Handon eyed him across the shimmering air over the fire. “What’s the source of your intel?”
“An informer in al-Shabaab, originally. Later, I saw it firsthand.”
“Elaborate.”
“I was senior officer at the Agency safehouse in Hargeisa.”
Handon’s eyes lit with recognition. “We were in your safehouse. It kind of burned down.”
“So they tell me. I was kind of knocked unconscious when it was being rocketed, and caught fire.”
“We also read your report.”
This bit seemed to surprise Zack.
Handon looked at Juice. “Getting data off burnt-up computers is part of that man’s job.” Juice smiled and waved at Zack.
“Fair enough,” Zack said. “But I was never able to update that report, for reasons that might be imagined. Never updated it with what I learned later.”
He paused to scan faces around the circle. “It was an al-Shabaab bio-terror attack, that much you’ll have read – a chimera virus, made of smallpox and myelin toxin. But what I only found out later was they’d been testing it on baboons out in the bush. And a pack of rabid dogs attacked this outpost – tore up the baboon, and later tore up the al-Shabaab guy watching it. He was next seen in a nearby village – eating the villagers. Other al-Shabaab guys restrained him and took him home.”
Henno shook his head. “Christ. So that’s how it all started. You’re sure he was the very first?”
Zack nodded. “With ninety-nine percent certainty.”
Handon said, “How do you know it’s in this basement?”
“Again, because I saw it.” Zack nodded at Baxter. “We both lived there, barely fifty feet from the thing, for months.”
“Wait a second,” Henno said. “Why were you living with al-Shabaab?”
Zack shrugged. “Not a lot of safe havens going at the time of the fall. Strange bedfellows. We finally escaped to join Triple Nickel. Godane was going to kill us if we stayed.”
“Sheik Ali Rage Godane?” Handon asked.
“Yeah,” Zack said. His expression said to Handon that he actually knew the man – and that he was a profoundly unpleasant piece of work.
“How long ago? How recent is your intel?”
“Six months,” Zack said. “But you have to understand how Godane felt about P-Zero. He believed the Apocalypse was God clearing the Earth of unbelievers – so Godane could lead the faithful in rebuilding the Caliphate.”
Henno grunted. “More God-botherers.”
“He also believed he was God’s instrument. Rather, he knew he was responsible for the plague – but thought this outrageous fuck-up on his part was some kind of badge of honor. He also believed the first dead man was a talisman – the source of his power. It made him unkillable. And made his control of al-Shabaab unshakeable.”
Handon said, “I think murdering all his rivals had more to do with that.” Unlike Juice, he hadn’t spent years fighting al-Shabaab in the Horn of Africa. But he knew the lay of the land.
Zack nodded. “You’re probably right. But it doesn’t matter what we think. Because Patient Zero was sacred to Godane. In his mind, it allowed him to keep control of his minions – so he kept tight control over it. Though it’s also worth noting that Godane’s dead now.”
Jake looked up and said, “We don’t know that.”
“What makes you think he’s dead?” Handon asked.
“Because I shot him,” Zack said. “With a minigun.” Suddenly, to the Alpha guys, Zack started looking a little less analyst and a little more operator. “But whether he’s alive or not, whoever’s still in charge in there, will be keeping P-Zero alive and well, and under tight control. Believe me.”
With a slightly sinking feeling, Handon realized he had no choice but to believe this. Because it was the only game in town. “Okay. So that brings us up to date. But the state of play now is—”
Jake picked up. “State of play is that the whole place is still heavily armed and fortified. Twenty-foot walls, guard towers, emplaced machine guns. Probably two hundred defenders left alive inside – with a shitload of ammo and explosives.”
“But also surrounded by—”
“Yeah – about thirty hectares of heaving dead. Including a lot of these new crazy-ass fast ones.”
Handon said, “And it’s been like this for the last six months – since that herd came through?”
“Affirmative.”
Henno cocked his head. “If they’re hemmed in that thick, how have two hundred of ’em survived this long?”
