Odyssey

by Michael Stephen Fuchs

  Sarah exhaled, and squeezed his arm again. “I’ll take it to the grave. You can count on me. Always.”

  And Sarah considered that, at the end of what had been a hell of an odyssey, she and Homer now shared a bond. One that perhaps could never be broken. “Your turn.”

  Homer laughed. “Okay. But it wasn’t me who took the vest. It was Kili.”

  Sarah exhaled. “I really liked him.” She realized that, along with everything else, she didn’t know what had happened to the man. Only that he hadn’t come back with Homer.

  “Yeah,” Homer said. “I liked him, too.”

  “Oh, God,” Sarah said. The past tense told her everything. Or enough, anyway. “I’m sorry.” She didn’t think it was her place to ask for details, sensing it would still be too raw. But she did still want to know the other thing. “Who did Kili find the vest on, Homer? It was bin Laden, wasn’t it?”

  Homer just shrugged.

  “I knew it. How come we didn’t read about that?”

  “I told you. Most of what you read about that mission never happened. And the White House thought it was a better narrative that he was using his youngest wife as a human shield – which by the way was also true – leaving out the fact that he was willing to martyr himself at the end.”

  “And what about you?”

  “You mean, what did I think? I thought we should tell the truth. But nobody asked me.”

  Sarah smiled. “No surprise there. Honest to a fault.”

  “Not really,” Homer said. “I just thought it was a better narrative that he was too stupid to successfully blow himself up.”

  Sarah laughed out loud, Homer joining in.

  * * *

  The morning light was crisp and clear when the carrier finally appeared, cutting a long white wake behind her on the ocean.

  Homer had never doubted they’d catch it. He always tried his best never to doubt at all. But even he breathed a sigh of relief, or maybe just happiness, when it came into view.

  They were going home.

  Little had ever looked so good to his eye.

  Then again, as they got closer, and the details of the giant floating city clarified, Homer realized the boat had actually looked a lot better when he last laid eyes on it. He didn’t know exactly what was involved in fighting off a storm of ten million dead.

  But it had clearly taken its toll.

  There were no aircraft up top, which wasn’t unusual. But there was what looked like the aftermath of some kind of massive explosion at the front end of the flight deck. And that Sparrow missile deck on the starboard side, the one he loved to hang out in, enjoying the solitude, was simply gone.

  However that happened, Homer was glad he missed it.

  He got on the radio, flipped channels, and hailed PriFly, Primary Flight Control, on the top level of the island, finally getting through on an unsecured channel. It took him a minute or two to convince them he was who he said he was. And then another solid five minutes to convince them he was going to land this aircraft on their flight deck – whether they helped him do so or not. After some substantial consultation, everyone involved agreed it was possible.

  And also that it was going to suck.

  That it was going to be risky as hell.

  Well, if it doesn’t suck, we don’t do it, Homer thought. And his whole life had been about taking on risk, overcoming ridiculous odds. Heck, this was unlikely to be the riskiest part of his day.

  As he continued their approach and swung around to port, lining them up with the angle deck, he was more pleased to see that, while the deck was free of other aircraft, it wasn’t empty. In fact, it was filling up fast.

  With people. Dozens, then hundreds, of them.

  Many were flight deck personnel in their colored jumpsuits, the colors designating their jobs in air ops. But a lot weren’t – random sailors, Marines, guys in civvies, people evidently not on duty. They weren’t close enough to make out faces.

  But Homer could sense who else was down there.

  Or at least he could hope.

  And suddenly he was seized with a powerful feeling – that he had finally figured out who his real family was. And that, having done so, he needed to hold on tight. To hold them close and hold them dear. Moreover, he realized that home wasn’t a place.

  Home was people.

  And people were the point.

  The next thing he saw gave him even more cause for hope – that he’d live long enough to hug those people. It was the “barricade” going up at the end of the angle deck. This was a heavy-gauge wall of nylon netting, suspended between 12-foot steel arms, intended to trap aircraft with damaged landing gear or malfunctioning tail hooks.

