Gnash (9 page)

Sergeant Owens gestured to Billy, the radio operator, “Get back on the company net and order the other three teams in here.”  He turned to Lieutenant Colonel Henson, “Sir, I recommend that we divide the MP squad up and send three MPs with each group.”

“No.  I want two MPs to stay here and guard the entrance to make sure no one inadvertently tries to enter the building.  The rest of them are going to stay with me, you, Dr. Collins and Specialist Givens in a make-shift command post in the courtyard.  Sergeant, give your four teams their floor assignments, put a medic with each team and then come with me to the courtyard.”

“Yes sir.”  Owens took a few moments to scribble some notes and sketch a quick diagram of the Pentagon on a piece of paper then he called his men over.  “Alright, listen up.  Here are your floor sweep assignments.  Your job is to go floor to floor to see if you can determine the source of whatever it was that killed these people.  Command believes that it’s a chemical of some type based on the VX
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attack outside the building two days ago.  Each team will take a medic with them to assess injuries or treat any survivors.  Stay in constant radio contact with me and Colonel Henson.  The plan is to start in the A ring and work your way out.”  He held up his sketch for each of the team leaders to see.  “If you get confused about where you are, there are maps on the wall at each apex intersection, here, here, here and so on,” he said as he pointed to the intersections of the corridors at the A ring. 

“Basically the building is a big wagon-wheel shape,” he continued.  “The different corridors originate at the A ring and go out like the spokes of a bicycle wheel from that point.  There are five different sections called rings that are actually separate buildings on the outside, but they’re connected by hallways so that you don’t even realize it when you’re on the inside.  They start at the A ring and progress out to the E ring, each building getting larger as you go.  Most of the doors operate with electronic locks, so with the power off, they should be open.  Check every room you can as quickly as you can while still being thorough.  Any questions so far?”

“Uh, Sergeant, I got one,” Staff Sergeant Alejandro Rodriguez held up his hand, pencil hanging limply from between his thumb and forefinger.  “Are the different rings connected so that we can like, search all of A ring, then the B ring and so on, like that?”

Owens held up his drawing again.  “Good question.  No.  The only rings that you can actually walk completely around on are the A and the E rings.  The rest of them are offices and cubicle farms.  You won’t be able to go in a door from one corridor and come out a different door in a separate corridor, so you’ll have to move out down one corridor, check the offices that are unlocked, move back to the corridor, keep doing that down to the E ring, check the offices in that ring, and then back down the next corridor back to the A ring doing the same thing.  Kinda like a zig-zag pattern,” he said as he traced the pattern on his drawing.  “Anyone else?”

“If the door is locked…”

“Skip it, we’ve got a shitty mission and we’ve only got about two and a half hours until the sun goes down completely so we’ll definitely be in here in after nightfall.  Hell, most of the offices will be dark anyways since there aren’t very many windows in the building.  That reminds me, make sure everyone has extra batteries for their headlamps and mini-cams.”  He referred to his notebook.  “Alright, Sergeant Smith, you’ve got the fourth and fifth floor.  Sergeant Atkins, second and third floor, Rodriguez, basement and first floor and Gutierrez your team has both of the sub-basements.  Keep us informed over the radio as you go.  After you’ve completed your sweeps, return to the courtyard to give us an in-depth brief on what you’ve found on the floors you were responsible for.”

“Sarge, this whole thing seems like a real-life version of some video game or sci-fi movie.”

“Don’t worry about that science fiction stuff Sergeant Atkins.  We’re investigating a mass casualty site as the result of a terrorist attack.  Is it scary because it’s dark and there are probably thousands of dead bodies?  Yes, but we’ve got a job to do and we’re going to do it.  Now check your gear and move out in ten minutes.”

***

A couple of the military police walked slowly around the small perimeter they had set up.  They’d moved a few of the courtyard picnic tables together so Billy Givens could set up his electronic equipment and attach a speaker to the radio so they all could hear the message traffic.  The MPs had brought in a few portable battery-operated floodlight systems that they set up to shine out from the perimeter in a circle and two directed near the command post.  Then they set up four laptop computers that each received a live feed from the helmet-mounted miniature cameras carried by the team leaders so the command group was able to see the team’s progress and when the team reported by radio, they could figure out what was being seen on the computer screen.  Imperfect system, but the Department of Defense’s budget was not unlimited like most Americans thought. 

