ARISEN, Book Twelve - Carnage

by Michael Stephen Fuchs

  Sarah shook her head. “No. You’ll be totally vulnerable while hanging over the side – and then again when you’re down on the water and within easy shooting or grenade range. Someone’s got to stay back and hold this position. This deck. To cover your withdrawal.”

  Before Lovell could say, “Yeah, me,” Sarah lifted up the bottom of her tactical vest. Her whole midsection was covered in blood.

  “I caught one when we were crossing the deck.”

  Lovell put down the winch line, his brow furrowing with concern. “Let me see that—”

  But she cut him off and pushed his hand away. “I can already tell you. I’m pretty sure it’s through my liver.”

  Lovell looked up into her eye.

  “It won’t kill me fast,” she said. “But unless you know of a functioning level-one trauma center out there somewhere, and can get me there in the next hour…”

  Undaunted, Lovell reached into his aid kit and yanked out an Israeli bandage – but even as he did, Sarah discharged her rifle right over his shoulder. A dark-helmeted head had peeked over the edge of the deck at the top of the ladder. Lovell pulled away, the hearing in his left ear pummeled, as Sarah fired five more times. It wasn’t clear if she’d hit anything, but the face disappeared – for now.

  Lovell faced her again, moving the bandage to her midsection – when Park pivoted and fired over their heads and behind them. Lovell’s hand slapped at the holster on his vest, but there was no .45 there. He’d given it to Raible. Sarah turned, raised her rifle nearly straight up and snap-fired – her first round going right into the face there. The body it was attached to tumbled forward off the flight deck, forcing them to move to either side to get out of the way. It hit the railing with an ugly crack, then pirouetted over the side and fell nearly a hundred feet down to the ocean’s surface.

  “Go!” Sarah said, moving to the winch control panel, her rifle still elevated, pointing back and forth from the top of the stairs to the deck edge over their heads.

  There was no time to protest. With Park’s help, Lovell pushed the now-inflated raft out over the edge, where it hung on the taut winch line. Park gave Sarah her pistol back, then got in. Lovell grabbed the ruck with the sequencer and lowered it in. He then put one foot in – but managed to lock eyes with Sarah a last time.

  “Always count on a cop,” he said. And Sarah remembered now, when they had been alone in the MARSOC weapons room, he had confided in her that his mother was a small-town cop. And that he had always planned one day to become one.

  “Hey,” Sarah said. “The job of the police officer is to preserve life.” She nodded at Park. “His, in this case. Take care, Simon – and save the damned world, okay?”

  Park nodded, evidently unable to speak.

  Lovell climbed in, both of them hanging onto the line, trying to keep the boat steady as it hung in open air. Sarah moved the lever that started the winch lowering, and Lovell held her gaze until the hull of the supercarrier came between them. Both of them nodded. And at the last second he called back, quietly:

  “Get some.”

  Third Battle of the JFK

  JFK – Cargo Deck

  With only herself to cover all angles of approach now, not to mention man the winch, Sarah arranged herself for best effect. A glance over the side told her the CRRC was going to be a couple of minutes descending the hundred feet to the waterline. And then they were still going to be vulnerable out on the water, until they got moving – giving anyone on the deck a clear shot. The expression “sitting duck” had probably been coined for such circumstances.

  And Sarah wasn’t going to let Park get taken down now. They had both come way too far. She got a couple of rifle and pistol mags out and onto the winch control console, where she could get to them fast.

  But then she realized her strength was starting to flag, most likely from the blood loss. So she went ahead and retrieved that Israeli bandage from where it fell. When she lifted up her shirt and wiped the blood away, though, it was obvious the wound was all the way out on the side of her waist, where only fat and a little muscle had been perforated. There had been enough blood that she knew Lovell would buy the liver story. But this wound definitely wouldn’t kill her – at least not if she stopped the bleeding.

  Resting her rifle barrel across the top of the winch console, she started getting it wrapped up. Whatever was going to happen now, she needed to be awake for it. She needed to be operational.

