ARISEN, Book Twelve - Carnage (35 page)

Everyone was going away. And none of them were coming back – probably ever.

…avionics master switch, idle gate lever, prop brake…

And now she realized something else: breaking up with Homer hadn’t made his loss any less painful. Briefly, when she’d made the decision to sacrifice him to the mission – by reserving that one Hellfire missile for themselves, and leaving him and Pred to face the Black Shark on their own – she felt she’d been validated in her repudiation of love. That retreating from love had been the right choice. Because it had allowed her to make the hard operational decision.

But now she was forced to admit it: she could make the hard decisions no matter the state of her heart. That was her job. No, her original choice to leave Homer hadn’t really been about operational efficiency. It had been about her fear of losing him. About the pain of that loss. And about the risk of giving her humanity, the love she felt for him, free rein. And the devastating emotional risk that carried in the ZA.

…engine start selection switch, heading indicator/altimeter…

But now she finally knew the truth – it wasn’t finding a way to protect her heart that she needed. No, what she needed was to find a way to protect
Homer
. To be with him, to never let him out of her sight again. And that’s what she’d been doing with those two steps she took: she had decided to follow him – to the carrier, to wherever his duty took him, to the ends of the earth. She just hadn’t known it.

Which meant Juice had read her mind –
before SHE even knew what she was thinking
. And that really was spooky.

In any case, it just hadn’t been possible. Homer had his mission, and she had hers. Maybe, if they both succeeded, and both survived, and if she ever saw him again, things would be different. She knew she would be.

Ali stood, leaned across the cockpit, and took a look down and to the left. Nobody was actually touching the propellers on that side.

She started the other engine.

* * *

Fick heard Ali on his radio:
“This is it. Do what you’re gonna do.”

“C’mon, buddy,” Reyes said to the bag over his shoulder, the one with Sergeant Lovell in it. “Let’s make ourselves useful.”

Fick started to open the door.

“No, wait,” Reyes said, turning and feeling Fick up. “Gimme these. Okay, now.”

Finally, Fick yanked open the door. Immediately, and once again, Noise rolled out and turned left, pouring a raging storm of double-ought buckshot before him. Fick went right, firing in that direction.

And Reyes blasted out behind them, also firing his weapon one-handed as he ran, emerging from the whipping flames that now engulfed the hangar.

Like a glorious, dying phoenix.

* * *

Misha monitored the burning building, waiting for the rats inside to scurry out. He spared a glance for the two men wrapping up wounds, after having been shot in the gas-pouring operation. If shooting blind was off-limits for his men, it had worked out pretty well for the enemy.

He looked up again as he heard firing and commotion at the left-side door. When he saw a figure run away down the alley and disappear behind the hangar to the left, he tracked until it reappeared again, running up the next alley and into the open.

None of his men fired, and it was easy to see why – the man was carrying a bagged-up body over his shoulder. Nobody wanted to be the asshole who had to face Misha after shooting the Index Case.

Misha squinted and paused a half-second, then raised his rifle, flipped the fire selector switch to full-auto, tracked the running man – and opened up with a long, rolling, suppressed burst. Rounds poured into both the running man and the dead man on his shoulder, and the pair collapsed in a heap behind a stack of truck tires.

Misha felt Kuznetsov’s eyes on him, and looked over.

Flipping his fire selector back, he said, “The bag wasn’t wiggling. Also too big.”

But when he looked back to the hangar, it suddenly hit him – what the end-zone run with the fake Index Case was. What it had to be – a fucking diversion. They were about to make a breakout. The crescendoing of engine and propeller noise from the hangar verified this. He looked over at the parked vehicles, a hangar and a half away – and realized he’d missed a trick.

“Assholes!” he shouted, taking off at a run. “Move the damned vehicles! Block the hangar doors!”

* * *

Reyes shrugged out from under Lovell, and pulled himself up into a sitting position, with his back to the stacks of tires. At least he was under cover. But much good would it do him. He checked himself out, but couldn’t even really identify everywhere he’d been shot, due to blood being everywhere – as was the pain, and growing numbness.

