Arisen : Nemesis (44 page)

“We survived, too.”

Elijah shook his head sadly. “But not for much longer. Not in a fight with the six of us against hundreds of them. I’m sorry, Bren. I didn’t think Triple Nickel had any future. God wasn’t on our side. He’s on theirs.”

“It was you all along,” Brendan said, his voice sadder now. “You told them we were going out to Lemonnier. You tipped them off about the ambush. Hell, you probably flew the Shadow right to where they could bring it down.” His eyelids lowered fractionally. “And you warned them about the assault today.”

Elijah’s expression hardened. “It’s no worse than the team deserves. What did we ever accomplish? How were we a force for good? We couldn’t even protect the Warsangali, which was our whole job here—” His voice broke. “We couldn’t even keep an innocent, orphaned boy alive – we couldn’t save Dalmar…” He gathered himself. “And Jake cursed God, and took joy in vengeance and killing. I couldn’t follow him any further. Even if you could.”

No one spoke. The only other sound was the rattling of the chains holding the ancient Zulu to the wall, as it lunged forward at the living people out of its reach.

Elijah straightened up. “You all were dead already. You were dead as soon as this started. They promised me a place here for helping them. And they needed a doctor. I could have been of use again, among the devout. Doing God’s work.”

“You’re a fucking traitor, Elijah. Not to mention insane.”

Elijah took a breath, tightened his grip on his weapon, and brought it another few inches up. “Maybe. But you’re the one who left me alone in the TOC with the radio all that time, Cap.”

* * *

Jake hurdled another one of those damned gopher holes, and when he landed that brought him to the ladder up against the wall. There were a lot of shooters out there trying to track him from varying ranges, so he had to climb fast. He flipped his Beowulf around on his back and powered himself up the ladder with his three and a half strong limbs.

After he leapt up onto the parapet, he turned right, put his head down, and accelerated. As he ran, he pulled his MP7 clear of its drop-leg holster, yanked the stock out, and brought it up to his shoulder. Wood chips were hitting him from rounds impacting all around and behind him. But these asshats couldn’t hit him when he was static, so he liked his odds running flat out.

In seconds, he was coming up on a normal wooden guard tower, which had been mostly blown out – but which he was still going to have to fight through to get to the next section of parapet and the armored tower beyond. And there were definitely defenders in this one, who had either survived or else reoccupied the position. Pulling his weapon in tight by the foregrip, Jake sprayed 950 rounds per minute of 4.6mm through the doorway as he hurtled toward it.

Blasting inside and not even slowing, he traversed his barrel to one side and then the other. The 40-round mag went dry as he went hurtling out the other side. If there was anyone still alive inside, they were going to have to catch him. As he dropped the mag and reached for another, he put his head down and accelerated again—

“Jake! Your six!”

That was Todd, no doubt watching over him from above. When he turned, not yet reloaded and wondering how he was going to engage this new threat, he saw it wasn’t survivors from his guardhouse massacre – but two who had climbed up another ladder on this side of it. By the time he saw them though, one had already been shot and was falling off the parapet, and the second one took two center of mass hits and followed his buddy down.

Jake turned forward again.

One last stretch of parapet to go.

“Jake – check your nine.”

He spared a glance to his left – over the wall and down into the forest.

Whenever that herd of five million dead had been scheduled to arrive… they’d pretty clearly picked up the pace. A running gun battle with RPGs and grenade machine guns would have the tendency to reel them in, Jake figured. They’d all made a big racket with their little dust-up in there.

And now the walking dead had arrived.

And they were already starting to pile up against the north wall.

* * *

“How far?” Kate asked. She was leading Baxter through the labyrinth with her M4 up, weapon-mounted light illuminating the path ahead, but with him giving her directions from behind.

It wasn’t that she was so anxious to escape the underground dungeon of the Stronghold. It’s that she wanted to get up to wherever the fight was, wherever the rest of her team was engaged. She knew they were going to need every gun. And she needed to be doing her part.

“It’s close,” Baxter said, his rifle at low ready, and one eye on their rear.

