by David Poyer
Only Qurban went with it instead of resisting. The heavier man came down on him like a collapsing house as Teddy hit the deck, driving the breath from his lungs, caroming his head off the rocky dirt.
Teddy blinked away stars, concentrating on the knife, the knife. Finally he got the wrist twisted back enough that he could flat-hand the blade out of his opponent’s grip. It spun away, clanging.
Another sigh traveled the in-pressing circle of intent faces.
But even weaponless, the other was stronger. His left knee locked Teddy’s right hand. His left arm found his throat. A throat bar. He forced Teddy’s head back, gradually crushing his windpipe as his free hand dug Teddy’s face. The eyes … a thumb found his left eye, the sharpened long thumbnail digging in.
It was done in a second, with a dazzling flash and a shot of piercing pain. The man on top held up a fist, and at the sight of what dangled from it an excited hubbub broke out.
Teddy could still see out of the remaining eye, but blood was running into it. He couldn’t breathe. The thin-blade … his left hand scrabbled for it … but the sheath was empty. Oh yeah. Lost it already.
No other weapon …
Going to black out …
So this was it. The last fight. The one you always knew was coming.
For a half second he almost welcomed it. The end of the struggle. Going down. Ringing the bell, at last.
Then he thought: Fuck that. And let this ass-jumping fanatic win?
Let him take over the resistance? And pattern it on what—Daesh? Boko Haram? Al-Shabab? Take a fighting, oppressed people back to the dark ages?
Not gonna happen.
If he only had a weapon …
His scrabbling fingers found hard metal. Hesitated. Then reached lower, for the buckle. He had to wriggle, shifting his hips beneath the weight pressing down. The man atop him shifted, trying to capture his left hand as well, but Teddy evaded it.
Red flooded his remaining vision. Fading fast. Time for one last blow. But it had to be done right. Delivered at the exact angle. With all the force he could muster.
It came free. Now turn the thing a little. Forget the lost eye. Forget the lack of breath. Get the sharp end, the end shaped for the toes of a drooping foot. But the red was turning black …
A bellow of sound.
A flash of light on the faces around him. They swung to ogle the mountain.
Where a pillar of flame was climbing skyward.
And at the same instant, a flash pulsed through his brain, as if every circuit in his mind had been shorted out, every thought stopped. Something fizzed and snapped in his pocket. His cell. Half a second later, the ground tremored uneasily. Not abruptly, as it had during the shelling, but a half-familiar shiver that disquieted his genitals. It was accompanied by a queer deep crackle, like focused lightning. A BOOOOM that went on and on.
Through the momentary daze he realized: The Package had detonated.
Interrupting every software program, and overloading and burning out every exposed circuit within a radius of at least a mile.
The pressure on his throat slackened. He blinked up through the scarlet curtains to see Qurban, also waggling his head, dazed, turned away, facing toward where the ascending missiles bellowed, louder now, shaking the very air.
Striking as hard as he could, Teddy drove the sharp end of the leg-brace into the side of al-Nashiri’s neck. It was titanium, but that didn’t mean it was light. And it wasn’t all that sharp, either, but the toe end tapered enough that he could drive it in. He twisted it as the other screamed, pulled it back, and hammered it in again as the ground began shaking beneath him and the men around him shouted, pointing into the sky.
Teddy couldn’t look. He was otherwise occupied, as the man on top of him stiffened. Went rigid. Teddy dragged in a deep breath and drove the end of the brace in again, jamming it into the vagus nerve as hard as he could. Just to the side of the windpipe. Where the heavy muscles of the neck didn’t shield it. The thick, deeply entwined, crucial nerve that controlled breathing and heartbeat, and connected directly to the brainstem.
When Qurban went limp Teddy got his other arm free and backhanded him off. He rolled over him and with both hands forced the sharp end of the brace into his mouth. Straight down this time, digging deep. Until he felt the bony resistance of the spine.
Somewhere in there the man under him must have regained consciousness, because he shuddered, then started to struggle again. Something dripped onto his face from Teddy’s. Blood, or jelly, from his empty socket, probably. Teddy leaned in even harder on the brace, probing for the gap between the vertebrae, hammering the spadelike point in with his free hand like a complexly curved chisel.
