To Sail a Darkling Sea - eARC (26 page)

“Yeah,” Zumwald said.

“So, returning to the original issue,” Steve said. “I need someone to do the pre-planning for our next float. And future missions. If you take the job, you’ll start working with Isham today. You’ll need to get a basis for what’s required. Then build a plans and ops team and figure out the float. For which you won’t have much time.”

“Great,” Zumwald said, frowning.

“And the quarters and the rest,” Steve said. “The main thing, though, is the power and the prestige. The multitudes bowing and scraping. And, eventually, Riverside.”

“If you can swing it,” Zumwald said.

“There will be politics involved,” Steve said, shrugging. “You’re generally good at that. If you have a reason to support my position, that’s a benefit. And, as with Isham, if you
fuck
me you had better run far and fast.”

“You really did miss your calling, Smith,” Zumwald said, laughing.

* * *

“Oh, thank God,” Sophia said as the
Senorita
cleared the harbor and hit the first rollers.

A slight squall had come through the night before and the water was a bit lively. But nothing that the
Senorita
couldn’t handle and it seemed as eager to hit the waves as its captain. Not so much the crew.

“I think I’ve sort of lost my sea legs,” Paula said. “I am mildly queasy.”

“Not me,” Sophia said. “I am sooo ready to go see some new harbors that
don’t
stink of rotting bodies and rotting liners.”

“Can I come up?” Olga asked.

The girl had been a late addition. Turned out she had significant civilian shooting experience.

“Sure,” Sophia said. “As long as you promise not to hijack the boat.”

“Very humorous,” Olga said, sitting down on one of the benches of the flying bridge. “You forget, I was the bait, not the hook.”

“You’re forgiven,” Sophia said. “And I was joking. I wouldn’t have let you on my boat if I thought you were going to take it over.”

“How the hell did you end up on the Money?” Paula said. “You said you were an American. Where did the Russian accent go?”

“I can get it back if you want,” Olga said, with a Slavic accent. “But I grew up in Chicago. And I’m not Russian, I’m Ukrainian. Yes, there’s a difference and yes I care. I moved to the US when I was six with my family. My father sort of had to leave. The FSB had recruited him and he told them to fuck off. They did not take it well.”

“FSB?” Paula said.

“Russian spy agency,” Sophia said. “Was he normally a spy?”

“Sort of,” Olga said. “He was mostly a foreign military attaché prior to that. FSB wanted him to… do some things in the Middle East he did not agree with. It wasn’t even spying. It was, basically, money laundering. When he said no, well, there were issues? It was not even legal as far as legal ever matters in Russia. He became a liability. I don’t really remember it very well except a safe-house in Turkey. We were there for some time. Then we were in Chicago where I grew up.”

“So how’d you end up with Mister ‘I have a Rocket Launcher’?” Sophia asked.

“I was on a modeling tour in Europe,” Olga said, shrugging. “You know, it is hard to get a job as an international model these days if you are
not
Russian? So I told them I was Russian. I speak Russian. And read it. And French. And Spanish. German. Italian. Ukrainian obviously.”

“Wow,” Paula said. “I mean, why?”

“
I
wanted to be a spy,” Olga said, shrugging. “I applied to the CIA. I was turned down. I did not meet the psychological profile. Oppositional Defiance Disorder. Basically, I have a hard time taking orders from idiots.”

“Don’t think of me as an idiot and I won’t give you an idiotic order,” Sophia said. “But if I give you one, you’d better do it. Because it’s probably going to mean surviving or dying.”

“You I don’t mind,” Olga said. “Or I wouldn’t have joined your crew. Don’t ask me about Nazar. So I was in Spain with the troupe. When the Plague hit, they shut down travel. And all my guns were in America. In a zombie apocalypse. I was quite upset.”

“You should have seen Faith when they told her she had to be disarmed in New York,” Sophia said. “Then they gave her a taser and that was mistake. What kind of guns?”

