Sure enough, a big de Havilland Dash 8 appeared almost right in her face, moving from right to left – slowly enough now, but picking up speed. She could also see both left-side hatches were open, with armed American soldiers manning the doorways. She had no idea where this aircraft was going. But she sure as hell knew she wanted to be on it. And she didn’t plan to get left behind.
She also knew she was going to get one shot at this – at best.
Putting on a desperate burst of speed, she angled to her left, on a course she hoped would intersect with the rear hatch as it went by. She came alongside a little ahead of it – which was a hell of a lot better than a little behind – and as she pumped her arms and legs, and the aircraft still began to pass her…
The biggest man she’d ever seen in her life leaned out the rear hatch, which was luckily only four feet off the ground – and picked her up and pulled her inside the aircraft.
She was in.
* * *
“Go, go, go!” Misha shouted, windmilling his arms, as men poured into the vehicles now that the grenades had finally stopped going off. In seconds, one, and then another roared to life and accelerated crazily down the runway after the runaway plane. He spotted Badger and Warchild running by, and shouted at them. He planned to clear the hangar first. There was still the chance this was just another diversion.
And he wasn’t going to be the dumbass who fell for it.
But by the time they were halfway there, he could see it looked empty – with the front roll-down doors gone, it was open to the world, and there was hardly anywhere inside to hide. Misha was also probably going to have to gamble on this one. He turned and they all ran back to the last remaining vehicle, an open-top Humvee, where he found the Runt sitting in the passenger seat.
As Badger and Warchild leapt in back, he heaved himself into the driver’s seat – and instantly realized that by being last, he’d gotten screwed not only on his passenger but on the vehicle itself. A grenade had actually landed in this thing, and exploded in the cab. Everything was all fucked up, including the starter – and Humvees didn’t even have keys, just a start switch, which had been blown off.
But when he pulled out his multitool, opened the pliers, and turned the remaining bit of screw, the engine roared to life and they pulled out. Last to the hunting party.
But not least frenzied.
* * *
The aging and until very recently neglected de Havilland Dash 8 rattled and bumped over the pot-holed and weed-overgrown runway. In the cargo area, just behind the seats, Zack lay on his back and tried to keep from groaning. Predator had been able to finish the surgery to clamp his severed artery. But now a bearded and turbaned Sikh, who had formally introduced himself as something like “Noise,” had taken over – suturing up the long surgical incision.
Baxter was back, as well, squatting beside him and helping.
Zack was still tripping on a lot of morphine, but it was starting to wear off. He didn’t mind – he wanted his wits about him right now. Lolling his head and looking past and around all the people on board, he was able to make out a single small figure in the rear. And that man was working at what Zack would swear was a DNA sequencer. He looked back up at Noise.
“Is that the scientist? The one working on the vaccine?”
“That it is,” Noise said. “But I need to impose upon you to lie still.”
“No.” Zack shook his head. “I’ve got to talk to him.”
“No doubt there will be plenty of opportunity later.”
“Not if I die right here,” Zack said. “Seriously. Not kidding.”
Baxter rose. “I’ll go get him, Zack.”
* * *
With Park squared away and getting to work, Fick left him there and moved to the open rear hatch – which Predator was now manning like a sullen temple idol with his SCAR-H. This was after having seemingly pulled a random naval aviator out of thin air.
In the little room Pred didn’t take up, Fick stuck his head out the hatch into the slipstream, and looked back. Behind them, and closing the distance, were five trucks in various configurations, presumably manned by even more of these Spetsnaz assholes.
But that’s not what Fick was seeing.
What Fick saw, very clearly, was another of his Marines being left behind, holding a runway to ensure the survival of the team and the success of the mission. But Fick also knew MARSOC Marines were tough sons of bitches, and very hard to kill. He chose to believe that Reyes was alive back there, still operating and kicking ass – just as he believed that the Kid, Chesney, was still alive, and escaping and evading, somewhere back on Beaver Island, half a world away.
