But when he swung back into the alley, rifle up… it was empty. Both the Russian and the pilot were gone. Lovell reached back, grabbed Park by his shirt, got them both moving again, fast.
And hoped like hell that delay wasn’t going to cost them.
* * *
Ali was huddled up with Homer over a regional map when Pete trotted up – much faster than she’d expected. Wordlessly, he held out the pad with his ammo manifest on it. Ali took it and held it where she and Homer could read it.
“Well, shit,” she said after a few seconds.
“Yeah,” Homer said. “It ain’t good.”
Ali realized they shouldn’t have been surprised. It wasn’t twenty minutes ago that they were all going cyclic trying to stay alive in a desperate ambush. And all of them had been in fights before that – but after their last access to spare ammo in helos or trucks. Now they were pretty much all scraping the bottom of the barrel.
“I don’t suppose there’s anywhere left we can top up,” Ali said.
“There’s Lemonnier next door,” Homer said. “But it’s overrun.”
“It shouldn’t matter. This is the final act. We’ve just got to get the hell out. Then we’re done.”
Homer looked skeptical – but then smiled and tapped Ali’s chest, where there were four full mags for her Mk12. “But, as usual, you’ve shepherded your rounds.”
She shrugged. “Hey, I may be black… but I’m never black on ammo.” But her smile faded as she looked past him at the plane.
“Yeah,” he said, reading her mind. “That’s probably a little bigger than you’re used to flying.”
In addition to being a combat helicopter pilot, Ali was qualified on small planes – generally very small ones. But, looking around the hangar, she didn’t see any more pilots than before. It was just her.
“I’d better check the cockpit – see if I recognize any of the controls.”
“I’ll come with you,” Homer said.
The plane had two hatches, front and rear, both on the left side. Both were open and both sets of stairs down. The others had started loading up – casualties first.
Ali climbed up and in, using the hatch closest to the cockpit, then paused to check out the cabin to her right as Homer followed. This had clearly been a working cargo aircraft. It had three rows of seats at the front, just behind the lavatory, which was behind the flight deck. But the rest of the long cabin was wide open, cleared out for cargo.
But it wasn’t empty.
Ali looked down just beyond the seating area – and saw Predator and Baxter hunched over Zack, who was flat on his back, and evidently sedated. Pred, gloved up and holding a scalpel, looked up at her. She had no desire to observe this, so moved left into the cockpit, sat down, and regarded the flight controls, as Homer took the co-pilot’s seat.
A loud but dull thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk penetrated the cabin.
They both leapt to their feet again.
But by the time they got back out of the plane, it was all over. Noise was pulling closed the door in the rear, smoke curling gracefully from the barrel of his Auto Assault 12 combat shotgun.
* * *
Misha nodded at his men emerging from the second-to-last hangar, which had proven empty, then moved up to the gap between it and the very last one. He watched as two of his guys stacked up on the side door. One jammed a crowbar in the gap and popped the door open, moving aside for the other, who swung around and—
In the next second there sounded a series of five dull blasts.
The point man rocketed across the alley and into the side of the hangar, as the second man got his weapon up – and then was also knocked back and down by the unexpected storm of buckshot. Both lay unmoving in an ugly dark pile on the ground. There was a long blood smear on the wall of the hangar behind them.
The door banged as it slammed shut again.
Misha looked over at Kuznetsov, who said:
“Well. I suppose we’ve found them.”
* * *
Lovell not only heard but recognized the full-auto burst of shotgun fire. He took this as an alarm bell, and that’s exactly what it turned out to be. When he and Park reached the end of the alley behind the sheds, and Lovell looked out, he could see Spetsnaz guys ahead and off to the left. And they were even then circling and forming a cordon around the last hangar – where Lovell knew Fick and the others were.
There was fifty meters of mostly open space between them and it.
They were going to have to gamble and run for it – and it was now or never. If they waited, they’d be cut off. Lovell turned, put his mouth to Park’s ear, and hissed, “Put your head down, stay to my right – and run like hell.”
