Wade paused again, lost in the memory. “He was like that. He gave the orders, but we always came first. He has a sister and a nephew here in Boston. He wanted to protect them because they were the only family in the world he had left. He could have walked off the job, but he stayed. He put us first. He put the Army first. And now he’s dead. He died in a fucking hospital we had no business being in. Now his family is stuck in this city. I tell you, if I get out of this, I’m going to pay him back. I’ll go Elvis. I’m going to find them and protect them.”
Rawlings squeezed his hand. “I understand.”
“You do?”
“Yeah. But don’t do it.”
“No?”
“We need you, Wade. I need you. Come here.” She touched his head and guided it to her shoulder. She stroked his hair.
“I’m so fucking tired,” he said. His mind began to slip away.
“Sorry to interrupt, lovebirds.”
Gray grinned down at them, still wearing his NVGs.
“Wade, you take first watch.”
“Go to hell, Gray,” Wade told him.
He closed his eyes and fell asleep in seconds.
THIRTY-FOUR.
Hanscom Air Force Base. Oh-dawn-hundred. Already hot and humid. The day was going to be a scorcher. First Battalion kicked off their fartsacks and got to their feet.
Lt. Colonel Lee searched for the big sergeant the men called John Wayne.
Sergeant Andy Muldoon, First Platoon, Delta Company. His squad was a rough bunch of bad apples. He had a reputation of taking misfits and turning them into hardened killers. He’d served seven tours on and off in Afghanistan and had been decorated three times. The Taliban knew his name, and they’d been afraid of him. The war had turned him into the type of man who knew he could never go home. He was on American soil again, but home was gone.
He and Lee had history in Afghanistan. They held no special love for each other. But Lee needed his help.
Lee found the sergeant sitting on a crate with his back against a palette of bottled water, whittling a piece of wood into what looked like a chess piece. Lee once again found himself impressed with the man’s colossal size; he was a virtual giant. His squad loitered around him with their shirts off, trading desserts from MRE pouches, lifting weights and sharpening their big knives. A boom box pounded out Iron Maiden’s “Run to the Hills.”
“Sergeant Muldoon, a word.”
The big sergeant squinted up at him. “Captain Lee. Or is it Colonel Lee now?”
Lee crouched next to him. “Your men are fit? Ready to move?”
Muldoon grinned. “Always. You tracked me down just to check up on me?”
“They don’t look like they’re in a state of readiness.”
“They’re ready.”
“There’s a mission.”
“There always is, Colonel. The second I laid eyes on you, I knew you needed my help.”
“Believe me,” Lee said, “I don’t like it any more than you do.”
“Then it must be a real choice mission, one you wouldn’t do yourself.”
“I’d do it if ordered, and you wouldn’t see me bitch.”
“You really think you’re better than me, don’t you? Now that you’re in command, you need somebody to do your dirty work for you, so you don’t get dirty yourself.”
Lee sighed. It was like Afghanistan all over again. The mission that went wrong in every way possible. The kid. The long hours spent under the hammer. What happened between them there had turned into a never-ending pissing match that had no respect for decorum or rank. But Muldoon was the best man for the job he had in mind, and as always, the mission came first.
“No, Sergeant. We’re all just different tools for the job. And when did you start caring what I think of you? You might be surprised to know I came here for your skills, not your morality.” He paused then added, “And definitely not for your personality, in case you were wondering.”
“All right, Colonel. Fair enough. Give it to me. Straight, if you don’t mind.”
Lee took a deep breath. “Major General Brock knows we’ve pulled out of the city. He says we work for him now. And he’s pissed about us blowing up the hospitals. Real pissed. He wants us to fall in line, go back to our original positions, and hold whatever ground we can.”
“Yeah, well, he’s nuts. So?”
“So he said he’ll prevent us from leaving Massachusetts by whatever means necessary.”
“Which means what, exactly? Talk is cheap.”
“Our drones identified two companies of infantry moving west out of Newton along Route 90.”
Muldoon grunted. “That’s only like ten, twelve clicks from here.”
“Most are on foot. Fuel must be a problem for them. But they have some vehicles. Humvees. A few five-tons.”
“Armor?”
“Negative.”
The sergeant snorted. “Doesn’t sound like a fair fight to me. Let them come.”
“It’s an opening move. Brock wouldn’t have sent them if he weren’t committed. More are probably on the way. He’s got four thousand men in the Greater Boston area. Armor, airpower, arty. We can’t watch them all. In any case, it’s a fight we don’t want even if we can win it.”
“You know, there’s another way out of this.”
“What’s that?”
Muldoon grinned. “We hand you over and join the Guard.”
Lee stared the man in the eye. “Is that what you want to do?”
“Nope. Just throwing it out there. Because it sounds like what you want is for me and my boys to go down that road and risk our lives slowing them down.” He spit a stream of tobacco juice onto the ground. “Fighting our own guys.”
“Like I said, I’m hoping there won’t be any fighting.”
“You want the road blocked.”
“That’s right.”
“It’s six lanes of highway.”
“I’m sending the engineers with you. They’ll handle the demolitions.”
“You’ll be blocking the route to Drum,” Muldoon noted, “if we’re going that way.”
“We’re not,” Lee told him. “Change of plans. We’ll be going west along other routes. Try to bypass some of the major cities. Fewer people, fewer problems. No National Guard.”
“Smaller roads. They’ll be blocked in places. Slow going.”
“The alternative is a pitched battle with Brock.”
“Sold. So let’s leave then.”
“We’re not ready. We’ve got stragglers coming in, and we’re still packing equipment. We can’t leave anything for the crazies. If they hoof it, the Guard may get here sooner than we’re ready to egress. We need time.”
“And you want me to buy it for you.”
“That’s right.”
“It’s doable.”
“There’s more. The drones are picking up big movement among the infected. A lot of them are coming this way. So you might have company out there.”
Lee didn’t tell him about Radio Scream. Radio Scream, the voice on the FM dial rasped, where we pay to play. An infected engineer had figured out a way to take back control of the broadcast from Mount Weather’s override. The infected DJ preached his sadist gospel between “songs” that consisted of grating laughter and the screams of tortured innocents.
Last night, the DJ told his listeners that Tenth Mountain was leaving the playpen without permission and that they should go and say bon voyage to the brave boys in uniform and personally thank them for their service to this great nation. He kept at it all night. By morning, the westward migration out of the burning Boston core began to shift. Toward Hanscom.