Arisen : Nemesis (5 page)

Kate blinked and shook her head.

“Since taking power, he’s killed his number two, who wanted to pursue peace talks – then disbanded the relatively moderate Shura Council, and killed half of them when they objected. He was credited for al-Shabaab surviving in the bush, reportedly based out of some huge and secret Stronghold, after they were driven out of the cities. Under his leadership, a-S has become one of the most brutal militant groups in the world – with stonings and amputations for anyone who defies Godane’s edicts banning music, dancing, watching soccer… a lot of what gets us up in the morning is protecting regular Somalis from that. He’s also been turning Somalia into a base for global jihad, recruiting hundreds of foreign fighters. Basically, this is the kind of guy who puts five-year-olds in suicide vests.”

“Secret stronghold?”

“I don’t think it exists. I think they’re sleeping on dirt.”

“What was that crap about God wiping out the unfaithful?”

“I don’t know. He’s nuts. He also said something about being the cause of the plague. Controlling it.”

“Are all your Islamists this batshit crazy?”

Elijah squinted his eyes, parted his mouth, and looked thoughtful. “No,” he finally said. “Not all of them. I’ve actually met a number of their foot soldiers.”

“What – how?”

“Doing outreach clinics in the bush or in the smaller townships, helping out the medical expeditionary teams – sometimes doing my own clinics. You set these things up, and sometimes al-Shabaab or other militia dudes, guys who were shooting at us twelve hours earlier, will walk right in.” Kate looked disbelieving. “They know it’s our policy to treat anyone – as long as they’re not visibly armed. They also know it’s the only place in the region they’re likely to get a decent standard of medical care – particularly for something like a gunshot wound, or soft-tissue damage from blasts.”

Kate shook her head. “Doesn’t it clue you in when they stroll in with a gunshot wound?”

“Hell, we know already. And lots of innocent people come in with gunshot wounds. Basically, it sucks here. And it’s not black-and-white. Some of the militia guys are basically okay. I’ll say this: at least they’re God-fearing types. Which is more than you can say for a lot of the fornicators on this base.”

Kate honestly couldn’t tell whether that was a joke, so she kept silent as a slight chill ran up her neck. She didn’t like the parallels between the Islamists here and the fundamentalist Christians in the U.S. Instead she changed the subject. “Hey – who was that other guy? The huge jacked one in the background of the video.”

“That was al-Sîf – Godane’s lieutenant and enforcer.”

Kate blinked heavily. “What the hell was that weapon he had?”

“The one that looks like a medieval halberd crossed with a giant meat cleaver?”

“Yeah. That one.”

“Moorish scimitar.”

“Jesus.”

“That’s why they call him al-Sîf – “
the Sword
.”

“No points for creativity.”

“Yeah, well, you tell him that. And you do not want to see what he does with that thing. C’mon.” Elijah started to climb to his feet, saying “Back to wo—”

—but he was instantly knocked straight back onto his ass as an explosion of gut-shuddering magnitude shook what felt like the entire side of the base. As Elijah got up onto his hands and knees, while Kate reached over to help him, the sound of gunfire ramped up outside, a lot of weapons in various calibers discharging, swaddling the building in buzzing and racket.

It was obviously game on.

Inside the Wire

Camp Lemonnier - Med Shack

They had both just gotten to their feet when the outside door banged open and in surged some kind of vengeful god.

Kate took a second recognizing him as Jake, the team sergeant. Like her, he wore only a t-shirt underneath his tactical vest, and his muscles looked like they were trying to muscle their way out. He was square-shouldered, well-built, fierce-eyed, and didn’t look like he had skipped a workout in his entire life. His head was bare – even SF guys tended to wear ball caps or something – revealing a full head of wavy black hair, again not quite military short, and as she’d seen before, graying slightly at the temples. He also had an extremely intelligent cast to his glinting eyes, which wasn’t the smallest surprise to Kate.

As he spotted them and trotted up, Elijah looked up, still steadying himself, and said, “What the heck was that?”

“107mm rocket,” Jake answered, his voice exactly the right volume for the environment. “Probably shot out the back of a pickup truck.”

