And when Misha finally stood up, Handon could see he was surrounded by a circle of soldiers. One of them handed Misha back his Desert Eagle, which he chamber-checked, then pointed at Handon’s head. Handon mustered his strength again and, refusing to die face down in the mud, rolled over on his back, then levered himself up on his elbows.
And he looked up at Misha, his eyes still bright.
Misha cocked his head, evidently puzzled by what he saw on the face of the other man.
It was contentment.
Handon had just spent his life to delay the enemy long enough to complete the mission – and to ensure the safe return of the people on his team, whom he loved.
And so he was happy.
But what Misha saw was a man who did not fear death. And he was impressed, despite himself. The American commander had put up a hell of a fight.
“Warriors wage war,” Misha said, putting the muzzle of the Desert Eagle to Handon’s forehead. “But for you, now – sleep.” For once, his voice was not a terrifying rumble, nor even unkind.
It sounded nearly human.
Last Stand
JFK – Hospital Lab
Sergeant Lovell, Sarah Cameron, Doctor Park, and Professor Close were still holed up in the lab, while the battle for the hospital raged outside. Park and Close had their laptops and research materials in satchels and backpacks. Sarah insisted on humping the DNA sequencer on her back. Lovell had no idea how she was going to bear the weight, much less fight while doing it, but then again he didn’t know how much she could deadlift. And also there was no choice – because he had to carry the even heavier bagged-up CRRC on his back, the raft that was their ride out of there. And he was definitely going to have to fight while he did that.
The question was no longer where to go, just how the hell they were going to get out of there. They all froze as the sounds of battle ramped up outside again. It started with another flurry of grenade blasts.
Then shouts, screams of pain.
And firing, both suppressed and full-volume, rifles and pistols, more shouting, the desperate cries of men and women fighting to the death in close quarters. Growing closer.
No one spoke, as Lovell scanned faces a last time. Sarah looked adrenalized but ready. Close looked like he was battling with bladder control. Only Park looked calm – totally unperturbed, actually. Like, whatever was going to happen now, he would deal with it. Lovell hadn’t been along for most of Park’s journey from mouse hiding in his hole to indomitable survivor and champion of humanity, fully committed to living long enough to do his job. But he liked the result.
Lovell picked up the frame charge from where he’d dumped it on the floor, out of the ruck that now held the sequencer. And he picked a spot on the bulkhead.
They were out of options, and out of time.
* * *
Outside, the invaders had breached again – once again in front of a grenade volley. Most of the hospital personnel active in the defense were now dead, dying, or wounded, including Walker herself, who was bloody but unbowed. She’d run out of shotgun shells, so had picked up the fallen NSF man’s M4 and got his vest on, with its few remaining mags. Rifle to shoulder, she fired steadily, falling back with the survivors while Patrick, badly wounded himself, covered the withdrawal.
The front of the hospital was lost.
Walker directed the three remaining men and women under her command in establishing a fallback position in the middle. Two of them, out of pistol rounds, had managed to pick up AK carbines from fallen Russians. One, a doctor badly out of his depth, but aware of his duty as a military officer, dropped the mag out and checked it. It was empty. There’d been no time to pull extra mags off the dead invaders. Walker drew her M9, reversed it, and handed to him.
Once the other three were in position, and she had hunkered down herself, she was amazed to see Patrick running, hobbled, through their lines, jerking from a hit in his back even as he appeared. She hadn’t known he could still walk. And she had figured his holding action for them would be a last stand. But he was still on his feet.
She settled down again, staring coolly over the top of her inherited M4, and waited for the next rush – which would probably be the last. As she breathed smoothly and deeply, the radio she had picked up went.
“CIC to Hospital!”
She recognized the voice. It was LT Campbell.
“Hospital copies,” Walker said. “Send it.”
“How you guys doin’ down there?”
“We’re just fine, thanks.” She paused to take a couple of labored breaths. “Now what the hell are you guys doing to take our damned ship back?”
* * *
The hangar deck – vast, sprawling, dark, and menacing. But it must not have been a critical target for the invaders, because when two different forces spilled into it from two different directions – despite a few tense seconds of threatened fratricide – they were all loyal crew members of the USS John F. Kennedy.
From the fore, and the senior officer’s quarters, came Derwin, Petty Officer Hester, the two other NSF sailors – all led by Commander Drake himself. With them were the six MARSOC Marines left alive and operating. They’d come here because it was a good position to serve as a staging area for an assault to retake the island.
From aft, and below, came Armour and her dozen-strong force of militia. They were here looking for the Marines – and Armour immediately put herself and her people at their disposal. But when they saw Commander Drake, they couldn’t have been any more surprised if it the Captain himself had turned up. Maybe Drake had taken over the role, staying in hiding, until the critical moment when he was needed.
At any rate, they now had a formidable force of defenders – certainly the biggest any of them had seen since the attack started. The question was how to employ it to best effect. Drake wasted no time in taking charge. He seemed like he was not only fully in possession of his faculties.
He was fully in command.
