ARISEN, Book Eleven - Deathmatch (44 page)

“Tough old bird,” she said.

Stopping and turning to cover behind them, Henno said, “What the hell happened to ‘Getting killed in a helo crash is no help to anyone?’” Handon had previously ruled out their use of this aircraft.

Handon just shrugged. When there was no choice, there was no choice. It was also indicative of their reduced circumstances when he ran up to the cockpit window – and found only one pilot, and no other crew. Presumably every other Seahawk crew member had been killed, lost, or injured.

“Thanks for coming!” Handon shouted at the pilot, whose flight-suit nametape read
Cleveland
.

“No problem! Had to patch it together with baling wire, then start the engine with a big-ass external battery. But she might take off again. Once or twice.”

Handon nodded. “Winch line work?”

“Yeah, I think so. Why?”

“We’ve got one more to pick up – and we’re going to need to winch him out of the bush.”

Some part of Handon knew he shouldn’t spend the time and take the risk of going back for Juice. But he was still going to. Also, they could plug Juice’s mini-GCS into the APU on this aircraft, then remotely pilot the UCAV ahead of them as top cov—

“Hey, wait – you said you started it with an external battery?”

“Yeah,” Cleveland said. “Along with half the critical onboard systems, the APU is totally shot.”

Son of a bitch
. Handon shook his head.

That meant they couldn’t power the GCS on this aircraft, and so couldn’t fly the UCAV from it. And as soon as they powered down the controller, the Russians would regain control.

And blast them out of the sky like slow-moving skeet.

* * *

A hundred and fifty miles northwest of the Nugal River Valley, the combined Alpha and Triple Nickel ground convoy blasted through the Somalian wasteland – now at substantially higher than their maximum safe speed.

Jake was driving the lead vehicle, the gun truck – and he was now a man on a mission. For a while, that mission had been to do whatever was required to help Alpha complete theirs – so he could go back and look for Kate.

But then, with no warning, she’d popped up on the radio – alive, unhurt, and free. So now the convoy was racing toward her current coords, as best they could work them out. This also happened to be in the same direction as the last coordinates they had for Handon’s team, which made for domestic felicity between Jake and the others – they didn’t have to choose between the mission and the man.

Squinting into the vast stretches of gray and brown, Jake suddenly found he could see a figure standing by the roadside.

And she was holding out her thumb.

* * *

“Baxter,” Handon barked. “Front and center.”

The rest of the team had already loaded up the Seahawk, so the young analyst had to hop back out on to the muddy ground. He nodded at Handon, cradling his rifle and looking alert.

His own face expressionless, Handon said, “Juice has to remain at the crash site to fly the UCAV. Or the Russians will get it back.”

Baxter squinted and visibly worked through the ramifications of this. “Can’t you just crash it?”

Handon nodded.
Smart kid
. He had thought of that, too. But having the drone in the air to cover them was just too valuable. More valuable than Juice himself. And not only him.

“Negative. We need it to cover our extraction. And now I need you to go back to the crash site and pull security for Juice while he flies it.”

Baxter didn’t need much time to work out the ramifications of that. Basically, he was being spent – in service of the mission.

And he was being left behind.

For some reason, he thought of the quote by science fiction author Robert Heinlein: “Duty is a debt you owe to yourself to fulfill obligations you have assumed voluntarily. Paying that debt can entail anything from years of patient work to instant willingness to die.”

And this was his instant. He just hadn’t seen it coming.

“Roger that,” Baxter said. “I’ve got it.”

Handon clapped him on the shoulder. “Can you find your way back to the crash site? Or do you need GPS coords?”

Baxter shook his head and pointed over Handon’s shoulder. There was still a faint column of smoke rising over the forest. Handon nodded and clapped his shoulder again. Then he climbed on the helicopter, and it lifted off into the sky.

Baxter stood and watched it go for a few seconds.

* * *

Handon unslung his ruck and went straight to the cockpit, squeezing in and taking the co-pilot’s seat, then put on an ICS headset. But before he could issue instructions, the pilot was already talking in his ear.

“Handon, listen – the
Kennedy
is in play.”

