Operation Wild Tarpan Read Free Page A

figured out there wasn’t anything there .
    It took time for the convoy captain to get back to his Bravo and start talking on the radio. He yelled bullshit into his radio, which seemed to Miller like it was a lot more important to the rest of his command squad than it actually served. It was minutes before the captain could sheepishly extricate himself and wander back as if organizing his forces was some dumb thing only a social pariah would ever do.
    Lewis was back on the communication’s circuit almost instantly. “ Give me some good news about that cordon, Miller. ”
    Miller gestured du Trieux over. “Trix?”
    “They’ve blocked intersections a block further east on Duffield than we expected them to, so there’s a little room to play with, but you’re locked in tight.”
    “ You inside the cordon? ” Lewis asked, worried.
    She double-checked the drone footage on the tablet. “No, sir. We’re closer than expected to where they’re blocking you in, but outside the cordon.”
    “ Good. Now plainly we aren’t going to need you, because in about an hour Mr. Matheson’s going to call Stockman and give this place up in exchange for our freedom, but you stay frosty up there. You’re our insurance policy. ”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “And remember,” Miller said, looking at du Trieux, Doyle, and Morland in turn—though Doyle didn’t look up from his rifle’s scope. “If it happens, suppressive fire only. Get them to stick their heads down while our guys muscle their way out in their Bravos. No one has to be killed, here; this is about wasting their time—not taking lives.”
    So far as pep talks went, he could have done better. But Doyle looked up, at last, with a sceptical twist to his eyebrow, and Morland calmed down, nodding just a little too quickly.
    “Yeah,” Morland said. “Just make them keep their heads down.”
    Doyle ducked his head back to the rifle scope, biting his lip.
    So far as Miller knew, Doyle hadn’t yet fired his new rifle in anger. The weapon was one of the first out of the engineering section set up in the Astoria Peninsula. The frame came out of the printer/milling rig in three pieces that fit together perfectly, after a little sandpapering, pinned together around the rifle’s barrel and internals.
    Doyle had been using traffic signs across the East River to get the weapon zeroed, and by the time he was finished he could hit the dot over the ‘i’ in ‘FDR Drive’ at a distance of half a mile. That’s where Doyle’s training lay. Putting holes in heads, not keeping them down.
    Miller lifted the binoculars, and sighted in on the section of the avenue where Lewis had confronted the Infected command squad. PFC Klansman was howling away at the top of his lungs, hardly aware that he was alone, the rest clustered around their Bravo and its radio.
    Other troops had drifted closer, enough of them dismounted to start forming a sizeable mob. The captain’s interest in the radio looked to be dwindling bit by bit.
    A chill sensation in Miller’s gut mingled with unpleasant foreboding.
    “Doyle?” Miller asked, voice barely a whisper.
    “Mmm?”
    “See the screaming private out front? Left and low from the command Bravo?”
    “At about eight o’clock? Angry fellow. What about him?”
    Miller hesitated. It was just a feeling. You didn’t kill people on feelings...
    “Target moving,” Doyle reported, voice flat. “He’s returning to the Bravo—they’re all getting angry now.”
    The mob’s mood rapidly twisted. The hard blush of anger on Private Klansman’s skin flooded across his fellow troops, skin darkening, some looking around, mystified, unsure of what they were so angry at but willing to scream all the same. They were like emotional dominoes, Miller noted, primed and ready to tip over with a strong suggestion and a heavy dose of the Parasite’s signal pheromones flooding over them.
    Some of his troops might not have known what they were angry about, but the captain,