“Lieutenant, I appreciate your passion. The order stands. Gunnery Sergeant Sands, if the lieutenant does not obey the order, you will remove her from the building by force if necessary.”
“Like hel—!” Faith started to scream when Walker shut off her radio then caught her arm before she could strike back.
“Belay that,” Walker said quietly.
Faith, under the best of circumstances barely capable of discipline, dropped her arm and nodded.
“Yes, sir,” Faith said, looking at him curiously.
“Mr. Under Secretary, are you up on this frequency?”
“Yes,” Galloway replied.
“Ensign, turn your helmet cam on me,” Walker said, just as quietly. His demeanor had changed to anything but laid-back. Despite wearing Army gear, until that moment he’d still been “Mr. Walker,” surprisingly good at all sorts of things, especially combat, but in some fashion easy to overlook. Unless you knew him, you hardly noticed him.
Now, he seemed to fill the corridor. Barely five two, he suddenly seemed taller, broader. Without any discernible change, he was suddenly the center of attention.
He reached into a pouch and started pulling out velcro patches, slapping them rapidly onto spots on his armor and uniform. Pathfinder, Master Parachutist’s Badge, Scuba Badge. Combat Infantry Badge, two stars. Joint Special Operations patch, left shoulder. An odd and very rare patch that looked a bit like the SAS badge, right shoulder.
Last, he pulled out two strips of cloth and slapped one on his helmet and one on the front of his body armor.
Each strip bore three black stars.
“Activating at this time, Mr. Under Secretary,” the lieutenant general said. “Assuming command of this mission.”
“General on deck!” Gunnery Sergeant Sands said.
“As you were,” the general replied, potting an infected offhand, left-handed, while returning the salute. “That means cover us while we work this plan, Gunnery Sergeant.”
“Do I get to know who this general is who just popped up in my command, ma’am?” Steve said. “You said you were aware of him.”
“Lieutenant General Carmen Montana,” General Brice said, speaking rapidly. “Handle: Skaeling, Translation: ‘He who walks as death in the night.’
“Seventeen years enlisted Army Special Operations, mostly Delta, directly promoted captain from sergeant major after Mogadishu. Actions in Mog still classified, awarded Distinguished Service Cross to be considered for upgrade to Medal of Honor after declassification. Additional twenty years officer. Former commands: Delta Force, Fifth Special Forces Group, Joint Anti-Terrorism Task Force, Army War College, and Joint Special Operations Command. Turned down SOCOM and retired. More medals than Audie Murphy. Speaks something like thirty languages fluently. Parachuted solo into Dagestan under cover on Nine-Twelve. He was sixty-three at the time. The rest would take hours. Questions?”
“No, ma’am,” Steve said. “Not even terribly surprised.”
“Bottom line: He outranks everyone but Mr. Galloway. Pre-Plague Joint Chiefs and SecDefs stood up when Night Walker entered the room. I’m not going to argue with him because I know he knows what he’s doing.”
“You’re a vice admiral?” Sophia spluttered. “Sir? I was thinking chief, maybe colonel!”
“Lieutenant general, Ensign,” said “Walker,” reloading. “My last name is actually Montana. My first name is General. Do you understand that, Colonel?”
“Yes, sir,” Hamilton radioed.
“Primary mission abort,” General Montana said. “Do need to extract. No one left behind. Shall make it out. All of us. Time to unpack my adjectives. Lieutenant Smith, call the plan: They know your voice.”
“Yes, sir!” Faith said, changing back to the platoon frequency. “All teams fifth floor and above, move to the roof and extract by helo. All teams below fifth floor, converge on floor three, east. If you get stuck, don’t worry, take open order, lie down and sit tight. We will come for you…”
There wasn’t a thing that Steve could do to support his children in the maelstrom. Which he had become as comfortable as any father was ever going to get about long ago. So he picked up the phone and dialed a number.
“Medical Wing, Nurse Black speaking.”
“Tina, could you please get me Lieutenant Fontana if he’s available?”
“Yes, sir. One moment, please.”
“Fontana.”
“Turns out Walker’s a lieutenant general?”
“Guess he decided to break cover, Captain?”
“Yes. You knew?
“Duh. Everybody in SF knew Night Walker. It’s like asking a Marine ‘have you ever heard of some guy named Chesty Puller?’ Or, you know, Audie Murphy, Alvin York, Patton…Except nobody without a TS was supposed to know his name. It’s why he turned down SOCOM. It was a publicly posted position. That and it was all politics.”
“And you never even thought to mention this? I mean, the first time you met him, you didn’t even blink, Falcon.”
“Of course not. It was Night Walker, Steve. And under cover. Of course I didn’t blow his cover. He’d have killed me. It’s an SF thing. You wouldn’t understand…”
“This is probably a stupid order, COB,” Commander Vancel, skipper of the attack sub Alexandria said. “But I don’t want book on this one. Not this one.”
“The guys already shut it down, sir,” the chief of boat said seriously. “And, with respect, sir, until they get out, or don’t, pretty much everything’s shut down but reactor watch, sir.”
“Approved,” Vancel said. “Please God, they make it out. I don’t know how we’d keep up morale without the Bobsie twins.”
One by one, the helmet cams of the leadership, and then the radios, succumbed to continual scrums with infected. Along the way, however, the viewers got a new appreciation for the word “fury” watching the combination of Night Walker and Shewolf. The helmet cameras of the whole group had to be doused down frequently as the seventy-something general and the “almost fourteen, damnit!” ieutenant cleared corridor after corridor, room after room, again and again.
Night Walker turned out to have a lot of adjectives he hadn’t unpacked. No single human could carry the entire battle, but the phrase “freak of nature” was applicable. The general had immense natural talent and nearly forty years experience of bringing death and destruction to America’s enemies. Single-handedly, the diminutive septuagenarian added at least the weight of another platoon. And if his age showed at all, no one could tell the difference. Even the gunny couldn’t keep up.
If this was to be the last battle of the Night Walker, it was an achievement to equal any in history.
After two hours the last word that higher had was link-up with Sergeant Hocieniec’s Team Six. But Sergeant Weisskopf’s team in Fourth floor South was cut off by then. When Weisskopf went into a scrum and his radio was ripped off his gear, that was the last transmission.
The helos continued to circle. Infected were being drawn by the sound from all over London and St. James Street and Pentonville Road were piling up with bodies. The Seahawk RTBed once for gas and ammo and to drop the Marines it had picked up, then returned. And still there was no sign of the rest of the party. Just more and more infected crowding in. Many of them were stopping in the street to feast but others seemed drawn to the sound of conflict in the building and were wading through the fire from the helos to close with the embattled unit.