“Mad gardening skills.” The others turned to look at Baxter, who had been keeping his own counsel, and now still kept a poker face. “Plus significant stores of long-life food, scavenged before they got trapped. And several deep groundwater wells they dug along the way.”
“Okay, but how much longer could they possibly last?” Homer asked. “They’ve got to be running low on supplies.”
Handon waved this off. “That doesn’t help us. If they’re starved out a year from now, or a week from now, it’s still too late.”
Jake looked at him with narrowed eyes.
Handon said, “Britain probably doesn’t have a week.”
And they all knew what that meant: the world probably didn’t have a week.
* * *
The grim silence was interrupted by Noise returning to camp, carrying an armload of wild bananas, presumably picked outside the wire. Everyone turned to look at him.
He said: “I don’t suppose by any chance you have an electric blender in camp? And a kilogram or so of ice?” The looks he got from the others, particularly from Jake, answered his question. Handon remembered the Sikh’s stated position that health and wellness couldn’t take a back seat just because of the end of the world. Noise dropped the topic and just started passing out bananas.
“Okay,” Jake said. “Here’s what you need to understand. I lost nearly my whole remaining team, half an ODA, trying to get that thing out of there the first time. Our team captain got shot in the head, specifically making a run over open ground to grab it. And, aside from Kate, what you see here is everyone who made it out alive.”
“I’m sorry for your losses,” Handon said. “And I’m not here to tell you my guys are capable of what yours weren’t. I’m only telling you we have to make it happen. This is it. We’re probably only days away from losing the last non-overrun territory on Earth. But we’re also inches from producing a vaccine that can pull us back from the brink. My team fought through three million dead in Chicago to pull out the scientist who can do this. And he’s made it clear: a very early sample of the virus is the last piece of the puzzle. And he’s got to have it. It’s this or die. We’ve got to get it done.”
Left unsaid was: And you’re going to help us.
But Jake didn’t need to hear that last part. He got it. He visibly shook off the fatalism and despair that had grown on him like a dark coat over the last six months. He took a breath. “Okay. There is a bit of good news. The singularity around the Stronghold is relatively mild. It’s stayed below the level of their walls.”
Handon said, “Our experience has been that once they start coming, they don’t stop. The moans draw more.”
“Yeah, that’s been our experience, too. But there are exceptions. In this case, the singularity was actually drawn by the fight we were having inside the walls.”
Henno shook his head. “Not very clever, that.”
“Even less than you know,” Jake said. “That massive herd I mentioned, that swept all the local dead out? Yeah, that was on its way in when we conducted our assault. But they were holding one of our teammates.” He looked toward the sangar on the wire. “We had to get her out. Before the herd arrived.”
“Her – along with Patient Zero?” Henno asked.
“Yeah. That was the plan.”
Henno’s expression betrayed his dim view of which one they had emerged with.
Handon had to look away. He was thinking Henn
o just kept chafing his ass. He didn’t mind about his own discomfort, but worried about what this signaled – that trouble was still brewing in the team. And an ugly dominance contest was still to come.
Jake also looked away from his staring contest with Henno, and back to Handon. “Point being, the herd had so much momentum that the front edge of it drew the majority of those that came behind. Some were attracted to the firing behind the walls, and stayed, but most moved on. And al-Shabaab managed to get their walls repaired and hunker down – and stay quiet enough that the dead outside lost the scent, and calmed down.”
“But they didn’t leave, either.”
“No. I don’t guess those inside could be completely quiet. Or maybe the dead had the scent of them. There was a lot of blood on the ground when we left.”
Henno looked unimpressed. “It matters nought – they’ll perk back up fast enough if we come round.”
“There’s something else,” Baxter said. “Godane built an underground escape tunnel that emerges outside the walls. Trouble is – it doesn’t emerge far enough away. It’s inside the ring of dead. We know they’ve been sneaking people out quietly, at night, for recon and scavenging. So it’s at least possible to slip through.”
