CHAPTER 3
Edonian Royal Trade Highway
13 Miles south of the capital, Antrusia
1:04 am September 19th, 2010
Thom was swearing over and over again as he stood up and kicked the rear bumper of the Humvee, rocking the heavy vehicle forward slightly. He paced around, furious, for a few minutes as Carter threw his blood soaked gloves to the ground and grabbed a bottle of water to wash off his hands. He was blinking back forming tears as he rinsed his friend's blood from his hands and wrists. Marcos was solemnly repacking the scattered contents of the trauma bag, hanging his head in remorse at not being able to save their brother. The woman was just sitting there, staring at Ibrahim.
"Any sign of Jeff?" Thom asked, finally.
Marcos and Carter both took a deep breath and Carter said, "We'll go check."
As they got up to go look around the blown up Humvee, Thom stood and glared at the woman who was fixated on the lifeless body in front of her. He wanted to blame her for this, but he had seen the inside of the SUV when they pulled her out. The driver had been shot, multiple times, before he crashed their vehicle. His blood was all over her and Thom knew that she was in at least as bad of a state as they were.
Nick got up as Marcos and Carter moved around the burning Humvee, keeping his eyes on the area around the destroyed pickup trucks. Neither of the men searching saw what looked like a burning six foot one, hundred and eighty pound body inside or around the Humvee at all, so they spread out to look for any sign that he might have crawled off. They hoped he'd jumped out and run for cover, but the nearest cover was the trees and he would have seen them all after the fire fight. They tried to raise him on the radio, but there was no answer. It was as if he had just vanished into thin air.
Thom heard their radio calls and came over the net, asking, "What's up boys?"
They walked back to the rear of the Humvee and Carter said, "There's no trace of him. No body. Nothing."
Just then, Nick faintly heard a distinctive low rumble, accompanied by a slight vibration he felt through his feet. He got a sick feeling in his gut as he realized they were about to be joined by something very heavy, very soon. He moved to join the rest of the team as Thom was looking at Carter and Marcos with a puzzled expression.
"The hell do you mean nothing?" He demanded.
Before they could answer, Nick interjected, "We need to bug out now! We're about to have more company than we can handle."
They stood in silence, listening for a moment before they picked up on the rumbling and vibrations. Thom shook his head, swearing again.
"Get the stretcher and whatever else we can carry out of the truck and let's move," he ordered, "We'll get into the wood line with Ibrahim, but we're going to have to cache him somewhere if we want to move fast enough to get clear of all this shit."
Marcos nodded and shouldered the aid bag, then slung his grenade launcher and MP5A2 sub machine gun and helped Carter unfold and lock open the folding litter. Nick pulled Thom's, Ibrahim's, and his own bug out bags from the truck. They were packed with some food, water, ammo, and basic survival gear for use in emergencies. Thom and Nick each shouldered their bags and Nick gave Ibrahim's to Carter, who shrugged it on silently. Nick also pulled out a Mossberg 500 pump action shotgun, slinging it on his back over the bag, and put his helmet back on.
Thom stood before the woman who was standing quietly by, waiting, and said, "You're coming with us. Keep up and stay quiet until I tell you otherwise, understand?"
She nodded and shouldered her own bag, asking, "Can I at least have my pistol back?"
"Absolutely not," Thom said then turned to help lay Ibrahim on the stretcher.
Nick flipped his PVS-14 monocular device back down and took point going into the woods with Carter and Marcos carrying the stretcher behind him. The dark haired woman followed them and Thom stayed hidden in the trees near the field, covering them as they moved. If they were spotted he'd buy them some time to get away. He watched as an old World War Two era half track vehicle came around the bend next to the hill. It looked like a Russian made beast that was marked with the spider emblem of the Urchenko's insurgent forces. The front half was basically an armored semi truck cab while the back half ran on tracks with an armor plated troop compartment and a machine gun mounted in a half turret at the front. Thom knew that he had nothing that would even slow down the heavily armored vehicle, so he just stayed hidden and watched.
A cargo truck followed behind the half track as it pulled up next to the destroyed trucks and stopped. When dozens of guerilla forces began jumping out of the back of the truck and pouring out of the half track armed with AK-47s and RPGs, Thom slowly crept back into the woods. He carefully pulled back out of sight of the men as they fanned out and searched through the wreckage of all the vehicles. When he was safely out of sight he got up and took off to join up with his team.
He caught up to them in just a few minutes and urged them to move as quickly as they could through the forest. He pushed them for about five hundred meters, to the base of a ridgeline where they stopped so Nick and Thom could take the stretcher from Marcos and Carter. The hillside slowed them down as Nick and Thom struggled to climb up the slope while carrying the body. Once they crested the ridge they fought to make their way down the other side without dropping Ibrahim off of the stretcher. As soon as they were at the foot of the hillside they switched back out and Marcos and Carter moved to make up lost time.
