It was sheer brutality.
After little more than a minute, the commander of the whole strike group was down on the deck unmoving, the NSF security guard lay on his back with staring dead eyes – and at least a dozen other crew lay dead or wounded on the deck or draped over their stations.
As this angel of death dropped out another magazine, and took one off a dead officer to reload, a hidden radio went, his clear earpiece speaking to him. He paused shooting, and spoke into his cuff in response.
“I had to go – things kicked off early. But don’t worry. I will hold the bridge by the time you get here.”
He dropped the slide of his pistol forward again.
And he resumed the cull.
* * *
Gulping for air, throat constricted, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes, Emily ran down the passageway away from the Team Room, willowy limbs pumping and flapping. Her ears rang terribly and white spots swam in front of her eyes, despite the fact that she had stuck her fingers in her ears and squeezed her eyes shut.
She’d even managed to dive for cover behind a crate as she threw the flashbang. And good thing because, whatever Hollywood thinks, flashbang grenades are grenades – and extremely dangerous in close quarters. This fact hit home for Emily when she climbed back to her feet and realized it must have exploded in the face of the invader pointing his rifle at her – because he lay face down on the deck, unmoving, in a pool of blood spreading out from his head.
The second man couldn’t see her, or hear for that matter, and just flailed around the room. Emily had juked around him, grabbed the mission profile binder and keycard from the desk, and legged it out the hatch.
Now, as she reached the MARSOC weapons and stores room, she found it already filled up with a shitload of Marines, including Lovell. Most of them were tooled up already, some still just in fatigues, but all of them hyper-energized and moving a million miles an hour. Those who hadn’t been on-call for the QRF now strapped on body armor and tactical vests, grabbed at weapons, and loaded and charged them, while everyone overfilled pouches with mags and grenades.
Lovell actually only noticed Emily from the strong odor of ammonium nitrate, and looked up to see her standing in the open hatchway. He stopped what he was doing, pulled her inside, and closed the hatch. He knew exactly who she was, and was about to ask what the hell she was doing here, when she cut him off.
“There are two of them in the Team Room,” she said, her voice too loud. “One’s down.”
Lovell said, “Slow down. How is one down?”
“Flashbang,” she said. “I threw it in his face.”
This caused a couple of the burly spec-ops Marines, bulging with weapons and armor, to look over at the 105-pound girl, their eyes squinting and mouths opened.
“Damn, dude,” one of them said.
* * *
Nearly a hundred feet above them, up in Primary Flight Control (Pri-Fly), at the very top level of the island, everyone on shift could hear muted gunshots banging away from down below them on the bridge. There were six people in there, including the Air Boss, his assistant (the mini-Boss), and four other air traffic control and flight ops personnel. Right now only three of them were doing their jobs. The other three were pointing handguns at the hatch, wondering like hell who was going to come through it – and when.
It wasn’t really their job to provide security for this station. They were supposed to have NSF and Marines for that shit. But none of those guys were answering their phones. And, so far, none were coming to the rescue.
But the three of them still running flight ops had their own set of problems, as was evident by the tight-lipped grimace on the Air Boss. He was looking at a radar display showing an incoming aircraft. Not only was it just a few minutes out – it was also fairly low on fuel, and had absolutely nowhere else to land.
“Fucking timing,” the Air Boss muttered.
“Roger that,” said the mini-Boss. “But what the hell are we going to do with this aircraft?”
The plane in question was the Beechcraft King Air sent by Jameson back at CentCom – and which was intended to take Dr. Park and his proto-vaccine back to Britain, there to save the day, and the world. Basically, it was the most important aircraft on Earth.
The Air Boss exhaled loudly and looked to the one other controller at an actual station. “Did you try CIC again?”
“I keep trying. Still nothing. Nothing from any station.”
The mini-Boss said, “We could put it in a holding pattern. And hope things down here get better?”
The Boss shook his head. “What if things get worse? And then it’s out of fuel – and we’re out of options.” He looked out the screens, down on to the flight deck, where a variety of personnel ran in what looked like random directions. It looked like chaos. And he flashed back to having to land their Greyhound in the middle of the mutiny and outbreak.
This wasn’t as bad as that – yet.
“We’ve got no choice,” he finally said. “We’ve got to recover this aircraft. That bird is everything right now, and we’ve got to get it down. Send the deck crew out – now.”
* * *
While filling a huge insertion ruck with ammo and explosives, Lovell handed out team assignments. But as there were exactly eight healthy and operational Marines left on this boat, or possibly in the world, they were going to be spread fatally thin, however they approached this fight.
Maneuvering a frame charge into his pack, Lovell said, “Okay, ideally we’d need to secure the flight deck, reactor control room, and reactor compartment – plus the ordnance magazine and ship’s armory. But we have no idea how many we’re facing. So the priority has probably got to be the island – bridge, CIC, and Pri-Fly.”
Another Marine said, “I heard the bridge has been taken.”
“Well, take it back – if you can. But don’t be all motarded and get everyone killed doing it. Because we’re pretty much it – there’s no one to spare, and no reinforcements coming. You’ll have to make the call on the scene. Oh – take some SRAWs in case you do assault.” He pointed to a rack of missiles, short-range assault weapons.
