ARISEN, Book Fourteen - ENDGAME

by Michael Stephen Fuchs

  As he sat there and watched the spinning of the world slow, the one thing he didn’t feel was any regret – much less recrimination. Despite his shocked shouting at Charlotte just before and during her death-defying grass-mowing maneuver, he completely understood what she had done. More importantly, he knew exactly why she’d done it. It was for the same reason he was there in that cockpit with her in the first place, where he had come of his own free will. She didn’t have to explain anything, any more than he did.

  It was all the same thing.

  And it was the same when she got his hatch open and hauled his dazed and spinning body out of there, up top with her in the falling rain. Once he’d retrieved his rifle and scanned around them, he realized they were in a bit of a situation – and facing a hell of a run, or rather a run through hell, to get back home. And they had to go now – because the ground around them was getting more thronged every second they stood there. Right now he figured their odds of making it back alive were terrible at best. But they would never be better.

  But then he saw Charlotte standing on one leg.

  “Can you run?”

  “Hell, yes,” she answered without hesitation. But when she tried to put weight on the leg, her face exploded with pain, in a way she obviously couldn’t control – because she would have, if she could. “With a little help,” she added, looking him in the eye and smiling, rain drops dotting her eyelashes and dripping down her cheeks. “Thanks for coming with me.”

  Jameson smiled, and used her own line – the one she’d used when he thanked her for coming back to pull him out of the Gherkin. “Always, mate.”

  Then he picked out what looked like the clearest side, and started shooting to clear it a little more, Charlotte’s shiny new carbine pouring in fire alongside his own rifle. Then they both reloaded and climbed down into it, him first, helping her down after him. With her arm around his shoulder to support half her weight, neither of them could fight at 100% capacity.

  But they didn’t have any choice.

  They somehow kept the dead at bay, for a while, as they ran and staggered and shoved – and pretty quickly Jameson realized there were a lot more than their two guns firing to protect them. They were also being covered from somewhere above. He couldn’t hear it, but he could definitely see a lot of bodies falling that neither of them were shooting – and a lot of those were basically on top of them, particularly when they were reloading, and would have ended them.

  The covering fire helped and definitely kept them alive and on their feet longer than they would have on their own.

  But it wasn’t enough.

  They were only at the halfway point when things got too bad to go on. But that point was marked by the last marooned tank – the one whose barrel had taken them down. They had no choice but to cease their flight and climb up on it. If they stayed down on the ground another second, they were dead.

  In the end, they’d only made it halfway home.

  But when Jameson shoved Charlotte up ahead of him, climbed up after her, then turned to look back to the walls…

  He saw home was coming for them.

  * * *

  “Good man,” Baxter said, stealing half a look at Liam on the MG. While the young soldier’s fingers drummed on the pistol grip, trigger housing, and the trigger itself, he was still holding his fire. If they attracted a huge mob of the dead to the foot of their guard tower, the sniper OP, the two desperate helo-crash survivors out on the ground would never reach it.

  That Apache had definitely taken out a shitload of dead – first intentionally, and then less so, when crashing and tumbling. And an awful lot of the rest had followed the Gurkhas and tankers, and the sound of firing from the walls. But a crashing Apache wasn’t what you’d call inconspicuous. And there were plenty of dead to go around. If there was one thing this planet never lacked for, it was more dead guys.

  And Baxter only spared half a look for Liam because he was too busy firing – as was Kate, and also Elliot. The three of them were shooting suppressed, and they were all shooting nonstop. It was obvious they were the only chance the two survivors out on the ground had. Maybe no one else on the walls could see them all the way out on the right, maybe they just didn’t know they were there. Maybe it was that at first they were too busy pulling the Gurkhas back up, and then soon back at work fighting the dead before they reached the base of the walls again.

  Whatever the reason, it was all on these four now.

  But they weren’t going to be enough.