A few hundred meters past the ridge Thom stopped them and called them in, saying, "We'll cache the body here. Nick, get back up on the ridgeline and keep watch for any trouble following us."
"Got it," Nick replied as he finished drinking a bottle of water.
He carefully climbed back up the hill and selected a good, concealed position that had a pretty good view through the trees below. He scanned with his night vision, looking for any movement before he got on the scope, turning on the PVS 22. He scanned through the trees slowly, but saw nothing. Satisfied, he took off his MICH, worked the slung shotgun off his back, and dropped his go bag, all in a small pile next to his position.
He got on the radio, "I'm in place. There's no movement, so you've got some time."
Marcos had started digging while Carter went to gather vegetation to use as concealment. Thom went through Ibrahim's kit, taking his FNP90 submachinegun and FiveseveN pistol along with their magazines and his radio. He also grabbed Ibrahim's wallet and any other odds and ends he was carrying in his pockets that they didn't want to leave for the guerillas to possibly find. He packed the things in his bug out bag and walked over to the woman who was sitting nearby.
"Now you get to talk," he told her.
She sighed and began, "My name is Karina Lavorya and I work for the B.S.A.A. Eastern European branch. My partner's name was Levi Marko…"
Tears began to well in her eyes as she reached her hand up to touch the blood covering the sleeve of her jacket still.
Thom waited a few seconds and said, "And the B.S.A.A. is …"
She took a deep breath and continued, "The Bio-terror Security Assessment Alliance, an international organization that tracks down the illegal production, sale, and use of biological weapons.
"We were following a lead from Warsaw that a former Umbrella Corporation researcher was smuggling in a weapon developed for Andru Urchenko."
"The guerillas wanted a bio-weapon? What exactly was it?" Thom asked.
"It's a very dangerous virus that combines elements of two different variants with some genetically engineered controls. Levi and I tracked down the smuggler after he'd entered Edonia and managed to follow him to the meet, where he was to deliver the weapon. We couldn't stop it, but Levi managed to get this."
She pulled a small metallic case from her backpack and set it on her lap. She opened the latches and lifted the lid carefully, holding it out so Thom could take a look. He shined a red lens flashlight on the contents, revealing three glass vials with what looked like helical tubes inside filled with a viscous fluid.
"So, what exactly does that shit do?" he asked.
She shut the lid and latched it, saying, "We've only had a chance to briefly go over some documents we found in his lab in Warsaw, but from what I've already read it seems to be a variation of a virus that can reanimate dead cells. It's been modified to work with a parasitic organism which bonds with the host, giving another some kind of control over it. There are different strains of the parasite, some dominate the host completely while others allow the host to communicate and control those that were dominated."
"You're going to have to break that down a little bit more for me," Thom said, "You're saying it's some kind of mind control virus?"
"I'll know more when I get a chance to study the documents we took, but, basically, yes. I believe Urchenko intend to use it to turn the population into his undead soldiers."
"Like, zombies?" he said in disbelief.
"Yes," she calmly told him, "There were four trucks at the meet and three of these cases. We only got one of them before we were spotted and had to run. We tried to destroy the others, but I don't think we were successful.
"If it weren't for you and your men, I'd be dead also. I am truly sorry that you lost him," she said, gesturing to Ibrahim.
He nodded solemnly and said, "So am I. We've got another man missing, too."
She lowered her eyes and shook her head, saying, "I don't know what to say, except that this weapon is not just a threat to Edonia. If it spreads like previous versions of the virus, then the entire planet is at stake."
Thom reached into his bag and fished around, finally pulling out the Beretta he had taken from her holster when he pulled her out of the SUV, as well as the magazine that had been in it. He held them out to her.
"I guess you should take this back," he said, "I'd better be able to trust you with that."
She slid the magazine in the grip and racked the slide to chamber a round before she holstered it, saying, "You won't need to worry about me."
He nodded and extended his hand, "Name's Thom."
She stood and shook his massive hand.
"Thank you."
Carter returned with an armload of branches, brush, leaves and hunks of moss as Marcos was finishing with the makeshift grave. It was almost two feet deep and long enough for Ibrahim's body to fit easily. Thom pulled a Mylar emergency blanket out of the survival gear in his bug out bag and lined the hole with it so they could cover the body, keeping it somewhat protected from scavenging wildlife and the elements.
