Predator was going to have to burn him all the way to the ground.
* * *
Misha also looked into Predator’s eyes. He was looking for something in particular himself. And he found it.
For a fraction of a second, Pred’s eyes had darted to the knife locked between them. And then they flashed down to the helpless American commander on the floor. And what Misha saw there wasn’t love – love for his commander, love for his friend, love for his teammate. No – what Misha saw was:
Weakness.
* * *
The middle of the plane cabin was pure carnage. Baxter was trying to come around, his head lolling. He was also bleeding from the face and arm, as he shook his head and tried to rise to hands and knees.
Just ahead of him, behind the seats, Zack, Jake, and now al-Sif lay in various stages of bleeding to death. Behind them, Warchild was face down on the deck, unmoving. Aft of him was Wesley, also out cold. Most of the deck underneath all of them was awash with blood, not all of it from Zack’s surgery earlier.
Just aft of all the bodies, Fick and Badger were back down on the ground, locked in a lethal grapple, rolling and spitting, and maneuvering for position with their blades, each knife hand held at bay by the opponent’s left.
And when Baxter’s head finally stopped spinning, he could see… Warchild, waking up and rising up again. Jesus, that dude was just fucking unkillable. Then again, blood dripped down the back of his head and he looked dazed, and not enormously combat effective.
He ignored Baxter, who still couldn’t get up – and his eyes went forward, all the way to the front. When Baxter followed his gaze, he could see what Badger did – the only person on her feet up there was Kate. And she was turned away, firing out the hatch.
There was no one between Badger and the cockpit.
* * *
Predator and Misha didn’t relinquish their mutual death embrace, right hands remaining locked, but did resume hurling each other around the cabin, the two land giants whirling around the gravity well of that knife, smashing into bulkheads.
But now Misha had an evil glint in his eye.
He nodded down at Handon’s limp form on the deck, and spoke in an evil growl. “After I finish you, I am going to pick up your commander – and I am going to toss him out that hatch there.”
Pred half-picked Misha up and hurled him into the opposite bulkhead. They froze again, two oceans of strength cancelling each other out, locked in deadly opposition.
“He went down screaming, you know – and begging for his life.”
Pred pulled Misha from the bulkhead and slung him into the other one with a cabin-rattling crash, their hands still locked. But he followed him in, pressing up against the knife and the Russian’s body, sticking his giant head in Misha’s face. When he spoke, it was from inches away – his voice first a gravelly, lethal whisper, then rising to a hair-blowing bellow.
“I seriously doubt that. But even if he did… YOU DO NOT GET TO KEEP HIS FUCKING KNIFE!” And bringing his left hand in, Pred managed to peel Misha’s fingers away from the pommel – and then smashed his hand brutally against the bulkhead behind him.
The knife came free and skittered across the deck.
But Misha was already bringing his knee up into the big man’s groin. And as Pred’s grip relaxed, Misha grabbed his ears with both hands and slammed his face into the steel bulkhead, right beside his own.
Pred reeled, staggering, three-quarters stunned.
Finally free, Misha walked straight to Handon, picked him up by the belt, and dragged him toward the whistling wind of the open hatch. In seconds, Handon’s torso was out in the slipstream.
Pred shook his head and tried to focus – then lurched over, grabbing Handon’s leg with his right hand and giving Misha a ferocious shove with the other. He then hauled Handon’s center of gravity back over the lip, going down on one knee as he did so.
Behind him, Misha unclipped the ruptured fire extinguisher from its bracket on the bulkhead. And he brought it down with both hands on the back of Pred’s head.
Predator collapsed, his body draping protectively over Handon’s.
Then Misha, sucking wind and growling, looked around for the dropped Vorax knife, spotting it on the deck fifteen feet away. As he walked to it, he passed Juice, who was only just recovering from being mostly suffocated – and who now lunged for him. Misha put his hand on Juice’s head, redirecting his attack into the bulkhead. Instead of letting him fall, he gripped his head with both hands – and smashed it into the wall. Juice collapsed to the ground, totally out again.