Park nodded.
“Go!”
They put their heads down – and both ran like hell.
* * *
Misha and Kuznetsov startled and looked up at motion from their right. The rest of their men were already facing in toward the last hangar, so only the two leaders clocked this flashing movement from behind the row of smaller buildings. Kuznetsov raised his rifle, but Misha knocked it away, his vision spooling in on the second figure. “That’s the fucking scientist,” he said. “We need him.”
Kuznetsov realized he was right – impressed that Misha had ID’d him so quickly – and lowered his weapon.
But then Misha raised his own rifle in a blur and sighted in. “That dubious Jarhead motherfucker on the other hand…” He didn’t specifically recognize the second man from the warehouse fight at Saldanha – but he damn well recognized the uniform, that MARPAT camo. He fired twice.
The scientist disappeared behind the hangar.
The Marine slid into the dust, crushed under a heavy backpack.
Misha lowered his rifle and grunted in satisfaction.
The Siege
Djibouti Airport – UN Hangar
Noise pulled Park through the door with one hand, then slammed it behind him and raised his AA12 again. There were several familiar faces there to greet the scientist, mainly those of Alpha guys, and they looked pretty damned glad to see him.
One who didn’t was Fick. “Where the hell’s Lovell?”
Park’s smile evaporated, and he looked behind him. There was nothing there but the inside of the door. “He was right behind me…”
Fick moved to the nearby window and looked out – then dashed across the hangar to the opposite side, ducking under the tail of the plane and sticking his face up to the other window, pushing aside Wesley, who had been guarding it. The glass was grimy, but Fick could make out his Marine – down on the deck, dragging himself under the cover of the parked pushback tractor.
He turned around to face the others. “I need covering fire.”
Ali said, “I can’t let you go out there, Master Guns.”
Fick’s expression made it immediately obvious what she was going to have to do to stop him.
But then Park spoke up. “He’s got the DNA sequencer.”
Wesley stepped up. “I’ll cover you.”
“Goddammit,” Ali said. “Okay. Come on – we gotta go if we’re going.” She shouted out assignments as they crossed the hangar floor again. “Ready?” she said as they stacked up at the door.
It wasn’t really a question.
* * *
Inside the plane, Baxter assisted as Predator dug around in Zack’s thoracic cavity. He was looking straight ahead, working blind, deep inside the man, having to find the source of internal bleeding by touch. They were both kneeling in a pool of blood that had waterfalled out of Zack’s abdomen when Noise sliced it open.
Baxter was looking away as well, but for another reason – it was too awful, and he identified too closely with Zack. They’d been all each other had for a long time. Then again, he was keeping the retractor in place, and proving a capable enough surgical nurse.
More shotgun blasts sounded, followed by more firing outside.
Baxter stiffened up, and stared across at Pred, whose
look of focused concentration didn’t change. Baxter said, “Aren’t you worried about what’s going on out there?”
Pred squinted as he dug around. “Whatever’s going on out there, our teammates have got it covered. If they need us, believe me – they’ll come find us. Our job is to focus on what we’re doing. Got it?”
Baxter nodded, breathed, and tried to freak out less.
“More retraction, dude.” Then Pred smiled. “Aha – got it. It’s the iliac artery, like I thought. Hand me a couple of clamps.” He pointed with his head. “They’re in there.”
Baxter nodded, and did his job.
* * *
With the rescue team assembled, Noise yanked the door open, stepped out, went left – and opened up down the alley, single-shot now to conserve his dwindling ammo. Wesley spilled out beside him, also firing his M4 – unsuppressed weapons, it turned out, worked better as covering fire. Then again, Spetsnaz were not the kind of guys who panicked at the sound of gunfire. As those two faced out, and Ali stayed in the doorway, Fick went right, with Jake and the limping Reyes behind him, all three turning right again and blasting down the alley behind the hangar. When they emerged at its end, Jake and Reyes instantly took up positions and put out a murderous covering barrage of their own.
