* * *
Henno was only halfway to Handon’s shed when, preparing to hurdle another of those holes in the ground, he saw Handon pop out of it, rifle to shoulder. He’d repositioned himself there in the seconds after Henno silenced the weapon that had been turning his concealment transparent.
Henno dropped down in beside him, Handon taking a few rapid but aimed shots to cover him. But suddenly an insane amount of fire was coming in on them – most of it from a machine gun in one of the guard towers, which had zeroed them and now went cyclic. So they both indulged the better part of valor and pulled their heads down where they were more likely to keep them. At least until the MG chewed through all the dirt between it and them.
“Who’s in the goddamned helicopter?” Handon asked.
“Sodding Spetsnaz. Squad-strength.”
“What?” Lips parted, Handon tried to make sense of this impossible fact. Tumblers turned in his mind as he re-evaluated everything he thought he knew about the tactical situation, in light of this new fact. Al-Sîf hadn’t double-crossed them. Somehow the goddamned Russians had found them. But why, in God’s name…?
“Where’s P-Zero?”
“Couldn’t get to it. Still on the ground last I saw.”
Handon flashed back to his game of chicken with that transport helo. And then the last tumbler clicked. He and it had been headed toward the same spot. This couldn’t be happening. But all kinds of shit kept happening lately that couldn’t happen.
“Where’s Baxter?” Handon asked, finally.
“I left him in the other bloody hole.”
* * *
The Spetsnaz team pushing out on the ground shot, moved, and communicated with supreme skill and unit cohesion – and raggedy militia guys fell from the walls like gunshot-victim rain. There were enough of them up there that occasionally one would score a hit on a Russian. But they must have been either body armor hits, or minor wounds to extremities, because the Russians simply didn’t appear to mind. It was like they were all playing paintball – and also cheating, unwilling to call themselves out when hit.
Getting shot didn’t stop them, or even slow them down.
And as those dozen shooters pushed out their salient in front of the helo, one of them moved to the front, leading the others with total disregard for incoming fire or his own safety. He carried a compact assault rifle, as well as some kind of rifle-sized pistol in a chest rig, but he wasn’t firing. And he was clearly bigger, meaner, and even more fearless than the men he led.
Leaning forward, he powered straight up to Patient Zero, picked it up, and tossed it over his shoulder. He and his supporting team did this all so efficiently that it was a done deal before Ali even realized his plan. She’d been holding her fire while trying to work out the new tactical picture – and also because the Russians were doing excellent work degrading al-Shabaab, work she wasn’t sure they wanted to interfere with.
Somehow, it had just never occurred to her that anyone else would also be looking for Patient Zero – never mind stage an elaborate ambush of their handover to get it. Cursing herself for a fool – and, worse, a slow-moving one – she sighted in on the leader. But by then he had turned away, and started bouncing off at a run – that body bag taking up half her sight picture, its torso and head shielding the man carrying it. She couldn’t risk the shot. Not from an evasively jigging helo.
And as her finger twitched on her trigger, she felt someone big and warm at her shoulder – it was Juice, stepping up beside her in the open door. He was still dealing with radio traffic – “CIC, Cadaver, wait out,” “Thunderchild, make your altitude five-zero-zero and stand by” – but as Ali looked over, he pushed his chin mic away and stared at the last steps of the man walking off with their body.
And she heard him breathe a single word: “Misha.”
Before she could ask who the hell Misha was, she could see the leader stomping back up to the helo, and making a whirly motion with his index finger, which caused his team to collapse back on him. And just before he disappeared around the side of the bird, not even looking back, he tossed a pair of grenades over his shoulder, like a parting Fuck you – and then stuck his hand up over the same shoulder, showing the bird to anyone watching.
Ali shook her head at the sheer balls on this guy. Yeah, she thought. That’s precisely what it was – a parting Fuck you.
