Every single one of their guys had fallen off the back of the train. He and al-Sîf were all that was left. They were it. And Zack was now tail-gunner Charlie.
One more casualty, and it would have been him.
And as he swallowed down something dry and heavy in his throat, he saw the shambling figures at the front of the approaching crowd being knocked aside to make way for… runners. And once clear of the crowd, they accelerated like a pack of pissed-off T-1000s.
Zack depressed his trigger and held it down as he swept his barrel from side to side, the night erupting before him in a giant sheet of muzzle flash, and the roar assaulting his ears. As the mag went empty, and he could hear the truck starting up behind him, some motion and noise to his right snapped his head around. More walkers – and more runners, a lot more – all coming in from Djibouti Town. The violent revving of the truck engine snapped him into action.
He opened the passenger door and threw himself, just behind his rifle, then pulled the door shut. Something smashed into the passenger-side window, a few inches from his cheek, spider-webbing the glass. It was a face.
And now Zack realized he had been wrong. One of those runners back there actually was alive.
It was one of the reserve force guys, and one Zack knew personally – a nice kid named Arbooshe. He was young, too young for al-Shabaab to have gotten their hooks into him. But at least he’d survived the Apocalypse – until now. As Zack looked into the youth’s pleading eyes, he could see deep raking wounds across his jaw and neck.
Zack pushed his elbow down on the door lock.
Al-Sîf shot a look over and saw what Zack did.
“Xumahay, walaalkiis,” he said, then popped the clutch, spun the back tires, smashed into a half-dozen figures who’d gotten in front of them – then jacked the wheel and put them into a shrieking one-eighty that sprayed dirt and body parts twelve feet in the air. Finally, he pointed their nose back down the road out of town and floored it.
Zack pulled his seatbelt across his chest, and looked over at the driver.
Even if he hadn’t grown up speaking Somali part-time, he could have translated al-Sîf’s last comment from his tone, sagging face, and body language alone.
It was: “Sorry, brother.”
Exalted in Might and Wise
The Stronghold - Outside the Front Gates
The crushingly long drive back to the Stronghold passed in silence. Al-Sîf was normally a happy warrior. He’d gone on a kill-crazy rampage to get him and Zack out of Lemonnier alive, but he’d done it with relish and verve, even in their most desperate moments.
But now Zack figured he’d had many hours to consider what was waiting for him back at the Stronghold, after he reported to Godane. He’d not only failed to kill the Americans, or take their weapons and supplies. He’d also lost three of the four vehicles, plus every fighter he’d led out on the mission.
All he was bringing back was Zack. Which there was absolutely no reason to suspect Godane would appreciate in the least.
The two of them had pushed on through the night and all of the next day, stopping only for fuel – most of the spare gas cans had been on the other trucks. So they’d had to siphon abandoned cars and one underground tank at a gas station. Al-Sîf made Zack do the hose-sucking while he pulled security.
“You suck better than you shoot, Zack,” was all he said about that.
Now it was night again as they rolled up to the giant log front gates, with the lights off and the engine idling low. As noted, al-Shabaab was neither smart enough nor paranoid enough to park their vehicles somewhere else. They had a dirt track that led right inside the compound. In fairness, the Stronghold was even more isolated than Camp Price.
Plus, if push came to shove, it was also a hell of a lot more defensible.
They waited in the dark for the two-ton gates to swing slowly open.
* * *
Zack got sent straight to his room while al-Sîf went to deliver the bad news to his eminence, the Emir – after first waking him up. Zack did not envy him that task, and guessed he’d got the better part of the deal. But he’d only just slipped inside their room, found Baxter asleep, woke him, and started to brief him – when the door opened again.
It was one of Godane’s Praetorians, as Baxter and Zack referred to them – the longer-surviving, more violent, and most loyal fighters, who Godane kept close. They were a bit like al-Sîf Lite. A lot of the al-Shabaab “fighters” who had originally made it to the Stronghold alive were goofballs, scrawny guys who looked like they were playing army when they picked up their AKs. But the Praetorians were serious, and most had proved that they were deadly.
