ARISEN, Book Eleven - Deathmatch (37 page)

Okay, fuck this noise
, he thought, reaching over his shoulder and hauling out his pistol-grip shotgun while shouting to his team. “Nicks, Webb! On the deck!” As he gave them a half-second to comply, he suddenly wondered where the hell they were, and why they weren’t attacking this sonofabitch themselves, what with still being able to see and all, but that was combat for you.

He fired three times, up from the floor at an angle, sweeping from left to right, pumping the action between each blast. When he heard a grunt, he fired twice more in that spot. And then he heard the satisfying thump of a body hitting the floor.

He got his NVGs reseated, reloaded the shotgun, went and found his other damned weapons – and located his fire team, to find out why they didn’t have his goddamned back.

Eli didn’t intend to die from the fog of war.

* * *

Colour Sergeant Croucher moved with the deliberate speed and steadiness of an experienced combat veteran. If Jameson had hardly ever shot living people to their faces, Croucher had done it all too often. The fighting in Helmand Province had been nose to nose as often as not, and the house-to-house fighting in Iraq even worse. Those wars were a long time ago now. But lessons learned at the cost of men’s lives were rarely forgotten.

Croucher actually didn’t lead from the front, preferring to keep his three men, Snipes, Thomas, and Yap, in his sight at all times. As a very senior non-commissioned officer, he felt very protective of his men. He also felt strongly about keeping them from fucking up.

“Intervals,” he hissed.

“Yes, Colour Sergeant,” Thomas said.

“And shut the fuck up.”

Croucher’s team moved forward – fast and silent.

* * *

Four minutes after his first killing, Jameson had the blood of five more men on his hands. And he still didn’t have the time or attention to think about the morality of it.

What he did think about was everything behind him, back in Britain – what he was fighting for. He had to be brutal so Amarie wouldn’t be brutalized. He had to survive so Josie would live long enough to see her mother again. He had to become something he didn’t like, so everything he loved would continue to exist. Later, maybe he could feel bad about it.

Right now, he couldn’t afford to.

Men up ahead of them were now shooting blind, as well as unsuppressed, so Jameson and his team took cover and slowly picked them off. When the raucous clatter of unsilenced weapons ceased, Jameson rose and headed out again – but then stopped dead in his tracks. Because a voice had suddenly become audible, shouting in accented English.

“
Here! I am Aliyev, and I am here!
”

* * *

Jameson shut the door to the interrogation room behind them. It hadn’t been locked, or even quite closed, so there’d been no need to shoot through it. Now he kept his weapon trained on the door while Halldon cut through the bonds on the man taped to a chair, on his back, down on the floor. The man was simultaneously sniffling, babbling his thanks, and possibly crying a little.

Jameson looked over his shoulder, and saw Sanders pulling him to his feet. “You’re Aliyev?” he asked.

“Yes. Yes.”

“What color was the ferret—”

“It was a fucking badger! Can we go now?”

Jameson almost laughed despite himself. “Can you walk?”

Aliyev nodded his head frantically, as Sanders started pushing him toward the door. But he dug his heels in and yelped, “Wait! I need my bug-out bag.”

As he moved to the corner, Jameson saw a big backpack there.
Thank fuck
, he thought – assuming the bag must have the zombie-killing virus in it. Aliyev got both its straps on with what looked like painful effort. And now Sanders pushed him forward as Jameson opened the door and led them out, rifle raised and on a hair trigger.

They couldn’t relax. But they had at least found the damned objective. Now they just had to secure it – and get them all out alive. But the four of them stopped again even as they were starting.

“My shotgun!” the modest-sized scientist said, pushing back against Sanders. “It’s got to be around here somewhere.”

“Not happening.” The last thing Jameson needed was an injured, crazy, blind Kazakh with a shotgun. “Here – put your hand on my shoulder and move when I move. Do it.” Then he hit his radio button and spoke into his chin mic: “All teams – objective recovered, exfil to rally point one. Repeat, exfil now.” This would get everyone moving back toward the stairwell. He hoped.

“Jameson, Eli, acknowledged.”

