Arisen : Nemesis (39 page)

In terms of pure warfighting, they could all move and shoot, they were very solid tactically, and they had extremely good small-unit infantry and CQB skills.

But they weren’t gods.

Not even Jake was.

They weren’t like the unstoppable assaulters and snipers of Delta or Seal Team Six. In terms of pure resolve and combat effectiveness, they weren’t even quite like the regular SEALs. If nothing else, you could tell from the way Army Special Forces ran the selection course – the cadre instructors were actually trying to keep guys in the program. Whereas the more elite spec-ops forces weeded out everyone they could possibly pummel into quitting. But SF coached, they mentored, they did what it took to get good men through the program – because they were needed in the field. At the end of the process, they had supremely committed and well-trained soldiers.

But not gods. No, they were all too mortal.

Brendan shook his head.
Seventy to one…
Only Jake wasn’t daunted by the odds they were going to be facing in just a few hours.

The terror of the dream falling from him, but not that of the coming battle, Brendan got up, toweled himself off, put on a t-shirt and flip-flops, and stepped out into the cooler air outside. He could immediately see there was a light still burning in the team room. When he walked over and stepped inside, he found it was Jake, drinking a mug of coffee and going over the mission plan again. He was also wearing shorts, a t-shirt, and sneakers – and the light from the desk lamp was glinting on the aluminum fittings of his leg.

When he looked up, Brendan said, simply, “This is going to work – right?”

Jake exhaled. He looked like a different man in his reading glasses, which he rarely wore in front of the others. He took them off and leaned back. He said: “There are no guarantees in this line of work, Captain Davis. The only thing I can tell you is: if Kate dies… if you go down… or the others on this team fall… odds are I’m already dead. That’s all I can promise you.”

Brendan put his hand out. Jake took it.

“That’ll do.”

PART THREE

“And I will set my jealousy against thee, and they shall deal furiously with thee: they shall take away thy nose and thine ears; and thy remnant shall fall by the sword: they shall take thy sons and thy daughters; and thy residue shall be devoured by the fire.”
– Ezekiel 23:25

Dead Men

ma’Qal (“The Stronghold”) - Just Outside the Walls

The sun had cracked the horizon but did not yet penetrate the thick bush. The dense trees and heavy undergrowth rose up menacingly to either side, creating something like a tunnel, one filled with darkness and silent menace – or perhaps it was more like a funnel.

Hopefully not a fatal one
, Todd thought.

He was driving the lead vehicle in what might be the last ever Triple Nickel caravan, as it rumbled along the rutted and washed-out forest track. The road only went one place, so there had been little navigation to do for the last hour.

But there had been some steering required – mainly around the intermittent hazard of walking dead men in the road.

The front edge of the herd had arrived.

As they traveled south they began to pass through it, like the thin outer edge of a gas giant in the vacuum of space, or the first sparse drops of rain at the edge of a heavy storm coming in. They were just ones and twos, and not many of those, stumbling forward mindlessly, lone scouts in front of an unimaginably large Persian army of the dead, coming to flood the plains of Greece.

For the most part, the two trucks could steer around them, or wait for them to cross the road like wild animals, or occasionally run them over. Nobody felt like shooting, not this close to the herd they knew was massing out there.

Plus they anticipated they were going to need every round.

Now, finally, the oppressive embrace of Galmudug fell away to either side and they emerged into the slight clearing that surrounded the towering and spiky walls of the Stronghold. Most of the Triple Nickel guys had been hearing rumors about this place for years, so it was like driving into imagination, or dark fantasy.

This was the heart of darkness.

It was also the fell hand wrapped around the body of Staff Sergeant Kate Dunajski. And her body was theirs, just as theirs were hers. She was in there somewhere. And nobody in either of these two gun trucks was leaving without her.

Getting hold of Zulu Zero and, if Zack were to be believed, increasing humanity’s ultimate chances for survival, was also on the list of essential mission objectives. But that type of salvation seemed very distant, amorphous, an abstraction.

