Pred shook his head. “Aw, hell, there they go again.” Like everyone else in Alpha, it had been impossible for him to pretend he didn’t see the simmering conflict between those two. Hell, he’d had to pull them apart when they came to blows in the last guard tower. Now it looked like they might be going at it again.
Kate said, “This a regular thing with them?”
Pred just shook his head and looked away. “I’ll give you ten bucks to stab me in the face right now.” Clearly, he didn’t want to watch this, or have any part of it.
Luckily, Handon and Henno kept walking, until the forest swallowed them up. But they left a bad disturbance in the air they passed through.
They were on a collision course.
* * *
“There are rules about bitching,” Handon said, stepping into the clearing, then turning to watch Henno stalk in after him. “Everyone has the right to bitch about a mission for five minutes. After those five minutes are up, you shut the fuck up and get to work.”
Handon was giving Henno a lot of credit by suggesting he’d been complaining about the decision – rather than making a different one on his own, essentially wresting control of the mission. But Handon wanted to give him a chance to climb down from this.
The two of them circled the edge of the clearing, keeping their distance. The rain had slowed to a light drizzle, but the sun was still MIA. Finally, Henno squared up to him, ten feet away.
Neither man slumped, fidgeted, put their hands in their pockets, or looked away. Both of these warriors were pure granite. Neither flinched from anything, certainly not conflict. Neither lacked for confidence, or self-belief. Both had ground their own weaknesses into dust – through decades of service, the most extreme and punishing training imaginable, and meeting the highest standards in any military. Both had faced death on the battlefield many times, walked through searing fire, and come out the other side.
So neither was in the habit of surrendering.
Handon sized the other man up. And, for a second, he hesitated. He remembered the thought he’d had, standing alone on the sandy road down from their parked MRAP. He’d thought that perhaps Henno, with his viciousness and pragmatism, was the indispensable devil perched on his shoulder. That he was the ugly and ruthless part of his soul he couldn’t live with – but also couldn’t complete their mission without.
But now Handon also saw the faces of those children, burnt into his mind’s eye – though nowhere as burnt-in as they would be if he sent them all out to die. He could already see them being devoured and infected while fully conscious, and hear their screams. Some part of him wanted to tell Henno they couldn’t save humanity by destroying their own.
But he knew how far that would get him.
Handon understood very clearly that Henno was willing to sacrifice not only the lives of everyone on the team – but also their souls. And maybe that was the difference between the two of them. Some part of Handon wondered if Henno was right. If maybe sacrificing their souls, their innate goodness and morality, had always been necessary. That there’d never been any way around it.
And maybe he just didn’t have the will to do it.
* * *
He decided to try to reason with Henno. But he instantly regretted it. “You didn’t see these kids. They’re innocent children. Most haven’t hit puberty.”
If this affected Henno at all, it didn’t show on his face. He just repeated himself. “And, like I said, mate – cold, hard, fucking world.”
Handon had spent enough time in the UK to know that “mate” was a familiar term of address between equals. It wasn’t a term of respect – and you never used it to address your commander. He also knew it was having exactly the effect on him Henno intended. He considered trying to explain that he was still in charge of this outfit.
But he knew they were well past that. Henno didn’t care who was in charge. What he cared about – all he cared about – was doing what was necessary to save Britain and the world. And he was prepared to overthrow Handon’s authority completely to do it. He was in full rebellion.
Now they were just going to see how this rebellion played out.
Since it was impossible to keep trying to cover this up, Handon brought it out into the open. Circling around the clearing, he said, “Ainsley told me this would happen.”
Henno cocked his head and squinted back at him – not looking too pleased to hear Handon use the name of the original team commander, who Henno revered – and who was a soldier who understood his duty. And who’d had the will to do what was necessary. “What the fuck did the captain tell you?”
Referring to Ainsley by rank also wasn’t lost on Handon.
He said, “Right before the mission to Chicago stepped off. He said that if he fell, I’d have trouble controlling you.”
Henno snorted once. “Oh, I doubt he said that.”
“Oh, yes, he did. Because he knew your loyalty was to him – and him alone. And he was worried about what would happen. I think he had a premonition of his own death.”
Henno ground his jaw, his face reddening. If he’d been trying to provoke Handon, now the tables were turned. The more Handon talked about Ainsley, the thicker the red mist that descended before Henno’s eyes. It was like a red rag to a bull.
And there was definitely the possibility of a charge.
Now Henno stalked around the clearing in the opposite direction. And he turned the tables again – while also upping the stakes. “Aye, now I see why Sarah Cameron doesn’t trust you with her secrets. Because you can’t fucking keep a confidence.”
This brought Handon up short – and caused his own face to redden. He stopped circling and glared at Henno. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“The bad thing that happened to Sarah in Toronto. That made her marry that muppet, Mark.”
Handon couldn’t respond to this. He just ground his jaw.
Henno twisted the knife. “She said she’d never been willing to tell you about it. Didn’t want to tell you.”
Handon found his voice. “What, and she told you?” Now he pictured the two of them where he’d last found them – sitting side by side on Henno’s bunk.
