Chapter 8

November Fifteenth

Bradley Furner exchanged hand signals with Jack Unger and Gary Revay as they crept up to the chain link fence topped with concertina wire that surrounded the reactor training facility. The irony of the situation made him queasy. All three had been Master Chiefs in the U.S. Navy, serving most of their time in the SEAL program. Afterwards, their careers had pretty much followed the course that Arthur had described. After decades of honorable service, each had been within months of mandatory retirement. Now, their youth miraculously restored, they were looking in at nuclear power plant on U.S. soil, planning to betray all that they had sworn to defend.

He had grown increasingly depressed as the retirement date approached. Unlike many of his friends, he had nothing outside the Navy. No wife. No kids. His only family was a sister in Idaho who he only spoke to on Christmas. Then he had been approached with an ambiguous offer of participation in an individual combat enhancement program. If nothing else, he had been told, it would extend his service by months if not years. He had jumped at the opportunity eagerly.

What a fool he had been. The first inkling he had of the true nature of the program was when he had awoken after being injected multiple times by Nolan's assistant. At first he had been exuberant. Even in the heavy restraints he felt better than he had in decades, and far stronger than he had ever been in his life. Then he had felt the fangs with the tip of his tongue, and the exhilaration faded. Immediately thereafter, a lab assistant had entered the room, and he had first experienced the hunger. A hunger that could not be sated no matter how many rats he drained. Even when he had lived off grubs for more than a month in the jungles of Somalia, he had never known the like.

Since that first day, the hunger had been his constant companion. Until now. His mind tried to shy shamefully away from thoughts concerning the reason for that absence. He had known the kid on whom he had fed, as he knew most of the garrison. A fresh recruit from the inner city of Philadelphia, he had been a good soldier who had been shaping up to be a fine man. Now he was dead.

He still had trouble accepting what it was that he had become, but the truth was undeniable. Like everyone else in the world, he had avidly watched the news from Pittsburgh during the outbreak. Like most people, he had believed the government officials and medical experts who had assured the world that it had only been a very unique disease that had caused all the problems, but now he knew the truth. He no longer had a pulse. His body was always exactly room temperature. He didn't even have to breathe except to talk, although the habit of a lifetime was hard to break. No disease could do that. He found it strange that he had never felt more alive than he did after he was technically dead.

Guiltily he returned his thoughts to his current course of action. He didn't like what he was doing. In fact, he hated it. But what other choice did he have? As a young man, he had recklessly risked his life time and time again, convinced of his own immortality. Then, when he had reached the age when there were definitely more years behind him than there were ahead, thoughts of his own inevitable demise had plagued him with increasing frequency. He didn't want to die. He supposed that no one did, but now, if this Arthur character was telling the truth, he might truly be immortal. How could he give that up?

For weeks now, as the hunger became increasingly difficult to control, he and the others had been grumbling about their ultimate fate. None of them were naive enough to believe that they would ever be allowed complete freedom again. In fact, once they had received their injections, they had not been permitted outside the facility at any time for any reason. The thought that they would be disposed of at the conclusion of the program had been brought up more than once; each of them knew all too well how callous bureaucrats could be when it came to expending the lives of anonymous soldiers. Morale had been low.

Arthur had offered them something that had been severely lacking: hope for the future. Hope that they would again be free. Hope that their lives would have purpose and meaning for all of their existence. Hope that their lives wouldn't be snuffed out in the near future as a matter of bureaucratic convenience. He knew there would be a price, that the good ol' U.S. of A., and the rest of the world, would take one hell of a hit. In the end, though, it would all be for the best. Wouldn't it? Briefly, he imagined what it might be like, living in a world where the guilty were always caught, and the innocent were never falsely imprisoned. A world in which he would always be valued as a keeper of the peace and a bringer of justice. Unless Arthur was bullshitting them. He forced that thought aside: too much depended on the truth of Arthur's words.

Shaking himself from his reverie, Brad joined his partners in devising a plan of attack. Briefly they discussed the degree of lethal force that should be used; the place was, after all, manned by their own countrymen. They unanimously decided that the quick, clean deaths that they could give would be far more merciful than the long, lingering ones that would result from radiation poisoning.

