Savages (5 page)

I spotted Caleb Hicks and Derrick Holland on the way to the headquarters building. They heard me call out to them and waited as I approached.

“What did you find?” I asked.

“Bunch of dead ROC troops,” Holland answered. “Looks like they realized we had ‘em surrounded and took pills. I’m guessing cyanide.”

“Take any prisoners?”

They both shook their heads. “We found the sniper that took out Fuller, I think,” Hicks said.

“Dead?”

“In several pieces. Infected got ahold of him. What was left was tore up pretty bad. But we found his rifle. Three-hundred Win-mag, just like you said.”

“Is that it?” I pointed to a barrel protruding above Hicks’ right shoulder.

“Yep,” he said. “Not sure what to do with it. I know it was used to kill a friend of mine, but it seemed wasteful to leave it. I don’t think Fuller would mind.”

“No, he wouldn’t. Especially if you use it to take out some ROC types.”

Hicks nodded in silence, eyes looking past me.

I said, “Seen Gabe around?”

“He’s at headquarters. Heard it over radio chatter.”

“I need to talk to him. Catch up with you two later.”

The headquarters building looked like all the other buildings at Fort McCray. Cinder blocks painted a hideous dull brown, no windows on the ground floor, reinforced steel door that only opened outward and could be secured with heavy bars from the inside, narrow windows on the second floor, and a three-foot cement battlement surrounding the roof. I saw several soldiers with field glasses patrolling above me, eyes scanning the inner part of the base for any sign of infected. Their carbines had heavy barrels and were chambered in hard-hitting 7.62 NATO. The Nightforce scopes were not merely for show, nor were the spare magazines on the troops’ MOLLE vests.

One of them peered at me through his field glasses and said something into his radio. When I reached the door and knocked, a sergeant with a Mossberg shotgun and a pistol on his chest opened a small panel and asked me to identify myself.

“Name’s Eric Riordan. Same as last time, Wally.”

“Sorry. Protocol.”

“Sure.”

Wally opened the door. His name was Wallace, but he went by Wally. He did not look like a Wally. Well over six feet tall, black hair shaved down to a nub, steely black eyes over a nose that had been broken at least three times. When he smiled, there were a few teeth missing. His voice spoke of New England origins—Massachusetts, if I had to guess. His hands were large and brutal looking and the knuckles were covered in scars. There was scar tissue in his eyebrows and forehead, and his ears had the cauliflower swelling of a prizefighter.

I had asked him once, months ago, while waiting to see Captain Harlow, what he did for a living before the Outbreak. He smiled his gap-toothed smile and said, “A little of this, a little of that.”

His manner had been pleasant, but the smile did not reach his eyes. I did not ask again.

“Captain’s expecting you,” Wally said. “You know the way.”

“Sure, thanks. Always a pleasure, Wally.”

He sat down in a chair facing the door and said nothing. I went up the stairs and around the corner. The lower part of the building was mostly dark, but there were a few lights on upstairs. I did not hear the low drone of the generator at the far end of the building, meaning Captain Harlow must have switched over to the solar panels. I nodded to his secretary, went down the hall to his door, and knocked three times.

“Yes, come in.”

I entered. Gabriel and Lieutenant Jonas sat in armless metal chairs facing Captain Harlow’s desk. There was one chair left, so I took it.

“Captain,” I said, and then nodded to Jonas and Gabe.

“We’re short on time,” Harlow said, “so I’ll get straight to it. I just got off the horn with Central. Our orders have changed. All of Echo Company and the Ninth TVM are to remain on station to guard Hollow Rock while the townspeople make repairs to the gate. We also have about two thousand infected to dispose of, wounded to provide for, and dead enemy troops to examine. Sheriff Elliot and a few of my men are investigating what happened today. I doubt they’ll learn much.”

“Agreed,” Gabe said. “It was a well-planned attack.”

Harlow looked at him. “Any other observations, Mr. Garrett?”

“If I had to guess, I would say the enemy troops were North Korean Special Forces. They carried the same weapons and gear we keep seeing on insurgents and marauders from the Alliance. They didn’t hesitate to commit suicide when faced with overwhelming odds. The troops manning the artillery knew they were going to die. They had to have known about the armored cavalry and helicopters, but they carried out their mission anyway. You don’t see that level of brainwashed loyalty in most militaries.”

“Not to mention the hordes and the artillery,” I added. “And the fact that they got so close without a patrol spotting them. Doesn’t exactly give me a warm fuzzy feeling.”

Jonas said, “Which leads us to a few obvious questions.”

“First,” Harlow said, holding up a finger, “did they plan to attack the same day we deployed, or was it just coincidence?”

“Couple of possibilities there,” I said. “One, they planned it that way. Which means they knew when we were leaving. Which means somebody, somewhere along the line, is passing classified information along to our enemies.”

“Or,” Jonas cut in, “as Captain Harlow suggested, it was coincidence.”

“I don’t buy that,” I said. “We know those troops were KPA, so-”

“We don’t know that for certain,” Harlow interrupted.

“Who else could it be?”

No one said anything. I went on. “If they’re KPA, that means they had to come all the way out here from the west coast. That would have taken weeks, if not months. Anyone want to spot the hole in that logic?”

“We just got orders to move a few days ago,” Harlow said. “This operation has not officially been in the works for very long. A week at the most. And that’s at the command level.”

“They could have flown out,” Gabe said. “We know they have aircraft.”

“But do they have fuel that is still usable?” Harlow said. “It’s been three years since the Outbreak, so unless they have access to refining facilities and strategic oil supplies, any fuel they brought over from Asia would have gone inert by now.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Properly stored and treated, fuel can last up to a decade.”