A grating snap deep in the neck, and the body beneath him went slack. Qurban’s eyes were still focused. He was still conscious. But he couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.
The roaring went on, like some gigantic beast, unimaginably powerful, released at last from its shackles to rend and tear the earth and all who lived in it.
Teddy held the hajji down, pinning him to the rocky ground, until consciousness faded from those up-gazing, unblinking eyes. Then rolled off, wheezing, still gripping the brace like some primitive axe.
Only to stare up at pillars of smoke and flame. For a moment he thought the mountain had erupted. Then realized.
Something far worse had been unleashed.
He pressed himself upright, using the brace like a cane.
Facing the circle, which stirred uneasily. Murmuring. Teddy swayed on his feet, looking up at the climbing flames, registering the tremendous deep rumble of departing rocket engines.
One ascending torch faltered. It began to corkscrew, then detonated with a ripping sheet of flame from which smoking pieces tumbled slowly downward. But only one.
Operation Jedburgh had failed.
A long dying fart escaped the body that lay between him and Yusuf.
They faced each other. The big disciple looked uncertain now. Staring, appalled, at the ruin of Teddy’s face, the empty socket weeping blood. But still pointing the Makarov as around them the muttering grew.
Fuck, Teddy thought, dismayed. Am I going to have to fight this asshole too? He took a step toward him, dragging the useless foot. “It is the will of Allah, Yusuf,” he grated out, swaying.
He spread his arms, wheeling to face them all in turn. To let them see. “You have all witnessed it. Nothing in this world happens against His will. He has given me the leadership. And now, it is the end of the world. Imam Akhmad taught you of this. It is the Hour of Reckoning. The Great Massacre. Afterward, Allah will judge us all, the living and the dead.”
He waited. There, a nod. A murmur of agreement.
“You will all obey me, and follow. In the final jihad.” He held out his hand.
And after an endless moment, the big mujahideen reversed the Makarov. He handed the pistol over. He bowed.
As if that was a signal, the others crowded forward, patting Teddy’s back, running their hands over his clothing, gazing with awe at his blood in their fingers, exclaiming and praising God. Praising his victory. Proclaiming their loyalty. Pressing bandages on him. An open palm offered back the ruined eye.
The Lingxiù pushed it away, snarling. He staggered under the hands, fighting with all his strength just to remain upright. Staring up at an apocalyptic sky. At the smoke that drifted now in enormous clouds, slowly, away into the scarlet-blazing east.
22
USS Savo Island
NIGHT came early this far north. Cheryl stood shivering on the starboard wing. Gray-black rollers glinted like phosphated steel in the waning light. The wind was fierce, chilling her even under the foul-weather jacket. The temperature had dropped precipitously as the task force beat north. Past Hokkaido, out to the Pacific. Past the Kuriles, then north again, into the Sea of Okhotsk.
She dogged the door behind her. The officer of the deck glanced her way, but said nothing. She scratched her neck, burying her face in
the radar hood. Feeling boxed in. Claustrophobic.
As well as guilty.
She groped under her coveralls, nails mining furiously at an itch that never seemed to retreat, that seemed resolved to take over her entire body no matter what Doc Grissett prescribed. “Fuck,” she muttered.
The surprise wake-homer attack off Korea. When she’d ordered Sioux City into Savo’s wake. The frigate had intercepted two of the incomers with her own CATs, but the last enemy weapon had evaded the antitorpedos and caught her on the port quarter, wrecking her so badly she had to be towed to Sasebo. With thirty-two dead, and dozens more injured or burned.
Cheryl shuddered. How was she going to face the families? Now she knew how Eddie’s squadron commander had felt, when she’d upbraided him for the loss of her husband. And felt doubly culpable.
But maybe this war could be ended. Maybe it was even ending now. Drawing to a close, not with triumph, but in the hesitant, tacit acknowledgment of mutually exhausted combatants.
She hoped so. With a parting word to the OOD, she stepped into the elevator.