“Aye.” Henno nodded slowly, an evil gleam in his eye.
Handon worked to breathe, and tried not react to this. He knew none of it mattered – none of this love-triangle bullshit between him and Henno and Sarah had anything to do with their mission, which was also the most important tasking in the world. Henno was just trying to needle him. And the stakes were too high for Handon to let it all fall apart because of interpersonal crap like this.
Battling over a woman.
But then he hesitated and thought again. Maybe Sarah was relevant to the mission. Maybe after meeting this woman, who had seemed to change him so much, and so quickly… maybe it was after that he no longer had the will to make the brutal choices that were necessary. Maybe she had ruined him for his job.
And then Henno, stalking back around again, made his own connection between the woman and the mission. “Aye, there’s a reason she prefers my company to yours. And it’s the same reason you can’t command this bloody team.”
And here it comes, Handon thought.
He knew in his bones that when Henno said what was coming next, there would be no coming back from it. It would be impossible for Henno to unsay – and impossible for him to unhear, or pretend he’d never heard in the first place.
And nothing in Alpha could ever be the same.
Henno’s voice was ice-cold steel. “It’s because you don’t have the resolve, mate. The resolve to do what’s necessary – whatever the cost. You don’t have the strength. You don’t have the nerve, the sack. You don’t have the bottle, Handon. You never did. And you never will.”
Silence descended on the clearing.
“Take your hand off your goddamned knife, Staff Sergeant.”
Handon said this before he realized what he was saying. And maybe Henno had moved his hand ther
e without being conscious of it. But now they both knew exactly where they were – standing on a crumbling precipice, over a dark void, with nothing but violence, death, and chaos below. And they both knew they faced a plunge into that void – the prospect floated out in front of them in the air, impossible to ignore or look away from.
And what Handon was thinking in that frozen instant was:
I can’t have a mutiny on my hands. I can’t have Henno going off and doing whatever the hell he wants to, at any time, on his own authority. The team will fall apart – and that will cause the mission to fail. And that CANNOT happen.
My God – I’ve got to kill him.
He no longer saw any way around it. He couldn’t control him. He couldn’t force him to obey. He almost certainly couldn’t send him back. And it looked like he was never going to get killed fighting the dead – or anyone else for that matter.
And what Henno was thinking in that exact same instant was:
I can’t have Handon keep making these airy-fairy decisions. We can’t have someone in charge who is unwilling to do what’s necessary – WHATEVER is necessary. If we do, he’s going to cause the mission to fail. And that CANNOT happen. I can’t let it. I won’t.
I’ve got to slot the fucker.
As the two warriors stared death and hellfire at each other, the air between them rippled and twisted with imminent violence.
And nothing moved in that clearing.
When Death Holds No Terror
Summit of Mt. Shimbiris, Northern Somalia
Holy fucking shit, Ali thought, watching the two Alpha men through her scope, from her OP up on the crown of the mountain.
This had clearly passed beyond punch-up and gone straight into the zone of bloody murder. In amazement, she thought: This could really be it. One of these men was seriously going to gut the other like a fish. Worse, she didn’t know who she would put her money on. While obviously rooting for Handon, she had enough street-fight experience to know the meaner man, unconstrained by humanity or scruples, usually won.
And that was Henno down to his boot soles.
She used the pause in their murderous slow-motion collision to do another visual sweep of the forest slopes around them. The complete dissolution of authority and team structure, happening even sooner than she had feared, didn’t mean she could stop being vigilant in overwatch.
She still had a job to do.
She panned by something in the shadows – then panned back, fast. There. It was gone almost instantly, but she’d definitely seen it. She had convinced herself it was her imagination the first time, when she’d been half-asleep, and thought she saw something moving down below. But not now. Now she was wide awake. And she hadn’t imagined it this time. She couldn’t have. If she had, it would mean she was losing her mind. And that couldn’t happen.
She wouldn’t allow it.
No, there was someone out there, up on the mountain with them, but lower down, in the forest below – someone watching them, even as she watched for him. And she somehow knew, deep in her bones, who it had to be.
Her nemesis.
He was back.
* * *
A small, hunched shape slipped away into the shadows cast by the forest canopy, and slithered down the steep and dripping slopes of the mountain. This humanoid shape also had something long and thin strapped to its back. Facing forward and picking up speed, he scanned the forest through slitted eyes – and one of those eyes was circled by a target reticle. It was the same crosshairs he saw every day through the scope mounted on the SV-338 sniper rifle on his back – but tattooed in black and red ink around his right eye.
And it wasn’t the only tattoo on his face.
While he jarred visually, Vasily moved without sound. It was a big part of his job to get into and out of places in silence. And right now he was getting out – descending the sodden slopes, and descending farther, leaving the summit behind. It was a long walk down the mountain and back to the forest encampment Vasily called home for now. But he didn’t mind. Anyway, he was home wherever he laid his sniper rifle.
He was home as long as he was close to the fight.
