Arisen : Nemesis (49 page)

Then again, Kwon realized as the first two arced through the air like comets and exploded in the branches over his head, close actually counted in three things: horseshoes, hand grenades… and RPGs.

Kwon’s sniper hide was quickly turning into a live-fire range.

But suddenly none of that mattered. Because when he looked back to the other side of the courtyard, he saw that Jake had broken cover and was running flat out through the middle of the maelstrom.

And then the unthinkable happened.

Jake went down.

Achilles

The Stronghold - Middle of the Courtyard

Jake felt the impact smash into his only flesh-and-blood lower leg.

He was even pretty sure he saw the weapon that got him – an RPK “Super Kalashnikov” – which he’d caught a glimpse of, with its distinctive long barrel and 75-round drum magazine.

But then he was looking at nothing but dirt rushing at him at high speed. One minute he’d been moving fast across open ground, ranging over the battlefield like he owned the damned place. And the next he was hit and immobilized. There was absolutely nothing he could do for the moment.

The law of large numbers had caught up with him.

And he was going down.

And being horizontal, it turned out, didn’t mean he was going to get shot at any less. Probably more. The guys blasting away at him, from all kinds of angles and elevations, had the scent of the kill. Rounds were kicking up dirt on all sides and he was definitely about to be hit again. He dragged himself into what looked like a shell crater nearby, which on closer inspection was maybe a half-collapsed tunnel below. Maybe a bit of both. In any case, it was the only cover going, and Jake got down into it and assessed his leg wound.

Two things about it were immediately obvious.

One, a plum-size chunk of his calf had been blown out.

And two, a jagged edge of bone was sticking out the hole. His shin bone had been shattered and broken in half by the impact of the bullet. He was bleeding moderately, but that wasn’t what worried him. The real problem was there was almost no way he was going to be able to run on this thing. Jake knew better than anyone his own toughness, resilience, and imperviousness to pain.

But he also knew something about biomechanics. And this piece of machinery was badly broken.

He got a bandage out of his blowout kit and got the wound wrapped up. That seemed to stop the bleeding for now. Then he reported his status over the radio, in exactly two words. He wanted to do that before what came next – because of what might happen to his voice after that. He dug out a role of 100-mph tape from his pack and set it in the dirt beside him. Then he gripped both ends of the shin bone, which were a good three inches apart.

And he shoved them back together.

He wasn’t sure whether the sound he made when he did this was audible over the noise of the battle. But he hoped not.

Then he began wrapping the whole shin, bandage and all, in the heavy-gauge tape – round and round and round again.

And pretty soon he was going to find out if enough 100-mph tape could actually bear a man’s weight.

* * *

“I’m hit.”

Those two words sent a chill through Brendan’s exhausted body. He had never heard his team sergeant utter them before. It was like Achilles had fallen – unthinkable. He keyed his radio.

“Jake. Where are you? How bad?”

But it was Todd who answered.
“I’ve got eyes on him. He’s pinned down – basically dead center in the middle of the courtyard.”

Brendan spared exactly one thought for the very important dead man on his back. Then he found something like a safe place to stash it – in another shell crater, which he then kicked some dirt over. He keyed his radio:

“Jake, Bren. I’m moving to you.”

And then he took off running through the fire raking across the middle of that courtyard.

Without a body on his back, he felt surprisingly spry.

* * *

“I’m hit.”

These two words affected Kwon much more than the incoming fire. At this point, AK rounds were tearing up foliage, and occasionally bark, all around him and RPG explosions were raining burning bits of wood on his head. The whole tree around him was waving like it was in a gale.

And then he heard Brendan’s next transmission and saw his team commander sprinting through the open, to the spot where his team sergeant was pinned down.

And Kwon dropped out his mag in a flash, reloaded, got his eye back on the glass – and started sniping like he never had before in his life.

He knew he would be pretty much the only thing keeping Brendan alive now.

* * *

“Kwon, Todd.”

“Send it.”

“Yeah, buddy, you’re going to have to displace.”

“Copy that.”

As usual, Kwon sounded like he was shooting at the rod and gun club, rather than in a kinetic combat situation where he could be killed or injured at any second.

Then again
, Brendan thought,
I may be the only member of the team who’s ever actually belonged to a rod and gun club…

He was listening in while running flat out through the open, dodging holes and debris, watching the ground churn up around him from incoming fire. He was quickly becoming the center of attention for every bad guy left breathing air in this joint, all of whom were shifting their fire from Jake to him. Bren was also firing from the hip, but hardly aiming. He had a pretty good idea why he had lived this long into his run, and it was speaking in those ice-cool monosyllables from up in his OP.

Brendan was, for the moment, shielded in a cloak of Kwon.

“No, seriously, dude
,” Todd said
. “I’ve got a bird’s-eye view of more and more shooters on the walls turning to engage… And they’re zeroing you. Even you can’t have missed those incoming RPGs. You gotta go, man.”

“They can’t hit shit at this range. I’m fine.”

Goddammit
, Brendan thought, continuing to pump his arms and legs and suck air. He keyed his mic. “Kwon, Bren. Do what the man says. Get down from there. That’s an order.”

He stole a look up at the distance he still had to cover to Jake’s spot. And he steeled himself against the reality that he was going to have to cover it on his own now – without overwatch.

Not that he figured that stubborn son of a bitch was going to listen.

* * *

Todd spun the stupidly heavy turret around to get the minigun facing forward. With Jake down in the middle, and their dumb-ass commander going out there to die with him, strings of high-explosive 40mm grenades were not exactly the precision kind of fire he wanted to be putting out there right now.

After he got it spun, he reached back to grab the tablet with the drone video and set it where he could see it again.

And what he saw at Kwon’s OP made his heart skip a beat.

