Gripping the sword with both hands to control it, Wes sized up the man coming for him. Warchild was a truly grizzled badass – salt-and-pepper crewcut, dozens of deep lines around the eyes and forehead, evil ice-blue eyes that had seen every manner of atrocity. And as he stalked up to Wesley, swinging his shovel, it became clear his plans did not involve stopping.
Wesley tried a quick jab at the man’s midsection, but Warchild knocked it away and kept coming, already inside the range of both their weapons – and delivered a powerful left jab into Wesley’s nose, knocking him half-senseless.
Wesley reeled, backing up and trying to keep his feet.
* * *
To Wesley’s immediate right, Badger – the leering young Spetsnaz knife guy – came at Fick, dual knives akimbo and dancing in the air. Fick just stood tall and wide, his expression somewhere between bored and pissed off, and waited for him.
Finally, the two flashing knives came in at him from two directions, and Fick was forced to react, parrying one strike and then the other with his bigger and heavier K-Bar, retreating one step and then another, giving himself space to react.
After the initial flurry, Badger stepped back and reset. He smiled at Fick. And he came in for him again, knives flashing.
Fick spat, and met him head on.
* * *
Up on the flight deck, Hailey was blissfully unaware of the mayhem back in the cabin. No one had to tell her the right-side engine had come back online – the effect was instantaneous. The plane stopped pulling to the right like a lunging pit bull, and they started picking up speed.
Now she squinted down the runway, trying to judge if they had enough left to get off the ground. She had no idea what the minimum take-off distance was for this aircraft. She did know, however, that this runway had 500 feet of concrete overrun at its end – and, after that, nothing but dirt, a little beach, and then the Gulf of Aden. There was the perimeter fence, but that was nothing to a plane of this size. There were no trees, buildings, or other obstructions she had to get over. If she could get them one inch in the air before running out of ground, they’d be okay.
She decided she had to give it a shot.
Something in the distance flew into her visual frame, spun around, and then settled down twenty feet off the deck.
Right over the end of the fucking runway.
It was a helicopter – and it was now occupying the exact airspace she would need to go through to take off.
Hailey froze, wide eyes staring ahead.
“Oh, fuck it,” she said out loud. She pushed the throttle into the console. In games of chicken, in her experience…
The bigger player usually won.
* * *
Battling to focus through tears, Wesley batted away Warchild’s strikes with his sword – once on the right, the impact jarring through his arms and making them buzz, then again on the left. But when he tried to block again on the right, the force of it knocked the sword out of his hands entirely.
His eyes darted down, but Warchild stepped forward and sent the sword skittering down the deck behind him with his boot. He then wound up a two-handed strike with the sharp edge of the spade, which seemed likely to take Wesley’s head off.
With inspiration born out of desperation, he rushed forward inside the strike, put his head down and to the side, wrapped his arms around the Russian’s legs, and executed the most basic rugby tackle – front-on with a roll to the side. The Russian went down on his back, Wesley rolling on top of him and then jumping to his feet and backing up.
But the Russian also bounced to his feet.
And Wesley’s sword was still on the wrong side of him.
* * *
Still leering, blades flashing, Badger smiled at Fick’s K-Bar. “You’ve only got one knife, old man – and it’s almost as old as you are.”
Okay, Fick thought. I’m officially sick of this horseshit.
And he did what he’d been dying to do all along: he put his own head down and charged, smashing into Badger before the Russian could orchestrate a killing strike – but not fast enough to avoid getting cut. Fick absorbed the slashes on his upper arms as they crashed to the deck. Knives or no knives, now it was a ground grapple.
And Fick liked his odds there.
He’d take age and upper-body strength over youth, speed, and a smart-ass attitude any day.
* * *
“Wesley, mate!”