Then Misha calmly walked over, picked up the knife, and went back to the two crumpled bodies in the hatch, one atop the other, Predator and Handon.
“Two throats,” he said, lifting Pred’s head up and exposing his neck. “One place to slit them.”
* * *
Inevitably, Fick had followed up zinging his helmet at Badger – which caused him to lose another knife when he tried to block it – with a tackle that brought him down to the deck again, largely negating his advantage in speed and stamina. Now Fick knew he was going to have to finish this thing – he was cut in too many places, and unless he stopped and wrapped those wounds up, his advantage in strength was going to evaporate damned quickly.
With Badger pinned beneath him, he went for the traditional forehead to the nose. But the Russian saw it coming, and used his speed and flexibility to get his face out of the way, taking Fick’s strike on his ear instead. He also used the moment of distraction to twist his knife to the inside, and bring the blade across the top of Fick’s knife hand.
His K-Bar hit the deck beside his head.
With Fick distracted, Badger twisted and squirmed at high speed and rolled them both over, ending up on top again. And with Fick having no blade for Badger to keep at bay, he grasped his own knife with both hands, and put his full weight behind it…
Bringing it down straight toward Fick’s exposed throat.
* * *
Head and eyes both swimming, Baxter felt for something on the bulkhead to help him back up. But motion caught his eye and he looked forward and tried to focus. It was Badger. Making an end-zone run for the cockpit.
No one stood between him and it now.
Wait, scratch that, Baxter thought. No one stood – but, that didn’t mean no one was there. To get to the aisle between the rows of seats, Badger had to pass through the casualty collection point. And now Zack, lying on the right side, recuperating from thoracic surgery, reached out and tripped him.
Baxter’s heart leapt. Yeah! Good ole Zack!
The Russian stumbled, caught himself on the back of one of the seats, turned, and looked down at Zack. And he stomped his boot through his stitched-up surgical scar.
Behind him, on the left, the horrendously torn-up Jake had regained consciousness – and now slashed the back of Warchild’s calf, deep, just above the boot, with his Special Forces Yarborough knife. Lips pursed like he needed to scream but wasn’t going to, Badger turned and kicked Jake full in the head. The veteran team sergeant went limp again, collapsing beside the insensible al-Sif.
Badger had cleared the field.
The Bottom
Dash 8 – Front Hatch
Despite the chaos in back, there was little but the sound of the rushing wind at the open front hatch. And as Kate perched there once again, everything went away, and the world went silent, even as it was also going dark. Everything had to go away, all the chaos and peril and bloodshed, the years of loss, of suffering and struggle, the lifetime before that spent in training and preparation. Because Kate Dunajski’s next and perhaps final task was going to require perfect focus.
After pointing out the Black Shark dead ahead of them again, the pilot had made it totally clear. If Kate couldn’t clear that thing out of their way, they were all dead.
But she knew she could do it now.
Not least because she was now armed with a much superior weapon, namely Kwan’s
– a SCAR Mk 20 Mod 0 Sniper Support Rifle (SSR) – an accurized version of the 7.62mm SCAR-H, with a twenty-inch barrel, precision stock, and Leupold 3-10x optic. It was not only a hell of a lot more accurate than her M4 – but its rounds had three times the mass, and a hell of a lot more power and punch behind them.
She was vaguely aware of the bloodletting going on behind her in the cabin. But she really only knew one thing: if they didn’t take off now, their mission was over – failed, forever. She also had a strong sense this maniac Top Gun-wannabe in the cockpit would not be hitting the brakes again.
It was take off now and live – or stay here with the dead forever.
All that existed now was a single soldier with a rifle – facing down a terrifying aerial machine of destruction. And it was this which stood between Kate and everything she loved, everything she had left to her, everything they hoped yet to save.