Elijah hefted his rifle. “Can’t they get some counter-battery fire on that crap?”

“Expect they’re doing it now.” That this man did not rattle was the most obvious fact in an entire extreme and complex situation. He spared a half a glance for Kate, who stood ready and – she hoped – alert-looking, with her rifle cradled, then looked back to the medical sergeant. He said, “Everybody with a working trigger finger is being called out to defend the perimeter.”

Kate nodded and hefted her rifle.

“Not you,” Jake said.

“Where are we?” Elijah asked.

“We think a-S might be making a play. There’s been coded radio chatter.”

Kate knew this meant the base was at risk – that the bad guys were going to try to overrun it. Or at least blast their way in and go on a shooting spree. That kind of thing had happened often enough in Afghanistan, though usually to smaller and more isolated combat outposts. But not always.

She took her right index finger from her trigger housing and squeezed it several times in open air.

Jake pointedly didn’t look at her as he kept talking. “The base is already weakened with so many teams outside the wire trying to help the civil authorities.” The sound of a belt-fed machine gun started up, chattering dully from outside somewhere.

“Me,” Kate said. “I’ve got one. I’ve got a trigger finger.”

Jake blinked once, slowly. “They’re trying to bring all deployed units back in now, but it’s not happening fast enough.”

“Works fine, looks just like yours.”

“And we’re Alamo’ing the fuck up until they do.”

“Master Sergeant,” Kate finally said, her own voice rising to the occasion.

Jake finally deigned to look at her. “It’s Jake.” He sized her up. “What kind of tactical training do you gals get?”

Not pausing to be outraged by the casual sexism – which she figured was an attempt to wind her up and see if she’d react emotionally – Kate reeled it off: “CQB, combatives, small arms and crew-served weapons systems, tactical movements, reflexive fire drills, SERE school, squad designated marksman – I was the only female DM in my battal—”

She nearly choked on the final syllable as another explosion, like the first but closer and louder, shook the floor.

Jake looked seriously at Elijah. “She stays in your back pocket.”

“Check,” Elijah said.

“I’m serious.”

“When are you ever anything but?” Elijah cracked a smile, then pointed two fingers at Kate’s eyes, pointed them at his own, then pointed at his back pocket.

Jake was already leading the way out, rifle up.

* * *

The matter of pockets almost instantly became moot. This was a firefight, and everybody’s equal and on their own in a firefight.

When the three of them stormed outside, Kate and Elijah found that full-on night had fallen on the camp, while they were inside and elbow-deep in blood, camped out under the hot surgical lights.

But the darkness was also alive and malevolent with its own lights – muzzle flashes, firing from up on the walls, in the guard towers, and from out in the town. Fires blazed in at least a couple of different impact points, as silhouetted figures raced at them with handheld fire extinguishers. Most breath-stealing of all were the bright and angry streaks of tracers lacerating the darkness – both red and green, coming and going in both directions.

Kate heard a jet-powered, fixed-wing aircraft blast by at low altitude – and then a rotary-wing one lift off, further in the distance. Thank God they had some air up. Apaches, she hoped. Those guys had been like the finger of God, and had saved her own personal ass more than once in Afghanistan.

She shook her head now, realizing she was already trying to do two difficult things at once: keep up with the other two, who were running straight toward the sound of the guns – and also figure out what the hell was going on around her, which was usually the key to staying alive in combat. She worked out, firstly, that they were heading north, toward the fence on the side of Djibouti Town; and secondly that she was falling behind.

Kate sucked wind and dug down deep to pick up her pace.

And that’s when she heard the new sounds, even more ominous than the chaos going on all around her. The first was that of a big, low-pitched, straining engine – rising in pitch and then falling again, as someone up-shifted and accelerated. The second was a medium machine gun going cyclic. The engine noise was approaching from somewhere out beyond the wire, and still out of sight. But the machine gun was in that tower where she’d seen the SEALs.

