A Time to Die (6 page)

Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe a million people moved like a slow-moving amoeba, continually trying to overwhelm the retreating force. He was only over the battle for a few seconds and he was sure he saw artillery land on the crowd more than once before he swept on past.

Andrew had seen military weapons used on civilians, on tape and in person. You don’t serve for long in the Middle East without bearing witness to the depths of man’s soul. Some crowds, driven by religious fervor or righteous anger, could charge sporadic gunfire. But this wasn’t sporadic. He’d just witnessed a wave of humanity rushing massive confined weapons fire, and they kept on coming! More, they appeared to be winning in places, overwhelming the defenders and destroying men and equipment alike.

“What am I seeing,” he asked the roar of the cockpit, and of course received no answer. Now miles north of the conflagration, he was over the more affluent suburbs of Mexico City and the wide highways leading north. And there he saw more surprises. The roads were clogged with a sea of people, cars, trucks, wagons, and whatever would move, all heading north. The army hadn’t turned on the populace here; they were buying them time to withdraw. But to withdraw from what? He desperately wished for more than a simple TV screen to view the images. It was intended for targeting, and had no image intensification or enhancement ability.

And then, he was north of the city. Every mile showed fewer heading north and eventually he passed the chain of human refugees, even passing over one area where men and armor appeared to be gathering. Preparing another line of defense? Defense against what, damn it.

“Tightend-Switchblade, what did you observe?”

Andrew stared at the screen for almost a minute, trying to decide how to convey even the slightest impression to this commander without coming out with it. He finally decided. “Switchblade-Tightend. I saw Hell, and it’s coming north.”

Chapter 9

Tuesday, April 17

The proliferation of drones has made them nearly ubiquitous. The military owns untold thousands, law enforcement legions more. Many drug organizations and gangs managed to get ahold of privately manufactured drones as well. But one of the most eager new users turned out to be news organizations. The market for unarmed, smaller drones proved extremely competitive, and the aforementioned news groups became much anticipated customers to drone manufacturers eager for customers.

The news hounds weren’t picky, but they had certain specific demands. They needed to be able to carry good recording and transmitting technology, sport good loitering range, and be extremely stealthy.

A single Trimark Model 11-B Nightwing drone flew along using its ground profiling radar to plot a course less than ten meters above the terrain that raced by at just over 100kph. Somewhat resembling a B-2 stealth bomber, the Nightwing had a short boom with stabilizers and a pair of miniature electric ducted fans extending from its rear. In its current mode of operation, it could stay aloft, unguided, for nearly twenty hours, thus giving the drone a nearly 2,000 kilometer range. When it passes over the Mexican border, an automated surveillance system notes the passage and sends an alert. The drone will be a hundred kilometers away before anyone can come to investigate.

Sticking to rocky canyons and tree-covered hills, the drone makes rapid progress ever south and westward. It passes just to the south of Monterrey. The city is teeming with activity. Tens of thousands are packing cars, trucks, anything that moves and preparing to evacuate. The military is fortifying the western approach along Highway 40 that cuts through the mountains. The drone passes unnoticed through the mountain pass until it encounters the first camps. Valleys full of the remnants of humanity from Mexico City cover the ground from end to end, a small sea of survivors that number in the tens of thousands. Dawn is still an hour away as the drone spends vital time circling, its array of cameras recording and transmitting what it sees. Few in the valley look up at the buzz of the drone, many are too tired or hungry to wonder what it means. All they know is it isn’t screaming death from the south. After a time, the drone continues southward.

More camps follow, steadily growing in size as it moved southwards and finally encountered the first military presence. The drone plays it cautious, answering to remote control relayed from satellites. The military presence was disorganized, almost as if they were refugees as well. They sat in camps centered around supplies or heavy weapons. Small vehicles moved between the camps attempting to coordinate and organize the ragtag survivors, with little success.

After a short time, the Nightwing turned southward again. A low mountain pass caused more energy to be expended and the drone drew close to its range. But just over the pass, paydirt was found. Another army, only this one was not well organized, or even in uniform.

The roadway was clogged with legions of men, women, and even children shambling along the road. The Nightwing orbited slowly, filming all the while the vast tide of humanity moving at a slow yet steady pace towards Monterrey only dozens of kilometers farther along.

