ARISEN, Book Eleven - Deathmatch

by Michael Stephen Fuchs

  Gromov did the helo equivalent of stomping the brakes and twisting the wheel, radically reducing their airspeed and banking hard to the left, in an effort to miss whatever the ever-loving shit was exploding in the air in front of them.

  And as he did so, he saw there was something behind the explosion, coming in even faster.

  And it was whited out by the flash of some kind of weapon. And then a very bad sound came from the rear of the helo – and finally another aircraft blasted by way too close. And a warning klaxon sounded and a red light flashed from his control panel.

  He steeled himself to look down and see what it was.

  * * *

  Hailey’d had to get way out in front of the Orca to make this work. And then she came directly at them, head on. With the numbers provided by CIC, she had dialed in the airburst parameters for the missile, then set a timer to tell her exactly when to launch it.

  As she blasted straight toward the helo, and the seconds ticked away, she’d tried to calm her nerves by reciting a line of dialogue that seemed right for the occasion. In her best crisp tactical controller voice, she said: “Luke – you’ve switched off your targeting computer! What’s wrong?”

  But then she was out of time.

  She fired the missile. It slid off its rail, blasted forward – and exploded in mid-air ahead.

  The Orca did exactly as she expected, or at least hoped – it slowed and banked, both radically.

  And in the next fraction of a second, Hailey got her look. There was the tail rotor inside its housing. Not in full profile. But also not going by at 200mph in front of her, its relative lateral speed much lower. Not nothing, but lower.

  She steered into it as she triggered her cannon.

  She only got off about twenty rounds – less than a half-second’s worth – before the two aircraft had blasted by and out of sight of each other. And she figured three-quarters of them missed entirely.

  But the rest hit.

  * * *

  Captain Gromov swallowed dryly. Not because they had just lost their tail rotor. But because Misha was back.

  “What’s crackalatin’, playa?” he asked in that way of his.

  Gromov blinked once and tried to explain what he thought had just happened. But, mainly, he told Misha what the result was – total loss of tail rotor function. Then came the hard part: trying to tell Misha that they had to land. Or else die.

  Misha wasn’t interested. “No, you will do it big – and you will keep us in the air. My pimp hand is strong. Ponimayu?”

  “Yes, I do understand you. But I’m sorry, Polkóvnik…”

  That was Misha’s rank in the Russian Army – the equivalent of colonel. But no one gave a shit about rank in Spetsnaz, Misha least of all. Everything was strictly merit-based. Or rather brutality-based.

  Gromov finished his dangerous thought. “…this aircraft is not staying in the air. It is out of my hands now.”

  Misha pulled his gigantic Desert Eagle 50-cal – which looked less gigantic in his hands, versus in the hands of non-gigantic people. He put the yawning muzzle to Gromov’s helmet. And he hauled the heavy hammer back, cocking the weapon.

  Evidently that was all he had to say about that.

  Gromov swallowed. He hoped he had enough saliva left to say this next bit. “Look. We are going down. The question is how. You can kill me now – and we come down hard and fast. You let me land, and we will come down soft and fast. Or you make me keep flying… and we’ll go down hard and slow.” He swallowed again, without looking up.

  “I leave it to you.”

  * * *

  “Kickass,” Ali couldn’t resist saying, even over the open channel.

  Handon actually smiled – then squeezed Ali’s bicep, and patted Reich energetically on the shoulder. Then Muralles as well, so as not to leave anyone out. He hit his radio. “Thunderchild, great job.”

  “Roger that, Cadaver. Be advised, I am five minutes from bingo fuel, so am going to RTB. LT Morris, call sign Firecrotch, will be coming on station to take over.”

  Handon contained his amusement at the other pilot’s call sign. Though he really wondered how he’d got stuck with that… But he did smile again, as they were able to see, albeit way out at the edge of vision, the Russian helo going down.

  But it was where it was doing so that became Handon’s next concern. Stretching out ahead of them, in the northeast of central Somalia, a number of river valleys meandered in from the coast – or, rather, the rivers themselves meandered out to the sea. Three big ones in particular lay right across their flight path. And they were just as Jake had warned – large, lush, and strangely overgrown, especially surrounded as they were by semi-arid desert.

