LZR-1143: Redemption by Bryan James Read Free Book Online

The shit had just started to break out, and we were all en route to the airport. Big camps around Kabul had broken down, and the Embassy was closing up. Just a huge shit-storm of people heading to the planes. When we got to the airport, we thought there was a riot. You know, people fighting for tickets, spots on the outbound flights, and all that.”
    He blew a large bubble and slapped the larger man’s knee.
    “Rhodesy here was riding shotgun in one of the Humvees when they figured out it wasn’t a riot.”
    The man grunted once.
    “Was it the virus?”
    “Fuck an A, man! Come in on a flight an hour ago. They put the guy in a cell, but he had bitten a guard and those idiots didn’t know what to do about it. Long story short, the whole damn airport was SNAFU. We didn’t bother with suppression, we just blasted into the military side and loaded up. The Taliban fucks used it as an opportunity to take a shot at us. But the fuckers only succeeded in taking down the fencing between the tarmac and the road, so the deadheads just poured into the operations area. On the plus side, the Taliban didn’t realize what they had on their hands until it was too late—they thought the crowd at the airport was just a pro-Taliban rally. Stupid shits.”
    “Everyone get out?”
    He just looked at me and blew a bubble.
    “Five thousand of us. Ten planes. Country going to shit. What do you think?”
    I stared out the window as the rotor noise changed as we pitched back quickly, and suddenly trees were visible to either side. A plastic rod appeared no more than five meters from the open door, and green grass rose up to meet the belly of the machine. A slight thump announced our landing, and the two Rangers detached their harnesses and disappeared from the cabin, moving to secure the landing zone as one of the pilots turned.
    “ETA on your next ride is about ten minutes, folks. Good luck.”
    I nodded and spoke a brief thank you, following Kate from the cabin and stumbling slightly under the awkward weight of the large pack and the brighter light outside the helicopter. The larger soldier, Rhodes, stood next to the pole that I now recognized as a tee, and the chopper lifted off quickly from the green, buffeting us with strong currents of air and dirt.
    Long grass covered the ground, unkempt and wild, and the trees were shaggy, retaining half of their normal load of foliage in the fall air, but the form of the golf course was clear. Kate followed Clifton as he checked his handheld GPS and nodded away from the small circle of slightly shorter grass.
    “Stow your firearms,” said the large man beside me suddenly, hefting a large weapon with an impressive silencer. “If we see any geeks, I’ll take point. Quieter.”
    Hard to argue with that logic, I thought, and slung my Pathfinder across my chest, pulling the machete instead.
    In front of us, Kate had also pushed her Pathfinder aside in favor of the large blade, and we moved silently through the grass, the Rangers scanning the perimeter professionally.
    As we passed through a small copse of trees, past an overturned golf cart with mildew creeping along its length, and onto another fairway, Clifton’s hand shot up into a fist, and we stopped. He motioned to the ground and we fell flat, the grass barely long enough to hide our profiles.
    Ahead, a group of more than twenty creatures was shuffling past, all of them following the same course, parallel to our own, back the way we had come.
    They had heard the chopper.
    Behind me, I heard the slow, barely perceptible movement of what I knew was Rhodes keeping them in his sights. They moved as quickly as they could, an odd assortment of people—a groundskeeper and a firefighter among them, along with an assortment of suits and blue-collar attire—all fixated on the sound that had so recently dissipated. They slowed abruptly, as if realizing the noise was gone.
    They were only twenty meters away, barely at the edge of the visibility limit. If