Payload (35 page)

Addison kept an eye on the rear and wondered if Sophia had been briefed by his mother in person. Probably not, he decided-she always kept a disconnect between herself and any direct attempt on his life. It was why he had never gotten the goods on her, but it had also worked to his advantage on occasion. He had to hand it to her, she was a first-class operator, the best he had ever seen. He wondered how long she had been building up FASA.

JD sighed and tucked the photograph away. He wondered how the kids were doing in Belize, and what their mother was telling them about him. Was she saying he had abandoned them? Both Dyson and Marv had promised that if he bought it, that they would find a way to get the truth to his kids-that was a big reason he was down here waiting to see which was more dangerous, armed terrorists or zombies: he wanted his kids to have proof their old man wasn’t a complete asshole.

It was nice and cool in the shaded depths of the creek bed, Sophia discovered; she was a big-city girl born and bred, and never bothered to spend any more time outside than was necessary, but even so, walking on the gravel bed of the creek under the cool green overhang of the trees was nice. It had a calming effect-while she had been fond of showing up at the scenes of her pre-FASA chaos events, she had never hit any place or people she knew on a personal level. Meeting these Yard Gnomes, secure in the knowledge that Mabry would cue the response team to start their run once they had verified that the entire team was down here, was stimulating. Glancing sideways at Dennis, who was moving alertly, weapon ready, she wondered if this was how he felt when he closed in on his kills. It was an interesting thought.

They were waiting for them as promised, the biker sprawled in a green nylon folding chair with black plastic rod supports, trying to look cool and relaxed, but was clearly tense. The other four were a bit further down the creek bed, waiting.

Her eye fell on Chip Wilson sitting on a log, and was struck by his appearance. Staffers had pulled his license photo and pictures off his Facebook page, and she had a very firm impression of a bumbling young man, fat, lazy, technically intelligent but crippled by an absence of drive. The Chip Wilson sitting on the log looked very different…he was the same man, of course, but she was struck by the fact that he was not just overweight, but
large
: heavy bones, broad shoulders, and over six feet in height. His face looked a tad less round and a lot harder, and his eyes did not flinch away when she met his gaze, but held hers. He looked tired but determined, big hands gripping a rifle of some sort across his thighs, another gun hanging on a strap looped across his chest, and he had a holstered pistol as well. This Chip Wilson looked tough, and she was struck by a pang of unease, a single strong tone of worry echoing through her inner being.

For the first time she questioned her assessment of these dregs, these self-named Yard Gnome Action Team. Up close and in person they did not look like losers, and a part of her mind reminded her that at least three teams of FASA operatives had crossed their paths and fared very poorly. Four, she realized with a start: they had taken out a team previously listed as missing, the source of the sat phone Bear had used.

“You ready to deal?” Bear asked, his rough voice familiar to her from the phone, and she wondered if what she had interpreted as tension was in fact simply a state of readiness. She causally glanced at Trek and Dennis, and saw that both were alert and visibly wary.

She felt another pang of concern, but fought it down. “Of course.” She hitched at the purse’s strap. “How do you want to do this?”

“I see the stones, and then we scoot and you get the payload down.”

“You see the stones, we get the payload, and then we all go our separate ways,” Sophia countered. “That way there’s no accidental alerting of the zombies.”

Bear considered that. “OK.”

She tossed him the bag, suddenly glad she had the revolver.

The Gnome pulled the multi-chambered case out of the purse and flipped open two compartments at random. “Pretty.”

“Fair enough?”

He weighed the box on one hand. “Sure. Get yours.”

She nodded to Dennis, who moved up slope to just below the crest, and cautiously bobbed up to check. Nodding, he moved to place a tree trunk between himself and the Gnomes before motioning Trek onward. From her angle she could see that Mabry had hung a tablet that displayed the drone feed on a handy projection on the tree.

Turning back to Bear, hand casually resting on the hard rubber grips of the revolver stuffed in her waistline, she smiled at Bear. “This is all terribly exciting.”