  And the Orca was already descending into the middle of the first of these riverine valleys – the biggest one.

  Spetsnaz, and Patient Zero, were disappearing into the bush.

  Ranger Up

  Somalia – Sool Region

  In the ZA, you rarely needed to pull over. So Jake just rumbled the shot-to-hell and apocalyptic-looking gun truck to a stop right in the middle of the wide track of mud that passed for a road in Somalia. Ordinarily this road would be pure dust. But the rains had at least cured that.

  The two-vehicle convoy was heading south, out of the Sanaag Region in the north that was home to Camp Davis, down into central Somalia, and toward the Stronghold – at high speed. But now all that speed bled off. Jake was driving the lead vehicle, so he didn’t need to ask anyone’s permission to stop, either. He just did it. The Land Cruiser rolled to a halt behind him.

  Ten seconds later he, Predator, Homer, and Noise were hunched over the hood of the SUV, plastic-covered map pack laid out in front of them – while Zack stayed on his minigun, watching the road ahead from the turret. In addition to getting briefed on what had happened at the Stronghold, they had just gotten the most up-to-date heading from the Seahawk, so they could maintain an intercept course with them, on the ground. Luckily, both the American and Russian helos were heading north, reducing the distance between them and the ground convoy.

  Predator wasn’t thrilled by the stop. He also figured consulting the map wasn’t why they had pulled over. He was right.

  Jake looked up at the others. “We have to go get her.”

  Pred rolled his eyes. “What, go back to the Stronghold? There is no Stronghold anymore. You heard Baxter yourself. It’s overrun, blown up, and burned down.”

  Pred had been monitoring the same channel. But from Jake’s expression, he realized he’d said the wrong thing. Because Jake’s teammate, Kate, was still back there. Then again, he didn’t care that much, so he just went on.

  “Even if we did go back, what are the odds she’s still alive? Or that we’d find her? And it doesn’t matter anyway. You heard it yourself – the salvation of the world just got swiped and is winging its way in our direction.”

  Jake didn’t look like backing down, and he also didn’t look like he was intimidated by Predator. He said, “Handon should have fucking listened to me in the first place. Dealing with al-Sîf was a shitty idea. Now you still don’t have Patient Zero, and I’ve lost Kate.” Jake had been trying to raise her on the radio ever since they got the news, with no success.

  Noise said, “Just trust in Ik Onkar, brother. Kate will be taken care of.”

  Now that pissed Jake off. He knew it was men alone who made all the evil in the world. And it was only the decisive actions of the resolute and the good who ever made anything better. “Have you looked around you?” he said. “Does it look like God is taking care of anyone?”

  Homer stepped in, hoping he could head off any more discord. Because if these two teams couldn’t work together, they were in big trouble. He also saw Predator checking his watch, and knew the big man had a point: they needed to get moving. To Jake, he said, “Look – I respect your responsibilities as team sergeant. But you’ve got to see there’s a lot more at stake.”

  Jake backed down slightly. Of course he di
d see that. He wasn’t an idiot, or unaware of his duty. He was just distraught. “I’ll go alone, then. Just give me one vehicle. We’ll split up. It’s a reasonable compromise.”

  “Not happenin’, man,” Pred said. “We need the redundancy, and we need the firepower.” He sighed loudly. “Look, dude, I know she’s your guy. But she’s just one guy.”

  Jake squinted up at him. “She’s not just one guy to me.”

  Both Jake and Pred were master sergeants, so it wasn’t clear who got to be in charge. But then, unexpectedly, Predator softened. He thought again of Cali – and it occurred to him there might be something more between Jake and Kate than just the job. He squeezed Jake’s shoulder. “I know how you feel, man. Maybe you’ll see her again. But right now, we need to get out there and save the world. C’mon, dude.”

