ARISEN, Book Eleven - Deathmatch (30 page)

The Russian smiled and spat blood. Evidently his English was fine. “Vasily,” he said. Then he squinted up at Ali, recognition spreading across his face. Evidently she was known to the enemy, as well. They probably didn’t go up against a whole lot of female African American snipers.

“
Da
,” the badly wounded Russian said
.
“He is looking for you.”

“Is that so?” Ali said. “Well, I’ll tell him to look out for you, too – when he gets there.”

The Russian squinted. “When he gets where?”

Ali looked at Henno and nodded.

He pulled the trigger.

Wake Up, Raible – You’re Missing the Apocalypse

JFK – Hospital

Lieutenant Commander Walker, senior flight surgeon and CO of the hospital and its twenty-plus medical personnel, peeled back a section of plastic sheeting from a large area of burnt skin. The burns were on the body of Corporal Raible, who had got them by walking into a Russian IED, during the Marines’ scavenging mission to Saldanha Bay in South Africa.

Though what really bought him these terrible injuries was his heroic attempt to save his teammate, Lance Corporal Jenkins. But Jenkins was gone now, as were so many of the leathernecks who had started this journey. And now much of Raible was gone, as well – quite a lot of skin, a significant amount of soft tissue, and his right leg below the knee.

He was currently getting the attention of the senior medical officer on the boat. She had more time for him now, which had not been the case recently, when there’d been over sixty casualties in there – a few more than the hospital was designed to hold – after the missile strike on the flight deck. This was why Raible was in a bed shoved almost all the way to the rear, only a few feet from the lab used by Dr. Park.

The majority of those casualties had relatively minor injuries – or, at any rate, couldn’t be spared from their stations for long – so had been treated and returned to their duties. Those left were the worst cases, perhaps a dozen, many of them also with bad burns.

But, even with more space, Walker hadn’t wanted to move Raible. He was going to have plenty of discomfort, and serious challenges, without being jostled and shoved around the room.

Right now, she was checking his burns for signs of infection, as well as trying to identify healthy areas of skin they could harvest and culture to make grafts from. As she put the sheeting back down, Raible stirred and came awake – for the first time in days.

“Good morning, Corporal,” Walker said. “How are you feeling today?”

Raible blinked and worked his tongue around in a mouth that had to be seriously dry. But still, he produced a sleepy smile. “Groggy,” he said. “How long have I been out?”

“You’ve been in and out, mostly out, since your team carried you out of South Africa. That was five days ago. How’s your pain level? One to ten.”

Raible put on what looked like a poker face. “Not bad. Call it four and a half. But, listen, I’d like to be on a lower dose of pain meds.”

Walker gave him a skeptical look. This was a very seriously wounded kid. And these were painful injuries.

But he didn’t relent. Holding her gaze, he said, “I don’t want to sleep my life away. Or miss the whole rest of the ZA.”

“I sure would,” Walker said, shaking her head.
Brave kid. Where do they find them?
“Okay. I’ll tell the nurse to bring you down a notch or two. And we’ll see how you do.”

Raible smiled again. “Thanks, doc.”

* * *

One deck down and several frames aft, Captain Martin stood in front of the last urinal in the 03 Deck Aft Men’s Head. He’d come in here looking for Safo and Jakobs, his two missing crew members, but stayed to avail himself of the facilities. He hadn’t found anything unexpected in the storage closet of the reactor control room, despite his weird feeling of not being alone. Now he was also alone in the head, but for some reason still couldn’t stop looking over his shoulder.

When he returned to the control room, he found the hatch still securely locked. That was something, at least. He swiped his security card, punched in his code, and entered. As soon as he stepped in, he could see Jakobs – back at his station, facing away, and looking into a monitor. Martin stopped, hand still on the latch.

That WAS Jakobs – right?

It sure looked like his uniform, and his build was unchanged. But had he gotten a haircut? Now Martin squinted at the back of his neck… and he saw something indistinct – but distinctly wrong. It looked like a tattoo, under make-up.

