The White Death (14 page)

Chapter 26

Beijing was eerily silent. Thick smog lay low on the roads, the city’s population only venturing out during the daytime. Still, police cars and jeeps roamed through the empty streets and motorways now, in specially designed units protecting them from such an intoxicating atmosphere.

For Rodgers, he was glad of it. The fewer people around, the better. Scuttling from street to street, he was careful to be discreet, hiding in the cover of darkness. Seeing the imposing American Embassy compound, Rodgers was thrilled to spot the Stars and Stripes flying overhead. Calling on the last of his reserves, he ran toward its tall, thick gates, seeking refuge.

“Identification?” said Niko Haynes, an American Embassy guard. His voice had an electronic hint to it, with the small breathing mask he wore over his mouth.

“Captain Rodgers. Service number 190692, United States Army.” Rodgers handed over some ID documentation to the inquisitive embassy guard, who began running his details through the system.

“Still scanning,” said Haynes.

“Can you hurry it along?” said Rodgers, growing impatient. The trees began to shake, followed by a gust of dirt that hit him up the face. Two squadrons of Chinese military helicopters flew past, heading toward the center of Beijing.

“We’re in complete lockdown, sir,” said Haynes.

Rodgers knew he was nervous and tried to have a little patience for the younger private. He was just relieved to have escaped capture. His Chinese captors hadn’t even tried to stop him escaping, too busy trying to resuscitate the woman in white.

“Private…” he said, biting his lip. The darkness in every corner of the street frightened him. He had never felt so uneasy. More helicopters flew past overhead, a dozen at least, their searchlights blinding. He needed into the embassy.

“We have you down as killed in action … in Korea?” Haynes rechecked the data just to be sure. It had been a long day.

“Trust me, Private, I thought I was a goner as well.” After a few nervous moments, the gates opened marginally, and Rodgers slid in. More ambulances and police cars now headed towards the center of the city.

“Trouble?” asked Rodgers. It looked like the Chinese government was preparing to evacuate the capital.

“You have no idea,” replied the young Haynes, turning white. He got Rodgers up to speed on the Korean bombings and panic spreading throughout Asia. “Every country is sealing up.”

“Closing their borders, frightened,” said Rodgers. It was to be expected.

“Yeah,” said Haynes. “India and Russia might invade China if anything happens.”

“But the bombings have been done?” said Rodgers, confused. They entered the main hallway of the embassy, with stunning glass walls and roof.

“China’s panicking, sir. We keep getting reports of infection nearly happening. Remember, China is big.”

“We can’t bomb all of China,” said Rodgers. They got into the elevator.

“Nuke them?” said Haynes, and he wasn’t joking.

“Be serious,” said Rodgers.

“What else could we do, sir?”

“Not nuke them anyway. That just isn’t a helpful statement.”

“Sorry. Here we go, level five,” said Haynes.

“I need to see the ambassador immediately,” said Rodgers. “I thought that was where we were going.”

“You just can’t see the ambassador,” said Haynes. “That’s not the way it works.”

“Private, I’ve just come from Korea and have vital information I must tell the ambassador right away.” Rodgers stood his ground, refusing to exit the elevator.

Haynes stared at him for a moment. “Fine.” They headed up to level twelve.

“Everyone on patrol tonight?” asked Rodgers. He could see the perimeter wall from the glass elevator. There were dozens of guards, all heavily armed.

“Until a few hours ago, this was considered a low-risk embassy,” said Haynes. “Then Special Forces began to arrive.”

“That’s when you know shit’s hit the fan,” said Rodgers. “I remember reading about the construction of this embassy. Five-meter-high concrete walls, ten-centimeter-thick bomb-proof glass, emergency bunkers, and state of the art security systems.”

“We are a fortress,” said Haynes. “But so was North Korea, and look how they were overrun.”

“True,” said Rodgers. He was trying to talk himself into feeling safe, and the young private had just dashed that hope.

“I should warn you, Captain. Ambassador Kilroy is quite abrasive under normal circumstances,” said Haynes. He pressed his thumb into a fingerprint reader, and heavy double glass doors opened up, revealing an enormous secretarial office.

“Got ya,” replied Rodgers. “Good evening,” he said to the woman at the desk. “I need to see the ambassador.”

“Name?” asked the completely uninterested secretary. She reminded Rodgers of an old, grumpy headmistress.

“Captain Rodgers. I need to speak to him urgently.”

“Same as everybody else,” she replied, still staring at her computer screen. “Take a seat.” Her monotone, unhelpful voice grated on him.

“I’ve just come from Korea,” shouted Rodgers, just as the ambassador came out of his office. The four security officers at each corner of the room charged forward with their guns raised, shouting furiously for Rodgers to get on his knees. The ambassador took his blue handkerchief out and covered his mouth.