While the three teams consolidated in the corner that held Alpha’s abandoned dojo, the Marines set security, and the others circled up, Drake was still coordinating with Campbell on his handheld radio. She had just told him about the giant submarine full of reinforcements steaming directly at them.
“You have GOT to take back the bridge.”
“Calm down, LT.”
“We’ve got no answer to that Akula-class sub – with no air and zero escort ships.”
“I hear you, and I’ve got a plan, LT. But I have to brief the team undertaking it, not you. Stand by for now. And trust me.”
He turned to face the twenty-strong group of sailors, NSF, and Marines. “Listen up,” he said, raising his voice – but not raising it too much. “I’m going to need two forces of equal size, both consisting of NSF and militia, both led by Marines.”
As he looked at the MARSOC guys, he saw a big tube strapped to the back of each of them.
“Those AT-4s?”
“Aye, sir.”
“Outstanding. Okay, then. Two mission teams, composed of all three groups, each split down the middle.” Drake paused. The question now was who would be assigned to each team. Because probably only one of them was going to have any survivors when this was over.
Then again… it was possible neither would.
* * *
Last stand, Walker thought. And when she locked gazes with Sergeant Patrick, she could see he was in the same mental place. The five remaining defenders, all now wounded one way or another now, were waiting for the Russians’ final rush. But Spetsnaz weren’t going to stumble into anything stupidly, not even now. Maybe especially now.
They were taking probing shots and bounding forward through the front and middle areas of the hospital, and still chucking the odd grenade. The grenades made the defenders duck down, and when they did the attackers surged forward. They were cautious and methodical – until they weren’t, and two of their number switched to blitzkrieg tactics, and simply smashed through, firing flat out t
o put the defenders’ heads down.
Patrick figured they were breaking through to get in their rear and finish it. But Walker saw they were going for the lab. She stood up to target them, spinning and firing as they sprinted by – but was knocked to the deck by fire from the front, which was now her rear.
Patrick wasn’t going to be able to get there in time, either.
Both assaulters made it to the hatch in the rear that led to the lab, one turning to cover behind while the other put his hand on the latch to yank it open. They were there – one thin sheet of steel from Dr. Park, and his proto-vaccine.
Neither of these two noticed Corporal Raible – lying in his bed, burned-off skin covered with sheeting, amputated leg wrapped in white bandages – until he shot them both. The young Marine fired all seven rounds in the mag plus the one in the chamber, reloaded, and emptied the second mag. The Russians tried to react, but were being pummeled in close quarters by a heavy volley of fat .45 rounds. Both were badly wounded and went down to the deck.
As one tried to roll over and bring his weapon to bear, he saw a tall blood-covered woman looming over him.
Walker relieved him of his AK-style Saiga-12 Semi-Auto Combat Shotgun – and used it to finish both him and his buddy. She looked up to see Patrick limping back toward her. “The others?” she asked. He shook his head no. She banged on the hatch to the lab. “Friendlies! Comin’ in!” she shouted, then opened it up.
It evidently had no lock.
Appearing behind it, Lovell said, “We’re breaching out of here – come with us!”
Walker shook her head firmly. “Thanks, no. This is my duty station. Now if all of you interlopers could just kindly get the hell out of my hospital…” She shoved Patrick through the hatch, then shut it on him.
Now she stood alone.
She took a deep breath, then looked down at the bodies of the two men she had just shotgunned to death. The one she’d taken the Saiga from had a few ten-round magazines of twelve-gauge shells still in his vest. So she squatted down, grabbed him by his drag strap, and pulled him up to the doorway to the lab. Squatting down felt so good, she was tempted to slump down with her back against the hatch.
No, she thought, pulling out two mags and shoving them in her waistband, then straightening up to her full height. I’ll die on my feet, thanks.
Rounds were already chipping up the hatch behind her.
Greater Love
JFK – Hangar Deck
MARSOC was out of senior leaders at this point. They were all dead, or committed elsewhere. Luckily the Marine Corps taught leadership at every level, all the way to the bottom. So while Drake, feeling the energy and life somehow coming back to him at the moment of the Kennedy’s direst peril, was ready and able to command them, he found he didn’t have to.
“Graves and Commiskey, you’re on me.” This was said calmly, firmly, and very audibly by a young Marine he knew as Corporal Meyer. “Swett and Witek are with Corporal Dunham.”
Then Meyer turned to Drake and waited for orders.
Drake shook his head in awe. Two corporals were left in charge. What were these guys – twenty-three, twenty-four? Refocusing on the task, he looked around to see that Chief Derwin had split his four-man force in two; and Seaman Armour had done the same with her dozen militia. Seemingly spontaneously, the three groups had shifted neatly into two groups of eleven, each of the three teams evenly divided among them. They were like some Paleolithic super-organism, splitting, recombining, evolving to survive.
No, that’s not right, Drake thought. This group wasn’t primitive or animalistic. They were actually on a very high plane. And it wasn’t evolutionary pressures or the necessity of survival they were responding to.
It was love.
Drake could feel it filling the space of the hangar deck. Love for the ship, which was their home, their refuge from the world-leveling storm. Love for their duty and their mission, which was to save everyone left alive who couldn’t save themselves. But far over and above all that…
It was love for one another.