Nick was lying on the crest of the ridgeline, shivering. The sweat he'd worked up during the movement, carrying the stretcher up and down the hill and then climbing right back up it, left him with a wet shirt on a cool autumn night. In spite of lying on the cold earth in the middle of the night with sweat soaked clothes, he continued to pull security diligently for his teammates. He knew that it was vital to their survival at this point to see the enemy before the enemy saw them.
When he caught movement through the trees with his NVGs he prepared his rifle, turning on the PVS 22 and flipping open the lens covers. He turned off his goggles and flipped them up before he took off the helmet and set it next to his bug out bag beside him. He looked through the scope and spotted three men, dressed in various piecemeal military gear, carrying AK-47s. They were moving slowly, trying not to make any noise as they advanced through the darkness of the forest.
Nick keyed his radio and cupped his hand in front of the mic, whispering, "Hit the mute button fellas, we've got company."
Everyone stopped what they were doing and Thom held up his hand to signal to Karina before he got on comms and said, "How far out?"
"Three hundred meters from the base of the hill, moving towards it." Nick replied.
"Are they tracking us?" Thom asked.
Nick watched them for a few more moments before answering, "Doesn't look like it, they don't have any night vision, but they're moving closer to our trail."
The team had been moving quickly through the forest with the added burden of hauling a body. The trail they left would be easy to find, especially on the uphill side of the ridge, where Nick and Thom were constantly slipping on the fallen leaves and loose dirt as they struggled to make the climb with the stretcher. Once they had hidden the body they'd be able to spread out and move with much more care not to leave any trail to follow. For now, they were forced to endure waiting out the threat.
"Keep us posted mate," Thom instructed over the radio, "We're going to try and finish this up quietly."
"You got it," Nick said.
Thom looked at Marcos and Carter and whispered, "Alright boys, let's lay him to rest."
The whispered words weighed heavily on the two men, one his best friend and the other the medic who was supposed to keep them all alive. They both felt a personal responsibility to their fallen brother to see that his body was not dishonored or lost in foreign soil. The three men silently moved to pick him up off of the stretcher, lifting him carefully and gently laying him on the Mylar blanket in the shallow hole. Each of them said a silent farewell to Ibrahim before folding the blanket around him, tucking the edges in underneath him to try to create the best possible seal. They then began scooping the cold earth back into the hole, covering the shiny material of the blanket and burying their friend.
Nick came over the radio, "They've got our trail at the base of the hill. I'm going to take these guys."
"Do it," Thom answered coldly, feeling like there would be some kind of retribution in killing more guerillas, "We're almost done here."
Nick shifted slightly and took aim at the only one of the three men carrying a radio. He was only about a hundred and fifty meters from them, if that, and could hear their voices whispering as they conferred about finding the trail. When the guerilla grabbed the Icom-style radio off of his belt, about to transmit the news, Nick broke his shot, striking the rebel in the center of his chest. He dropped the Icom and fell back at the base of a tree; his body tensed and shook for a second before it went limp as he exhaled his last breath.
The other two scrambled for cover behind nearby trees as Nick racked the bolt action quickly. The guerillas were talking loudly over each other, panicky and uncertain. While Nick didn't know much Romanian, he assumed they were trying to figure out between them what they should do next. They each poked their heads out around the sides of the trees they were using for cover, but Nick waited patiently for a better shot. They had no idea where he was exactly, just that the shot came from over the hill, and Nick knew that if he waited, they would get impatient and do something stupid.
A few moments later the opportunity for another easy shot presented itself when the man to the right of their dead comrade crawled out to reach for the radio, exposing his head and half of his body. Nick calmly fired his second shot and watched it strike the guerilla fighter just behind his jaw, below his ear. He laid out flat, eyes bulging and muscles contracting for a few seconds before he too went limp and lifeless.
Nick pulled the bolt action back, ejecting the spent brass, and left it open. There was one round still in the internal magazine and he began pulling the five rounds in elastic loops on the outside of his butt stock pouch and loading them in the mag. The last round he fed into the chamber, then held down the rounds in the magazine and rode the bolt over top of them, giving him one in the chamber and five in the mag as he locked the action closed by rotating the handle down.
The last guerilla was hyperventilating behind his tree, too terrified to move for fear of getting shot in the night. Nick crept back, just behind the crest of the hill, and moved north alongside it, slowly and silently. After twenty or thirty meters he crawled back up on the ridge. He had a partial view of the man, sitting with his back pressed against the trunk of the tree. He was still out of his mind with fear, trying to remain silent and motionless. Nick lined up his shot and pressed the trigger, satisfied as the round hit him just behind his right eye, in the temple. He slumped over completely still.
"There'll probably be more very soon, they had to have heard the shots," Nick said over the radio, "but we're clear for now."
"Good work," Thom replied, "We're done here, why don't you join us and we'll pick up and keep moving."
"Got it," Nick said.