“Damn, I’m all fucked up,” he said with a laugh.

He twisted at the waist, peeked through a gap in the tires, and saw Russians running toward their parked vehicles behind him. Carefully noting the locations of the trucks, he started arming grenades – including all of the ones he’d taken off Fick at the last second – and started giving them high, strong tosses over his shoulder, one after another… right into and around the trucks.

As he listened to panicked shouting and explosions erupt behind him, he gathered his strength, grabbed a lungful of air, then shouted at the top of his voice:

“
You always were an asshole, Gorman!
”

* * *

Misha recoiled from an exploding grenade like another man might from a light bulb popping out, ignoring the blast wave and few bits of shrapnel that peppered him. His men were nearly as fearless as him, but the unexpected grenade volley was still making it difficult, impossible, or lethal to get to their goddamned vehicles.

Even before the last grenade crumped off, Misha straightened up and heard another, bigger explosion – this one from the front of the hangar. He looked over as both roll-up doors came free in violent expulsions of smoke, and then crashed down onto the tarmac.

Behind them was a big turbo-prop plane, facing out – with both engines wound up and screaming. It popped its brakes and lurched out of the hangar, turned left, and lumbered out onto the runway.

And it started heading away down the tarmac, picking up speed.

We’re All Going Home, Brother

Djibouti Airport – Tractor Shed

From her hiding place in the dark corner of one of the outbuildings, Hailey heard the explosions – then the sound of turbo-prop engines, getting louder fast. Deciding in an instant, she ducked out the front door, handgun out and up this time, and charged out onto the tarmac, running flat out.

Sure enough, a big de Havilland Dash 8 appeared almost right in her face, moving from right to left – slowly enough now, but picking up speed. She could also see both left-side hatches were open, with armed American soldiers manning the doorways. She had no idea where this aircraft was going. But she sure as hell knew she wanted to be on it. And she didn’t plan to get left behind.

She also knew she was going to get one shot at this – at best.

Putting on a desperate burst of speed, she angled to her left, on a course she hoped would intersect with the rear hatch as it went by. She came alongside a little ahead of it – which was a hell of a lot better than a little behind – and as she pumped her arms and legs, and the aircraft still began to pass her…

The biggest man she’d ever seen in her life leaned out the rear hatch, which was luckily only four feet off the ground – and
picked her up
and pulled her inside the aircraft.

She was in.

* * *

“Go, go, go!” Misha shouted, windmilling his arms, as men poured into the vehicles now that the grenades had finally stopped going off. In seconds, one, and then another roared to life and accelerated crazily down the runway after the runaway plane. He spotted Badger and Warchild running by, and shouted at them. He planned to clear the hangar first. There was still the chance this was just another diversion.

And he wasn’t going to be the dumbass who fell for it.

But by the time they were halfway there, he could see it looked empty – with the front roll-down doors gone, it was open to the world, and there was hardly anywhere inside to hide. Misha was also probably going to have to gamble on this one. He turned and they all ran back to the last remaining vehicle, an open-top Humvee, where he found the Runt sitting in the passenger seat.

As Badger and Warchild leapt in back, he heaved himself into the driver’s seat – and instantly realized that by being last, he’d gotten screwed not only on his passenger but on the vehicle itself. A grenade had actually landed in this thing, and exploded in the cab. Everything was all fucked up, including the starter – and Humvees didn’t even have keys, just a start switch, which had been blown off.

But when he pulled out his multitool, opened the pliers, and turned the remaining bit of screw, the engine roared to life and they pulled out. Last to the hunting party.

But not least frenzied.

* * *

The aging and until very recently neglected de Havilland Dash 8 rattled and bumped over the pot-holed and weed-overgrown runway. In the cargo area, just behind the seats, Zack lay on his back and tried to keep from groaning. Predator had been able to finish the surgery to clamp his severed artery. But now a bearded and turbaned Sikh, who had formally introduced himself as something like “Noise,” had taken over – suturing up the long surgical incision.