Figuring he was going to regret this, Wesley looked over his shoulder just in time to see Noise tossing something at him. Catching it through some combination of necessity and divine intervention, Wes found himself holding a cricket bat. Where it came from, he hadn’t the vaguest idea. But he did know how to use one – not so much from cricket, which had never been his sport, but from his days as a bouncer in dodgy clubs in the Midlands.
When he turned around, he found Warchild swinging for his head again, and gave the spade a two-handed slam with the bat. And this time it was the Russian who absorbed all the force, staggering and spinning to his right.
Wesley smiled, as Noise shouted support in true English fashion: “Get in, my son!”
But Wesley was too busy being pleased with his handiwork, and too slow to realize the Russian was continuing his spin – and bringing his spade around from the other side. Wesley tried to get the bat up to block – but too late. The flat part of the shovel crashed into the side of his helmet, and his world went black.
Wesley crumpled to the deck.
* * *
Noise looked up from his work trying to stabilize Jake – and he saw both Wesley and Fick go down. And while the Marine had his opponent pinned to the deck, the Brit’s sparring partner was still on his feet. This meant that, on the left side of the cabin, no one opposed him. He also didn’t take time to finish Wesley off, but just stepped over him and kept coming forward.
Noise knew his objective would be the cockpit. But even as his hand reached for his own sword, a figure rushed by, coming up the aisle. It was Baxter. Noise nodded his respect and let him take it.
But this also left the front hatch unguarded – not to mention the flight deck. Noise looked up, locked eyes with Kate, and stuck his thumb in his chest. “Front hatch.” He pointed at Kate with his index finger. “Cockpit.”
Kate nodded. If she didn’t like leaving Jake uncared for, she also understood their priorities. As the pair rose and dashed back up the aisle, Noise said, “No one can get through you. They must not take the cockpit.”
“Check,” Kate said, reaching the flight deck, spinning, and bringing her rifle up.
Stepping up to the open hatch, Noise said, “And no shooting.”
“I’ll do my best.”
But then Kate’s vision went long, and she looked through all the carnage in the cabin. And in the back, she could see a gigantic Russian choking Juice out. She took a bead with her rifle, but then stopped, and hit her radio on the squad net.
“Hey, somebody really needs to do something—”
At the same time, a few feet away, Noise stuck his head out the hatch to check the state of play – and he saw the most amazing thing: Predator.
He was outside the aircraft.
And standing in a vehicle no one seemed to be driving.
I’m Crushing Heads
Djibouti Airport – the Runway
Captain Kuznetsov watched the flapping, broken body of another of his men bounce at him down the tarmac, and had to decide whether to swerve or not. It made little difference from the victim’s point of view – and it was safer to run him over than to steer around.
The Humvee bounced once as Kuznetsov squinted through the giant bullet hole in the windshield and the spider-webbing around it. A little late, he realized the windshield had a quick-release. He turned one pin, then the other, and pushed the whole pane out. That was good, as had been his success in ejecting the dead driver and taking control, all without crashing.
But now everything else was going to shit.
&n
bsp; The vehicle he’d sent around for the mechanics was a half-crushed hulk a half-mile behind them. The lead vehicle on this side had gotten a similar, but worse, treatment, ending up a charred and smoking ruin. And now it looked like the open-bed safari truck had been depopulated by some Misha-sized maniac who’d leapt onto it from a moving plane and proceeded to evacuate all the passengers like they were in rocket-powered ejection seats.
Now the 50-cal gunner behind him, and everyone else in his vehicle, was shouting at him to swing out so they could get a shot at this Gigantor son of a bitch. They were either frenzied at the prospect of bagging such big prey – or frustrated out of their minds that they couldn’t engage the plane. Probably a bit of both. But, in any case, the SUV ahead of them was blocking their sight picture.
Kuznetsov shook his head. Misha’s outright ban on firing at the aircraft was on the verge of getting them all killed. It would do precious little good to capture the plane if everyone who might use it to get home was street pizza on the tarmac. Then again, their mission objective was also on the plane. And on the upside, Misha and his two praetorians had managed to board it. With a little luck they would take it down and stop it.