“I like that your family prefers the AK series,” Olga said. “I really do think it’s superior to the M16 series in many ways. Much more reliable. They say it is less accurate but that is at longer ranges. The round is not designed for long range.”

“I can hit at a thousand meters with my accurized AK,” Sophia said. “It’s a matter of knowing the ballistics. It’s not real powerful at that range, but try doing the same thing with an M4. I’ll wait.”

“Oh, jeeze, you two,” Paula said. “Get a room.”

“So continue with how you got on the yacht,” Sophia said. “We don’t want our cook getting all woozy with gun geeking.”

“We were called by the agency and asked if anyone wanted to ‘catch a ride’ on a yacht,” Olga said. “When they said who owned the boat… I nearly said no. We all knew Nazar. Or at least of him. Not a nice man, as you might have noticed. We knew what we were getting into. But then we were told he had vaccine… ” she shrugged again.

“Accepting Nazar’s offer was perhaps not the worst decision I have made in my life. I survived. Not how I would have preferred to survive, but I was vaccinated and I survived. But I did not even hint that I knew more about his men’s weapons than they did. They were pigs. Tough guys. But none of them were military and none of them really knew what they were doing with them. When they brought out the RPG, I nearly peed myself. Irinei had no idea what he was doing with it. I don’t think he even knew the safety was off.”

“You know how to use an RPG?” Sophia said.

“My family liked the United States very much,” Olga said, sadly. “We all like guns and anything that goes boom. And in the US, you could find people who had licenses for
anything
. I’ve fired an RPG, yes.”

“Well, if we find an RPG you can have it,” Sophia said.

“Oh,
thank you
, captain!” Olga said, clapping her hands girlishly.

“But we’ll be keeping the rounds and the launcher
separate
,” Sophia said.

“Oh, my, yes,” Olga said. “And both will have to be in a well sealed container. This salt air would cause corrosion quickly.”

“I guess you miss your guns?” Paula said. “That’s not a request for an inventory and loving description of each, by the way. Got that enough from Faith.”

“I do,” Olga said. “But I miss my books more.”

“Books,” Paula said. “Now you’re talking my language.”

“I have more books than shelves,” Olga said. “And I had many shelves. I collect old manuscripts when I can afford them.”

“If we do any land clearance, look in the libraries and big houses,” Sophia said. “I bet around here you can probably pick up some great stuff.”

“This is okay?” Olga said. “We can, salvage?”

“If there’s time and if we clear the town,” Sophia said. “Sure.”

“Oh, thank you, captain!” Olga said, kissing her on the cheek.

“Okay, now you
definitely
need to get a room.”

CHAPTER 20

The vote, I thought, means nothing to women. We should be armed.

Edna O’Brien

“Okay,” Sophia said. “Don’t think we’re clearing this one.”

The town of El Chorillo was not at water line. The
marina
was at the waterline. The
town
was on top of a two hundred foot bluff. Most of it. The rest was condominiums built into the bluff in racks up the to what was a small mountain. There was a large public park right at the waterline behind a massive rock breakwater.

“Senorita,”
Chen radioed.
“Drive into the marina and check it out. All I see is sailboats.”

“Roger,” Sophia said, engaging the motor on slow. “Paula. Get up forward and check the water.”

“Roger,” Paula said.

“Check the water?” Olga said. She’d changed into a bathing suit. The girl was about covered in fine scars including one on her chest that didn’t look like a surgery scar. More like a knife. Sophia had decided she wasn’t going to ask.

“There was a sunken boat in the harbor at La Playa,” Sophia said, entering the marina carefully. “Nobody noticed it until the last day and thank goodness nobody hit it. But we’re getting extra careful. There’s no real channel here. That shouldn’t be an issue. Hopefully.”

“All clear so far,” Paula called.