Kate was real. And they could all see her face with perfect clarity.

The two trucks rumbled to a stop before the gates.

And now Godane made them wait.

Todd, in the driver’s seat of the lead vehicle, tapped his horn.

Jake punched him in the shoulder – hard.

Finally, the massive log-pole gates began to swing open. When there was enough of a gap, Todd put it in gear and rolled forward, the other truck following on his bumper. As before, during their mission to Camp Lemonnier, he knew exactly where he was going. Their plans were precise. He followed the mud ruts around a couple of outbuildings and emerged into a more open central area.

He didn’t stop until he was dead center in the middle of the giant courtyard.

Then he pulled ahead and swung out into a wide left-hand arc, continuing through 270 degrees and going around the nose of the other truck – which did a regular ninety-degree left-hand turn, both of them continuing until they were side-by-side. It was a tight little choreography, and it ended with the two trucks facing opposite directions, driver’s side to driver’s side.

Todd’s truck faced the south wall of the fortress, the other the north.

The two trucks looked like they were cross-decking, ready to shoot over each other’s shoulders. Like two buddy gunfighters in Main Street at high noon, about to take on the villain’s entire gang.

Which was exactly what they were.

Above them, and all around on every side, al-Shabaab fighters stood on the parapets on the inside of the walls, pointing weapons down at them. The six guard towers also bristled with emplaced machine guns, as well as guys with RPGs on their shoulders. There were at least a hundred men visible, all of them covering the two invading trucks of Crusaders.

They were truly in the belly of the beast.

* * *

And both gun trucks looked something like medieval battle wagons now. If the gun turrets on top were manned, it wasn’t obvious – because the steel gunner shields had been extended up and over, completely enclosing anyone inside. Each turret also sported two emplaced weapons, pointing in opposite directions – the stubby barrel of a grenade launcher, and the three linked barrels of a minigun.

Beneath the turrets, the first one looked like an up-armored, somewhat tricked-out Humvee. But the second looked like some serious Mad Max shit. This was the dune-buggy-style gun truck, which had previously lacked doors or a roof. Now it was covered with welded-together steel plates, which enclosed the whole driver and passenger area, the bumpy welded seams criss-crossing its surface like the stitched-together face of Frankenstein.

Jake stepped out of the Thunderdome-mobile and reached up onto the roof of the other truck. Strapped there, halfway between the front edge and the turret rising up behind it, was Godane’s Predator GCS, packed up in its aluminum case. Jake stuck a big blob of putty-like substance to the top of it, which then showed a stubby antenna sticking off it, and a blinking light. He then held his left hand aloft.

He was clutching what looked like a pistol-grip game controller.

He then turned to face the arena, and spoke aloud – very loud.

His booming voice filled the courtyard and rose to the parapets. “
Nin dhintay kiciya!
” he shouted, then repeated it in English. “
Dead-man’s trigger!”

Still holding his hand aloft, Jake scanned the walls until he found them.

Godane – and, behind and beside him, al-Sîf. They stood just outside one of the guardhouses and were flanked on either side by a half-dozen al-Shabaab fighters, most of whom were nearly a head taller than the rank and file who ringed the parapet, and were much more heavily armed. They even wore body armor.

Godane’s Praetorians.

Having located the enemy commanders, Jake did a careful 360-degree survey of the walls and guard towers, just to be sure. And it was as he expected.

Kate was nowhere to be seen.

Nodding once, he returned to the truck, dead-man’s trigger in one hand, and the pistol grip of his rifle in the other. Todd reached across to open the door for him and he climbed in and pulled the door shut.

Both trucks revved their engines up to a throaty roar.

Then with no warning, preamble, or visible sign, both simultaneously popped their clutches, spun mud ten feet in the air, and blasted off in opposite directions.