“I’m not sick,” said Rodgers, shouting back. The secretaries were ordered to leave, as was the ambassador, but he refused.

“Stay down,” said the security officers.

“Ambassador,” said Rodgers, turning his head to look up at the suited older gentleman.

“Lower your weapons,” ordered Ambassador Kilroy, resplendent in a three-piece tailored suit.

“But sir?”

“Do as I say,” he repeated. “If he was infected, we’d all be by now. Put your weapons down.”

The elite security team begrudgingly lowered their lethal weapons, returning to corner patrol positions.

“Thanks,” said Rodgers, getting back on his feet. “Ambassador.”

“What news have you got?” asked Kilroy, forgoing the formalities.

“What’s our status?” asked Rodgers. He gripped his shoulder in pain.

“I’ve been coordinating a diplomatic frenzy of activity in the past twenty-four hours,” said Kilroy in an eloquent, upper-class tone. “The Chinese government is in meltdown, and our own is just keeping it together. Evacuation plans stand ready to get us out at the first sign of trouble.”

“Well, I have trouble,” said Rodgers. “Can we go into your office?”

“My office,” agreed Kilroy before turning to the guards. “No one leaves this building. Understood?”

Rodgers could feel the hot stare from the security guards as they walked through the double-glass doors.

“Coffee?” asked Kilroy, pouring two large mugs of the lifesaving substance. Rodgers felt relief wash over him as he sat down in a comfortable chair for the first time since this all started.

“What have you got for me?” asked Kilroy. Slow, eloquent music played in the background. Rodgers found it quite posh. Nothing he recognized.

Rodgers provided his briefing to the ambassador, still in disbelief he had survived. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, sir, but it was like something out of a horror movie. Thousands of people running everywhere, mindless, like animals. You could have 500 chasing one person and always catching them. The cities were beginning to crumble, and then the bombs came … our bombs.”

“Hell on earth then.”

“Yes. What kind of virus is this?”

“We still don’t know specifics yet, Captain,” said Kilroy. “But if it ever got into China, we’d lose control. It could take a virus like this less than twenty-four hours to infect seventy percent of the planet’s population, and that’s being conservative.”

“Fucking hell,” said Rodgers.

“If the Chinese have brought an infected human into China, and they lose control, then…”

Rodgers sat and listened to the ambassador list point after point of horrible consequences that the world would endure if China became infected. About to agree, he noticed the desk lamp starting to shake. It was only slight, but he still noticed it. A piercing flash of orange fire lit up the night sky in a distant part of the city, grabbing their attention, and they raced to the window.

“Did we imagine that?” questioned Kilroy. “My lack of sleep is approaching dangerous levels.”

“You wish, sir,” said Rodgers gravely. He stepped back from the window as a jet of fire in the same location shot into the sky. Clearly something very bad had happened.

“Ambassador, where is that?”

“That, Captain,” said Kilroy with a deep sigh, “is in the general area where the Ministry of State Security operates.”

“Chinese Secret Services.”

“Yes.” The telephone started ringing, and the unique tone it was using told Kilroy the White House was on the line.

“Patching you through to the president,” said a White House operator.

“Ambassador.”

“Mr. President.”

“I want you to go and speak to the Chinese premier yourself,” ordered Thomas. “We’re having trouble over here getting through to anyone. The good news is our bombing runs—and the Chinese army finally kicking into gear—have kept the virus contained within the Korean peninsula. We might just, with prayer, contain this.”

“Mr. President, I have a Captain Rodgers with me, who fought in Korea less than twenty-four hours ago. He claims Chinese Secret Services took an infected Korean and brought her back to Beijing for study.”

“What?”

Kilroy held the receiver away from his ear, hearing the president shout orders.

“Ambassador,” interrupted Rodgers. He pointed at the window again. Emergency vehicles, with their startling blue flashing lights and warning sirens, raced toward the scene.

“They’re trying to contain whatever is happening,” said Kilroy.

Fighter jets, helicopters, and armored police units all scrambled now.

Kilroy lifted the receiver again.

“Mr. President,” he began, “we are seeing explosions in random parts of the city, particularly in the government district where that infected patient was being taken. Chinese emergency services and the army are on the scene.”

“Ambassador, your formal recommendation?” said Thomas.

“As your ambassador, I am formally requesting this embassy be evacuated and classify China as an infected country. Please, Mr. President.”

Rodgers watched as the upper echelons of American political power faced a crisis unprecedented in the 250-year history of the country.

“I’ll authorize evacuation immediately,” said Thomas. “Ambassador, hold tight. Helicopters are on their way with full dispatch.”

“Thank you, Mr. President.” Kilroy turned to look at Rodgers, and the captain could see some fear in the ambassador’s wise eyes.

