“No, I need you to keep Lincoln safe—and the girls and Vern. Carmen and Miguel and Patricia… That’s where I need you to be. They need you.”
“Then we need to hurry up and follow through with your plan. I’m sick of running too, Sidney. Every time we think we’ve found a good place to settle, they come after us. I’m sick of it. Sooner or later, they’re gonna get to us like they did the other day, but we won’t be ready for them. I want to kick their asses so bad that they just stay away forever.”
She smiled. “I know you do, but it’s not that easy. This,” she gestured vaguely toward Liberal, “might be a one-way mission. I don’t want it to be, obviously, but I’m prepared to do whatever it takes to keep Lincoln safe. If that means dying when I wipe out a bunch of these guys, then so be it.”
“You guys are my family,” Mark stated. “You’re my responsibility too.”
“Go home, Mark.”
“No. I’ll just follow after you like I did tonight.”
“Don’t.”
“I’m not going back home—back to that place where we’re staying. I’m going to help you. You need it.”
“I don’t need your help,” she grunted, adjusting her backpack. “But I need to get moving.”
He turned and wobbled his shoulders. A mostly-empty backpack shook across his back. “I’ve got plenty of room to help you with all that weight.”
“Ugh. You’re not going back are you?”
“No. We’re a team, Sidney. We always go out hunting together. This is just another hunt.”
Against her better judgement, Sidney acquiesced and slipped the pack from her shoulders. “Fine,” she said. “But if things go bad, promise me that you’ll leave and go home.”
“I promise,” he replied, holding up his thumb.
“Okay, fine. Let’s split up the explosives and then get moving.”
14
FORT BLISS MAIN CANTONMENT AREA, EL PASO, TEXAS
MARCH 6TH
“Good morning,” the general said as he stood up from his desk and walked around to the conference table. He stuck out a hand and said, “Neel Bhagat.”
“Hannah Dunn,” she replied, taking his hand and shaking it.
General Bhagat gestured to the table. “Please, have a seat.”
As everyone got situated, Hanna looked around the room. Besides the Aviation Brigade commander and intelligence officer, whom she already knew, there were two full colonels, a command sergeant major, a lieutenant colonel, a couple of majors, a lieutenant—probably the aide—and an E-5. The sergeant seemed nervous. He sat at the far corner of the table, away from the officers.
“Before we get started, let’s all introduce ourselves to Ms. Dunn,” the general said, placing both hands on the table. “We’ll start with our esteemed Air Force colleagues on the phone.” He pointed to the speaker phone in the middle of the table.
“Colonel Dan McTaggert,” a tinny voice from the speaker stated. “Commander of the 49th Wing at Holloman Air Force Base.”
“Welcome back, Dan,” the general said.
“Thank you, sir. We’re glad to be back in comms with you guys. It got pretty lonely over here.”
The general nodded. “We’ve got Sergeant Pollard in here with us. He was the team leader who eliminated the jamming site.”
Ahh, Hannah thought. That’s why the random E-5 was in the room. He’d been involved in the mission to destroy the jamming equipment that had been interfering with communications between the Air Force base and Fort Bliss. She’d heard about it hanging around the Aviation Brigade’s operations center.
“We certainly thank you, Sergeant. Now that we can talk to one another, we’re excited to resume close air support for your troops on the line. I’ve got my staff with me here in the room, sir.”
“Thank you, Dan,” General Bhagat replied. “Sergeant Major?”
The senior enlisted man to the right of the commander cleared his throat and said, “Sergeant Major Strathbourne. I’m the Division Command Sergeant Major.”
“Colonel Dave Morales,” the next man in the row said. “Division Chief of Staff.”
“Colonel Dave Tovey, First AD Ops officer.”
“Lieutenant Colonel Tim Sewel, First Armored Division Current Ops officer.”
“Major Todd Blackledge, Division Intelligence Officer.”
“Uh, Sergeant Will Pollard,” the E-5 said, obviously uncomfortable at being in the room with the division’s senior leadership.
Finally, it came back around to Hannah. “I’m Hannah Dunn. I work for The Havoc Group—well, worked for them. They probably don’t exist anymore.”
“I’m not familiar with The Havoc Group, Ms. Dunn. Can you explain their role?” the general asked.
“Yeah, sure. We provide a wide range of security and operational support to the US Government as well as advisory support to foreign governments. We operated closely with the CIA as a subcontractor of sorts on clandestine operations—I’m not entirely sure about previous missions before I joined the Group, but the mission I was on…” She paused, looking intently at the young soldier at the end of the table. “Um, what is the classification level here, sir?”
“We have a Secret phone line to Holloman,” General Bhagat stated. “But that’s strictly for the end-to-end encryption that it offers us for defense against the Iranians spying in on our conversation. Given the way things are now, I don’t think it matters if you disclose the specifics of a previous operation. We don’t even have anyone to turn you over to.”
She chuckled nervously. Talking openly about a Top Secret—No Foreign classified mission with uncleared personnel who were not “read on” to the project went against everything she’d ever been taught, but he was right. There were maybe a few hundred million non-infected humans worldwide, what difference did it make?
“Gotcha, sir,” Hannah said. “The mission that I’m about to discuss—the one to try to stop this virus from getting out—was extremely hush-hush. Very few people even