  As far as Homer was aware, the aircraft he was currently piloting had perfectly intact landing gear. But it had no tail hook whatsoever. There was also the conspicuous fact that, aside from being a barely qualified small-plane pilot, he had never attempted a carrier landing. Or anything like it.

  And this was not a notoriously straightforward piloting task.

  But SEALS were good at doing anything they needed to, especially when there was no choice. With careful instructions from PriFly, Homer started attempting the “crab-crawl” technique that made it possible to land on a deck slanted at a 30-degree angle to a ship moving forward at 40 knots. Virtually always, the ship needed to keep moving forward into the wind to recover aircraft. In this case, Homer also got the subtext.

  They weren’t stopping for him. Or even slowing.

  Their mission was too urgent, and far too important, to bring it to a halt just to recover four individuals. Even if one of them did happen to belong to Alpha team. And two were children.

  Homer dropped the landing gear, brought their power down, and continued to line up the trap, fighting the crosswinds, taking corrections over the radio, jogging left, then right, then left again – all of which felt wrong, awkward, and dangerous.

  And then they were coming down, all in a manic blur.

  They got over the first hurdle, not crashing into the stern – but then were instantly blasting over the deck, then impacting it, unevenly, right wheel first, smashing down, too hard, too fast…

  The plane bounced, violently, Homer fighting the winds, the moving deck, and their own momentum. For one terrifying second, he was sure the plane was going to flip – and kill all four of them right then and there.

  But he jammed the yoke into the console with every bit of his strength and the plane dug in, slamming down onto the runway on all three wheels, still upright, and still intact.

  But still going what felt like a million miles an hour.

  And also veering toward the left edge of the deck.

  Beyond which was a 100-foot drop to the water.

  Homer fought one last battle with the controls and their path straightened out, though it still didn’t slow, or at any rate slowed too little to reassure him.

  And then they slammed into the barricade, propeller first, all four passengers jolting forward in their harnesses. The plane’s forward motion came to a crashing halt, but the propeller kept going and for a second it looked like it was going to chew through the heavy nylon. Homer had already brought engine power down, but there was too much momentum in the spinning blades. Finally, straps torn away, inches from the end of the deck, the plane stopped grinding forward.

  Homer could see figures running around them on the deck, and hear chains clanking – and realized the aircraft handling crew had anchored the plane by its landing gear.

  He stayed in his seat until the propeller stopped and he’d finished the shutdown safely, even as Sarah unstrapped and climbed in back with the kids. Over his shoulder, he could see her unstrapping them, getting the doors open, climbing out, then turning to help Ben and Isabel down onto the deck.

  Finally, reassured the aircraft wasn’t a danger to themselves, the crew, or the ship, Homer opened the smaller crew door in the cockpit. He breathed a final sigh of relief, tasting the fresh air th
at blew in, his heart swelling with happiness. He ducked his head, climbed out, and straightened up into the clean air and early morning sunlight. The plane was surrounded by a wide and deep ring of unspeaking, staring, awe-struck faces. There must have been two hundred people out there to greet them.

  Homer ignored all but two.

  Somehow, he instantly focused in on a pair standing at the center, and an easy smile spread across his face, which he beamed down at them. The first one was Handon. But just to the big man’s side, a smaller, darker, lither figure stood frozen, open-mouthed, holding Homer’s gaze, her dark eyes wide and shining.

  Ali.

  Miss all that came before? The mission to save humanity, and the world’s greatest military ZA adventure, begins in

  ARISEN, BOOK ONE – FORTRESS BRITAIN.

