From the uncertain looks the soldiers passed among themselves, relaxation was going to be hard to come by.
Juarez sat down beside the lieutenant. "You here to deal with that?" he asked, jerking his head toward the camp.
Reese nodded, watching the men around them. A bird trilled a few liquid notes and Dennis waved his arm in a "c'mon in"
gesture.
"That was them?" Juarez asked. "I'm impressed. I thought it really was a cardinal."
"Oh, they're very good," Dennis said.
From all around them figures decked in grass and brush and paint began to stand, or to emerge from the undergrowth, guns at the ready.
"At ease," Reese told them. Guns were lowered to a less threatening position, but their faces remained guarded. "Susie, this is Sergeant Juarez. Sarge, this is my second-in-command."
Juarez looked her over, visibly hesitated for a moment at her extreme youth, then nodded; she did the same.
"Everyone I've been able to identify down there is a creep,"
Juarez said, looking at Reese. "I know that most of them have at the very least been put on report for unnecessary roughness to the civilians. They talked about the kids like they were some kind of vermin. And none of them had very convincing stories about what outfits they were with before they came here—somehow, they were all people who'd been on leave from units that took a nuke in the first day. Funny they're the ones who survived."
The lieutenant shook his head and forced himself to meet the sergeant's eyes. "Funny like a funeral. I doubt it's an accident,"
he said. "Just before I was shipped out, some guys were overheard apparently gloating over the epidemic. There was some speculation that someone was spraying germs onto raw food. Fruits and vegetables."
Juarez just looked at him, for so long that Reese assumed he was waiting for him to go on.
"Apparently they never got around to investigating it," the lieutenant said.
"Apparently," the sergeant agreed, hard-eyed.
"Sir, I hate to break into a reunion, but how are we going to handle this?" Susie's dark eyes were intense and Reese could almost feel her nervous energy flowing like an electrical field around her. This was her first mission under fire and Juarez was a complication she hadn't expected.
"From what I've seen"—he nodded at the sergeant—"and heard, we're unlikely to get any converts out of the military left in camp. My instinct here is to be careful only in regard to civilians and any prisoners they may have."
"Today would seem to be a bad time to strike." Susie glanced at the sergeant. "They're expecting trouble."
"But not from our direction," Juarez pointed out. "And not from armed opponents."
"Has to be today," Reese interjected before his fiery second could respond. "By tonight those people will have been infected, and for all the good we can do 'em we might as well shoot them."
Susie bit her lips. "When do we go, sir?"
"After the trucks are gone," the lieutenant said. No sense in giving the enemy heavy armor. "Say twilight. It will make it harder for us to be seen. Meanwhile, get some rest. Come back…"
He quickly calculated the marching time and then doubled his original estimate of fifteen minutes to explain what he wanted done; these were civilians, or very recent ex-civilians, for the most part.
She nodded and moved off to talk to her people.
"They any good?" Juarez asked quietly.
"We'll know in a few hours," Reese said, getting out his map.
"In any case, they're what we've got. Let's figure out how we're going to do this."
THE CAMP
The women were all terrified, and trying not to show it for the children's sake. Bad enough that for the last few weeks they'd been living a life they were ill prepared for after experiencing the terror that had haunted their entire lives. Now, suddenly, their own armed forces were herding them into prison camps.
Children clung and cried, or moved silently, big-eyed by their mothers' sides into the barracks. The stench was overwhelming and most of the youngsters hung back. But the eyes of the soldiers, just visible behind their gas masks, offered no leniency.
They'd been told to go into the barracks and clean them up. So the women did, dragging their reluctant children with them.
One of the women started to retch upon entering.
"You sick?" a guard barked.
"It's the smell," a woman snapped. She took the sick woman by the arm and pulled her across to a window, which she threw open. Just in time as the woman threw herself over the sill and was sick.
"You'll clean that up," the same soldier said.
A little girl screamed and her mother exclaimed, "Oh, my God! There's a body here!"
The other women clustered around the bed and stared in horror at the emaciated figure in it. The woman moved and they all sprang back, some screaming.
"She won't bother you for long," a guard said. "But we can't bury her just yet." The other guards snickered and the newcomers looked at her in deep dismay.
The women looked at one another and then a new look at the place they were to stay. It was filthy beyond description, with a stench that could only come from terrible sickness and much death.
"You said clean," a woman said, rolling up her sleeves. "Do we have cleaning supplies?"
The guards looked at one another, marking this as one to watch. Then their leader indicated a closet at the end of the long room.
"Okay," the woman said. "Let's get to work, ladies."
* * *
"Now remember, the guards are all bad guys," Reese said.
"But the inmates aren't, and those shacks wouldn't stop a spitball or a stiff breeze, much less a bullet. Now let's go."
He felt himself smiling grimly as they moved in through the thickening twilight.
Somebody designed this camp to keep people from getting out, not in, he thought. And those creeps may be wearing the uniform, but they're prison guards and muscle, not soldiers.
That's why they don't have anyone out here.
He still wished he had more night-vision equipment, or that the enemy had less. That could be arranged…
Sergeant Juarez and two men were walking down the road toward the camp's entrance, which was flanked by two watchtowers. Reese made himself not check his weapon again—that would be fidgeting—and kept still behind the bush that sheltered him. Juarez and his troopers were playing it calmly, walking up with weapons slung; soldiers from the camp—
pseudosoldiers, he reminded himself—came out to meet them.
Far too many of them. I was right: that bunch never went through basic.
The last thing you wanted to do in a suspicious situation was crowd a lot of men right out in the open. An experienced and suspicious NCO would have sent one or two men out to greet the newcomers, keeping the rest back under cover and ready to react if anything went wrong.
Which it was about to do. Through the binoculars Reese could see the leader of the camp guards smiling and nodding as Juarez spoke, the broad gestures of the sergeant's hands… and then one going to the small of his back.
" Go!" Reese barked as the noncom pulled the pistol out and shot the guard in the stomach.
Then Juarez hugged the body to himself and used it as a shield, emptying the magazine into the crowded enemy as the two soldiers following him swung their assault rifles down and opened fire as well.
Reese ran forward, hoping that the dozen others behind him would follow—the rest of Juarez's squad were over on the eastern side of the camp, and it was all survivalists and odds-and-sods here.