Larkin Terminal
Robert Grey Army Airfield
West Fort Hood, Texas
CONUS
Sunday
03 November, 1991
1500
The terminal was silent as a church. Peel stumbled out of the bathroom, shaking, pale, wiping her mouth. Cots were laid out where the rest of Actual was laying down, covering their eyes. They were on the mend, most of them had kept down lunch, but their recovery was painful.
"Ma'am, a Captain Jane is here to see you," One of the Rangers said. He, like everyone else who wasn't part of Actual, was wearing a gas mask. "She's masked."
"Send her in," I said, watching as Peel sat on her cot, picked up her MRE, and started eating the dehydrated fruit cocktail by snapping pieces off, putting one in her mouth, and then taking a drink of water to swish in her mouth with the hard sweet food.
Captain Jane came clomping up next to me. I glanced at her and saw her wearing her gas mask, the hood pulled down, and her chemical gloves.
"Are they contagious?" She asked.
"No," I said. "But better safe than sorry."
She watched Peel suddenly bend forward and retch into her empty MRE container. "What's wrong with them?"
"I gave them standard Special Weapons inoculations," I told her.
"Is this an unusual reaction?" she asked as Peel rushed back to the bathroom, one hand on the side of her butt. "Seems a little strong for a few sticks."
I shook my head. "No. Not when you get nearly two hundred serums, vaccinations, and innoculations in a thirty minute time period and begin taking medication to prevent infection by some of the nastier biologicals out there."
My stomach gurgled and I pressed my hand against it. "That new anthrax inoculation though, Lugus stab the eyes of whoever developed it."
"I got a visitor just after lunch," she said after a moment.
I pointed at a woman leaning against the wall watching everyone with cold dead eyes. She had black hair in a pixie but, a narrow pale face, dark eyes that looked black, and was short. She wore a black suit with a ChemCorps pin on her left breast.
"Just like her," Jane said. "She looks exactly the same."
"Blackbriar clones them in vats," I half-joked.
She shuddered. "I'd believe it."
"What did she want?" I asked.
Captain Jane took my elbow and led me over next to the soda machine. Once we were there she looked around carefully before speaking.
"Discussing with me the duties 15th FSB will be undertaking if we get orders to unseal a packet she delivered. If the orders do not come to open them, we're to shred and then burn in a burn barrel the orders without opening," she said.
"Yup, that's Blackbriar Ridge. Burn before reading, shoot yourself afterwards, blind people only, no braille," I joked.
"I'm not the only one. Apparently the same woman, or someone who looks like her, delivered a sealed orders packet and the same instructions to the entire battalion," she said quietly.
That made me nod slowly.
Jesus, it was easy to have all this go to your head. On the word of a single 23 year old Warrant Officer an entire battalion was being prepared to roll out and provide support.
No wonder they spent so much time and effort watching our psychological status.
"How long do you..." Captain Jane said, but stopped when the woman in black touched her ear, cocking her head, obviously listening. Then she straightened up, looked around, and made an immediate bee-line for me.
"Crap," I said, feeling my guts knot that had nothing to do with the anthrax shot.
"Good luck, Heather," Captain Jane said, slipping away.
The Blackbriar rep moved up next to me. She made a motion and two masked Rangers interposed themselves between us and the rest of Actual.
Peel came out of the bathroom smiling and headed for the box of MRE's.
"This is your notification that your team has moved from alert to active status," She told me.
"I need details. I need to know what I'm walking into," I told her.
She waved at a different room. "Intelligence is being set up right now. Time is of the essence."
I waved at Donovan, who came trotting up with my folders.
"He stays out here," The Blackbriar bitch said.
"Then you can carry out the mission," I snapped, "This is my mission, you dropped this on my head, we do it my way," I leaned down so our noses touched. "You're not Special Weapons."
She swallowed. Approval flickered in the back of those dark eyes. "Your team needs to get ready."
"The C-130 has been loaded for two days," I told her, heading toward the door to the room. "My people are recovering on schedule from their inoculations, and I've been giving classes on handling biological warfare victims."
I opened the door and stared. There were two men from the CIA standing by the window, which was covered with reflective foil as well as had wires running to it that I knew were causing the window glass to vibrate to stop laser microphones. They didn't even need to introduce themselves, I could tell by the demeanor, the arrogance in their stance, and the disdainful look they gave me.
Fucking spooks.
There were satellite scans on the table, a military map of the area, sheets that I saw was a breakdown of the population. Close up maps of other sections.
"The CDC team is dead," I stated, walking up to the table and putting my hands on it, looking over everything.
I'd heard it wrong, or spelled it wrong.
Deschinquo, Texas. Population 678 as of 1990 census. Primary industry had been a refinery that closed down in 1985. Elementary school, high school, police station, general store, two gas stations, the list kept going and I matched the buildings to the key.
"As of zero eight..." one of the spooks said. I held my hand up, palm toward him.
"Be silent," I snapped, "I'm working."
He choked, turning red, but went pale when the Blackbriar Liaison pulled her pen from her pocket and clicked it twice.
He moved back to the wall as I kept looking.
Reservoir was a lake, the autumn rains already having partially filled it. Two cattle ranches. Eighteen farms, the fields fallow. A drive-in theater.
It was fenced. Surrounded on two sides by a culvert. On the north side was a golf driving range, fenced off by thirty foot high fences. Judging by the grass and the condition, it had been abandoned for a few years, same with the drive in.