  Baxter’s heart sank when he saw the two climb up out of the mob and onto that last marooned tank. Because he knew there was virtually no chance of them getting off it again. It was clear the female pilot could barely walk – she’d been half carried that far as it was. And they’d climbed up and out because things had gotten too bad on the ground. And now they were getting worse – fast.

  “We have to go get them.”

  Baxter looked up. It was Elliot who said this. He’d paused to reload, but he was also moving around to the rope and pulley to their right side, the one that had been rigged for Zulu capture. There was an extra length of rope left over, which Elliot tied off and threw over the edge. Then he checked the original rope, which had a hook on one end, and the sandbag counterweights on the other, and was looped through the pulley in the middle. For better and worse, there was currently neither a tank nor a big pile of destroyed dead below their tower and section of walls – so the ropes looked like the only way down. And also the only way back up. If they got back.

  Kate looked at Elliot. “It’s death on a stick out there.”

  Elliot looked back at her, and then over at Baxter, his expression blank and inscrutable. He said, “That pilot saved my life. And, a few minutes later, she was willing to forfeit hers to go back to save the man out there with her now.” And then his expression filled with pain and dark memories in a way Baxter couldn’t interpret at all. “And I owe him an even greater debt than I owe her.” The young Para clearly had some history with the two stranded out there – even if Baxter couldn’t begin to guess what it was.

  But whatever it was didn’t matter. It couldn’t.

  “Oh no, man,” Baxter said. “Just sit your ass down. You can’t go. Our whole job is to keep you alive for later. You’re the only guy who can hit Foxtrots.”

  This seemed to give Elliot pause. But then he looked back out at the two stranded on the tank. “If you don’t go, I am.”

  Baxter looked at Kate. She was giving him a No fucking way, buddy look. But now Baxter’s own heart seemed to weigh a ton, trying to sink down into his stomach – as he remembered how he had fucked up before, accidentally shooting the Foxtrot that Homer had managed to infect, after such struggle, and nearly at such cost. They might all already be on the road back if he hadn’t fucked up so badly then.

  And he simply couldn’t do it again. He couldn’t let Elliot get killed – their new last best hope. As always, his job was to do his job, and not let anybody down. Only now his job was more important than ever before. And if he failed, he would be letting down everyone left alive. But to Kate he only said, “Fuck it. We survived out there once. And I for one don’t want to stand here and watch those two die fifty feet from safety.”

  “Goddammit.” Kate looked like she was going to blow a gasket. But there wasn’t time for it, and definitely no time to argue any more. “Well I didn’t save your ass last time just to let you die out there on your own now.” And anyway both of them knew perfectly well, and each knew the other was thinking it: Triple Nickel never left anyone behind – hell, practically the whole team had died getting Kate out of the al-Shabaab Stronghold. This was just how they rolled.

  And it was probably too late to change now.

  “Saving motherfucking Private Walker,” Kate muttered half under her breath, as she climbed up on the railing. She paused there, grabbed the rope with both hands, and looked back at him. “Earn this,” she said. “Earn it.” Her face looked like it was to
rn between a smirk and a scowl.

  And, knowing Baxter would be behind her, she slid down.

  Straight into death.

  * * *

  Now the roles were reversed – and Jameson and Charlotte were up relatively high, shooting to cover the two guys from the walls who had inexplicably dropped down into the shit, and were now fighting their way out to them. The good news from their point of view was that the area beneath the guard tower was fairly clear. The bad news was why – virtually all the local dead had been drawn by the Jameson & Charlotte Show. Jameson now wondered if he should have let her shoot at all, with her unsuppressed carbine, but she seemed so proud of the damned thing.

  Screw it, he thought. They’d barely made it this far with both of them shooting, and almost certainly wouldn’t have otherwise. Now they were shooting to cover the rescuers mainly because it seemed like the right thing to do, returning the favor. But also because it was possible to imagine that, just maybe, just barely, with four of them, they might somehow be able to fight their way back to the walls, all together.

