A Pound of Flesh: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (33 page)

“Did they make us?” Cade inquired.

“They didn’t deviate,” Durant interjected.
“Points to no in my book.”

“We’ll give them a minute or two to create
some distance between us,” Ari stated. “In the meantime, anyone
know any show tunes?”

Tice cackled and Lopez shot him a death
glare. Meanwhile Cade continued to stare at the creek much closer
than he had anticipated.

After hovering ten feet above the gurgling
creek with boughs and leaves whipping from the turbulent rotor
wash, the black Ghost Hawk arose slowly from the canopy, nosed
down, and resumed the north by northeast heading.

“Just like that, gentlemen,” Ari said with an
air of cockiness. “And in broad daylight.” An obvious jab at Cade’s
decision to nix the night infil. Thankfully another pre-marital
spat ensued, taking the barb off of his mind.

“Goddamn, before Ari pulled that evasive move
I saw a shitload of Zs on the road,” Tice said.

“Watch your mouth
Spook
,” Lopez said,
glaring at Tice. “I don’t need to hear the blasphemy...
pinche
pendejo
.”

“Sorry Lopez,” Tice intoned. “Won’t happen
again.”
Yeah right
.

Smiling, Cade shook his head and swapped
helmets, preparing for the infil.

“Five mikes gentlemen,” Ari said over the
onboard comms.

After making sure all eyes were on him, Hicks
held up an open hand to visually reaffirm Ari’s message.

Cade checked his weapons for the umpteenth
time. He made sure the SCAR rifle was strapped tightly to his chest
and the Glock 17 snug in its holster on his thigh, locked and
loaded. In his ruck were two fragmentation grenades and enough C4
plastic explosive to blow a Winnebago sized hole in the Grand
Coulee Dam. For good measure he cinched his ballistic vest and
MOLLE rig one notch short of tourniquet.

As he watched the other three operators
making last minute preparations, he began to second guess himself.
Was he putting too much faith in the Night Stalkers and the
capabilities of their Jedi Ride? Would four operators be able to
destroy the NA’s ground defenses
and
pull off the snatch and
grab? If they found their targets would he be able to resist the
urge to put a bullet in Ian Bishop and Robert Christian at first
sight?

Gotta take the first step and hit the
ground running,
he told himself, trying to shake the nagging
doubts he thought he had squashed before leaving Schriever.

As the operators swapped their flight helmets
for the low riding tactical helmets, Hicks began readying the fast
ropes they would be using for the infiltration. He first checked
the anchor points, then placed the thick plaited ropes coiled
neatly near the doorway so they would be readily accessible. Once
Ari had the bird in a hover over the insertion point, he would only
need to throw the anchored ropes into the void and watch the
commandos until they were safely on the ground.

In a perfect world, once the helo was on
station, the time spent over target from hover to boots on the
ground should be less than thirty seconds—Hicks was anticipating
fifteen.

“Two minutes,” Hicks said holding up a peace
sign as he slid the door open.

Cade rolled with the bucking ride and watched
the tall firs blur by. Their scent swirling around the cabin
suddenly reminded him of Christmas, and made him long for the
normalcy he had been enjoying in Portland before that Saturday in
July.

Ari banked the craft hard to port, popped it
up over a small hillock, and then nosed back down where the black
helo would remain hidden from prying eyes—human or electronic.

He wasn’t too worried because they were on
the south side of Jackson Hole. The entire valley to the north was
a different story, because it was being defended with American made
hardware. The Ghost Hawk employed Frequency Hopping for its
communications and radar as well as radar absorbing skin and ducted
exhaust, all of which contributed to its ability to emit virtually
zero electromagnetic radiation while maintaining a very low heat
signature. In short, the bird was virtually undetectable as long as
he kept it out of the valley and out of range of the stolen
American made surface-to-air missiles.

Hicks extended a hand to Cade, helped him to
his feet, and then checked his gear out. It was standard operating
procedure. At the same time the other operators were doing the same
for the man in front of him.

“One minute,” Hicks bellowed.

Counting down in his head from sixty, Cade
said a prayer and slapped his gloved hands together to get the
blood flowing. At ten the helo nosed up, coming to an abrupt halt,
then hovered thirty feet from the drastically sloping ground.

