The Shift: Book II of the Wildfire Saga Read online

  "Move,” Yuri said in English. He placed a hand square on Chad's back and pushed. Chad had no recourse but to stumble forward into the hallway, only this time he decided to test his acting. He pretended to trip and fell headlong into Boris. The man jumped back and shoved Chad backwards into the waiting arms of Yuri. Boris yelled at him and gesticulated wildly with one fist as he kept the other resting on the top of his rifle. Abruptly, he turned and marched off down the hall as Yuri propelled Chad forward again.

  Chad continued his shuffling gait and hid the smile that threatened to spread across his face. If he had a mind to, Chad could have gripped the trigger on Boris’s rifle and started shooting. He might not have been able to kill him, but he was sure he would have been able to hit Boris in the foot or leg and then possibly spin around and aim for Yuri. It might not be the best plan, since wherever he was fairly crawled with Russians, but it was nice to know that if he ever got to the point where he didn't care if he lived or died, he could at least take those two with him.

  The door to the exam room opened and the old Russian doctor was in his usual place by the exam table. The man mumbled something and motioned for Chad to take his place by the exam table. Chad figured it had to be something like ‘assume the position, comrade’—as if he had a choice.

  Chad shrugged and shuffled toward the table before he sighed and practically collapsed onto its cold, metal surface. The doctor, with a surprisingly gentle hand, slowly lowered Chad down to the table and clucked his teeth over the fact that his hands were still bound. He growled sharply at the guards and Boris stepped forward with a knife. He flashed it between Chad's hands and his wrists were free.

  The Russian doctor carefully strapped Chad's abused arms to the table with thick, blood-stained leather straps. He mumbled to himself as he pulled up what Chad hoped was a fresh needle and tapped it, ejecting a droplet of fluid from the tip.

  He knew what was coming next. He would feel an intense stinging sensation and then heat would slowly spread from his arm up through his chest. In a matter of moments, his eyelids would begin to get droopy and the room around him would fade.

  As he had done the last few days, Chad determined to stay awake as long as possible and slowly scanned around the room with eyes that appeared to be drunk. As he shifted his vision, the metal cabinets and chairs shifted too fast. The ceiling was covered in cheap acoustic tiles that could be found anywhere. They seemed to spin as if the tiles were part of some synchronized ballet. The fluorescent lighting overhead gave the doctor a ghoulish look and turned his skin a sickly yellow.

  Chad blinked and forced his heavy eyelids to remain open and saw he the doctor leaning over his face. He shined a flashlight in Chad's eyes and then disappeared from view. The world began to fade.

  Chad could hear the doctor setting up his equipment. Wheels squeaked on the linoleum floor and a metal stand appeared next to him. Chad felt no pain, but he could feel the sensation of something being forced under the skin of his right arm. With supreme effort, he slowly rolled his head to the right and was rewarded with the of the needled embedded in his vein. Within moments, the IV tubing went red as his blood began to seep into the collection bag on the floor.

  Chad promised himself that one day soon he was going to find a way to end this misery. A small voice told him that one day soon he was going to realize that he didn't care if he lived or died. Just like before.

  He'd been a pincushion of the US government during the Great Pandemic. At first, he'd willingly obliged the scientists, delivering up as much blood as they could take. After all there was a Cause. The virus that had made him an orphan and destroyed everything and everyone around him was his target. His blood was the weapon.

  The scientists had been eager to figure out a way to use his blood to destroy the influenza virus. He remembered snippets of conversations from a decade ago where the chief scientist—what was his name? Boat-something. He’d discussed future applications of the immune properties of Chad’s blood. It might be used in all sorts of fields of medical research. Limitless possibilities. Very exciting. Perhaps he would be able to provide science with a cure for leukemia, or other cancers. Back then he had only been 16. Scared and alone, he’d agreed to everything.