Martin yanked at his side arm – but “Jakobs” was already spinning in his chair, holding a weapon, and firing. Martin got his pistol clear and lead blasted in both directions, leaping out of sparking barrels in quarters way too close for any kind of comfortable gunfight. Martin felt a sharp pain and went down on the deck, falling behind a bank of stations.

Wow
, he thought, half-stunned.
That happened really fast…

* * *

LCDR Walker looked down on Raible with concern as he drifted back to sleep. She picked up his chart and began scribbling a few updates. She only looked up when an unfamiliar NSF sailor walked right up to her, toting a shotgun. She frowned at him and put the chart down – not pleased that he’d been able to just stroll back here. Evidently, no one had challenged him on his way through the hospital. Random personnel were not supposed to be armed back here – NSF or no.

But before she could address him, the man pointed over her shoulder at the door to the lab. “Dr. Park back there?”

Walker stood up to her full height and stepped forward. “What’s your business with him?”

The man tried on a smile. “Lieutenant Harte sent me to check on him.”

Walker smiled in response. “Okay, no problem. Go on in.”

The man nodded, turned, and took a few steps toward the hatch – before he realized something was wrong. When he stopped and turned around again, he found Walker pointing her side arm at his face.

“Move real slow and tell me who you are,” she said. When he hesitated and cocked his head, obviously sizing her up, she hauled back the hammer of her M9. “Harte died in the mutiny. You don’t even know who your own CO is.”

The man smiled again and raised his hands, palms out, and started walking slowly toward her, closing the distance. When he read in her expression that he was going to get about one more step before getting shot, he tensed – then moved laterally, and fast, while bringing his shotgun up.

He never got close.

Campbell’s first round caught him in the side of the head, spinning him around and dropping him to the deck, his limbs tangling up with the shotgun.

Walker stepped forward, fast and smooth, her weapon trained on the man’s head, and kicked the shotgun away from him with the side of her foot. Then she switched the pistol to her left hand, and moved laterally herself.

Straight to the phone on the bulkhead.

* * *

Blinking rapidly, his breathing weak and shallow, Captain Martin reached down and felt wetness around his waist. He had been hit low in the stomach. He also quickly discovered he couldn’t move or even feel his legs. That wasn’t good. It was very bad, in fact.

Steeling himself, maintaining his shaky grip on his weapon, he managed to drag himself around the edge of the station… and down there with him on the deck he saw not one body, but three. The man he’d just shot it out with was dead, lifeless eyes open and staring, with a neat bullet hole high in his right cheek.

But behind him, Martin could see Safo and Jakobs – or rather their naked bodies, which had both been stashed under the row of stations at the back of the control room.
Oh, God
, Martin thought, moaning audibly, his stomach turning, either despite or perhaps because of the gunshot wound in his abdomen.

Not five minutes ago, he’d been sitting five feet from both of his slain crewmen. That coppery smell he’d noticed was blood.

Martin dragged himself closer to the rear of the compartment and looked up at the wall phone on the bulkhead. He battled like hell, but couldn’t drag himself up far enough to reach it. His legs simply wouldn’t obey, and his arms were weak, trembling, and slightly numb, probably from shock and blood loss.

He looked hopelessly down to his belt, where he already knew there was no radio.

Finally, he pulled himself up into a sitting position, his back against the rearsmost station, where he had an unobstructed view of the hatch – which he realized with another rush of horror he had left open. No one was coming through it in response to the gunfire – either to help, or to shoot him some more. This deck was generally pretty deserted at this hour, this far down in the bowels of the ship.

Looking around him, he gathered weapons and ammo – most of which were on the belt of the man he’d shot. Relieving him of the spare mags he wouldn’t be needing, Martin looked into his glassy dead eyes.

Who the hell ARE you?

A more interesting question, actually, was whether this guy had friends nearby. Martin definitely couldn’t assume he didn’t. He reloaded his own weapon, and placed the intruder’s pistol and magazines in his lap where he could get to them. This was his post. And he intended to defend it – until his last breath, if that’s what it came down to.

