“I’ve got a whistle,” Sergeant Turner said, digging into the pouch on his vest, emerging with a dusty OD green plastic whistle. “Old school land nav habit that you young ’uns wouldn’t understand.”
Jake grinned. In fact, he didn’t know what the whistle was for, but the old platoon sergeant had joined the Army when Jake was still in elementary school. He’d been in for a long damn time, so there had to be a reason for the whistle. It wasn’t a flare, but it sure as hell might work in a pinch.
“One long blast means to move forward to assist the LT,” Sergeant Turner said gruffly. “Two long blasts means to help us out over in the other position. Best I can do, sir.”
“Thank you, Sergeant. That’s perfect. Any more questions?”
“ROE?” Gallegos asked. Up to this point, their Rules of Engagement had been strictly to fight off thugs in the city with as minimal violence as possible. But these were straight up gangbangers, very bad dudes. What passed for the authorities in Manhattan were afraid of them. They needed to be removed if there was ever going to be peace.
“Weapons free,” Jake replied, earning several nods of approval. “But remember that we are extremely low on ammo. What we have is all we’ve got, so don’t go apeshit with suppressive fire and junk. Tell your men to pick their targets, and end their existence.” He looked around the small group of platoon leadership. “Anything else?”
Sergeant Turner’s rough, gravelly voice made him turn to look at the man standing next to him. “Yeah, I got one, sir. I heard what Jackson Jefferson’s guy said, but the platoon didn’t hear him, so it’s best if they hear it directly from you. What do we do if we find Harper dead, or can’t find him at all?”
“Given what little bit we know about the gang, that’s a very real possibility. Our number one priority is to retrieve Harper, whether that’s dead or alive. The scientist that we linked up with said that having him alive would be best, but even the body would be better than nothing. We are not leaving that neighborhood without Harper. He’s one of us now and we don’t leave our people behind. Got it?”
A chorus of affirmative answers met his assertion that they were going to search until they found Grady, whatever that took. “Thank you, Sergeant,” Jake nodded to his platoon sergeant. “Anything else?”
Nobody said anything, so Jake pointed a knife hand at Staff Sergeant Gallegos. “Alright, Sergeant. I want your squad moving out in five minutes. Understood?”
“Roger, sir.”
The lieutenant returned the flurry of salutes as his squad leaders went back to brief their men. “Over-under on whether this will work?” Jake asked Sergeant Turner as the taciturn old grunt went over a few last minute adjustments to his kit.
“Probably ninety-ten, sir. Harper’s dead. We just gotta get the body before they dump it in the river—or eat it.”
Jake kicked at the concrete in frustration. “Fucking asshole.”
“Yeah. Selfish. That’s all it was. Now we gotta clean up his mess.”
Jake glanced at his watch. Only a minute or so had passed of the five he’d given the first squad. “Okay. Good luck, Sergeant. I’m gonna move over with third squad.”
“Good luck, sir. Keep your head down. I don’t believe for one second that this gang is completely out of ammo.”
“Me either,” Jake agreed. “This whole thing is cocked up.”
Sergeant Turner’s weathered cheeks creased as he smiled. “Welcome to the Infantry, sir.”
24
BRAZILIAN HIGHLANDS RAINFOREST, BRAZIL
MARCH 7TH
The facility was larger than Hannah would have thought from the outside. The Iranians tunneled downward, creating two sublevels underground. As she walked behind a group of soldiers, the dampness of the air on the second basement level made her skin crawl.
“God, it smells awful down here,” she mumbled.
“It’s all the bodies in the holding pens,” a soldier nearby said through the closeness of his t-shirt over his mouth and nose. “Looks like they were eating each other for a while until they all died.”
After poking around the experimentation area a little more, Doctor Lawrence was convinced that the Iranians had been trying to improve the virus at the site when the infected were released to fight off the Havoc Group team outside. Major Edmunds surmised that the creatures had then attacked the workers and the site had to be abandoned. It was a pretty good guess of what happened considering the events of that day, but Hannah had reminded them that Grady Harper had been with her outside of the facility on that day, and the pictures that they found of him were clearly over a longer period of time.
The major didn’t like being corrected by a civilian, but he let it go with only a passing comment. Then, a call came over the radio from the captain in charge outside telling Edmunds that the infected from the surrounding jungle were still making their way toward the facility, following the sounds of the C-130 landing. Their slow stream of curiosity was keeping the snipers busy and the captain was worried that their numbers were increasing.
They had no idea how many of the damn things were out there, so the major wanted to be in and out as quickly as possible. He ordered a full sweep of the building to retrieve any and all written documentation, computers, disks, and thumb drives. The search team was given ten minutes, no more, to bag everything and get back outside to the plane.
Hannah had grabbed several of the pictures of Grady that the doctor tossed on the counter before heading off with the search team. She was convinced that there had
