When Handon hailed him on his team radio, Juice paused his supervision and went back to flying. Unless he could figure out how to use the UCAV as a radio relay, he guessed this might be one of their last secure transmissions, as the Seahawk winged its way northwest.
“This is Juice, send it, Cadaver One.”
“Interrogative: Baxter find you okay?”
“Affirmative.”
“Good. You guys are now call sign Cadaver Four.”
“Copy that. Wait, are there even still four of us left alive?”
Handon chose to ignore that. “A more urgent question: how the hell did the Russians hack our drone?”
Juice wasn’t surprised Handon was getting around to asking this, but he still had to swallow his annoyance. Oh, so NOW he wants to talk about that shit. He slightly wished Handon had listened to him on their first Seahawk ride, when he had tried to warn him about the possibility of this happening. But the Alpha leader had a lot on his plate then. Still did.
“My guess? Either the Russians have still got active cyberwar units, which were always top-tier – or else they just bought the hack off the shelf from the Chinese, before the fall. Like the Iranians did in 2011.”
“Okay. So where the hell are they controlling it from?”
“My half-assed triangulation had the control signal emanating from offshore – somewhere in the Gulf, but north of the Kennedy.”
“So the Russians have got another seagoing vessel out there somewhere.”
“Yeah. But it might be a rowboat.”
“And it might be another battlecruiser.”
“We’d have seen that on radar.”
“We have no idea what the Kennedy can or can’t see on radar at this point. They’re fighting for their lives against a heavy force of Naval Spetsnaz borders.”
“Holy shit. Over.”
“Yeah, roger that. Cadaver Four, how’s our air?”
“Cadaver One, we show clear skies and smooth sailing all the way to the border.”
“Okay. That makes a change. Stay in touch.”
“Copy that. Fly safe.”
Juice signed off, and only realized Baxter was looking over his shoulder when the younger man said, “So, wait, you—”
Before he could get the next word out, Juice twisted at the waist and gave him a forearm shove. “Eyes front!” he said. “Weapon out. Posture vigilant. You trying to get us all killed?”
Baxter immediately complied, embarrassed that he had taken his eye off his one job: defending Juice, the crash site, and control of the drone. He also shut the hell up, and moved back to the line of fixed defenses – and then he heard Juice’s voice again, softer this time.
“Now you can ask your question. Just don’t forget what you’re doing. You’re the only security this position has got. And I’m not going to let you fuck it up, which if you do you’ll never forgive yourself for… for however many seconds you have left to live.”
Baxter nodded. He got it. He paused and scanned 180 degrees of forest over the top of his M4. In a very real way, he was now finally living out his long-imagined boy’s own operator adventure. He was teamed up with a no-shit legit Tier-1 guy. He was getting real-time and real-life tactical instruction. And everything he did now mattered. Once he had satisfied himself the forest was devoid of life – or the dead, for that matter – he whispered his question over his shoulder.
“You said the Iranians bought off-the-shelf hacks from the Chinese?”
“Yeah.”
“So the stealth drone the Iranians brought down in 2011 actually was hacked?” That was the claim the Iranian mullahs had made. The U.S. government had kept stonily silent on the topic.
“Oh, absolutely,” Juice said. “We were never going to admit it. Also, like I said, the Iranians didn’t do it themselves – they just bought the code from one of the Chinese cyberwar units, who were happy to sell it to them. And who almost certainly developed it by hacking into Lockheed Martin’s systems.”
“Holy shit.”
“I’d tell you never to tell anyone any of that, but it hardly matters now. Or, wait, maybe it does again…”
Baxter shook his head in awe. This dude could not only give him world-class tactical instruction. He could also see through the matrix of cyberwar.
Stirring him from his reverie, Juice said: “Go do a patrol loop to check our six – and the rest of our perimeter. Start on the other side of the bird, push out fifty meters, then do a full circuit.”
“Wilco,” Baxter said.
He patted himself down to make sure his weapons and ammo were where he expected them to be – and, mainly, that nothing was loose and would rattle when he moved. Then he headed out around the barricade and started circling the clearing and the wrecked airframe. He had his rifle at low ready and his head on a swivel.
As he ducked under the angled tail boom, a sound up ahead made him freeze. He crouched down for a full minute. When nothing appeared, and the sound didn’t recur, he rose and moved out again. As he ducked around the last mass of foliage and into the tiny clearing on the opposite side…
He froze dead again – even as he raised his rifle to his shoulder. There was a man there – pointing a rifle right back at him.
“Hello, white boy.”
Baxter wasn’t cool enough to deliver his expected line. He just gulped, and slowly lowered his weapon.
Al-Sif.
Dead Stick
Seahawk Crash Site, Nugal River Valley
“Whatever you do,” Baxter said to the river valley’s most unexpected visitor, “do not raise your weapon when we go around this aircraft.”
Al-Sif looked truculent, which Baxter thought was a bit rich, all things considered. The dude was lucky to be alive at all – this being only his latest encounter with a whole bunch of guys, namely the operators, who were in every way his superior. Baxter figured he had actually better do some due diligence before he allowed al-Sif into the their camp. Juice might not be pleased with what he brought back from his patrol.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“I came to collect… my ticket out.” He meant the ride back to Britain he had been promised in return for handing over Patient Zero. But then al-Sif spat in the dirt, and both of them glanced at the grounded and utterly ruined helicopter beside them.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” Baxter said.
