn’t quite over yet.
That she had one more mission of her own she had to do.
And it was one they couldn’t accompany her on.
* * * *
April first dawned hot and humid over the small island research station off the southwest coast of Florida. With just the three of them there, it felt huge, isolated.
Disquietingly quiet.
Down below, on the beach, Papa was doing his tai chi. Tank watched him from the balcony, the smoothly fluid way he worked through the form, studying every line and curve of every muscle, committing it to memory.
Tomorrow, she would be flying out of MacDill and back to Washington, DC, to meet her father. He’d fully recovered from the mild case of Kite he’d contracted. The medical team thought it was getting him treatment so fast after his bite, and the infusion of Tank’s blood, that helped keep him from suffering a severe form of the disease.