* * *
“GOT more company, Skipper,” Matt Mills said as she slid into her seat at the command desk. Deep in the Citadel, in what was still called CIC by the old hands. The air was nearly as cold down here as up on the wing. The overhead was black as an Arctic night. The lighting was muted. No one else spoke. She nodded.
The combat systems team was doing an interoperability drill with the Japanese ships. Exchanging launch point estimates, surveillance tracks, IPPs, time of predicted impacts. The output would be a covariance error, or tracking error estimate, checking to what extent their systems returned consistent outputs if they had to carry out a coordinated engagement. She left them to it, studying the central display. The geo plot, first.
They were surrounded by Russia. Sakhalin and the mainland to the west and north. The Kamchatka Peninsula to the east. She leaned in, looking where Mills placed the laser trace.
“There,” her exec muttered.
Twenty miles to the west. Three contacts. AALIS had labeled them friendly, but Cheryl didn’t think that was entirely accurate.
Years before, the UN had declared this entire sea part of the Russian continental shelf, and thus part of the Exclusive Economic Zone of the Russian Federation. Oil and gas developments sprawled off Magadan, to the north. To her south, between her and the rest of the Allied forces, lay the main Russian naval base at Vladivostok. The Eastern Military District was led by Colonel-General Yevgeney Sharkov. PACOM had set her up with an HF radio link with his headquarters. A petty officer checked in once a day. A hotline, just in case.
The new contacts to the west, joining others to the east and an unknown number of submarines, were Russian.
The order of battle was sobering. The Russian Pacific Fleet had been beefed up throughout the war until the bulk of their navy was out here, including the latest ship types and a new carrier, Admiral Istomin, with fifth-generation T-50 fighters. Heavy-missile batteries, dense antiaircraft coverage, and a major airbase in Sakhalin lined the coasts. The EWs reported constant probing by radar.
An even more pointed threat, a stealthy Okhotnik drone, had shown up two days after they arrived on station. Relieved every twelve hours, a strike-and-recon UAV had stuck with them ever since, orbiting the task force at high altitude. She could see the hypersonic antiship missiles the drones carried through the telescopes on Savo’s lasers.
“China might be less of a threat, out here, than the Russians,” Mills said.
She nodded grimly. “My thoughts exactly, XO. Finished the drill? How’s it look?”
“Chokai’s still lagging us. The older software flight, probably. I’m not sure what we can do about it.”
Terranova stopped on her way past. “Coffee, Captain? I’m getting some.”
Cheryl shook her head and said no, thanks. Then almost immediately wished she hadn’t, but the Terror was already gone.
She got up and stalked the aisles, checking screens over the shoulders of petty officers and junior officers. Parting the curtains into Sonar. The Keurig was lit. She dumped in a bottle of water, selected a Sumatran Dark, Ten Ounce, and hit the button.
The Sonar chief, Zotcher, cleared his throat. “Skipper, remember that guy Admiral Lenson brought aboard with his staff? Back on the old Savo? The submariner—Rit?”
Cheryl rolled her eyes as she stirred in two sugars. She could afford it; she’d lost weight every time she checked the scale. Besides, who was she supposed to look good for? The only man who’d shown any interest, after Eddie that is, was back with his family.
The resort had nestled in a green-forested canyon, facing a golden beach and a lapis sea. The floor-to-ceiling windows looked down a the nature trail on one side, and down onto a heated pool on the other. Two days of freedom, snatched from a hellish precom schedule. Forty-eight hours of sex, larded with guilt. His mother Thai, father Nigerian. Cocoa skin she could close her eyes and still feel. Black stubble in the morning …
Zotcher cleared his throat and she flinched. “You mean Carpenter,” she said. “The idiot who put that porn game on the ship’s network?”
“It wasn’t a—” Zotcher stopped himself in mid-sentence. “Uh, right, Skipper. Anyway, he was telling me about how they used to run subs up here. Against the Soviets. Tapped a comm cable that ran along the bottom. Listened in on all the traffic from the base at Kamchatka.”
“Okay,” she said, and waited. There was an awkward moment.
Zotcher broke it. “Anyway, another thing he said, you know, we have to watch for ice up here.”
