ARISEN, Book Twelve - Carnage

by Michael Stephen Fuchs

  Even the old boys.

  Eli just stared in the dark. There was nothing else to be said.

  Jameson’s head hung now, his face totally shadowed. But then he looked up at his friend. “Whatever the cost, we can’t give up the Kazakh and the pathogen. They’re the only thing that can save Britain now. Or even London.”

  Eli nodded. “I’m with you. But how the hell do we get it? Even if we somehow clear the square of those dead, we’ll still have to fight Alfa Group for it.”

  “I’ve got an idea that might degrade them some – maybe enough to give us a fighting chance. Anyway, that jackass had one thing right. We can trade our lives – but not in the direction he meant. We can trade our lives to get the mission objective, and get it out of here. Nothing else matters.”

  “No,” Eli agreed. “And definitely not a lot of scuffed-up bootnecks like us.”

  Jameson and Eli locked gazes. As usual, they were on the same page. And Eli would have Jameson’s back until the end, however bitter. They went back up top.

  To start planning their endgame.

  Gambit

  Red Square – One Troop’s Strongpoint

  Grenade crumps. Rippling flashes, like ground-level lightning, flickering on and off in the far corner of the square. Croucher already had his binos to his eyes, as Jameson and Eli rushed to his side. The faint blasts continued, echoing off the insane amount of stone in this place.

  But the blasts also seemed to be growing fainter.

  Jameson could see it even without the binoculars. The dead in the square were starting to move toward the northwest end. And those up at the end were moving out – following the noise and light.

  “The sons of bitches,” Eli said.

  “Yep,” Croucher concurred. “They’re going to drain the square of dead. It’s not going to happen fast. But it should work, eventually.”

  Jameson squinted as he thought through this.

  Another explosion sounded now, also muted, but from a different direction, and a hell of a lot closer – directly below them. A hyperventilating voice came across the squad net. “One Troop, Nicks – contact!” Behind the voice was the sound of rapid suppressed rifle reports. “Contact ground floor! Incur—” but then it cut off.

  Jameson and Eli hefted their rifles and turned toward the stairs, but Croucher beat them to it and blocked their way. “I’ve got it,” he said, totally calm in the way only an experienced veteran can be in a surprise attack. “Yap, on me.” When Jameson and Eli, wide-eyed, made to move forward again, he said, “I don’t need command risking their necks, and I don’t need a bunch of bodies getting in my way, or shooting me in the back. If we need more, I’ll call you.”

  As Jameson watched him turn and leap down the stairs with Yap close behind, he knew Croucher was right. In a dark and enclosed space, more shooters would just be a liability. Still, it scraped his soul to stand there unmoving and listen to the sounds of suppressed firing, then shouts, then more shooting. But it was over in two minutes, at which time Croucher reappeared – with a body over his shoulder.

  When he dropped it down on the rooftop, Jameson could see it was a Russian in full tactical kit – flex-cuffed at the wrists and ankles. He also had gunshot wounds in his upper arm and shoulder, and one in his leg. The expression on his face said that he was in severe pain, but totally determined to be the master of it, and not the other way around.

  Croucher turned and reported. “It was just a two-man probing action. Killed one and took this one. Good intel source.”

  “Agreed,” Jameson said. “How’d they get in?”

  “Breaching charge, from the next building over. I blocked up the hole, but of course they can always just breach again.”

  Eli frowned. “That means they’ve got freedom of movement. Either moving through the buildings that ring the square—”

  “Or moving around behind them,” Jameson said. “Nicks?”

  Croucher shook his head.

  “Dammit.”

  “But Nicks damn well did his job. Because he reacted, we were able to get there in time and finish it. Without more casualties.”

  This was some comfort to Jameson. But, then again, not all that much. He’d already had more losses today than on any other single day he could remember. And they were some of his very best men. Though they were all his best men.

  “Yap okay?”

  “Fine. He’s taken over stag downstairs.”

  “So much for that offer to just walk away,” Jameson said.

