The Savage Dead (23 page)

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“Make ready!” Rick Carter yelled.

Inside the helicopter, the operators around Juan started to move. The men put on their helmets and adjusted their gear, checked their weapons, but did it calmly, like the professionals they were. Fast-roping from helicopters was a basic skill set for them, one of the first things they'd mastered way back in Ranger school, long before getting selected for Delta, and none of them acted nervous or apprehensive. Certainly none of them looked as nervous as Juan felt. Most of them, in fact, had slept during the two and a half hour flight out to the
Gulf Queen
.

Juan had tried to sleep himself. After being in a constant state of motion since eight p.m. the previous day, he was exhausted, both mentally and physically. But try as he did, he just couldn't fall asleep. He was too worried. He was worried about this mission, about his own safety and the safety of these men; but even more than that, he was worried about Tess. After fighting those dead men in the Cavazos Meatpacking facility, and watching scores of zombies staggering around the deck of the
Gulf Queen
on the drone feed, he was sick with worry over what he'd find. Tess was tough. She could take of herself. He knew that better than anyone. But she'd been alone on that boat, facing down all those zombies, for at least twenty-four hours now. Good as Tess was, could she still be alive? Would anybody still be alive?

He pushed thoughts of finding a zombie Tess out of his head and focused on the job at hand. He had fifty pounds of gear strapped on his back, and he was about to jump out of a perfectly good helicopter, something he'd hated since his days in the Ranger battalion.

He grabbed his helmet, nodding in approval at the hydraulic fluid that had beaded up on it. The stuff was on his boots and his pant legs, too. But that was okay. There wasn't an Army helicopter in service anywhere in the world that didn't spew hydraulic fluid. In fact, there was a joke in the teams that if you ever got on a helicopter that wasn't leaking the stuff, get off, because it was probably going to crash.

And then the crew chief yelled, “One minute!” and dropped the cargo door down.

The roar of the engines grew even louder. Wind whipped through the cabin. Rick Carter came over to him and held up one finger.

“It's game on,” he yelled over the noise. “You ready?”

“Hell, yeah!”

“Bullshit. You hate this part of the drill.”

“No,” Juan said, “I've learned to love it.”

Carter laughed. “Yeah, right. Hey, have you seen your ship? It's really burning.”

He was right. From where he sat, Juan could see thick black smoke rising up into the sky. He pulled himself up on the overhead handrail and went closer to the open door. About three hundred feet below him, the
Gulf Queen
was dead in the water, no wake, just drifting with the current. On her deck he could see people—zombies, he reminded himself—moving around, some of them turning their attention up to the pair of helicopters moving in for the kill.

Juan glanced over at the other helicopter and was impressed by the operation they'd put together in such a short time. Both helicopters were flown by seasoned pilots from the 160th Special Operations Aviator Regiment, who were the official air delivery service for both Delta and the SEALs. His helicopter, carrying a team of ten Delta operators, was going by the designation Slasher 1. They'd go in first, secure the drop point directly above the bridge, and work crowd control while Slasher 2 brought in the rest of the operators. Once everybody was on board, each team would break into two squads. One of the squads from Slasher 2 would go forward and secure their extraction point at the ship's helipad, while the other three teams went in search of the senator.

In support of the mission, which was now officially called “Operation Iron Maiden,” were a multitude of resources. The U.S. Fleet Forces Command had three Ticonderoga class cruisers headed into the area. In the air was a C130 for refueling the helicopters, an E2 Electronic Warfare Jet to manage all of the communications, the drone that was still feeding live footage to the mission commanders and, of course, the two F-15s coming from Hurlburt Field in Florida that were assigned to shut the door on Operation Iron Maiden once the senator was found.

Juan glanced up at the sky, figuring they had about an hour of workable daylight left. He hoped it would be enough. While looking over the ship's blueprints back at Corpus Christi he figured they'd need about thirty minutes to search the entire ship. Now though, seeing the thing in person and getting a feel for how huge it really was, he was starting to have doubts.

“Hold on!” the crew chief yelled into the cabin. “We're going in.”