From the entrance, Sophia could make the same determination. There were some off-shore power boats, though. And the usual zombies. Most of them were in shadow, asleep. But she counted at least six in view. When you saw six, you knew there were more like two dozen. Most of the sailboat cabins were open. They’d pop up like fleas if she cranked the radio.

“No really ocean capable yachts,” she radioed. “I mean, thirty-fives, but that’s it. There are some big Bayliner kind of boats. Is that what we’re looking for, over?”

“Do they look hell on wheels fast, over?”

“Negative,” Sophia said. “Thirty maybe thirty-five knots.”

“I’d say this is a bust.”

“Roger,” Sophia said, backing and filling in the turning basin. “Headed back out.”

“Division, Guppy.”

“Go, Gup.”

“We going to shoot ’em up, over?”

“Negative. We’re under time to find boats and such. Only where there’s a good salvage target.”

“Okay, but you see the survivors, over?”

“Survivors?” Olga said, sitting up and shading her eyes.

“Top of the cliff. Set of condos. Waving a sheet. Bunch of ’em. Over.”

“Shit,” Sophia said, looking up. “Son of a bitch.”

The condo had ropes hanging from several of the balconies as well as growing plants. There was exterior piping that looked as if it was used for collecting rainwater. Several groups of people were trying to attract their attention. There were quite a few survivors. At least thirty.

“Boise, you got your periscope up, over?”

“Roger, LitClearOne. We confirm multiple survivors.”

“Can you get up with Squadron and retrans the video? I’m pretty sure this is not a security team objective, over.”

“Stand by.”

“We could do this,” Olga said. “We can’t just leave them!”

“Olga,” Sophia said. “You can shoot. You had to qualify for the position. That’s different than fighting as part of a fire team up to the condos then clearing those. Hang on. Division, going noise hot to demonstrate the issue to my new security people.”

Sophia had been barely puttering along. The
Senorita’s
exhaust was below the waterline and she didn’t make much noise. Now she turned on the stereo and cranked it.

As piano opening of “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner’ boomed across the marina, zombies started pouring from everywhere. Sure enough, they’d been sleeping in the sailboats. Now they were howling. And their howling started to set off every zombie in the town. It was apparent that there were at least hundreds if not thousands.

“Oh,” Olga said, looking around.

“His comrades fought beside him,” Sophia sang as she puttered over to the public park. There was a line of buoys marking a “no crossing” zone and she puttered right up by it then dropped her anchor. “But of all the Thompson gunners, Roland was the best… ”

“So the CIA decided, they wanted Roland dead… ” Olga sang in harmony. She’d gone below and gotten her M4 while the boat was being repositioned. “Permission to do some target practice, Captain?” she sang in time to the song.

“Division, doing some catenary target practice,” Sophia said.

“Roger, Senorita.”

* * *

“
Jeepers
,” the skipper of the
Boise
said. “COB, I’m defining this as a morale boost video. Retrans to the rest of the boats.”

“On that, sir,” the Chief of Boat said. “
Bella Senoritas
indeed. Damn those are some fine legs.”

“You betcha.”

* * *

“It is hard to hit them with a moving boat,” Olga said. She was laid out in the prone position on the sundeck forward. “Or are they not noticing the 5.56? There is not much rocking.”

“Each,” Sophia said. “Both. Takes a lot of practice.” They’d both put on hearing protection.

One of the group of zombies lined up on the waterfront finally stumbled over and fell. When it did, the group fell on it, ripping at it with their teeth.

“Gross,” Olga said, continuing to fire.

Seagulls clustered around, trying to find a way through the infected. Which drew more infected. Some of them waded out into the water. Then one went under and the water turned red. The others didn’t seem to notice. They just stopped, waving their arms angrily, slapping the water and howling, when they were low-chest deep. Another went under. Then another.

“Swimming is contra indicated,” Paula shouted. She’d put in earplugs.

“Are those two screwing?” Olga asked.

Sophia picked up a pair of binos and looked through them.