  Jameson was also pretty sure at least one shooter was still covering them from up in that tower. And while he understood why the machine gun up there wasn’t engaging – none of them would get back up into the tower if it were swarmed – he had extremely mixed feelings about this strategy. Because none of them were likely to live long enough to have that problem.

  As the two rescuers got closer, close enough to be in the real thick of it, Jameson could now see one of them was a woman – and the other was rocking an MP7 machine pistol, just like Charlotte’s, firing full auto into the thick crowds of dead ahead of them.

  Shit, he thought, looking over at her. Like Charlotte’s. He’d totally forgotten about it. But then the dead stopped being at their feet, as the first Foxtrots found them – and they didn’t have a big problem getting up onto a Challenger turret, and didn’t need to pile up to do so. They basically just flew.

  Mentally begging forgiveness, as there was no time for permission, Jameson reached across and yanked the MP7 from Charlotte’s shoulder holster, flipped the fire selector to full auto, and started tracking incoming aerial threats. Both of them flinched and ducked under first one then a second Foxtrot, both peppered with 4.7mm rounds, coming down and bouncing on the hard steel canopy of the tank, shot to hell, but not shot to hell enough. Jameson emptied the H&K mag into them, kicked the bodies off into the heaving crowd below, stuck the MP7 in his belt, then brought his own rifle back up in a blur.

  And when he did, he saw the cavalry had arrived.

  “Come on!” he shouted at Charlotte, pulling her forward and handing her down to the two rescuers in the same motion – and as she slipped off the edge into waiting arms, he also managed to snag the other two mags for her MP7, from the other side of the shoulder holster. She hit the ground and put her arm around the shoulder of the young man there while the woman fired to protect them both.

  When Jameson straightened up, he could see that one shooter to protect them wasn’t going to be enough. The dead were coming back good and hard, including more Foxtrots. There was only one in overwatch now back in the tower. And Baxter and the limping Charlotte, like her and Jameson before, would only be fighting at half capacity.

  “Go!” he shouted, already firing way too close to the three on the ground below them. “I’ll cover you!” Baxter and Charlotte looked up at him, the latter with fear and defiance. Shouting while he shot, he yelled, “She’s the last living helo pilot! Get her the hell back!” Charlotte’s face said she wasn’t leaving, but she was injured, and Baxter was clearly stronger than her, and there was definitely no time to argue.

  “Right behind you,” Jameson said, to grease the wheels.

  He reloaded, set his feet to resume shooting – and then remembered those four grenades he’d nicked from Simmonds. They were still on his belt. He armed two, popped the spoons, then judged the distances while they cooked off – there was no time, but it was also no help if he blew up the people he was trying to save – and chucked them a little to their rear, one left and one right. They both went up, destroying some dead, drawing more. Then he resumed shooting.

  It started to look like the others were going to make it.

  * * *

  This is bad, Kate thought, firing and dropping mags, and wishing once again she still had her M4 instead of the SCAR. The better optics and ballistics didn’t help her, but bigger magazines and a shorter barrel definitely would have. Live and learn. Or die and learn…

  The fight back to the tower was definitely a lot dodgier than the fight out, though it did have the virtue of getting less bad as they went. She was also seriously glad they’d all gotten the vaccine shot, and sure hoped it had taken effect by now – because this was some way-too-close-for-comfort contact. But, as Baxter noted, the two crash survivors had been marooned little more than fifty feet from the tower – and little more than a lifetime later, they were back at it.

  When Kate spared a quick look up, Elliot was already leaning out and shaking on one of the ropes. “Hook in!” he shouted. Sure enough, there was a cargo hook on the end, but Kate didn’t have time to stop shooting and grab it. Luckily, Baxter did, looping it through the harness of the pilot. He then secured the hook, yanked on it, and resumed shooting himself.

  And then the pilot disappeared, shooting into the air above.

  And suddenly Kate knew what the sandbags were for.

  But she also knew there were only two little guys up there to haul the counterweights back up from the other side and reset them. And she and Baxter would be dead by then.

