ARISEN, Book Eleven - Deathmatch

by Michael Stephen Fuchs

  The looks the two of them traded made it clear this left them both uneasy. Then again, they were alive. And they held the riverbank. And, much more importantly, Fick had reported by radio that they now – finally, after every conceivable setback – had Patient Zero.

  They’d done it. Finally achieved their mission objective.

  Now they just had to get it, and themselves, the hell out of there.

  But they could also hear short bursts of unsuppressed full-auto fire across the river. Handon was just about to hail Fick for a sitrep when he heard him shouting at him directly, from across the river. When he looked up, he saw the Marines had gotten the Russians’ lashed-together raft back in the water, and were rapidly hand-over-handing themselves across on the rope line.

  Fick pointed at his feet, at which lay a body bag. And he gave Handon a thumbs-up. But there were only two Marines on the raft.

  “Set security,” Handon said. “I’ll be back.”

  And he headed down the riverbank.

  To see if Misha’s body had been washed downstream.

  * * *

  Major Kuznetsov, commander of Team 2 and one of Misha’s more or less trusted lieutenants, looked over the top of his rifle, which lay on the hood of one of the vehicles in the convoy he’d just arrived in. He spared a glance at the burning lead vehicle, and lamented the stupid loss. Unlike his boss, he actually preferred to keep his men alive when possible.

  By radio, he instructed his men to probe the enemy’s flanks. He had a funny feeling they weren’t going to find any. This felt to him like a delaying or holding action – maybe only a one- or two-man one at that.

  He spotted a muzzle flash through the bush and dialed in with the optic on his own rifle. And what he saw wasn’t the shooter… but a black body bag laid out on the ground in front of it. And it was wiggling.

  He jammed his radio button. “Watch your fire, check fire! You’re shooting at the damned mission objective!”

  * * *

  Brady grinned as the incoming fire slacked off. He’d already been hit twice more, just creases really, but the additional blood loss wasn’t going to extend his lifespan any. He saw a Russian raise his head up and peer into the bush, spotting instead of shooting.

  Brady put one into his right eye and he went down again.

  Then he winged another guy who showed too much arm.

  After that, when more careful and measured rounds started coming in on him, he reached over, grabbed a fistful of body bag, and rolled the whole thing up on to his own back. The occupant of the bag didn’t seem to like this much, making muffled grunting noises and kicking.

  “Just you and me, buddy,” Brady said. “Lie still, dammit!”

  Then, peering out from under it, still grinning despite the pain, he changed mags and resumed firing.

  In short, controlled bursts.

  * * *

  Handon followed the river up to a tiny cove he hadn’t seen before. And, sure enough, there was a body in it – lying half in and half out of the water. But as soon as he approached, he could see it was way too small to be Misha.

  But it was a Spetsnaz guy. And he wasn’t dead.

  Half-drowned, only half-conscious – but alive. Cheek in the mud, the fair-skinned young soldier managed to lever his eyes open, and looked up at Handon like a drowned rat. He didn’t even have the strength to raise his head.

  Handon put his aiming dot on the man’s forehead. But he couldn’t make himself do it. They’d all done enough killing for one day. And they’d be long gone before this guy could recover enough to become a threat. If he’d had a rifle, it was gone now, so Handon reached to the guy’s chest rig, removed his pistol, and chucked it in the river. The young man closed his eyes again.

  Handon turned and jogged back up the bank.

  * * *

  Brady only stopped firing when a boot came down on his weapon from behind, pushing it into the mud. Then the bagged body was pulled off the top of him. Finally, he felt a muzzle press into the back of his skull – hard.

  Mustering the last of his ebbing strength, he grabbed the leg, applied leverage in a direction the knee didn’t want to go, and took its owner down to the ground. In another two seconds he had flipped around, got his legs wrapped around the man’s waist, and pinned him.

  “Ha!” he said, from his position of control. “BJJ forever, muthafuckas!”

  What looked like an entrenching tool entered his visual field from out of sight, completing a wide swing into his face. As he collapsed, his vision going black, the last thing he could hear was a Slavic-accented voice saying in English: “Your whore mother forever – muthafucka.”

