Island-638
Restricted Naval Area
Navigation Hazard Area
North Atlantic
22 March, 1987
0650 Hours
I watched the sun through the window of the Chinook, holding onto the strap hanging from the ceiling. Around me was a mixed team from SOG, some SEAL, a smattering of Rangers, some guys out of First Special Forces, a set of Marine Recon, some Air Force Commandos, and four guys from Air Force SOAR.
I was surrounded by goddamn snake eaters.
They looked less than thrilled with the thin plastic disposable J-Suits they were wearing, but they were a damn sight better off than I was in my heavy armored version. I had a dual tank system of my back that easily weighed fifty pounds. Oxygen mixture for me, thermite enhanced fuel for the flamethrower that the ejector was riding on my hip.
My headset, some hot shit new design out of DARPA that was only just reaching the SOG dwonks, crackled.
"Landing site visible," The pilot said.
"Circle the town," I snapped. I'd argued this repeatedly on the destroyer but the Naval captain onboard was worried about fuel usage.
He still thought they were going to get the helicopter back.
I wasn't sure he'd get any of us back.
"My orders were to..." he started.
"I'm overriding your orders, Commander," I snapped, "I'm in charge of this mission at this point, which means you do what I say, and I'm ordering you to circle the surface settlement."
"You don't..." They protested again.
The SOG Team Leader broke in, "Sergeant Stillwater is in charge of this mission the second we moved within a mile of the island, Commander. Follow his orders."
Holy shit, a snake eater paying attention to the expert. That was a first.
"Until further notice this is a Class-Bravo biological incident," I told him, trying to make my voice gentle. "Have Redwall-Two hold position before they drop the pallet and head back, I don't want him dropping that pallet before I clear an area, much less landing. And open the rear door."
"Understood," The pilot said. I could hear his displeasure in his voice as I used the straps to move to the back of the Chinook. The door started winding down into deployment mode as I headed back. The wind picked up and the rotor noise was loud enough to be heard through the suit clearly.
I leaned out as we banked over the settlement and let the lizard do his work.
Fifty four buildings; forty eight of them domestics, three point five people per for 168 people, of which 72 would be children; two docks both heavily damaged by fire and explosives; burnt out clinic; burnt out school, high school from the design; elementary school, undamaged and apparently barricaded; law enforcement building with helipad, explosive damage and fire; air-strip, cratering charges used to make the field unusable; artillery piece with empty standard pallets and artillery shell pallets, two round design, meaning it was an 8" artillery piece; two M-270 Multiple Launch Rocket System vehicles with twenty-six stacks of four depleted rocket pods; some cratering of the surrounding fields; three bulldozers near the beaches, steel anti-amphibious landing crosses on beach and in water, no rust; sixty vehicles, all destroyed, including three school buses and two ambulances; dead sheep and cattle; pools of dead birds, domestic and wild; burnt areas that I knew where pyres; scattered human corpses, 33 of them, two of them near the artillery piece.
They'd done their duty.
"I've seen enough, tell Redwall-Two to hover near the pallets near the artillery piece," I said, moving back from the door. "Hover next to it."
"Roger that, Sergeant," The pilot said, putting slight stress on my rank. It sounded weird to my ears, I'd been a corporal for years, and while I'd made the point spread several times and denied promotion due to having never attended the Primary Leadership Development Course, this time I'd made the points and the rank was considered mission critical enough that I had a one star general pin me right before the briefing.
"Why not at the landing site that was selected by Naval Intelligence?" The Team Leader asked.
"Because they didn't listen to me or anyone else and selected a landing site that will be covered in APERS FASCAMs," I told him. Before he could ask, I filled him in, "Eight inch artillery shells, FAmily of SCAtterable Mines, Anti-PERSonell. The shell blows open, drops those little man-killers everywhere. To top it off they used two MRLS wagons to drop APERS bomblets all over the island."
Someone whistled loud enough for me to hear over the rotors and through my suit.
"It's standard procedure," I finished. "Someone hand me some binoculars." One of the guys held a pair out an I took them as the helicopter slowed down. I moved back to the door, leaning out again and pressing the binoculars against my suit visor. It wasn't the best, but I could see the pallets clearly.
Two dead men. No wiring. No mines.
"Have Redwall Two drop the pallet on the pallet just north of the artillery piece. Hover over the pallet to the south, get us as close as you can to the ground, but don't land," I ordered. I turned and looked at everyone. "We'll unass this beast, and start."
The helicopter bobbled for a moment as it lowered but steadied out only about three feet off the ground. I was first out of the helicopter, my knees flexing as I took the shock of the twenty pound suit and the fifty pound tank rack. I looked over in time to see Redwall-Two drop the pallet exactly on top of the pallet on the ground and drop the hook. It didn't pause, just lifted up and headed back to the south toward the destroyer.
"Go ahead and head back once we all unass, Redwall-One," I told the pilot. "Don't come back until I give word. Nobody else. This spot will be mined when we leave. No authorization to land or perform rescue missions unless cleared by DoD NBC Command."
I saw two of the men who had already jumped out stiffen as I reminded them of the bare fact I had stated repeatedly in my briefings to them, as well as in private.
This was likely a one way trip.
The helicopter peeled away without another word, and I knew the pilot was miffed. He'd get yelled at by the destroyer commander for using an alternate LZ and for circling the island, Naval Intelligence would debrief him and bitch at him, and if all this went south, he'd find himself in charge of a hangar queen somewhere in Asshole, Alaska when the Navy threw him under the bus. I'd just be erased from DoA records and get my name engraved on the wall at Blackbriar Ridge if I bought the farm.