  Boatner. Boatner, that was the guy’s name, Chad told himself. He smiled drunkenly at the memory of Dr. Boatner as he sat and talked with Chad. The others would hook him up to a machine like the one the Russian used, then leave him in his solitude. Boatner always sat on the edge of the bed and talked with him about whatever Chad had wanted to talk about. It helped pass the time while he was drained of blood and for that, if nothing else, Chad had been grateful.

  But then as the days turned into weeks and the weeks turned into months and the blood continued to flow through the needles that revolved around him in a never-ending procession of pain, he vowed he would never let them do that to him again. When he'd finally been released at the end of The Pandemic and pressed into the service of the CDC upon completion of high school, things began to get better. He’d at least had his freedom and could hide from other people. The Press for one. They had hounded him as some sort of savior of mankind when word leaked that he was The Source.

  But now…

  Chad struggled to keep his thoughts on track. The Russian doctor appeared before him, but it wasn't a stranger he saw, but rather the face of Dr. Boatner. He had been one of the few doctors who had noticed he was a person and not a walking blood bank. The memories were all fuzzy, though, and Chad struggled to hold onto his thoughts.

  Chad blinked slowly again and was surprised when his eyes actually opened. The edges of his vision were starting to go dark. He could see Boris and Yuri standing in the background laughing about something, but he no longer heard them. His consciousness was slipping into the comfortable, drug-induced haze once more. He snuggled into the exam table—the feeling was like someone pulling a warm, fuzzy blanket over his him on a cold winter’s night.

  Chad closed his eyes and with his last conscious thought vowed that he would find a way to escape.

  CHAPTER 4

  Lumford, South Carolina.

  CAPTAIN DEREK ALSTON USED the night vision device attached to his helmet to examine the map in his hands, taken from an airport in Iowa. His Rangers had chased the Russians who’d taken Chad Huntley—the Source—out of Salmon Falls, Idaho with the help of a traitor. He’d chased them halfway across the country.

  He looked up from the map and glanced at the Spanish Moss, hanging down from the limbs of the trees nearby. Long way from Idaho.

  The map, depicting a string of cities across South Carolina circled in red, was printed in Cyrillic, but Alston didn’t care—he could tell what the city names were and that’s all he needed. A Russian assault force had taken control of each of those unfortunate towns. The line of circles terminated on Charleston. Just west of the red circle around Charleston was a small regional airport: Lumford. It was on the other side of the ridge he and his men occupied.

  He checked his watch. 0230 hours. It was go time. The company of Marines−or what was left of them−tasked with assisting his Rangers had spread along the tree-covered slope just north of the civil airport.

  Alston cocked his head and listened. There, just over the background buzz of nocturnal insects, he detected the sound of a helicopter cutting through the night air. It grew louder by the second. It was heading for Lumford.

  The warmth of a typical late-autumn day in South Carolina had not yet taken hold. The air was still cool and crisp. Despite that, Alston could feel sweat trickle down his back. He allowed a cough to escape his lips, thankful for the relief. The sound of the helicopter more than drowned it out.

  Damn. Coughs are getting harder to hide…How much time do I have? He had to find the Source and get that man’s precious blood back to the lab geeks who could use it to find a cure for the weaponized flu. That’s all that mattered now.

  Lights appeared just over the ridge as the helo started its final approach. The
noise was buffered by the pines that crested the ridge, but it was still loud. He let another cough loose and ignored the fear that it brought over his own declining health. He took a sip from his canteen and tried to steady his breathing. He would get treatment when he got back to base. If he got back to base.

  “All units, this is Actual. Move to your assigned positions and wait for my signal."

  Moving as quietly as he could, Alston crawled through dead leaves and fallen pine boughs as he made his way to the very crest of the ridge. On the other side of the long hill, just beyond a shallow depression filled with waist-high grass and weeds, the civil airport that served the Lumford, South Carolina area lay shrouded in darkness.

  He immediately spotted the running lights on a Russian Mi-24 Hind as it idled in the middle of the tarmac. At this distance, the sound waves from the rotors barely penetrated the forest. He cautiously worked his way downslope. Two spot lights lit up from the closest hangar and pointed at the helicopter. He paused behind a pine tree and peered around the trunk.