Neither could resist smiling at this.
“Okay,” Baxter said. “How’d you get here?”
“Drove the jingle bus,” al-Sif said, tossing his head toward the rear. Baxter actually knew what he was talking about. That ridiculous vehicle had been parked by their overrun airstrip outside the Stronghold for ages. “Then followed the smoke trail.”
Something tickled at Baxter’s memory. “Kate,” he said. “What the hell happened to Kate?”
Al-Sif’s expression darkened. “She’s alive.”
But before Baxter could follow up, his team radio went. It was Juice. “Baxter. What the hell? Get back here. Over.”
Baxter drew a breath. “This way,” he said to al-Sif. “You first.”
The Somali looked annoyed again, but complied. To avoid anyone getting shot, Baxter hit his radio. “Juice, I’ve got, erm, a prisoner.”
In ten seconds they were back around on the open side of the crash site. And, this time, Juice did put the drone on autopilot. And he was leaning out around the lip of the cargo door, perfectly motionless, lightly gripping and aiming his SIG assault rifle.
Al-Sif stopped and put his hands up. When no one spoke, he repeated his claim. “You promised me a ride out of here, back to Britain. I’m here. Take me.”
Juice just eyed him over his rifle sight.
* * *
Two hundred miles north and 1,500ft up above the deck, there was only wind and sky – and engine noise, still some of that, thank God.
Out beyond the nominally blast-proof but still badly spider-webbed cockpit glass, the great expanse of the g
reen earth spread out in rolling forested hills below, rising up to mountains at the northern border of land and sea. And the glory of the sparkling ocean out beyond that.
And there was also smoke. Quite a lot of smoke.
Hailey got a nose full of it, coughing and spluttering as she regained consciousness, hand instinctively going for her oxygen mask. But she quickly realized she had much bigger problems, and was probably getting enough oxygen to function. And as she regained her faculties and remembered where she was, she realized she also didn’t mind the coughing fit. It meant she was alive.
Plus still in the air. Which had definitely been in doubt when that fourth Vikhr missile, launched by the Black Shark attack helo, had exploded practically beside her head.
The fact that she was still flying also meant she’d managed to engage the autopilot before she blacked out. She verified this with a quick review of the touchscreen menus – which still seemed operable, though the display flickered slightly. She now saw she’d even managed to get herself pointed north, toward the carrier… and all of that must have happened only a few minutes ago, even at her current low airspeed of around 250mph.
The Kennedy was already in sight, out in the gulf past Mt. Shimbiris, which anchored the whole mountain range on the northern coast. Hailey was so relieved she nearly wept. But then she noticed something unexpected – the ship was under way. She could see the wake behind it. Also, it wasn’t facing the direction she had left it, but was now heading east out toward open ocean.
Ka-BOOM!!!
Something exploded behind her. And, while there was no way she could turn around, much less get outside the aircraft to have a look, she pretty quickly worked out what it was – her damned engine. It was dead or dying, and she was losing thrust fast. She paused one second to acknowledge those critics of the F-35 program, who had said a single-engine design was too risky and a terrible idea.
But one second was all she had.
Because after that she had to figure out what the hell to do, and how to save herself. And, as her airspeed dropped rapidly…
She knew she was going to have to do it fast.
* * *
In the cargo hatch of the grounded Seahawk, Juice exhaled and slightly relaxed his posture. And he thought: Well, hell, we actually do have Patient Zero now. Maybe it wasn’t so crazy that al-Sif was due what he had been promised – a ticket back to Britain. Then again, having this Islamist fighter in camp was a bad risk. A strong case could be made for just slotting him right now.
Juice squinted, aimed, and considered.
But then Baxter spoke to al-Sif, putting to rest his dreams of a flight out. “Sorry, dude. We’re probably walking out of here – if we get out at all.”
Juice didn’t react to this. The kid clearly understood that this mission to maintain control of the UCAV might be their last. Recovering them afterward was not going to be a big priority, definitely not compared to getting P-Zero out and back to Britain.
But then Baxter spoke to Juice. “He’s got a ground vehicle.”
“Where?”
“Huh,” al-Sif said, spitting into the foliage. The implication was obvious. He wasn’t handing over his one trump card. “I can also help you. I can fight the Russians.” He tapped the side of the SCAR Mk20 rifle he had wisely kept slung at his side.
Baxter said, “I don’t quite want to say I’ll vouch for him. But the dude can definitely fight. And, after what just happened at the Stronghold, he’s probably going to have little love for Spetsnaz.”
Juice considered. Having only one on security, never mind a young inexperienced guy, was dodgy. And having a ground vehicle would definitely provide them with some options, which were always good things to have, due to never knowing for sure what the hell was going to happen next. It would also give them a chance of getting out of there alive after the UCAV ran out of fuel.
Juice pointed two fingers at his eyes, then pointed them both at Baxter’s, and then finally at al-Sif. His meaning was clear. But then he squinted and changed his mind. “Fly the drone,” he said.