Juan grabbed the overhead handrail just as the helicopter started down. They had a primary and a backup drop site predetermined, but both were compromised. Not good, he thought. They were going to have to start shooting from the moment they hit the deck.

The pilot took them lower and Juan found himself twenty feet above the
Gulf Queen
's Lido Deck, staring down at a rapidly growing crowd of hands and teeth.

“Ropes out,” the crew chief called to his assistant, and the two men threw their heavy black ropes over the side.

“Game on,” Carter said. “Let's go!”

The team started down the ropes. Juan moved forward. Carter was right in front of him, and as he grabbed the rope, he turned to Juan and said, “Reminds me of Oaxaca. I hope this senator of yours is worth it.”

He slid down without another word.

Juan grabbed the rope, looked down at the deck rocking back and forth beneath him, and thought: Yeah, me, too.

And then he jumped.

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Juan dropped into a mass of hands and bloody faces. The zombies pulled and slashed at him, grabbing at his clothes and his gear, trying to pull him down. There was no way to fire his rifle without risking hitting one of the other guys on the team, so he swung it like a club, bashing a woman in the face until her hands let go of his uniform and she was pulled under by the ones charging up behind her.

Above him, Slasher 1 flared off, dropping its ropes to the sea as it cleared the airspace for Slasher 2's approach.

The downwash from the rotors blew smoke across the deck, and for a moment Juan couldn't see. But he felt the zombies reaching for him and his instincts kicked in. Juan swung his rifle again and again, crushing skulls everywhere he turned, and still they kept coming. Beside him, two men grabbed one of the team and rode him to the ground. They were smashing his face into the deck when Juan ran to help. He kicked one of the attackers in the ribs and then threw him off. When the second man turned his attention on Juan, he punched the zombie in the face until it sagged to the ground. He brought the butt of his M4 down on the man's face until it looked like meat, just one open and swollen eye staring up at him, the body not moving.

Beside him, Carter was doing the same thing. He knocked a zombie to its knees, backed up, and fired a single round into the man's face. The shot exploded out of the back of the man's head and his body fell limp.

“Secure the stairs,” he ordered, and his men fanned out to do just that, firing as they went.

They'd landed on a narrow deck next to the pool. It butted up against part of the superstructure and had two sets of white metal stairs, one leading down to the casino and the other leading up to the Sun Deck. The zombies were sprinting up the stairs, so many of them that they shook the entire deck.

But the team kept their fire discipline, every shot careful and deliberate, and within seconds they had two-man teams at the head of each stairwell directing a steady stream of fire at the zombies above and below. Juan looked around the deck and saw bodies everywhere. The deck was slick with blood, and a few of the zombies were still moving. But they had knocked them all down at least and none of them were immediate threats.

“Ready, Slasher 2,” Juan heard Carter say over his headset. Carter didn't sound winded or even animated. He was cool and collected, absolutely in control of the situation, just as Juan knew he would be. He saw Carter giving the all-clear sign to Slasher 2. The helicopter was already on its approach and its crew dropping its ropes. Twenty-eight seconds later, all ten of their operators were on the deck and fanning out to their assignments.

Impressive, Juan thought. The guys were tight.

Like all Special Forces operators, the team needed very little on the ground direction, and the only radio chatter Juan heard came from the guys running the show up in the air and the helicopters circling the deck. They were calling out hotspots, giving information on numbers of zombies as best they could, but the guys around Juan barely seemed to notice. They just went about their assignments, getting the job done.

The squad assigned to secure the extraction point moved forward. Their LZ had been chosen with great care because it could be secured quickly and yet still offered direct access to the front of the ship and to several points below deck. Juan was already picturing the route he and his squad were assigned to take through the ship when he heard glass shatter behind him.

Juan turned and saw four of the guys on the extraction detail backing away from the windows to their left. The fifth member of their team was on the ground wrestling with a zombie that had just crashed through the window, scattering glass shards everywhere.

His mind was just starting to ask why they weren't helping him when all the windows along that part of the superstructure burst outward as dozens of zombies rushed them.