  “That was bollocks,” Eli said. “He wants us dead, not gone.”

  Face freezing into a hate mask, Jameson squatted down by the prisoner, grabbed him by his wounded arm, and said, “Talk. Will your team be coming for us again?”

  The man laughed, showing teeth that had been bloodied somewhere in the fight. He answered in accented but good English. “Count on it, citizen.” He cocked his head at the distant sound of grenade blasts. “You hear that? Before long the square will be clear of dead. And in only another fifteen minutes or so, they will have cleared out rubble from that stairwell you blew up. And then you can bet they’ll be coming. You will be outnumbered twenty to one.”

  Jameson clenched his jaw, then stood, turned, and pulled Eli aside. “When that square clears, and their main force gets out of that bunker…”

  “Yeah,” Eli said. “We’re done.”

  * * *

  “Enemy transmission detected!”

  “Put it on speaker,” Akela said.

  “—oop Actual, Fat Cow, send message, over.”

  “Charlotte, we urgently require an ammo drop at a rooftop location, how copy?”

  “Fat Cow copies all, five-by-five.”

  “Stand by for grid reference for drop location, over.”

  “Standing by, send traffic.”

  “MGRS reference is three-seven-Uniform-Delta-Bravo-one-three-four-one-six-seven-nine-six-one-one, readback, over.”

  “One Troop, I have GZD as 37UDB, easting as 13416, and northing as 79611.”

  “Confirm, confirm, all correct. Fat Cow, be advised – rooftop is likely to be unstable. Do not try putting too much weight on it. And be ready to pull pitch and get out of there, how copy?”

  “Roger that, One Troop, wilco.”

  “I repeat, Fat Cow – BE READY TO PULL PITCH.”

  “…Roger that, wilco. One Troop, my ETA those grid coords is approx two-zero minutes, how copy?”

  “Copy that, Charlotte. See you in twenty. Fly safe.”

  Within ten seconds, Akela had those grid coordinates marked on the map on their overhead display. He instantly saw it was one of the buildings on the northeast edge of the square – roughly where Lyudmila had the enemy forced Alamo’d up. In another ten seconds, he’d transmitted the grid reference to her, and then got her on the radio.

  “Can you get your team there in twenty minutes?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Capture the inbound aircraft if possible. Destroy it if not.”

  “Roger that. We’ve got it.”

  * * *

  Sanders and Halldon climbed back over the wall that divided One Troop’s rooftop from the next one over.

  “It’s done?” Jameson asked.

  “Affirmative,” Sanders said, handing Jameson a small boxy object.

  Jameson looked around at his remaining Marines. “Everyone ruck up and get ready for resupply. Bird is ten minutes out.”

  “You heard the man,” Eli said. “Go, go, go!” The remaining Marines started moving, closing out their temporary rooftop operating base and getting ready to move – and to fight.

  After having satisfied himself that the men were moving smartly enough, Eli leaned in close to Jameson. “Assuming this works, and we get our resupply – what then?”

  Jameson sighed. “Then we bash into the square. And try to fight our way to that helo. Or we die trying.”

  “So it’s hey diddle diddle, straight up the middle?”

  “I don
’t love the plan myself. But the dead are a little thinner than they were. We can use some of the explosives to clear ourselves a channel. Might give us a fighting chance.”

  “And the Russians? The rest of them?”

  Jameson shrugged. “We haven’t seen any sign they’ve dug themselves out yet.”

  “Yet,” Eli said. “And ten minutes is a long time.”

  Jameson knew as well as his troop sergeant that if the main Spetsnaz Alfa force got out of the bunker before One Troop got out of Red Square, they and their mission were doomed. And it was now past the fifteen minutes their prisoner had predicted. There was absolutely no way of knowing they wouldn’t be all be overrun and gunned down within seconds of entering the square.

  Jameson just shrugged. “I don’t see any choice. You said it yourself – none of our lives matter. The plug has been pulled on the Channel Tunnel. And the drain is London. With everyone we know and love inside it.”