And it all came down to this one… single… shot.
She swung out that hatch, weapon held left-handed again, but the hell with it. She was going to have to use the Force to make this shot anyway. But as she sighted in through the Leupold scope, she instantly felt better. She could do this.
Something exploded near her face, and a terrible stinging pain ripped through her cheek and neck. When she yanked her eye from the sight, she had no idea what had just happened. But she had just been peppered with fragments of a round impacting the lip of the hatch.
And then she got shot in the chest, which knocked her back in the cabin, saving her life.
She slapped at her radio button.
* * *
Ali had just caught her breath after nearly being machine-gunned to death, and also enjoying, once again, the amusing theme-park attraction that was hanging from the wing of an aircraft accelerating toward take-off. But with the Black Shark’s departure, she had finally managed to pull herself back up top, belly-down on the wing, and started to crawl up onto the fuselage – with a view toward finally getting her ass back in that rear hatch. That’s when Kate came on the channel.
“There is a fucking SNIPER out there, and he has got me seriously zeroed. Has ANYBODY got a look at this guy?”
A round thwacked into the top of the plane six inches from Ali’s nose. Then another, two inches away.
Oh, GodDAMMit.
Him again.
She quickly lowered herself back down under the cover of the engine and wing, feet scrabbling at the top of the landing gear again. But not before ID’ing the source of the shots.
“Yeah, roger on the fucking sniper,” she said, pausing briefly to adjust the grip that was keeping her on the plane and alive. “I think you’ll find he’s up in that control tower.”
Ali wasn’t sure what she was going to do about this asshole.
But she had better do something, and do it fast.
* * *
Hailey looked over her shoulder to find the Army chick lying on the deck behind the cockpit again. “Hey!” she shouted. “Bullet magnet! What the fuck are you doing?” She stabbed her finger out the front again. The Black Shark was still there, dead ahead and getting closer every second.
Only this time, out beyond it there was no 500-foot overrun, no nice flat beach, no soothing surface of shark-infested gulf behind it. Instead there were three-story buildings. And while this propeller-driven old beast wasn’t the fastest or most powerful aircraft in history, now that it wasn’t limping along with only one engine, it was definitely going to cover the length of the runway faster than it had last time.
Kate tried to nod and wave her understanding, as she stuck her hand under her vest and rubbed the giant welt that had already formed there. She felt like she’d just had all her ribs tenderized with a meat mallet. But the ceramic plate had at least kept the mallet and the ribs separated.
She shook her head to clear it, and looked back up at the open hatch. Sometimes you just had to charge the goddamned machine gun nest, and the bullets be damned. She hefted her weapon, took three quick breaths and got ready to pop and shoot – fast.
Keeping low, she got to the edge of the hatch, rose to her full height, raised her weapon, leaned out, and acquired target. She did spare a quarter-second glance up at the air traffic control tower – way out ahead on the left edge of the runway, but coming up fast. Yeah, that could definitely be where she was taking fire from. But then she sighted in on the Black Shark again.
And instantly felt like she’d been punched in the head. Totally autonomously, she ducked back inside, and when she pulled off her trademark baseball cap, she found two holes in it, about two inches apart. A high-velocity round had just creased her scalp. An inch lower and she would have had her skull cored out.
She’d recognized Ali’s voice on the radio, and now tried to remember when she had last seen her. She hit her radio. “Hey, Delta chick – are you still outside the aircraft?”
“Affirmative.”
Jesus Christ. At least Kate wasn’t the only one with problems. “Well, listen, I don’t mind dying – right here, right now. But this motherfucker is going to kill me before I can take my shot. And if I don’t take out that helo, we’re all dead – right here, right now.”
“CAN you take it out?”
“Affirmative. But not if I’m fucking dead.”
“Okay. Hang tight for a second.”
Kate looked out through the cockpit glass at the shrinking expanse of runway before them. A second they had.
Any more might be a problem.