“Jameson, Croucher, turning tail, meet you there.”

Jameson almost breathed a sigh of relief.

“Damn, Sarge.”
That was a different voice.
“I’m hit…”

Rear Guard

Moscow – Alfa Group Bunker [Two Minutes Ago]

Akela leaned minutely around the right corner at the intersection of hallways, weapon held easily. His two hand-picked men were behind, one covering the left corner from just behind him, one facing back the way they’d come. It was all clear in both directions, just unmoving spectral-green-and-blackness. But Akela knew they must be approaching the main force – the group of British invaders who had so impolitely invaded his bunker. And the momentum was shifting.

But before he could advance, he heard that sonofabitching Kazakh shouting, giving away his location.

Shit
.

He turned on his heel and dashed back toward the interrogation room, his two men instinctively shadowing his maneuver, almost like computer-controlled players in a video game, following and supporting wherever he went. Seeing the door cracked, Akela kicked it open and charged in. Too late. The rescue force had somehow gotten around him – not all that surprising in the darkness and chaos – and now the prisoner was gone. This was a tough nut to swallow: a hostage rescue being pulled off, right in the heart of their highly secure underground military bunker. Maybe they’d gotten lazy. Maybe they’d forgotten how to face living opponents. Maybe their opponents were good.

They were clearly bold – ballsy sons of bitches.

But now that they had what they’d come for, Akela knew where they’d be going, because there was only one way out. He moved the three of them out again – toward the elevator and the stairs. He picked up his pace to a run, not precisely in that direction, but looping around, and still moving tactically. When they reached a big intersection, he leaned around the corner again… and this time he put his green IR aiming laser on the throat of an invader he could see guarding the next intersection up. And he stroked his trigger.

A single shot dropped the man to the deck.

* * *

“Casualty status,”
Jameson asked across the net
.
He needed to know who got hit – and, more importantly, how bad it was.

But as Eli dragged the wounded man back around the corner to safety, and even though he’d just reported himself hit, it was obvious that Webb was gone. His limp body felt like pulling a huge duffel bag of sand, and there wasn’t a flicker of life in him. Nonetheless, even as he saw the hole in his throat, Eli felt for a radial pulse and checked for breathing.

“Jameson, Eli. Webb is KIA.”

“Received. Keep moving.”

“Roger.” Eli spared a last look down at the slack features of Webb, who had always been a hard worker and a good man. He looked so peaceful now. It tore at Eli’s soul to leave him down in this dungeon, but of course that’s exactly what he had to do. Webb had fallen in foreign fields, doing his duty.

And now he was never coming home.

“Move out,” Eli said to Nicks and Younis, who were kneeling on either side, covering him while he assessed the casualty. Eli could already see that both were visibly more frightened than they’d been a minute ago. It’s said that a soldier’s mentality in combat goes from, “I can’t get hit” to “I could get hit – but I can avoid it if I’m careful” but then finally settles on “I’m going to get hit and there’s nothing I can do about it.” Eli figured they’d just passed into stage two.

The three surviving Marines on the fire team raised their rifles and legged it, Eli hoping their luck would hold long enough to keep them out of stage three.

* * *

Now Akela simply followed the shifting green beams of the enemy’s IR illuminators. As soon as he and his men got their NVGs on, the beams of the invaders were like homing beacons. And what they were homing in on, sure enough, was the elevator lobby.

Akela’s team moved fast but stealthily down the corridor, keeping their own IR lights off for now, just as the green cones disappeared around the end of the corridor.

If they moved fast, Akela knew they would get a look at the enemy’s backsides as soon as they turned the next corner. His finger moved from the side of his receiver to the trigger. And he got ready to make these guys pay.

And to rescue his damned hostage back.

* * *

The three Marine fire teams converged in the same place they had first split off – at the elevator, where three corridors met in a T-junction. Jameson’s team, with Aliyev, got there first from the center corridor. Jameson cleared around the corner to the right – and immediately saw Eli’s team, minus one man. Pivoting to the other side, he saw Croucher’s team on the left. He gave them a bladed hand wave to get them moving.

