ARISEN, Book Eleven - Deathmatch (35 page)

“Get it done, Thunderchild.”

* * *

Hailey knew Handon wasn’t only willing to spend her life. He was willing to spend his own – sending her away, with that Black Shark still out there and liable to come back at any time.

But what Hailey knew that Handon didn’t was that the ground convoy was now less than 50km from the river. Which, conveniently, was also the range of her anti-air missiles – which meant she could go out and devastate the convoy, while still covering Alpha from the air. In fact, her ASRAAMs, which moved at Mach 3, didn’t perform well
inside
of 5km, where they didn’t have enough time to correct.

So Alpha was actually safer with her a little farther out. Handon just didn’t know that when he sent her away. He was obviously at the point of having to put every chip he had on the table. Or maybe Hailey was one of his chess pieces.

He was definitely playing a dangerous game.

But, still, she reassured herself, the Black Shark pilot would have to be a complete moron to get within 1,000 miles of a supersonic jet fighter armed with ASRAAMs. They were like God’s own delete button for enemy aircraft.

She zoomed her optics in on the convoy, which had just come out of the river valley to the north, heading for the southernmost one, where Alpha and Spetsnaz were slugging it out. This had them now driving through the semi-arid and wide-open stretch between the two – also very convenient for Hailey.

But not so healthy for them.

As she came around and locked the magnified video view to her targets, though, she realized she had a problem. Whoever the convoy commander was, he wasn’t stupid. He had their eight vehicles spaced at tactical intervals – that is, wide ones. They weren’t bunching up and making one nice fat target.

It was eight vehicles – and Hailey only had two Damnations. She didn’t think she could get them all with two. No, she was going to have to herd them, get them to bunch up somehow. Or maybe try to take out a couple with cannon fire. Either was fine with her. The downside was that by engaging them in a gun run, she was also going to find out pretty quickly whether or not they had SAMs.

Continuing to descend, she brought her nose around again and lined up the gun run – south to north, right at them.

Straight into the teeth of the enemy.

* * *

Handon was now able to put a little more of his attention on the fight he was actually in. That convoy was supremely dangerous – if they made it through. But Handon didn’t expect they would. If there was one thing an F-35 was good at, it was taking out unprotected vehicles on open ground. Hailey’s ground-attack missiles and autocannon ought to turn that convoy into a Michael Bay highway action sequence in short order.

And he got more good news on top of that.
“Handon, Juice.”

“Send it,” he said, ducking down to change mags.

“Forgot to tell you. The Kennedy also got their UCAV in the air a little while ago. ETA twelve mikes on that.”

“Outstanding.”

That made two air assets – which ought to dominate both the skies and the battlespace.

And Handon was perfectly happy to risk having the drone attack the Spetsnaz force they were fighting at the riverbank. Maybe it would get shot down by their Grinches – but maybe not. It too was a stealth aircraft, and now they knew what they were facing. And its Hellfires and JDAMs would be decisive. The enemy was still exposed on the riverbank and vulnerable from the air. They’d get murdered by the drone. And that made it worth risking.

Handon knew if they could finish them, or even get them on the ropes, while Hailey decimated their convoy on the other side of the river… that would be game, set, and match.

All to Alpha.

* * *

Out on the left flank, hunkered down and taking careful, measured shots, Juice was experiencing déjà vu. Because here he was in another smash-mouth gunfight with tactically outstanding Spetsnaz shooters. Though there were a few differences between this one and the warehouse fight.

For one thing, the bush was thick enough, and the range long enough, that neither side got a good look at the other. If they had, people would be dying, as neither side were the kind of shooters who missed. So he couldn’t see them very well.

But Juice could feel it in his bones.

These were the same dudes he’d shot it out with in that warehouse. And he could feel something else:

Misha was still out there, somewhere in the mix.

Really, he’d known it all along – that Misha didn’t die in that warehouse. And that he’d be seeing him again.

And the man would
not
be in a good mood.

