Nonetheless, Browning knew it was basically him and three uniform-fillers. But they were his people now, and he had to lead them, and just trust they could do their jobs. All had been getting trained by Derwin and his cadre, put through local versions of the Security Reaction Force — Basic (SRF-B) course. But they were less than a week into it. And Kate, for one, looked like her helmet was two sizes too big and might swallow her, and with her wide eyes and youthful features, she also genuinely looked to Browning like she was about fourteen years old. Like she was playing dress-up.
The four of them moved forward across 02 Deck, rifles up, expecting to get jumped at any second. Browning saw there was a lot of expended brass on the deck crunching beneath their boots. But whatever had gone down here seemed to be over. For now.
But then as they approached the final turn to the passageway the hospital was on, all four froze at the sound of muted explosions ahead, and just out of sight. Following Browning’s lead, the other three pressed themselves up against the bulkheads and crouched down.
Thinking fast, Browning considered that this wasn’t the first explosion they’d heard down here. But it was the closest. And it also sounded like it came from exactly where they were going – the damned hospital. As he thought through this, he realized what it had to be.
And what they had to do in response.
Crouching and waiting was exactly the wrong reaction. They had to go – now! “Come on!” he shouted, rising and taking off, and throwing stealth to the wind. “Follow me!”
They did. But into what, they dared not imagine.
* * *
The Spetsnaz besiegers came harder, faster, and much sooner than either Walker or Patrick had imagined they would. The Marine probably should have known. If you have to assault a fixed position, the last thing you want to do is give the defenders time to consolidate and dig in. And of course the hallmarks of every SOF force worthy of the name were moving fast and hitting hard.
A few of the other hospital staff had weapons, side arms only, and had been positioned down behind cover and given instructions by Sergeant Patrick. Also on the line was the NSF guy – Petty Officer First Class Toussaint, who at least seemed to have his legs under him, after having to be urged by Walker to discharge his weapon out in the passageway. Luckily, he, Walker, and Patrick were all behind cover, if not down under it. But they all dropped to the deck electrically when the sparks from a plasma torch started flying into the air behind the hatch.
And now Patrick hoped like hell everyone here remembered his instructions – that an assault would be preceded by a volley of grenades. He’d been emphatic about it, but non-combatants had a way of forgetting everything, including which end the bullet comes out of, once shit started blowing up and the lead started flying.
But everyone kept their heads down as the breached hatches were shoved open, the barricade knocked down – and, mainly, when shit did start exploding out in front of their makeshift cover and shooting positions. Which was good because these were not flashbangs, or anything like them. These assaulters were not here to rescue hostages, and the grenades were sent in to maim and kill, to dismantle the defenders and their positions.
And the Spetsnaz shooters poured in right behind them, less than a heartbeat after they went off. But Patrick’s instructions, and Walker’s leadership, gave the defenders something like a fighting chance. The two leaders popped up before the invaders could reach them, the Marine engaging with his SCAR-L and the flight surgeon blasting away with her captured shotgun. Toussaint popped and started shooting shortly after, and the five medical officers with side arms after that.
Two of the nearly-black-clad invaders went down just inside the hatch, felled by Patrick and Walker, but others came behind them, two, and then two more, and instantly started putting out heavy and brutally effective fire. Two medical officers showed too much of themselves and went down – and Patrick could tell the rest of them were going to be hit, or else have to get the hell out of the line of fire. And as soon as they did, their lines would be overrun, and they would all get shot down that way. This fight was going to end before it really got started. It was all happening too fast for the defenders to deal with.
Which was how assaulting operators liked it.
But then something changed.
Shouts and unsuppressed firing sounded from out in the passageway. The assaulting force didn’t quite break, or get distracted. But no one else came in – and then two of the four turned and ducked back out the hatch to react to something out there.
And that left something almost like a fair fight inside.
* * *
Browning knew which side his bread was buttered on, namely marksmanship, so he put his hand up to stop his team’s frantic headlong flight. They had just rounded the corner as the enemy came into sight – a line of invaders stacked up outside the hospital, and pouring into it like shells cycling into the chamber of an autocannon, firing at their crew-mates inside.
Stopping his run, Browning took a bead and fired on the last man in the line, who dropped to the deck. He started to smile at his remarkable success – but only had half a second to do so. Because the man just ahead of him was already turning and reacting. Browning took a second shot on this man – but either missed entirely, or hit him somewhere armored. His idea had been to take down one or two off the back of the line, Sergeant York style, then attack into the remainder with his full team.
But he never even got the chance.
The rear of the Spetsnaz force reacted in seconds – two of them, then two more, turning and running at the NSF sailors, firing as they ran. And running flat out did not appear to affect their marksmanship in the least. They did not, like Browning, need to stop to make their shots.
Browning felt two vicious smacks in the center of his vest – and then, before he could react, something smacked him in the head like a roundhouse punch, and sent him pirouetting to the deck. He was instantly dazed, and trying to breathe through a bleeding nose, but he knew he had to get his senses back – and did so just in time to see his team get cut down. Rob was hunched over his weapon and firing – but his head rocked back, the back of his skull opened up, and he dropped to the deck like a sandbag. To his right, Dooley also had his weapon up, but jerked from several hits, then bounced into the bulkhead on the right and fell to the deck.