  He left the rest unsaid – that they all had a job to do, and that even in the face of terrible losses they were expected to Ranger up and get it done. Pred knew Jake would get that without hitting him over the head with it. He did.

  They all saddled back up. The two big engines fired up, and both vehicles accelerated to 110mph and blasted south again.

  But as they did so, Homer silently wondered whether he could leave Ali behind, if the mission, and the fate of the world, required it. Worrying about this problem was, he was pretty sure, why she had broken things off with him.

  Maybe love was the enemy of survival.

  Jingle Bus

  Stronghold – Air Traffic Control Tower

  [Thirty Minutes Earlier]

  After al-Sîf hauled Kate back up into the guard tower, the first thing he did was check behind him. The GCS, which had been the source of the explosion, was missing its lid – plus much of what had been inside, namely a hardened laptop, second screen, controls, electronics rack, etc. But because the cover had been closed, most of the grenade blast had been contained, or directed in a harmless direction, namely up.

  This was particularly nice for al-Sîf and Kate, who had been down on the deck. It occurred to him for one second that his good deed – saving Kate from falling to her death into the swarm below – had perhaps saved his own life. But he didn’t give much significance to this, and he definitely didn’t dwell on it.

  Because not only was the entire Stronghold burning and being overrun all around them – but undead were also racing up the stairs behind them. Al-Sîf threw his shoulder into the door and got it closed and latched again, with no time to spare. It bucked with the impact of heaving bodies behind it. He spared a look over his shoulder and saw Kate – pointing her rifle at his face.

  He rolled his eyes. It seemed totally obvious to him that their only chance of survival lay in working together – or at least not fighting each other. And al-Sîf had an excellent nose for the requirements of survival. He might actually end up being the last survivor of al-Shabaab.

  But he wouldn’t have to survive long to do so.

  Moreover, he needed Kate, to connect him to the others – and to get out of Africa. He held his palms outward placatingly, then nodded at the heaving door against his back. “You can kill me,” he said, “but I do not think you will last long after that.”

  Kate shook her head, lowered her rifle, looked around – then grabbed what was left of the GCS, mainly the bottom of its case, and wedged it diagonally between the door handle and the floor. Al-Sîf took his weight off it. It looked like it would hold, at least for a little while.

  “So now what?” Kate said. They were basically trapped in the crow’s nest of a sinking ship. Every level below them was submerged under the rising tide of dead. She scanned the courtyard and walls behind her. No Americans, no Russians, and no more living Somalis that she could see. Sections of wall were still burning, and the one big downed section opposite them still admitting more dead.

  And the courtyard was still a mosh pit, with the entire zombie audience now trying to bum-rush the stage. They were racing into interior entrances all around the perimeter, the sounds of moaning and shrieking competing with the roar of the flames.

  “The escape tunnel,” al-Sîf said, pointing over the wall. “Look, the exit is clear.” And it was true – the suddenly opened plug of the Stronghold had drained the forest of much of the surrounding singularity. The perimeter was now in closer than the “secret” exit, which Kate had used once before.

  But she just pointed at the heaving door behind them, and then the heaving courtyard below, and made an annoyed face.

  Al-Sîf got it. Trying to fight their way down to the tunnel would be worse than the problem it solved. “Wait,” he said, leaning out and peering over the outside wall. The area below them was relatively clear. The dead had mostly been sucked around to either side to reach the big gap, directly opposite. There were still a few close by, in ones and twos, those too stupid to figure out how to go around, or too freethinking to follow the herd.

  Kate looked. It was doable. They could probably make it.

  “And from there?” she asked. You didn’t jump into the fire without a plan to get out again.

  Al-Sîf raised his arm and pointed – to the jauntily colored jingle bus still parked beside the airstrip. The area around it was also relatively clear, as was the route there. The wooden beams of the door behind them cracked as the weight and fury of dead bodies behind it increased. The pressure was building fast.

  “Rope?” Kate asked, scanning around.

  Shaking his head, al-Sîf just held out his hands again.

  Kate took them.

  * * *

  A twenty-foot drop wasn’t terrible, particularly with the Somali lowering her by the wrists to take eight or so feet out of it.