That whole day had been an incredibly close-run thing – only an inspired bit of hacking, a hail Mary pass from midfield, had salvaged the mission. And saved their asses.

But as Juice slithered back from a fallen log, then popped up ten feet to the right and fired three times, he hoped he wouldn’t be called on to pull another hack out of his ass to save them all. Because these were not the kind of guys who would fall for the same shit twice. Spetsnaz were not just mean, they were also seriously cagey – much like the Marines he’d taken up against them.

Another difference was Juice had most of Alpha by his side this time. And while he definitely felt more comfortable being with his own brothers – peerless Tier-1 shooters like Handon, Henno, and Ali – there were too damned few of them, and they were outnumbered.

And now they’d spent their surprise.

* * *

On Handon’s right, in the center-right of Alpha’s line, Henno was pissed off – not an unusual state for him. A well-placed Spetsnaz round had creased his cheek, which now bled freely. Another had completely shattered the Surefire tactical light on the side of his barrel rail. He could live without the light, and the cheek wound wouldn’t kill him.

But the guys he was shooting it out with were wired tight and seriously switched on. He was having to use every scrap of his street gunfighting skills and experience to match up against them. He was used to outclassing his opponents in physical strength, tactical skill, and particularly swagger – aggression and fearlessness.

You want a scrap? Fine. Henno wasn’t bothered.

But he had to give these Russian bastards their due respect. The fuckers could fight. But he also really needed to kill some of them, fast – rather than sit around trading lead, which eventually wasn’t going to go his way.

Whatever Handon was planning, he’d better get on with it.

* * *

Baxter couldn’t even really believe the situation he was in. He remembered once when a couple of SF guys had passed through the safehouse in Hargeisa, and he’d had an hour or so to grill one of them about his experience of combat. Baxter had always idolized the operational guys, and tried to learn as much from them as he could. But this one guy hadn’t warmed to his hero-worship.

“No, man,” he said, shaking his head. “A gunfight is not a cool thing to be involved in. Thank God every day that you have a job that doesn’t involve people trying to kill you.”

At the time, Baxter had thought it was just false modesty. But now he got it. There was nothing cool about being shot at – never mind being shot at
well
. In addition to battling for control of his bladder and bowel, he was having to use every iota of attention, skill, and focus to even stay alive in this fight.

And he was truly convinced each minute would be his last.

* * *

Juice was having to stay tightly wired himself now, both to avoid getting shot and to put out accurate enough fire to keep Spetsnaz pinned where they were, and not maneuvering around on them. And he had to do it without running out of ammo.

But he was only going to have to do it a little longer.

Because they now had motherfucking air superiority – which, as usual, was going to make all the difference.

“Juice, Handon.”

“Send it.” He triggered off the last three rounds in his mag, dropped down, and listened while he reloaded.

“I want you JTAC’ing that UCAV when it gets here – and you need to keep it on a short leash. It’s going to be tight in here.”

“Roger that.” Suddenly Juice realized he hadn’t heard from the
Kennedy
in quite awhile. He got his new mag seated, slid over two feet and popped up into the scattered incoming fire.

Both sides were conserving ammo now, as both had only been able to hump so much through the bush. Juice knew from long experience that ounces added up to pounds, and pounds equaled pain – and, worse than pain, they made you slow. Probably no one out here was down to their last few mags yet. But they could all see it coming. So this was more like a cat and mouse game now, than a balls-out firefight.

There were two Spetsnaz positions Juice had been trading rounds with. He saw the dude in the right one pop, presumably after a move or a mag change. Before the dude could acquire and engage, Juice put two right into the poor bastard’s EOTech sight, and smiled as the guy went down. But then he popped a foot over, still on his feet – how he had survived being shot through his sight was beyond Juice – but he was at least reduced to using his back-up iron sights.

But he was using them well. Now Juice had to move again.

