“Yes, ma’am,” Decker said.
“Soph?” Olga said as the staff sergeant marched back to the Grace Tan.
“Yeah, Olga?” Sophia said. It would be a nice night if it wasn’t for the smell of iron and shit and the occasional burst of fire in the distance. Okay, the fire wasn’t so bad. She really didn’t want to try to extract the ISS crew with infected swarming. On the other hand, she didn’t want Faith getting shot by her undertrained Marines.
“What the hell is going on?” Olga asked. She’d pulled off her mask as well.
“Thanks for waiting till now to ask,” Sophia said with a sigh. “I appreciate you just going along with the madness. The answer is, I can’t tell you.”
“Oh, come on,” Olga said. “What the hell could be that important?”
“Olga, you’re smart,” Sophia said. “Why in the hell would we be thoroughly clearing an entire island while simultaneously preparing a germ-free transport vehicle? Why did we carry a container that was just as thoroughly decontaminated and has an air lock? And when you figure that out, ask yourself why in the hell we’re keeping the reason secret. And until you can answer that one, don’t talk about it, okay? If by tomorrow at noon there’s no apparent reason for all this… Then if you think you’ve figured it out you’ll also understand why we’re just calling it a training exercise.”
“None of that makes any sense,” Olga said darkly.
“Like I said, you’re smart, you’ll figure it out,” Sophia said. “There is a reason. Now keep an eye out for the returning Marines. We can’t fall back onto the ship till my sister gets here…”
CHAPTER 18
“Do not, say again, do not, contaminate my truck,” Sophia said, standing at the base of the pier with her hand out. “We’re bringing in Zods to clear you off.”
“Do we have something set up to clean us off?” Faith asked, holding her arms out for a hug. “I sort of got covered in blood again.”
“This was not the night to be scrumming, Sis, you know that,” Sophia said, shaking her head. “Stay away from me.”
“Feel the love,” Faith said as the Zodiacs came into the beach. “You getting while the getting’s good?”
“All your people here?” Sophia asked. “Tan, we’ll need wash-down for the Marines. They’ve been scrumming.”
“We found the lost ones courtesy of sub intercept systems,” Faith said. “Who knew they were so accurate?”
“Omaha, radar locked on predicted track…”
Commander Isaac Luallin, skipper of the SSBN USS Tennessee, wasn’t having the best week. Or month. Or for that matter year.
Ballistic nuclear submarines are all about risk aversion. Not for them the chasing other boats, doing hull shots, sneaking into the back yard of other powers. No, SSBNs were all about finding a big, empty, deep patch of water and disappearing. For months. Drive slow, stay deep and pray that you never have to actually do your job.
They had in fact been doing pretty much that since the Plague was announced. Even after the SSNs started “assisting” Wolf Squadron, the SSBNs had pretty much stayed in their patches except for the occasional, necessary, fishing expeditions. At one point they got an alert to stop even that when the Soviet general in charge had gotten frisky and ordered some of his remaining SSNs to hunt U.S. subs. According to the Hole that had come to nothing when the subs mutinied and the general had “retired.” Apparently he’d committed suicide by shooting himself in the back.
They were finally going to get to help out and…now all they could do was radar support. So they’d surfaced and put up the radar mast.
“Roger Tennessee,” the “controller” in Omaha replied. “Incoming ballistic track predicted for five minutes. Stand by…”
Luallin locked the periscope on the predicted track and connected it to the crew monitors. No reason not to. Unless it failed, which would be icing on the damned cake.
“When do we bring it up openly, sir?” Faith asked. She was freshly showered and back in MarPat. By the end of the sweep they were finding zero customers so the plan was for them to land in standard “light fighter” gear, not bunker gear.
“When we have to,” Hamilton said. “Stand by…Roger. So the answer is: Now. Listen up, people!” he bellowed. “Look to the west and up at sixty degrees.” He pointed and raised a pair of binoculars. “Anybody see anything different?”
“I’ve got an inbound ballistic track on projected heading,” the Tennessee’s radar tech said. “Forty-five thousand feet. Seven point five six kilometers per second. Decelerating…”
“There it is,” Commander Luallin breathed, watching the monitors. “Son of a bitch. It’s past the plasma zone.”
“Go baby go,” the chief of boat said.
“I’ve got radar lock by six boats,” the digital compliance technician said. “Track is as predicted to ninety-eight percent.”
“Let’s hope ninety-eight is good enough,” Brice said, grimacing. “At that range, ninety eight is miles. Miles as in in the drink.”
“Is that it?” Faith said, pointing up. “By that red star?”
“That’s Mars,” Sophia said, scanning the sky. “And…yeah. That’s it. Look for the two red stars people. One of them is an inbound space ship!”
“It’s lit up,” Faith said. “Fire?”
“They’re well past the plasma stage,” Colonel Hamilton said. “It’s reflected sunlight. Red because the sun’s about to come up. It will disappear in a minute. That’s when it gets tricky.”
“Okay, now it’s making sense,” Sergeant Smith said.
“They’re trying to land on the island,” Sergeant Hoag said. “Son of a bitch. So why couldn’t they tell us?”
“’Cause if it didn’t work, it’d be another morale blow,” Faith said from behind them. “But that’s why we had to land at night and thoroughly clear the island. And now we’re going to be providing security for an extraction team. Assuming it lands on the island.”
“When will we know, ma’am?” Sergeant Smith asked.
“The subs are surfaced,” Faith said, pointing out into the channel. “They’re following it on radar. Since they could find you to the meter, I figure they can probably find where it landed.”
“Ma’am,” Sergeant Smith said thoughtfully. “If they are coming down by parachute, they’ll need winds aloft.”
“I understand that Mr. Walker figured that out, Sergeant,” Faith said drily. “Believe it or not, some of your superiors do have a clue, Sergeant.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Smitty said. “Understood.”
“Shit, it missed!” Lance Corporal Ferguson snarled as the capsule passed overhead. It was clearly headed for the channel on the far side of the island. A moment later it winked from view as it dropped out of the sunlight.
“Winds,” Sergeant Smith said, scanning to the southeast. “It’s going to drift with these winds…”
“There,” Faith said, spotting it again. “You can see the chutes…”