ARISEN_Book Fourteen_ENDGAME

by Michael Stephen Fuchs

But now, with this one final act, by getting another young officer – or at least a junior and inexperienced one – LT Wesley, the hell out of there, and staying back to die holding the line, as he properly should… Fick felt he had finally gotten it right.

  And maybe even expunged his sin.

  His soul was clean. And now he could go home.

  The door started heaving again, and Fick had to put his back into the barricade to resist it, his old and tired legs threatening to buckle. He picked up the .45 again with one hand and pointed it at the crack.

  “My turn,” he said. “Coming to join you, brothers.”

  Something cracked and crashed behind him, both close and loud – and when Fick looked over his shoulder, he saw what looked like a Bobcat shovel tearing the inside doors right out of their frame. When it had pulled them clear, a small knot of four RMPs rushed in, grabbed him by both arms, and hauled him flailing out into the prison yard. Before he’d even hit the wet dirt on his ass, he saw the second Bobcat, both of them lighting the rainy scene with their working lights, rushing forward with a gigantic shovelful of earth.

  The shovel tilted forward, dumping its contents in through the torn-out doors on the inside of the wall. As it pulled back, the first Bobcat was already coming in with another shovelful, and rammed that one in there as well. In another thirty seconds, the whole security room was filled with what had to be a good couple of tons of earth. It had been filled nearly completely in. Fick looked up to see a man standing over him.

  That man was LT Wesley.

  “Right,” he said. “That should hold a while.”

  Fick worked to speak. “What the hell?”

  Wes nodded. “Just moved a couple of holes. Ramp, really.”

  Gaze panning, Fick could now see there was a ring of RMPs standing in a semi-circle around him. “Schmuckatelli,” Fick said. “You came back for me.”

  “Absolutely. Sir.” Fick opened his mouth to yell at him, but the RMP’s grin said he was intentionally winding him up.

  “And Lemaire,” Fick said to the man beside him.

  “You remember my name.”

  “Sure I do. Why the hell wouldn’t I?”

  Wesley reached down, clasped Fick’s hand, and hauled him back to his feet.

  “Come on,” Wes said. “We need you.”

  * * *

  With his half-functional leg, Handon didn’t have the easiest time keeping up with the two adrenalized ammo bearers as they sprinted through the totally blacked-out corridors of the prison. But it was hardly the first hard run he needed to not fall out from, and in a few minutes they were inside the armory.

  It might have helped that he was the only one of them who had a light, the Surefire GX2 from his belt, which he now used to light his way to a weapons rack on the far end of the big room. He mainly found a handful of British L85s, which he didn’t enormously like the look of. But at the very end was a single C8 carbine, which was the Canadian-manufactured AR-15 platform used by the SAS – including Henno.

  Taking it off the rack, Handon smiled, wondering if somehow Henno had left it here for him. It wasn’t his good old HK416, but it wasn’t a million miles away either, basically indistinguishable from an M4 – and it would do. He went back to the entrance where he’d seen the bodies of two RMPs lying against the wall, the nearby floor stained with blood from where they’d been dragged out of the way. He got the tactical vest off one dead man and shrugged into it, then took his rifle sling. As he attached it to the C8, he saw the two ammo bearers coming out from an aisle of shelving, each carrying another heavy crate.

  “What have you got?” he asked, looping the nylon through the sling mounts on the C8.

  “Rifle magazines,” one said.

  “Light machine-gun belts,” said the other. “Five-five-six.”

  “Put those down,” Handon said. Despite having no visible rank insignia, and these guys having no idea who the hell he was, they complied, so he figured his Sergeant Major voice must still be working. As he went to the first crate and started filling the pouches of his new vest with mags, he said, “You. Go and pull out all the linked seven-six-two you can find.” The man nodded, turned, and left. “You. Think there’s any forty-five ACP in here?”

  “Maybe. I know where to look, at least.”