But they hadn’t parted yet. Putting her eye back to her scope and leaning out, Ali shot the two rearmost guys in their column before they reached the cover of the helo. And those guys definitely went down. Ali didn’t shoot paintballs.
Not pausing even a second, she started putting fire into the engine cowling between the helo’s airframe and rotors – trying to disable the damned thing before it could get off the ground. As she shot, she shouted at Kate and Juice to do the same. But even as they started pouring fire in, the Orca lifted off – Russian helos not being notoriously vulnerable to small-arms fire. Its engines whined as it turned and angled away, showing its ass to the Stronghold, and to Alpha.
But as it spun, and the previously dark side came into view, Ali could see a single rifle barrel emerging from it. And as the Orca rose over the walls, that single shooter swept and fired, knocking four al-Shabaab fighters off the wall – all in two seconds, and with perfect accuracy. And that was despite doing it from a shooting platform moving on all three axes.
And Ali knew in her gut exactly who that was.
And if she was right, that meant he had not only made four flawless shots from a twisting, climbing, accelerating helo – but he had done it with a goddamned bolt-action rifle, an SV-338 Lapua Magnum. Which meant he’d had to manually cycle it every time, loading a new round, sighting in, acquiring, and engaging – all in a half-second.
Which was just showing off.
Man, I hate that fucking guy, Ali thought.
But as the Orca finally disappeared from sight, flying low over the bush, whisking away both Ali’s nemesis and Juice’s, not to mention their mission objective, the last thing to occur to her actually wasn’t about her old pal the tattooed sniper, but about the rest of them – the assaulters, and their leader.
None of the Spetsnaz shooters on the ground had gone back for the two men she shot. She could see them still lying right where they fell. Now, Ali knew these guys were dead – because she knew exactly where she’d shot them. But their teammates couldn’t have known this. And they didn’t even go back to check.
They just left them where they lay.
And this, more than anything else, made Ali very uneasy.
Safety First
Red Square – Southeast Edge
“What the bloody hell is that nutter up to?” Eli asked Sanders in a barely audible whisper. True to phlegmatic form – and perfect for the environment – Sanders only shrugged. But just when Eli was about to either hail Jameson or go look for him in person, the shadow of the officer appeared on top of the tank again, slithered off, and dashed back to the edge of the square.
Jameson cast around, and then pointed behind Eli. The glass of the storefront behind them was totally missing, and he motioned his senior NCO inside. They quickly cleared the room, then had a rapid whispered confab.
“Well?” Eli asked.
Jameson shook his head. “Nothing. There’s no one there. Found the radio Aliyev must have used, though it was dead. There was also a chem-light.”
“Still lit?”
“Faintly.”
“So at least he was there. The question is where the bloody hell did he go? It’s not like we can just ring his mobile.”
Jameson exhaled. “I think he got pulled out.”
“By who?”
“There’s a trail of 7.62 brass leading away.”
“Leading where?”
Jameson pointed over Eli’s shoulder. “Looks like that way.”
Turning, Eli could see a large stone building protruding out into the square on the other side, about halfway up.
Jameson s
aid, “Bring the men inside, clear the building, seal it up – and then strongpoint here. I’ll take one man and follow the trail.”
“Yeah,” said Eli, “and that man is me. Not letting you out of my sight again. Croucher can handle things here.”
Jameson couldn’t argue with that. Croucher could probably do both their jobs – at once. “Let’s bring one more.”
“Sanders.”
Jameson nodded, not having to ask Eli’s thinking.
Sanders could damned well keep quiet.
* * *
The three Royal Marines ended up practically having to crawl the entire width of Red Square. The trail of bullet casings did appear to lead toward the big stone building – but they couldn’t assume it did, so needed to actually follow it, rather than skirting around the edges of the square again. Whoever had left them obviously felt no need to slink, but had marched straight through the middle, standing tall.
It had clearly been a patrol in force.