As he slipped through the shadows of the dripping forest, he reached up to scratch his earlobe – forgetting once again that it wasn’t there anymore. He felt constant phantom sensations from the shot-off ear: phantom pain, phantom irritation – and goddamned phantom itching.
These phantasms were a haunting legacy left to him from the ghostly sniper chick he had faced, in dueling helicopters, over the open water of the south Atlantic. Vasily felt he knew a great deal about this enemy sniper, after only one engagement.
He knew she was good – seriously good. But anyone could tell that about her, probably from over 1,500 yards out. And she was smart. She was also tough and determined – which were more important than being smart or good, more important than almost everything else. But not everything.
Because Vasily also knew this: she wasn’t vicious enough.
And it was because of this failing that he had won his sniper duel with her. Their skills were closely matched. But she simply didn’t have the necessary savagery.
And that had cost her – nearly everything.
She had managed, it now appeared, to get away from that engagement alive. But it was Vasily who had flown away with the prize – the American pilot, the commander of the carrier’s air group. And soon Vasily and his team, the Mirovye Lohi, were going to leave with the real prize: the Index Case.
And they alone would have the key to curing the plague.
They would be immune – and immortal.
* * *
In silence, Vasily leapt down a last series of crumbly banks that led to level ground, and stepped on to a rutted path that led out of the forest, and to the closest thing to a road in northern Somalia. There was still a lot of solo walking left to do, but he was very comfortable in his own company.
Spetsnaz didn’t let in men who weren’t totally self-reliant, nor too many who would win congeniality contests. They looked for men who could operate without support, without sleep, without medical care, hungry and cold, wounded, half dead, in terrible pain…
The imaginary pain in Vasily’s ear reminded him of the woman sniper again. The fact that she was a woman was nothing to him. The Motherland had always given capable women equal footing in the military, and many had distinguished themselves in the Red Army. During the Great Patriotic War, which is what they called WW2, over 2,000 women had served as snipers.
Though barely 500 had survived.
The most famous, Lyudmila Pavlichenko, had been credited with 309 confirmed kills – including thirty-six enemy snipers. Winning that many sniper duels was not luck. It was due to skill, resolve, and the absolute determination to prevail.
And it required real viciousness.
So Vasily knew women could fight. As could the one he’d faced in the air. He thought he had her dead to rights with a headshot more than once – but somehow she had slithered free each time. In the end, he’d had to take out the whole helicopter around her, including both pilots, as well as both minigunners.
And that was how Vasily knew this sniper lacked the necessary viciousness. Because she had been down on the deck taking care of their wounded crew chief, instead of throwing herself back into the fight. The Russians’ own minigunner had been hit, too. But Vasily had taken his eye from the scope only long enough to tell the moaning man to get up and get back on his weapon. But he had whimpered that he was too injured to do so.
“Then what good are you?” Vasily had asked.
And so he had won the fight himself, while the minigunner bled out down on the deck. And that was the difference between him and the woman sniper: weakness. She had not ruthlessly rooted out every bit of weakness in herself – every trace of compassion, of humanity.
She was weak, and so she had lost.
Vasily, like everyone in Spetsnaz, knew you had to kill the weak parts of yourself, just as you kille
d everything in your way. To prevail, it was necessary to sacrifice humanity, compassion, weaker comrades – anything that compromised their strength, or their victory.
And especially in a dead world that was trying to eat you alive, humanity was a luxury that could not be afforded – and love even less so. You had to do without love, and you had to overcome your own humanity, so as to become stronger than death, even more unfeeling than the dead.
Only when they were stronger than death could death hold no terror. Then, death had no power over them. And death could not beat them.
Nothing could.
* * *
“Vasily to Team One.”
“This is Team One Actual.” It was Misha himself who answered. That rumbling warlord basso voice was unmistakeable. “What up, my negro?” Never mind his highly eccentric use of language.
“I am mission complete, ETA twenty minutes.”
“And what have you got for me, Vashushka?” Vasily didn’t like it when Misha used a diminutive form of his name, particularly one with a pejorative tint. But of course there wasn’t a goddamned thing he could do about it.
“They’re here,” he said simply.
“All of them? The sniper?”
“Yes, her.”
“And the bearded one?”
“Him, too.”
“Okay – bring it in. And shake a tail-feather, mutha.”
Vasily didn’t bother signing off. Misha liked having the last word.
Even if it often made no sense.
Warlord
Moscow, Red Square – 100 Feet Beneath Lenin’s Tomb
Akela, commander of the Spetsnaz Alfa Group team known as Volch’ya Staya (the Wolf Pack) walked the aisles of his high-tech Tactical Operations Center (TOC) – which was what leading from the front often meant these days. Though he still personally led ops out on the ground as often as he could.
Right now, he still wore his dark gray assault suit with a small, dimmed-out tricolor Russian flag on the shoulder, from the patrol he’d taken out to reel in the Kazakh asshat and former bioweaponeer who had inexplicably crash-landed in their backyard. Akela had shucked all his weapons and tactical gear – except his side arm and spare mags.
ARISEN, Book Eleven - Deathmatch Page 5