Owens paced back and forth between check-ins.  He really didn’t like the situation, regardless of what he’d told his men.  Once they split up, the command group had made their way out to the courtyard in the center of the building.  In 2005, he’d been pulling security after the stampede at the Baghdad Bridge where over 950 Shiite Muslims on pilgrimage had trampled one another when rumors of a suicide bomber swept through the crowd.  There seemed to be just as many bodies down in the lobby area as that day in Baghdad.  So much death and so many lives ruined, then and now.  For what?  What was this all for?

After they left the lobby, the thing that shocked everyone was the lack of bodies.  They had to step on hundreds of corpses to make it into the actual building, but then there weren’t any more.  When the colonel called up this highly unusual finding, they were told to carry on and keep an eye out.  The little voice in the back of Sergeant Owens’ brain kept screaming that something wasn’t right.

When the command element reached the courtyard it was more of the same scene as inside.  It was deserted, almost as if nothing had happened.  The grass was well-manicured, the edges were trimmed and the trash cans were emptied of garbage.  The only thing out of the ordinary was the absence of the birds that usually flew around the area.  Owens had been stationed here as a brand new buck sergeant, years ago and he remembered that the birds in the courtyard were absolutely everywhere in the springtime.  It didn’t make sense that there weren’t any. 

Not only was the lack of bodies disconcerting, but Owens was also beginning to worry about his men’s chemical protective suits.  They were fine for limited use around biological agents, but not sustained use.  If this attack was biological like he suspected, the suits could begin to fail before and his men would be at risk. 

The more he thought about it, the more he felt that the absence of any bodies or animal life in the courtyard was indicative that something terrible was going on.  Why were there all those bodies right there in the lobby, but absolutely nothing anywhere else?  Had everyone who tried to get out of the main exit through the lobby died and those that didn’t were alive somewhere?  There were about 27,000 employees in this building, where were they?

The search teams were reporting the same thing over and over: No chemical agents detected and only a few bodies here and there.  On the bodies they did find, there was evidence of severe trauma on them.  Sergeant Gutierrez’ team discovered two bodies in the Joint Emergency Operations Center on the first sub-basement level that had their heads bashed in and one had an arm missing.  It was unexplainable but they had to keep going, maybe they had fought with each other near the end.

The shadows had already lengthened across the courtyard to a degree that their eyes began to play tricks on them.  In less than an hour it would be totally dark out here like it was on the inside the building.  Owens sighed and walked back to where Specialist Givens was monitoring the radio.  He placed a hand on the kid’s shoulder and asked him how things were going. 

It was meant as an encouraging, fatherly gesture, but the young specialist jumped and gave out a frightened yelp.  “I’m sorry, Sergeant.  Guess I’m a little bit jumpy right now.”  He looked at his notebook.  “Um, teams two, three and one have reported in.  No word from Sergeant Gutierrez’ team in the past twenty minutes.  But as you can see in monitor four, they’re still moving.  Maybe there’s too much interference for the radio to work properly the deeper underground they go.”

“Hand me the mike, will you?  And have you seen the colonel?  He needed to piss and didn’t want to do it outside.  He went to the bathroom at the apex a while ago but hasn’t came back.”

“No, I haven’t seen him in about ten or fifteen minutes, Sergeant.”

“Ok, we’ll give it five more minutes then I’m gonna send the MPs looking for him.”  He keyed the button on the radio handset.  “Febris Three-Seven, this is Febris Three-Two, over.”  He paused for a few seconds, “Febris Three-Seven, this is Febris Three-Two, over.”  Nothing.  “Febris Three-Five, this is Febris Three-Two, do you have contact with Three-Seven, over?”

“Three-Two, that’s a negative.  I haven’t had contact with any of the other teams since we started our sweep.  I can hear your end of the conversation, but I don’t hear anything but static when they’re on the line, over.”

Billy jumped back from the monitor.  “What the fuck was that?”

“What?”

“Something definitely moved just at the edge view of camera four and it wasn’t a member of the team,” he said as he readjusted his protective mask and with his prescription eyewear inside.  “Whoa, Sergeant!  Something’s going on.”