Still, the encircling Spetsnaz shooters responded in kind, taking cover and putting out a lethal return volley.
Not hesitating, Fick charged through the storm of lead to the rear of the aircraft tractor, grabbed Lovell by his drag strap – and pulled both him and the sixty-pound sequencer back to the hangar, three times as fast as any middle-aged man had any business doing.
Twenty seconds after going out it, they all flew back through the door – all five of those who went out, plus Lovell. In another minor miracle of combat ballistics and angles, nobody had been hit.
No one except Lovell.
Down on the deck, Fick cradled the head of his Marine. Lovell was bleeding out.
He was dying in Fick’s arms.
* * *
Two Spetsnaz Team 2 guys, who Misha didn’t quite recognize, not only kept firing at the little hangar door after it was shut, but also walked their fire to the right, along the likely path of those who fled inside. The thin corrugated steel of the hangar was like rice paper to the high-velocity AK rounds, and two neat lines of holes blossomed across it.
Only Misha’s dwindling number of men kept him from killing these two outright. Instead, he charged them, bellowing.
“Prekratite strelyat’, vy petukhmastera! Chertov Patsiyent Nol’ tam!”
He couldn’t have them shooting blind in there. It was a big hangar, but it would be just their luck for one of them to put a round into the brainstem of Patient Zero.
They got the message and stopped shooting pretty fast.
* * *
Several people hit the deck as rounds cut through the walls and bounced around the interior, many of them pinging off the skin of the aircraft. When it stopped, no one had been hit – but the gunfire silenced all chatter inside. Into the silence, Predator could be heard to shout from inside the plane:
“Hey, Juice, brother!”
“Yeah?” Juice said, climbing to his feet.
“This car sucks, dude!”
Nearby, at his post at the window, Wesley said, “If they can just shoot through the walls, maybe we need to get the hell out of here?”
“Nah,” Juice said. “They won’t do that again.”
“How do you know?”
“Did you hear that dinosaur voice shouting outside? That was their commander.”
“And what did he say?”
Before Juice could answer, Baxter did. He had stepped through the front hatch of the plane, blood on his hands, knees, and boots. “He said, ‘Stop shooting, you cockmasters. Fucking Patient Zero is in there.’”
Juice looked up at him. “Huh. I didn’t know the Russian for ‘cockmaster’.”
“I just translated literally.”
Ali, still conferring with Homer, said: “Well, that’s something.”
Homer didn’t look reassured. “Doesn’t mean they can’t dig us out of here some other way.”
Ali nodded, then looked up. “I was thinking about trying to get up on the roof. Defend the position from overwatch.”
Homer shook his head. “That’s a no-go, Aaliyah.” She didn’t look convinced, so he ticked off the reasons why. “They definitely know P-Zero isn’t up there, so it’ll be a turkey shoot – with you as the turkey. Plus the group can’t do without you.”
Ali shrugged. “If I fall, almost anybody else can take charge.”
“Maybe so – but nobody else can fly the plane.”
“Oh, yeah. That.”
This still begged the question of whether they could even get the plane, or themselves, the hell out of there in one piece.
* * *
In the back left of the hangar, near the once-again-closed rear door, Fick was still cradling his dying Marine. And he was thinking: Oh, God. Not this again…
After so many years served together, Lovell could read his look perfectly. As huge a hard-ass as Fick liked to make himself out to be – had to be, as a Marine Master Gunnery Sergeant, and acting commander of the MARSOC force – Lovell knew he was actually as sappy and sentimental as they came. Like a lot of interesting and accomplished people, he was a huge bundle of contradictions. Lovell looked up at him and tried to smile.
“It’s okay, Master Guns,” he said. “I did what I needed to do.” With obvious pain, he nodded toward Doctor Park, who was kneeling beside the ruck with the DNA sequencer in it. “You’ve just got to get him the last leg. You finish it.”
