Scott Sigler - Contagious

Damn it. She assumed he would stay with her. Well, she’d opened her mouth, and no matter what, she wasn’t letting him go alone.

“I got it,” she said. “After you.”

He walked out of the room, quickly but carefully, letting his pistol lead the way. Margaret stood and followed.

Dew popped up over the trunk of a Ford, fired off a burst, then ducked back down. Bullets peppered the car, hitting metal, glass and rubber. Whiskey Company had cut through most resistance up until now, but Ogden’s men seemed to have concentrated in this area. The fighting grew nastier by the second, racking up casualties—about fifteen so far. With the uncontested and constant air support, that left plenty of fighting strength to push forward. When Ogden’s men did fire, Apache chain-guns quickly ripped into their positions.

“Come on, Perry,” Dew said. “They’re digging in here. We’ve got to be close. Which goddamn direction do we go?”

Perry lay curled up half under the Ford, slush-wet pavement coating him in black winter road grime.

“I’m trying,” he said. “They’re jamming me. It’s getting bad. I think it’s Chelsea, Dew; I think that little bitch is doing it.”

Another burst of plings and cracks as bullets ripped into the Ford.

Dew heard the buzzing roar of a chain gun, then the firecracker-on-steroids blast of thirty-millimeter rounds tearing through brick and wood and glass.

Then nothing, a pause in the action. Dew pulled Perry back up to a sitting position and leaned him against the ruined Ford.

“Look at me, Perry,” Dew said. “We’ve got nine minutes. Come on, kid, focus .”

Perry nodded and closed his eyes. “It’s blurry, Dew. It’s two signals, and… and one of them is moving .”

“Key on the signal that is not moving,” Dew said. “They can’t move the gate.”

Perry nodded. He breathed in deeply through his nose and let it out slowly from his mouth. Eyes still closed, he raised a hand and pointed over the hood of the battered Ford.

He was pointing down Atwater Street, toward downtown. A snowy field stretched along the left side of the road, and past that, the Detroit River. On the right side of the street, he saw a dilapidated three-story brick building surrounded by empty lots. Faded blue paint up on top had a barely legible sign painted on it: GLOBE TRADING COMPANY.

“That way?” Dew said. “Where, behind that building?”

“No, in it. I think.”

“You think or you know ?”

“I think,” Perry said. “I told you, the signal is fading really fast.”

Dew scratched at his face, then looked around. Even in the middle of the firefight, he could see civilians scrambling for cover, cowering in doorways, frightened eyes peeking out from windows.

Apache HEAT rounds would destroy the building, but that didn’t guarantee destruction of the gate. Was there a basement? Had Ogden built protective berms or other support structures to harden the target?

Dew could have one of the F-15s drop a two-thousand-pound bomb, but again he wouldn’t know for sure if that took out the gate. Not to mention inevitable civilian casualties. Those bombs could kill people as far as a hundred yards from impact. Dew’s conservative guess was that a bomb would kill at least fifty people: men, women and children.

He checked his watch—1:08 P.M. Five minutes to go.

Dew pulled out his satphone. “Murray! Come in!”

Murray’s scratchy voice came back immediately. “Murray here, over.”

“We think we found the gate,” Dew said. “Corner of Orleans and Atwater.”

“Understood,” Murray said. “Can we bomb it?”

“Negative. Do not take out the building. There are too many civilians around. I’ll take Whiskey Company in and make sure this is the real deal. We’ll capture it, blow it manually if it gets hot.”

There was a pause.

“Dew, this is President Gutierrez.”

“Uh… hello, sir.”

“It’s admirable that you want to protect civilian life, but I was informed that Dawsey is one-hundred percent sure that gate opens at one-fifteen.”

“That’s correct.”

“I’m ordering the bomb run for one-fifteen,” Gutierrez said. “If you want to stop it, enter the building and capture the gate in the next six minutes.”

Fuck. Dew shoved the satphone into his flak jacket, then thumbed the transmit button on his helmet mike. “Nails, Nails, come in, over.”

Dew heard the response in his helmet’s earphones. “Nails here. What are your orders?”

“Building at the corner of Orleans and Atwater,” Dew said. “That’s the target. Get in there right now, kill everything that moves. We have four minutes to secure that building or they’re going to drop a bomb that will level about five square blocks.”

“Yessir!”

Dew looked at Perry. “Well, kid, you ready?”

“No,” Perry said. “Not even close.”

Dew slapped him on the shoulder. “Tell you what. We go out there, we get this bullshit done, and then tomorrow you and I go fishing. How about that?”

Perry stared at him for a second, then nodded. “Okay.”

Maybe Dew’s daughter wouldn’t go fishing, but Perry was probably the closest thing he’d ever have to a son.

Following the three gunmen turned out to be much easier than Margaret had thought possible, for a very disturbing reason. They had run back to the eight-laned Jefferson Avenue, turned west and started collecting hostages. Herding them along at gunpoint, like cattle. Sixteen so far. Women, children, a few men. Some people had resisted—and had been gunned down instantly. A few had shot back, men in their twenties and thirties, firing handguns and even one shotgun. Gangbangers, maybe. They didn’t stand a chance. The body-armor-clad soldiers worked as a team, moved as a unit and gunned down any resistance. They even collected the resisters’ weapons, leaving nothing behind.

Margaret and Clarence followed at a distance, staying out of sight, feeling completely helpless. Clarence kept cursing in a low growl. He wanted to kill those men. So did Margaret, but Clarence still had only one bullet.

Attacking the gunmen would be suicide, plain and simple. There was nothing he could do but wait for an opportunity. So he followed, and Margaret stayed by his side.

Perry didn’t know jack shit about military tactics, but as a football player he knew great team play when he saw it. Right before Dew called in the attack on the old factory building, Perry could spot maybe four Whiskey Company soldiers. They popped up, shot, dropped back down, moved from one spot of cover to the next. They grabbed wounded comrades and civilians alike, dragging them to safety. Fifteen seconds after Dew’s call to Nails, Perry saw at least two dozen soldiers. They seemed to materialize out of nowhere, charging forward, shooting at the Globe building’s boarded-up windows. The building grew hazy as bullets pounded bricks into little puffy tan clouds. Perry’s helmet radio buzzed with the excited talk of soldiers on the attack.

“Sniper, third floor!”

“Got him!”

“Keep that fire on the second-floor windows. They’re chucking grenades!”

Dew stood, groaning a bit as he did, then scooted around the front of the Ford and ran toward the building.

Perry drew his .45 and followed. This was insanity. But if Dew was going, Perry was going with him.

Dew’s sprint wasn’t much of a sprint at all. Mentally, maybe the guy had shed twenty years, but physically, not so much. Soldiers raced across the empty lot on either side, passing Perry and Dew as if they were standing still. Each step felt like it took five minutes, five minutes during which a bullet might connect at any second.