He was right, the laptop screen started to flash brightly as the members of the team began firing their weapons.  The MPs heard the two men talking and came over to stand behind them and watch the screen.  “What’s goin on with that team Sarge?” one of them asked.

“How the heck should I know?  We don’t have radio coms with them, only video.”  The flashes grew less frequent and the video shifted rapidly as Sergeant Gutierrez jerked his head from side to side.  The screen went black for a moment and they thought the feed was lost, but then Gutierrez’ protective mask came into view.  He must have blocked the camera when he took off his helmet.  He held up one finger then the view jostled again and a piece of paper was put in front of the camera.  It said, “
One injured, not bad.  Shot something.  Bringing it out 2 U.”

Owens keyed the mike, “Febris Three-Four, Three-Five and Three-Six this is Three-Two, acknowledge.”

“Three-Five.”

“Three-Six.”

“This is Febris Three-Four, over.”

“Alright, listen up, this is Three-Two.  I want all of you to stop what you’re doing and return to the courtyard.  Gutierrez’ team got in a firefight with someone and they have an injured man.  Go weapons hot and stay alert.  I say again, abort your mission and bring your team to the courtyard.  Acknowledge.”

“Three-Five, got it.”

“Three-Four, weapons hot, roger.”

“Three-Six, moving your way.”

“Specialist Givens, get on the horn and give HQ a SITREP.”  The scenes on the other three monitors were roughly the same as each team leader gestured to his men what they were supposed to do.  In monitor two, an M4 carbine came into view and then a hand pulled the charging handle back, chambering a round.

The wait wasn’t long for the group at the command post.  The building was huge when you searched it room by room, but when you had a direct point to go to it was actually a pretty short trip.  Within ten minutes the three teams that had been operating above ground had assembled at the command post.  Monitor number four indicated that Sergeant Gutierrez’ team was almost out of the basement.

“Did any of you see the colonel?  He’s gone missing somehow.”

“Negative on that Sergeant.  We didn’t see him, just a lot of empty rooms.”

“Alright,” he turned to the MP squad leader, “Sergeant Jones, I need you to take your squad on a sweep of the courtyard.  Don’t go into the building.  Understand?”

“Roger.  We’ll be back soon.”

As the MPs were walking away from the small command post, Team Four came back.  They were dragging something behind them.  “Sergeant, we shot this guy down in the basement.  Three or four of them came from down the hallway we were searching.  At first we thought they were survivors, but then they got closer and I realized they were sick or something.  They attacked us.  One of them was swinging an arm like a club.  A human arm!  We opened fire and they retreated back down the hallway.  This guy here,” he gestured at the body they’d brought with them, “was hit several times.  At least twice in the head.  Private Davis was either bit or scratched, we’re not sure but it was hard enough to penetrate his protective suit.”

Owens looked at the dead man and crossed himself, “My God, what the happened to these people?”  The corpse wore the remnants of a bloodstained Army uniform.  He had large dark bruises covering his arms and neck and his skin appeared pale and waxy like he’d recently lost a lot of weight that left behind a flabby mass of skin, stretched out of shape from years of obesity.  “Gutierrez, have your guys begin decontamination of Davis and conduct a protective suit exchange now.  Doctor Collins, can you look at this guy and give us some insight into what was wrong with him.  He looks different than the others we saw at the front entrance.”

Collins crouched down beside the body and talked out loud as he examined it.  One of his medics took notes on a tablet of paper and another held a miniDV camera.  “Lack of blood from 5.56mm wounds delivered approximately fifteen minutes ago.  Skin tissue appears to be dead and beginning to decay as indicated by these dark areas resembling bruises.  Based on initial examination and lack of body fluids, estimated time of death would be more than twenty-four hours, however the flesh is still pliable and rigor mortis has not set in.  This would indicate a much later time of death.”  He pulled out a scalpel and began to delicately work the blade on the skin.  “Just cut through the skin to examine the subcutaneous fat layer.  Total lack of blood at the entry site is consistent with someone being deceased around a week or more.  That, or the body was drained of blood,” he paused and worked his glove into the opening he’d cut.  “As expected, fat layer is the consistency of play dough, indicating loss of body fluids.  Initial examination of the other bodies found indicates massive amounts of blood in their lungs and loss of fluids from all visible orifices.”  He moved down and lifted up the shirt over the stomach and cut deep into the body.