Handon’s eyes went wide. “What?”

“She’s been boarded – and is in danger of being taken. Last I heard, Russian commandos held half the critical stations on the ship, and have the other half under siege.”

“I need to talk to Abrams,” Handon said, reaching for the radio.

“Not happening,” Cleveland said. “Commo with the ship – CIC, PriFly, everything. It’s all out. The attackers took down the whole telecoms array over the island. Nearly took me out with it.”

Christ
, Handon thought.
And I thought we had it bad.

“So my question to you now is this,” Cleveland said, taking his eye off the sky and his controls, and pinning Handon with his gaze. “Where the hell are we going?”

Handon told him.

But as he did so, he wasn’t thinking of their destination, or even of getting Patient Zero safely there. Instead, he was thinking about Dr. Park, who was still back on the damned carrier. The vaccine wasn’t complete, so he was still indispensable. Moreover, Patient Zero didn’t have a whole hell of a lot of value without him.

What if the carrier fell? And Park with it?

He reached into a pouch and dug out his satphone.

* * *

When Predator saw the way Jake hugged Kate, he knew he’d been right. This was not merely a working relationship.

Well good for them
, Pred thought.

He was glad Jake had his person back. But now they had to get moving again. Before they could saddle up, though, a call came in – on the set radio in the gun truck. Jake climbed into the driver’s seat and took it, while Pred and Homer leaned in and listened.

After he signed off, Pred said, “Okay. We turn around and head northwest, back toward Lemonnier – and Djibouti Airport.”

“What?” Jake said. “Handon just said head for the coast.”

Pred shook his head. “No. That was a dodge. He used a duress word. The Russians must have hacked our comms.”

They loaded up, and the two vehicles pulled wide U-turns, heading back the way they came. This time the SUV was in the lead, Predator pushing them to an unsafe speed. Because he was pretty sure Handon’s last instruction wasn’t code – but absolutely true and literal:

“Haul ass. Because you know we can’t wait for you.”

* * *

When Handon slung himself back in the main cabin of the Seahawk, he saw Henno giving him a look. And he was pretty sure it was about leaving Juice behind, and sending Baxter with him. But it was different from his usual Henno looks. On the surface, it was blank and stony. But the subtext was clear:

So you’re finally getting it. Better late than never.

As Handon lowered himself down to the deck, he thought sadly that maybe he was. And what he was getting was this: that everyone was expendable. As was, perhaps, their humanity – even their immortal souls. Nothing mattered but the mission.

Maybe that was just the truth of life in the ZA.

And eventually
, Handon thought,
the truth hits everyone.

“Bad news,” Handon said to Henno, and to the others. “The
Caravel
is burning.”

Henno squinted. “You’re joking. The
Kennedy
?”

“Wish I were. Spetsnaz are crawling all over it.”

“How the hell do we get back to the Old World, then?”

Before Handon could answer, Ali asked, “You get through to the convoy?” The look in her eyes said she was thinking of Homer.

Handon waggled his team radio. “Not on this. Out of range. Had to use the helo’s radio.”

Ali tilted her head. “That secure?”

“Nope. And I can’t rekey it without Juice’s keyloader.”

Ali just shrugged, tilted her head back against the bulkhead, then shut her eyes. She just had to trust that Handon knew what the hell he was doing. If he didn’t, they were all screwed anyway. Racking out, she elbowed for space against the two big lummocks, Henno and Reyes, on either side of her.

The two of them were hunched over, pulling rounds out of two of the dozen or so ammo cans they’d found stacked in there, reloading empty rifle magazines by hand. It looked like there was plenty to go around, thank God.

Up in the front of the cabin, Handon huddled up with Fick to plan what they hoped would be the last act of this drama – both of them hoping like hell it wouldn’t end as tragedy. But first Handon had to tell him what was happening on the carrier. He didn’t have many details. But Fick would know one thing – if the
Kennedy
went down…

All his Marines would have to be dead first.

