ARISEN, Book Twelve - Carnage (25 page)

Shit, shit, shit
.

“Gibson, stand by. And hold tight.” Jameson made a wheelie motion at Simmonds with his finger, causing him to switch back to the first channel. Jameson took a breath and steeled himself. “Okay. What do you want?”

There was another pause. And then Jameson heard what sounded like a crackling cigarette, and then a long exhalation. He could practically smell the smoke. The voice said,
“This puts you in rather a narrow corner, doesn’t it – with your plane and pilot now in the hands of the Russian Federation?”

Jameson just pressed his lips together, blinked once slowly, and waited for the rest.

“I know that like any good infantry officer, you would like to get your men out of this engagement alive. Well, all you need to do is leave the Kazakh worm behind – and forget about whatever might or might not be in that helicopter. Simply walk away – and I will give you your plane and pilot back. We’ll even pack you a nice lunch for the flight. You simply trade those two things – for your lives.”

Jameson closed his eyes for a second, then opened them.

“But make no mistake – this will be your only chance to leave here alive. And it is very much a limited-time offer.”

* * *

“Jammy bastard,” Eli said.

Jameson had just explained to him and Croucher the nature of the Russian’s offer.

“I’m sure I don’t need to point out,” Croucher said, drumming his fingers on his rifle receiver and leaning against the railing at the edge of the roof, “that this bastard’s just going to shoot all of us in the face, first chance he gets.”

“No,” Jameson said. “You don’t have to point it out. Croucher, stay here and keep eyes on the square, the helo, and the enemy. Eli – you’re on me.”

And then the One Troop commander and his troop sergeant descended back to the ground floor again. Because Jameson needed to talk this through – with his friend. This time they couldn’t relieve Thomas on stag. Thomas was dead, his body interred a hundred feet below them. Instead they relieved Nicks, sending him back up top.

Alone down in the dark again, Jameson looked up and said to Eli, “The ten little Indians are being whittled down.”

“Oh, we’ve got a few left yet.”

Good old Eli
. “How’s our ammo situation?” One of the first things he’d had Eli do was a manifest.

“Dire. Between sweeping through half that bunker, and the balls-out fight up top, we’re hurting – rifle rounds and grenades both very low. But almost all of our pistol mags are left.”

“Great,” Jameson said.

“And we do still have half a shedload of explosives.”

Jameson shook his head. “Not ideal for small-unit action.”

Eli shrugged, and nodded at the singularity outside. “We can’t get to the bastards to fight ’em anyway.”

Jameson took a breath. “Maybe there is a way.”

“What do you have in mind?”

Jameson seemed to ignore the question and instead asked, “How far out is Charlotte?” There was, at least, a significant ammo top-up winging its way toward them in the “Fat Cow” Chinook, along with the fuel to get them home. Albeit for the plane they no longer had.

Eli checked his watch. “ETA fifty-five minutes.”

“Okay. We coordinate an ammo drop for then. Whatever plan we come up with, it’ll work better if we’ve got bullets to shoot.”

“Land on the rooftop?” Eli said. “Will it hold her weight?”

“Doubt it. But she can always kick it out from a hover.”

Eli nodded, and regarded his boss seriously. “And what do we do about that tosser’s offer?”

Jameson sighed, and then answered with another non sequitur. “A lot of the old boys bought it today.”

By this, he meant men who had fought through two years of ZA and survived many campaigns and battles – only to fall now, in what was likely to be, one way or the other, the final stretch. Jameson was also borrowing the line – he’d read it in a WW2 history book. After D-Day, in the fight all the way across Europe to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest, almost no one got sent home, no matter how long or hard they’d already fought. They just kept fighting until they got killed. Experience was a great help in keeping you alive. But eventually the odds caught up with everyone.

Even the old boys.

Eli just stared in the dark. There was nothing else to be said.

Jameson’s head hung now, his face totally shadowed. But then he looked up at his friend. “Whatever the cost, we can’t give up the Kazakh and the pathogen. They’re the only thing that can save Britain now. Or even London.”

Eli nodded. “I’m with you. But how the hell do we get it? Even if we somehow clear the square of those dead, we’ll still have to fight Alfa Group for it.”