The men started firing, their weapons tearing into the crowd, but they were overwhelmed and ripped to pieces in the time it took Juan to process what was going on.

He took a few steps forward, but the men were already dead.

Carter grabbed him by the handle on the back of his pack and pulled him away.

The zombies that couldn't get at the men turned toward Juan and the others and sprinted after them.

“Fall back,” Carter ordered. “Leapfrog it.”

It was a familiar drill, one Juan had done many times. They were standing on a narrow deck about five feet wide. To one side was the ship's superstructure and on the other, the railing that guarded against going over the side of the ship. The team split, each man taking up a position on the opposite side of the deck from the man in front of him and about twenty feet behind him. The lead man started shooting as he pulled back, pausing only long enough to slap the next man in line on the shoulder, confirming that he was now the lead. Done by seasoned professionals the method, nicknamed “leapfrogging” in the teams, could maintain a continuous field of suppressive fire down range while still allowing for a fast and orderly retreat.

The trouble was it was a method that only worked against an enemy afraid of being shot. It didn't offer much opportunity to aim, even for men with Delta's high level of marksmanship, and relied more on the shock and awe of a continuous field of fire to get the job done. It did little good against the crowd of zombies chasing them, and two more members of the team went down before they could get everybody off the LZ.

Carter put a hand on Juan's shoulder. “We're getting slaughtered up here. We need to get aft of this superstructure, and we need to do it right now.”

“What about the extraction site?”

“It's compromised. We have to fall back. We'll exfil from the miniature golf course at the rear of the ship.”

They were at the rear of the leapfrog line, waiting their turn as lead. The noise of the approaching crowd and the rattling guns was deafening. Carter turned to watch the team's progress when the man two positions ahead of them started firing at a group of zombies coming up the stairs next to him.

Juan tried to yell at the man to get out of the way, but he was too late. The first zombie up the stairs gathered him up in a tackle and pushed him back against the railing. As the two struggled, more zombies surged out of the opening, some of them moving forward to attack the guys still caught in retreat, while others mobbed the man who had been standing right at the top of the stairs. Juan watched in horror as the deck filled with zombies. Within seconds, they had overrun almost the entire team, and here and there through gaps in the sea of mangled faces Juan watched the men of Delta Force, one by one, get pulled down to their deaths.

Only Juan and Carter and one of the men from Slasher 2 were left. Carter and the other man ran aft, but Juan didn't run. He'd noticed something.

There was a metal door hanging open on the wall next to them. Inside was a janitor's closet. Juan wasn't interested in what was inside, though. It was the heavy metal door he wanted.

“Juan, what are you doing?” Carter said.

“Find cover,” he said. “I'm going explosive.”

“What? Juan, what the . . . ?”

But Juan wasn't listening. He pulled the door open so that it faced the zombie crowd. He removed all of the breaching charges he carried, peeled off the adhesive tape on the back, and stuck them to the front of the door. With luck, the door would help to shape the charge and the resulting impact would create some distance between themselves and the growing horde.

“Ready,” he called out.

He got behind the door, pressing his back against it, and blew the charge.

The blast sent him flying. He knew it would. He was prepared for that, and when he hit the deck, he rolled, just like they'd taught him to do during the judo training the guys from the CIA had given him when he first joined Delta.

But he was not prepared for how much damage the blast would do to the deck they were standing on. He stopped rolling just in time to see dozens of zombies falling over the side of the ship. Many more were burning, their clothes and hair on fire as they stumbled onward.

“Christ,” Carter shouted. “How much of that shit did you use?”

Juan looked over his shoulder at him. “Pretty much all of it,” he said, and grinned. But the next instant the deck shifted beneath him and he dropped.

“Whoa!” he said, trying to steady himself.

He could hear the metal support struts groaning. Something popped, and then the whole thing yawed under him and Juan slid down it and over the side.

He hit the railing and bounced, for a moment suspended in midair over the ocean a hundred ninety feet below. Juan stabbed a hand out and caught the railing. His body dangled from the twisted metal, the world rocking back and forth below him. The gear he wore on his back made it hard to keep his grip, but he knew he had to. There were no second chances at this. With a fierce yell, he heaved his weight up and managed to grab hold of the railing with both hands.