“Luke Fucking Kwon.
You are dead if you stay there. Displace – NOW.
”

* * *

Kwon had much bigger problems and didn’t have time to look down, but he knew what he’d see if he did: his position was starting to be overrun from below. The herd was arriving. Death was waiting for him below just as much as it was coming for him up here.

Yeah, he could probably still fight his way out if he climbed down now.

But there was absolutely no way that was going to happen – not while Brendan was running alone through the open under fire. And he knew there was basically only one way he was getting out of this tree now.

He didn’t bother answering Todd this time.

He had too much to do on the rifle.

And his crowning moment of badass was at hand.

* * *

Todd quickly panned over to the center of the courtyard with the drone camera. And the picture there didn’t do his heart any good whatsoever.

He could make out Brendan doing his Forrest Gump routine, blasting through no-man’s land – though he was still too far to the east, Todd’s right, to make out directly from out of the turret.

But moreover, and much worse, he could see all the enemy elements maneuvering in on Jake’s little dug-out home in the dirt. Never mind that the shooters repopulating the walls would probably do him in before those on the ground could get there.

In part using the overhead view to tell him where he needed to be shooting, Todd started putting blistering minigun fire into every position that was putting fire on his team sergeant. But he couldn’t hit them all, and he definitely couldn’t get a look at all the maneuvering units, so he got on the radio while he engaged.

“They’re circling in on you, Jake. And I can’t support you. You’re going to be overrun in about a minute if you stay put. You’re gonna have to move. Seriously.”

He put his left hand back on the minigun.

And he made every round count.

Mogadishu Mile

The Stronghold - Jake’s Shell Crater

A streaking RPG detonated on the very rim of the dirt dugout that was Jake’s only cover from the storm. They were digging him out. And then they were going to bury him there.

He’d gotten his ravaged lower limb taped into something like a solid pillar.

And he knew he was going to have to try to break out.

The exploding RPG sent a shower of dirt over his head, not to mention shrapnel into his boots. But he wasn’t worried about that right now. He wasn’t even worried about himself. He keyed his mic.

“Kwon, Jake. Listen to Todd and the Captain. It’s time for you to go.”

His tone made it clear: dad was back. You could sass mom for a while. But eventually dad came home from work. And the tomfoolery was at an end.

“Roger that. Wait out.”

Jake clenched his jaw. “Climb the fuck down, Kwon – that’s an order.” He could feel the physical resistance – and thought he knew what the cause was. “Look, I’m fine here. I don’t need you shooting to protect me.”

“I know you’re fine – you’re under cover. I don’t give a shit about you right now.”

Jake wrinkled his brow. Kwon wasn’t staying on station to protect him.

He was doing it for Brendan – who was even now running like a madman through the open to get to Jake’s pinned-down position.

And Jake had to swallow hard at that.

He knew, everyone on the team knew, that Kwon was totally loyal to him – and would die for him in an instant. That went without saying. But now he was keeping his ass hanging out in the AK and RPG storm for Brendan.

Just as Brendan was running through hell to get to him.

All divisions in the team had somehow been forgotten.

The nearness of death made their differences fade to nothing.

They were all brothers again.

* * *

Brendan didn’t even feel the pain in his shot-through foot anymore.

It was almost certainly the adrenaline, which always dulled pain.

And nothing flooded an exhausted system with adrenaline like a solo run across open ground through a whipping, slashing rain of AK and RPG fire. He felt a round pluck at his sleeve, and another banked off his helmet, hitting hard enough to make his vision go double. Explosions geysered the earth ahead and behind as he ran through falling showers of dirt, thanking God he wasn’t faster than he was, which would have put him at the impact point at the right second to kill him.

He didn’t bother firing or trying to chuck grenades now.

There were too many targets, and his only chance was to get through all this, and he needed all his concentration to stay on his feet and running.

And he knew the only protection he had… was from above.

He could feel Kwon’s shooting taking the very worst of the heat off him.

And, once or twice, he could even see it.

As particularly fearless or vicious al-Shabaab guys would break cover to intercept him, they would immediately bowl over, faces hitting the dirt, due to precision shooting from above.

Brendan kept his chin tucked in and his legs pumping.

It was a long-ass run.

* * *

A single RPG hit the trunk of Kwon’s tree, barely five feet below him and just around to the side. With this one, he got hit with some casing and wood shrapnel. Amazingly, he got smacked with a chunk of bark in his right eye – the wounded one. It wasn’t moving fast enough to penetrate the bandage, but still smarted like hell.

Jesus
, he thought.
The trees have really got it in for me.

But at least it wasn’t his good eye.

He kept his head down, dropping targets as fast as he could acquire them. At any given second, it seemed like there were ten guys who were about to kill Brendan – and he could only engage one at a time. In a controlled panic, he shot and shot and shot, and at every instant expected to see Brendan fall.

But somehow he stayed on his feet.

As against this, the fire Kwon himself was taking counted for nothing.

Everything was about doing his job. And not letting his teammate down.

Even now – when he caught an AK round in the right arm, and then another creased his cheek. He knew there were a-S guys crowding the south and east parapets, competing to see who would get him first, whooping and cheering, and he felt like Kevin Costner in
Dances With Wolves
, riding in front of the Confederate lines and giving the rebs a free shot.

In Kwon’s case, though, it wasn’t because he wanted to die.

It was because he was determined that someone else live. And he had a job to do, and it required shooting past those guys on the parapets, down onto the ones trying to kill his team captain.

He’d seen a couple of RPGs streaking down toward Bren from one of the guardhouses but couldn’t see the shooter – however, he knew where the guy had to be standing, and he tried a bank shot through the open firing port and off a wall, then tried another – and saw the rocket-man tumble out the front.

Wow
, he thought.
That actually worked.