  Then again, Kate thought balefully, this is how it all goes wrong. She’d seen enough zombie movies and TV shows to know that sprained ankles were the number-one cause of death. Hell, in a world without sprained ankles, the ZA would probably be no more than a nuisance…

  Well, nothing for it. She nodded, they both let go, and she dropped down to the mud. Then she spun and brought her rifle up, instantly engaging the half-dozen or so dead in the immediate vicinity, spitting out rounds carefully and cautiously. Only the last couple even realized she was there before they were destroyed and on the ground.

  Kate pushed out a few steps and covered the area so al-Sîf could follow her down. But she also stretched out both ankles to check their range of motion, looking down gratefully at the ankle support of her Hanwag Special Forces GTX boots.

  Yeah, she thought. Never skimp on boots.

  She glanced up in time to see him finally climb out of the tower, finger-hang, and drop down beside her.

  Straightening up, he aimed his rifle – Kwan’s fucking rifle, Kate amended – and led them out at a run toward their ride. There was still a scattering of dead here and there, but perhaps because they were in frenzy over the al-Shabaab hot buffet inside, none locked onto them – no runners or Foxtrots did, anyway.

  They reached the bus alive, al-Sîf leading, head down, Kate scanning through all angles over her rifle behind him. He pushed open the door, climbed up the stairs, then dropped down in the driver’s seat – while Kate got the door closed, then swung herself into the first bench seat behind him.

  He reached for the keys, which were in the ignition.

  “Wait,” she said, grabbing his arm. “Where are we going?”

  “We need to follow your helicopter. So it can get us the hell out of here. Out of Africa.” He paused. “Where is it going?”

  Kate considered. “It’ll be following the Russian helo, I think. But I can find out exactly where. Or maybe even get us picked up.” She keyed her radio and hailed the team. But it didn’t even squelch. She reached over her shoulder to the long radio pouch on the back of her MOLLE vest, where she wore it to keep it out of the way.

  When she brought it around, it had an ugly bullet hole in it. “Goddammit,” she said.

  Al-Sîf started the engine. “I saw them go northeast.” And he rumbled them out of t
he muddy ruts beside the landing strip and started driving that way. And he couldn’t keep himself from smiling as he did. Because not only was he still alive, he was out of that goddamned Stronghold.

  At least he wasn’t going to die down in there.

  Kate looked forward as scattered but fat drops of water from low clouds fell on the windshield, beneath the row of colorful fringe and baubles that hung from the ceiling. She wasn’t smiling. It wasn’t that she was ungrateful to be out of the Stronghold. It was that she was now sharing the ZA with perhaps the very last man on Earth she would have chosen. But she exhaled and shrugged. At least she was alive. And she could always kill him later.

  The moaning, screams, and flames receded behind them.

  Hubris

  Nugal River Valley, Karkaar Region, Somalia

  As usual, Misha was first out, spilling out of the downed Orca almost before it had finished crash-landing, leading from the front. He stomped around the periphery of the clearing and secured the crash site – no dead in evidence, never mind living Americans – then set perimeter security. Finally, he went back inside to supervise the unloading of men and materiel.

  He also put Vasily up on top of the wrecked bird itself, on overwatch. Otherwise, he knew that crazy son of a bitch would want to go climb some damned fifty-foot tree, and they’d be all day getting him down. And Misha didn’t plan on staying here that long. Because losing the helicopter sure as hell wasn’t going to stop the progress of their mission. Maybe slow them a little.

  Captain Gromov had managed to put them down in something like a clearing. But the landing had been faster than it was soft – perhaps because of the delay with Misha pointing his pistol at his head. They’d clipped some branches on the way in and come down pretty hard and messy.

  Now, it looked like there were two casualties. One soldier in back had wrecked his back, compressed vertebrae probably, and couldn’t walk. The other was Gromov himself. His abdomen had been traumatized by his own flight instruments, and he was now probably bleeding internally. That bothered Misha less. Without the aircraft around him, he was of little value to Spetsnaz.