“Wait – where the hell are you going?”
Lovell cinched up the bag and looked up. “The hospital.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. That’s where Dr. Park is. Everyone else on this boat is non-essential personnel.” Squinting in thought, Lovell then leaned the ruck against a bulkhead, maneuvered to the back of the compartment and grabbed one of their CRRCs – combat rubber raiding craft, basically a boat and a motor in a bag – and dragged it over to the feet of a burly Marine.
“Patrick, you’re with me,” Lovell said.
Sergeant Patrick had survived the fight with Spetsnaz in the South African warehouse, and had swept the perimeter for Zulus together with Lovell. And they’d been through the shit together many times before that. Patrick grimaced as he felt the enormous weight of the thing, but got it slung around on his back, and still managed to hold his weapon.
He and Lovell were halfway out the hatch when someone said, “Hey, wait – who guards the weapons room?” Lovell knew it was a good question. They couldn’t afford to have their weapons and ammo cache captured. It would make for a short fight. Then again, they also couldn’t spare anyone to hang out and play defense.
“I’ll do it.”
Everyone looked down, to where Emily sat on an ammo crate, raising her thin hand.
“Seriously?” someone asked.
Lovell only hesitated a second. “She defended the Team Room, dropped one of them – and secured these.” He nodded to the mission binder and keycard. “Plus we’re out of people.”
As the Marines began filing out, someone strapped body armor on her, getting it cinched as tight as he could, then handed her a pistol, and got her sat down behind hard cover. She nodded. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll just sit right here until Fick comes back.”
“Fine,” the Marine said. “Sh
oot anyone who comes through that door who isn’t a Marine.”
“I may shoot anyone who isn’t Fick.”
“Probably smart. It would just piss Fick off. Go for it.”
Pounds Equal Pain
12,000 Feet Over the Nugal River Valley
“New tasking, Thunderchild.”
Ah, Hailey thought. NOW he needs me down in the fight.
“Go ahead, Cadaver.”
“If that ground convoy reaches the river, the game is over. And we fail the Apocalypse – forever. Best case, they take Patient Zero and go. Worst case, they reinforce this Spetsnaz force, kill all of us – then take Patient Zero. That convoy CANNOT make it to the river.”
“Copy that, Cadaver.”
“How are you fixed for ground munitions?”
“Times two AGM-169 Damnation ground-attack missiles. And two-two-zero rounds of twenty-five-mil HEIAP.”
“Okay, Thunderchild. This might work.”
Hailey could almost hear Handon smile across the radio. The AGM-169 Damnation had been developed specifically to replace the Hellfire – previously the most lethal and powerful air-to-ground missile in existence – and to outdo the Brimstone missile being developed for Britain’s Royal Air Force.
“Can you destroy or at least stop that convoy – without getting shot down doing it?”
Hailey sighed into the cocoon of her helmet, of her cockpit – of her sky. She figured that would sort of come down to whether the enemy had SAMs, and what kind. And there was only one way to find out.
“Does it even matter?” She was pretty sure she already knew the answer to that one.
“Get it done, Thunderchild.”
* * *
Hailey knew Handon wasn’t only willing to spend her life. He was willing to spend his own – sending her away, with that Black Shark still out there and liable to come back at any time.
But what Hailey knew that Handon didn’t was that the ground convoy was now less than 50km from the river. Which, conveniently, was also the range of her anti-air missiles – which meant she could go out and devastate the convoy, while still covering Alpha from the air. In fact, her ASRAAMs, which moved at Mach 3, didn’t perform well inside of 5km, where they didn’t have enough time to correct.
So Alpha was actually safer with her a little farther out. Handon just didn’t know that when he sent her away. He was obviously at the point of having to put every chip he had on the table. Or maybe Hailey was one of his chess pieces.
He was definitely playing a dangerous game.
But, still, she reassured herself, the Black Shark pilot would have to be a complete moron to get within 1,000 miles of a supersonic jet fighter armed with ASRAAMs. They were like God’s own delete button for enemy aircraft.
She zoomed her optics in on the convoy, which had just come out of the river valley to the north, heading for the southernmost one, where Alpha and Spetsnaz were slugging it out. This had them now driving through the semi-arid and wide-open stretch between the two – also very convenient for Hailey.
But not so healthy for them.
As she came around and locked the magnified video view to her targets, though, she realized she had a problem. Whoever the convoy commander was, he wasn’t stupid. He had their eight vehicles spaced at tactical intervals – that is, wide ones. They weren’t bunching up and making one nice fat target.
It was eight vehicles – and Hailey only had two Damnations. She didn’t think she could get them all with two. No, she was going to have to herd them, get them to bunch up somehow. Or maybe try to take out a couple with cannon fire. Either was fine with her. The downside was that by engaging them in a gun run, she was also going to find out pretty quickly whether or not they had SAMs.
Continuing to descend, she brought her nose around again and lined up the gun run – south to north, right at them.