Looking up now, she could just make out that reversed ball cap in the rippling, non-stop muzzle flash of the machine gun. The dude wearing it was standing upright now, with this heavier weapon braced on the railing before him, and he was tracking with the bucking and discharging beast, its angle seeming to follow that of the rapidly crescendoing engine noise an—

And then Kate’s feet were yanked out from under her, and she found herself actually eating dirt as she sprawled out face down, her body pummeled and her senses overloaded.

Whatever had just exploded made the earlier rocket hits seem like Fourth of July Roman candles. It seemed to shake not just the whole camp, but the entire Horn of Africa, and sent a pillar of fire hundreds of feet into the black night sky. It was almost immediately followed by a shitload of small-arms fire, full-auto 7.62 from AKs and maybe PKP machine guns, all of it coming in from the north.

Kate rolled onto her back, trying to get back her wind, which had been completely knocked out of her. Her eyes were wobbling, but she locked onto that shearing muzzle flash up in the tower as a visual, and emotional, anchor. Good old SEALs, standing tall and banging away.

And then a barrage of RPGs, at least half a dozen of them, went streaking through the darkness and up toward that tower, which erupted in a giant gout of flame that went shooting out the back for at least fifty feet.

Kate had never watched men die right in front of her.

Her mouth was filled with dirt, and she was still trying to spit it out, when she saw both Elijah and Jake standing over her, backlit in flames like superheroes. If either were hurt, neither showed it. Each grabbed one of her arms and hauled her to her feet. By the time her vision stabilized, she could see more guys running out the door of the med shack behind them, yanking off their scrubs – and chamber-checking weapons. It was every man to the walls now.

The wire had just been breached.

Heavy Weapons

Camp Lemonnier - Near the North Fence

Debris was still falling to earth, bodies were still down on the deck, one guy was rolling another guy around on the ground – who was still
on fire. Carnage and chaos. “What the fuck just happened?” she shouted.

“VBIED!” Elijah shouted back. “Drove right up to the wire! The fence is knocked down, for like fifty meters. We’ve gotta reinforce the breach!”

She could see not only guys with weapons rushing to the yawning hole in the fence, but combat engineers rolling out to begin reconstructing it. Kate saw a small Bobcat earth-mover already rolling and was amazed at how quickly it got into play. Rounds were flecking off it but nobody seemed to care. These guys were like Bob the Builder crossed with Achilles – skilled, badassed, and completely fearless.

“Come on!” Elijah shouted, his rifle held at high ready. Kate could see Jake was already advancing on the still-burning area of ex-gate. Out past it were constellations of muzzle flashes, AKs going crazy. She tried to think. She knew not to panic about the AK fire, which was never accurate when it was that exuberant. But she also knew there could be more suicide bombers. She got her own rifle up, but didn’t try to put out any rounds yet. She needed to have a better idea of what was going on, and where people were.

First, do no harm – i.e. don’t shoot your own guys in the back.

Soldiers, some of them in shorts and shower-sandals, were setting up something like a perimeter. And now, reflected in the flames, Kate could finally make out some of the enemy: black-hooded guys moving like wraiths, hopping from cover to cover, and advancing on the hole in the wire. Coming for them. And she shivered with fear. It was like seeing the actual bogeyman, after hearing all the scary stories.

There they were,
right fucking outside
.

She once again heard the booming of a very large-caliber single-shot weapon, and wondered if the SEALs had somehow survived having their guard tower immolated. If anyone could, it would be them.

But then she squinted into the darkness and realized it was actually Jake. Unlike the others on the team, he didn’t carry a SCAR, but rather what had looked to Kate like a heavily customized M4. But now she realized it only looked like an M4 – when he started putting out rounds and she heard the crushing boom of its report. Out just beyond the burning hole, she thought she saw a black-hooded head disappear entirely.

Holy shit,
she thought.
What the hell is that?

She could see now that his barrel was much bigger than it should be, and as she followed behind, she toed one of his empty casings on the ground with her boot. It was fifty-caliber. Then she remembered hearing about the .50-cal Beowulf – a custom receiver and barrel for the M4, and mags that held ten of the giant half-inch slugs. And those rounds could shoot straight through engine blocks. She also remembered someone telling her that when you put all ten rounds out of that thing, you had half a pound of lead heading downrange.