“Rick!” he called out. “Rick! A little help down here.”

Carter appeared at the edge of the collapsed deck. “Goddamn, Juan. You're fucking insane, you know that?”

“You know it.”

“Hang on, I'll get you out of there.”

Carter got a length of black cord from his assault kit and tossed one end down to Juan. “Grab hold, man. I don't think this thing is very sturdy.”

Juan stuck out his left hand and found the rope. He coiled it around his wrist and then reached over with his right to grab it. At the same time the deck shifted again, slipping a little closer to collapse.

“Better hurry,” Carter said.

“I've got it,” Juan said.

Carter pulled and Juan felt himself rising. At the same time there was another loud series of pops and the deck started to move. Juan put his feet up on it just as it gave way, and for a moment it was like he was Wile E. Coyote, his legs pumping a million miles an hour even though he never moved an inch. Then the whole thing separated from the ship and Juan turned to watch it as it tumbled end over end, like a broken kite, toward the ocean below.

It took a long time to hit the water.

He barely heard the splash.

Carter pulled him up the rest of the way, and when Juan gained the deck again, the two men collapsed side by side.

There was a big gap now between them and the zombies, many of whom stood perfectly still, watching them, waiting. Others were still burning, but making no effort to put out the flames. In and amongst the wrecked bodies they could see several of their own, all dead now.

“Holy crap,” Carter said.

Juan was out of breath. But he wouldn't have been able to respond anyway. After twenty years of fighting in some of the most god-awful places on earth, after all the shit he'd seen, he'd never seen anything like this.

The radio crackled in Juan's ear. It was McBride, demanding a report.

Carter sighed before answering it. “I think they're gonna scrub us,” he said.

“What? They can't do that. I've got . . . we have to finish the mission.”

“Yeah,” Carter said. “We'll see.” He keyed his radio. “Echo 2, we've taken heavy casualties. No joy on the target.”

“Extent of your casualties,” McBride said. By necessity, all radio communications were clipped and terse. This was already a longer radio conversation than Juan had ever had on an operation.

Carter took a deep breath. “We've got me, Garrity, and Sierra 1. Everyone else is dead.”

A long silence followed, and Juan figured McBride was consulting with his bosses, trying to reassess the situation. He'd never been on a mission that had gone this wrong before. But there had been others in the past. There had been precedents. Mogadishu, in 1993, the famed Black Hawk Down fiasco, came to mind. That one had been a bigger operation than this one by far and resulted in eighteen American fatalities, a small percentage of the total operational elements on the ground, and still the powers that be had pulled the guys out and regrouped for a rescue operation for the personnel wounded and captured during the initial assault. But in Mogadishu, they had gone back in. They didn't leave anybody behind. And that made Juan think of Tess, somewhere down in the belly of the ship. He was so mad he wanted to scream. He knew the way these things worked. The brass up in the air would make a cost-benefit analysis, and in the end, they'd scrub the mission, extract the assets they still had, and call in the F-15s to clean up the mess.

“Okay,” McBride said when he got back on the radio, “proceed to the secondary exfil position. Prepare for extraction.”

“Understood,” Carter said. He turned to Juan and said, “You ready?”

“I can't leave her.”

“Who, Senator Sutton? Dude, fuck her. I already told you, a politician's not worth all this.”

“I mean Tess,” he said. There were so many feelings churning inside him he hardly knew how to express them. In the end, he said the only thing that really mattered. “She's mine.”

But it wasn't enough for Carter, for his expression, normally so neutral, so unemotional, suddenly turned to disdain. “Seriously?” he said. “Juan, look over there. Look!” He pointed across the gap left from Juan's breaching charges. “I just lost seventeen of mine. Seventeen!”

“I know,” Juan said. “I know that. It's just, I . . . Rick, I can't leave her. I can't.”

“No,” Carter answered. He was speaking slowly, deliberately. There was menace in his voice. “You can, and you will. Unless, of course, you want to get your ass shot out of the water by a pair of F-15s.”