ARISEN, Book Eleven - Deathmatch (11 page)

A few seconds later, Gibson felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Jameson. “How’s it looking?” he asked.

By now the black expanse of what used to be Moscow was rising up on all sides as if to envelop them. There was just enough moon and starlight to make out the grand boulevard – their improvised landing strip – rolling out beneath them, fully fifteen lanes wide and over a kilometer long. Gibson had his night-vision goggles seated. If there were power lines across any part of the street, the NVGs weren’t good enough to make them out. He was slightly optimistic about their odds in a Beechcraft versus power line contest.

Anyway, they had no choice.

And they’d know in a second. Gibson extended the landing gear as the buildings on both sides of the street rose up on either side of them. As always, it was strange coming into a major city in the dead of night – and seeing not a single light anywhere.

“Wait – what’s that?” Jameson said, leaning in. Gibson saw he was looking at a blinking red light on his console.

“Radar warning receiver. It’s been coming on and off for the last fifteen minutes. It has to be a fault. There’s no one down there painting us with radar.”

“Fuck,” Jameson said. “We don’t know that.”

Stealing a glance over his shoulder, Gibson could see Jameson had pulled down his own helmet-mounted NVGs. He was now peering into the darkness of the street, the ten-story buildings on either side – and mainly the alleys between them. Following his gaze for a second before he had to focus on touching down, Gibson found he could just make out a small series of sparkly flashes in the dark of one side street.

“Pull up,” Jameson said. “Abort the landing – now!”

Gibson didn’t quibble. He just pulled on the wheel and smoothly turned their slow and steady descent into a sudden and dramatic ascent. Only when they were safely climbing over the onion domes of Red Square did he ask. “What? What was it?”

“Fucking glint tape,” Jameson said. “There are men down there.” Replaying his mental movie, Gibson realized the Marine officer could be right. He’d been on enough night ops, and seen enough IR reflective tape – visible only through NVGs – to recognize it.

Someone was down there waiting for them.

* * *

“TOC, this is Viper. Enemy aircraft has waved off. Repeat, they’ve aborted their landing and winged it south
.
”

Akela straightened up and touched his ear. “Copy, Lyudmila. Get your team on their feet, and be ready to chase and interdict if they touch down somewhere else.”

From the station to Akela’s left, though, the radar operator said, “They’re staying low, and we’ve lost them in the ground clutter of the city. If they pop up again, we’ll see them.”

Akela frowned. “We have no idea where they’re heading?”

“Negative. But we’ve identified the radar signature. It shows as a Beechcraft King Air Model 200. Most likely military version.”

“So either American or British.” Given the time since the Kazakh’s distress call, it could only be the Brits. Akela squinted in thought as he stared at the still and quiet radar display.

What the hell is John Bull playing at…?

Get It Done

Camp Davis, Team Tent

Baxter put the radio handset down and regarded the others in the dim light inside the team tent.

“Well?” Handon asked.

“He’ll do it.”

“Thank fuck,” Henno said. Whatever else, Handon had to admit the Brit was happy to be proven wrong – especially when that meant things would go right. It wasn’t about being right for Henno – it was about getting it done.

“Okay,” Handon said. “What does he want in return?” He’d heard Baxter agree to something in his short conversation with al-Sîf – and now hoped it was something they could deliver.

“He wants a ticket out.”

“Out of what?”

“Out of Africa. He wants to come back with us.”

“What – back to Britain?”

Baxter shrugged. “That’s his price.” It seemed a small enough one to pay. No one disagreed. “Evidently he’s got relatives in Bradford.”

Henno almost laughed out loud, shaking his head. “Bloody Somali Yorkshiremen.”

Handon picked up the handset, switched channels, and hailed the
JFK
. And he got their one flight-worthy Seahawk helo and its crew scrambling. Luckily, the operators could practically see the
JFK
from where they were – or at least Ali could, from up on the summit – so the flight time for their airlift would be measured in minutes.

Handon signed off, nodded, and headed out.

To get himself kitted up again, and to see that the others did likewise.

And, in his mind, he repeated the thought he’d had when Triple Nickel were pulling their asses out of the fire in Hargeisa – the thought that he had better make sure they were ready.

For their very last shot at this thing.

