Warriors from the Ashes Page 14

  “Jesus,” Stryker said, awe in his voice. “He looks half dead.”

  “At least half, sir,” Harley said. “They’ve contracted some sort of sickness from a BW they discovered at the camp. We need to get them back as soon as possible so the docs can go to work on them.”

  Stryker whirled around to his men. “Jones, Baxter, get to work on some of those trees and fix up a travois. Now!”

  As his men went to work preparing a sled out of jungle trees, he looked back at Harley. “I suppose it’s contagious?”

  “Very,” Harley said, “and it works fast. It’s only been twenty-four hours since Jersey was exposed, and she’s very sick.”

  “Airborne?”

  “Probably, though we don’t know for sure.”

  Stryker pulled off his shirt, then his T-shirt. He put his outside shirt back on, and poured water on his T-shirt from his canteen. He wrapped the wet cloth around his nose and mouth. “This should do to keep us from contracting the bug.”

  Everyone did the same with their shirts, and soon Jersey and Coop were lying side by side on the travois and Stryker’s men were taking turns dragging them back toward the ship.

  Beth and Corrie and Anna walked alongside the travois, giving words of encouragement to Coop. Jersey was still unconscious, coughing in her sleep.

  As they walked, Stryker got on the microphone of his communications gear and radioed the ship.

  “General Raines, we got a couple of people exposed to an unknown BW here. They’re pretty sick, so I need you to have the medic on the ship get in touch with one of your doctors who’s an expert in this and have him tell us what to do when we get back.”

  “Roger, Captain Stryker,” Buddy said. “We’ll have everything ready by the time you return.”

  Dr. Larry Buck spoke with Mike Peavy, the medic on the ship. “Symptoms seem to be primarily respiratory?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir, that’s what I’m told. Evidently it acted pretty fast. Less than twenty-four hours after exposure, both patients are very sick.”

  “Okay, here’s what I want you to do. Limit exposure of the patients to only one or two caregivers. The rest of the crew is to stay well away. Full isolation precautions; gloves, masks, and showers before and after contact.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “As soon as you have them isolated, draw four vials of blood, two red-top tubes, two purple tubes, and refrigerate them immediately. Start cultures on all media of mucus and throat swabs. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “As soon as you’ve collected the specimens, start IVs and give amoxicillin alternating with whatever aminoglycocide you have on board, at full doses.”

  “Yes, sir,” Peavy said, writing down Dr. Buck’s orders as fast as he could.

  “Then, once that’s done, I want you to call me back with a detailed description of their signs and symptoms, especially any rashes or skin markings.”

  “Will do, sir.”

  “And, Peavy,”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Be careful. Whatever this bug is, it’s designed to spread fast. You might want to use your extra antibiotics to give doses to everyone on board, yourself included.”

  “Okay, Doc. I’ll get on it as soon as they get here.”

  “And Ben Raines wants Harley Reno to be available for debriefing after you talk to me.”

  “I’ll tell him, sir.”

  After Dr. Buck finished talking to Peavy about the symptoms Coop and Jersey were having, Harley got on the phone with Ben Raines.

  “How’s it look, Harley?” Ben asked.

  “I don’t know, General. They’re both pretty sick, especially Jersey. She’s barely coherent most of the time.”

  “Damn! And the docs have no idea what it is?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “How about the leader of the mercs? Any clues to his identity?”

  “I’ve been wanting to talk to you about that, Skipper. I got to thinking back to the time we spent in Africa a few years ago.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. The leaders of the mercs’s training camp are all Germans, a Bergman and a Bundt. Then we come upon a BW they’re obviously working on to use against us. That bring anybody to mind?”

  Ben snapped his fingers. “You think it might be Bottger again?”

  “It’s a thought. It’d be an awfully big coincidence to have a bunch of Krauts running the place and working on BW and not be connected to Bottger somehow.”

  “But we thought Bottger was killed in that helicopter crash after we took his headquarters,” Ben said.