Zack patted Baxter on the hip – as if to say, Don’t worry – but also to hand him something out of sight, something blocky and heavy, which Baxter was clued in enough to slip under the blanket. Then Zack rose and followed the guard. There was another outside. The two of them wordlessly frog-marched Zack through the dim tunnels, one before and one behind. When they entered Godane’s chamber, the atmosphere in there was so foul it would have turned Bordeaux to balsamic vinegar.
Ah, shit, Zack thought.
He surveyed the scene as he walked forward. Godane was at his desk, al-Sîf standing to the side, his body armor stripped off now. Zack looked over his shoulder – the two goons did not exit to guard the hallway this time, but stood inside, to either side of the door. Zack approached the desk like he was a dead man walking, with not much prison corridor left to go.
He tortured his brain, knowing that whatever he came up with to say here was going to have a pretty serious impact on his future health and happiness. But Godane spoke before he could. The Emir wasn’t ranting for once. His manner was calm and ice-cold – and scarier for that reason.
“You will tell me why they spared you,” he said.
Zack stopped himself from saying, “What?” He didn’t need a replay of Pulp Fiction with Godane in the role of Jules: “I dare you, I double-dare you, motherfucker – say what one more goddamned time!”
“Emir,” he said, “it was the hand of al-Sîf that saved me.”
But even as he said this, he could read it on Godane’s face: twenty men go out to fight the Americans, two come back – and one of them is Zack? It didn’t add up, and not only because Zack didn’t particularly enjoy a reputation as a fearsome fighter.
Godane turned aside to al-Sîf and spoke to him in Arabic. Zack had to take care not to react in any visible way. He’d managed to conceal from Godane for a long time that he spoke Arabic. It was one of the very few aces up his sleeve.
Al-Sîf shrugged in response, and Godane turned back to Zack.
“The devils spared you,” he said. “It is the only explanation.”
And even as Zack opened his mouth to deny it… his face betrayed him again. Godane was right. He knew he was right. They had spared him. Not having NVGs, he hadn’t seen the IR laser dot dancing on his chest. But he had seen everybody else in the advance team drop like sacks of cement all around him. And then that truck had swerved around him with inches to spare – when they didn’t have to, and could have been forgiven for running him over. They’d had bigger problems.
Zack played a card, albeit not a great one. “Emir, they killed your men because they are very, very well trained in combat.”
He was careful not to phrase that last clause as because they are super-skilled unflappable badass operators who make your spray-and-pray mafia look like shitty paintball players.
“Surely in your wisdom you can see that a war with them will not go well. You can still walk away with honor.”
But before these words were even out of his mouth, Zack knew how futile the effort had to be. Godane’s belly had a pre-existing load of bile for Triple Nickel – and that was yesterday. Today, they’d murdered the shit out of twenty of his fighters. It was already war, the first shots had been fired – and there wasn’t going to be any backing down, certainly not on this side. Watching him, Zack thought Godane pretended to not eve
n hear what he’d just said, like it was a kindness to ignore it.
“If you are working with them, I will know it,” Godane said.
“Emir, I am not working with them,” Zack said.
Not yet.
* * *
“As for the thief,” Godane said, reciting now in that rhythmic monotone he reserved for passages of the Quran. “As for the thief, the male and the female, amputate their hands in recompense for what they committed as a deterrent from Allah.” He looked up. “And Allah is Exalted in Might and Wise.”
Before he could react, Zack felt four strong hands on his arms, seizing him from behind.
Ah, shit.
In seconds they had him at Godane’s desk, his right hand stretched out and pressed down flat on its surface. Zack struggled, sort of automatically, but it was just pro forma. These guys were a lot bigger and stronger than him. Whatever was going to happen now was going to happen.
Godane leaned forward and looked Zack in the eye. “They stole from me. My trucks, my men. And you will pay in their stead.”
Zack was too scared now to look away – until a shadow passed over him and he twisted his neck to see al-Sîf stepping up beside him. It was obvious that today the man was going to earn not just his paycheck – but his nickname.