He knew he was probably kidding himself. But he also knew that we all live under illusions – and he might as well choose ones that made it possible for him to get through the day. To keep his sanity. To keep fighting. And it simply wasn’t Reyes’s fate, or Chesney’s, or Lovell’s either, to go to Britain, to be there for the endgame. It was Fick’s.
And he had no choice but to fulfill his destiny.
He got out of the way as Pred started taking shots on the pursuing convoy, and moved toward the center of the cabin, passing Juice on his way back.
* * *
Ali looked up from the serious business of shoving the throttle into the console, and trying to get them all off this wretched continent, to find there was another woman on her flight deck. And she was wearing the flight suit of a naval aviator.
“You’re relieved,” Hailey said.
“All yours,” Ali said. If she’d been all that attached to flying, she would have remained a pilot.
As Hailey took over Ali’s seat, she added, “Your presence is being requested in back – to do some shooting, I think.”
Ali sighed. She’d never really thought it was going to be this easy.
When she exited into the main cabin, she was greeted with a scene very unlike anything one might encounter on any conceivable commercial flight.
To her immediate right, the front hatch was open – and Jake, the imposing Triple Nickel team sergeant, was pointing a big-ass rifle out it – along with Kate, the other woman shooter, backing him up. In the three rows of seats beyond that were exactly two passengers – Wesley, the NSF commander, and Pete, the mechanic – both strapping themselves in, and looking nervous. Just beyond the seats, Zack was down on the deck, no longer bleeding out, with a polite and completely deadly Sikh suturing his abdomen. In the open middle area, Fick and the dreadlocked, sword-wielding Somali were peering out the left-side windows, looking anxious. Predator and Juice manned the open rear hatch on the same side. And beyond that, in the very back, it looked like an airborne vaccine research lab, with the DNA sequencer set up and Patient Zero lying behind it. But the lab manager, Park, was now coming forward, led by Baxter.
Having got the lay of the land, Ali stepped up behind Kate and pressed her helmet to hers. “Sitrep me!” she shouted over the wind and engine noise. But even before Kate could answer, Jake’s 50-cal Beowulf started booming, practically in their ears – which was answer enough. Spetsnaz were obviously back. They weren’t giving up, or letting go, that easily.
Nonetheless, Kate turned her head and shouted back: “Five victors, right behind us! We think they’re going to try to pull ahead and cut us off – block the runway and keep us from taking off! We’ve got to keep them from getting by!”
“Okay,” Ali said. “Roger that.”
* * *
Park was down on the deck when Baxter found him – gloved up and withdrawing a syringe of gunk from Patient Zero, preparing to start sequencing the sample even as the plane accelerated toward take-off. But Baxter convinced him to take a minute out, led him forward, and made way as Park squatted down beside Zack, trying to ignore his ravaged abdomen being stitched up in front of him.
Not knowing what else to say, he said, “I’m Simon.”
Zack couldn’t nod, so he just blinked. “Zack.”
“You’ve got somet
hing to tell me,” Park said.
“I was there at the beginning,” Zack said, knowing he may or may not have a lot of time for this. “At the start of the plague, in Hargeisa. And even before that – at the creation of the virus.”
Park’s eyes went wide. This was definitely of interest. “Wait – the Alpha guys sent me a CIA report they found in Hargeisa. About an al-Shabaab bioweapon attack.”
Zack tried and failed to nod again. “Yeah. I wrote it. And if you’ve read it, then you know the virus that became Hargeisa started as a chimera…” He paused to get his breath, as well as to wince in pain. Noise had tried to give him more morphine, but he’d refused. “A chimera of smallpox and myelin toxin.”
Park nodded. “Yes. Priceless info. It’s helped me enormously.”