Once they made it inside, the rest wouldn't be difficult. During their long careers, they had performed missions that were far more challenging. Security here was relatively light compared to that of similar facilities. Located at the heart of Fort Dix, it depended significantly upon the protection offered by the large army base. The only real impediment in their way was actually getting inside the perimeter of the fence. They were woefully under equipped for such a mission, lacking even a simple bolt cutter.

Jack studied the fence for another moment, and said, "I wonder ... Cover me."

He waited until the roving patrol had turned around a corner, and, before his partners could protest, he sprinted at full speed toward the barrier. Just short of the fence, he gathered his legs under him and jumped. Brad and Gary looked at each other in silent astonishment when Jack cleared the top with more than a foot to spare.

As Jack knelt with his purloined M16, ready to provide cover fire if necessary, Brad and Gary began their own runs. Brad also cleared the fence easily. Gary wasn't so fortunate. He hit the ground on the opposite side hard and lay groaning in pain. Brad went to his side and winced at the sight of the deep lacerations that the razor wire had inflicted on his abdomen and legs.

"Hang in there, Gary," he whispered as he clasped the man's shoulder supportively.

As Brad and Jack discussed how they were going to evacuate their wounded partner, Gary looked down at his body with confusion. Pushing a finger through one of the rents in his clothing he probed tentatively, and then with more force.

"Uh, guys," he whispered disbelievingly, "I think I'm okay."

The other two looked at him with surprise, before rushing to his side to probe at the previously injured areas themselves. They had been told that they were now able to regenerate quickly, but this was beyond their wildest expectations. Pulling Gary to his feet, they ran at a low crouch toward the entrance.

The men were well practiced in stealth, and were able to get within ten yards of the men standing watch at the facilities entrance without being noticed. In all fairness, though, the guards were scandalously lax, spending more time discussing which port had the best whores than they did scanning their surroundings.

Brad and Gary crept slowly behind them. Drawing combat knives, they lunged forward. With their greatly increased strength, they were easily able to drive the knives into the base of their targets' necks, severing the spinal cord. Death was nearly instantaneous and, more importantly, silent.

Wiping his blade off on his victim's dungarees, Brad looked up at the camera that monitored the area. He had expected an alarm to be raised by now. They had all assumed that they would have to fight their way to the reactor vessel. He wondered why they didn't.

As they penetrated deeper into the building, he got his answer. The man who was supposed to be watching the monitors was asleep at his post. Normally, this would be an Article 15 offense. Tonight it was capital.

The man's dereliction of duty made their task far easier. Time and again, they happened across trainees, instructors and guards, alone or in small groups. All died before the surprise had faded from their faces.

As they approached the reactor itself, they could hear the whirring of the massive seven stage centrifugal pumps and the whine of the steam turbines. The Navy used high pressure water reactors. The highly radioactive water that surrounded the fuel was kept at such extreme pressure that it remained a liquid at temperatures far surpassing those that would cause it to flash to steam under normal conditions. Their plan was to cause the reactor to generate so much heat that even the extreme pressures of the core could no longer hold the water in its fluid state.

Finally, they stood outside the chamber itself. After efficiently dispatching the nuclear electronic technicians who were monitoring the core, they studied the instrument panel. Jack moved forward and made the necessary adjustments. There was a slight hum as electric motors on top of the reactor pressure vessel head pulled the hafnium control rod assemblies from the fuel.

Red lights began to flash and the hum abruptly ceased. They looked at each other in consternation. They hadn't taken into account that this was a training reactor. Safety overrides had been put in place to keep raw trainees from inadvertently causing the disaster that they were trying to create. As one, their eyes turned toward the large hand wheel positioned above the uncooperative electric motors. The Navy never left anything to chance. The wheel allowed the control rods to be moved manually to shut down the core in the event of a catastrophe. Of course, a mechanism that could be used to lower the rods could also be used to raise them. The Navy's attention to detail would ironically be the undoing of this place.