Straight into the teeth of the enemy.
* * *
Handon was now able to put a little more of his attention on the fight he was actually in. That convoy was supremely dangerous – if they made it through. But Handon didn’t expect they would. If there was one thing an F-35 was good at, it was taking out unprotected vehicles on open ground. Hailey’s ground-attack missiles and autocannon ought to turn that convoy into a Michael Bay highway action sequence in short order.
And he got more good news on top of that. “Handon, Juice.”
“Send it,” he said, ducking down to change mags.
“Forgot to tell you. The Kennedy also got their UCAV in the air a little while ago. ETA twelve mikes on that.”
“Outstanding.”
That made two air assets – which ought to dominate both the skies and the battlespace.
And Handon was perfectly happy to risk having the drone attack the Spetsnaz force they were fighting at the riverbank. Maybe it would get shot down by their Grinches – but maybe not. It too was a stealth aircraft, and now they knew what they were facing. And its Hellfires and JDAMs would be decisive. The enemy was still exposed on the riverbank and vulnerable from the air. They’d get murdered by the drone. And that made it worth risking.
Handon knew if they could finish them, or even get them on the ropes, while Hailey decimated their convoy on the other side of the river… that would be game, set, and match.
All to Alpha.
* * *
Out on the left flank, hunkered down and taking careful, measured shots, Juice was experiencing déjà vu. Because here he was in another smash-mouth gunfight with tactically outstanding Spetsnaz shooters. Though there were a few differences between this one and the warehouse fight.
For one thing, the bush was thick enough, and the range long enough, that neither side got a good look at the other. If they had, people would be dying, as neither side were the kind of shooters who missed. So he couldn’t see them very well.
But Juice could feel it in his bones.
These were the same dudes he’d shot it out with in that warehouse. And he could feel something else:
Misha was still out there, somewhere in the mix.
Really, he’d known it all along – that Misha didn’t die in that warehouse. And that he’d be seeing him again.
And the man would not be in a good mood.
That whole day had been an incredibly close-run thing – only an inspired bit of hacking, a hail Mary pass from midfield, had salvaged the mission. And saved their asses.
But as Juice slithered back from a fallen log, then popped up ten feet to the right and fired three times, he hoped he wouldn’t be called on to pull another hack out of his ass to save them all. Because these were not the kind of guys who would fall for the same shit twice. Spetsnaz were not just mean, they were also seriously cagey – much like the Marines he’d taken up against them.
Another difference was Juice had most of Alpha by his side this time. And while he definitely felt more comfortable being with his own brothers – peerless Tier-1 shooters like Handon, Henno, and Ali – there were too damned few of them, and they were outnumbered.
And now they’d spent their surprise.
* * *
On Handon’s right, in the center-right of Alpha’s line, Henno was pissed off – not an unusual state for him. A well-placed Spetsnaz round had creased his cheek, which now bled freely. Another had completely shattered the Surefire tactical light on the side of his barrel rail. He could live without the light, and the cheek wound wouldn’t kill him.
But the guys he was shooting it out with were wired tight and seriously switched on. He was having to use every scrap of his street gunfighting skills and experience to match up against them. He was used to outclassing his opponents in physical strength, tactical skill, and particularly swagger – aggression and fearlessness.
You want a scrap? Fine. Henno wasn’t bothered.
But he had to give these Russian bastards their due respect. The fuckers could fight. But he also really needed to kill some of them, fast – rather than sit around trading lead, which
eventually wasn’t going to go his way.
Whatever Handon was planning, he’d better get on with it.
* * *
Baxter couldn’t even really believe the situation he was in. He remembered once when a couple of SF guys had passed through the safehouse in Hargeisa, and he’d had an hour or so to grill one of them about his experience of combat. Baxter had always idolized the operational guys, and tried to learn as much from them as he could. But this one guy hadn’t warmed to his hero-worship.
“No, man,” he said, shaking his head. “A gunfight is not a cool thing to be involved in. Thank God every day that you have a job that doesn’t involve people trying to kill you.”
At the time, Baxter had thought it was just false modesty. But now he got it. There was nothing cool about being shot at – never mind being shot at well. In addition to battling for control of his bladder and bowel, he was having to use every iota of attention, skill, and focus to even stay alive in this fight.
And he was truly convinced each minute would be his last.
* * *
Juice was having to stay tightly wired himself now, both to avoid getting shot and to put out accurate enough fire to keep Spetsnaz pinned where they were, and not maneuvering around on them. And he had to do it without running out of ammo.
But he was only going to have to do it a little longer.
Because they now had motherfucking air superiority – which, as usual, was going to make all the difference.
“Juice, Handon.”
“Send it.” He triggered off the last three rounds in his mag, dropped down, and listened while he reloaded.
“I want you JTAC’ing that UCAV when it gets here – and you need to keep it on a short leash. It’s going to be tight in here.”
“Roger that.” Suddenly Juice realized he hadn’t heard from the Kennedy in quite awhile. He got his new mag seated, slid over two feet and popped up into the scattered incoming fire.
ARISEN, Book Eleven - Deathmatch Page 26