Ari held steady. The rotor blades had mere
feet of clearance on each side. Through the cockpit Ari could see
nothing but wildflowers and knee high grass bending in the rotor
wash.

Gripping the thirty foot rope with both
hands, Cade waited for Hicks’ signal. Then once he received the go,
he slid over the edge, the feeling of virtual free fall sending his
stomach into his throat. Instantly his gloves went hot from
friction and in two and a half seconds his boots hit the sloped
hillside with a dull thud. Instantly he stepped aside to clear the
landing spot and freed his rifle from the center point sling. He
went to a knee, brought the SCAR up and had the tree line covered
before Lopez hit the ground.

One at a time the other two slid down and
formed up.

Hicks jettisoned the fast rope as the helo
started to pull away from the hill. And by the time he closed the
door, Ari had spun the Ghost in the other direction and they were
off to the preplanned loiter spot.

Like a well-oiled machine
, Hicks
thought to himself as he looked down at his Suunto—
eighteen
seconds
. He grimaced as he unhooked the safety cable because he
knew the Delta boys could do better, then he took his place behind
the starboard mini-gun and strapped in.

“Good job Hicks,” Ari said.

“Over
fifteen
... not good enough
sir.”

“Look on the bright side—nobody was shooting
at us.”

“Roger that,” Hicks replied coolly.

The cabin remained quiet as Ari slowed the
helo and parked it in a hover inside a small clearing in the
Bridger Teton National Forest, ten miles east of the insertion
point.

As soon as Durant received Cade’s all clear
call he relayed the message, “Anvil Actual is good to go,”
referring to the call sign Major Nash had assigned the Delta
captain.

Ari quickly forwarded a situation report to
Schriever, then nosed the helo to the south as Durant searched the
digital topo map for the butte they would be cooling their heels on
while awaiting the Delta team’s exfil request.

The abandoned logging camp where the SOAR
aviators would be awaiting the exfil call had been located using
old footage gleaned from an earlier flyover conducted by one of
Major Nash’s KH-11 Keyhole spy satellites. Their loiter LZ (Landing
Zone), situated on a medium sized butte roughly five miles
southeast of downtown Jackson, was far enough away and low enough
on the horizon to keep them underneath the enemy radar.

With only one overgrown and nearly impassable
road leading in and out, the Night Stalkers would be safe although
a little bored.

It was understood by Cade and the other three
men and reiterated by Ari in no uncertain terms that the team would
be leaving the valley either on foot or some other type of ground
transportation if they failed to disable—or more preferably
destroy—the Patriot surface-to-air missiles deployed in the elk
refuge.

Chapter 35

Outbreak - Day 11

Jackson Hole, Wyoming

Snow King Resort, Downtown Jackson

The team fanned out and took cover, each near
the base of a mature fir tree; then, after a few minutes spent
waiting and listening to make sure they hadn’t been compromised,
they trudged up a field of loose scree, their destination three
hundred yards above.

Shadowing the team’s uphill progress,
flitting from tree to tree and sounding like a rusty pump handle, a
Steller’s Jay belted out a series of shrill calls.

Cade held up a clenched fist.

The other three men went still.

Looking directly at Tice and Maddox, Cade
pointed to his left with two fingers.

The men nodded and moved in that direction,
angling for the summit.

Cade motioned for Lopez to follow, and then
he moved forward in order to create more spacing in case someone
was waiting for them at the top. The last thing he wanted was for
the mission to end on the side of the mountain, the entire team
taken out by one hand grenade or a quick burst of machine gun
fire.

“Clear. We’re at the summit,” Maddox said
into his throat mic.

“Copy,” Cade answered as he went to ground
and low-crawled until he and Lopez met up with Maddox and Tice
behind a termite infested snag.

Though the elevation was only 7,808 feet, the
view from the top of Snow King Resort was breathtaking. The city of
Jackson Hole started at the bottom of the ski runs where the
massive hotel and convention facilities were, and rambled into the
distance. Laid out in a grid pattern, the downtown core was
dominated with bars, restaurants, art galleries, and T-shirt shops.
The National Elk Refuge sprawled to the northeast and roughly ten
miles beyond lay the Jackson Hole Airport. The Jackson Hole
Mountain Resort was just twelve miles to the north and, in the
middle of them all, rising to nearly fourteen thousand feet, the
majestic Grand Tetons thrust skyward. Yellowstone with its
geothermal pools and the Old Faithful geyser were a mere sixty
miles to the east.