This was really happening.
Oh, well, Zack thought. At least he’d be finished with Godane’s bullshit. Considering the quality of medical care available there, not to mention the dirt and squalor, he was unlikely to survive amputation. If blood loss didn’t get him – and he didn’t see anything like a C-A-T military tourniquet lying around – infection would.
He looked back as Godane spoke. “I am done trifling with the Americans. I am going to blow them into meat and smoke.”
Zack squinted. He might have one last thing he could do here – one last good act in this life. “You can’t do that, Emir.”
“Why not?”
“You can’t send the Predator over their compound again. They have Stinger missiles now, taken from Camp Lemonnier. I saw the crates on the back of the truck. If you send the drone, they will shoot it down before it even gets close.”
In point of fact, to the best of Zack’s recollection, the range of the Hellfires might actually be slightly greater than that of the Stingers. But Godane sure as hell didn’t need to know that. And he’d probably fuck it up anyway.
Godane nodded to al-Sîf.
Zack looked up. Al-Sîf was trading some kind of look with him.
As the scimitar fell, Zack hauled on his arm for everything he was worth. His hand moved a couple of inches – and he was almost certain the blade was off by at least a couple more.
It took off his middle and ring fingers at the first knuckle.
He screamed like a banshee. The sound must have carried through the entire Stronghold. Zack lurched away, jamming his left hand in his right armpit.
Oh, motherfucking son of a BITCH. That smarted.
He stalked around like a headless chicken, blind with pain, and before he knew it tears were streaming down both cheeks.
“You are a woman,” he heard Godane sniff. “Take him from my sight.”
Zack was led away again, back down into the dark.
Because You Didn't
Camp Price - Team Room
Sitting up against the back wall of the Team Room, Elijah disinfected and rewrapped Todd’s thigh wound. Todd had stripped down to his Ranger panties – the black silky short-shorts that spec-ops guys loved and hated to wear for PT. Todd was always perfectly comfortable in them – the others a bit less so, due to the intermittent flashes of his nuts they made pretty much inevitable. Right now, the Ranger panties definitely facilitated access to his creasing bullet wound – which was alarmingly high on the inside of his thigh.
“You should be more careful,” Kwon said. “You almost got your best feature shot off.”
“Hell,” Todd said, “when it all kicked off, the only cover I had was from the waist up. I was trying to crawl inside my own boots.”
Everyone was back in the Team Room now, seated around the table.
They’d already stripped, cleaned, reloaded, and repacked all their weapons, gear, and assault kit. That was job one when getting back inside the wire. You never knew when you were going to have to rush back to the walls of the camp to defend it – or race outside to rescue somebody else. There wasn’t anybody else anymore, of course, but they had hung on to many of their old TTPs – tactics, techniques, and procedures.
Many of them were still good habits.
Kate said, “Nigga forgot to duck, that’s all.” Everyone laughed, including Elijah. The line was from Glory – Denzel Washington, 1989. Kate had long ago become one of the boys, participating in the bonding ritual of trading favorite immortal movie lines. Sometimes, on deployment, in a remote area, it was all the entertainment they had. She belatedly noticed that Todd also had some scorch marks of indeterminate origin on his face. RPGs probably.
“They can’t touch me, man,” Todd said with an arrogant tilt to his chin. “I’m a bandit for life!”
Kwon snorted. “Ass bandit for life.”
Kate and Todd were seated side-by-side. She looked at him seriously and said, “You can be my wingman anytime, Maverick.”
To which he replied, “The defense department regrets to inform you that your sons are dead because they were stupid.”
“What were you thinking?” Kate deadpanned.
“You don’t have time to think up there! If you think, you’re dead.”
The two of them cracked up helplessly, while the others just looked annoyed. Todd had Top Gun on his laptop, which he and Kate would constantly sit around watching, often with popcorn, giggling all the way through to the end, enjoying it more every time. Everybody else on the team, despite having seen all the other movies in their collection at least twenty-five times, steadfastly refused to watch Top Gun. They called it “the homoerotic seamen movie” and gave Kate and Todd endless shit about their devotion to it.