The Mad Max truck accelerated wildly for fifty meters then braked for an equivalent distance, skidding to a frantic but perfectly positioned stop, right in the narrow space between two of the larger and more solid buildings that backed onto the south side of the wall. With the wall to its nose and the buildings on either side, it was in an extremely well-covered position.

At the same time, the other truck accelerated madly for about the same distance – but then hardly braked at all as it crashed into the front of a large building that backed onto the north wall. It blasted right through the front door with a concussive crash and came to rest with half the vehicle sticking out of the violated structure.

That back half included the weapons turret.

A percussive
thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk
sounded from the stubby barrel pointing out of the turret of the south truck, the one between the buildings.

And a sound like a chainsaw going through a knotty tree erupted from the spinning barrels protruding from the turret of the north truck, and the building it was sticking out of.

And, not quite instantly, two things started to happen to the Stronghold.

The men standing at the top of the wall on the parapet started to come apart.

And the guard towers started to explode.

Get it Done

Camp Price - Garage
[The Night Before]

Todd flipped up his welding mask and killed the big acetylene torch in his thickly gloved hand. Then he took off one glove and pulled out his expensive JBL earbuds. Metallica’s “Damage, Inc.” was leaking out of them, at a volume Zack couldn’t believe, given the size of the speakers, and their proximity to Todd’s brain. The crunching guitars, bashing snare drum on the downbeats, and Smaug-like vocals spilled out of the tiny speakers at a volume Zack would have hesitated to use in a college dorm.

“Do me a favor and knock next time, dude,” Todd said. “So I can snuff the torch before you crack the door.”

“Light discipline,” Zack agreed. “But what makes you think I didn’t knock?”

Good point
, Todd’s expression said.

Zack stepped into what looked like nothing so much as a scene from
The Road Warrior
. Sheets of heavy steel were stacked everywhere, gigantic weapons systems rose half out of crates, and two urban-assault-looking vehicles hulked in the dim light in various states of modification, like Transformers frozen halfway between four-legged dinosaurs and main battle tanks.

“How’s it going?”

Still sticking up through the weapons ring, Todd shucked his other glove and said, “Well, affixing the mounting kits for both a GAU-19 minigun,
and
a Mk 47 grenade machine gun, on a single turret ring, definitely presents some unique engineering challenges.”

“Can you do it? Will it work?”

Todd laughed. “It’s not whether I can. It’s: do I have to. Most of my job is making it work. Whatever it is.”

Zack leaned against the other vehicle. “And in the time you have.”

“Yeah. That, too.”

If Zack hadn’t ever before seen quite this level of skill in metallurgy, he’d certainly seen the mindset before. It was pure spec-ops.

It was:
Get it done
.

Climbing down from the ring and then out through the vehicle, Todd said, “The bigger job is actually extending the gun turrets. These already have the I-PGK turret shields – the Improved Gunner Protection Kit, which are some of the best available. But now I’ve got to extend them all the way up and around. When I’m done, if I do it right, only the barrels, cameras, and optics will be left sticking out. Only full protection for the gunners is going to keep them alive in the shit storm we’re going to be bringing down on ourselves.”

Zack squirmed. “And who exactly are these gunners going to be?”

“You and me, dude. But don’t worry, it’s gonna be awesome.”

Electric Death

The Stronghold - North Gun Truck

Zack shouted out loud as he kept the red trigger on the right pistol grip of the minigun depressed and traversed his elevated barrel from right to left, keeping his red-dot sight about three feet above the parapet on the south wall. This was shockingly easy to do, because there was virtually no recoil from the huge weapon – in part because it was welded to a six-ton truck, but mostly because it fired so fast that all the reports blurred into one unbroken thrumming. And it was that electric, predatory power – electric death, really – that coursed through his hands and arms and caused Zack to yelp, almost involuntarily.

That, plus the result he was seeing on the other end.

Dozens of their enemies were being cut in half at the sternum, or at the shoulders if they crouched down, or sometimes at the thighs if they tried running for it. Todd had been right when he said that if this was a video game, it would be a crappy one.