***

Six Hours Later

Cade was no stranger to the boredom and
monotony a prolonged stretch of surveillance could bring on. He had
spent days on end in the Stan and Iraq watching and waiting for an
HVT (high value target) to show, only to paint the target with a
laser and let someone else drop a two thousand pound JDAM (Joint
Direct Attack Munition) or a couple of Hellfire missiles on their
heads. This would be different; if they were lucky they would be
rewarded with a HVT to take home with them.

Aside from the random vehicles and the
occasional helicopter buzzing north towards the airport, the one
constant during the team’s six hour over watch had been the Humvee
patrolling downtown Jackson Hole. Every twenty minutes, like
clockwork, the flat black vehicle returned from the northwest,
passed through downtown and then disappeared to the northeast.

Cade checked his Suunto—
one hour until
full dark
. He addressed his men who were separated by only a
few feet. “We’ll lie dog a little while longer—we’ve got a sliver
moon tonight,” he said, looking at the clear darkening sky. “Then
just after dark we’ll work our way down and set up near those,” he
said, pointing at the alpine toboggan. The blue concrete run, its
straightaways bookended by steeply banked turns, ran from the top
of the lift to the bottom of the mountain. Cade figured the
suspended part of the run near one of the corners where it banked
sharply would provide them with the perfect cover until the patrol
made its lap, allowing them to move into the city.

He brushed a termite from the Bushnells and
continued glassing downtown and the valley beyond.

***

Silver Dollar Cowboy Bar, Jackson Hole

The mechanical bull was going full tilt,
bucking in herky-jerky rhythms, as the rider’s boots started to
exit the stirrups.

Daymon knew without a doubt that the man was
about to make an unintended dismount.
Three, two, one
... he
counted down in his mind and when the count hit
one
the wiry
kid with the blond crew cut was launched from the undulating
fiberglass toro and with a hollow slap hit the considerable amount
of padding covering the wooden floor.

Unable to control himself, Daymon laughed and
peered over the wooden rail at the thrown rider.

The younger man stood slowly and grimaced in
pain as he dusted himself off. He looked at Daymon, who was still
laughing uncontrollably, and hissed, “What the
fuck
are you
laughing at...
nigger?
”

At this point in a Western movie all of the
boisterous talk and chatter would stop and the bar would suddenly
go quiet; so great would be the vacuum of sound that you could hear
a pin drop. This wasn’t the case here. Daymon had to yell to get
his
point across. “
A sad fucking excuse for a bull
rider
,
that’s what I’m laughing at!
”

Crew Cut came out of the pit, and without
taking his eyes off of Daymon defiantly got into his face.

“You sure you don’t want to change your
story,
nigger?
”

Daymon brought one leg around so that he was
sitting sidesaddle on the bar stool facing Crew Cut, then he raised
both hands from the bar, palms out in mock surrender.

Thinking he had bested the man with caustic
words alone, Crew Cut smirked, hitched his thumbs into his front
pants pockets and seemed to relax.

Trapping his dreads behind his head with both
hands, Daymon tensed his abs then delivered a wicked head-butt to
the bigot’s face.

Without so much as a whimper Crew Cut dropped
to the hardwood floor as blood poured from his destroyed nose; he
lay motionless save for the occasional autonomous twitch.

Daymon massaged his forehead, checking it for
blood.
Nothing.

The bull resumed its steady
kachunk-kachunk
with a new rider in the stirrups as Daymon
scanned the bar. Two men, both well north of six feet, played a
game of pool on the other side of the bull pit. A handful of
inebriated men dressed in all black slouched in a horseshoe-shaped
booth swathed in sparkling red vinyl that looked like a transplant
from Harrah’s in Vegas. Since nobody seemed to be missing Crew Cut,
Daymon reclaimed his space at the bar and waved to Gerald. When he
at last made eye contact with the grizzled proprietor he raised the
empty tumbler.