  Then blackness.

  * * *

  When Handon got back to the foot of the bridge, the raft with Fick, Reyes, and their elusive and hard-won prize was just grounding into the muddy bank. He and Fick locked eyes, then clasped hands, elbows bent, just as they had at their last reunion on Beaver Island.

  “Brady?” Handon asked.

  Fick just shook his head.

  Handon put one boot on the raft and leaned over to pick up the bagged body, but Fick waved him off. He looked exhausted, but determined – and he hefted it over his own shoulder again, adjusted the weight, then looked to Handon.

  “So what’s our plan for getting the hell out of Dodge?”

  “Follow me.” Handon turned and led the reunited but degraded teams back into the forest to the south.

  Right back the way they came.

  * * *

  Major Kuznetsov’s convoy now consisted of six vehicles – two had been destroyed by strafing from the air, and the one hit just now by RPG fire no longer had a back seat, or the men who had been sitting in it, but the fire had been put out and it still ran. This convoy now rolled up to the river’s edge a few seconds too late to see Alpha and the Marines disappear into the forest on the opposite bank.

  But they were in time to see Misha and Vasily appear from out of the bush, both soaked to the skin. To Kuznetsov, it looked like they had both just swum the river. Until this second, he’d mainly been worried about explaining to Misha how he planned to get both teams out of there in only six vehicles. But it looked like this was it.

  The rest of Team 1 was dead.

  Kuznetsov figured the good news, from Misha’s perspective, ought to be that his convoy held another twenty-four fresh shooters – fully supplied, healthy and rested, and ready to roll.

  Misha had been massively reinforced.

  But as he stalked up to the convoy, leaving muddy footprints behind him, he asked only one question, his rumbling basso chilling Kuznetsov’s soul as it did no matter how many times he heard it.

  “Where is it? Where the fuck is the Index Case?”

  “We recovered it,” Kuznetsov said, pointing to a wiggling body bag in the open bed of the vehicle. Misha saw it lying next to a bound and bleeding U.S. Marine. He ignored the prisoner and yanked open the zipper of the bag.

  Inside was a Spetsnaz Team 2 guy – one who Kuznetsov hadn’t even realized was MIA. He was badly wounded, only half-conscious, and flex-cuffed at his wrists and ankles, with a wide strip of tape over his mouth.

  “Sons of cunts,” Misha said.

  Then when he looked over at the Marine, he saw he was also half dead – but grinning like he’d just fucked Misha’s sister. “Very clever, Jarhead,” Misha said, in English. He pulled his mammoth Desert Eagle and pointed it at the grin. “Any last requests?”

  Brady’s head lolled. “Wouldn’t say no to a coffee.”

  Misha squinted, admiring the bravado of this warrior, in his last minute on Earth. He snapped his fingers. “Runt! Coffee!” But then he remembered the Runt was gone, swept away into the ocean. He looked at Kuznetsov. The major shrugged, leaned into the front of his vehicle, produced a thermos, poured some in the cap, and put it to the lips of the prisoner.

  Brady took a sip, then swallowed with effort. “This is shit.”

  Misha shrugged. “Sorry.”

>   “Oh, well,” Brady said.

  “Oh, well,” Misha echoed.

  A single thundering pistol shot cracked through the valley.

  The Truth Hits Everyone

  Nugal River Valley, Near the South Edge

  Handon had to give Fick credit. The guy was two years older than even him, but there he was, keeping up with the column of younger guys on a loaded run – in his case, loaded with a body. Then Handon remembered an old joke: A friend will help you move. A good friend will help you move a body.

  Correction, Handon thought. Fick wasn’t just running with a body. He actually had the salvation of the world on his back. And Handon couldn’t think of anyone he’d sooner trust with that duty.

  Fick would bring it home.

  While everyone was sucking wind, at least they were sticking to the dirt road this time, and not having to fight through the bush. Their objective was simple. Get out from under the forest – the forbidding canopy that spread over the narrow mud track, dripping water on their heads from the day’s endless on-and-off rain.