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  With ENDGAME, the climax & conclusion of the entire ARISEN epic, the series is complete. But…

  The story doesn’t end here. Across the entire overrun world, two whole years of ZA remain to be explored, and many of your favorite heroes will return, in forthcoming prequels and side books, such as:

  ARISEN : RAIDERS

  and

  ARISEN : OPERATORS

  To be alerted when these adventures are available sign up for e-mail alerts, like the ARISEN Facebook page, and follow @theZuluAlpha on Twitter.

  Meanwhile, come back and live through the beginning of the end of the world in

  ARISEN : Genesis, the pulse-pounding and bestselling first ARISEN prequel.

  And then live through it again, except harder and faster, with the SF soldiers of Triple Nickel.

  ARISEN : Nemesis.

  Salvation. Vengeance. Vanity.

  NEMESIS

  A portion of the earnings from this book will be donated to the Navy SEAL Foundation, which provides immediate and ongoing support and assistance to the Naval Special Warfare community and its families – including warrior and family support, educational opportunities, tragedy assistance and survivor support, post-service transitions, veteran support, and legacy preservation.

  Note from the Author

  I probably do have a few salty things to say about the process of writing this, the first post-main-series ARISEN book – but am also too tired to compose them right now. :) When I do get around to it, hopefully by the time you read this, they will be on my blog here. For now: THANK YOU for continuing this journey and adventure with me. Your kindness, support, enthusiasm, and love for the series (and its author) still mean everything – and make it all worthwhile.

  Michael

  30 November 2018

  Thanks & Acknowledgements

  The author wishes to thank the incredibly generous and talented ARISEN beta-reading team, which for the present book stands at one: Electronics Technician Chief Petty Officer Mark D. Wiggins, USCG (ret). You da man.

  Thanks as always to the amazing Editrice (jacqui@ladyeditrice.co.uk), for making ARISEN bulletproof.

  Thanks to my awesome publishing assistant Madame Marauder, aka Julia Molin.

  Thanks also and forever to Anna K. Brooksbank, Sara Natalie Fuchs, Richard S. Fuchs, Virginia Ann Sayers-King, Valerie Sayers, Alexander M. Heublein, Matthew David Grabowy, and Michael and Jayne Barnard, for their indispensable support. Also, Bruce, Wanda, Alec, and Brendan Fyfe for their service and sacrifice. Eternal thanks to Glynn James for coming up with ARISEN – and for the paperback design of this one!

  Thanks to VKT, for saving me.

  The wonderful cover image for this book was created by the always amazing Tom Weber at MILPICTURES.

  Two articles that massively helped as research for this book were “SEAL Team 6: A Secret History of Quiet Killings and Blurred Lines”, by Mark Mazzetti, Nicholas Kulish, Christopher Drew, Serge F. Kovaleski, Sean D. Naylor, and John Ismay, in The New York Times; as well as “The Crimes of SEAL Team 6”, by Matthew Cole, in The Intercept.

  Ditto “Navy SEALs gone wild: publicity, fame, and the loss of the quiet professional”, by Forrest S. Crowell, published by the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California. (PDF available here.)

  Also very helpful was the outstanding e-book, Beyond Neptune Spear: The (Open) Secret History of SEAL Team Six, Post-9/11, by Chris Martin.

  Absolutely indispensable was the memoir, The Operator: Firing the Shots that Killed Osama bin Laden and My Years as a SEAL Team Warrior, by Robert O’Neill. It would be impossible to overstate how much, or even catalogue everything, I swiped from this awesome book, but they include:

  The Lance Factor.

  “This was for the straightforward reason that those who refused to quit against all reasonable odds were the only ones who could do what SEALs needed to do.”

  “Attitude is the key to everything.”

  “Ultimately, SEAL commanders are trying to find the people who realize that all stress is self-induced. Even when bombs are going off and people are trying to kill you. Can you put that bag of bricks down and forget about it, or are you going to let it ruin your day?”

  “Don’t be afraid to think outside the box. Impossibilities only exist until somebody does it.”