The drone continued to loiter, running dangerously past its point of no return. Its operators were mesmerized by the scene they were witnessing. A short distance in front of the advancing hordes were two aged station wagons crowded with at least a dozen people. They’d tried desperately for hours to get their cars running again and were about to give up when the first of the shambling mob crested a hill and spotted them.

The drone’s high definition cameras caught in perfect detail a man in a tattered business suit, his face flaccid and expressionless as he walked, until he saw the pair of cars and the huddled refugees around it. His face instantly split into a horrendous mixture of rage and hunger. He shook his head violently from side to side before bearing his teeth. There were no microphones to pick up the primal scream or hear it picked up by the others behind him as dozens broke into a crazed headlong rush down the hill.

The refugees looked up in terror, several instantly turning to run while others, struck with indecision, either jumped into the cars to lock the doors or continued to struggle with the broken engine in vain. As the cars were hit by the first of the runners, the people in the open were tackled by headlong leaps while others tried to use any weapon that came to hand to defend themselves. Brutal images were caught frame after frame as the hopeless battle proceeded, and the refugees were torn literally limb from limb. The scenes of people ripping men, women and children apart with hands and teeth were caught in shocking detail, and relayed far away to be recorded.

The Nightwing continued to circle the action and follow the advancing mob mile by mile until it was almost within sight of the Army defenders near Monterrey. Just as the first artillery rounds begin to fall among them, sending torn bodies flying into the skies, the drone finally ran out of juice and spiraled into the ground.

* * *

“Jesus, Kathy!”

Kathy Clifford sat staring at the monitor, unable to move. Even after the streaming video from Mexico City two days ago she couldn’t actually believe what she’d seen. The video had been taken down by the streaming service after only a few hours online. Maybe she’d made a mistake making it available live without first watching the content. She’d agonized over the recordings ever since, having experts review it same as the other news services who’d gotten ahold of it second hand. Of course their versions weren’t the original feed, like she possessed. Experts said they believed it must be faked. The ones who reviewed hers agreed with that assessment, only they could find no signs of tampering or FX enhancements.

“Jesus Christ, Kathy!” the voice behind her repeated, louder and with an edge of insanity to it this time.

“Shut up Marc, I’m trying to think.”

In almost twenty years as a journalist Kathy Clifford had seen her share of death and crime. In the killing fields of the Middle East she’d watched Jihadists beheading women for secretly going to schools, and in Africa she’d photographed mass graves of villagers who’d taken help from Christian missionaries to feed their children. Nothing came close to matching the horror she’d just witnessed.

Marc was whimpering and shaking his head, grabbing a tablet computer and doing something unknown. The question of some elaborate hoax or a government conspiracy through false flag operation was put to death as suddenly as those people she’d just seen die on a lonely Mexican highway. It was all in living color and now recorded on the hard drive of her laptop computer. She had what she’d gone out to get when she’d ‘borrowed’ the GNN Nightwing news drone. It could well be the news story of the year, of the decade, of the millennium! The drone, worth more than a million dollars, was now scattered all over the Mexican scrub.

Her computer chirped, and incoming ‘high importance email’. The technology director at GNN had noticed her accessing their high priced asset and wanted to know what the fuck she was doing. Kathy ignored it as she chewed her thumbnail and thought furiously. A few minutes later her phone rang, also from GNN. She continued to ignore everything. At some point Marc wandered off. He was sitting at his desk on the other side of the room, shaking his head and mumbling something that sounded like a prayer.

“God won’t help you now,” she said under her breath.

Kathy accessed the new services and government databases, looking for something about this, anything at all.

“Mexican diplomats are curiously silent,” one headline read. “Agents of US Customs & Border Patrol have stopped all train traffic through the Laredo port of entry with Mexico,” another announced. “Families complain to the State Department concerning inability to reach family members in Mexico,” was the most concerning headline. It felt like a news blackout to her and made Kathy furious. She couldn’t be the only reporter aware that a crazy war was underway in Mexico… could she?

She had her phone in hand and the number to her bureau chief punched in, finger over the ‘SEND’ button when she stopped. What if there was a blackout? Maybe the CIA or FBI was halting all news stories for national security? Was this a plague and the people she saw attacking the army by hand, driven insane by some virus?

