two Ospreys lifted off and raced away to the north.
“Not napalm, but we’ve got a plan.” Zemeck said.
After almost a minute Pointere turned to him, “Is this one of those jokes about how to keep an asshole in suspense?”
“Sorry, sir. We’re going to spray them down with fuel oil and set the fuckers on fire. There’s a big agricultural site a few miles to the north and one of our pilots swears he saw a couple of crop dusters sitting there when we flew in.”
“We’re going to crop dust the infected?” Pointere smiled.
“Pretty much,” Zemeck smiled back. “Load up with fuel oil from something called a cracking tower, don’t ask me what the hell that is, then soak these bastards down and toss a match.”
“Is that a good idea? That much fire this close to a refinery?” Pointere asked, turning back to look at the approaching herd through his binoculars.
“It’s better than being the appetizer to keep them excited about getting to Oklahoma City. Sir.”
Pointere nodded but didn’t say anything else on the subject. “We’ve got another problem, Master Gunny.”
“Sir?”
Pointere filled him in on his conversation with Admiral Packard.
“Your thoughts, Matt?” He asked when he finished speaking.
Zemeck was quiet for a minute, processing what he’d just heard. He’d been with Pointere for a long time, and knew he could speak freely in this situation.
“I think we’ve got one big fucking mess that’s bad enough to deal with without a traitor trying to hand what’s left over to the Russians. I haven’t spent over twenty years of my life and had my blood spilled on three continents just so some goddamn bitch can roll over and spread her legs for the enemy. Sir.”
“Well put, Master Gunny.” Pointere said. “Here’s what else you need to know. The Admiral has dispatched a couple of SEAL teams to Alaska to arrest President Clark. If we’re in, we’re in all the way.”
“Why don’t we just ignore her?” Zemeck asked.
“We could, but there’s officers that are following her orders. We’ve got to take her out of the picture and try to get them back in line.” Pointere said, then continued to fill in Zemeck on the situation at Tinker.
“What’s funny, Master Gunny?” He asked when Zemeck started grinning.
“The thought of them thinking they’re going to arrest and hold John Chase.” He answered. “He is the most god awful terrifying son of a bitch in battle I’ve ever seen. And with a few hundred Rangers right there in the middle of the base? They don’t know the can of worms they’ve opened.” Zemeck answered, then they both looked up when first one, then a second bi-plane roared overhead.
“Guess they got the crop dusters flying.” Pointere said drily.
“Looks that way. If you’ll excuse me sir, I want to be on hand while they’re loading up.”
Pointere nodded and Zemeck trotted away in the direction the planes had flown. Looking through his binoculars Pointere could clearly see the leading edge of infected. It was all females and they were now less than five minutes away, charging as fast as they could over the broken corpses left behind by the Warthogs.
An Osprey went into a hover between the barricades and infected, minigun sweeping across the ranks of females with devastating results. But it was only a delaying action. They had nowhere near enough ammunition to stop the herd. Tens of thousands had already been killed, but millions still pressed forward from the rear. Pointere took a moment to say a silent prayer that Zemeck’s idea with the crop dusters would work. They were out of rabbits.
It was close to ten minutes later when the first bi-plane roared into the sky. Its tanks that normally held fertilizer or pesticides were full to the top with partially refined fuel oil. Marine Captain David Williams was at the controls, not at all bothered by the thought of flying a gigantic fuel bomb. He gained altitude and turned toward the herd.
Lining up with the long axis of the mass of infected he swooped down over the refinery and as he approached the leading edge, pulled a lever in the cockpit that activated a high pressure pump driven by a wind turbine. The pump forced the fuel oil through nozzles designed to break liquids up into billions of tiny droplets.
The crop duster’s spray nozzles are mounted along the trailing edge of both wings, and as the plane flew less than fifty feet above the heads of the infected it left behind a dense fog of highly