  Tucking in the end of the bandage, she leaned back into the corner behind the control station, taking some of the weight off. This also gave her a good look up the ladder, directly ahead of her, and the area of flight deck above where the second attacker had appeared.

  Still no one came. Maybe they’d had enough.

  Half-sitting, she felt a familiar pressure in her left front pocket. Not taking her eye off the danger points, she used her bandaged left hand to reach in and remove a small leather bifold wallet. When she flipped it open and laid it on the console before her, one side showed an unflashy blue-and-red badge. And in the other was her warrant card, with her photo, rank, and warrant number. This was her warrant from the state and the Queen to serve as a police officer.

  Though she had never shown it to anyone but Handon, she’d carried it every day since the fall. Of course she had no police powers outside of Canada, not to mention there was no Canada anymore. But even now, she felt naked without it. And now, standing this last post, she felt like she was fulfilling her true purpose – preserving life. And, with a little luck, maybe even all the life that was left in the world.

  Sarah felt like herself again.

  Though thinking of Handon definitely opened a can of mental worms. And in a way, she realized this last act was her being faithful to him – faithful in death. Of course she regretted that she would never see him again. But, then again, if he didn’t survive the shore mission, this would be her following him into the dark.

  No one on his team seemed to think he could be hurt, certainly didn’t believe he might be killed. He was like a father figure to them, and he made them feel safe. But Sarah knew him – well enough to know that he would spend his life in a heartbeat if completing the mission required it. He’d just been both lucky enough and good enough to get this far without it coming to that. But no one was perfect.

  And no one could be lucky forever.

  She focused on taking some deep, steadying, oxygen-rich breaths, and then refocused her vision on that ladder and that deck edge above. She could maybe afford to get a little reflective here. She just couldn’t get distracted. Or lazy. They were too close to the endgame.

  Two grenades dropped and clattered down on the deck on the other side of the console. She leaned over, grabbed one, and scooped it over the side – but way to the aft – and then the other, which exploded in mid-air maybe twenty feet away, just beneath the level of the deck, half-stunning her. She gritted her teeth, brought her rifle up, and ducked back behind the console.

  A face appeared at the top of the ladder and she shot until it disappeared.

  Then… silence again.

  No – no one could be lucky forever. And she wasn’t nearly as good as Handon was. Sarah considered that she had been willing to die on her own shore mission, recovering that gene sequencer. But somehow, against outrageous odds, she had survived. So maybe it was only now that she would truly atone – sacrificing her life to get that device, and mainly Park, and his guardian, Lovell, the hell out of there.

  She looked to her left at a scraping sound. It was the inside hatch to the gallery deck. Someone was working the latch from the other side. Trying not to hyperventilate, Sarah got her pistol in her left hand – which had a hole in it and hurt like hell, but seemed to still work – and pointed it in that direction. Her rifle, lying across the console, her right hand on the pistol grip, still covered the ladder.

  And then she saw slack piling up on the winch line spool. That meant they were down. Using the hand with the pistol, she stopped
the motor. They were down on the water now – and just needed a little more time to motor away. Sarah had to give it to them.

  So she’d survived the cleansing flood on shore. But maybe there was no shortchanging the Reaper in the end – or karma, or fate, or the great wheel, or whatever your conception of it. And this time, unlike back at the cabin, she would be sacrificing only herself. Not her family. Not the brothers she had gained and come to love so much on this journey. Only herself.

  The hatch flew open – at the same instant as another shooter appeared at the top of the ladder.

  Sarah rapid-fired in both directions.

  * * *

  Park looked up at the sound of furious gunfire high above.

  “Forget it,” Lovell said, getting the winch line cast off. “Eyes front. We go forward.”

  Park nodded and got busy helping, by starting the outboard motor. He realized the Kennedy had come to a complete stop now, which definitely eased their entry into the water. Lovell pushed him down into the bottom of the boat and took over at the motor. He revved it up, dropped it down, and they roared off like a duck out of hell, the great gray ice shelf of the carrier receding behind them.