  In four minutes, there were four cases of 7.62mm stacked in the middle of the floor – evidently the last in the armory – and Handon had all of his pistol mags refilled, from the four lonely boxes of .45 rounds at the very back of the last shelf.

  “Come on,” Handon said. “Carry.”

  The manner of the two ammo bearers as they rushed to comply, hefting the four heavy ammo cans, said they not only knew Handon was in charge. But also that they felt a lot safer with him than on their own.

  As they turned to the exit, the lights came back on.

  * * *

  Two Bobcat earth-moving tractors, laden with piles of sandbags, rumbled over the black, wet, open terrain of the Common through the rain. They were driven by the two Royal Engineers – with Fick, Wesley, and half the QRF riding them like bulls, all of the riders trying to shoot straight despite tearing across the uneven terrain at Bobcat top speed.

  When they reached the lonely structure of the power generator, no longer swarmed by dead because it was no longer making noise, the passengers leapt off and formed a security perimeter as the sappers drove both tractors into a V formation on the side with the exposed diesel engines.

  Then they jumped off, pulled clear a few wedged-in and half-melted bodies, and got to work clearing the air intakes. Finally, with a little maintenance magic, the generator roared back to life – and by the renewed twinkling of distant lights around CentCom, the sappers sandbagged the gaps in between the two Bobcats – sufficient at least, or so they hoped, to protect the damned air intakes of the engines.

  Then the ten of them – sappers, RMPs, and commanders – hauled ass on foot back toward the prison.

  And back to safety. However temporary.

  * * *

  Up on the walls, the front-facing spots bloomed back on – searing the eyes of everyone up there using night vision.

  “Goddammit!” Savard said, flipping up his dripping NVGs, lowering his rifle, and rubbing his eyes and aching temples. “Could they just make a decision about the fucking lights?”

  “Seriously,” said Wheeler, doing the same beside him.

  * * *

  To their left, in the center, the Gurkhas and Tunnelers had no NVGs, so no such problems. On the other hand, the Tunnelers, already soaked and miserable and terrified, instantly had to see again what was out there coming for them.

  And it was worse than it had ever been.

  “Fuck me,” Colley said, looking across at Hackworth.

  Hackworth didn’t disagree. The dead still stretched to the horizon – but thicker than ever before, and coming in even faster. Worse, they were piling up at the foot of the walls, right beneath them, less than fifteen feet away. Almost all of the ones down there had been destroyed, or at least disabled. But they were perfectly in place for all the others that came after to climb up on – and soon after that to just climb over.

  There could be little question they would get there.

  It was only a question of how soon.

  * * *

  “Fucking ’ell,” Simmonds said, when his own eyes had recovered, looking upon the same sight. “It’s like when Hicks stuck his head up in the ceiling panels. Better not knowing.”

  “Shut the fuck up,” Croucher said. “You’re no Colonial Marine.” He stood up and looked down the line. “Hey, where the fuck is Major Jameson?”

  He’d been gone too long.

  * * *

  In Bio, the whole fabrication facility and synthetic vaccine assembly line rumbled back to life.

  That’s the right word for it, Park thought. LIFE.

  The sound of the vaccine being fabricated was the sound of humanity making it. He got back to work, redoubling his efforts.


  And making everyone else redouble theirs.

  * * *

  In the JOC, radios and monitors came back on right away. And while she rebooted her station, mainly to get satellite coverage back, Cpl Jones got up, went over to the wall…

  And turned on the damned overhead lights in there.

  Turning back to face the room, of which she was still the only occupant, she holstered her pistol and exhaled heavily.

  “Thank fuck for that.”

  * * *

  Handon and his ammo bearers emerged from the prison at a run, and he steered them away from the ramp leading up to the walls, where the sounds of battle raged undiminished – and instead over to the Panther armored vehicle parked nearby.

  Even as they reached it, but before he could tell them what to do, he was stopped by a voice behind him, equally unmistakable and irresistible.

  “Command Sergeant Major Motherfucking Handon.”