Chip hadn’t been sure of what to expect in a top FASA agent-he had thought she might look like the Italian villainess in Resident Evil 5, all elegant clothes and a major rack, or maybe something like Amy Winehouse after a hard night of partying, all deranged hair and punked-out clothes. But she had turned out to be just a regular woman, early thirties, pale and going a little chunky, not pretty but not ugly, sort of like the Clinton daughter: unremarkable. She had blond hair in a short haircut, sort of a perky college girl cut that was too young for her. She was wearing little gold studs in her ears, a sort of southwestern theme top, and a pair of boot-cut levis over high-dollar walking shoes. She had a stainless-steel revolver with black rubber grips stuffed into her jeans, and she had her hand on it now, but Chip could see she was even less weapon-savvy than he was-it was a prop to her, something she brought because that was what you did in this sort of thing.

He wished he could hear what she and Bear were talking about, but the earplugs blocked out everything.

Chapter Fifteen 

Portal checked that the drone was in a tight orbit over the target building and moved around to the rear of the SUV, figuring that if trouble came, it would come from the direction of town, which the vehicle was facing. He didn’t like this operation but nobody had asked his opinion. He didn’t like wasting last night and today watching a crossroads instead of hitting the farms and ranches around here, bringing blood and fire to the unbelievers, but his opinion on that subject hadn’t swung any weight, either.

He wasn’t sure he really believed all this Door business, but it had gotten him a pretty cool time before the outbreak, and since then they had been home invading like a mofo, like SWAT teams. Lots of strait-laced squarejob pussy screaming him into the hot shot, lots of death-penalty-loving squares getting put on their knees for a bullet in the head after watching their old ladies or daughters getting the Portal Express.

It rocked, but this recent inactivity was itching at him-not that he couldn’t wait, twelve years in the box had taught him patience down to the bone, but he suspected that if they didn’t pound the government down fast, then it would be a risky business being a parolee and registered sexual offender with a huge stack of felonies on his hands. They had heard that the military was hanging people in Texas for less than what his team had done, in fact were stringing up anyone with gang or prison ink on spec. It was just rumor, but he wouldn’t put it past those rednecks.

The reaction team was moving, closing up fast-they had gotten the word a minute ago from Dennis, he had heard the tone over the high-tech radios they were carrying, and if he knew his guys they would have already been easing forward anyway.  Whack these wannabes and get back to business.

He heard the movement in the ditch to the south and took a knee, bringing up his H&K G36K. It was too irregular for zombies, and too noisy for anyone who knew what they were doing. A flashing of white amongst the tall weeds quickly resolved into a white rag being waved by someone, and a moment later a tall blonde girl lunched up onto the shoulder of the gravel road, red-faced and gasping for air, her large breasts bouncing under her blue Dallas Cowboys jersey top. Behind her a shorter Hispanic girl thrashed her way through the weeds, slipping just short of the road and sliding a couple feet back into the ditch before scrambling up onto the road.

“Are you with the Army?” the blonde gasped, mopping her face with the white towel she had been waving. “Thank God! The town is covered in those…
things
. We were in my truck, it hit one of them, we rolled…where are your troops? We need to get out of here.”

Portal lowered his weapon as neither girl was armed, and admired the way the blonde’s breasts moved as she came towards him. The other one was hot, too, but she was nervous, maybe sensing that Portal wasn’t any sort of hero. Being shy wouldn’t save her ass, but he figured Blondie was gonna get the first ride on the Portal Express.

“Keep your voice down,” he raised a cautionary hand. “We don’t want to attract attention. Come over here, both of you, take cover. Are there any more with you?”

The world exploded before the girl could answer.

“Damn,” Dyson stuffed his sap into a pocket before dragging the G-36K free, rolling the man onto his back in the process. “I think I hit him too hard. Is he dead?”

“Let’s see,” Bambi kicked Portal square in the groin. The man gasped and curled into a fetal position. “Nope, still alive.”