  Park appreciated the sentiment, but the air cells of this raft weren’t going to shield him from any threats anyway, and he didn’t like cowering down in the bilge. As he rose up and looked back, and they angled away from the carrier, suddenly a smaller gray ice shelf appeared from around behind it – one nearly as impressive, but totally unexpected.

  It was the hull of the giant Russian boat, the Akula-class sub.

  Park’s mouth opened as he saw the ranks of armed men filling most of its sprawling deck. “Holy shit,” he said.

  Lovell saw it too, but he looked blasé.

  Park gawked at him, uncomprehending.

  Lovell shrugged. “She shouldn’t have breached,” he said, loud enough to be heard over the engine noise and shushing of water over the rubber hull.

  “What? Why not?”

  “Because a sub’s totally vulnerable on the surface.”

  “Vulnerable to what…?”

  But before Lovell could answer, gigantic geysers of seawater blasted up from around the waterline of the vessel.

  * * *

  Wild cheers erupted in the confined space of CIC – the sound of a Super Bowl party whose team had just completed a hail Mary pass to win with time expired.

  Drake just leaned back in his chair, looking over the heads of the leaping and shouting men and women, at the image on the big central overhead monitor. It was still grainy, but the Akula was much closer now – close enough to see the great geysers of white foam erupting all around its waterline, explosions tearing through its superstructure, and the Spetsnaz naval commandos on the deck being launched off the deck and hundreds of feet into the air. They rained down over the Gulf of Aden on all sides, limbs flailing, like a Russian meatball shower.

  More wild cheers erupted with every geyser, every flying Spetsnaz dude, every splashdown.

  Seaman Armour fought her way through the dancing mob to where Drake serenely sat. “What the hell is this?”

  Drake smiled. “The USS Washington, of course.” The carrier strike group’s Virginia-class fast attack submarine – which, as on so much of this mission, had been trailing behind them, doing 25 knots to the Kennedy’s 40.

  “I fucking love that sub,” said LT Campbell, appearing behind Drake’s chair. She put her hands on his shoulders, squeezing affectionately.

  He looked up at her and smiled.

  “Nice to have you around again, too,” Campbell added. She smiled down at his inverted face. Drake tried to remember when he had ever seen Campbell smile before. Probably never.

  Armour squinted in awe. “You knew exactly when it would get here.” She knew enough to know that only a few people on board knew the location, heading, or speed of the sub.

  Drake shrugged again. “I’ve been out of the loop for a while. But I had a pretty good idea. I did the math, and the LT here verified it. We also had no comms with them – so had to trust their captain to take action and attack.”

  Armour shook her head, and stole another look at the overhead display. “Jesus, though – that was close.” She meant the Akula was minutes from catching the carrier when it got torpedoed.

  Drake drew a breath and stood up. “Luckily, close counts in horseshoes, hand grenades – and Mark 48 advanced capability heavyweight torpedoes.”

  Armour didn’t look inclined to argue with that.

  The noise in the tin can of CIC was starting to die down. Which pleased Drake, because he figured that was about all the time they had for celebrating. “Listen up!” he said. “We’re still under siege, we’ve still got an unknown number of heavily armed boarders – and we’ve got a lot of dead and wounded shipmates.”

  He didn’t say it, but his implication was clear:

  But now we’ve got a fighting chance.

  “What now, sir?” someone asked. And from those three words, it was clear that Drake’s heroic status – earned in so many victories and close calls across so many missions, surrendered when he briefly lost his mind – was back again.

  “Now… we go take our damned boat back.”

  Everyone got to work – with a purpose.

  As Drake and Campbell moved to a station to plan their high-level strategy, he saw a jaunty gleam in her eye. “What?” he asked.

  “I was just thinking that we’ve had worse than this.”

  Drake nodded. “Hell, yeah. I’d actually say the Third Battle of the JFK has been a cakewalk.”

  Campbell arched an eyebrow. “Third, sir?”

  “The mutiny and outbreak were really the first. We just didn’t realize it at the time.”

  Campbell grinned. “And the flight deck battle and storm of ten million dead was second.”