“Yup,” she said, lowering the binos. “They do that when there are these feeding frenzies. They stay away from each other till there’s a source of food like this. Then they swarm and tussle over it. Sometimes they start screwing in the middle of the tussle. You’ll see a male run down a female, or sometimes a smaller male, and try to eat it and screw it at the same time. Although usually it’s screw then eat.”

“Gross,” Olga said, taking another shot.

“Don’t get Faith started on it,” Sophia said. “A couple of times when she’s been in scrums, the males realize she’s female. There’s no way to get through on her gear but she still doesn’t like it.”

“What do you do?” Olga asked. “I mean, if you’re in a… what was the word?”

“Scrum,” Sophia said. “Basically, if you’re at the bottom of the dog pile. There’s a reason that Faith carries a lot of knives. Apparently they get less romantic when you cut their parts off.”

“Lots of knives,” Olga said. “Got it.”

“Yes, you did,” Sophia said. “Oh, you meant the knives. But you hit that last one.”

“I was aiming for the one next to him,” Olga said. “This is hard.”

“Senorita, Division.”

“Division,
Senorita
,” Sophia answered in a Spanish accent. “Aqui, over.”

“Bringing up the gunboats. Squadron is punching down a Marine team. We’re to do the zombie boogie, primary clearance at dawn. Sending DivTwo down to the next cluster to check it out.”

“Roger, Division.”

“I wonder which Marines they’re sending,” Paula said.

“Three guesses,” Sophia said. “And Hope and Charity were unavailable.”

“Zombie boogie?” Olga asked.

“We crank the music all night,” Sophia said. “Have a party. Lots of lights.”

“Flares,” Paula said. “Fireworks if we’ve got ’em.”

“Then in the morning, well, party’s over, we politely ask any zombies who have turned up to lie down, be good zombies and enjoy their afterlife.”

“Now is when I would like to be on the gunboats,” Olga said as the boats began to jockey into position. “If I went over there and asked them nicely, do you think they would let me play with their
big
guns.”

“I’m sure they’d let you play with anything you’d like,” Sophia said. “You can probably stop by during the party.”

“So you’re talking about a real party,” Olga said, looking over at her.

“Pretty much, yeah,” Sophia said. “Booze, snacks, trying to carry on a conversation over the music cranked up to atomic level. There’s usually not nudity or anything. And since we’re as close as you get to the cops, you don’t have to worry about them breaking it up. But I need to get the boat turned around, now that the gunboats are in position. Have to have the speakers facing the beach, you know?”

Olga watched as the crews got the .50s set up and loaded. Then they opened fire.

The big bullets smashed the crowd of infected into zombie goo in seconds. The seagulls were properly thankful.

So were the people up on the cliff. They were waving fit to die. Olga could see that some of them were crying. Then someone apparently found some spray-paint and started waving a badly painted american flag. The stars were black dots but it was the thought that counted.

Olga waved to the group then realized she really should have put on some sunscreen.

* * *

“Division One. Captain’s call, Senorita, Nineteen hundred hours.”

“Paula, we’ll need to lay out some of the special stores.”

“On it, Captain.”

* * *

“Why am I not surprised,” Sophia said, drily, as Faith stepped onto the wash deck.

“Shewolf… Arriving… ”
Olga intoned over the intercom.

“Oh, good God, sis,” Faith said, laughing. “You’re really going over the top, huh?”

“It’s a captain’s call,” Sophia said. “Should we be less than formal? I didn’t have a bosun’s whistle. I looked for a wave file on my computer, but the closest I could find was something from Star Trek. And it ain’t, actually, a bosun’s whistle. Now get out of the way, Lieutenant, my boss is coming alongside.”