  Four figures emerged from the Hind. A fifth stumbled out into the light as if shoved. This last figure was almost as tall as the others and appeared to be shackled and hooded. Alston’s heart leapt at the thought that he had just discovered the Source being transferred—then he realized that captive couldn’t be the source: the shoulders were too narrow and they walked more like a woman.

  Why did they take a female captive? He stared at the figure through his binoculars. What did you do to get in this situation, lady? Alston lowered the binos and stowed them in his hip pouch. He pushed the woman from his mind. She wasn’t his problem—he had to find the Source.

  Alston watched the guards as they dragged, shoved, and cajoled their prisoner across the tarmac towards the control tower building. They walked casually behind the hooded woman, rifles at the ready. They looked lazy.

  He gave the signal for his men to halt their progress and waited. A few tense moments later, the helicopter’s door slid shut and it clawed its way into the sky. He waited a good 30 seconds after the helicopter had disappeared and its sound faded into the soft breeze before he gave the signal for his men to renew their forward progress.

  Sifting his way through knee-high grass and a few briar patches, he made his way down the south side of the ridge toward the northern edge of the airport proper. Too slow, Alston. This is taking too long…

  Creeping forward, Alston approached the edge of the airfield just behind a large chain link fence. On his side of the fence, the grass and weeds were knee-high or higher. On the other side, the grass had recently been trimmed. He examined his options while he paused to catch his breath.

  It’s already in my lungs…that little crawl shouldn’t have winded me like this. Gotta go faster or I’ll never make it back to Denver…

  His position was the center of their attack. They would cut a hole through the fence, infiltrate the airfield and make their way across to the large hanger on the far side of the auxiliary runway.

  Alston pointed his night vision gear at the back wall of the closest hangar. ‘Distance to target’ displayed in the bottom right corner of his field of view: 53 yards.

  Assuming there were no guards, it would be an easy stroll in the darkness. However, he was not in the habit of assuming anything in combat was ever easy. He operated under the rule that the enemy was always better equipped and trained then his own men—it kept things in focus.

  But was Huntley here? That was the question that he had pondered on their long trip from Idaho. They had bird-dogged the Russians across the United States from civil airport to municipal landing pads. He and the men under his command had traced the path of destruction the Russians left behind. Everywhere the Russians had stopped to refuel, they had slaughtered anyone unfortunate enough to be found nearby and had taken what supplies they could before setting fire to everything else.

  It had been a long, slow process to track them this far—every time Alston tried to land, he’d found most of the local fuel reserves had already been destroyed or stolen by their Russian prey. As a result, they often had to range far and wide looking for alternate sources of fuel. It had taken them almost a week to traverse in Ospreys what normally would have been a four or five hour flight in a jet.

  Of the five Bell-Boeing V-22 Ospreys in which they had flown out of Salmon Falls, three remained. One had been lost to mechanical malfunctions on the west side of the Appalachian Mountains near Cumberland, Tennessee.

  Looking at the size of the airport before them, Alston regretted the fact that the second Osprey had been shot down by friendly forces as they cruised over one of the towns recently occupied by the Russian soldiers.

  He closed his eyes and tried to block the memory of tracers illuminating the night. One of the Osprey pilots had screamed that his aircraft had taken damage a split-second before the starboard wing had exploded into a ball of fire. A lucky shot had struck the fuel tank and ignited a fire that sent the Osprey and all 19 Marines on board to a fiery death. When Alston’s surviving vehicles had landed, the Rangers and Marines mounted a counterattack to make sure that any survivors were recovered. What they found had been a shock.

  The local American population had risen up against the Russian invaders—much as they had done in Salmon Falls—and had liberated their town. When they saw the Ospreys, the civilians had panicked and believed them to be Russian reinforcements.

