Free Operation Wild Tarpan by Addison Gunn

night’s sleep. He didn’t expect to be issued any more food for the rest of the day.
    The mob was coordinated, even with their radios down. They weren’t drifting around the city, or rioting in the uncontrolled mobs that had swept the city in weeks past. They were controlled .
    Miller knew the Archaean Infected mobs could flip their emotional state like a switch, just add the right amount of anger, the right amount of xenophobic fear. He’d hesitated before, and PFC Klansman had spread his hatred to his commanding officer. Could the Infected really manipulate each other like that? Use the sick and weak to distract snipers and let them hide in plain sight?
    It was a question he’d already seen answered. The string of bodies being torn to pieces down-river were proof enough.
    And Wild Tarpan had been put on hold until the perimeter had been secured.
    “Doyle!” he called again. “Get down to the personnel hall and gather supplies for a full day outside the walls. Enough food and ammunition for the rest of Cobalt-2 and Hsiung. On my authority.”
    Doyle halted on the stairway, leaning out to look down on Miller. “But we’ve got orders to hold the wall.”
    “Y’all were the one talking about flexibly interpreting orders,” Miller drawled.
     
     
    J ENNIFER B ARRETT DIDN’T look happy being confronted in her office, or confronted at all, but she rarely smiled anyway. “We don’t have the resources to support a push—”
    “This isn’t a push into the city.” Miller bit his lip, angry at himself for cutting off the boss, but plunged on. “This is a five-man team.”
    “Our air assets are tied down, we can’t push Bravos into the city. Everything we’ve got is being prepared to push the army off the bridges. It’s the only way to get supply boats in safely. There’s nothing left to provide any hope of support.”
    “We didn’t have support in Harlem.”
    “If you just wait until nightfall...” She pinched at her nose, eyes squeezed shut.
    “It needs to happen now. This is Operation Wild Tarpan over again, hitting their communications infrastructure, but the nature of that infrastructure has changed. We need to capture or kill their Charismatics.” Miller leaned on Barrett’s desk, and pushed his phablet over to her. In a still image it was harder to pick out, but the looping clip showed it clearly enough: the Infected bubbled around individuals, protecting them from the thickest part of the mob. Sometimes a lieutenant, sometimes a private, sometimes collapsing to outnumber a smaller band.
    “Charismatics?” she asked, watching the footage.
    “I don’t know if there’s a better term. Ones like Swift, the ones skilled at manipulating the other Infected. Or the ones so emotionally overcharged they can swing the mob’s mood by themselves.”
    “I think I see the ones you mean,” she said, tracing a path with her finger. “You think this might break the siege?”
    “It can’t hurt.”
    “It can hurt you , Mr. Miller. We can’t get you out of trouble.”
    “The mobs forming out there aren’t like the ones during the riots, ma’am. This time they’re not going to wander home when they all decide they’re tired and shamble off in a group. We have to remove the Charismatics from the equation.”
    Barrett’s jaw tightened. “I thought you didn’t approve of ‘black ops shit.’ That is what you said this morning, isn’t it?”
    “It’s been a real long day, ma’am,” Miller muttered, bowing his head.
     
     
    K ILLING A MAN with du Trieux was one of the most intimate acts Miller had ever experienced. Like stalking deer with his father, like discovering he wasn’t alone beside Doyle.
    Something inside him had broken. He knew that. He could feel it bleeding away in the parts of his soul that had believed things would get better some day. All of Miller’s faith in a brighter future had snapped into pieces and the brittle shards were grinding into the soft flesh of his throat,