  Eli stopped and squinted in the dark. “Wait – what did you say?”

  “Nothing. Come on, we’ve got to go.”

  “No, wait.” Eli grabbed his arm. “Wait a sodding second. I may have a slightly less shitty idea. But we’re going to need this bloke.” He dashed over to where the bleeding prisoner had been tied to a duct. With a flash of his blade, he had the half-conscious Alfa operator free and on his feet, and started pulling him along. To Jameson he said,

  “Come on! I’ll explain on the way…”

  * * *

  Charlotte Maidstone appreciated the fact that this Chinook variant, the Fat Cow, had a fully night-vision-compatible cockpit and flight controls. What she didn’t appreciate was having to use it. That is, she was having to fly an aircraft she was not technically rated for, under conditions of full night-vision – and also without a co-pilot, or any of the other three to four crew members usually on hand to operate this twin-rotor behemoth of an aircraft. And now she was going to have to perform a complicated rooftop touch-and-go in an urban area – in a bird badly overloaded with one extra shit-ton of fuel.

  It was all pretty damned cognitively taxing, not to mention anxiety-producing. And Charlotte was already exhausted from the long solo flight all the way across Europe. Basically, this gig was a hell of a lot less fun than her day job, in her regular ride, the Apache helicopter gunship. If flying the Apache was like “riding the dragon,” then jockeying a Chinook was like flogging a Brontosaurus. But she was at least aware that, basically, the job remained the same: to support the men on the ground. To keep them alive.

  And make it possible for them to complete their mission.

  Finally the buildings of Moscow rose up ahead of her in night-vision green and black. She’d already input her target grid coords, and the spot was lit up on her moving map display – and would also shine in her heads-up display as soon as she was visual with it. Surprisingly quickly she was above Red Square – and couldn’t fail to miss the sprawling sea of dead that filled it.

  Jameson conveniently failed to mention the singularity… It looked like they’d been having a real party down there without her.

  Casting around, she could see the overlaid location marker on one of the sections of rooftop. This was going to be the tricky bit. She descended, then flared in heavily and clumsily, trying to keep the overloaded bird level, finally just kissing the four fat tires on the rooftop – while keeping her power up and most of the weight held by the two giant four-bladed rotors. Her hand moved to lower the back ramp. But she couldn’t see Jameson on the rooftop, or anyone for that matter…

  Until suddenly she did. Soldiers with rifles to their shoulders appeared from all around the edges of the building. But something was wrong. First of all, they were aiming the rifles at her. But, even without that, she could instantly tell they weren’t her boys. They were dressed wrong, armed wrong, and most of all they moved wrong.

  And, even in the dark, they dripped menace.

  A shouted voice penetrated through the cockpit glass and over the rotor and engine noise. “Bring your engines offline and exit the aircraft. Do not attempt to lift off, or you will be shot down. Bring your engines offline NOW.”

  Adrenaline flooding her system, eyes like saucers, senses hyper-alert… still Charlotte hesitated. One of the soldiers, smaller than the others, approached the right-side cockpit glass, muzzle first. Charlotte realized with a start that it was a woman. She tried to decide whether to take these guys at their word. Her hand hovered over the control to bring the engines down.

  Then Jameson’s voice popped up in her ear. It said:

  “Charlotte – PULL PITCH, NOW!”

  Jameson, she trusted.

  * * *

  Lyudmila walked smoothly forward, heel-toe, weapon to shoulder, panning and sweeping the helo and shadows at the corners of the rooftop. Her team had cleared the area and been surprised not to find the enemy ground force, but had presumed they were out of sight, waiting to see if their aircraft would set down safely before coming out. It hadn’t, and it wasn’t going to.

  But now that they had captured both of the enemy aircraft, plane and helo, those guys weren’t going anywhere. And Akela would have the main force dug out of the bunker in only a few more minutes. At which point they could mop up the invaders at their leisure.

