ARISEN, Book Eleven - Deathmatch (7 page)

But Handon didn’t consider it settled at all. And he suddenly regretted telling the others, or at least Henno. Having done so, he could already feel the decision slipping out of his hands. He said, “We’ve still got the option of getting a team out from the
Kennedy
. Tasking the Marines that are left, or NSF. Or militia.”

“No chance,” Henno said. “That’ll take too long. But more importantly, we need them. Is Britain more or less likely to stand with those Marines alive and operating? And the shore patrolmen and sailors? No, we use the assets we can spare.”

Handon bristled at Henno’s casual euphemism. “They’re not assets, they’re children,” he said.

Henno put his hands on the table, biceps flexing, and pinned Handon with his flinty eyes. “Yeah, mate, and it’s a cold hard fucking world. But here we are.”

Handon worked to control his temper – to be the grown-up, and not escalate this into another showdown between the two of them. But Henno went ahead and escalated it anyway. He looked at the others around the tent, then raised his voice.

“There are ten million tots back in Britain – and all of them are gonna snuff it, if we don’t get back there with this vaccine. You think I give a shite about a few jarheads or swabbies? No – I care about my whole nation. And those Marines can help save them. The villagers can’t – except by doing this one job for us. So they’re fucking well going to do it.”

Handon moved slow and thought fast, trying to master his anger and keep the lid on. And he honestly tried to figure out whether he disagreed with Henno’s reasoning and conclusions – not to mention his morality, or lack thereof. Or whether it was just his ego rebelling, threatened by Henno’s pre-empting a decision that, as commander, it was his job to make.

And on top of all of that, Handon also needed to figure out which was more dangerous – getting this decision wrong, or the team falling apart completely, and descending into full-blown civil war. A war for dominance between him and Henno.

He could feel the eyes of everyone on him, as he steamed, considered – and agonized. Because underlying all of that was probably the worst moral dilemma he’d ever faced. He genuinely wasn’t sure he could send a whole village full of children to their deaths – to be eaten alive, in fact – whatever the stakes were, however much was on the line.

Even to save the whole world.

He was afraid this was a line he couldn’t cross. But he was equally terrified it was one he had to – a terrible moral decision he had to somehow find the strength to make.

Henno pushed back from the table. “End of,” he said. As far as he was concerned, that settled it.

Handon exhaled heavily and stood up. “Henno. On me.”

And he walked out of the tent, not looking back.

* * *

In the little sangar, Kate and Pred watched Handon and Henno exit the camp, their body language broadcasting bloody murder.

Pred shook his head. “Aw, hell, there they go again.” Like everyone else in Alpha, it had been impossible for him to pretend he didn’t see the simmering conflict between those two. Hell, he’d had to pull them apart when they came to blows in the last guard tower. Now it looked like they might be going at it again.

Kate said, “This a regular thing with them?”

Pred just shook his head and looked away. “I’ll give you ten bucks to stab me in the face right now.” Clearly, he didn’t want to watch this, or have any part of it.

Luckily, Handon and Henno kept walking, until the forest swallowed them up. But they left a bad disturbance in the air they passed through.

They were on a collision course.

* * *

“There are rules about bitching,” Handon said, stepping into the clearing, then turning to watch Henno stalk in after him. “Everyone has the right to bitch about a mission for five minutes. After those five minutes are up, you shut the fuck up and get to work.”

Handon was giving Henno a lot of credit by suggesting he’d been complaining about the decision – rather than making a different one on his own, essentially wresting control of the mission. But Handon wanted to give him a chance to climb down from this.

The two of them circled the edge of the clearing, keeping their distance. The rain had slowed to a light drizzle, but the sun was still MIA. Finally, Henno squared up to him, ten feet away.