“I’ve got an idea that might degrade them some – maybe enough to give us a fighting chance. Anyway, that jackass had one thing right. We
can
trade our lives – but not in the direction he meant. We can trade our lives to get the mission objective, and get it out of here. Nothing else matters.”

“No,” Eli agreed. “And definitely not a lot of scuffed-up bootnecks like us.”

Jameson and Eli locked gazes. As usual, they were on the same page. And Eli would have Jameson’s back until the end, however bitter. They went back up top.

To start planning their endgame.

Gambit

Red Square – One Troop’s Strongpoint

Grenade crumps. Rippling flashes, like ground-level lightning, flickering on and off in the far corner of the square. Croucher already had his binos to his eyes, as Jameson and Eli rushed to his side. The faint blasts continued, echoing off the insane amount of stone in this place.

But the blasts also seemed to be growing fainter.

Jameson could see it even without the binoculars. The dead in the square were starting to move toward the northwest end. And those up at the end were moving out – following the noise and light.

“The sons of bitches,” Eli said.

“Yep,” Croucher concurred. “They’re going to drain the square of dead. It’s not going to happen fast. But it should work, eventually.”

Jameson squinted as he thought through this.

Another explosion sounded now, also muted, but from a different direction, and a hell of a lot closer – directly below them. A hyperventilating voice came across the squad net.
“One Troop, Nicks – contact!”
Behind the voice was the sound of rapid suppressed rifle reports.
“Contact ground floor! Incur—”
but then it cut off.

Jameson and Eli hefted their rifles and turned toward the stairs, but Croucher beat them to it and blocked their way. “I’ve got it,” he said, totally calm in the way only an experienced veteran can be in a surprise attack. “Yap, on me.” When Jameson and Eli, wide-eyed, made to move forward again, he said, “I don’t need command risking their necks, and I don’t need a bunch of bodies getting in my way, or shooting me in the back. If we need more, I’ll call you.”

As Jameson watched him turn and leap down the stairs with Yap close behind, he knew Croucher was right. In a dark and enclosed space, more shooters would just be a liability. Still, it scraped his soul to stand there unmoving and listen to the sounds of suppressed firing, then shouts, then more shooting. But it was over in two minutes, at which time Croucher reappeared – with a body over his shoulder.

When he dropped it down on the rooftop, Jameson could see it was a Russian in full tactical kit – flex-cuffed at the wrists and ankles. He also had gunshot wounds in his upper arm and shoulder, and one in his leg. The expression on his face said that he was in severe pain, but totally determined to be the master of it, and not the other way around.

Croucher turned and reported. “It was just a two-man probing action. Killed one and took this one. Good intel source.”

“Agreed,” Jameson said. “How’d they get in?”

“Breaching charge, from the next building over. I blocked up the hole, but of course they can always just breach again.”

Eli frowned. “That means they’ve got freedom of movement. Either moving through the buildings that ring the square—”

“Or moving around behind them,” Jameson said. “Nicks?”

Croucher shook his head.

“Dammit.”

“But Nicks damn well did his job. Because he reacted, we were able to get there in time and finish it. Without more casualties.”

This was some comfort to Jameson. But, then again, not all that much. He’d already had more losses today than on any other single day he could remember. And they were some of his very best men. Though they were all his best men.

“Yap okay?”

“Fine. He’s taken over stag downstairs.”

“So much for that offer to just walk away,” Jameson said.

“That was bollocks,” Eli said. “He wants us dead, not gone.”

Face freezing into a hate mask, Jameson squatted down by the prisoner, grabbed him by his wounded arm, and said, “
Talk
. Will your team be coming for us again?”

The man laughed, showing teeth that had been bloodied somewhere in the fight. He answered in accented but good English. “Count on it, citizen.” He cocked his head at the distant sound of grenade blasts. “You hear that? Before long the square will be clear of dead. And in only another fifteen minutes or so, they will have cleared out rubble from that stairwell you blew up. And then you can bet they’ll be coming. You will be outnumbered twenty to one.”

Jameson clenched his jaw, then stood, turned, and pulled Eli aside. “When that square clears, and their main force gets out of that bunker…”

“Yeah,” Eli said. “We’re done.”