  Alston opened his eyes and re-examined the small airport before him. At least the sacrifices the Marines on that Osprey had made had not been in vain. The survivors had been resupplied and everyone had gotten a good night’s sleep and plenty of food on the last leg of their pursuit.

  He glanced to his left and saw a green ghost inch his way through the underbrush. Alston saw just the barest hint of an outline of a second Marine beyond the first. They both vanished again in the darkness as quickly and silently as they had appeared.

  He brought his attention back to the airfield and the task at hand. Before him, the auxiliary runway stretched east to west across the airport property in an unbroken gray line. Beyond that was their target building: the largest hangar at the small airfield.

  Alston had his doubts about whether or not this was even the correct airport. He pulled the Russian map from his thigh pocket and looked at it again in the darkness. Was it a decoy? Perhaps the Russians had circled this one on the map and gone on to another airport. Was this a trap? The fact that the Russians seemed to be trying to escape the notice of the local population made him wary. It was opposite what they’d done in every other town they’d stopped on the way from Idaho.

  Surely they wouldn't have left the map behind on purpose? In their haste to trade for Mr. Huntley with that traitor Apache pilot and escape the chaos that enveloped Salmon Falls, the Russians had left behind many of their supplies, including the map. But was it a plant?

  Alston grimaced and folded the map. He looked back to the airport. He could easily see two other hangars across the main runway that ran north-south. The control tower rose up like a blocky finger, attached to a long rectangular terminal building.

  His eyes were again drawn to the grass on the other side of the fence. It had been cut. Why was that bothering him?

  Someone’s trying to make this place look as normal as possible.

  The grass, the prisoner transfer, and the Hind all confirmed the Russians were on-site. But was the Source?

  Alston shifted position and pushed a strand of thick weeds out of his vision. He was willing to bet before the Russians arrived the grass on the other side of that fence had been just as tall. Judging by the surrounding towns, the airfield had likely been abandoned ten years ago. Until recently, no one had bothered to mind the landscaping.

  No, the Russians were there. They cut the grass to be able to see anyone approach. They had cleared the airfield grounds for a hundred yards in every direction. It must have taken them days.

  That’s no way to set a trap. Alston grinned in the darkness. A
t least not for me.

  "All units Hammer 2, Actual,” he whispered. “Radio check when in position."

  Alston waited for the responses and continued to scan the airport. There were two lights on in the control tower. One at the top, in the air traffic control room and one at the base of the tower. He picked out at least seven lights at random intervals along the length of the terminal building. They were all on the first floor. The windows of the second floor remained completely dark. He reached up and switched his night vision to thermal imaging.

  Three shapes immediately popped out as white spots on the roof of the terminal. Two of them began to move. A slow steady pace along the edge of the roof line. The third sat motionless. Right in the middle.

  "Hammer 2, be advised: three guards on the roof of the terminal,” he whispered.

  "Actual, Hammer 2-2," replied Gunnery Sergeant Thomas Morin, the NCO in charge of the Marine detachment. "I got guards on the east side of the control tower. Three of them, down by the door."

  "Actual, Golf," said Garza’s voice. He'd been assigned to the far southeastern corner of the airport and been working his way toward his Overwatch position for the last two hours. "I'm in position, I got more guards on the far side of the target hangar. My count is five, but they're moving around…it's hard to tell at this distance…"

  "Actual copies all, wait one." As the remaining elements of his strike team checked in, he considered his options. Right now, the entire airport was surrounded by nearly 100 Rangers and Marines. From what he could gather, there were at least 15 guards visible outside the buildings.

  Alston focused on the main runway. He could see the dark outlines of three Russian transport planes—they looked just similar enough to the venerable C-130 Hercules to fool a civilian, but the angle of the tail fin was too steep and the sweep of the wings was all wrong.

  To a man who had spent most of his career jumping out the back of airplanes, it was easy to spot the differences. Those planes were not American. The rear ramps on two of the Antonov An-12s rested open on the ground. The interiors were dark caves. There was no movement and no thermal signatures. The planes had been shut down for some time. The engines were cold.