  “Yep – and if we survived that shit, I seriously doubt anything can kill this ship. Not a few dozen Russkies and a big tin phallus.”

  Campbell shook her head. “Though this shit does keep happening for some reason.”

  Drake shrugged. “Maybe we’ll finally learn some lessons. Right now—”

  “Yeah. Let’s go take our damned boat back.”

  Drake smiled at the LT. He wouldn’t take her on.

  * * *

  Completely slack-jawed, face misted with ocean spray from the fast-moving CRRC, Park watched the chain-exploding submarine – and the cannon-launched Spetznas guys – recede in the distance behind them.

  “Vulnerable to stuff like other subs,” Lovell finally answered. But he didn’t even look back. He was running them flat out, moving fast toward their next battles – and maybe even their last ones – all of which lay on land.

  And he was only looking ahead now.

  Leading Them Home

  Djibouti Airport – Main Terminal

  Misha lifted up the lifeless head of the Team 3 man from the blood-splashed tile floor. He had a small entry wound in the back of his helmet – but only an exit wound where his face had been. Misha had no idea who this used to be. It didn’t matter. His battle buddy one position over seemed to still have some features, but Misha wasn’t interested in seeing them. Instead, he looked up at Kuznetsov. “Any response from the others?”

  The captain shook his head.

  Whatever had befallen Team 3, it had hit them hard. And it taken them all down. Misha took some small satisfaction that they hadn’t died in the terminal, and had at least executed his orders to slip away and set another ambush at the hangars. He hoped they died out there, ideally holding up the assclowns who had his zombie.

  He intended to find out now.

  Two men appeared from down the corridor that led to the departure lounges, moving at a run. It was Badger and Warchild, who Misha had sent out to sweep the perimeter. Badger said, “We found Team 3’s vehicles. Tucked out of sight around the side.”

  Misha nodded and grunted. “Good. I’m sick of fucking walking.”

&nb
sp; In fact, they had run all the way from the destroyed bridge, albeit making excellent time. The two men he’d made carry the folding litter hadn’t enjoyed this process. But nobody had to enjoy shit. They just had to do it.

  “Don’t forget that,” Misha said, tossing his head at the stretcher.

  Then, hefting his weapon and heading out, and without looking back, he added, “RTO! Get me my hunting hawk…”

  * * *

  Nina grunted in approval as the tool she needed appeared like magic over her right shoulder. It was true Bazarov had an edge as an aircraft mechanic, not to mention attack helo back-seater – though she had marginalized him in that role more and more over time. But all things being equal, she was much happier having Vasily in her aircraft. First and foremost, he wasn’t a fucking whiner.

  But more importantly, he was a killer.

  Then again, it had arguably been Nina’s bloodlust and desire to do her killing up close that had landed them in this mess. She just hadn’t believed the enemy personnel in that SUV could have survived their tumble down into the river. And she definitely hadn’t imagined one of them would have the size, strength, or stones to leap up onto her helicopter and dump grenades into their one working engine. Then again, the man had looked to be the size of Misha, so maybe he also had equivalent strength.

  He’d proven beyond any doubt he had the sack.

  She made a mental note to look for him on the next battlefield. But that was only if they could get in the air and back in the fight again. Happily, their luck looked good. That big, smug son of a bitch had dropped explosives in both ends of her left-side turboshaft aero engine – in both the intake and the exhaust. The engine was a tough son of a bitch, but still the resulting explosions had badly deformed the fan blades on one end, and the low-pressure turbine on the other. It was a miracle Nina had been able to get them clear of the river valley and set down on flat ground beyond it. But she had.

  Shortly after, though, when they assessed the damage, they found fate to be on their side. The other engine, on the right side, which had been disabled by the anti-air missiles from the drone, had suffered all its damage in the middle – its compressor, combustion chamber, and compressor turbine basically destroyed. But both its fan and low-pressure turbine were intact. Now it was simply a matter of scavenging those parts from one engine and getting them installed on the other. The damage and deformity caused by the grenades was making this easier said than done.