ARISEN, Book Eleven - Deathmatch (17 page)

He low-crawled around the corner of the wall and stuck his head up again. His prayer must have worked because the first thing he saw was one of the two men swiping what looked like a keycard, while the other faced out and pulled security. But the door immediately opened and the outward-facing one was already turning around. He missed seeing Jameson by a fraction of a second.

They stepped inside and pulled the door shut behind him.

Jameson crawled forward far enough to verify that this same door was where the trail of 7.62 brass led. He couldn’t even begin to imagine what was inside.

Other than Aliyev.

Their target was almost certainly in there.

* * *

Jameson silently cursed himself for not bringing four men – because he needed to leave someone to keep eyes on this structure and its entrance. But he was absolutely going to need Eli to talk through what they would do next. He hissed instructions to Sanders – who didn’t seem to mind staying alone – then grabbed Eli, and the two of them made their way back.

When they reached the front of the building One Troop had been left to strongpoint, they instantly saw that it had been done right. For starters, the smashed-out windows had been boarded up with what looked like scavenged plywood.

“Wonder where they found that?” Jameson asked Eli, as Simmonds opened the front door to admit them.

Eli snorted. “I wonder how the hell they nailed it up without making noise.”

“The colour sergeant’s up on the roof,” Simmonds said, shutting and locking the door behind them. “Stairs that way.”

In another minute, the two leaders had climbed the five flights to the roof, finding a Marine strongpointing at every other level. And up top they found Sergeant Croucher, peering across the square with a pair of night-vision binos. Also there was Simmonds, who as most junior had the unfortunate duty of humping their long-range radio. Jameson and Eli exchanged impressed looks. Security, surveillance, command, comms – everything was totally squared away. It was practically a forward operating base already.

When they gave Croucher a job, he did it.

Jameson leaned in close to Simmonds and said, “Raise Group Captain Gibson and update him on our status and location.”

“Sir,” Simmonds said, nodding, and pulling the phone handset from his pack.

* * *

Five kilometers to the north, Gibson answered the radio call – on the surface, to a casual listener, he spoke in his usual jolly tones. But there was a cold ribbon of pain and fear underneath. His face was pale and dotted with sweat.

“Gibson here, go ahead.”

He listened, nodded, and acknowledged the transmission. But when he opened his mouth to speak again, the button on the hand mic got released, and it was yanked away from his mouth. And what was left, nearly pressing against his mouth on the other side, was the end of a long suppressor, threaded into the barrel of a big and menacing MP-443 Grach 9mm pistol, with a 17-round magazine. The person holding the pistol wasn’t big, but she was at least as menacing. She had the hammer back, and her gloved finger curled around the trigger.

She put her thumb on the hammer and released it by pulling the trigger, lowering it with her thumb. That it was still pointed at Gibson’s face while she did this was deeply unreassuring to him.

“Safety first, kids,” Gibson said, trying to grin, and failing. He was having to work too hard at his breathing – through the pain.

“Shut the fuck up,” Lyudmila answered in English.

Replacing the pistol in a chest holster, she nodded to the two men holding the pilot from either side, pressing his back up against the plane, then switched back to Russian. “You two stay with the shooting range marshal here. While we go mop up the rest.”

The two Spetsnaz Alfa Group operators gripped Gibson’s upper arms and straightened him up, as he held his right hand, bandaged and bloody, with his left. His rifle lay in the grass where it had fallen.

The twelve-man Alfa squad had come in fast, hard, and silent – but even with so much open space around the plane, Gibson still hadn’t seen them until they were nearly on top of him. He’d snatched up his L22 carbine – but hadn’t even gotten it to his shoulder before he’d been shot. The team leader, this woman with the viper glare, running out in front of her men, had shot him in the hand, right in the center of the palm. With a single rifle shot. While running flat out. From thirty meters out.

Now this terrifying woman hefted her AK-12 with its square holographic sight, textured polymer mag, vertical foregrip, tactical light and aiming laser – and underslung grenade launcher – and moved to lead her team out again.

