Tom’s tension eased by about two per cent.
Then General Black raised his arms out to the side and turned to the people who were waiting in line.
“Listen to me,” he roared. “Everything is okay. In fact, everything’s great. This man here is Captain Joe Ledger. You won’t have heard of him, but he was a very famous soldier. A Special Ops solder. Best of the best. He’s come here to join us. To help us. And he is my friend. Let’s show him how much we appreciate his coming all this way to support our sacred cause.”
The guards began applauding first, and if it was a bit slow and uncertain at first, Ledger could understand. Then the medical staff joined in and then everyone. Only Dr Pisani did not applaud. She stood staring at Ledger with confused eyes and a mouth pulled rigid with fear.
Ike Black strode over and took Ledger’s hand, holding it high as the applause swelled, and then shaking it. He used the handshake to lean in and whisper in Ledger’s ear.
“If you’re fucking with me, Ledger,” he said, “I will have you skinned alive. Don’t think I’m joking. I’ve done it a dozen times before. I’ll cut your balls off and make you eat them.”
His handshake was crushingly hard, but Ledger knew the trick of positioning his hand so the bones braced against the force rather than collapsed within the stricture. He met Black’s eyes and smiled at him.
“You don’t have to worry about me,” he said. “You don’t ever have to worry about me, General.”
—18—
The Hall of the Mountain King
The big treatment hall was cleared and the people with the white wristbands were sent outside to bed down in one of the big tents, with Ike Black telling everyone that the doctor was exhausted. There was no option for discussion or debate as soldiers moved in and cleared the room.
“Let me show you fellows around,” said the general. “I think you’ll appreciate what we’re trying to do here.”
The tour started with introductions to Ike Black’s senior staff, most of who were clearly not military men but instead looked like a roughhouse crew of bikers, backwoods hunters, and general hard-cases. Tough, but not in the same way professional soldiers were. Harder in the wrong places and with noticeable lapses in personal discipline and an understanding of military procedures. For all that they were dangerous, and more so because their actions would be random and unfiltered.
Joe Ledger and Tom Imura shook a lot of hands as the general showed them around the complex.
“This was a hardened facility,” the general explained. “The rock and iron in the mountain kept them from EMP burnout and the blast doors kept the eaters out. Tucson’s a total loss, and when I got here there were half a million of the dead bastards walking around.”
“How’d you handle that?” asked Ledger.
“Controlled burns, mostly. Brush fires, some incendiaries fired from our helicopters.”
“You still have helos?”
“Had,” said the general wistfully as he led them into an adjoining chamber where a hulking Bell UH-1Y Venom ‘Super Huey’ squatted. “One crashed and this one needs parts that we don’t have here, and we don’t have an aviation mechanic to tell our machinist what to make.”
“I might be able to help with this old girl,” said Ledger. “I’ve tinkered a bit.”
Black gave him a startled look. “Really?”
“Sure,” said the soldier, patting the gray skin of the helicopter. “Motors, rotors, and avionics. When you spent as much time in the field as I have you need to know how to fix your ride. Couldn’t Uber my way out of the kinds of places they sent me. I can fix a boat, too.”
“No boats out here,” said Black, “but I’ll file it away for when we expand.”
“What about ground transport. Anything need work there?”
“We’re doing better with vehicles. We have five Humvee light armored vehicles, couple of utility cargo trucks. Six noncombat vehicles. All in pretty good shape.”
“That’s not a big fleet for an army. You got how many guys here? Forty?”
“Fifty-one,” said Black. “We’ll make do. If we can’t drive, we’ll use horses. But one of my scouts found a place a few hundred klicks from here that has a crap-ton of three and four-wheel ATVs. Two-stroke engines, and we took in a guy today who fixes that kind of stuff. He’s sure as shit going to earn his room and board.”
The tour moved on, with Black becoming expansive and Ledger encouraging him to brag. Tom Imura drifted along behind like a silent ghost, and behind him were two armed guards. Another pair of guards walked point for their small party. Black was being welcoming, but not stupid.
They passed Dr Pisani’s lab, and although there was a guard the lab was empty and dark. Ledger paused outside to peer through the dusty glass. The general walked on a pace, then stopped and joined him.
“Does she know?” asked Ledger.
“Allie? Fuck no,” said Black, then he thought about it and amended that. “I don’t really know. She’s damaged goods, as you probably saw.”
“That a recent thing or…?”
“Nah, she was half out of her mind when I found her. She was here in the base with six pencil necks, four soldiers and a lot of dead people. They were in here for a couple of years. Teams would go out looking for survivors or trying to make contact with other groups, but none of them ever came back, and when I rolled up the last ones here had pretty much lost their shit. The soldiers threw in with me right off. I wasn’t regular army, but like you said, what does that matter.”
“Word,” agreed Ledger, nodding.
“The lab crew had been working on a cure, and Allie Pisani swore she had cracked the damn thing, but…”
“No?”
“No. It can’t be cracked. There was this other doctor, Monica McReady, who was a big shot in bioweapons from out at a station like this in Death Valley, and for a while they were feeding intel to Allie, but then they went dark. And it happened at just the wrong time, right when Allie thought she was onto something, but she needed some vital info from McReady. Couldn’t go in the right direction without it, and bam. Done. Nothing. I think that’s when Allie Pisani lost it. I think she saw it as some kind of slap in the face of hope and optimism, or maybe she thought that it was proof God was throwing in the towel on this whole shit show. Not sure, and don’t really care. I mean, sure, a cure would have been dope, but we never got it and won’t get it, so we make do. No use crying over spilled milk, am I right?”
“Right as rain.”
Black smiled broadly and nodded approvingly at Ledger. “God, it’s nice to have a conversation with someone who gets me, you know? Someone who’s both been there and done that and doesn’t have his head all the way up his ass.”
“Believe me, General, I’m enjoying this conversation, too.”
“Fuck that ‘general’ stuff unless we’re around the tourists. It’s Ike. Ike and Joe, okay?”
He stuck out his hand again and they shook, both of them grinning at each other.
They wandered outside into the camp. Ledger caught Tom’s eye and saw the younger man’s confusion. He gave him a wink and allowed him to interpret it any way he wanted.
“So how’s this set-up work, Ike?” asked Ledger. “I have a line on the white wristbands, and I’m pretty sure I dig what you have in mind for the reds. Dead wood, am I right?”
Ike Black paused for a moment, his eyes searching Ledger’s face. “You disapprove?”
“Me? Fuck no. Planet Earth’s a lifeboat, brother. We can’t waste food on anyone who isn’t going to make it anyway. And we can’t waste food on anyone who’s not going to help us row to shore. Far as I see it sentimentality is a sucker’s game.”