Neither man slumped, fidgeted, put their hands in their pockets, or looked away. Both of these warriors were pure granite. Neither flinched from anything, certainly not conflict. Neither lacked for confidence, or self-belief. Both had ground their own weaknesses into dust – through decades of service, the most extreme and punishing training imaginable, and meeting the highest standards in any military. Both had faced death on the battlefield many times, walked through searing fire, and come out the other side.

So neither was in the habit of surrendering.

Handon sized the other man up. And, for a second, he hesitated. He remembered the thought he’d had, standing alone on the sandy road down from their parked MRAP. He’d thought that perhaps Henno, with his viciousness and pragmatism, was the indispensable devil perched on his shoulder. That he was the ugly and ruthless part of his soul he couldn’t live with – but also couldn’t complete their mission without.

But now Handon also saw the faces of those children, burnt into his mind’s eye – though nowhere as burnt-in as they would be if he sent them all out to die. He could already see them being devoured and infected while fully conscious, and hear their screams. Some part of him wanted to tell Henno they couldn’t save humanity by destroying their own.

But he knew how far that would get him.

Handon understood very clearly that Henno was willing to sacrifice not only the lives of everyone on the team – but also their souls. And maybe that was the difference between the two of them. Some part of Handon wondered if Henno was right. If maybe sacrificing their souls, their innate goodness and morality, had always been necessary. That there’d never been any way around it.

And maybe he just didn’t have the will to do it.

* * *

He decided to try to reason with Henno. But he instantly regretted it. “You didn’t see these kids. They’re innocent children. Most haven’t hit puberty.”

If this affected Henno at all, it didn’t show on his face. He just repeated himself. “And, like I said, mate – cold, hard, fucking world.”

Handon had spent enough time in the UK to know that “mate” was a familiar term of address between equals. It wasn’t a term of respect – and you never used it to address your commander. He also knew it was having exactly the effect on him Henno intended. He considered trying to explain that he was still in charge of this outfit.

But he knew they were well past that. Henno didn’t care who was in charge. What he cared about – all he cared about – was doing what was necessary to save Britain and the world. And he was prepared to overthrow Handon’s authority completely to do it. He was in full rebellion.

Now they were just going to see how this rebellion played out.

Since it was impossible to keep trying to cover this up, Handon brought it out into the open. Circling around the clearing, he said, “Ainsley told me this would happen.”

Henno cocked his head and squinted back at him – not looking too pleased to hear Handon use the name of the original team commander, who Henno revered – and who was a soldier who understood his duty. And who’d had the will to do what was necessary. “What the fuck did the captain tell
you
?”

Referring to Ainsley by rank also wasn’t lost on Handon.

He said, “Right before the mission to Chicago stepped off. He said that if he fell, I’d have trouble controlling you.”

Henno snorted once. “Oh, I doubt he said that.”

“Oh, yes, he did. Because he knew your loyalty was to him – and him alone. And he was worried about what would happen. I think he had a premonition of his own death.”

Henno ground his jaw, his face reddening. If he’d been trying to provoke Handon, now the tables were turned. The more Handon talked about Ainsley, the thicker the red mist that descended before Henno’s eyes. It was like a red rag to a bull.

And there was definitely the possibility of a charge.

Now Henno stalked around the clearing in the opposite direction. And he turned the tables again – while also upping the stakes. “Aye, now I see why Sarah Cameron doesn’t trust you with her secrets. Because you can’t fucking keep a confidence.”

This brought Handon up short – and caused his own face to redden. He stopped circling and glared at Henno. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“The bad thing that happened to Sarah in Toronto. That made her marry that muppet, Mark.”

Handon couldn’t respond to this. He just ground his jaw.

Henno twisted the knife. “She said she’d never been willing to tell you about it. Didn’t want to tell you.”

Handon found his voice. “What, and she told you?” Now he pictured the two of them where he’d last found them – sitting side by side on Henno’s bunk.

“Aye.” Henno nodded slowly, an evil gleam in his eye.

