Couldn’t be helped. Sidney had to get that beacon lit.
Her feet hit pavement and she knew she was close. She’d seen the damn thing parked at the edge of the terminal all day. She slowed to a brisk walk, her rifle ready to fire blindly at anyone who emerged from the darkness.
But no one came. There was no mechanic working late into the night. She was all alone as she slid up next to the giant Iranian plane. She unwrapped a brick of C-4, the American stuff, and pushed it against the metal, but the damn explosives wouldn’t stick and they started to fall to the ground. She didn’t have any tape and the explosives weren’t sticky enough on their own to adhere to the side of the plane.
She cast about for anything to help, but it was nearly pitch black. “Dammit,” she muttered, her hand trailing along the side of the plane. She hefted the brick of explosives. Would this be enough? She had literally no clue how much to use and had already placed three of them back at the fence.
Surely two of them was enough to do some major damage and hopefully ignite the fuel inside the plane. Finally, she came to the landing gear and pressed two of the bricks into place. Each of them got a separate blasting cap and detonator.
Eleven minutes. She set the timer and turned into the darkness.
Sidney wasn’t totally sure of the way, so she jogged back in the general direction that she’d come from. She made it to the fence and then searched the darkness for the truck. There! She’d missed it by a good twenty feet.
“Sidney? Is that you?”
“Yeah. It’s me,” she replied, answering Mark’s question.
“Where the hell did you go?”
She trailed her fingers along the chain link until she made it to the gates. Mark stood there off to the side. “We need to get away from here.”
“Back to the spruce trees?”
She nodded, but then cursed herself slightly. He couldn’t see her nod. “Yeah, let’s go.”
They barely made it to the cover of the trees when the world erupted in light and flame. Sidney’s eyes widened in shock as the C-130 was blown literally in two. Flames rose into the night, sending a dark cloud of smoke to mingle with the low clouds. Next, the explosives along the fence line blew, creating a large gap in the perimeter fence that protected the facility.
Shouts of alarm reached their ears, carried on the wind as men began to emerge from the building. Then, Mark’s explosives went off. He’d placed several of them at the corner and the side of the terminal building to create as large of a hole into the Iranian fortress as he could. In the light of the burning plane, Sidney could see that part of the building had completely collapsed. They’d done a damn fine job with destroying the base’s perimeter and the terminal building. All they needed was some cooperation from the—
They sank deeper into the spruce. So deep that they were pressed closely to one another and could barely move. The smell filled Sidney’s nostrils and the world shrank down to the few inches in front of her nose that she could see.
She didn’t care about the closeness this time. It offered safety from their prying eyes. It kept them safe away from the claws and teeth. From certain death.
The infected had seen her beacon and they were here to see what all the fuss was about.
34
MANHATTAN, NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK
MARCH 15TH
“Are you sure you don’t want to stay?” Jefferson asked. “We could use people like you.”
Jake smiled sadly. “You don’t need people like me.”
“You’re still a trained tactician, Jake,” Manhattan’s leader said. “We’re doing good right now. The Latin Kings were some bad dudes. Thanks to you they’re out of the picture. But, there will be more. The gangs in this city are like rats: We can’t ever totally get rid of them and they’ll always try to find a way back in.”
“You guys will be fine,” he said, looking over to Harper and Taavi. “Most of the platoon decided to stay here. I’ve got a few guys on the fence, but you’ll get at least twenty soldiers who can help to defend Manhattan from any other gangs that may be trying to move in. I’ve got unfinished business that I need to take care of back in Kansas and Sergeant Turner is hell-bent on returning the Strykers to Fort Bliss—which was his original mission all along.”
Jefferson nodded. “And you’re sure you want to leave, Grady?”
The operator nodded. “Absolutely. You’ve got a nice little set up here, but I feel cooped up, like a wild animal stuck in a cage. There’s plenty of work for a guy like me out there. I mean, millions of things. I could spend my entire life hunting the infected and never run out of targets. Do you know how satisfying that is to a guy like me?”
Jefferson shrugged. “I mean, I guess.”
“Besides,” Harper continued. “If I stick around here, I’m just going to keep getting poked and prodded. I think a week’s worth of donating blood, tissue, saliva, hair, and even a few semen samples for some idiotic reason is more than enough.”
The scientist shrugged. “I do have a lot of samples to work with, but I’m always willing to take more.”
Harper raised his sleeve. He
