ARISEN, Book Twelve - Carnage (8 page)

“Go, go, go!” he shouted. “Get the barricades up!”

Walker was first to the breach, shoving a crate with her shoulder. When the others followed too slowly, she bellowed at them: “Come on, you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?”

They complied, while Patrick shot steadily, covering the operation. No attackers showed themselves in the hatch – yet. But he couldn’t let his attention flag. And if he’d been amused by Walker borrowing a famous line from a Marine Sergeant Major in WWI, he didn’t have time to laugh.

He only lost his extreme target lock when a hand came down on his shoulder. It was Lovell – crouched over his weapon and now helping to cover the entrance. But Patrick wasn’t glad to see him.

“You ok—” Lovell started to stay.

“Get the hell out of here!” Lovell startled at this and almost took his eye off the hatch. “Stay back with Doc Park – he’s the whole point of this exercise.” Patrick didn’t stop shooting for a second while he spoke, though luckily for comprehension, like all the Marines, he was shooting suppressed. “When they get through us, you’re the only defense left.”

Lovell didn’t argue. He couldn’t.

But he wasn’t here to hang out anyway – he had brought his gigantic ammo sack, and while Walker and her people shoved half-demolished furniture and crates back in front of the hatch, he went around distributing ammo – 30-round mags of 5.56 for Patrick’s SCAR and Toussaint’s M4, 15-round pistol mags for the M9s, shoving them in empty pouches or piling them up at their positions. Those side arms which had belonged to the dead officers got distributed to surviving but unarmed hospital personnel, who took up the positions of their fallen friends with no little trepidation – but a hell of a lot of courage and resolve.

Lovell didn’t quite empty out the ruck, then he took it and what was left of its contents with him back to the rear.

* * *

“Oh, my God, we got our asses kicked,” Browning whispered, sounding as if he was near to tears – though whether from pain or sorrow was impossible for Kate to tell.

Not lowering her weapon, she got her aid kit unsnapped from her belt and dropped it on him. She didn’t know that you were supposed to use a wounded man’s own aid kit on him, saving yours for yourself. She had never gotten to that stage of training. But, then again, courage and steadiness under fire couldn’t be taught. “You’re going to have to do self-care,” she said. “Can you do that?”

Browning nodded, tears leaking from the corners of his eyes. Kate appeared unwounded. But he was pretty sure Rob and Dooley were dead, lying out in the open around that corner. Those were his men, his responsibility, and they had died carrying out his orders – trying to conduct a half-assed counter-attack into the rear of a superior force.

They never had a chance.

Browning had been shot at before, and he’d lost teammates – in both Virginia and Saudi Arabia. But never anything like this. He had never been part of a team that was faced down and had the shit kicked out of them by massively superior combatants. As he tried to get a pressure bandage out of the aid kit with shaking hands, he also tried to get his mind around how thoroughly they had been out-fought. Neither he nor anyone he knew had ever encountered a force as aggressive as this one. In the aftermath, he was totally shell-shocked.

Two of his three people were dead – and he was more dead than alive himself. His team had nearly been wiped out – and he wasn’t sure how any of them had survived, except maybe because of Kate’s fast thinking and nerves of steel, and the proximity of that passageway.

Losing so badly wasn’t a good feeling – maybe even worse than the physical pain of his wounds. And, as far as Browning knew, it had all been for nothing.

He had no way of knowing it was only his team slamming into the Spetsnaz rear that had allowed the defenders of the hospital to withstand the first onslaught. It would have meant something to him if he had.

Right now he focused on his breathing – and getting the bleeding in his collarbone and leg stopped. But pressing against the wounds hurt so damned much – it was soul-scraping, and he had to dig down just to keep from crying out.

Browning was in way over his head.

Islamist Asshats II

North-Central Somalia – on the Jingle Bus

Juice now got why they were called jingle buses. And it was pissing him off. He drew his commando knife and sliced through the colorful bits of string hanging around the driver’s seat, with the jingle bells at the end of them.

Al-Sif looked over his shoulder as they hit the floor. Juice was making him drive, not least because he was easier to keep an eye on that way. And it left Juice free to shoot – and Baxter free to do his bidding, which currently involved sitting turned around in the back bench seat, watching their six.

