the structural integrity of the fences and the armed security measures.
Vlad laughed out loud in the briefing room at that one, drawing an evil glare from the briefer. More of the dead were arriving by the hour, adding their weight to the pressure on the fence line. The pilot understood physics well enough to see where it would end. At first, command had used the small gunships called “Little Birds” to make strafing runs outside the fence, attempting to thin them out. It was highly ineffective, consuming vast quantities of ammunition with few results. And killing them off was apparently no longer an option, because no one was flying gun runs anymore. There weren’t enough bullets on base to control them, and if bombing or napalm was employed, it would only scatter them temporarily but succeed in destroying the fence.
As the Blackhawk thumped overhead and crossed the fence line onto the base, thousands of pairs of milky eyes looked upwards, twice that number of reaching arms and grasping fingers clawing at the air.
Vlad set his bird on painted numbers on the tarmac, shutting it down. He and RJ spent ten minutes making sure all was secured and properly turned off, and then they walked a short distance to a truck which would carry them off the field. A small fuel tanker pulled up next to the Blackhawk. Their day was done.
In the cab of the truck, the driver gave them a nod. “Bravo was yours, right?”
“Da. Why?”
“Groundhog-3 went in to pick them up, but the ground team didn’t show up at their extraction time. They circled for ten minutes until the Bravo team leader finally walked out onto the roof. He was a skinny.”
“A Russian in the O-Club. Who could have imagined.”
“And yet here I am.”
The Navy pilot was twenty-six, ten years younger than Vladimir. His call sign was “Rocker,” he was attached to the USS Ronald Reagan, and the dark circles under his eyes revealed a bone deep exhaustion. Sitting in the darkness in a rumpled flight suit while a country song played in the background, Rocker raised his beer. “To you, my friend.”
Vlad tapped his own beer against the glass and sipped. He was as tired as the other man looked, and should have been in bed hours ago, but there was little point to it. He didn’t sleep well when he did lie down. He had bad dreams.
“What the hell is a Russian doing flying an army Blackhawk out of a navy base?”
Vladimir explained the Russian Federation’s helicopter purchase, and his training assignment. “I was stationed at Hunter Liggett, out on the coast. After the outbreak, the army ordered every available aircraft to different locations.” He shrugged. “I was sent here.”
“What about your buddies?”
There had been five other Russian pilots at the training facility with Vlad, all of them close friends. “I do not know,” he said.
Rocker nodded and stared into his beer. “Hunter Liggett’s gone now,” he said after a while. “It’s bad out there.”
“Yes, I know.”
The fighter pilot stared at him. “No, you don’t. The shit I’ve seen…” He shook his head. “LA is gone. We’re bombing the shit out of it right now. Rockeyes, napalm, whatever we got. The Reagan’s off Catalina right now, every pilot making three, four bombing runs a day. Hammering the shit out of the City of Angels.”
“Why are you not with them?”
“I’m assigned to reconnaissance, but they’ve got us scattered all over. Air groups from different ships are all mixed up, orders changing all the time. No one’s in charge, everyone’s in charge. It’s a clusterfuck.”
Vlad had to agree. The briefings were becoming confusing, and he had begun to think they weren’t actually withholding information so much as they just didn’t know anymore. Gossip ran wild, stories changed, and there was a subtle atmosphere of growing panic among the officers. It made him nervous.
“Why are they bombing Los Angeles?”
Rocker looked up with a puzzled look. “To contain them. The skinnies are moving. Millions of them, moving out of the city, moving north. No one’s told you?”
“Nyet. They are moving together? In a group?”
A nod.
“Why?”
Rocker shrugged. “My CO says it’s like a herd mentality, they just follow each other. From the air it looks like spreading lava, only made out of people, and they don’t stop for anything; tanks, rocket attacks, gas, nothing works. They just keep on rolling.”
He took a long pull of his beer before continuing.
“The bombs and napalm don’t do much. They get blown down, and get