  “What if he wasn’t?” Harley asked. “Or, if it’s not Bottger himself, maybe it’s another one of the crazies he had working under him or with him. All of those New World Order guys had screws loose if you ask me.”

  “Good thinking, Harley. I’ll have Mike Post get to work on it to see if there’s any record of Bottger or one of his known associates surfacing in South America in the past five years.”

  “Skipper . . .”

  “Yeah, Harley?”

  “I just want you to know, Jersey and Coop infected themselves on purpose in order to bring us a specimen of the bug those bastards are working on. It was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “I know, Harley. They’re very special people, and we’re going to pull out all the stops to make sure they come out of this okay.”

  “Right, General. Harley out.”

  Harley hung up the phone, and walked down the corridor to the door to the cabin that had been made into an isolation room for Jersey and Coop. He stood there, staring through the window at their bodies lying on the beds.

  Jersey’s skin was covered with sores and scabs, and was flushed red from the temperature Peavy was having trouble controlling. As he watched, she reared up in bed, coughing and gagging and choking until he couldn’t watch anymore.

  He slowly turned and walked back down the corridor, wondering if he would’ve had the courage to do what they’d done.

  One of the SEALs who was working as Peavy’s assistant while he took care of Coop and Jersey appeared at the end of the corridor, syringe and needle in hand.

  “Mr. Reno, sir, time for your next injection of antibiotics.”

  “Again?” Harley asked.

  “Yes, sir. Dr. Buck says we’re all to get these every six hours until we get back to base.”

  Harley shook his head as he rolled up his sleeve and followed the sailor to the sick bay.

  “Hell, I’d almost rather be shot than take all these injections.”

  The medic glanced up at him as he filled the syringe with colorless fluid from a vial. “Being shot is easy, sir. The question is, would you rather be like Coop and Jersey or get the shots?”

  Harley sat down and clamped his jaw shut. “Well, when you put it that way . . .”

  After the medic stuck him, Harley asked, “Peavy say there’s been any change in Coop or Jersey?”

  The young man glanced up, a sad look in his eyes. “Not yet. They’re both still running fevers, but the oxygen seems to be helping Jersey breathe a little easier at least.”

  “Any idea what it is yet?”

  The medic shrugged. “Dr. Buck says it sounds like maybe anthrax.”

  “Anthrax? But we’ve all been inoculated against that already.”

  “Doc says this bug is special. Evidently, they’ve altered it so that the old vaccines don’t work.”

  “Great,” Harley said. “That means even more shots when they get it figured out.”

  The medic glanced up, a worried look on his face. “You mean, if they get it figured out.”

  TWENTY

  Lieutenant Juan Villareal, called Juanito because of his height of barely over five feet tall, walked around the perimeter of the fortifications surrounding the town of Cardenas, just fifty miles north of Villahermosa.

  He’d received a call from General Jose Guerra himself, warning him to be on the lookout for movement from the rebel forces stationed
at the Navy base at Pariso. The general had told him he and his outpost were very important, as they would be the first to see the rebels if they decided to attack northward.

  Juanito took pains to explain this to the soldiers manning the gun placements, that they should be very alert and that El Jefe himself had his eyes on them.

  Cardenas was a rather small village, typical of southern Mexico, with no real importance other than its location just north of the rebels’ encampment. The citizens were for the most part poor dirt farmers who barely grew enough food to feed themselves, with none left over to send to market. A few of the men made the one-hundred-mile round-trip to hire on as fishermen on the coast, but that pay was low and it meant spending weeks away from their families doing extremely hard work on deep-sea shrimpers and long-line fishing boats.

  The Pan American Highway ran smack through the middle of the town. Hence its importance as an early warning device for the generals in Mexico City, for there was no other way the rebels could travel northward if they decided to press their war against Mexico.

  Juanito clapped a young soldier on the back as he stood next to the fifty-caliber machine gun in his sandbagged outpost on the edge of town. The soldier put down the field glasses he’d been staring through and smiled at Juanito, who was a very popular commanding officer.