But that’s when they rounded a corner – and ran out of tunnel.

Because it had collapsed.

The smell of fresh earth, must, and mold washed over them. The pile rose diagonally from floor to ceiling with red and black dirt and rock, and the tunnel around them suddenly didn’t look any too stable. With as many RPGs and 40mm grenades as Kate thought she could hear going off, she was amazed no one had anticipated this.

She turned to face Baxter. “How do we get around?”

“We’ll ne—“

But she body-checked him into the wall and came up firing.

The repair party – or some party, carrying not just shovels but AKs – was here.

And Kate and Baxter were now cut off by them, backs to the dirt wall.

Immediate Action Drill

The Stronghold - Godane’s Chamber

“Enough,
kaffir
,” Godane said to Brendan’s back. “Put your gun down and you may live a little longer.”

Brendan had a pretty good idea what that extra life would entail. Either being held as a hostage and bargaining chip, if Triple Nickel were winning the battle up top. Or being crucified on one of the towers, if not.

He took a step closer to Elijah, his back still to the room.

“No closer, Bren.” Elijah shuffled back a half-step, his weapon still up.

“Go ahead, Eli. Take the shot.”

Brendan sounded as if he had nothing to lose. He took another step forward.

Eli depressed his weapon from Brendan’s chest to his right thigh, and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. His eyes widening, he pulled the charging handle – and a perfectly good round ejected and fell to the floor. He looked back up at Brendan.

The team captain was holding something up between two fingers, roughly the size and shape of a knitting needle.

“My firing pin,” Elijah said. Then he quoted Brendan back to him: “‘Neither of you shoot unless I tell you to.’”

Brendan nodded, almost imperceptibly. “I knew it had to be you. I didn’t want to believe it. It was impossible. But I was out of explanations.”

Brendan tossed Elijah his firing pin.

And as his eye involuntarily went to it, Brendan moved like lightning – knuckle-striking him in the throat then spinning in a blur around behind him, pulling his forearm across his throat.

The Praetorians were already firing, a storm of 7.62 rounds from their full-auto AKs tearing up the entire front of the room.

Brendan brought his own rifle up under Elijah’s right arm.

And he tried to engage, from behind cover.

* * *

Jake continued hurtling across the parapet toward the armored guard tower. He had a new 40-round mag in his MP7 and the weapon back up to his shoulder.

Two defenders spilled out of the structure and Jake dropped them both with measured bursts – but all at a run. They both tumbled cinematically off the parapet to the inner courtyard twenty feet below.

In a mental blur, Jake considered the advisability of tossing a flashbang – or, perhaps better yet, a real grenade – into that armored guardhouse before charging inside. But he’d have to stop or at least slow down to throw it, then wait for it to go off – and speed and violence of action were everything for him right now. They were what was allowing him to scatter and defeat a much larger force.

That’s what he told himself.

Just as he told himself he had to come up here to take out this tower.

But he also knew there was almost certainly still a large RPG cache in there, and it was almost certainly still being guarded by al-Sîf. And if he simply blew up the guardhouse, he’d never have the satisfaction of killing the man – with his own two hands. He kept running, and was through the door in another second.

Senses moving in slo-mo, he saw and engaged two shooters in the open.

They went down.

Too late, he sensed more than saw another one covered up, just a rifle barrel and optic. Perfectly positioned. Waiting for him.

Jake took four rounds to the chest, knocking him back out the door.

He collapsed to the parapet, the force of the impact knocking his MP7 from his hand, which went clattering off the parapet to the ground far below.

* * *

There was zero cover in the sudden and intimate firefight in the half-collapsed tunnel – but Kate arranged for her and Baxter to take cover behind a wall of lead.

Executing a one-man immediate action drill, she killed one, wounded one, and drove the rest under cover. She was already advancing to close with the enemy by the time Baxter got his weapon up – and by then she had driven them back around the corner.