Hearing shooting to his left, he looked over to see Kate down on the deck beside him, firing as fast as she could pull the trigger. Somehow she’d had the presence of mind to hit the deck before she was put there. And now her rapid-fire barrage – the unsurpassed M4 atrociously loud in a small metal tunnel – gave the counter-assaulting force ahead of them pause. They ceased bounding forward, and went down on their knees, taking measured shots.
And Browning knew this was their only chance.
“Come on!” he shouted.
The cross passageway was still practically right beside them. He physically shoved her toward it and out of the line of fire, Kate doggedly continuing to fire as he did so. When she finally scurried to safety, Browning took a page from her playbook – and started emptying his mag to cover her. This time, his vaunted marksmanship aside, he honestly didn’t think he was hitting a damned thing. Worse, he wasn’t even cowing the enemy enough to throw off their shooting.
He realized this when he felt a terrible pain in his collarbone, and then another in his thigh. Screaming inside his own head, he made a straight line of himself and his rifle, and in an equally desperate and inspired moment of insanity or genius, rolled out of that passageway and to safety in the intersecting one.
When he stopped rolling and lay on his back, he didn’t think he could get up. The pain was terrible. He had pressed his eyes closed against it, but when he opened them, he saw that Kate could get up – and had. She was kneeling over his helpless and ravaged body, pointing her weapon over him toward the intersection.
She was protecting him.
The magazine dropped out of her rifle and l
anded on his stomach, and she got another one seated – without ever moving her aim.
Kate was the last man standing.
* * *
At the entrance to the hospital, the defenders now managed to hold the line. With only two Spetsnaz left in the room, Patrick was able to get aggressive, tagging one with a series of rapid center-of-mass shots – then plinking at the other after Walker put a spread of buckshot into the upper right of his body, causing him to wince and lower his weapon for a second – a second too long. Both were wounded, and retreated back out the hatch.
The defenders also had multiple wounded, including Toussaint, and what looked like two KIAs among the medical officers. But Patrick couldn’t bother with them right now. He, too, knew that aggression was everything – and that the last thing you wanted to do was give your enemy a chance to regroup.
Also, they had to get some kind of barrier up in front of the gaping hole where the hatches now swung free and unlockable. Otherwise, they’d be eating grenade shrapnel all day – or, rather, for the rest of their lives, which would most likely be measured in minutes.
Not asking or needing support for this part, Patrick chucked two of his own grenades out the hatch, banking them down the hall to the right, the direction the attackers had retreated to. In the enclosed space, they could inflict some horrific damage. Then again, he knew his opponents would know that, too, and might be positioned in other compartments off the passageway for that reason. In any case, the instant the grenades crumped off, he swung out wide to the left and started shooting diagonally out the open hatch.
“Go, go, go!” he shouted. “Get the barricades up!”
Walker was first to the breach, shoving a crate with her shoulder. When the others followed too slowly, she bellowed at them: “Come on, you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?”
They complied, while Patrick shot steadily, covering the operation. No attackers showed themselves in the hatch – yet. But he couldn’t let his attention flag. And if he’d been amused by Walker borrowing a famous line from a Marine Sergeant Major in WWI, he didn’t have time to laugh.
He only lost his extreme target lock when a hand came down on his shoulder. It was Lovell – crouched over his weapon and now helping to cover the entrance. But Patrick wasn’t glad to see him.
“You ok—” Lovell started to stay.
“Get the hell out of here!” Lovell startled at this and almost took his eye off the hatch. “Stay back with Doc Park – he’s the whole point of this exercise.” Patrick didn’t stop shooting for a second while he spoke, though luckily for comprehension, like all the Marines, he was shooting suppressed. “When they get through us, you’re the only defense left.”
Lovell didn’t argue. He couldn’t.
But he wasn’t here to hang out anyway – he had brought his gigantic ammo sack, and while Walker and her people shoved half-demolished furniture and crates back in front of the hatch, he went around distributing ammo – 30-round mags of 5.56 for Patrick’s SCAR and Toussaint’s M4, 15-round pistol mags for the M9s, shoving them in empty pouches or piling them up at their positions. Those side arms which had belonged to the dead officers got distributed to surviving but unarmed hospital personnel, who took up the positions of their fallen friends with no little trepidation – but a hell of a lot of courage and resolve.
Lovell didn’t quite empty out the ruck, then he took it and what was left of its contents with him back to the rear.
* * *
“Oh, my God, we got our asses kicked,” Browning whispered, sounding as if he was near to tears – though whether from pain or sorrow was impossible for Kate to tell.
Not lowering her weapon, she got her aid kit unsnapped from her belt and dropped it on him. She didn’t know that you were supposed to use a wounded man’s own aid kit on him, saving yours for yourself. She had never gotten to that stage of training. But, then again, courage and steadiness under fire couldn’t be taught. “You’re going to have to do self-care,” she said. “Can you do that?”