* * *
Ali settled her mind, and cleared out all the distractions – such as having her ass hanging off an aircraft that was picking up speed, and being responsible for keeping everyone aboard, which was also almost everyone she loved, from dying in the next minute. And then everyone everywhere dying not long after that.
She cleared out all that garbage because she needed her full faculties, and every last iota of her considerable skills, experience, and abilities. And what she knew now was:
Vasily had to die.
This time, she had to put that slippery, tattooed, annoyingly unkillable sonofabitching Spetsnaz sniper in the ground. She couldn’t lose to him again. She couldn’t afford to.
This time, simply, he had to go down.
She just didn’t know how she was going to make it happen. He had an elevated and much superior position, not to mention a stable firing platform. And now, when she peeked over the fuselage of the rattling plane to more specifically locate him, it took him exactly one second to put another round right in front of her face.
She couldn’t afford to give him looks like that.
In her brief viewing, she had seen light glinting off the control tower – and realized the clouds had cleared, way down on the horizon, just enough for the setting sun to peek out and send out a few strong rays at them. Unfortunately, they were also right in her goddamned eyes, as the plane was taking off west now.
Ali clenched her teeth. This guy was everywhere – he effectively had both her and Kate pinned down. And he was fucking good – which Ali had known before. But now he seemed to be having his true crowning moment of badass. And he only had to stretch it out another thirty seconds, which was when the plane was going to run into that cock-blocking Black Shark. And then all this was over. Forever.
But at least Ali knew Vasily’s exact position now.
And maybe she didn’t have to give him another look like that. Maybe what she needed was to give him a better one. One he would find irresistible. Then the SF gal down below could make her shot, and the plane would lift off. At that point, Ali would probably fall off it, but the others would be away. And then all her problems would be over, anyway. Plus there might not be time for anything else.
She hit her radio. “Hey, blondie.”
Brief, sullen pause. “Send it.”
“Get ready to pop and shoot – in three, two, one—”
Ali hauled herself up on the wing, rolled once toward the fuselage, bounced to her feet – and she took off runni
ng aft, down the length of the plane.
“I’m up…” she muttered, timing it, “…he sees me…”
She could already feel the air around her filling with lead.
* * *
Vasily rose to his full height when he saw the sniper chick break cover – if that’s what you called it in these extraordinary circumstances. But he didn’t care. He didn’t care if the plane crashed or took off, if the world survived, or burned to the ground from the zombie virus.
He was going to kill this bitch.
But as he tracked and fired, tracked and fired, trying to reconcile the forward motion of the plane with her backward run, his radio went.
“It’s a distraction, you dipshit. And I’m taking fire.”
Nina. Knowing she was right, and feeling the tug of duty, Vasily pivoted left and fired twice at the front hatch. The shooter there disappeared again. He couldn’t tell whether he had scored a kill.
But he didn’t care about killing that one.
* * *
“I’m up… he sees me… I’m down.”
Ali made it to the rear of the plane, and the vertical stabilizer. The area of fuselage back at the tail was probably less than the fabric needed to cut a good suit, and none of it quite horizontal, but Ali was standing on it. More to the point, she was behind the vertical stabilizer, hidden on its right side. This provided concealment from Vasily.
She had her doubts about whether it would provide actual cover, and had to hope he wouldn’t put it to the test by sending some rounds through it.
“A for effort!” Kate shouted over the radio. “But he’s still fucking got me zeroed!”
Ali just sighed.
And then she popped around the edge of the stabilizer, sighted in, and took a few of the most interesting shots of her life. Happily, now that they were closer, she could see Vasily leaning out of the tower, aiming forward of her. She didn’t think she hit him, but he did duck back behind a concrete pillar on the observation platform. The glass was blown out on both sides of it, and the back wall inside was visible, only a few feet back. If she could keep his head down, maybe Kate could make her shot.
ARISEN, Book Twelve - Carnage Page 34