“Here’s what wasn’t in the report – because the world ended before I could update it. The virus mutated in the presence of rabies, specifically rabid dogs. It was only after that it became virulent in humans in the way that… that we’ve seen…”
Park’s eyes went wide again. His face said: It all makes sense now. “The last piece of the puzzle. Smallpox, myelin toxin – and rabies.” He had already been confident he could perfect a working vaccine with the early-stage sample they finally had. But, with that last piece of information, now he had this pathogen by the throat. He had its number. “I’ve got to get back to work.”
“Go,” Zack said. “Save us all.”
And when Baxter looked down into Zack’s face, the older man looked at peace. Like he was done.
“You hang on,” Baxter said. “You are not dying in Africa.”
Zack laughed weakly, then winced from the pain of the laugh.
* * *
Homer peered through the crack in the half-open door of the little office in the back corner of the hangar. With the front doors blown off, the entire structure was now pretty much open to the outside. And by having the office door mostly open, that gave the illusion of it being empty, too – rather than having a Team Six SEAL, an ace aviation mechanic, and a bank robber hiding behind it, their backs pressed against the thin wall.
And it was as Homer feared – Spetsnaz were not like cats who followed any moving piece of string. They were panthers, who stalked their prey with patience, commitment, and savvy. And the three trotting toward them now – including the biggest human being Homer had ever seen who wasn’t Predator – looked like the rule that proved the rule.
He was already turning to issue whispered instructions to Davis and Burns about what he needed them to do, in the brutal and close-quarters firefight that was about to erupt… when the giant and his minions changed their minds. They simply turned, ran back to the last of the vehicles, spun the tires, and roared off down the runway.
Well, Homer reminded himself. I’d rather be lucky than good any day.
“Come on,” he said to the others. “It’s about a mile to the beach.”
* * *
Reyes twisted at the waist again, to peer through the gap in the tires – just in time to see the last vehicle peel out and roar off. He had his .45 in his hand, resting in his lap. But he didn’t have the strength to raise it and take any last potshots. It didn’t matter, though.
He was still laughing his ass off about the grenades.
When he faced forward again, he saw three men exit the hangar at a run. He immediately recognized one as Homer.
Man, he thought. We could have saved ourselves a lot of trouble if we’d just listened to that dude earlier…
It occurred to him to try to shout at them – but he didn’t have the strength for that, either. So instead, he just watched them go, happy to see them alive, on their feet, operating. Good for them. His mind was getting a little fuzzy, but it did occur to him to wonder where they were headed. Then he thought: maybe back to the carrier. To reinforce the Marines fighting there.
That would be good. He knew that Homer, or any of the Alpha guys really, could single-handedly turn a fight around.
“Get some,” he managed to whisper.
He realized he couldn’t see those three anymore, but wasn’t sure if it was because they were out of sight, or because his vision was fading. Or maybe because the light was failing as night fell.
And as the darkness descended, his vision filled again with the bright sunlight of southern California. It was that playground, in the pretty reclaimed little section of East L.A. where he would take his daughter. And he could see her now, five years old, riding the merry-go-round. He would always give her a fast initial spin, which would make her squeal with delight. After that, she wanted to do it herself, reaching out with her little foot and pushing off in the grass to keep herself spinning.
Reyes had never been religious, despite being raised by his devout Catholic grandmother. But in this moment, he could feel that there must be something more, something beyond what they could see. And he felt there was somewhere he had to go. And that his daughter would be waiting for him there.
Someplace like home.
With his last strength, he unzipped the top of the bag that still lay beside him, revealing Lovell’s serene and beautiful face. He was a little paler, but otherwise looked just the same as ever: switched on, happy, always ready to help. Reyes put his hand on Lovell’s cool forehead.
“We’re all going home, brother.”
Bloodthirsty and Brutal
Red Square – One Troop’s Strongpoint
Standing on their own rooftop, back from the destroyed one and open-air Spetsnaz shooting gallery next door, Major Jameson personally waved around a couple of IR strobes, guiding Charlotte and her “Fat Cow” Chinook helo back in and down. But even as he did, she was already giving him a tongue-lashing over the radio.