Browning nodded, tears leaking from the corners of his eyes. Kate appeared unwounded. But he was pretty sure Rob and Dooley were dead, lying out in the open around that corner. Those were his men, his responsibility, and they had died carrying out his orders – trying to conduct a half-assed counter-attack into the rear of a superior force.
They never had a chance.
Browning had been shot at before, and he’d lost teammates – in both Virginia and Saudi Arabia. But never anything like this. He had never been part of a team that was faced down and had the shit kicked out of them by massively superior combatants. As he tried to get a pressure bandage out of the aid kit with shaking hands, he also tried to get his mind around how thoroughly they had been out-fought. Neither he nor anyone he knew had ever encountered a force as aggressive as this one. In the aftermath, he was totally shell-shocked.
Two of his three people were dead – and he was more dead than alive himself. His team had nearly been wiped out – and he wasn’t sure how any of them had survived, except maybe because of Kate’s fast thinking and nerves of steel, and the proximity of that passageway.
Losing so badly wasn’t a good feeling – maybe even worse than the physical pain of his wounds. And, as far as Browning knew, it had all been for nothing.
He had no way of knowing it was only his team slamming into the Spetsnaz rear that had allowed the defenders of the hospital to withstand the first onslaught. It would have meant something to him if he had.
Right now he focused on his breathing – and getting the bleeding in his collarbone and leg stopped. But pressing against the wounds hurt so damned much – it was soul-scraping, and he had to dig down just to keep from crying out.
Browning was in way over his head.
Islamist Asshats II
North-Central Somalia – on the Jingle Bus
Juice now got why they were called jingle buses. And it was pissing him off. He drew his commando knife and sliced through the colorful bits of string hanging around the driver’s seat, with the jingle bells at the end of them.
Al-Sif looked over his shoulder as they hit the floor. Juice was making him drive, not least because he was easier to keep an eye on that way. And it left Juice free to shoot – and Baxter free to do his bidding, which currently involved sitting turned around in the back bench seat, watching their six.
After abandoning the useless Seahawk crash site to the Russians, they were now blasting north up the muddy and rutted road that bisected the middle of the country. Once again, the clapped-out old bus was moving surprisingly fast – a little faster than Juice was comfortable wasn’t going to bounce them off the road, blow a tire or axle, or simply roll them over. He had taken some unlikely forms of transport before, but few that annoyed as much as this one. Then again, it was what they had.
And it definitely beat walking.
Also, unlike the others, Juice knew where Handon was taking P-Zero and the rest of the team, and what his plan was for getting it and them the hell out of there. But there was one thing everyone knew: there would be no waiting around for latecomers. If you missed the train, you were on your own – stranded in Somalia.
Probably forever.
As if on cue, Juice’s radio went. It was Handon. Juice had already updated him with their status, so he must have something new for him. He straightened up, stopped hovering over al-Sif, and retreated halfway back down the aisle.
“Send it.”
“Afraid you were right. That UCAV might now be coming for you. It’s definitely headed your way.”
“Copy that. ETA?”
“Send me your current location.” Juice read out a grid reference from his GPS. After a pause, Handon said, “I’m guessing about eight minutes. I don’t suppose it’s going to run out of fuel before that?”
Juice just pressed his lips together and grimaced.
“No, I guess not. What’s your plan?”
Juice tapped his fingers on his rifle receive
r, monitoring the featureless landscape blurring by them. There was nowhere to hide, and running wouldn’t get them far. Not with the UCAV going 700mph.
“Well… I guess we’re just gonna have to shoot it down.”
* * *
Handon was still up in the cockpit of the Seahawk when they experienced their second flyby in less than half an hour. Having gotten buzzed by the UCAV going one direction, now they were being overtaken by another helo. Handon squinted down at the radar console.
“What the hell is that?”
Cleveland glanced down. “Hey, I just work here.”
Handon clambered into the back, maneuvered around the others and the body on the floor, then stuck most of his torso out the gunner’s hatch. The wind hit him from behind, and he squinted into the wild slipstream, trying to make out the dark speck behind them.
It was getting bigger – fast.
* * *
Having instructed al-Sif to keep driving no matter what, Juice got in conference with Baxter in the back of the bus. “Here’s how it breaks down. If that UCAV comes to take us out, there’s no escape. Getting the bus off the road doesn’t help – there’s no cover for fifty miles. And it’s not going to miss if it targets us. So. Scenario one: it simply leaves us alone. We’re not worth a Hellfire. That’s our best chance.”
Baxter nodded. That sounded pretty good.
“Scenario two: the pilot is a moron, and flies low and right over our heads, basically buzzing us, much closer than he needs to engage. Not counting on that one.” He didn’t elaborate – so far, few of the Spetsnaz operators they had tangled with were morons.
“Wait,” Baxter said. “Can’t smoke or clouds block or confuse its laser-targeting?”
Juice looked out the window. There was some heavy cloud cover, but it was higher now than it had been. “Yeah, he’ll probably have to get down underneath the weather. But he can still fire from stand-off range.” He took a breath. “But if for some reason they do cowboy it and actually dive-bomb us, we can try to take it down with small arms.” Juice let that hang out there.
ARISEN, Book Twelve - Carnage Page 5