“Too early in the season for that, Chief. And it’s a lot warmer now than it was back then.”
“Sure, Skipper, but there’s a lot of fresh water inflow. That means low salinity in the upper levels of the water column. Ice from the Amur River. And we’re getting into autumn now.”
“This’ll be the fourth year of the war,” she said, feeling her shoulders tense again. Not really sure she was following his meaning.
Zotcher blinked. “All I know is what the Armed Forces News puts out. But it sounds like we’re winning. Or at least, that the slants are losing.”
“I hope so. Okay, we’ll stay alert for ice.” She sighed, and carried her mug back out into the main compartment. Looked at the elevator, wondering if she should be back on the bridge. Sometimes it seemed strange, unseamanlike, sealed in by airlocks, running everything from screens, like a video game tournament.
At the moment the center display showed her formation. Her formation. She was in tactical command of an augmented task group. She stood before the display, absentmindedly scratching her flank. Considering.
The centerpieces were Savo Island, two Japanese ABM-capable Aegis destroyers, Chokai and Ashigara, and one Korean unit, ROKS Jeonnam. Jeonnam was the northernmost, with Savo next, then the Japanese, all spaced at thirty-mile intervals. With their coverage areas interlocked, they barriered the flight paths of any ballistic missiles launched from central China toward the US. Unless, of course, they were programmed for a nondirect suborbital trajectory. Unlikely, but in that case the orbiting ASM satellites would take the play.
Her force was submarine-heavy. That made sense, considering how little tasking was left for the undersea forces this late in the war. USS Arkansas, Idaho, Guam, and John Warner. Her surface escorts were two US missile frigates, Goodrich and Montesano. Spaced even farther out, in a defensive and early warning perimeter closer to the coast and extending down toward the Kuriles, were the unmanned hunters USV-34, 20, 7, and 16.
She had no carrier support up here. But four Aegis units should be able to fight off an air attack, considering the enemy’s weakened state. In an emergency, JASDF F-3s were on call from Wakkanai, Hokkaido. That island was also her logistics support, via commercial tankers retrofitted for astern refueling. The US logistics fleet was occupied supporting operations in the South China Sea.
Hers was one of three Allied forces closing in on
the enemy. One, based on Taipei, menaced the Chinese naval base at Ningbo and protected liberated Taiwan. The other, supported by three carriers, was supporting the invasion of Hainan.
A classified briefing via VTC had laid out her own mission. As the snare closed around China, the risk of all-out nuclear strikes rose. High-side chat said diplomatic feelers were under way, to try to end hostilities without the ultimate escalation. But no one could guarantee they’d succeed. Cheryl and her task force were the backstop. She was assigned to intercept any ICBMs targeted at US cities. The Armageddon Protocol, Admiral Yangerhans had called it, half jokingly. But also half in earnest, she figured.
She grimaced, turning toward the bulkhead to surreptitiously scratch her pits. If they could get through this … could the nightmare really end? It seemed surreal even to contemplate peace. The years before the war had been tense enough, with trade wars, friction over the islands, disgruntled allies, a bumbling administration fumbling everything it laid hands on. But looking back, they’d been good years. One long golden summer before the war …
A petty officer cleared his throat beside her. “Yeah,” she grunted. “What you got?”
“Voice call for you, ma’am. Uncovered HF.”
She frowned. Hardly anyone used conventional voice radio anymore. The first year of the war had shown how simple the older systems were to penetrate, even when they were scrambled. “Uncovered?”
“Affirmative, Captain. Simplex single sideband deconfliction frequency.”
Cheryl glanced at her watch. “It’s not time for the daily check.”
“No, ma’am. It’s Vladivostok calling. Want the task force commander. Personally.”
“That’s you,” Mills said, but he looked puzzled too.
The petty officer set Cheryl up at his desk. She fitted on the earphones, feeling decidedly retro. “Remember, it’s an uncovered net,” the petty officer said.
She nodded. The working frequency was a mini-hotline, mainly to prevent collisions and other fatal misunderstandings. She looked at the printed test sentences and drew a breath. “Mishka, this is Albert. Mishka, this is Albert. Over.”