After abandoning the useless Seahawk crash site to the Russians, they were now blasting north up the muddy and rutted road that bisected the middle of the country. Once again, the clapped-out old bus was moving surprisingly fast – a little faster than Juice was comfortable wasn’t going to bounce them off the road, blow a tire or axle, or simply roll them over. He had taken some unlikely forms of transport before, but few that annoyed as much as this one. Then again, it was what they had.

And it definitely beat walking.

Also, unlike the others, Juice knew where Handon was taking P-Zero and the rest of the team, and what his plan was for getting it and them the hell out of there. But there was one thing everyone knew: there would be no waiting around for latecomers. If you missed the train, you were on your own – stranded in Somalia.

Probably forever.

As if on cue, Juice’s radio went. It was Handon. Juice had already updated him with their status, so he must have something new for him. He straightened up, stopped hovering over al-Sif, and retreated halfway back down the aisle.

“Send it.”

“Afraid you were right. That UCAV might now be coming for you. It’s definitely headed your way.”

“Copy that. ETA?”

“Send me your current location.”
Juice read out a grid reference from his GPS. After a pause, Handon said,
“I’m guessing about eight minutes. I don’t suppose it’s going to run out of fuel before that?”

Juice just pressed his lips together and grimaced.

“No, I guess not. What’s your plan?”

Juice tapped his fingers on his rifle receiver, monitoring the featureless landscape blurring by them. There was nowhere to hide, and running wouldn’t get them far. Not with the UCAV going 700mph.

“Well… I guess we’re just gonna have to shoot it down.”

* * *

Handon was still up in the cockpit of the Seahawk when they experienced their second flyby in less than half an hour. Having gotten buzzed by the UCAV going one direction, now they were being overtaken by another helo. Handon squinted down at the radar console.

“What the hell is that?”

Cleveland glanced down. “Hey, I just work here.”

Handon clambered into the back, maneuvered around the others and the body on the floor, then stuck most of his torso out the gunner’s hatch. The wind hit him from behind, and he squinted into the wild slipstream, trying to make out the dark speck behind them.

It was getting bigger – fast.

* * *

Having instructed al-Sif to keep driving no matter what, Juice got in conference with Baxter in the back of the bus. “Here’s how it breaks down. If that UCAV comes to take us out, there’s no escape. Getting the bus off the road doesn’t help – there’s no cover for fifty miles. And it’s not going to miss if it targets us. So. Scenario one: it simply leaves us alone. We’re not worth a Hellfire. That’s our best chance.”

Baxter nodded. That sounded pretty good.

“Scenario two: the pilot is a moron, and flies low and right over our heads, basically buzzing us, much closer than he needs to engage. Not counting on that one.” He didn’t elaborate – so far, few of the Spetsnaz operators they had tangled with were morons.

“Wait,” Baxter said. “Can’t smoke or clouds block or confuse its laser-targeting?”

Juice looked out the window. There was some heavy cloud cover, but it was higher now than it had been. “Yeah, he’ll probably have to get down underneath the weather. But he can still fire from stand-off range.” He took a breath. “But if for some reason they do cowboy it and actually dive-bomb us, we can try to take it down with small arms.” Juice let that hang out there.

“Which is never going to happen.”

“No. Not really. But it’s worth a shot. Everything’s all fucked up after two years of ZA. And most of it, including that drone, has been through a month of non-stop combat. So who knows.”

“How do we do it?”

“From the roof.”

“And when that doesn’t work?”

“Then we leap off the moving bus, and hope we survive that.” Head still low, Juice glanced up toward the front. “And al-Sif takes the Hellfire for us.”

If this offended Baxter’s morals, he didn’t say anything.

“Once we’re on foot, it’s unlikely they’ll waste another munition on us. They might not even see us.”

“Yeah, but then we’re on foot, alone, in the desert. Which means unless someone comes to get us, we’re dead.”

“Yeah,” Juice said. “There’s that.”

“Is there a third scenario?”

“Maybe, but it’s the worst one of all. Say they sensibly release their weapon at stand-off range. We can try to spot for it on the way in, and then try to jump off the bus before it hits.”

“Will that work?”