“You son of a bitch. You couldn’t have fucking WARNED me you were planning to blow the whole roof?”
“No, sorry, actually I couldn’t…” But then he had to get out of the way as the giant heavy-lift helo started coming down practically on his head. He decided to assume that wasn’t intentional on Charlotte’s part.
Eli leaned in to shout over the noise. “Seriously, though – how the hell did you know Spetsnaz had cracked our comms?”
Jameson shrugged while also ducking and backing away from the incoming hurricane. “It was the only way they could have captured Gibson and the plane so quickly. When he radioed his grid coords to Charlotte.”
Eli shook his head. “Damn. I had no idea you had it in you.”
“What – to be that clever?”
“No. To be so bloodthirsty, mate – so brutal.”
Jameson shrugged again, writing off the massacre of the Alfa Group patrol they had just perpetrated next door. “Fuck ’em. They were between me and the salvation of my home and my people.”
“Remind me not to get between you and anything you love.”
Jameson gave him a look that made saying it unnecessary.
Eli smiled in awe and gratitude and slapped his commander and friend on the back, then moved up to the rear ramp of the Chinook, which was already lowering. Within seconds, he and the rest of the men were pulling out a big blob-like empty fuel blivet, the only one that had been expended on the trip so far, and soon after that a couple of rucks full of ammo, quickly getting them distributed. As the men circled around and filled their empty mag pouches, Jameson pulled Eli in close.
“You really think this idea of yours will work?”
Eli smiled. “It’s so daft, I don’t see how it can fail. And, hell, your batshit-crazy idea about blowing up a rooftop underneath a fifty-thousand-pound helicopter worked. This one should be a walk in the park for you! Plus ten times as brutal.”
Jameson shook his head, then double-checked the contents of a rucksack, which he had filled with explosive charges, grenades, and rope. He went halfway up the ramp and threw it inside, then turned around and motioned to Sanders and Halldon. The two veteran Royal Marines nodded, then got the lolling Russian prisoner on his feet and pushed him up and inside. J
ameson pulled on an ICS headset, and squatted down on the open ramp.
“Where are we going?” Charlotte asked in his ear.
“Just across the square! I’ll point it out once we lift.”
The engines began to wind up, the noise and wind both pummeling. “One last thing!” Eli said. Jameson turned to see him still standing right beside the lowered ramp, very close to him. “You’re not going!”
“What?”
Moving fast for an old fighter, Eli grabbed him by the vest with both hands and hauled him off the helo ramp. Jameson passed his center of gravity, the cord of his headset yanking it off him, and with flailing arms flew through the air and sprawled out face down on the rooftop, the impact half-stunning him.
By the time he’d rolled over and bounced to his feet, Eli had already taken his place on the ramp – including wearing the ICS headset. And the bird was lifting off.
As Jameson stared, open-mouthed, Eli reached inside his vest, pulled out that battered old notebook of his, and tossed it down to him. “Keep this safe for me!” he shouted.
Horrorstruck, Jameson watched his old friend’s familiar face disappear into the night.
Smiling the whole way.
* * *
After a less than fifteen-second flight time, the Fat Cow flared in again, this time over the roof of Lenin’s mausoleum. The rear ramp had never been raised, and so Eli hopped off it the five feet down to the top of the building, then turned to take the prisoner as Sanders and Halldon handed him down. They then tossed out the rucksack and jumped out themselves.
There was no crew chief to tell Charlotte the team was clear, so Sanders circled around to the front and gave her a thumbs-up. She powered up again, and soared off into the night the way she came.
Eli did a quick scan of the rooftop, decided one spot was about as good as another, and started digging into the pack for breaching charges. But before he could get them set, Halldon hailed him over the radio. Running over and finding him on the opposite side of a small shed-like structure, he saw Halldon pointing at a door. “Think this goes anywhere?”
ARISEN, Book Twelve - Carnage Page 27