“OK,” the Georgian said slowly, eyeing the stripper warily. “Get his gear off and tie him up.” He dropped a packet of broad wire-ties they had gotten from Sid Rich’s people onto Portal’s chest. “I’m going to check the drone.” He tossed the CB to Sylvia. “Say it like you mean it, babe.”

Marv’s position was in a long stack of square bales the size of Gnomehome a hundred yards south of the creek; they had dragged the bales around until he had a position in the row just below the top that overlooked the exchange point, his hollow fronted by a bale so the drone could not spot him. Through the narrow spaces between the bales he could see the drone circling over the white building, and through the binoculars he could make out that its camera was aimed down, watching for trouble.

The CB clipped to his vest crackled, and he heard Sylvia asking if anyone was on the channel, if they had their ears on, her accent making her voice unmistakable. That meant the rear guard was out of action and the drone’s controls were in friendly hands; FASA would have other feeds but that wasn’t too important. Bracing his shoulder against the front bale, he carefully moved it forward until it dropped out to thump onto the ground twenty feet below.

Slipping on a pair of ear muff hearing protectors, Marv laid out a sheet of plastic and set the rifle out on it, a Remington Model 700 in 7.62mm NATO with a heavy, glass-bedded bull barrel and a Leopold 4x-12x scope, the main payment from the Sharpsburg raid. He had already sighted the weapon in, although he wasn’t facing that challenging of a shot. Stretching out behind the rifle, he settled it into his shoulder and worked the weapon to settle the bipod’s legs firmly.

Working without a spotter was a pain but he got the scope onto the general area, working off four-power for the slightly larger viewing area. He couldn’t see the exchange area, but he saw a short person in woodland BDUs carrying a G-36K like they knew how to use it easing around to the front of the building. He was surprised to see the THOR backpack unit the figure wore-that was a pretty high-end piece of equipment.

Moving in careful increments he eased his point of vision to the rear of the building; his position afforded him a clear view of the electric boxes. The north-most electrical box, which from his angle was squarely in the center of a gap between the trees, bore a set of initials in green spray paint.

Slowly increasing the scope’s magnification to twelve power, which filled his viewing circle with nothing but the center of the box, Marv released the safety, steadied his breathing, pushed the trigger forward to set it and reduce the trigger pull to next to nothing, and squeezed.

The 7.62mm match full metal jacket bullet penetrated the thin metal of the electrical box cover and struck the box’s payload-a pound of compressed ammonium nitrate fertilizer soaked in diesel. The explosion shredded the electrical box, but some of the blast travelled through the hole Addison had knocked through the wall, where it ignited the main charge: ten fifty-pound sacks of ammonium nitrate fertilizer from the Cross Plains Feed Store, soaked in diesel.

The explosion sent the building’s metal roof sailing off like a giant Frisbee and blasted the old cinderblocks into gravel. Trek, crouching near the front doors as she prepared to dart to the flagpole was largely liquefied by the force of the blast.

She was watching the Gnomes watching her and trying to look cool, calm, and relaxed while nagging doubts kept prickling the hair on the back of her neck. Standing on the sun-warmed concrete with the tree branches whispering overhead, she heard a distant gunshot and even as the sound registered the world tilted and she was lying on her side being pelted by leaves and small rocks raining down. It was hard to breathe-the air seemed full of dust, and she couldn’t hear anything but distant, slow church bells ringing. The concrete around her was covered with twigs, thousands of leaves, and as she lifted her head she saw Dennis lying halfway down the slope, his head pulped.

She swallowed hard, tasting dirt, and her ears popped-she realized that there weren’t any bells, that she was deafened and the ringing was just in her head. She blinked hard and struggled to get her leaden limbs under control and moving. She managed to get to her hands and knees, spotting her revolver on the concrete nearby, before her brain managed to close synapses and get back on line: Mabry was dead, and there had been a great explosion.