  He turned around.

  Fick – trotting up at the head of a squad-sized element.

  Handon held up his hand, and Fick clasped it. As usual, each of their biceps tried to out-swell the other. The two old spec-ops senior NCO hard-asses had been reunited.

  It looked like they were putting the band back together.

  Only Love, Man

  London – Armoury House, Parade Ground

  “Gentlemen!” Charlotte shouted into her chin mic. “I have seriously got zero linger time up here!” She had now not only pulled up from the courtyard and parade ground, but away from it as well, getting some good solid building between her and that demonic minigun – pretty much the last thing you wanted to see if you were the pilot of an unarmed, unarmored, unescorted, fat, slow-moving helo. She was now reasonably safe from the street shoot-out going on down in the courtyard.

  But she couldn’t stay there.

  She’d known when she took off from CentCom that she had enough fuel to get to Rabid One’s extraction point, and get back again, and maybe do a little dance in the middle. And only because she’d siphoned fuel from that Puma beforehand. Now, as had happened once or twice in the history of British military aviation, the LZ had turned hot out of a blue sky.

  But it had probably never happened with the stakes so high.

  Or with tolerances so low.

  “Roger that,” Juice answered, sounding like all experienced combat soldiers in the middle of balls-out gunfights in Charlotte’s experience – like he was having afternoon tea.

  But what the fuck does “Roger that” mean?

  “Seriously, guys. My fuel state is about five plus nothing. If I hover here for even another thirty seconds, it’ll be a minor miracle if we make it all the way back to CentCom.”

  “Copy that.”

  Oh, GodDAMMit. Finally she got the subtext. The team down there was saying: If you have to go, you have to go.

  Well she did have to go.

  But she’d also be damned if she was going to go. And if she couldn’t hover, and she couldn’t set down in the courtyard, that pretty much left one option.

  “Rabid One, be advised, I am putting this aircraft down on the roof of this building, and bringing the engines offline. Then you can finish up your firefight in your own fucking time, over.”

  That at least seemed to get their attention: “Yeah, received, but it’s kind of a heavy aircraft. You sure that’s a good idea?”

  No. No, she wasn’t at all sure.

  Charlotte exhaled, said a prayer, pushed on her collective…

  And she started to bring it down.

  * * *

  Frying pan time’s over, motherfuckers.

  Pred sighed. He and Juice were still completely pinned down by the fire of well over a dozen shooters, plus a totally impervious minigunner, whose own level of fire dwarfed the rest of them put together. Though the mounted shooters, Pred could now see, had gotten their heads out of their asses and were becoming dismounts – which meant they’d have Juice flanked and gunned down in a few more seconds.

  But that wasn’t even the real problem.

  The real problem was the mounted machine-gunner in the turret of the vehicle blocking the gates, to Pred’s six, was now screaming as he got turned into a hot lunch. Pred had been leaving him alone – not so much because the guy was facing away and leaving him alone, but because he was doing the critical job of keeping the undead horde out of there, and from swarming Pred’s ass. He’d even been doing it well.

  But now, inevitably, his MG had gone down – and while he was very inexpertly trying to change out ammo cans, a bunch of runners had naturally just run up the back of the vehicle, swarmed over the top, and started eating his face.

  Now they were about to be swarming in Pred’s rear, which meant he was engaged from both sides. And when you can’t stay where you are, that means you have to go – whether it’s possible to do so or not.

  Fuck it. Change is good.

  He hit his radio. “Okay, man, fuck this guy.”

  “Roger that. Hey diddle diddle?”

  “Yep – straight up the middle. On my signal.”

  Predator had never been one for stalemates. Hanging out trading rounds was bullshit. He’d just charge the convoy, and take his chances. He gave himself maybe even odds of making it. Which were a hell of a lot better odds than he’d had on many previous occasions. Hell, he’d definitely take this over singlehandedly fighting a Russian attack helo.

  And that had worked out okay.