As Jack disabled the electronics that could be used to shut down the reaction, Brad and Gary jumped up onto the vessel head. Even with their greatly increased strength, they had to strain to turn the wheel.

After a few turns, Gary asked, "Think that's enough?"

"Hell if I know," Brad replied. "It's not like it comes with a meltdown timer. Let's give it a few more turns and jam it."

They put action to Brad's words and hopped back down to rejoin Jack. Before they left, they turned their automatic weapons on one of the seven stage pumps so that the power generating portion of the facility would not siphon off any heat from the core. The lights flickered and dimmed as the turbines and the generators they drove failed. The lights then brightened again as a relay switched over to draw power from the civilian grid. They then did the same to the pumps and valves of the emergency cooling system. On the way out, they disabled as many of the massive doors that were designed to help contain the products of any accident as they could.

When they exited the building, the surrounding area was still deserted, but they could hear sirens and see flashing red and blue lights in the distance. The damage they had done must have caused an alarm to go off at the fort's primary security building. Not that it really mattered. For the moment, at least, Fort Dix was primarily an Army Reserve training base, where weekend warriors came to do their two week annual training. For this reason, the base's response team wasn't exactly impressive by their standards.

They jogged effortlessly back to the above ground portion of the laboratory. Most of the others were already gathered outside. A quick head count revealed that there were a total of thirty four, not counting themselves. Through the windows of the mess hall, the team could see that Arthur and Nolan's assistant were doing something with fire hoses. Some quick math revealed that five had not risen. Arthur had warned them that this might happen, but it was still sobering.

A moment later, Arthur came out to join them. Susan crawled behind him on all fours. Brad briefly felt sorry for the woman, but he had heard rumors of what had taken place in the forbidden sections of the facility. If he were Arthur, he would be pissed, too.

Arthur smiled slightly when he saw them, "Excellent. You've returned. I trust that all went well?" When they had nodded in response, Arthur continued, "While you were gone, we clogged all the drains, turned on the sprinklers, and ran fire hoses to the stair wells. By the time anyone thinks to look here, the below ground portions should be submerged."

He then turned his attention to the Commander and XO. "General Huffhamner, Colonel Woodard, could you come here please?"

When the men he addressed, men who had not been present for his speech and whom he had not yet twisted to see things his way, had resentfully approached, Arthur stated, "I am indeed flattered that the military considered me worthy of the attentions of a one star General and full bird Colonel. Tell me, gentlemen, do either of you have the power to authorize a flight from McGuire Air Force Base to Europe, Italy to be precise, or the Middle East, specifically Saudi Arabia or Israel?"

His eyes staring daggers, the General grudgingly replied, "Not to Italy or Israel, but I could put cargo on a plane already scheduled to go to Ramstein Air Base in Germany. I could do the same for a flight to Baghdad."

"Good. Please make the arrangements now. Your office should still be above flood level. Oh, and General? Don't do or say anything that would betray me or draw attention to the cargos."

Arthur turned to address the entire group, "Do any of you have your passports readily available?"

One of the men spoke up, "We're active duty military. We don't generally need passports."

"I realize that," Arthur replied, "but you aren't going to be traveling as military personnel. I repeat, do any of you have passports here?"

As it turned out, seven did. Arthur called them forward and studied each carefully. Three lacked the necessary characteristics for what he had in mind. He dismissed them with orders to locate two crates, each large enough to hold four men. He had the four he found acceptable stand to the side.

He again addressed the entire group, "Each pair of you will be sent to a different city. You are to remain covert at all times. I cannot stress enough how important it is that you not draw attention to yourselves. Once at your assigned city, you are each to make ten fledglings. All that is necessary to do so is to feed a person your blood as you drain him completely.

"You will send the first two pairs that you create to your secondary and tertiary targets. You will give them orders identical to the ones I am giving you now. Once they are established in their target cities, contact me for further targets. The other eight that you create will each make ten fledglings of their own. I leave it to your discretion on whether to have that last group continue the trend. You have more knowledge than I concerning the number of men needed to control a city.