I moved over to the nearest body, watching my steps for any tripwires or mine. "Watch it, gentlemen. If they managed to follow SOP, this area is likely booby trapped. These guys were your peers, not some ass kissing REMF," I warned as I squattted down.
Heavy skin lesions. Lymph node swelling. Ulceration around the mouth and nose. Petichia in what was left of the eyes. Necrotic skin around larger ulceration patches. They'd been dead, in the cold outside air, for nearly three days.
No animals had been at them. Not even birds.
Cross-species vector. Nose and eyes and mouth meant airborne. They had put their dogtags in their mouths, leaned against the artillery piece, and had died. From the bottle of medication between them, they'd taken the easy road out.
I checked the bottle. Morphine tabs.
Without moving the bodies I looked at the wrists and elbows without finding anything. Both of their necks were still swollen through decomp and the disease, but one still had the transdermal patch on his neck.
They were largely still experimental, but in use for isolated medical stations since they had a long shelf-life and were easy to use.
"When you set up the radio, give them the confirmation. I'm calling this a Class-A Contained Biological Incident," I told them over the headset. "Currently I don't know what the disease is, but I'm willing to bet it's weaponized and nasty as hell. Cross-species, airborne, virulently infectious, with lesion and necrotic tissues damage. Looks bacterial, not viral."
"Are we safe?" Someone asked.
...they have names... Nancy's voice
...so do some people's pet rocks...
Someone murmured something at me as I straightened up and began moving around the artillery piece. It was a fairly late model, I'd estimate no older than eight years. They angle of the barrel told me that they had probably been mining the beach when they ran out of munitions, which meant the entire goddamn island was now covered.
"Sorry, I didn't get that," I said.
"I asked if you know what it was," The Team Leader asked.
"Not yet, but I've narrowed it down to about six weapons in our arsenal, three in the British, and eleven in the French," I told them, "It could be about eight of the Soviets, doubt it's Chinese, they go for modified influenza and rhinovirus."
"The French?" One of them asked.
"I hope not," I said honestly. "After World War Two the French decided that they'd lost twice trying to play by the rules, and the Cold War is a whole new beast, so they decided to write their own rules. They moved to special services and special weapons. Funny thing is, none of their NBC arsenal is for use beyond their country, which is why all their delivery systems are medium range systems."
"What?" Another asked. "Why? Who are they going to reach, Germany?"
"Themselves. All that would be left is ash, poison, and disease. They'd drop Damocles's Sword right on their own heads and spit in the eye of their enemies from Hell," I said. "It's very French."
"Jesus," Someone else said.
"Doesn't care about Special Weapons," I told them honestly, moving slowly over to the MLRS wagons. "We're the Masters of the Horsemen, what you're seeing is just one of our minions, Pestilence."
They stayed largely silent. I knew they were talking to themselves on a separate channel, just like I told them that my channel had to override theirs and not to jabber at me. Most of them I could see were sweating inside their suits, the large plastic faceplate giving me a clear look at their heads.
There was a dead woman in the cab of the first one. She had a plastic ziplock bag containing several letters jammed in her Levi jeans and her dogtags between her teeth. One of the tabs was still on the inside of her wrist.
Same symptoms, a little better view since she'd been sealed in the cab.
Discoloration around the lips, between the fingers, black under the fingernails, necrotic tissue in her nose.
This goddamn weapon put the U in Ugly and in Fuck You.
I grabbed the plastic envelope and the dog-tags and went over to the two men and patted them down. They both had envelopes in their pockets, and I took them and their dogtags before I walked back over to the pallet where the SOG Team was checking the loadout. More O2 mixture tanks and fuel for my flame thrower, along with a second flamethrower and plenty of parts; a radio setup; rations; sealed water with hoses to allow the suits to be reprovisioned; weapons and ammunition; a generator; air compressor with filters; and a positive pressure tent.
The woman's had a diary page against the side and she'd outlined the page in red and yellow lines. I looked at it, and saw it was a list of symptoms, onset times, and stages of progression.
"Stay here, don't touch this, put it in a sample case," I told them, "We need these letters. Most will be letters to family, but she's got diary pages in her's with dates as recent as two weeks ago."
One of them nodded, taking the dogtags and the plastic ziplock bags with a shaking hand.
I turned away from them and fired up the flamethrower.
I knew what it was now.
Tularemia variant, a serious disease caused by the bacterium Francisella tularensis. It was definitely a weaponized variant, and if I was right, it was crossed with something nasty, probably either e.coli or influenza-A H1N1-series. I'd be willing to bet it had a modified protein shell.
That wasn't what bothered me as I burned the two men and then played the white-cored rod of thermite enhanced fire over the woman's body. She and the two men deserved better than the pyre I was giving them, and since I knew that the wagon was unloaded I bathed it in flame so she could ride it into Valhalla. I could hear Aine singing a funeral dirge softly in the back of my head, and several times I saw her dancing in the flames as I played the bar of fire over the woman's vehicle before moving on to the artillery piece.
She had told me something, had been careful in her note taking, and ensured I'd see what she had written down.
Her bravery was immortalized in a fire I knew that the CIA and DoD could see in their satellites that I knew were watching.
But it wasn't the Tularemia that bothered it me.
It was what she had circled three times in red.
Symptoms. Vectors. Onset times. Progression.
and finally...
THEY COME OUT AT NIGHT