Pandemic

NINE.

In the crowded trailer he was using as his headquarters, Lt. Colonel Joseph Prince studied the big electronic map and dry swallowed an Advil.

Little blue icons displayed First Battalion’s sprawling deployment around the Greater Boston area. A large blue icon indicated his headquarters at Hanscom Air Force Base in Bedford, home to the 66th Air Base Group before it had been relocated.

Yellow icons showed live fire incidents—units in contact. There were a lot of those, more and more every day. Some never stopped being in contact. As for red icons indicating opposition forces, there were none. The enemy was everywhere. The enemy is us, as Pogo once said. The enemy included his wife and son, infected and running amok until they’d been shot down in the street like dogs.

He knocked back a second Advil and tried not to think about that.

The colonel didn’t need the big board to tell him he was losing a war against his own country. He’d made rank by following orders. He never bitched. He always took the fight to the enemy. “Conventional doctrine, aggressive action, flawless execution” was his motto.

Prince wasn’t very imaginative, but he was reliable, and he usually got results. He was used to having the kind of firepower that could flatten anything that got in his way.

The current conflict defied the imagination. The enemy was American citizens, the mission objectives vague, the rules of engagement contradictory. His lightfighters had taken twenty percent losses in continuous operations, while each afternoon, the colonel met with civilian lawyers to review every after-action report and decision that affected American lives and property. He could just imagine their faces when he told them the order had come down from Regimental HQ to terminate the infected in the quarantine hospitals.

Prince was used to freedom of action with massive amounts of power. Now he felt like a spider caught in its own web.

Video monitors next to the big board rolled horrific images transmitted by aerial drones, blimps and long-range cameras. Exhausted staffers sitting in front of flat screens and stacked radios managed operations and talked to units in the field. Foam cups, water bottles and mission binders cluttered the desktops. Dead cans of Red Bull filled the trash bins. The room smelled like nervous sweat and stale coffee.

CNN was broadcasting video of an office high-rise. A massive fireball bloomed from the side of the tower. Then another. Glass and debris rained onto the streets.

Prince recognized the landscape and its scars: Boston’s Financial District.