Handon was still briefing him. They were all having to do all kinds of shit while fighting. But the ability to do everything at once was why they got the big bucks. There were no time outs in gunfights.
“When the UCAV comes on station, I want an immediate attack run, on an east to west vector – right up the river channel. No recon. Just come in fast and hard.”

Juice nodded. Smart – don’t give them a chance to get SAMs up. “Roger that, wilco.”

“A couple of 250-pound JDAMs on that riverbank ought to mess up Ivan’s day pretty well.”

“Roger that. Will instruct the pilot and come back to you when we’ve got ten seconds to cover up.”

“Copy that. Let’s put the damage in.”

* * *

Hailey’s first attack run on the convoy was like ducks in a barrel – except with no barrel. The poor bastards were all laid out right in a row, exposed and vulnerable in open desert. It was like the highway of death in Desert Storm all over again. Nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

By coming at them straight on, with her exhaust facing away, Hailey increased her survivability if they did have heat-seeking SAMs. If on the other hand they had laser-guided ones, like the Starstreaks, then it might be a short attack run.

She also kept her airspeed up, to make it harder to get a laser on her. And she came in on them so fast they couldn’t react before exploding cannon rounds were tearing through their column, seventy per second. They’d barely looked up before she had blasted past them, a hundred feet over their heads.

She banked sharply and brought it back around to check the result, and found her gun run had disabled two of the trucks. Both were stopped on the road and pointed at odd angles, one of them lying on its side. She could see the survivors climbing out. But the main result, and the one she was really looking for, was that the six other vehicles had peeled off to either side, like a cloverleaf, reversing direction and hauling ass back toward that last river valley. They’d be trying to get under cover, away from the steel rain splashing damage on their heads.

Ha – they’ve seen nothing
, Hailey thought, arming her first Damnation ground-attack missile. As she came around to take them from behind, she saw they were no longer keeping their spacing – this was now a panicked rout.

Perfect. BOHICA, boys – bend over, here it comes again…

But then she saw a blossoming of fire, and four streams of bright tracers tore through the sky at her. It was a four-barreled DuSHKa – a 12.7mm anti-aircraft gun, or four of them, really – mounted in the back of one of the open-bed trucks. This was a fairly serious threat, but dangerous mainly to helos or slower fixed-wing aircraft. Hailey was moving too fast for this guy to hit her, on what was going to be her last pass anyway.

DuSHKa Guy can’t touch me
, she thought, banking around again.
I’m too fast, too pretty…

She figured she’d better update the ground team. “Cadaver from Thunderchild, be advised: convoy has reversed direction, and is scattering back into cover one valley up from yours.”

“Copy that, Thunderchild. Nice job.”

“I’m tipping in to finish them now.”

She lined up her attack run on the asses of the retreating vehicles, locking in her targets, finger hovering over the weapons-release trigger. The surviving vehicles raced at full speed now toward the forest cover of the treeline ahead of them. And they were actually going to get pretty close.

But they weren’t going to make it.

The DuSHKa gunner was triggering off at her desperately from the rear vehicle. It was going fast enough that, with Hailey coming in from behind, his odds were slightly better.

Then again, they still weren’t great.

And in just a few seconds, it was going to be:
No more Mr. DuSHKa Guy.
He and his buddies were about to be nothing but meat and metal.

Hailey’s finger twitched on the trigger.

Airburst

Over Central Somalia

With unbeatable target lock, and two seconds to weapons release, both the F-35 and the convoy racing toward the treeline at the edge of the river valley, Hailey shot a quick look down to her RWR – the radar warning receiver. The panel was still and silent. But it was at least conceivable they had been keeping a heat-seeking SAM in reserve.

Her finger tensed on the weapons-release trigger, and her eyes flicked back up – just as the RWR went apeshit, yanking her gaze back down. But then she saw it wasn’t the RWR, but the smaller LWR alongside it – the laser warning receiver.

She was being marked with a targeting laser.

And as her gaze rocketed up and forward again, she was confronted with the last thing on Earth she expected to see.