* * *

“I’d leave that in if I were you.”

Handon looked up to find Jake standing over him, right hand resting on his rifle, which in turn rested on its sling. Handon was sitting on a flat stone with his vest propped in front of him – and an ESAPI armor trauma plate half pulled out of the front pouch.

Handon said, “We nearly took heat casualties on the first part of this mission.” His implication was clear: he could do without the extra weight – more than twelve pounds between the front and back ceramic plates.

Jake said, “Yeah, well, you’ll prefer that to becoming a trauma casualty, from bullets or blasts.” He put his sunglasses on top of his head, where they nestled in his curly dark hair. The brief appearance of the sun had been eclipsed by more heavy rain clouds rolling in, and pressing down low on them. Not only was the mountaintop being socked in – it felt like they personally were.

“Trust me,” Jake added, “this thing is probably only going to end one way. With us shooting it out with al-Shabaab.”

Handon took this on board as he regarded the SF team sergeant, who was now wearing three guns on him: his extremely unusual and equally fearsome Beowulf 50-cal M4 mod; an MP7 machine pistol with 40-round mag in a drop-leg holster; and an FN Herstal high-capacity .45 in a chest rig. The man was seriously tooled up. Maybe it had something to do with him being a New Yorker. In any case, it was obvious he was a pure-bred gunfighter.

Handon knew not everyone in Army Special Forces was. Not all of the guys who went that route had the killer instinct. Many were technicians, teachers, low-level diplomats – wonks and geeks, and very smart guys. But not killers. The Q Course they all had to complete taught them small-unit infantry tactics to an exacting standard. But Handon would say you can only really teach the mechanics.

You can’t teach aggression.

He sighed and looked away. He really hoped this thing didn’t turn into a gunfight. But there were definitely going to be a lot of guns, and a lot of fighters, where they were going. And as for hope, well, he thought of the words of another New Yorker, Rudy Giuliani: “Hope is not a strategy.”

But he only said, “Maybe we’ll end up shooting it out. But I doubt those guys can hit much of anything.”

Jake pulled up his pants leg – revealing not his titanium prosthetic leg, but the flesh one, which’d had an orange-sized chunk blown out of it by an al-Shabaab 7.62 round. Now, months later, it had healed, but the mass of scar tissue it had left was dramatic, and Jake still walked with a limp. He said, “Yeah, but anybody can get lucky. It’s sort of the million-monkeys phenomenon…”

“Put a million monkeys in front of a million AKs, and however shitty their shooting…”

“Yeah. Collectively, they’re bound to get lucky. I’d keep the plates in if I were you.”

Just then, the rest of Triple Nickel wandered out, all of them tooled up as well. Kate, from under her green
ARMY
ballcap, holding her standard-issue M4 on its sling, said, “Hey, top…”

Both Handon and Jake swiveled their heads toward her.

“Sorry. I meant Jake. I was thinking – if this works, then it means your original assault on the Stronghold wasn’t a failure.”

“Hey – we got you out, didn’t we?”

“Yeah, and I appreciate that. But I mean Patient Zero. It’s only because Godane’s dead that al-Sîf is in a position to give it to us.”

Baxter looked over at Zack. “Yeah – when you murdered the shit out of Godane—”

Kate finished for him. “You won Patient Zero for us. Otherwise, it would have been locked up there for eternity.”

“You did it,” Baxter added.

Not yet
, Zack thought. But he only shrugged in response. It wasn’t really humility.

It just meant he’d believe it when he saw it.

* * *

But now they were out of time.

They could all hear the whumping rotor blades of the Seahawk MH-60 approaching over the crown of the mountain, making landfall from the Gulf of Aden to the north, flying low, and bearing down on them at its top speed. Handon also heard the powerful engines of both of Triple Nickel’s vehicles, the Special Forces gun truck and the armored Land Cruiser, roar to life.

And, finally, he found everyone on both teams standing in a circle around him, all of them geared up for combat, whatever that meant for them. Even Zack and Baxter had vests and weapons – Zack just with body armor and a pistol, but Baxter with a tactical vest and an M4 of his own, which he seemed to be comfortable carrying.