  But as he scanned the courtyard one last time, clocking the locations of targets, and drawing a route for himself like he was about to run a seriously high-stakes play on 4th and 30 with time expired, he saw something else. The marauders were definitely climbing down from the vehicles and fanning out toward Juice’s position to the right.

  But they weren’t the only ones fanning out.

  The much larger group of civilians was doing so as well – and mostly behind the marauders, to Pred’s left. And as Pred glassed them, he recognized the one farthest out front. Or, rather, he recognized the three-piece suit. And the old dude was wielding a big-ass rolled-up umbrella, with both hands.

  Like he didn’t plan on going home without using it.

  * * *

  Cross-decking.

  There was an old but good one, a nearly lost art.

  Really, shooters were just almost never in such a bad situation, in such extremity, that it came to that. But, suddenly, here they were – Homer and Ali firing their pistols over each other’s shoulders in the overrun hell that was the middle of the parking deck, at multiple swarming targets coming in at each other’s backs. But it was too tight for rifles now, never mind they were dark red on ammo for them, and swinging swords and axes was fatiguing. You had to have a break periodically.

  But there were no time-outs in this fight.

  The two of them hadn’t even had to plan or discuss it – they’d both just hung on to their melee weapons with their left hands, drawn their side arms in a blur, spun to face each other, and started firing. Now they were even rotating in the same direction – perfectly in sync, fighting as a single organism, at the edge of their abilities, relying on a combined thirty-plus years of operational combat experience.

  Not to mention being a perfectly matched pair.

  In the thick of it down in there, the crowds of living, infected, and dead so thick they could barely keep moving, both were already taking bites and scratches on their suits, which would tear eventually – though not before they took bites and scratches on their exposed bits of flesh. They probably couldn’t be infected, but they could sure as hell bleed out, so they were focusing on defending their necks and wrists.

  Mainly they were working to stay on their feet.

  If one of them got knocked down, they might recover. If both went down, even for a second – they were done.

  And they had only fought their way down one more level.

  But both also knew, without having to confer, that if they could get down just one m
ore, to the third, they could hang and drop from one of the windows with a good chance of still being able to run after the fall. And they were close now. Holstering their empty pistols, hefting their medieval weapons, spinning not to face out, back-to-back, but rather to face forward together, side-by-side, they fought and swung and stabbed and shoved and reached the next bend at the end of the deck, then fought their way around it, gore splashing and decorating the walls as bodies piled up on the concrete floor.

  And finally there it was – that third-floor window.

  But it was also halfway across the level, fifty yards away. It was going to be a long fifty yards. But they could make it.

  And then… Foxtrots.

  At least two of them, coming from that direction, and literally leaping over the crowds between them to get to Ali and Homer.

  Homer stole a look over his shoulder. It was not only hemmed in back the way they’d come, but he could see an unusually large and cohesive pack of runners powering its way around the bend, taking down all and sundry before it, like they were intent on being both the Crips and the Bloods, or maybe the Yakuza, of all known runner packs.

  Homer faced forward again – Foxtrots coming in fast.

  The two of them were already fighting right at the edge of their considerable capacity. They could barely move through the mob now, and were only keeping the teeth of the dead from their throats by means of increasingly desperate swings of their weapons with half-burning, half-numb arms.

  And when those Foxtrots came down on their heads…

  Homer was afraid that would be it.

  They’d both go down. And never get up again.

  He figured they were pretty close to done.

  * * *

  Charlotte settled the 25,000-pound weight of the aircraft on the rooftop more slowly and gingerly, and certainly more anxiously, than in any landing before in her career.

  She hadn’t even had the privilege of trying to pick out the most sturdy-looking section of roof, because she had to go for the clearest one – the Chinook was not only a heavy bastard, but a huge one, fifty feet long and twelve wide. Or, rather, ninety and sixty, with its spinning rotors included, and you really didn’t want to exclude them, or anyway did so at your peril.