There were white vehicles in the scan, near the theater that was across from the county courthouse.
"Deaths are increasing exponentially," I said to myself. Donovan was writing. "CDC came into town. One vehicle outside the medical clinic. One outside the police station. Two outside the county courthouse."
I looked up. "I want transcripts and photostats of all reports the CDC filed," I said.
"Over here," The Blackbriar bitch said, tapping the folders.
"If it's redacted, I officially refuse the mission," I snapped, moving over to pick them up. I skimmed them, getting the highlights.
Moved in. Two sick and comatose. Unknown symptom range. Different symptoms between them. Were in standard clean suits with filters. Patients died in under two hours after examination.
Now that was weird. Weird, and very unique.
Body temperature went up after death. Rose all the way to 120F before plummeting. Skin blackened. Lesions appeared on the skin after death.
The next report was incoherent. I knew fever driven rambling when I saw it.
In just 8 hours the CDC people had gotten sick.
Another CDC team went in. Again, respirators and O2.
In 10 hours they stopped responding.
A quick slapped together BEST had gone out.
14 hours later they stopped communicating.
Over two hundred sick.
In less than 100 hours it had jumped from two obviously Stage II or Stage III patients to 200+.
Jesus.
This thing was a killer.
I walked around the table, looking at all the data. The State Patrol had blocked off the only road that ran through the town. The National Guard was blocking the dirt roads.
"Do you want my recommendation?" I asked when I'd taken in all the data. My subconscious was working on it, chewing over it, comparing it.
"Of course, Chief," The Blackbriar Liaison said quietly.
"Nuclear sterilization," I stated, putting my hands flat on the table. "Don't recall the State Troopers or the Guardsmen. Nuke the place, claim it was a meteor impact."
She shook her head. "We haven't reached that point yet," she said.
The two suits were sneering.
I pointed at them. "Shoot these two for withholding evidence, fuel air bomb the place, then scour it with napalm. Fill the lake full of alkaloids, ring it off, don't let anyone go near the place for ten years."
The two CIA guys stepped forward, their faces reddening. They stopped, their hands slowly raising.
Somehow my .45 was in my hand, pointing between them. Out of the corner of my vision I could see Donovan kneeling down, his M-16A2 pointing at them. The Blackbriar Liaison had her 9mm out, the silencer threaded.
"Why that part of the recommendation, Chief?" The Liaison asked.
"Because this isn't natural," I stated. "I recognize the disease," I told her.
"The CDC says there's no record of this disease on file," she said, her voice as emotionless as a computer.
"That's because it's Soviet biowarfare at its finest," I told her. "Same bioweapon that killed everyone in City-17. The Soviet Union sealed the city up and VX'd it till it ran off the walls and peeled the paint."
"Are you sure?" She asked.
"Absolutely. Biowarfare is my sub-specialty. The temperature rising after death and the lesions appearing, the infectious lesions, point at part of the Soviet Dead Hand program, specifically Amtrexxel-293, and these dumbasses brought it into the country," I snarled.
Both shook their heads at the same time, like a pair of puppets connected by strings.
"It wasn't a Special Weapons release, like New York or Miami influenza tests, this is rampant stupidity," I sneered, "And the lower the IQ that came up with the plan, the higher the statistical chance the CIA is in on it and thinks they're clever."
"You should nuke the site from orbit, just to be sure," I quoted.
"Cannot," she stated slowly. "Survivors present."
I shook my head. "That's where we come in, then."
She nodded. "Get on your knees," She stated.
Both CIA agents swallowed thickly, getting down on their knees.
They weren't afraid of me. I'd lowered my pistol. They weren't afraid of Donovan, he'd let his rifle drop to point at the floor.
They were afraid of her.
She moved behind them, holstering her pistol. Mine came back up, I expected some kind of dirty trick. Instead, they held still while she zip-tied them. They were actively sweating, pale and shaking.
"You gentlemen will be accompanying one of my associates to Blackbriar Ridge for debriefing," she said.
There was no humanity in her voice.
Both looked like they were going to pass out from fear. They looked at me pleadingly, but I just sneered at them.
She led the two out and I went back to studying the map. I made annotations for where we'd set up. Checked the fuel types at the gas stations. They had diesel, so did several of the farms. I'd need air support. Napalm, primarily. Zone it off with a burn area. It was a lot to burn, but I was hoping I could control rodent migration.
I had eight square miles to worry about. Roughly three hundred families.
The Soviets had considered the weapon a failure. They couldn't pull down the lethality index below 80%. It had a limited incapacitation time, had a morphic protein shell that prevented the development of a vaccine, and was able to lie dormant for days or years in the dust.
And those two idiots had smuggled it into the country, and either something had gone wrong, or they'd picked a small Texas town as a test-site.
Someday history would look back at the CIA and realize they were a greater threat to humanity than anything on the planet. Hubris and stupidity was a powerful combination when given to a limited bureaucracy with no oversight.
I sighed, straightening up and turning to Donovan. The Blackbriar rep was next to him, motionless and blank faced.
"I want everyone in the armored J-Suits, full enviro, no external filters. You and I will replace the filters on the Fox with ceramics. We'll do a LALO drop, it'll suck, but you guys should survive it if I put you in the vehicles," I shook my head. "We'll try to find survivors, but..."
I let the word hang as Donovan left the room. The Blackbriar rep nodded solemnly.
Those idiots.
Those arrogant, ignorant, stupid idiots.
Lugus stab their eyes.