But Kuznetsov, like most men who’d survived years in Spetsnaz, was a hard-bitten cynic and not a big believer in luck. So instead of racing ahead to fight it out with the giant leaping man, plus all the guys shooting out the two hatches on this side…
He braked, waited for the plane to go by, then swerved right.
Since the right-side engine had started back up, the plane had angled back toward the center of the runway, and now there was room to pass on that side. The last vehicle to try this hadn’t fared very well, but Kuznetsov intended to be ready this time. Moreover, there were only one or two of the enemy there. He’d take his chances.
More to the point, if he could pull ahead on the right, he could do what they were all there to do in the first place – get ahead of the plane, block its take-off, and bring it to a goddamned stop.
And finally end this.
* * *
Pred had little choice but to kill the driver of the safari truck. He was off balance, bent over the partition, pistol-wielding right hand locked and jammed into the dashboard, left hand still pointing back with an empty AK. It was an awkward and vulnerable pose – exactly the way to defeat a bigger, stronger opponent.
And the driver was swinging a huge knife at his face.
Pred executed the only move available to him: he tucked his chin into his chest, and tried to get his lightweight tactical helmet between his face and the knife. The razor-sharp blade sliced through plastic and thin Kevlar – and then the skin and muscle of his forehead, descending all the way down in front of his eyeball, a half-inch away. But Pred’s thick skull, and the angle, saved him.
The Russian yanked at his knife, but it was stuck.
Pred dropped his pistol in the footwell, then the rifle into the bed behind him. And then, using his horse-sized pectoral muscles, he brought his outstretched arms together, balled fists meeting in the middle at the Russian’s head. The man’s skull collapsed under the blow, the shape of his face distorting as all the bones in his face shattered.
Pred straightened up, unsnapped his helmet, and discarded both it and the embedded knife, as blood streamed down his face. He started to push the driver out – but stopped as he realized the dead man’s foot was still on the accelerator. They were not only still going, they were accelerating. This was good, because so was the plane.
Pred realized it was taking off in earnest now.
He also realized there was another vehicle between his and the aircraft, an open-top Humvee with only a driver in it – and it was accelerating to keep up with the plane. Pred had totally missed Misha and his praetorians climbing over.
He turned back in to the cab, squatted down beside Handon, drew his knife, and cut the straps that bound him to the litter. But he left the zip-ties on. This next part would be easier without Handon’s limbs flapping around.
As he picked up his unconscious but still breathing commander and friend, Pred vaguely became aware of radio traffic he’d been zoning out of. With a start, he recognized the voice of Kate. And she was saying, “—that big Russian bastard is about to kill Juice.”
He squinted as he tried to parse that. What big Russian bastard? But it didn’t matter. He was out of time. For at least this instant, all three vehicles – safari truck, Humvee, and Dash 8 – were lined up and moving the same speed. He paused a half-second to judge the distances, angles, and weights.
And then he threw Handon’s 200-pound body across open air into the bed of the Humvee – one hop closer to the plane.
And he coiled his own body to leap across after him.
* * *
Leaning out the front hatch, Noise saw what Predator didn’t – the next vehicle behind, gaining on them. And the Spetsnaz guys in it were leaning out and bringing weapons to bear on him – just as he appeared to be picking up a limp body from the back of the truck. Pred was oblivious to the threat.
Noise wondered what Pred must have been thinking to jump out into the midst of the enemy like that. It probably wasn’t a good sign, and didn’t speak well of his mental health.
I must have the big man’s back, he thought.
He had failed in his duty to protect the British bioscientists, reacting too slowly to the assassination attempt on the flight deck – losing one dead, one wounded, and one traumatized. He didn’t intend to fail again. He was going to keep the big man alive – whatever it took.