The reason all of them there were out here was: everyone was coming out. No one got left behind today. Once they had Patient Zero, it was over. And they were all getting the hell out of Dodge. Back to the carrier. Then back to Britain, with all haste.

They were nearly done with Africa.

What Handon couldn’t be sure of, though… was whether Africa was done with them.

There was also the problem that the single Seahawk wouldn’t hold all eleven of them. So half the team was following behind in the ground vehicles. Handon just hadn’t decided which half yet. But he was out of time for making that decision, so he just made it. He raised his voice to be heard over the noise of the helo, even then flaring in to land on Zack’s vegetable garden, the only suitable HLZ, up toward the summit.

“Ali. Henno. Juice. Baxter and Kate. You’re with me in the air. We remain call sign Cadaver One.” Most of these personnel decisions were easy enough to make. He wanted Ali on overwatch to cover his ass. He needed someone big, tough, and vicious, who he could count on to watch his back – and, even with their disagreements, even when they’d almost turned lethal, that still meant Henno. Juice he wanted on commo and JTAC duties, coordinating the F-35 that would be covering them from altitude.

And, finally, Baxter and Kate were the local experts. Both had fought in the Stronghold battle, and Kate was intimately familiar with the cells where P0 was kept. Baxter had not only lived behind those walls for a year and a half, but also had the relationship with al-Sîf.

Handon turned toward the vehicles. “Jake, Zack, and Noise are in the gun truck. Homer and Pred take the SUV. Your convoy is now call sign Cadaver Three.” He turned to look at these five as they formed up, and gave them last instructions. “Follow behind on the road at your highest safe speed. You need to be ready to back us up, be our QRF – and, mainly, be our ride out in the unlikely event the helo goes down.”

Predator laughed out loud at that. “Oh, yeah, ’cause that’s never happened before.” Some of the others also smiled. Between the Battle of Mogadishu in ’93, and the start of the War on Terror on 9/11, half of their training had revolved around downed-helo drills.
Black Hawk Down
had echoed and resonated deeply across all of their careers. That it happened in the same country they were currently in, Somalia, wasn’t lost on anyone, either.

But now Handon felt a strong hand on his bicep. He turned to see that its owner was Jake. And the man didn’t look pleased. He also didn’t seem to be pulling Handon aside for a word – perhaps because there wasn’t time – but instead was having it right out in front of everyone.

“I need to be on that helo,” Jake said. When Handon didn’t respond, he added, “You need someone with you who knows the Stronghold. And who knows what kind of man you’re dealing with.”

Handon held Jake’s eye. “That’s why I’m bringing those two,” he said, nodding toward Kate and Baxter. “Baxter knows al-Sîf – and, frankly, he’s not as likely to kill him as you are.”

When they were alone earlier, Baxter had told Handon how al-Sîf had killed Jake’s friend in their sister ODA. And how he had been, at the very least, involved in the deaths of their other three teammates, Kwan, Todd, and Brendan, in the Stronghold battle. All this history made al-Sîf, essentially, Jake’s nemesis. Baxter didn’t enjoy ratting out Jake. But he felt like Handon needed to know.

The helo was down on the deck now, its rotors idling loudly – probably too loudly for the ZA. They needed to go. So Handon said, “This is my op. I make the team assignments. And they’re made.”

Jake set his jaw. “And this is
my
AO.”

Handon exhaled. “You’re too emotional about this guy. Use your head, Master Sergeant.”

“And you give me a little credit, Sergeant Major.”

Handon sighed. He outranked Jake. And, in theory, a white SOF guy probably ought to be taking his lead from a Delta or other Tier-1 guy. But Handon also knew Jake had a point – two of them, really. One, this was his patch; and, two, he could be counted on to be a professional. In the end, Handon decided he would rather persuade him than order him.

“Look,” he said. “This guy, however big an asshole he is, represents the final hope of mankind. I simply can’t risk it. I can’t risk anything at this point. So be smart – smart enough to be somewhere else.”

Jake exhaled, backing down. He’d made a stand, and he’d lost. He was also trying to remember the lessons of their last fight against al-Shabaab – when his hubris, righteous anger, and refusal to back down had cost them so dearly. What he’d learned was: only the humble man gets to rule. He nodded at Handon – then went and climbed behind the wheel of the gun truck.