Straight back to Red Square.

Dark Night of the Soul

Red Square – One Troop Strongpoint

Jameson and Eli had retreated off the roof and back down to the nearly pitch-dark ground floor, where they could speak freely and debate what the hell they were going to do now. There was every reason to believe their mission objective, Aliyev, was now being held inside Lenin’s tomb. And the patrol they’d seen go in there said he, and that building, were well guarded and defended.

“Okay,” Jameson said. “What’s your take on that patrol?”

Eli didn’t hesitate. “Dark gray jumpsuits, advanced weapons and kit. Spetsnaz, I reckon.”

Jameson nodded. “Yeah. My take, too.” And also what he was afraid of. He’d been hoping Eli would reach another conclusion.

“And right here in the government sector? Maybe Alfa Group.”

Jameson exhaled mournfully. Otherwise known as
Spetsgruppa
"A", Alfa were the elite counter-terrorism task force of Spetsnaz – which had operated under the direct control of Russia’s top political leadership. Before the fall, they had been Putin’s loyal killers – the unit who responded to terrorist acts like the Moscow theatre hostage crisis and the Beslan school massacre. They were incredibly serious and dangerous operators.

Jameson said, “And we have absolutely no idea how many are in that building.”

“Tomb, you mean.”

“Yeah – ours, very likely, if we go inside.” Jameson sighed again. Having virtually zero intel on what they were facing, the twelve Marines of One Troop could all be killed in seconds if they ventured in there. But they also couldn’t leave without Aliyev. Everything depended on it.

These facts radically reduced Jameson’s space of options.

* * *

Dark night of the soul.

That’s what Jameson faced now, alone in the empty ground floor of their temporary refuge. He’d sent Eli back up top to work with Croucher on developing a plan of direct action.

“Plan based on what?” Eli had asked.

“Based on our total lack of intel. It’s CQB – free-flow through an unknown enclosed structure. Unknown enemy numbers and disposition. And one hostage. Start with that.”

Eli had nodded and left.

Then Jameson relieved Thomas and went on stag himself, guarding the front door. He needed a few minutes alone.

And now he very definitely was alone – physically, spiritually, alone with his doubts, his fears, and his demons. Mainly, knowing that he alone was going to have to make this decision. Because there was no one else.

He thought of the millions relying on them back in Britain, with the final noose of death and doom closing around London. His memory ranging out from there, he remembered his cousin, back in his hometown of Canterbury – seeing her face, so familiar and previously so lovely, through his scope in the battle there. Knowing he had come too late to save her.

And that all he could do was put her down.

Was he now too late to save everyone else? Or were he and his single squad of Marines just too little? Was he too weak, too frail? Or maybe just too damned unsure.

Jameson thought of the little girl, Josie, who had come out of the Channel with the Tunnelers – a vision of perfect innocence, deserving so much better than she was likely to get. And not even old enough to understand what was happening to her – only knowing terror and abandonment, separated as she had been from her mother. And what could Amarie be feeling in that moment, what was she going through even then? Jameson could scarcely imagine. Would mother and daughter ever be reunited? Would either of them even survive? Or were they doomed to not live out the week?

The weight of those fifty million lives back home was crushing. But it was also abstract. Josie and Amarie were real, and concrete, and totally vivid to him. He could picture both of them perfectly, the beautiful face and bright eyes of Amarie, the perfect and vulnerable alabaster skin of the little girl.

And in that moment, Jameson decided.

He wasn’t going to let them suffer the same fate as his cousin. And he wouldn’t let Josie never see her mum again. Even if it meant the deaths of him and all his Marines. Or all but one. One of them would retrieve the Kazakh, and his zombie-killing virus, and get him and it the hell out of there. And get them both back.

There was simply no choice. They had to.

And Jameson was going to make sure they did.

* * *

Thirty seconds later, as he was about to hail Thomas to come take over the post, Thomas came and found him.

“Sir!” he said. “You need to get up top.”

Jameson rose and moved out and up. As he mounted the stairs, he asked over his shoulder, “Preview?”