“That also doesn’t help us,” Handon said. “If they have a back way in, they’ll have it wired with explosives, so they can shut it – fast and hard. It would be a death trap for any invaders.”
“So what’s the plan, then?” Juice asked.
Yeah, Handon thought. What IS the plan?
But, instead of answering, he looked up at the sky as a fat raindrop landed on his face. The clouds had darkened and thickened up without anyone quite noticing. Within seconds, more heavy drops were falling, and it would be raining in earnest soon. The operators got up and gathered their gear.
“Figures,” Jake said, standing and letting the rain put the fire out.
“What figures?” Handon asked.
“We’re three-quarters of the way through what’s supposed to be the short rainy season. Normally it’s a lot of light, little showers. But, instead, this year, it’s rained like a sonofabitch, chucking it down constantly, all through the early part of the season. But then it was dry as a bone for the last two weeks.”
Juice looked up. The Horn of Africa was like that, always lulling you – then putting the boot in.
“Is that going to be a problem for us?” Handon asked. He knew rain and mist made it harder to see and hear enemy aircraft. But he wasn’t anticipating too many of those.
Zack answered. “Somalia, while largely arid, also has a lot of river valleys, of various lengths, running from the coast inland. Most are just dry wadis for much of the year. But the heavy rains lately, and before that in the long rainy season in spring, have caused a lot of foliage to sprout up – fast. Really fast, and thicker than I’ve ever seen it. Now we’ve basically got these long strips of oasis snaking through the desert – and they’re seriously heavy bush.”
Jake said, “Worse, the riverbeds will have dried and hardened again in the last two weeks. And now if a lot of rain comes down fast, which it looks like doing, it’s going to be flash flood city. A lot of those wadis are about to become serious terrain features.”
Handon filed that under transportation problems – basically, it made it harder to get around. But that struck him as way down on a long list of problems they had to deal with.
Everyone moved inside, to the biggest tent in camp.
And they got back to work trying to solve them.
Walk Through the Fire
Twenty Miles West of Moscow, at 2,000 Feet
The great barren expanse of western Russia spooled by invisibly beneath the Beechcraft King Air, all alone and wind-buffeted in the empty black void of the sky. No running lights illuminated the aircraft. No radio signals came or went.
A single carpeted aisle stretched the length of the cabin from the cockpit to the cargo area in the back. In the middle, in six rows of seats, one on each side, the twelve men of One Troop, 42 Commando, Royal Marines sat in silence and darkness. No interior lights lit the cabin, and the humming and vibration of the engines was the only sound – and nearly the only movement.
The men were alone with their thoughts, with their fears, with their memories and loss and all their regrets. And not least with the weight of what they had to do now. And the knowledge of what would be waiting for them back home in Britain if they failed. There would be nothing – nothing but death covering their homeland, from first inch to last. London overrun and fallen. Everyone they ever knew or loved dead. Or not even dead – worse. The weight on the shoulders of these twelve men couldn’t have been heavier.
In the front two seats, which due to chance or foresight faced backward, Major Jameson and Staff Sergeant Eli sat side by side, also in darkness and silence. But each was bearing an even heavier burden than the ten Royal Marines they led. Eli, though fatalistic at this point, and with an absolutely indispensable job to do as troop sergeant, seemed calm enough – head down, once again scribbling into the dirty, scruffy notebook he’d been carrying around with him ever since the fall.
Jameson, though, couldn’t make himself do anything but worry.
Because it was he who had made the decision to abandon his failing command of CentCom in London. And instead personally lead this hail Mary pass of a mission, this goal from midfield, to try to rescue the one man on the planet – if indeed he existed, never mind was still alive – who might be able to save Fortress Britain. Or at least keep London standing a little longer.
Oleg Aliyev. The man with the power to kill even death.