But while those guys, whoever they were, had shot their way across, Jameson’s team was in no position to do the same. Instead, they followed the trail for about twenty yards, then dropped down and hugged cobblestones when the dead got too near, waiting for them to wander off again. Then they did it again. It was painstaking movement, not to mention nerve-wracking and dangerous.
When they reached it, they found the imposing marble building itself surrounded by a single chain and a low stone wall. Jameson led Eli and Sanders up and over both, then finally up against the smooth red marble of the building, around its left side. When they had been in front, Jameson had seen five huge Cyrillic characters over the entrance: ЛЕНИН.
Now, as they huddled up and regrouped, Jameson mentally tried to unpack what he’d seen. “Fuck me,” he whispered, barely audible. “I think this is Lenin’s bloody tomb.”
“Shh!” Eli hissed, pulling the other two down to the ground.
It took another five seconds before Jameson could make out what had spooked his troop sergeant.
Voices.
As annoying as the dead were, they never spoke.
Jameson got down flat on the deck, pressed his cheek into the stone, and stuck his head around the corner at ground level – just in time to see two people, living ones, walk up to the entrance and mount the stairs. They were both armed and in uniform, clearly soldiers – and they looked squared away and operational. And while they moved tactically and wore NVGs, neither saw Jameson’s head peeking around the edge of the building.
He said a silent prayer of thanks – then a second one, to cover what he was about to do next. Pulling back under cover, he unclipped his rifle and handed it to Eli, then dashed forward over the low wall that ringed the building, rolling himself silently over it – all the while telepathically hearing Eli shouting at him about what the hell he thought he was doing.
The answer was: putting himself in position to see what the two newcomers did next. Because he had to know.
He low-crawled around the corner of the wall and stuck his head up again. His prayer must have worked because the first thing he saw was one of the two men swiping what looked like a keycard, while the other faced out and pulled security. But the door immediately opened and the outward-facing one was already turning around. He missed seeing Jameson by a fraction of a second.
They stepped inside and pulled the door shut behind him.
Jameson crawled forward far enough to verify that this same door was where the trail of 7.62 brass led. He couldn’t even begin to imagine what was inside.
Other than Aliyev.
Their target was almost certainly in there.
* * *
Jameson silently cursed himself for not bringing four men – because he needed to leave someone to keep eyes on this structure and its entrance. But he was absolutely going to need Eli to talk through what they would do next. He hissed instructions to Sanders – who didn’t seem to mind staying alone – then grabbed Eli, and the two of them made their way back.
When they reached the front of the building One Troop had been left to strongpoint, they instantly saw that it had been done right. For starters, the smashed-out windows had been boarded up with what looked like scavenged plywood.
“Wonder where they found that?” Jameson asked Eli, as Simmonds opened the front door to admit them.
Eli snorted. “I wonder how the hell they nailed it up without making noise.”
“The colour sergeant’s up on the roof,” Simmonds said, shutting and locking the door behind them. “Stairs that way.”
In another minute, the two leaders had climbed the five flights to the roof, finding a Marine strongpointing at every other level. And up top they found Sergeant Croucher, peering across the square with a pair of night-vision binos. Also there was Simmonds, who as most junior had the unfortunate duty of humping their long-range radio. Jameson and Eli exchanged impressed looks. Security, surveillance, command, comms – everything was totally squared away. It was practically a forward operating base already.
When they gave Croucher a job, he did it.
Jameson leaned in close to Simmonds and said, “Raise Group Captain Gibson and update him on our status and location.”
“Sir,” Simmonds said, nodding, and pulling the phone handset from his pack.
* * *
Five kilometers to the north, Gibson answered the radio call – on the surface, to a casual listener, he spoke in his usual jolly tones. But there was a cold ribbon of pain and fear underneath. His face was pale and dotted with sweat.
“Gibson here, go ahead.”