“It’s Sanders.”

But by then he was already leaping up, powering his combat-loaded body up three stairs at a time. The burning of lactic acid in his legs made him flash back to climbing for dear life up that building in Dusseldorf. But, amazingly, this mission was more important. And he had a bad feeling it was going to be even more costly.

“Sitrep,” he said as he hit the open air of the roof.

Eli just pointed out across the square, while Croucher handed him the binos, and the RTO pressed a phone handset on him. “Report,” he said over the radio. But even as Sanders answered in a calm whisper, Jameson could see it.

“Two-man patrol coming out of the target structure.”

“Got it,” Jameson said. He gritted his teeth – kicking himself again for leaving only a single man there. There was no way Sanders could capture two by himself – not two Alfa operators. He decided in an instant. “Kill them both. Single headshots. Do not fucking miss. And don’t cause a ruckus. Acknowledge and confirm.”

“Acknowledged.”

“Do it now. And do not fuck this up.”

Jameson knew this plan was supremely dangerous, and could go wrong in a thousand ways – not to mention that it was supremely brutal and cold-blooded. But it was also necessary. And the time for kid gloves was over. There was simply no way the rest of them could get over there in time.

And they had to get inside that building.

Jameson panned the binos left and picked out Sanders leaning around the edge of the tomb, a tiny green-and-black shadow nestled among deeper shadows, raising his rifle. He then panned right, his gaze settling on the two Russian soldiers. Without a sound, the one on the right one crumpled to the ground.

The second spun around electrically, dropping into a crouch and raising his weapon. He didn’t check on his teammate. He merely pulled his rifle into his shoulder and leaned into it, ready to engage.

His head jerked once.

And he fell over the body of his fallen comrade.

And that was it.

“Everyone downstairs,” Jameson said. “We step off in two minutes.”

* * *

Exactly two minutes later, the full team was mustered on the ground floor, and Jameson gave them final instructions. There was no more time for planning. They were going to have to rely on their skills, experience, and training as a team, and on their resourcefulness and resolve.

“Listen up,” Jameson said, scanning faces, NVGs pulled down in front of helmets all around. “There’s no more time for creeping around dodging the dead. As soon as that patrol doesn’t report in, that’s us fucked. So we’re going to push straight across the square – hard and fast, but silent as long as we can. Anything gets in your way, put it down. And keep moving.”

Jameson looked to Eli. He had nothing to add.

“And when we get inside that building, we’re all going to have to move a million miles an hour. This isn’t zombie-fighting, and slow-and-steady is not going to win the race. We’re facing not only human opponents, but seriously fucking talented ones. Killers who know how it’s done. We stop, we slow, we get jammed up in there… and none of us are ever getting out. You got me?”

He considered adding that if they got jammed up, everyone they knew and loved back home was also going to die. But that went without saying. Also, he didn’t want to put any more weight on their shoulders, no more than every man there felt already. Anyway, that burden, of completing the mission, was his alone.

He exhaled before concluding.

“Don’t stop, don’t trip – and,
whatever you do
… don’t miss.”

He turned and pulled open the door.

And Major Jameson led the way out, first and fiercest.

Hollenbaugh Shot

The Stronghold – Handon and Henno’s Trench

“Handon, it’s Juice – the Russians got the mission objective. Patient Zero has left the building.”

Well, so much for an easy conclusion to their mission. So much for luck. But as he exhaled and reset, Handon figured he should be used to this kind of shit by now. It did keep happening. And of course there was only one thing to be done now – track down those thieving sons of bitches.

And get their goddamned zombie back.

* * *

“Copy,”
Handon said from down below.
“Now I need you to suppress the MG that’s got us pinned, then put the bird on the deck and extract us. Because the bad guys are getting away.”

Ali didn’t respond to this, letting Juice deal with comms. She merely gritted her teeth and followed the stream of full-auto rounds still pouring onto Handon and Henno’s heads. Its source was one of the guard towers, where a medium machine gun was hammering their position.