He flipped the fire selector on his AA12 to semi-auto. It was a blunt instrument at this range, and he had to shoot around his giant friend to protect him. He fired once, twice, three times, and saw the safety glass of the approaching SUV’s windshield spider-web around big holes in the middle. He’d gotten their attention. But as he took another bead, the hurtling aircraft, picking up speed, bucked and bounced him half out of the hatch. He eased off the trigger as his muzzle swept Predator.
He let his shotgun fall on its sling and drew his side arm – he had to be more precise. He grabbed the edge of the hatch with his left hand, and hung his body out over the blurring pavement to get a shot. He could see two guys leaning out the right side of the SUV, drawing a bead on Pred. He emptied his mag into them – hitting one and forcing the other to duck back inside.
Motion caught his eye – it was a flying body, which landed in an open-top Humvee between Pred’s vehicle and the plane. The Humvee’s driver swerved in response, actually bouncing off the airframe. The 5,200-pound truck was enough to jolt the shit out of the plane, and nearly toss Noise out again.
Close one, he thought, bouncing again, barely hanging on – and then pulling himself back inside.
Just long enough to reload the pistol.
* * *
Baxter advanced toward the fray in the aft, and the hole in their line, like he was confident about his chances there. But when he looked into the eyes of the leathery old Spetsnaz bastard coming straight at him, his blood ran cold and his mouth went dry. But there was no turning back. And he knew that, while he might not be the last line of defense, he was the current one.
And he had to do his best.
“Hey, dudebro,” the old Russian said, inexplicably, in heavily accented and gravelly English. Baxter’s expression must have betrayed his bafflement. “You are a fraternity boy, no? So every sentence starts with dude, and ends with bro, am I right? Dudebro!”
As the Russian wound up his shovel, Baxter raised his rifle to his shoulder.
The Russian said, “You should know you can’t shoot in h—”
But Baxter didn’t fire – he charged and lunged, barrel-striking the man viciously in the head before he could swing his shovel. Warchild recoiled from the attack, turned away, and staggered a few steps, blood running down the hand clutching at his face.
Barrel strikes were a big feature of the close-quarters defense system – much favored by Navy SEALs like D
ugan and Maximum Bob. They’d done their best to train Baxter up in the time they had.
But when Warchild straightened up and faced forward again, his face sheeted with blood, he was clearly neither down nor out.
And he was definitely done making frat-boy jokes.
* * *
Pred waited for the Humvee to bounce off the plane and come closer again before leaping over. On the upside, his safari truck, driven by a dead man, was slowly veering toward it; on the downside, it was still accelerating, and starting to pull ahead. This felt dangerous as hell, but it was better than slowing or stopping, so Pred couldn’t afford to pull the saggy-headed driver from his seat.
In any case, he was out of time. He jumped for it.
And now he found that while the bounce left the Humvee closer to the safari truck, it also left it farther from the plane. He looked down at the driver from where he now stood in the open bed, and tried to figure out how – after he killed him – he was going to both steer the truck and throw Handon back across into the aircraft.
But as he squinted down at him, the driver looked back at him, over his shoulder. He was young, and seemed very equivocal – like he was having some kind of crisis of faith, or had mixed feelings about being there at all.
Don’t blame him, Pred thought. I sure as hell would. Hell, I do.
And as their eyes locked in the dim, wet, blasting air, Predator hesitated and stayed his hand from killing him.
Oh, what the hell. Try it out.
He stabbed a finger down at the truck beneath him, then pointed at the rear hatch of the plane. The driver nodded.
And he started bringing them in.
* * *
The Runt had seen what this giant American had done to an entire truckload of Spetsnaz commandos – ones a hell of a lot tougher and more experienced than him. And, from what he had seen so far, he guessed only one of the two of them was leaving this Humvee. Better the other guy, and this way. And there was also no one there to judge him, Misha being nowhere in sight.
ARISEN, Book Twelve - Carnage Page 31