  “Go!” she shouted. “No discussion!”

  Baxter complied, turning and grabbing the original rope they’d slid down, climbing hand over hand, knees clamping on to try to support his loaded weight. He was clear of the ground surprisingly quickly, which was good because Kate had to go now, and as she did so hands grabbed at her legs and teeth bit down on her boots – and then into her leg, just breaking skin through the fabric of her Ghostex pants. She kicked the hands and mouths away furiously as she scurried upward.

  One second earlier, she’d had absolutely no idea how Baxter was climbing a rope at all in full combat kit – never mind that fast. And now she knew.

  Everything was pretty easy when you had no choice.

  * * *

  Elliot never stopped shooting. He couldn’t. He was also firing straight down the front of the wall, and so was Charlotte after she recovered from nearly being knocked unconscious in her collision with the pulley – the counterweight worked a little too well – but finally stopped to help haul Baxter and then Kate back up and over.

  Both were drenched in rain and sweat and utterly breathless, and both collapsed to the deck in piles of limbs and rifle barrels, chests heaving. They were done for, at least for the moment. Elliot spared a look back and saw Liam furiously hauling the sandbag counterweights back up, only finally pulling them over the edge.

  “Get on the MG!” Elliot said. Liam rushed to comply.

  When Elliot turned back to the railing, Baxter and Kate were still down on the deck – but Charlotte was leaning out over the railing, most of her weight on one leg, firing back toward where she’d come from. She was also talking on her radio, Elliot presumed to Jameson. He knew the Marines’ channel from his time with them, so flipped his own radio to it, and listened as he reloaded, and swapped his beret for his helmet.

  Then he started to climb up on the railing.

  Charlotte turned to look at him with slitted eyes.

  Pausing to look back at her, at first Elliot thought she must not know about his presumed importance, or else cared less about that than about her friend still stranded out there. But then he realized everything was written right there on his face, and she was reading it like a book. Yes – here was the guy who had knowingly left Jameson behind back in the Gherkin. And now he was going out to atone for that sin – even if it cost him his own life. Maybe especially if it did. B
ut whether it was love for Jameson, or respect for the course of action he was choosing now, Charlotte wasn’t going to stop him.

  On the other hand, Elliot knew Kate and Baxter sure as hell would. They’d just nearly gotten killed to prevent him going out there and to keep him safe. But for the moment they were still insensible down on the deck, so he knew he had to go – now. As he climbed up on the railing, he hit his radio.

  “Hang on, Major,” he said. “I’m coming back out for you.”

  “Don’t be stupid, mate. You fucking hate me anyway.”

  Elliot looked to his right at Liam on the MG, who obviously now understood what he was doing. “You can’t go,” Liam said. “They said we have to keep you alive.”

  Elliot smiled. “You want to keep me alive? Start shooting.”

  Eyes the size of saucers, Liam nodded, depressed his barrel as far down as it would go – and he opened up.

  Elliot paused at the top of the railing – to look down at what was waiting for him, to wait for Liam to clear his path a little… and to say one last thing to Jameson. He knew he wasn’t going to have time or breath to do it once he hit the ground.

  “It wasn’t your fault, Major, that artillery barrage – you did what you had to do. That’s all any of us have done, or can do.” Elliot knew now he had misjudged Jameson. He knew it when he saw the way Jameson sacrificed himself for the pilot. Hell, he knew it the instant he committed that terrible crime of leaving Jameson behind in the Gherkin. He’d been wrong all along, and he had to let his grudge go.

  They were all they had left.

  He started to lower his weight over the edge, and hit his radio a last time. “Maybe I do still hate you. But I’ve got to save someone before this whole mess is over. Looks like you’re it.”

  And he slid down into death – worse death.

  * * *

  Throttle control. That was what Baxter had told Liam, and he remembered it – to keep the lid on, and keep his cool, which had been hard to do while watching the original rescue mission foundering right below him. But now it had all kicked off again, and he didn’t hesitate.