* * *

“Enemy transmission detected!”

“Put it on speaker,” Akela said.

“—oop Actual, Fat Cow, send message, over.”

“Charlotte, we urgently require an ammo drop at a rooftop location, how copy?”

“Fat Cow copies all, five-by-five.”

“Stand by for grid reference for drop location, over.”

“Standing by, send traffic.”

“MGRS reference is three-seven-Uniform-Delta-Bravo-one-three-four-one-six-seven-nine-six-one-one, readback, over.”

“One Troop, I have GZD as 37UDB, easting as 13416, and northing as 79611.”

“Confirm, confirm, all correct. Fat Cow, be advised – rooftop is likely to be unstable. Do not try putting too much weight on it. And be ready to pull pitch and get out of there, how copy?”

“Roger that, One Troop, wilco.”

“I repeat, Fat Cow – BE READY TO PULL PITCH.”

“…Roger that, wilco. One Troop, my ETA those grid coords is approx two-zero minutes, how copy?”

“Copy that, Charlotte. See you in twenty. Fly safe.”

Within ten seconds, Akela had those grid coordinates marked on the map on their overhead display. He instantly saw it was one of the buildings on the northeast edge of the square – roughly where Lyudmila had the enemy forced Alamo’d up. In another ten seconds, he’d transmitted the grid reference to her, and then got her on the radio.

“Can you get your team there in twenty minutes?”

“Affirmative.”

“Capture the inbound aircraft if possible. Destroy it if not.”

“Roger that. We’ve got it.”

* * *

Sanders and Halldon climbed back over the wall that divided One Troop’s rooftop from the next one over.

“It’s done?” Jameson asked.

“Affirmative,” Sanders said, handing Jameson a small boxy object.

Jameson looked around at his remaining Marines. “Everyone ruck up and get ready for resupply. Bird is ten minutes out.”

“You heard the man,” Eli said. “Go, go, go!” The remaining Marines started moving, closing out their temporary rooftop operating base and getting ready to move – and to fight.

After having satisfied himself that the men were moving smartly enough, Eli leaned in close to Jameson. “Assuming this works, and we get our resupply – what then?”

Jameson sighed. “Then we bash into the square. And try to fight our way to that helo. Or we die trying.”

“So it’s hey diddle diddle, straight up the middle?”

“I don’t love the plan myself. But the dead are a little thinner than they were. We can use some of the explosives to clear ourselves a channel. Might give us a fighting chance.”

“And the Russians? The rest of them?”

Jameson shrugged. “We haven’t seen any sign they’ve dug themselves out yet.”

“Yet,” Eli said. “And ten minutes is a long time.”

Jameson knew as well as his troop sergeant that if the main Spetsnaz Alfa force got out of the bunker before One Troop got out of Red Square, they and their mission were doomed. And it was now past the fifteen minutes their prisoner had predicted. There was absolutely no way of knowing they wouldn’t be all be overrun and gunned down within seconds of entering the square.

Jameson just shrugged. “I don’t see any choice. You said it yourself – none of our lives matter. The plug has been pulled on the Channel Tunnel. And the drain is London. With everyone we know and love inside it.”

Eli stopped and squinted in the dark. “Wait – what did you say?”

“Nothing. Come on, we’ve got to go.”

“No, wait.” Eli grabbed his arm. “Wait a sodding second. I may have a slightly less shitty idea. But we’re going to need this bloke.” He dashed over to where the bleeding prisoner had been tied to a duct. With a flash of his blade, he had the half-conscious Alfa operator free and on his feet, and started pulling him along. To Jameson he said,

“Come on! I’ll explain on the way…”

* * *

Charlotte Maidstone appreciated the fact that this Chinook variant, the Fat Cow, had a fully night-vision-compatible cockpit and flight controls. What she didn’t appreciate was having to use it. That is, she was having to fly an aircraft she was not technically rated for, under conditions of full night-vision – and also without a co-pilot, or any of the other three to four crew members usually on hand to operate this twin-rotor behemoth of an aircraft. And now she was going to have to perform a complicated rooftop touch-and-go in an urban area – in a bird badly overloaded with one extra shit-ton of fuel.