Her office, an independent news agency in Dallas, had no real national sway. Once, long ago in its heyday, they’d had a seat in the White House press room. Sure, it was in the last row and the only time a president had called on their reporter for a question his name had been Carter and it had been a slow news day, but they’d been there. The death of print had hit her company hard.

Kathy was a new breed of cyber-journalist, a specialist in eNews and ways of finding it. She got recordings of scenes from security cameras and found stories through personal blogs or ubiquitous live feeds, like the one she’d found in Mexico City. It was her specialty. This, though, this was world-shaking shit, and she was feeling way out of her depth.

What if I call Terrence and he pulls the plug? She chewed her already non-existent thumbnail some more. They were small, but well enough known that if a news blackout were under way they would be on the list of agencies to contact. And after her live linking that feed, she knew she would be being watched.

The phone in her hand rang and she jumped. Glancing down she saw showed “Terrence – Boss” as the calling party. “Fuck!” she cursed and dropped the device on her desk. Either GNN had called him, or the government was on to what she’d just seen. She turned to her computer for a moment before shaking her head and grabbing the little tablet out of her bag instead.

A minute to make two copies of the Nightwing video feed, one on an SD card, the other to her Ironkey flash drive, and she plugged the ironkey into her tablet. She loaded the video feed, all seven gigabytes of it, through the tablet onto the service’s encrypted server. She typed a hurried story line; “Anarchy and Death on the Road from Mexico City”, and sent it live out onto the web.

* * *

The rail hub at Laredo Texas was completely full, something only seen during occasional peak cattle seasons. April was not one of those seasons. Tens of thousands of rail cars sat on the sidings, spread out like the arteries of a body, or the delta of a huge river. At the other end of the sidings engines sat idle, unmanned and without orders.

Normally they would be taking railcars cleared through US Customs and dispatching them to huge trains heading north to the processing centers of Fort Worth and Alamogordo. Now the only sound was that of the untold thousands of heads of cattle rustling about on their cars. Their moos of complaint were growing ever louder as the meager fodder on the cars was long depleted, and no water was available in the ninety-plus degree heat. Already the smell of rotting carcasses was being carried in the still air.

“What the hell is going on?” asked one controller from the top of a short tower overseeing the expansive yard. “Four days now, and nothing released by customs. This is going to turn into a scene from hell real quick.”

“I don’t know,” his buddy said who was using a pair of field glasses to watch as a trio of CBP (Customs and Border Protection) white Chevy Suburbans moved through the yard. They’d been slowly working their way around for two days, obviously looking for something. “But if they don’t start releasing some of this mess, a Quarter Pounder is going to cost $40 next week!”

Down in the yard amidst the suffering and dying cattle, one railcar was different. It contained a special compartment in the middle of the cargo area. Amidst the heavy steel rails and under all the mass of cattle, it had avoided detection on many crossings between Mexico and the United States. After sitting for days, the compartment finally opened and a hesitant head carefully looked out. The dark skinned man crawled from the compartment, the cows were all silent. They looked to be sick, many lying on the ground making strange sounds. He didn’t mind the manure and straw on the ground, it was a small cost to get his family out of the hell they’d left behind.

He reached the slatted sides of the car and surveyed the outside before returning. “We are still in the rail yard,” he told his wife below in a hushed voice.

“Why?” she asked.

“I do not know. How is Emilia?”

“No better.”

The day before, their nine-year-old daughter had not awoken as the morning light came in through the cracks of their smuggling compartment. They’d examined her as best as possible with the tiny LED light they had, and aside from a tiny bite (probably from a mouse), there was no sign of injury. Now she was fevered and shaking. She occasionally mumbled something and shook her head from side to side. “Julio, she needs a doctor.”

“I know,” he snapped, then apologized. He’d paid ten thousand US dollars for the use of the space, along with its cargo and a promise to see it through. All of that was meaningless now as his daughter suffered from some unknown ailment. He had to find someone, even if it meant being imprisoned. But what if they tried to send them back? Back to the desperate plight of those still in Mexico… and the monsters.

“Come,” he said and held his hand out for his wife. They extracted themselves from the compartment. He left almost everything they owned behind. Clothes, valuables, even his family Bible. He had his wife carefully arrange their Emilia on the pack frame he carried on his back. On his wife’s was the other pack, with twenty kilograms of cocaine. The other price for their trip to Los Estados Unidos del Norte. Emilia thrashed and moaned for a second, then became quiet again.