  As she approached the cockpit, and peered inside over her sight, Lyudmila locked eyes with the pilot – and saw it was another woman, just as Akela had said. She moved to tap the end of her barrel against the cockpit glass – but before she could, the engines screamed as they wound up to full power. Lyudmila aimed at the pilot and started to squeeze her trigger.

  Explosions rippled beneath her feet, and on all sides.

  The ground shifted and buckled and then went away, and she found herself falling through black, nearly empty space. She landed on her back with a crash, the air instantly evacuated from her lungs.

  She tried to roll away as heavy debris fell on her face.

  * * *

  Jameson dropped the remote detonator and leapt the wall that separated their rooftop from the next one over – the one the Chinook was already rising above. No audible signal was necessary to get One Troop assaulting. The explosive charges going off on the top floor of the neighboring building, collapsing most of its roof, was sign enough.

  As he landed on the narrow ledge – all that was left of the collapsed rooftop next door – and as the giant looming Chinook powered up into the sky over his head, and whipped the air into a frenzy, Jameson could sense as much as see the other half of the team coming over the wall on the opposite side, from the third building over. In seconds, they were all in position, aiming their weapons down into the suddenly open-air top floor of the neighboring building.

  And as the Russian survivors of the collapse climbed unsteadily to their feet, or pushed hunks of masonry off their battered bodies, or rolled around trying to assess their injuries…

  The Royal Marines opened fire.

  It was a circular firing squad, from an elevated position. And, as tough and skilled as the Alfa operators were, they all fell down again, stopped moving – and never got up again.

  Even the most badass among them – even Lyudmila.

  Mogadishu Mile

  Djibouti – Outside the Airport

  The rains from earlier in the day had stopped, but the sky was still low, heavy, and gray as the Seahawk survivors – now reduced to Ali, Juice, Fick, Reyes, Baxter, and al-Sif, as well as Patient Zero – drew within sight of Djibouti Airport. Almost immediately, they could see the short sharp flashes of grenade blasts lighting up the glass front of the terminal building, followed by the muted whumps of the explosions a few seconds later.

  And they knew their brothers on the split team were in there – fighting for the lives against a Spetsnaz ambush.

  Ali, still in the lead, got on the radio. “Cadaver Three, this is One, inbound your location. What’s your status?” She recognized Jake’s deep and serious but relaxed voice coming back – on top of what sounded
like another suppressed firefight.

  “This is Three, in heavy contact inside the terminal building. We’re a little bit pinned down right now.”

  “Copy that, Three,” Ali said, picking up her pace – the others, also on the same net, rushing to keep up. “What’s your position, orientation, and enemy disposition?”

  “We are at airport security, five-zero meters inside the terminal, facing the rear of the structure. We are engaged with approx one-zero enemy shooters, head on. They are facing the front, over.”

  “Copy that. We’ll circle around and come in from behind, making a dynamic entry. Will attempt to hit enemy force from their four o’clock or eight o’clock, how copy?”

  “All received. Give us a heads-up when you’re in position for your attack and we’ll check fire.”

  “Wilco, out.”

  Al-Sif whispered to Baxter, “There is a plane for us here?”

  “Dude, you’re asking the wrong guy. I have no freaking idea.”

  But then he had to heft his rifle and rush to keep up. Because Ali was already leading the team around the outside of the terminal. It wasn’t huge as airports went, but it wasn’t small either, and they needed to get all the way around it – fast. Ideally while their friends on the other team were still alive.

  But as they ran, Juice dropped back to fall in beside Baxter. He touched the young man on the elbow and said, “Hey, am I going crazy or did I hear spoken Russian on our squad net a few minutes ago?”

  “Yeah, I actually did hear that,” Baxter said. “Crossed frequencies or something?”

  Juice shook his head. “I don’t think so. Could you make out what was said?”

  “Yeah, I think I did,” Baxter said. He recited his translation.

  Juice nodded. Baxter had understood the words. But Juice had recognized the voice. And there was no mistaking that.

  It was Misha.

  * * *