He listened, nodded, and acknowledged the transmission. But when he opened his mouth to speak again, the button on the hand mic got released, and it was yanked away from his mouth. And what was left, nearly pressing against his mouth on the other side, was the end of a long suppressor, threaded into the barrel of a big and menacing MP-443 Grach 9mm pistol, with a 17-round magazine. The person holding the pistol wasn’t big, but she was at least as menacing. She had the hammer back, and her gloved finger curled around the trigger.
She put her thumb on the hammer and released it by pulling the trigger, lowering it with her thumb. That it was still pointed at Gibson’s face while she did this was deeply unreassuring to him.
“Safety first, kids,” Gibson said, trying to grin, and failing. He was having to work too hard at his breathing – through the pain.
“Shut the fuck up,” Lyudmila answered in English.
Replacing the pistol in a chest holster, she nodded to the two men holding the pilot from either side, pressing his back up against the plane, then switched back to Russian. “You two stay with the shooting range marshal here. While we go mop up the rest.”
The two Spetsnaz Alfa Group operators gripped Gibson’s upper arms and straightened him up, as he held his right hand, bandaged and bloody, with his left. His rifle lay in the grass where it had fallen.
The twelve-man Alfa squad had come in fast, hard, and silent – but even with so much open space around the plane, Gibson still hadn’t seen them until they were nearly on top of him. He’d snatched up his L22 carbine – but hadn’t even gotten it to his shoulder before he’d been shot. The team leader, this woman with the viper glare, running out in front of her men, had shot him in the hand, right in the center of the palm. With a single rifle shot. While running flat out. From thirty meters out.
Now this terrifying woman hefted her AK-12 with its square holographic sight, textured polymer mag, vertical foregrip, tactical light and aiming laser – and underslung grenade launcher – and moved to lead her team out again.
Straight back to Red Square.
Dark Night of the Soul
Red Square – One Troop Strongpoint
Jameson and Eli had retreated off the roof and back down to the nearly pitch-dark ground floor, where they could speak freely and debate what the hell they were going to do now. There was every reason to believe their mission objective, Aliyev, was now being held inside L
enin’s tomb. And the patrol they’d seen go in there said he, and that building, were well guarded and defended.
“Okay,” Jameson said. “What’s your take on that patrol?”
Eli didn’t hesitate. “Dark gray jumpsuits, advanced weapons and kit. Spetsnaz, I reckon.”
Jameson nodded. “Yeah. My take, too.” And also what he was afraid of. He’d been hoping Eli would reach another conclusion.
“And right here in the government sector? Maybe Alfa Group.”
Jameson exhaled mournfully. Otherwise known as Spetsgruppa "A", Alfa were the elite counter-terrorism task force of Spetsnaz – which had operated under the direct control of Russia’s top political leadership. Before the fall, they had been Putin’s loyal killers – the unit who responded to terrorist acts like the Moscow theatre hostage crisis and the Beslan school massacre. They were incredibly serious and dangerous operators.
Jameson said, “And we have absolutely no idea how many are in that building.”
“Tomb, you mean.”
“Yeah – ours, very likely, if we go inside.” Jameson sighed again. Having virtually zero intel on what they were facing, the twelve Marines of One Troop could all be killed in seconds if they ventured in there. But they also couldn’t leave without Aliyev. Everything depended on it.
These facts radically reduced Jameson’s space of options.
* * *
Dark night of the soul.
That’s what Jameson faced now, alone in the empty ground floor of their temporary refuge. He’d sent Eli back up top to work with Croucher on developing a plan of direct action.
“Plan based on what?” Eli had asked.
“Based on our total lack of intel. It’s CQB – free-flow through an unknown enclosed structure. Unknown enemy numbers and disposition. And one hostage. Start with that.”
Eli had nodded and left.
Then Jameson relieved Thomas and went on stag himself, guarding the front door. He needed a few minutes alone.
And now he very definitely was alone – physically, spiritually, alone with his doubts, his fears, and his demons. Mainly, knowing that he alone was going to have to make this decision. Because there was no one else.
ARISEN, Book Eleven - Deathmatch Page 12