“LitDivOne, Arriving… ”

“Hello Seaman Recruit Zelenova,” Chen said, waving at the girl on the flying bridge. She had at least donned shorts and T-shirt for the “captain’s call.” “Is she shooting for… ”

“Played Starcraft, have you, sir?” Sophia said, laughing. “Hey, Olga, give ’em the Valkyrie thing… ”

“
 
‘Valkyrie
...
prepared,’
 
”
Olga intoned.

“Oh,” Chen said, bending over as if punched. “That accent. That’s not even Russian. It’s German or Swedish or something.”

“She used to do voice acting,” Sophia said. “And turns out she’s Ukrainian. Sort of. So, now that you’re here, sir… ”

“Let’s get started,” Chen said. “After you, Lieutenant.”

* * *

“One of the reasons to have this here is that Lieutenant Smith has the big plasma,” Chen said. The music was being pumped to the gunboats, which had been refitted with big speakers and was turned down on the Senorita so they could discuss the plan. “And we have actual intel this time.”

He’d already connected a laptop to the port on the TV and now brought up a video file. It showed the complex from a high, sideways angle. He froze it as it showed a group on the roof then zoomed in several times until their faces were clearly visible.

“Is this Predator, sir?” Sophia asked.

“Satellite,” Chen answered, drily. “Turns out it’s pretty detailed. But that’s not all. This is a recent satellite pass. They’re not moving them for stuff but they sweep constantly and they happened to be in the area. You’ve got no idea how big this video file is. Nearly a terabyte.”

He zoomed out until the roof-top was barely visible the pointed with his cursor and zoomed in again.

“There are rooftops, like this one, with plantings on them, here, here, here, here, here and here. Also in this small, unnamed town over to the side, here. There are two there and they have… ” he said, zooming in. “Catwalks between their buildings. This one should be easy. We’ll pull out the people with the security teams from DivTwo. The main town,” he said, zooming back, “is another issue. The Avenue De Colon follows the water line for about a kilometer then bends back up the hill and joins the Calle Juan Sebastien Alcano. Then about another kilometer to the first site. The entrances to the primary building seem to be on top. They are blocked to prevent entry of infected. There are three buildings that have survivors and they are all connected on top. There are two additional buildings nearby and, well, several in the interior. It is the determination of command that those cannot be cleared at this time absent this being an easier clearance than it looks. Lieutenant Smith…
She
wolf, any thoughts?”

“I saw the sub video when we got punched down here, sir,” Faith said. “This is bigger but not a lot. All I’ve got is the obvious. Land, grab some wheels, roll hot to the door, extract the survivors and roll back, sir. The one thing I’ve got is… Okay, couple things. You know, sir, and I know that with these screwy, twisty roads… Infected aren’t that smart, sir. Most of them are going to get trapped up on the cliffs trying to go straight for the lights. So we’re not going to get most of them down on the beach, sir.”

“Yes, I do realize that,” Chen said. “It’s one of the reasons that I contacted Squadron and asked for support.”

“And as we move along and engage, it’s going to attract more of them,” Faith said, taking a deep breath in thought. “We’re going to have to create fall-back points, move a team forward, have them attract them, bring them back to the defense points and engage. Then do it again. It’s going to be slow, sir.”

“If I may, sir,” Sophia said.

“
Sea
wolf,” Chen said.

“Go straight, sis,” Sophia said. She took the cursor and went straight from the beach to the first set of survivors.

“That’s a two hundred foot cliff, Lieutenant,” Chen pointed out.

“No, sir,” Sophia said. “With respect. It’s a hundred and fifty feet of
condo
, a
fifty
-foot cliff and more condo, sir. The gunboats with security teams cover infiltrators down Avenue De Colon. Marines clear
this
condo complex,” she said, pointing to one at water level. “Then they send up an assault ladder from the roof, go up and clear
that
complex, if it has infected internal, then extract the survivors down. It probably has internal infected. Otherwise they wouldn’t be getting around with ropes on the exterior balconies, sir. But going straight means your supply and extraction line has less sides to get hit by the infected. Sir.”