Glancing up again in frustration at the phone, he considered shouting for help. But making noise, never mind announcing his helplessness, seemed imprudent. Right now, whatever the nature of this violent incursion into the USS
John F. Kennedy
… it was conceivable that Martin was fighting it completely on his own.

Trying to keep his breathing steady, and his panic controlled, he belatedly noticed there was steam venting into the room from somewhere above and behind him.
Shit.
Unplanned vented steam in a nuclear reactor was rarely a good thing.

That last breath might come sooner than predicted…

General Quarters

JFK – Bridge

Commander Abrams stood wide-eyed at the port-side screens and stared at the thin clouds over Africa to the south – the ones Thunderchild had just disappeared into. He was still in shock to have lost both his last F-35 and his last fighter jock. Since taking command, he’d learned his input wasn’t particularly required for air ops. But he hadn’t thought pilots could just launch their own damned missions on a whim.

According to both PriFly and CIC, Thunderchild was acknowledging radio hails. She just wasn’t complying with their increasingly shrill orders to RTB, and do it RFN.

Abrams shook his head in resignation, if not quite surrender, and turned back around to reclaim the captain’s chair. He saw everyone else was sitting at their stations like on any other day – all except the one random blond sailor, who was still by the outside hatch, just inside the bridge, looking dodgy. And Abrams remembered what he’d been doing – finding out who this jackass actually was. He felt slightly annoyed that no one else had challenged him, and he had to do it himself.

He caught the eye of the NSF guard now posted permanently to the bridge, and nodded toward the mystery sailor. The NSF guy turned toward him, slightly raising his M4. And Abrams took two steps toward the man.

But he was stopped in his tracks by the same ops officer, who had his phone to his ear again. But this time his manner was not so much crisp as seriously alarmed. He flipped a switch, putting the call on the overhead speakers.

It was a woman’s voice – serious and all-business.

“—peat, Bridge – there are boarders on the ship. Sound general quarters NOW. One infiltrator killed at this station. Hospital is secure at this time…”

Eyes going even wider, Abrams swiveled his head to lock eyes with the mystery sailor – who smiled, shrugged, and drew his side arm, then pivoted and shot the NSF guy twice in the head before he could raise his weapon. As Abrams willed his right arm to work, the man pivoted back…

And he shot Abrams twice in the chest before he could react.

Screams and gunfire filled the bridge.

* * *

Sergeant Lovell, acting commander of the remaining MARSOC force aboard, twisted his body around, then kicked the blanket off his feet, which were getting too damned hot in the enclosed bunk again. Despite having just been up most of the night on standby, as leader of the QRF, then continuing to work for a few hours even when he wasn’t, he still somehow couldn’t sleep.

He was just on the verge of giving up and taking himself back to the Team Room when the ship-wide tannoy went off.

“This is the commander.”

Lovell could recognize Abrams’s voice – but for some reason it sounded thin and raspy, like he couldn’t get his breath. There was also some vague but desperate-sounding tumult going on in the background.

Wait – was that gunfire?

“General quarters. All hands to duty stations. All hands prepare to repel boarders. Repeat, the ship has be—”

He was cut off mid-syllable by a single gunshot.

Yeah – that was gunfire.

Lovell leapt from his bed in his skivvies, his body surging with adrenaline, and reached for his weapon – and his pants.

* * *

Emily was coming to the end of her morning’s work, already thinking about returning to Homer’s cabin and the kids, and letting the backup babysitter get back to her regular duties. With the crew so degraded from the recent battles, no one was getting time off – and many, like her and Emily, were working extra jobs.

She put her fingers on the lid of the laptop and pressed it closed. She pushed her chair back and stood up.

The general quarters announcement came over the tannoy.

Emily listened to it in full, standing stock still, face impassive. When it ended, or rather just stopped, she moved quickly but calmly to the outside hatch, made sure it was closed, and dogged it securely. Now no one could get in without a properly keyed access card. That pretty much meant the Marines, and her.