  Sooner than they expected, the road emerged from the treeline, the forest opened to the thin gray light above – and also to the sight of an incoming helicopter, looking as if it would hit its mark within seconds of the shore team’s arrival. Slowing to a trot, Ali looked up at the familiar profile of the shot-to-shit Seahawk – and, sure enough, with the light behind it, she figured she could just about read a newspaper through it.

  “Tough old bird,” she said.

  Stopping and turning to cover behind them, Henno said, “What the hell happened to ‘Getting killed in a helo crash is no help to anyone?’” Handon had previously ruled out their use of this aircraft.

  Handon just shrugged. When there was no choice, there was no choice. It was also indicative of their reduced circumstances when he ran up to the cockpit window – and found only one pilot, and no other crew. Presumably every other Seahawk crew member had been killed, lost, or injured.

  “Thanks for coming!” Handon shouted at the pilot, whose flight-suit nametape read Cleveland.

  “No problem! Had to patch it together with baling wire, then start the engine with a big-ass external battery. But she might take off again. Once or twice.”

  Handon nodded. “Winch line work?”

  “Yeah, I think so. Why?”

  “We’ve got one more to pick up – and we’re going to need to winch him out of the bush.”

  Some part of Handon knew he shouldn’t spend the time and take the risk of going back for Juice. But he was still going to. Also, they could plug Juice’s mini-GCS into the APU on this aircraft, then remotely pilot the UCAV ahead of them as top cov—

  “Hey, wait – you said you started it with an external battery?”

  “Yeah,” Cleveland said. “Along with half the critical onboard systems, the APU is totally shot.”

  Son of a bitch. Handon shook his head.

  That meant they couldn’t power the GCS on this aircraft, and so couldn’t fly the UCAV from it. And as soon as they powered down the controller, the Russians would regain control.

  And blast them out of the sky like slow-moving skeet.

  * * *

  A hundred and fifty miles northwest of the Nugal River Valley, the combined Alpha and Triple Nickel ground convoy blasted through the Somalian wasteland – now at substantially higher than their maximum safe speed.

  Jake was driving the lead vehicle, the gun truck – and he was now a man on a mission. For a while, that mission had been to do whatever was required to help Alpha complete theirs – so he could go back and look for Kate.

  But then, with no warning, she’d popped up on the radio – alive, unhurt, and free. So now the convoy was racing toward her current coords, as best they could work them out. This also happened to be in the same direction as the last coordinates they had for Handon’s team, which made for domestic felicity between Jake and the others – they didn’t have to choose between the mission and the man.

  Squinting into the vast stretches of gray and brown, Jake suddenly found he could see a figure standing by the roadside.

  And she was holding out her thumb.

  * * *

  “Baxter,” Handon barked. “Front and center.”

  The rest of the team had already loaded up the Seahawk, so the young analyst had to hop back out on to the muddy ground. He nodded at Handon, cradling his rifle and looking alert.

  His own face expressionless, Handon said, “Juice has to remain at the crash site to fly the UCAV. Or the Russians will get it back.”

  Baxter squinted and visibly worked through the ramifications of this. “Can’t you just crash it?”

  Handon nodded. Smart kid. He had thought of that, too. But having the drone in the air to cover them was just too valuable. More valuable than Juice himself. And not only him.

  “Negative. We need it to cover our extraction. And now I need you to go back to the crash site and pull security for Juice while he flies it.”

  Baxter didn’t need much time to work out the ramifications of that. Basically, he was being spent – in service of the mission.

  And he was being left behind.

  For some reason, he thought of the quote by science fiction author Robert Heinlein: “Duty is a debt you owe to yourself to fulfill obligations you have assumed voluntarily. Paying that debt can entail anything from years of patient work to instant willingness to die.”

  And this was his instant. He just hadn’t seen it coming.

  “Roger that,” Baxter said. “I’ve got it.”

  Handon clapped him on the shoulder. “Can you find your way back to the crash site? Or do you need GPS coords?”