Now somebody had to take control of the bullshitting, or the two of them would be trading off Top Gun lines for the rest of the night, if not the rest of the post-Apocalypse.
“You’re trapped in a well with a goat and a slinky,” Kwon said. “Describe how you will escape.”
“I don’t know,” Todd said, as Elijah taped off the end of his bandage. “But it doesn’t end well for the goat.”
Brendan smiled, and remembered that surviving an ambush always made everyone giddy. They were equally happy and amazed to be alive, and suddenly everything was hilarious. “Hey, Kate,” he said. “You know the difference between a Boy Scout troop and a Special Forces ODA?” She shook her head. “Adult supervision.”
Brendan had caught a piece of shrapnel himself, which had scored the top of his hand – and he hadn’t even noticed the tip of his ear had been shot off. Elijah, welcoming them all home, had instantly been back on the job as medical sergeant. He’d already wrapped up Brendan’s hand and painted the ear with orange-brown Betadine antiseptic, which was about all that could be done with that.
But now, all the urgent and non-negotiable tasks having been squared away, this was going to be an all-team meeting – and, ultimately, a serious one. In a way that hadn’t been true in a long time, their lives were suddenly on the line. There was a time when their missions were often more important than their lives.
But surviving was their only mission anymore.
At least for now.
* * *
Jake motioned for everyone to stop the hi-jinks, stood up, and started the meeting. And he got straight to the point.
“Okay, guys, two things have happened. One, we achieved our mission objective – the heavy weapons are ours. Two, we bloodied Godane’s nose. My feeling is that both those facts militate for the same course of action now: we get those weapons emplaced and we fortify the camp.”
Brendan didn’t wait to jump in this time. He felt too strongly about this
one. “There’s one thing that hasn’t changed. If we get engaged here and start blasting away, the dead will be right behind al-Shabaab. And none of us will ever get out of here again.”
Todd looked across at Brendan and shook his head slowly. “Au contraire, mein freund. That’s changed, too – it’s gotten worse.” He looked around the table before continuing. “Look, Kwon and I can get the Mk 47s and miniguns emplaced in the towers. And we build us a nice mortar pit. And after that, we can open multiple large cans of whoop-ass on anybody who comes after us here. But in the past, if the noise drew a bunch of walkers or runners, we might have a chance to fight our way out before they ringed us in a mile thick. But these new ones… I’m not sure they won’t just leap right over the wall and drop on our heads.” He looked up to Jake, then over to Kate. “You guys got a better look at them. Am I right?”
“Yeah, maybe,” Jake said.
Kate said, “The new ones aren’t good.” She didn’t say more, but her expression did: she was worried. These things were dangerous. They’d adapted to the walkers and even the runners, and were confident they could survive them.
But the game had just changed.
Jake turned to look down and across at Brendan. “Okay, what’s our alternative, then? Run for it? Take to the forest, like some half-assed band of merry men?”
Brendan took a second to answer. “Nobody wants that. I don’t even like the thought of it. But there’s no way to make Godane unlearn our location. Now that he knows we’re here, whether he comes for us or not is outside our control. Abandoning the camp and going elsewhere may become our only option. And we can either mount those weapons on the wall – or we can mount them on the trucks.”
Jake shook his head. “Sir, due respect – but fuck that. We’ve all worked too long and hard to secure this place. To make it defensible, to make it work. It’s our home. I’m not getting run out of here – at least not by that bearded, wild-eyed ass-clown.”
Everyone there knew how Jake felt about the al-Shabaab leader – and they all felt pretty much the same. It was because of Godane’s tireless and utterly unapologetic killing, torture, and oppression of innocent Somalis – who, after a few tours, Jake had started to get as attached to as he had to the Pashtuns and Hazara in Afghanistan, whom he’d fought to protect from the Taliban.
Arisen : Nemesis Page 20