Baxter nodded. But instead of moving into the Seahawk, he reached to al-Sif’s back – which had a big Milkor multi-grenade launcher slung across it. Before he could react, Baxter unclipped the strap and took it off him. Al-Sif spun around.
Baxter checked the weapon, then said. “This belonged to a much, much better man than you.” He meant Maximum Bob, the former Team Six SEAL and CIA paramilitary officer – and whose face, and last moments, Baxter could still see with perfect clarity.
Al-Sif opened his mouth to protest.
“Not a fucking word,” Baxter said.
Juice was ready to back him up. But he didn’t need to.
* * *
Hailey honestly didn’t know if she could make it to the carrier now, with her engine failing fast – and even if she did, it would be a bad risk trying to land the mortally wounded bird on the flattop. She’d probably only get one attempt at a trap – and she’d also get the opportunity to kill flight deck crew and damage the ship itself, if things went sideways.
There was only one runway in the region she knew of that was long enough, at least 8,000 feet, for her to safely use – and it was at Djibouti Airport. A quick eyeball of the map told her this was closer than the Kennedy. And it would be a lot safer to land on the ground – or, at any rate, she would only endanger herself. That decided it. She nursed the sputtering bird into a left bank, skirting the coast and heading toward what was probably her only hope of getting back on the ground alive.
But the engine sputtered and belched again, and power dropped even lower – and then flamed out entirely. Dead stick.
Okay, she thought, Plan B.
She was going to have to eject.
Hailey wasn’t wild about this plan. It was well known that the heavy helmet needed to fly this high-tech aircraft increased the risk of neck injury during ejection – little rocket engines were about to launch her out of the cockpit at somewhere between 12 and 18 Gs – and the lighter the pilot, the worse the risk. Even worse than that was the fact that she’d then be stranded on the ground in Somalia. But, then again, she liked this plan better than the next one down the list, which was a controlled crash.
She released the fail-safe, then pulled the eject handle beside her seat. The first part of the ejection sequence happened – namely, the busted-up canopy unlocked, rotated up and out, and got ripped away by the slipstream. And then…
Nothing.
No launch, no rockets. No Gs, no neck damage. No ejection.
When she looked down to her right she could see several things. First, she belatedly saw that she was personally torn up and bleeding. It didn’t look terrible, but then again it didn’t look great. She hadn’t felt a thing since waking up, for some reason. Second, she could actually see the warping of the airframe. It no doubt looked a hell of a lot worse from the outside. But even in here she could see the structural nano-composite shell was impinging on her seat.
She was trapped in this dying aircraft, stuck in her non-ejection seat. Unless she climbed out and leapt for it, her fate was now locked to that of this plane. And both of them were losing altitude fast.
Not looking good for our hero, she thought.
She was actually okay with dying – because before being shot down, she had gotten the job done as a combat pilot. Of that, there could be no doubt. She’d destroyed half the ground convoy threatening the shore team, and driven the other half off. She believed she’d shot down the Black Shark attack helo – though she’d probably never know for sure.
She had stepped up – and been equal to her great task. So she could die happy. And when she saw her old man, the admiral, up there in heaven – or, more likely, down in that other place – maybe he’d even be pleased to see her.
Well, probably not pleased. But maybe not a total dick, for once.
Looking up and out, she could see the airport coming up in the distance. But the dusty brown surface of Somalia was
coming up faster. She knew she was going in hard. So she figured she had better focus on doing it in some kind of survivable way.
Okay, dead-stick landing it is, then…
But as she fought the unresponsive controls, she remembered why it was called a “dead stick.”
That was also about to describe the whole aircraft.
And probably her, too.
* * *
Juice spat tobacco juice across their stacked wood defenses. With Baxter having taken over the flying for now, Juice had two hands free to get his tobacco pouch out and get a wodge in. And he had a minute to make sure their new guest wasn’t going to slot them both and fly the UCAV to Bradford. He hadn’t taken his eye off al-Sif once.
“What?” al-Sif asked.
Juice spat again. He wanted to ask him where he got the Gucci rifle, not to mention the grenade launcher. But this was the post-Apocalypse. Everything was going cheap.
Instead he asked, “You know what we’re doing here?”
Al-Sif puffed down slightly. “A vaccine. A cure.”
Juice nodded – but then cocked his head at the Somali’s expression. “You really don’t give a damn about that, do you?”
Al-Sif squinted back. “I will help you. I will do what I can for you, including fight. I just want to get out of here.”
Juice believed him. Baxter had said as much, when they first debated whether to trust him. Baxter said he was smart, non-ideological, and supremely self-interested. As far as their interests and al-Sif’s aligned, they could trust him. But that was as far as it went.
“You said we must walk out,” al-Sif said. “But I have a vehicle. We should go. We can drive out. Then your people can pick us up.”
Juice just shook his head slowly. Not happening.
“How long must we stay?”
Juice checked his watch, on the inside of his left wrist. “One hour ten. Once that drone is out of fuel and down in the dirt, then we can think about us.”
ARISEN, Book Twelve - Carnage Page 2