Baxter was back, as well, squatting beside him and helping.

Zack was still tripping on a lot of morphine, but it was starting to wear off. He didn’t mind – he wanted his wits about him right now. Lolling his head and looking past and around all the people on board, he was able to make out a single small figure in the rear. And that man was working at what Zack would swear was a DNA sequencer. He looked back up at Noise.

“Is that the scientist? The one working on the vaccine?”

“That it is,” Noise said. “But I need to impose upon you to lie still.”

“No.” Zack shook his head. “I’ve got to talk to him.”

“No doubt there will be plenty of opportunity later.”

“Not if I die right here,” Zack said. “Seriously. Not kidding.”

Baxter rose. “I’ll go get him, Zack.”

* * *

With Park squared away and getting to work, Fick left him there and moved to the open rear hatch – which Predator was now manning like a sullen temple idol with his SCAR-H. This was after having seemingly pulled a random naval aviator out of thin air.

In the little room Pred didn’t take up, Fick stuck his head out the hatch into the slipstream, and looked back. Behind them, and closing the distance, were five trucks in various configurations, presumably manned by even more of these Spetsnaz assholes.

But that’s not what Fick was seeing.

What Fick saw, very clearly, was another of his Marines being left behind, holding a runway to ensure the survival of the team and the success of the mission. But Fick also knew MARSOC Marines were tough sons of bitches, and very hard to kill. He chose to believe that Reyes was alive back there, still operating and kicking ass – just as he believed that the Kid, Chesney, was still alive, and escaping and evading, somewhere back on Beaver Island, half a world away.

He knew he was probably kidding himself. But he also knew that we all live under illusions – and he might as well choose ones that made it possible for him to get through the day. To keep his sanity. To keep fighting. And it simply wasn’t Reyes’s fate, or Chesney’s, or Lovell’s either, to go to Britain, to be there for the endgame. It was Fick’s.

And he had no choice but to fulfill his destiny.

He got out of the way as Pred started taking shots on the pursuing convoy, and moved toward the center of the cabin, passing Juice on his way back.

* * *

Ali looked up from the serious business of shoving the throttle into the console, and trying to get them all off this wretched continent, to find there was another woman on her flight deck. And she was wearing the flight suit of a naval aviator.

“You’re relieved,” Hailey said.

“All yours,” Ali said. If she’d been all that attached to flying, she would have remained a pilot.

As Hailey took over Ali’s seat, she added, “Your presence is being requested in back – to do some shooting, I think.”

Ali sighed. She’d never really thought it was going to be this easy.

When she exited into the main cabin, she was greeted with a scene very unlike anything one might encounter on any conceivable commercial flight.

To her immediate right, the front hatch was open – and Jake, the imposing Triple Nickel team sergeant, was pointing a big-ass rifle out it – along with Kate, the other woman shooter, backing him up. In the three rows of seats beyond that were exactly two passengers – Wesley, the NSF commander, and Pete, the mechanic – both strapping themselves in, and looking nervous. Just beyond the seats, Zack was down on the deck, no longer bleeding out, with a polite and completely deadly Sikh suturing his abdomen. In the open middle area, Fick and the dreadlocked, sword-wielding Somali were peering out the left-side windows, looking anxious. Predator and Juice manned the open rear hatch on the same side. And beyond that, in the very back, it looked like an airborne vaccine research lab, with the DNA sequencer set up and Patient Zero lying behind it. But the lab manager, Park, was now coming forward, led by Baxter.

Having got the lay of the land, Ali stepped up behind Kate and pressed her helmet to hers. “Sitrep me!” she shouted over the wind and engine noise. But even before Kate could answer, Jake’s 50-cal Beowulf started booming, practically in their ears – which was answer enough. Spetsnaz were obviously back. They weren’t giving up, or letting go, that easily.

Nonetheless, Kate turned her head and shouted back: “Five victors, right behind us! We think they’re going to try to pull ahead and cut us off – block the runway and keep us from taking off! We’ve got to keep them from getting by!”

“Okay,” Ali said. “Roger that.”