  “Water scares people - so does drowning. But not letting fear get in the way of accomplishing the mission was a big part of becoming a SEAL. In this case, the mission was staying in BUD/S another day.”

  “Right before Hell Week, one of the few human instructors pulled me aside and said, ‘You’re about to go to war for the first time and the enemy is all your doubts, all your fears, and everybody you know back home who said you couldn’t do this. Keep your head down and keep moving forward no matter what, never quit, and you’ll be fine.’”

  “The whole coastal area was a breeding ground for great whites - who were notorious for occasionally mistaking humans in wet suits for sea lion.”

  “You should meet the man who taught me. Senior Chief Petty Officer, African American – size of a truck. I’ll never forget him showing me how to wind a bobbin.”

  Everything about Cairo (the dog on the bin Laden mission).

  Everything about the Red Squadron team room.

  Anyway, you’ll see if you read this amazing book, which you absolutely, definitely should, right now. It may actually be my very favorite SEAL memoir – and, yes, I’ve read them all. With regard to the egregious theft on my part, I console myself it’s nonfiction, and thus part of the public record, and also that I’m attributing the quotes I lightly paraphrased or stole outright. But I’m consoling myself further by donating a portion of the earnings from this book to the Navy SEAL Foundation. And if Chief O’Neill complains, I’ll donate more. :)

  Virtually everything about BUD/S, SQT, and the amazing men who undertake and complete them, is straight from Dick Couch’s books The Warrior Elite: The Forging of SEAL Class 228, and The Finishing School: Earning the Navy SEAL Trident. The former book in particular, is one of the best books, of any sort, I’ve ever read, and you should run right out and read it this second. Mr. Couch is owed a tremendous debt for inscribing in history the inside story of our special operations training and selection courses (not just for the SEALs, but also US Army Special Forces, the 75th Ranger Regiment, and MARSOC).

  Everything about Adam Brown – every word of it completely true – is from Fearless: The Undaunted Courage and Ultimate Sacrifice of Navy SEAL Team SIX Operator Adam Brown, which is very definitely one of the best and certainly most inspiring books I’ve
ever read. Put down my stuff, and read this one, right now. Seriously. Please.

  I finally got around to reading Rogue Warrior by Richard Marcinko.

  The Odyssey, by Homer, obviously. Though, the dude seriously couldn’t write action – even when he finally, finally got around to it.

  “Tough. Deal with it. Adapt and overcome” is, as always, from former SEAL and SEAL Sniper course instructor Brandon Webb. His memoir The Red Circle might be my second favorite SEAL memoir. You should definitely read it, too.

  “There might not be angels, but there are people who might as well be angels.” is from David Foster Wallace (RIP, ten years on, this past September), in the best novel of the 20th century (if you’re asking me :), Infinite Jest.

  Thanks to ApocalypseStory.com for the compelling description of why, no, Walking Dead, gasoline doesn’t last forever.

  Thanks to the often indispensable SOFREP.com – erm, now with a dumber name – for the awesome review of the Daniel Defense MK18.

  The whole bit about why people miss wars and natural disasters, plus the quote, “Humans don’t mind hardship, in fact they thrive on it; what they mind is not feeling necessary.” is from Sebastian Junger’s truly outstanding and eye-opening book, Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging. Totally read that.

  The couplet of dialogue, “That happened fast” / “Everyone can shoot” was stolen from the wonderful film Appaloosa, screenplay by Robert Knott and Ed Harris, based on the book by Robert B. Parker. (And it looks like the writing credit for that bit is actually shared between book and screenplay!)

  The story about how the Northern Alliance fighters shielded Homer and his team with their bodies was adapted plus stolen from the amazing and thrilling and tragic book, The Only Thing Worth Dying For: How Eleven Green Berets Fought for a New Afghanistan, by Eric Blehm – and actually happened to ODA 555 (Triple Nickel). Juice was originally going to get this story, but I failed to fit in in anywhere before. :)