Fick couldn’t speak. He just nodded, his throat stoppered by a huge lump and his eyes thick with tears. They spilled over as he saw the light go out of Lovell’s eyes. He closed them with two fingers, laid the man’s head gently down on the deck, and stood up.
Park said, “He saved my life twenty times in the last two hours.”
Fick picked up the heavy ruck and said, “Come on. Minutes count.”
Park got it. He was ready to work. “Is there power on the plane?”
“Yeah, should be, as soon as the engines start, anyway. Let’s get you set up. Patient Zero’s already loaded up in the back of the cabin.”
As the pair moved around the tail to get to the rear hatch, Fick looked over his shoulder and saw Park stopped at a work bench, picking up a crowbar from it.
“Who do you think you are?” Fick asked. “Gordon fucking Freeman?”
Park shrugged and got moving again – but held on to the crowbar. As they mounted the stairs to the rear hatch, something punched through the steel roll-up doors in front and arced over their heads.
And it was trailing thick smoke.
* * *
“That’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout,” Misha said. He had been digging around in the crates and bags of supplies that Team 2 had loaded up in their vehicles. Since they were all supposed to be getting the hell out of this shit-hole continent, they had closed out their forest encampment – taking anything that might still come in handy.
This included a KBP GM-94 multi-shot, pump-action 43mm grenade launcher. It looked like a pistol-grip shotgun with a folding stock – except with an even bigger barrel and tube magazine underneath. Misha wasn’t surprised to find the weapon – though he hadn’t gotten his hopes up about the ammo he needed. But, sure enough, the dearly departed Team 2 guys had thrown it all in there. And it included – among all the HE, fragmentation, and thermobaric rounds – a half-dozen tear-gas grenades.
“Enough of this bullshit,” Misha said, snatching them up.
After loading up the three-plus-one the weapon held, he strode to a spot directly in front of the hangar doors, spread his legs and stood tall – and started shooting them off, high, left to right. The propellant of the grenades was enough to punch through the thin steel walls. When he was empty, he loaded up the last two and shot those as well.
“Now come out and breathe some real air, you junk monkeys…”
* * *
When the hangar started to fill with burning, noxious CS gas, nobody inside panicked. Then again, nobody had a gas mask, either. No one except Juice, who always seemed to have everything.
Most of the operators got some type of cloth, ideally wet from their CamelBaks, over their faces, then helped the non-operators do the same. Many had goggles, which came down fast, and were helpful to keep their eyes from shutting uncontrollably. Although the thick clouds billowing around didn’t help visibility much.
Ali quickly organized a more systematic plan to deal with the tear gas – though a more dangerous and crazy-ass one. While Homer got everyone clear of the plane, and Noise got the back door open, Ali climbed into the cockpit.
And she started up the right-side engine.
Now they had a head-thrummingly loud noise in there, along with engine exhaust fumes, and not to mention the outrageous health-and-safety hazard of a twelve-foot, four-bladed propeller spinning at over 1,000rpm, indoors and in tight quarters.
But they also had all the tear gas blown out the back door – basically all the air in the hangar replaced – in about ten seconds.
Ali nodded happily as she stepped to the hatch and looked out.
Your move, motherfuckers.
* * *
By this time, Misha’s men surrounded the hangar on all four sides. When the door on the back left opened, and the alley filled with tear gas, the two men posted there looked like they wanted to withdraw. But they sure as hell weren’t going to. Probably the ones in the back alley did as well, but Misha didn’t give a shit about them either.
“God fucking dammit,” he spat, turning and stomping back to the parked vehicles. He was starting to wish he’d moved them all over here from the open-air Team 2 graveyard where they’d stopped, two hangars down. But really he just wanted this shit over with.
He pulled a five-liter plastic fuel can from the back of an open-bed Humvee and tossed it to the man nearest him, then grabbed another one. He stalked up to the hangar and started splashing gas high and wide across it. Soon, several other men were approaching with gas cans, following suit.
ARISEN, Book Twelve - Carnage Page 25