Handon worked to breathe, and tried not react to this. He knew none of it mattered – none of this love-triangle bullshit between him and Henno and Sarah had anything to do with their mission, which was also the most important tasking in the world. Henno was just trying to needle him. And the stakes were too high for Handon to let it all fall apart because of interpersonal crap like this.

Battling over a woman.

But then he hesitated and thought again. Maybe Sarah
was
relevant to the mission. Maybe after meeting this woman, who had seemed to change him so much, and so quickly… maybe it was after that he no longer had the will to make the brutal choices that were necessary. Maybe she had ruined him for his job.

And then Henno, stalking back around again, made his own connection between the woman and the mission. “Aye, there’s a reason she prefers my company to yours. And it’s the same reason you can’t command this bloody team.”

And here it comes
, Handon thought.

He knew in his bones that when Henno said what was coming next, there would be no coming back from it. It would be impossible for Henno to unsay – and impossible for him to unhear, or pretend he’d never heard in the first place.

And nothing in Alpha could ever be the same.

Henno’s voice was ice-cold steel. “It’s because you don’t have the
resolve
, mate. The resolve to do what’s necessary –
whatever the cost
. You don’t have the strength. You don’t have the nerve, the sack. You don’t have the
bottle
, Handon. You never did. And you never will.”

Silence descended on the clearing.

“Take your hand off your goddamned knife, Staff Sergeant.”

Handon said this before he realized what he was saying. And maybe Henno had moved his hand there without being conscious of it. But now they both knew exactly where they were – standing on a crumbling precipice, over a dark void, with nothing but violence, death, and chaos below. And they both knew they faced a plunge into that void – the prospect floated out in front of them in the air, impossible to ignore or look away from.

And what Handon was thinking in that frozen instant was:

I can’t have a mutiny on my hands. I can’t have Henno going off and doing whatever the hell he wants to, at any time, on his own authority. The team will fall apart – and that will cause the mission to fail. And that CANNOT happen.

My God – I’ve got to kill him.

He no longer saw any way around it. He couldn’t control him. He couldn’t force him to obey. He almost certainly couldn’t send him back. And it looked like he was never going to get killed fighting the dead – or anyone else for that matter.

And what Henno was thinking in that exact same instant was:

I can’t have Handon keep making these airy-fairy decisions. We can’t have someone in charge who is unwilling to do what’s necessary – WHATEVER is necessary. If we do, he’s going to cause the mission to fail. And that CANNOT happen. I can’t let it. I won’t.

I’ve got to slot the fucker.

As the two warriors stared death and hellfire at each other, the air between them rippled and twisted with imminent violence.

And nothing moved in that clearing.

When Death Holds No Terror

Summit of Mt. Shimbiris, Northern Somalia

Holy fucking shit
, Ali thought, watching the two Alpha men through her scope, from her OP up on the crown of the mountain.

This had clearly passed beyond punch-up and gone straight into the zone of bloody murder. In amazement, she thought:
This could really be it.
One of these men was seriously going to gut the other like a fish. Worse, she didn’t know who she would put her money on. While obviously rooting for Handon, she had enough street-fight experience to know the meaner man, unconstrained by humanity or scruples, usually won.

And that was Henno down to his boot soles.

She used the pause in their murderous slow-motion collision to do another visual sweep of the forest slopes around them. The complete dissolution of authority and team structure, happening even sooner than she had feared, didn’t mean she could stop being vigilant in overwatch.

She still had a job to do.

She panned by something in the shadows – then panned back, fast. There. It was gone almost instantly, but she’d definitely seen it. She had convinced herself it was her imagination the first time, when she’d been half-asleep, and thought she saw something moving down below. But not now. Now she was wide awake. And she hadn’t imagined it this time. She couldn’t have. If she had, it would mean she was losing her mind. And that couldn’t happen.

She wouldn’t allow it.

No, there was someone out there, up on the mountain with them, but lower down, in the forest below – someone watching them, even as she watched for him. And she somehow knew, deep in her bones, who it had to be.