And then something happened down at that end.

* * *

Croucher tensed as he saw figures moving up ahead. But it was impossible to spend so much of one’s life around Royal Marines and not recognize their body shapes and the way they moved.

But then he heard a grunt behind him and turned in time to see Snipes hit the deck, and then Thomas also stumble and fall, even as he threw himself into an inset doorway on the right, Yap doing the same on the opposite side. By this time, a shitload of rounds had started snapping up and down the hall in the dark in both directions. It was difficult in the extreme to tell where they were coming from or who they were aimed at.

Croucher’s first concern was always for his men, so even as he leaned out and started putting out fire down the hallway to their rear, his eyes scanned the ground.

Snipes was motionless.

And Thomas was dragging himself forward – taking cover behind Snipes’s body.

* * *

Three down
, Akela thought to himself, leaning out and sighting in. This had turned into a quick and brutal firefight in a very enclosed space – and he had almost certainly found the main body of the rescue force. This meant he and his two men were outnumbered. But that didn’t remotely mean they couldn’t win. Plus more would be coming.

But Akela intended to finish this – fast.

* * *

Jameson had already turned right and was headed toward Eli when the shooting started. His instant reaction had been to shove Aliyev back down the hallway they had just exited.

“Sanders!” he shouted. “Watch him! Halldon – on me!”

And he spilled back out into the fight, he and Halldon both going left and advancing to inset doorways – closer to Croucher’s team, but not close enough. Those men were still on their own out there, pinned down. Reaching their position was going to be a son of a bitch. A hallway, Jameson considered, was a very narrow space, particularly with non-stop gunfire coming down it.

Simply, there wasn’t a hell of a lot of room to miss.

But his initial impulse was overpowering – he wasn’t leaving wounded Marines behind.

* * *

“Stay back, Major,” Colour Sergeant Croucher said across the net. But even as he said it, he could see Jameson slam into the doorway across from him, the one held by Yap. “Dammit, sir.”

Jameson said, “Thomas – get down and lie still! We’re going to push up and pull you out!”

But then, with no hesitation, the much younger wounded man showed his instincts were better than his commander’s.
“Negative, LT,”
Thomas said, unthinkingly using the rank Jameson had held for three years before this week. He spoke across the squad net in what sounded like his normal voice.
“I can’t fucking walk.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Croucher said, and leaned out to provide more covering fire, as did Jameson. But even as they did, they could both see more spectral figures at the far end of the hallway, advancing from one doorway to the next, rifles up. The garrison was coming.

And Thomas didn’t shut the fuck up. Instead he spoke again, sounding completely calm.
“I’m not going to make it out. You guys need to go – get the team and the objective out of here. I’m on rear guard. Flashbang up.”

Jameson instantly knew what Thomas was up to, and saw him skidding the grenade down the smooth tile floor of the hallway. He, Croucher, and Yap all averted their eyes and covered their NVGs. The flashbang went – anyone using night-vision down there was going to be in some serious pain, and blind for the duration. Leaning back out, Jameson could see Thomas throw two more grenades down the hall – and not flashbangs this time – then take up a firing position over the top of Snipes’s body and start shooting.

Croucher looked across at Jameson.

They both knew Thomas was right. It was now or never.

But this withdrawal scraped at the souls of both of them unlike any maneuver they had ever performed.

They did it because they had to.

* * *

Passing the destroyed elevator in the lobby, and for no rational reason that he could work out, Jameson paused to stick his head in it and look up. The doors were gone, the elevator car completely MIA, and the shaft itself looked clear all the way to the top. But then he joined the mass exodus of Marines trying to get out by the only exit left – the stairwell, at the end of the hall.

Tumbling through the door, shoving Halldon, Sanders, and Aliyev ahead of him, Jameson saw Eli was already in there with his two surviving men. When Croucher and Yap crashed in behind them, they had to start climbing to make room – despite the fact that three men who went in through that door were never coming back out it. But they seriously needed to start climbing anyway. Because the shouting and firing outside was growing louder and closer – fast.