Now it was simply a gunfight, two on two. And Kate, even with her non-SF tactical training, immediately got the sense she could handle this one. Even Baxter, with his rudimentary training, was engaging effectively, and appeared to be up to the job.

Basically, these guys were not tactical superstars.

On the other hand, Kate and Baxter were still trapped in there, with the collapse to their backs. But if they could shoot their way out before reinforcements came, she liked their odds.

Now, if we can just keep the rest of the tunnel from collapsing on us…

* * *

Four high-velocity rounds to the ceramic plate, fired nearly point-blank, will cause just about anyone to reconsider his position. It even worked for Jake.

It was actually only the force of those rounds knocking him over, and making him briefly do the limbo, that caused the followup two to miss his head. As it was, they were so close to his face that they burned, and the snap of the collapsing air pockets was like a punch to the jaw.

Flat on the deck, his whole torso buzzing from the impacts, rounds flying over his head now, his MP7 gone, his first move was to recover his primary weapon – his Beowulf. But it wasn’t lying by his side as it ought to be. It wasn’t anywhere. He patted at the front of his chest until he found the flapping end of his single-point sling, which had been severed by one or more of the rounds that had caught him square in the chest. He didn’t have time to look over the edge, but he had every expectation it was lying down in the mud with his MP7. That was some bad luck.

It was also a shame, because he knew the .50-cal was one cartridge that would defeat al-Sîf’s body armor. It might or might not penetrate it. But the shock it delivered would kill the man inside it anyway.

But now that ship had sailed.

So now Jake went ahead and pulled a grenade with one hand – not even noticing whether it was a frag or a flashbang, but just cooking it off and tossing it into the guardhouse – and pulled his high-capacity .45 from its chest rig with the other.

And by the time that grenade went off, he was going to have to be up on his feet and moving again – fast.

And using his last gun to best effect…

* * *

7.62 rounds will often pass right through a human. Luckily, Elijah had in both his front and rear ceramic plates, which made him an excellent human shield for Brendan, who was taking cover behind him.

And shooting around his own personal Brutus.

Bullets were impacting everywhere, the roar and flash and smoke and stench overwhelming. Bren could feel Elijah taking hits, then took two himself in rapid sequence – a round grazing his elbow, another striking his boot, sending scorching pain across his foot.

He had to block out the pain and noise to keep operating effectively – and to continue to engage the two Praetorians, who were hunched over and firing flat out. They were also moving in opposite directions, making two dynamic targets instead of one static one. Brendan was vaguely aware that Godane had ducked down behind his desk. He ignored this, and instead fired rapid single shots to his left, while now having to hold up Elijah’s body weight…

The Praetorian on the left went down, shooting the whole way, but either his fire or more probably the other guy’s cracked into Bren’s SCAR, shattering the EOTech sight and splintering the receiver. Bren let the weapon go, pivoted, and pulled Elijah’s pistol from its chest rig. Thank fuck it had a round chambered, because he only had one hand to operate it. He emptied the pistol into the Praetorian on the right, until his body armor also failed, and he went down to the deck, still firing all the way down.

Suddenly – silence.

Brendan lowered Elijah to the dirt floor, then regarded the carnage all around him. The last two Praetorians were riddled with rifle and pistol rounds. One of them had been hit in the jaw. Brendan shook his head. Whatever else, these guys were real gunfighters – tough, brave, and resolute. They had gone down shooting and died in a pile of their own brass.

Bren dropped the mag out of Elijah’s pistol and reloaded it. Only then did he check to see if Eli was still alive. He had absolutely no idea what he was going to do if he was. The man’s eyes were still open – and seemed almost to focus on Brendan for a second. Bren couldn’t interpret the look on his face. But then he immediately expelled a rattling breath.

And he didn’t take another one.

Rising and holding the dead man’s pistol forward and down, Brendan rounded the desk… but there was no Godane behind it. He’d managed to slip out the rear door during all the chaos, probably crawling the whole way. Bren also saw there was blood on the floor back there, so he’d been hit.

Hope he chokes on it.

Brendan checked the bodies of all four Praetorians. All were good and dead.