“No. A Hellfire is seven inches in diameter, with about a thirteen-inch wingspan. And it will be coming straight at us at a thousand miles an hour.”

“Okay,” Baxter said. “Let’s do it.” He held out his fist.

Juice bumped it.

* * *

Handon pulled himself back inside the Seahawk. He’d finally been able to ID the aircraft that was chasing them – or, rather, catching them. His expression must have betrayed his consternation, because Ali, just waking, looked up and said, “What?”

“The Black Shark. It’s back.”

“That’s not pos—” But she cut herself off. Of course it was possible. It was totally possible. Not only had the impossible been happening to them all day, every day, for months. But those Russian attack helos were notorious for being damn near unkillable, as Ali well knew.

Handon exhaled, then nodded down at the body bag on the deck. “They can’t shoot us down.”

“Is that so?” Fick said from the rear jump seat.

Handon felt Henno’s eyes on him, watching him expressionlessly, like a lion watching a gazelle. But the Brit kept his mouth shut.

Handon took a breath. “The smallest weapon the Black Shark’s got is a thirty-mil autocannon. They can’t possibly disable us without destroying us.”

Ali blinked a couple of times. “I’m sure that’s exactly what the pilot of the Russian Orca said about Hailey in her F-35 – and her twenty-five-mil Gatling cannon.”

Handon gave her a look. “It’s a bluff.” He checked both the time and their location on his watch. They were nearly within sight of the border between Somalia and Djibouti.

They were going to make it. They had to.

* * *

“Okay,” Juice said to Baxter. “I’m going to get on the roof and start spotting. I strongly recommend you stay by one of the doors. Preferably the rear one.”

“And if al-Sif gets suspicious?”

“Yeah,” Juice said. That was evidently all he had for Baxter on that one. But then he took off his ruck and opened it up. “I’m gonna give you a smoke grenade and an IR flare.” He pulled out the mini-GCS, which he’d stowed back in the top of the ruck, and held it with one hand while he dug around. He found what he was looking for and laid them on the seat. Putting one of each on his own vest, he handed the other smoke grenade and flare to Baxter, then started packing up. “If we get separated, these’ll slightly up your odds of getting extrac—”

“Holy fucking shit,” Baxter said.

When Juice looked up, the kid was staring at the mini-GCS. “What?”

“C’mon!” Baxter dashed up the aisle to the front and grabbed al-Sif’s shoulder. “Where’d you leave the Pred?”

“The what?” al-Sif said, looking over his shoulder.

“The goddamned Predator UAV! You had it up over the Stronghold when we flew in there! Did you ever land it?”

“No.” Al-Sif squinted, trying to work out where this was going. His eyes widened again as he started to get it. “It was on an autopilot circle overhead.”

“Fuel state? And armaments?”

“What?”

“Did you top the tanks before you launched it? And has it still got those last two Hellfire missiles?”

“Yes. And yes.”

Baxter checked his watch, then turned and looked at Juice with wide eyes. “It’s still up there. Our old Predator. It’s still got about sixteen hours linger time. And it’s still got two freaking Hellfires on its rails.” He pointed at the mini-GCS. “And that thing will control any drone in the US arsenal, right?”

Not waiting for an answer, Baxter faced front again, his face saying he was at the last hurdle. “The transfer control code,” he said. “Did you change it?”

“The what? What code?”

“Fucking A,” Baxter said, smiling – delighted he could still count on the Islamists to be asshats, and not even know to change the transfer code, always half-ass’ing their stolen technology. “Gimme that,” he said to Juice, grabbing the GCS and booting it up.

* * *

Ali exhaled mournfully. She wasn’t feeling so relaxed as Handon about the prospects of that Black Shark not being able to touch them. She hefted her rifle and climbed up into the cockpit, taking the seat Handon had just vacated. The pilot, Cleveland, turned his head and gave her a look, perhaps because her rifle didn’t fit in there real well.

“Planning to shoot me and fly this thing yourself?”

Ali cocked her head and squinted. Had he somehow heard about her threat to do that to Reich and Muralles in the last Seahawk? Pilots definitely talked. Then again, those two had died, saving everyone else, less than an hour later. She didn’t know when they would have had the time.