  Baxter shook his head and pointed over Handon’s shoulder. There was still a faint column of smoke rising over the forest. Handon nodded and clapped his shoulder again. Then he climbed on the helicopter, and it lifted off into the sky.

  Baxter stood and watched it go for a few seconds.

  * * *

  Handon unslung his ruck and went straight to the cockpit, squeezing in and taking the co-pilot’s seat, then put on an ICS headset. But before he could issue instructions, the pilot was already talking in his ear.

  “Handon, listen – the Kennedy is in play.”

  Handon’s eyes went wide. “What?”

  “She’s been boarded – and is in danger of being taken. Last I heard, Russian commandos held half the critical stations on the ship, and have the other half under siege.”

  “I need to talk to Abrams,” Handon said, reaching for the radio.

  “Not happening,” Cleveland said. “Commo with the ship – CIC, PriFly, everything. It’s all out. The attackers took down the whole telecoms array over the island. Nearly took me out with it.”

  Christ, Handon thought. And I thought we had it bad.

  “So my question to you now is this,” Cleveland said, taking his eye off the sky and his controls, and pinning Handon with his gaze. “Where the hell are we going?”

  Handon told him.

  But as he did so, he wasn’t thinking of their destination, or even of getting Patient Zero safely there. Instead, he was thinking about Dr. Park, who was still back on the damned carrier. The vaccine wasn’t complete, so he was still indispensable. Moreover, Patient Zero didn’t have a whole hell of a lot of value without him.

  What if the carrier fell? And Park with it?

  He reached into a pouch and dug out his satphone.

  * * *

  When Predator saw the way Jake hugged Kate, he knew he’d been right. This was not merely a working relationship.

  Well good for them, Pred thought.

  He was glad Jake had his person back. But now they had to get moving again. Before they could saddle up, though, a call came in – on the set radio in the gun truck. Jake climbed into the driver’s seat and took it, while Pred and Homer leaned in and listened.

  After he signed off, Pred said, “Okay. We turn around and head northwest, back toward Lemon
nier – and Djibouti Airport.”

  “What?” Jake said. “Handon just said head for the coast.”

  Pred shook his head. “No. That was a dodge. He used a duress word. The Russians must have hacked our comms.”

  They loaded up, and the two vehicles pulled wide U-turns, heading back the way they came. This time the SUV was in the lead, Predator pushing them to an unsafe speed. Because he was pretty sure Handon’s last instruction wasn’t code – but absolutely true and literal:

  “Haul ass. Because you know we can’t wait for you.”

  * * *

  When Handon slung himself back in the main cabin of the Seahawk, he saw Henno giving him a look. And he was pretty sure it was about leaving Juice behind, and sending Baxter with him. But it was different from his usual Henno looks. On the surface, it was blank and stony. But the subtext was clear:

  So you’re finally getting it. Better late than never.

  As Handon lowered himself down to the deck, he thought sadly that maybe he was. And what he was getting was this: that everyone was expendable. As was, perhaps, their humanity – even their immortal souls. Nothing mattered but the mission.

  Maybe that was just the truth of life in the ZA.

  And eventually, Handon thought, the truth hits everyone.

  “Bad news,” Handon said to Henno, and to the others. “The Caravel is burning.”

  Henno squinted. “You’re joking. The Kennedy?”

  “Wish I were. Spetsnaz are crawling all over it.”

  “How the hell do we get back to the Old World, then?”

  Before Handon could answer, Ali asked, “You get through to the convoy?” The look in her eyes said she was thinking of Homer.

  Handon waggled his team radio. “Not on this. Out of range. Had to use the helo’s radio.”

  Ali tilted her head. “That secure?”

  “Nope. And I can’t rekey it without Juice’s keyloader.”

  Ali just shrugged, tilted her head back against the bulkhead, then shut her eyes. She just had to trust that Handon knew what the hell he was doing. If he didn’t, they were all screwed anyway. Racking out, she elbowed for space against the two big lummocks, Henno and Reyes, on either side of her.