“That’s true,” Harlow said. “So we acknowledge it as a possibility, but an unlikely one. Radar and satellite coverage is still pretty good. It would have been damned difficult for KPA forces to fly an aircraft big enough to haul those cannons without being detected, even if they split them among several aircraft.”

“But not impossible,” Gabe said.

I stood up and went to the window. Outside, the sun was high above the horizon. Warmth radiated from the wire-reinforced glass, telling me it was going to be an unseasonably warm day.

“It’s a moot point anyway,” I said. “Even if they flew the men and artillery out, that doesn’t explain how they managed to capture over a hundred infected and rig them with explosives, round up nine hundred more, and then march them all the way here from Alliance territory. Even working around the clock it must have taken them at least a week.”

“They could have rigged them in advance,” Gabe said. “Hid them somewhere within a couple days’ march.”

“That sounds more like the Alliance’s way of doing things,” Jonas said. “And we know the KPA, or ROC, or whatever the hell they call themselves have been in-country for well over a year. Plenty of time to move men and equipment to Alliance territory. Could have been staging an attack for months, just waiting for the right opportunity.”

I considered the possibility. It fit. It fit very well. So the KPA had a presence in Alliance territory. So they rigged the infected and staged them somewhere close. The Hollow Rock patrols only covered a five-mile radius around town, and they could not be everywhere at once. Say the suicide troops were twenty miles away with the artillery. Say the infected were corralled somewhere close by. How long would it take them to move into position? The cannons, when they attacked, were two miles away as the crow flies. I turned to Gabe.

“What kind of guns were they?” I asked.

“The artillery?” Gabe said. I nodded.

“Heavy mortars. Sani 120s.”

“As in a hundred-twenty millimeter shells?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of range are we talking?”

“Effective out to four and a half miles.”

I whistled. Two miles was well within range. “How heavy are they?”

Gabe scratched his three-day growth of beard. “Five hundred pounds, give or take. Not to mention the ammo.”

I thought back to the artillery emplacement. “The guns were on wheels, and I think I saw a couple of boxy metal things on wheels as well. Probably for ammo. Could they have rolled all that in from, say, twenty miles out?”

“Very possible,” Gabe said. “It would have been a hell of a lot of work, but it could be done.”

“Did the recon team spot any animal tracks?” Jonas asked. “Horses, oxen, that kind of thing?”

Harlow shook his head. “No. I thought of that and had that tracker of yours look around. Hicks, I think his name is. Didn’t find anything but human prints.”

“So they wheeled the mortars and shells in on foot,” I said. “How many rounds did they fire at the wall? Do we know?”

Gabe closed his eyes and did his memory trick. If he concentrated, he could remember anything he saw. A useful talent. “Eighteen,” he said after a few seconds. “Six per gun.”

“Any shells left over?”

“We found four,” Harlow said. “But more could have been destroyed by the Hellfire.”

I looked at Gabe. He nodded. “Makes sense. Three guns, maybe thirty shells. Have them on standby no more than twenty miles away. Same with the infected. Plenty of places to hide hordes out there. Spread ‘em out over a few miles in small clusters. The order comes down maybe a day or two ago, and they move into position.”

“Which brings us back to the question of timing,” I said. “Riddle me this: why attack Hollow Rock? Why not attack the convoy directly? Or Fort McCray? Wouldn’t they be higher value targets?”

No one said anything. Outside, birds called to one another over the noise of men running and shouting. A bee hovered briefly in front of the window, then flew away. Gabe looked at his knees and tapped a finger against the side of his jaw.

“I see where you’re going with this.”

“Well I don’t,” Harlow said. “Care to enlighten me?”

Gabe looked at me. There was no amusement in his pale gray eyes.

“Let’s explore a few known quantities,” I said. “Fact: the attack happened right as more than a hundred troops, as well as heavy armor and helicopters, started an expedition north to deal with border incursions into Kentucky. Fact: the infected and the enemy troops came in on foot. To hit us when they did, they had to set out from no further than roughly twenty miles away. Fact: whatever the Alliance is doing in Kentucky, they’ve gone to a great deal of trouble to make sure we don’t interrupt them. From this, we can garner a few logical assumptions. Take it away, Gabe.” I waved a hand at him.

“There are any number of reasons for the Alliance to stage the guns and ghouls,” he said. “Maybe it was an insurance policy. Maybe they were planning to attack at a different time, but caught wind of the Union’s plans to defend the border. Either way, they chose to attack right as we were leaving. I can’t see that being a coincidence.”

Harlow let out a long sigh. “No. I don’t think so either.”

“Which means they knew
what
we were doing and
when
,” I said. “Which means someone in either Echo Company or Central Command is talking.”

At this, Harlow frowned, but did not argue.

Jonas said, “But that still doesn’t explain why they attacked Hollow Rock and not our forces.”

“I suppose you have a theory about that?” Harlow asked, looking at me.

“I do, actually. I don’t think whoever sent those men expected them to destroy Hollow Rock. Think about it. Why attack us in daylight when we’re still close to town with tanks and air support? It would make much more sense to attack at night. Gabe said something about an insurance policy.”

Harlow sat up straight in his chair. “Son of a bitch.”

I waited.

“That’s why they targeted the main gate, and why they attacked in broad daylight. If those rigged ghouls had blown the walls, we would be evacuating everyone in town to Fort McCray as we speak. And even if they had attacked Fort McCray directly, they knew we could fight them off. Call for reinforcements. That would be the opposite of what they want. They don’t want to take us on directly, not until they can attack in large numbers. They just want us to stay put. Crazy bastards sacrificed their own men to keep us here.”

“We got lucky,” Gabe said, “if not for Eric’s sharp eyes, those hordes would have destroyed the wall. And if not for the Apache, those mortar crews would have blown the main gate down to rubble.”