God, Drake had missed that feeling, the camaraderie, this brotherhood. And now he knew beyond any question that it would sustain him. Whatever knocks his brain had taken, whatever stresses had pummeled him into submission and senselessness during two years of struggle, he knew now that love would heal him up. It would sustain him. And it would carry him through.
As it would everyone there.
“Okay,” Drake said. “Corporal Dunham leads the assault team. Corporal Meyer’s is the diversionary force. Here’s what I need each of you to do…”
* * *
It was much quieter in the lab since the defense of the hospital had collapsed. Only a few seconds had gone by since Patrick tumbled in there with the other four, and Walker slammed the hatch on them. But there was still sporadic firing outside, including a shotgun, so someone was still alive. Lovell bet it was Walker. He wouldn’t take her on. Nor ever count her out.
“Gimme one of those,” Patrick said, meaning the huge heavy rucks on both Lovell and Sarah’s backs.
“Forget it,” Lovell said. “You’ve been shot five times.” And those were just the wounds he could see. He was amazed the hard-ass Marine could even walk. “Anyway, I need you shooting.” Patrick nodded, turned, and trained his weapon on the hatch.
“Get under cover,” Lovell instructed the others, then got his frame charge placed on an inside bulkhead. He was already withdrawing to cover with the others when something stopped him and he froze dead. It was some kind of noise, and it was coming from the opposite side of the wall. It also seemed strangely familiar.
Aww, shit…
“Down!” he shouted, then hit the deck, diving away and hitting the detonator at the same time. The entire compartment shook and blurred side to side as white smoke whooshed across the deck. When Lovell rolled on his back and aimed his rifle through his legs, it was toward a big square cut-out of bulkhead. And when he climbed into a crouch, advanced on the hole, and stuck his head through… he saw exactly what he had feared, but could still hardly believe.
It was two slightly dazed and very surprised Spetsnaz guys, with a frame charge of their own. The motherfuckers had been about to breach the same bulkhead, in practically the same spot. Because he’d had the presence of mind to trigger his off first, Lovell had a compelling advantage in the short but brutal point-blank firefight that ensued between the two compartments. When it was over, he was victorious and unhurt.
But when he turned to motion the others forward, he saw Professor Close face down on the deck. What the hell? It looked like he had broken cover and tried to run for it. When Sarah rolled him over, he was alive. But he’d been shot in the back of the knee.
“Can you walk?” Lovell said.
“For the love of God, no!” Close’s face was a mask of pain, tears wetting his cheeks, as he clutched his knee and rocked back and forth.
Lovell and Sarah traded looks – or rather the same look. They had to leave him. And there was very little to be said about it, and no time to do so anyway. They were being besieged from both sides, and their pinhole of escape might close any second. Lovell hefted his rifle, ducked through the hole, and swept the next compartment. “It’s clear!” he shouted back, then faced forward again. Sarah grabbed Park and shoved him forward. But he didn’t need any shoving.
And he didn’t take time to say goodbye to Close either.
* * *
Commander Drake led his eleven-man assault force, of which he was the twelfth, up the final ladder and down the last stretch of passageway before the internal hatch to the island. None of them had any good way of knowing how far out Spetsnaz’s defenses – or wired-up explosives – might extend. But it was critical they not tip them off too soon. So Drake moved them out of the passageway a good fifty meters from the island – six into an empty compartment on the left, six on the right. He checked his watch on his left wrist.
Then he chamber-checked the pistol in his ri
ght hand.
He looked out the open hatch across the hall. Corporal Dunham nodded at him once. As usual, the Marines were switched on. And, also as usual, they were fully prepared to get their asses killed if it meant making themselves useful, or progressing the mission. But it was the diversionary force Drake wept for.
Once again, he was probably spending lives to save the ship. He only prayed it would work.
The first explosion sounded dully through a lot of aircraft carrier, from outside. Then two more. There should be small-arms fire now, but Drake wasn’t surprised not to hear it down here. He counted off five more seconds, fingers clenching and unclenching, his whole body desperate to move.
“Go!” he said.
And he headed out, leading the two ranks of assaulters forward.
* * *
Corporal Meyer pushed his rifle around his side on its sling, and adjusted his grip on the AT-4 anti-tank weapon. He was going to fire the first shot, and he would be out front, leading this attack. Behind him were his two Marines – God, they were getting so whittled down, to less than a fire team now; two NSF, Morgan and MacCauley; and the half-dozen armed sailors, including a dude who looked like he seriously had to be running low on blood, and whose nametape read Parlett. But he was armed, and he looked game.
They all did. They had better be.
The diversionary force stood on one of the enormous aircraft elevators – the only one on the port side, located slightly aft of the island and opposite it. And it was quickly rising up from the depths of the hangar deck to the open air above.
And that open air was likely to be lethal. Because there was virtually no cover out on the flight deck. And they were going to have a short but exposed run across it to the outside ladder of the island. And then they’d be fighting their way up – and Meyer knew up was the one direction you really didn’t want to be fighting in. But he also knew this was their job.
ARISEN, Book Twelve - Carnage Page 17
