Arisen, Book Nine - Cataclysm by Michael Stephen Fuchs

Operations Center (JOC) below.
    But however the decision got made, Charlotte was happy. Simply, she just didn’t want to be grounded – she never did. She wanted to be on station, and she wanted to be in the fight. And she could only help protect her boys when she was up above them riding her fire-breathing dragon.
    It turned out there was indeed a figure coming out of the other side of the copse of trees. Luckily for him, he turned and waved at Charlotte – only seconds before he might have caught a 30mm flame job.
    And from the frantic movement of his arm, he knew how close he’d come.
    Charlotte pushed her cyclic to the right, throttled her dual Rolls-Royce engines up, and blasted off toward the other side of the base.
    She had fewer boys to protect down there now.
    But they needed her more than ever.
    * * *
    Major Jameson clicked off the air channel, but left his radio headset where it was – squarely on his head. There was little chance of his going a full minute without needing it.
    At the sound of his name being spoken, he turned around to face one of the support staff – who might have been a cook or a janitor in real life, for all Jameson knew, but was at least a corporal in the British Army – who had been pressed into service helping with radio operations in the JOC. The only two legit operations officers left alive were at that moment sitting at two of the only fully functional tactical stations left undestroyed – the pair of them two-handedly trying to run the entire battle for the south of England.
    Everyone else on the JOC staff was dead.
    The lightning outbreak that had started with the Foxtrot version of Major Grews had taken down the entire JOC in minutes – and most likely would have taken down the whole complex, if One Troop Royal Marines hadn’t hit the ground and rushed into the breach, guns blazing. Hell, Jameson’s troop sergeant, Eli, had taken down Zombie Grews himself – after he got outside the walls, and was seconds away from disappearing into the general population of inner London.
    Which probably would have been like a match to a drought-ravaged forest. It could easily have been “the end of the fucking world,” to use the words of the late Colonel Mayes – the son of a bitch who, by dying, had dropped this whole shitty situation in Jameson’s lap.
    “Go,” Jameson said to the corporal, not caring to waste syllables, or seconds.
    “Sir. I spoke to personnel in the pilots’ ready room. Good news – yes, those last two B200s out on the deck are flight-ready. And, yes, one of them can land on the American carrier. And they’ve even got somebody who can fly it, plus someone who will do as a co-pilot.”
    Jameson wondered if the co-pilot was qualified on that aircraft. He decided he didn’t want to know, and kept his mouth shut. It was enough that they’d be able to fulfill the Americans’ request to send another plane – to get their magical scientist and his vaccine back to Britain.
    Maybe even before everyone there was all dead.
    The very last act of Colonel Mayes had been to read Jameson in on the joint mission to North America to retrieve a rumored vaccine against the plague. It was just one more damned thing Jameson was having to manage. On the other hand, it was perhaps the best reason they had to keep fighting – and for staying alive.
    The corporal smiled. “The pilot said to leave it with him – they’d get out there, get the plane prepped, file a flight plan, and get in the air.”
    Jameson almost relaxed for a second. Something going right – and someone else handling it. This was like a deep-tissue massage to the pummeled flesh of his psyche. He nodded and was already turning away, when the corporal chirped up again. “It’s only, sir, he wants to know about mid-air refueling. Sir.”
    Jameson stopped turning and blinked once. “What?”
    “Well, sir,” and with this the corporal referenced a clipboard and started reading numbers off it. Jameson