Carry the Fight

JFK – Commander Drake’s Quarters

Darkness, or damned close to it. A cocoon of silence – or, rather, of sound-muffling noise. Commander Drake lay on his rack in the spectral light, listening to music through noise-canceling headphones. These were in clear violation of standing orders, but he figured being a commander ought to have some privileges. Plus he knew they’d come and find him if they needed him. But the whole point of his existence now was that they didn’t need him.

Or they had to get by without him, anyway.

He’d originally bought the headphones just to find a little peace on this bustling and overcrowded warship.

But now he used them for a very different reason.

It was specifically so that he couldn’t hear the all-hands announcements on the tannoy – all of which made him want to put on his uniform, go out the hatch, and make himself useful, his extended sick leave be damned.

But Drake knew that was pretty much how he got into this mess in the first place. By trying to do everything, all by himself, all of the time. That grenade blast to his head hadn’t helped any. And it took Doc Walker a lot of urging, but she’d finally convinced him he really did have a traumatic brain injury – TBI. In the end, he’d had too many of the characteristic symptoms to deny it.

But the longer he reflected on it, the more convinced he became that the TBI had simply blown the lid off even more serious underlying damage – the results of overwork, and stress, and the crushing burden of command in a time of war. Not to mention having responsibility for the mission literally charged with saving the world.

And when that exploding grenade finally popped the lid that had been keeping all this tamped down in Drake’s psyche… what came pouring out wasn’t pretty.

* * *

Now, in his enforced solitude, alone with his demons and his barest self, he was belatedly learning some important lessons. Humility. Patience. And the courage to let himself be weak – to step down and let others carry the fight for a while.

But then, on this day, when his hatch suddenly opened up without warning… the fight came and found him. He squinted as light from the passageway fell across his face. As his eyes adjusted, he could see wide eyes and adrenalized-looking faces peering in.

Of the four people outside his hatch, he recognized the one in front as Senior Chief Derwin – the NSF Master-at-Arms and ranking petty officer. Behind him stood three other NSF, all armed, and looking loaded for bear. Drake felt around for his music player, powered it off, and pulled out the earbuds. And now he could hear it. The general quarters alarm was sounding.

Whatever was going on, he’d missed it entirely.

“Commander!” Derwin said, stepping inside. “I’m sorry to bust in. We’ve been pounding on your hatch. Didn’t you hear general quarters?”

Drake ignored the question, sitting up in bed. He hadn’t showered in days, but at least his buzz cut made it impossible for him to have bed head. “What’s happening?”

“We’ve been boarded,” Derwin said.

Drake stood up in bare feet and boxer shorts, and looked around for his uniform. “By who?”

“We don’t know for sure. They’ve been heard speaking Russian.”

As Drake finished pulling on his pants and buckling his belt, he exhaled and looked up at the senior chief. “Spetsnaz. It has to be Naval Spetsnaz.” And he thought:

Damn it. Homer was right again. Smart SEAL
.

Derwin shook his head. “Dunno – maybe they are. But they’ve taken the bridge, ship’s magazine, and a bunch of other stations. And word has been passed down… Commander Abrams is dead.”

Ah, shit
, Drake thought.
Well, so much for humility and patience.

“What do we do, sir? What are your orders?”

Drake finished lacing his boots and pulled on a shirt.

“Follow me,” he said.

It looked like his sick leave was at an end.

And there was no one but him to carry the fight.

* * *

Way up on the second highest level of the island, the entire bridge crew had now either been killed or driven out. And one man held the bridge alone. Though he probably wouldn’t hold it long. Because he was bleeding out.

But he was happy.

This was the mystery blond sailor, who now sat slumped in what used to be the captain’s chair. Blood from multiple gunshot wounds on his extremities sheeted down the previously nice leather. Both his arms lay draped on the armrests, the right one limply holding a pistol with the slide locked back.

He was in this posture when the others arrived.

It was a force of Spetsnaz naval commandos, attired and armed like the ones operating belowdecks, all of them pure maritime pipe-hitters. But this team was bigger than all the others, sixteen men strong, and was led by the mission commander himself – Captain Leonov. It was this force that had been assigned to take the bridge, and hold the island – and for which the bleeding blond man was supposed to be merely a recon element. Now Leonov found him shot to hell and bleeding heavily, but still alive.