* * *
Those rear-facing front seats forced Jameson to look into the faces of the men, all those he was about to lead into what was almost certainly their last mission. Or surely their last into fallen Europe, at least. It also seemed to leave him looking into the past – at all the years and missions and struggle behind.
As well as into the faces of the men no longer there.
Those lost in the first days and weeks, killed or infected as they fought their way across Europe after the fall. Briars and Lewis, who fell in the brutal 360-degree fighting in Canterbury, with its crashing trucks, errant air strikes, and collapsing multi-story buildings. Johnson, Rottes, and Sergeant Elson, the grizzled and veteran leader of second squad, who had all walked through so much fire and come out standing, only to go down inches short of making it out of that overrun building in Dusseldorf.
And which Jameson should never have escaped himself.
The ten handpicked men facing him now had walked through fire and much worse, and were somehow still on their feet. They hadn’t had even one minute to rest, refit, or tend to their bodies or souls, between the harrowing Dusseldorf mission and the catastrophic outbreak at CentCom. They had literally run from their helos to the fight in the strategic operations center.
And now Jameson was asking them to put it all on the line one more time. There was Halldon, who had been critical to containing the CentCom outbreak. Corporal Nicks, one of One Troop’s youngest Marines and only promoted to fire team leader six months ago, to take over for a man who fell. Sanders – one of the quietest, but with a steely resolve and unflappable competence that kept shining, however bad things got.
And, most reassuringly of all, there was Colour Sergeant Croucher, Jameson’s new leader of first squad, who was said to have been around longer than the famous Royal Marine beret. He’d served three tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan when, in brutally contested Sangin in Helmand Province, he stepped on a trip-wire, and threw himself on a live grenade to save the three other members of his patrol. But, being as smart as he was brave, he did it backward – using his rucksack to pin the grenade, and tucking his legs up into his body. He was thrown several feet by the explosion, but between the pack and his body armor, he suffered only a nose-bleed and perforated eardrums. His pack was ripped from his back, which was good because the explosion breached a large lithium
battery inside, causing the whole thing to burst into flames.
That backpack was still on display in the Imperial War Museum.
Croucher’s rank and seniority meant he could have been senior enlisted man for the entire brigade. But he wanted to be out on the ground fighting the dead, not leading parade formations in barracks. Knowing that One Troop always got sent wherever things were worst, he put in to transfer – and then when the Channel was breached and everything began to fall apart, he had simply rocked up at CentCom, where he found them after their return from Germany. Jameson wasn’t willing to push Eli out of his role as troop sergeant, but he also wasn’t sending away a bonanza of combat leadership like Croucher. So he put him in charge of second squad, to replace Elson, who died in Germany. It was the best he could do, and the man seemed happy to be there.
On the other end of that spectrum of experience was Private Simmonds, who Jameson had picked for the mission because… well, he wasn’t even sure himself. Simmonds was steady enough, and he could shoot and move. But he was also personally responsible for the disaster at the CentCom hangar and landing pad. It had been his job to secure it for the incoming command element from Edinburgh, the one that was supposed to relieve them. And the result had been the biggest explosion – not to mention biggest fuck-up – that Jameson had ever personally witnessed. He was slightly afraid he was punishing Simmonds with this assignment. But maybe he was really just getting him away from the scene of his mistake, and his shame. A new start.
Although it was at least as likely to be the end of him.
Of all of them. They were flying non-stop from CentCom in London right to the edge of Red Square in Moscow. What would be waiting for them there was difficult or impossible to imagine. But, Jameson tried to reassure himself, it couldn’t be a whole hell of a lot worse than what they’d faced in this campaign already.
And maybe this would be the endgame.
The tortured decision Jameson had made to abandon his command and personally lead this mission was dereliction of duty, at best. But he had realized with terrible clarity that nothing he was doing as a half-assed strategic commander at CentCom was helping. But maybe, as a small-unit commander, he could manage to bring back this Kazakh and his purported zombie-killing virus.
ARISEN, Book Eleven - Deathmatch Page 3