They watched out the window as people took to the streets, running. For Rodgers, it looked all too familiar. “It’s here. The virus. It’s here … in Beijing.”

“Oh goodness, are they infected?” asked Kilroy. He pointed toward the thousands who were descending out of the city and heading up every road, including their own.

“Of course they’re infected!” said Rodgers. “Look at the way they’re running, like a herd of wild animals.”

“Our walls will hold.”

“Ambassador, now the walls will just keep us in,” said Rodgers, realizing he had no firearm. “They won’t keep them out.”

Rodgers looked at Kilroy. He was an ambassador, not a soldier, and the strain was evident. The perimeter wall guards opened fire, their deadly machine guns sparing no one, infected or otherwise. Anything that came into their line of fire was not only killed but obliterated.

“They’re dropping like flies!” said Kilroy. Body after body fell down, wriggling on the ground, but the hordes kept coming.

“We need those choppers,” said Rodgers. “We’re going to lose this very soon.”

“The walls are holding,” said Kilroy. “The guards are firing. Have a little more faith, Captain.”

Rodgers let the ambassador ramble on about American superiority. He knew otherwise. This was a war of numbers, and they were outnumbered.

“You need to start getting people up here from the lower floors,” said Rodgers. “Before they spill over the walls.”

“That won’t happen—they’re being picked off like flies.” Beads of sweat trickled down Kilroy’s brow. “Everyone is safe in the bunker.”

“Dammit, Ambassador, they’ll have to cross the courtyard to get up here. Evacuate them all now.” Rodgers’ eyes couldn’t focus on one part of the perimeter wall, with so much happening all around them. They were completely surrounded now.

Ten minutes passed, the piles of corpses building up outside.

“Look,” said Kilroy. “We might just be in luck after all.”

Four faint white lights in the distant dark sky were getting bigger and brighter. The choppers had arrived.

“The bunker!” shouted Rodgers.

“Of course,” said Kilroy, snapping back to attention.

Rodgers watched as he tried, in vain, to contact the bunker. With so much commotion going on above and no doubt below in the bunker, they simply might not have heard the telephone ringing.

“Here, keep trying,” said Kilroy, handing him the phone.

Rodgers just shook his head and hung up the phone. Calling was clearly a lost cause. “Head to the roof. I’m going to the bunker before we run out of time.”

“I’m going with you,” insisted Kilroy. “That’s my people down there.”

“You need to get to the helipad,” said Rodgers. “If you don’t, the choppers might take off. Get up there, and tell them to wait. Ambassador, that is an order.” He wasn’t sure if he had the authority to order the ambassador around, but this was a military situation and needed a military response. For the most part, ambassadors were not commandos.

The office shook as one of the Chinook helicopters landed on the rooftop of the tall central embassy building.

“Look,” gasped Kilroy.

“Oh no,” said Rodgers, leaning against the glass. The infected had clambered and climbed on top of each other and corpses to spill over the walls and into the main compound. Brave embassy guards trained their machine guns and hand pistols inwards now, but it was no use. Hundreds were inside within seconds.

“We need to get them out of there,” said Kilroy.

“Stop,” said Rodgers, grabbing the ambassador’s arm. “No point playing a hero, sir.”

“They’re my men!”

“Look at your men,” shouted Rodgers. He pointed down. Embassy security staff stationed throughout the grounds unleashed their automatic machine guns to kill, but it was no use. They were overrun instantly. Not one patch of green grass could be seen, just an ocean of savages and blood.

“Argh,” growled Kilroy, showing real fury.

“Ambassador, we must go now,” said the lead Special Forces commando entering his office. They were all in combat gear and, more importantly, biomedical masks.

“It’s only us two now.” He was very pale and sweaty, thinking of the good men and women down there that were suffering the most harrowing of deaths.

“Understood—now we need to go,” shouted the commando, and they raced up to the rooftop. The wind was cold, and the rain came down hard. As Rodgers dived into the helicopter, Kilroy took a moment to look around the city, seeing thousands roaming the streets. It was like a warzone. A commando forcibly pushed him into the helicopter. Tanks headed across the motorways, toward the government district in a futile attempt to save it.

“What’s our destination?” asked Rodgers. He could feel the helicopter launch into the air, with the Chinese capital under siege from its own citizens. Dozens of helicopters and planes filled the sky as those fortunate enough to escape did so.

“You will be brought to an isolation unit on the Japanese mainland.”

Kilroy expected as much and didn’t say anything. Rodgers knew he was in shock and buckled them both in as the pilot engaged in some harsh flying. He didn’t feel infected, and with what happened in Beijing occurring so quickly, he suspected he had lived to fight another day. The helicopter squadron increased speed, and they would soon be over the dark deep ocean.