  “Hola, Juanito,” the boy said.

  Juanito took a pack of American cigarettes out of his breast pocket and offered one to the boy.

  “Hola, Carlos,” he said. “Cigarette?”

  “Ah, americano, eh?” Carlos said, reaching for the pack. It was a real treat when anyone had American cigarettes, as they were much better than the Mexican ones, which tasted like so much bullshit when they burned, if you could keep them going at all.

  “Sí,” Juanito answered, pulling one out for himself and lighting both with a kitchen match. “The generalissimo knows how important we are to the safety of Mexico, so he arranges for these to be flown in on the weekly supply plane.”

  Carlos glanced around at the adobe huts that made up most of the village. “Why is this flyspeck of a town so important?” he asked.

  “We are the closest to the rebels,” Juanito answered, though trying to explain this to a young boy with no education and a very limited intellect would be impossible, he thought.

  “But I thought the war was over,” Carlos said, a puzzled look on his face. “Didn’t the rebel leader himself, Perro Loco, promise El Presidente he would not move farther north?”

  “And since when did you begin to believe the promises of politicians, or military leaders for that matter?” Juanito said with a laugh as he took a deep drag of his cigarette and blew smoke from his nostrils.

  As Carlos started to answer, Juanito noticed a large dust cloud on the horizon to the south.

  “Carlos, give me those glasses,” he said, taking the binoculars from around the soldier’s neck and putting them to his eyes.

  He choked on the smoke curling up into his face from the cigarette in the corner of his mouth when he saw a line of tanks and half-tracks coming up the Pan American Highway, with hundreds of soldiers walking along the side of the road next to the vehicles.

  “Holy Mary, Mother of Christ!” Juanito whispered. “They’re corning!”

  Carlos took a last drag of his cigarette and threw it in the dirt, grinding it out with his boot heel. He turned and crouched behind his fifty-caliber machine gun, jacking the loading lever back to pull a shell into the firing chamber.

  “Don’t fire too soon,” Juanito ordered. “Wait until they are within range. I’ve got to go radio Mexico City and tell them Loco’s on the move.”

  Carlos nodded, sweat breaking out on his brow under his helmet. He knew he was going to die in the upcoming battle, and he hoped he would remain brave and not bring disgrace on his family.

  Juanito didn’t stop running until he reached the small room above a cantina he used as his office. He slapped his radio operator’s feet off his desk and yelled, “The rebels are coming! Get me Mexico City on the radio.”

  After a moment of fiddling with dials and frequencies, the man handed the handset to Juanito.

  “This is Lieutenant Juan Villareal. I must speak with General Guerra immediately!”

  A tinny voice came out of the speaker. “The general is having his breakfast and cannot be disturbed,” the voice said.

  Juanito rolled his eyes heavenward and gritted his teeth. Here he was about to die to protect a man who couldn’t be called from his table.

  He took several deep breaths to calm himself, and spoke in a reasonable tone. “Then, when the general is finished with his eggs and bacon, would you inform him the rebels are on the move and are about to attack Cardenas?”

  “And just where is Cardenas?” the voice asked, as if discussing the weather.

  “The general will know, if you ever give him my goddamned message!” Juanito shouted before he slammed the handset back onto the radio.

  He ran to a corner closet, put on his helmet and side arm, and picked up an ancient M-1 carbine dating from World War II. He walked rapidly toward the door. Just before exiting, he turned to the radio operator. “Try and notify as many of the neighboring outposts as you have time for. They must do everything they can to get ready for the onslaught.”

  The radio operator’s eyes widened. “Can we hold them off, Juanito?”

  Juanito grinned sourly. “Can a pig fly?”

  Juanito made the rounds of his men, pulling some from the sandbagged outposts and putting them on roofs around the village. There was no way they could stop the rebels, but he damn sure intended to make it expensive for them to take the town.

  Carlos waited until the rebel tanks and half-tracks came within five hundred yards before he opened up with the fifty-caliber.

  He gritted his teeth and pulled the trigger. The big gun exploded and began to chatter and buck in his hands as it spewed forth hundreds of bullets per minute at the rebels.

  Several of the soldiers walking alongside the tanks fell in their tracks, and the others scrambled to the sides of the road and fell facedown in the small ditches that ran there.

  Hundreds of nine-millimeter bullets ripped into the sandbags around Carlos’s emplacement, but he kept his head down and continued to fire until the barrel of the fifty-caliber was so hot it was smoking.

  Carlos shifted the barrel to the tank and peppered it with fire, but the bullets ricocheted harmlessly off the armor plate of the tank.

  The turret slowly swiveled until Carlos was looking down the black hole of the long barrel of the tank’s cannon.

  He paused in his firing long enough to cross himself and whisper a prayer to the Virgin Mary. Then he squatted and pulled again on the trigger, sending a steady stream of bullets into the tank.

  He saw a puff of smoke and flame shoot out of the tank’s barrel, and had time only to blink before the shell hit his outpost, exploding on impact and blowing sandbags, machine gun, and Carlos into a million pieces.

  The other outposts opened fire, and men around the tanks and half-tracks burrowed even deeper into the caliche and sand around the Pan American Highway, waiting for the tanks and half-tracks to soften the village up for them.

  Henry Gomez jerked on the tube of the TOW rocket in his hands, extending and arming the handheld antitank rocket. It was one of the few modern weapons that had been sent to Cardenas, and he intended to make it count in the battle raging around him. TOW stood for Target On Wire, and the shell, when fired, was guided by a fine wire attached to the launcher. All the man firing it had to do was keep the sights on the target and it would hit it up to fifteen hundred yards.

  Henry leaned over the parapet of the roof he was on in time to see the tank blow Carlos into dust. His lips pressed into a fine line—Carlos was from the same village as Henry and they’d played together as children before joining the Army together to see the country.

  He put the TOW rocket launcher to his shoulder and sighted on the tank. Taki
ng a deep breath and holding it, he depressed the trigger.

  A giant whoosh and the rocket was on its way, the wire attached to it visible as a gleaming line in the sun.

  When a bullet tore into Henry’s left side, just above his waist, he jerked to the side, sending the rocket off course momentarily.

  With almost superhuman effort, he straightened back up and resighted the tank. The rocket curved back and struck the tank just below the turret.

  For a second, nothing happened, and Henry thought perhaps the rocket was a dud. Then the tank exploded in a giant fireball, sending a plume of black smoke and flames two hundred yards into the air. Seconds later, the fifty-caliber machine-gun bullets and several of the tank shells inside exploded. It was like the finest fireworks Henry had ever seen. Dozens of the soldiers walking behind the tank were mowed down like a harvester going through a wheat field.

  Just as Henry’s lips curled in a smile and he whispered, “Gotcha,” an M-16 bullet entered his forehead, exploding his brain into mush and killing him instantly.

  Juanito, observing this from the upper room of a nearby building, made a fist and said, “Way to go, Henry.”

  The burning tank was blocking the roadway, and had halted the rebels’ advance for a short time.

  Carlos stuck his M-1 out the window and began to fire down upon the troops pinned down at the road’s edge. He managed to kill two and wound another three before he heard a strange whoop-whoop sound in the hot, dry air.

  He glanced up in time to see a machine out of hell. It was a coal-black HueyCobra helicopter coming down at the town out of the sun. Juanito recognized it from the classes he’d taken in Officers’ Candidate School. For some reason, the fact that it carried eight TOW antitank missiles and two rockets, and sported a 20mm cannon, popped unbidden into his mind.

  He jerked his M-1 up at a forty-five-degree angle and began firing at the Cobra as fast as he could pull the trigger. He had little hope of doing any damage. It was like trying to hit a hawk flying overhead with a .22 rifle.