The Flood (38 page)

But she immediately realized how insane that was. Then again, it wasn’t a whole lot crazier than what she was seeing in front of her face.

And then motion at the edge of the clearing caught her eye and she panned rapidly again – only to see the young blond kid, Baxter, the one who had driven the gun truck out of Hargeisa, wading out into the center of all this. Ali had no idea what he thought he was doing there – but it wasn’t enormously smart. The kid could get seriously hurt in the middle of that shit.

But at least it interrupted Handon and Henno’s murderous collision course – if only for a minute. Ali used that time to do another visual sweep of the forest slopes around them. The complete dissolution of authority and their team structure – which was happening even sooner than she had feared – didn’t mean that she could stop being vigilant in overwatch. She still had a job to do.

She panned by something in the shadows – then panned back in a panic.

There.
She saw it now. She’d convinced herself it was her imagination the first time. But not now. Now she was wide awake. She hadn’t imagined it this time. She couldn’t have. If she had, it would mean she was losing her mind. And she couldn’t allow that to happen. She wouldn’t allow it.

No, there was someone out there, down in the forest – someone watching them, even as she was watching for him. He was gone by the time she panned back.

But deep in her bones, she knew who it was – who it had to be. It was that accursed Spetsnaz sniper – Ali’s nemesis. And he was not just out there
somewhere
.

He was
here
. Up on the mountain with them.

It was impossible, of course. How could he be here in far northern Somalia? Had Alpha been followed, all the way from Hargeisa? All the way from SAS Saldanha in South Africa? It was conceivable – just barely. But, then again, if she really had seen him, that meant he could see her, too. He was far too good not to. And a line of sight was an open shot. So why the hell was she still breathing?

Yeah, it was all totally and completely impossible. But Ali knew, down to the bottom of her soul, that it was also true. Either she had utterly lost her mind, or it was true. Somehow, Spetsnaz was here.

And her nemesis was in play.

Now redemption was coming.

Or, at the very least… a reckoning.

But God Save Us

JFK - Fantail Deck
[30 Hours Ago]

Handon, Fick, and Commander Abrams all stood at the railing of the carrier’s fantail deck, watching the last of the supplies being loaded onto the shore launch, which bobbed gently in the deep darkness beside the
Kennedy
’s dock below.

Even as the sailors finished their loading work and filed back up, the operators who were going on this mission, Alpha and MARSOC, began to file by and down the ladder. Like Handon and Fick, all were fully kitted up in assault gear, and all carried weapons – most conspicuously their assault rifles, but also pistols and melee weapons – as well as radios, blowout kits, and pouches bursting with ammo, all of which said: they were going into the shit.

But their expressions said they wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

Commander Abrams felt an impulse to shake the hand of each man, or woman, as they filed by. These guys were, after all, going off now to save the world – and everyone’s hopes rode with them. But, then again, he knew they wouldn’t be too interested in accolades. These were quiet professionals, they were doing a job, and they neither needed nor expected applause.

So instead, Abrams turned to Handon and Fick and asked, for the thousandth time, “You men have everything you need?”

“Good to go,” Handon said.

“All squared away,” Fick added, nodding.

With this, Juice filed past them, last in the train. He put his hand on the railing of the ladder and started to descend – but then hesitated.

“What is it?” Handon asked.

Juice paused, nodded, and spat tobacco juice over the railing. Then he looked at Abrams. “Hey, Commander,” he said.

“Yes?”

“Do we know what happened to that helicopter full of Spetsnaz dudes?”

“What – the one that ambushed the CSAR mission? And that Ali fought?”

“Yeah, that one.”

“What about it?”

Juice paused and spat again. “What I mean is: did it make it back to the
Admiral Nakhimov
before it sunk?”

Abrams paused and his expression darkened. “We don’t know. Not for sure.”

Juice nodded and didn’t say anything. But he was thinking:
We better hope like hell it did
. Because, as Homer had warned them, a Spetsnaz Naval Brigade had a theoretical wartime strength of 1,300 commandos. Obviously, that many wouldn’t have fit on the battlecruiser. But, then again, they had no idea how many might have already been on shore.

They already knew there was the team that had fired the Starstreak missile that took down their Predator drone, and was of totally unknown size. There had been at least two Russian helicopters in the battlespace – the Ka-60 transport, and a Ka-50 attack helo. Both, it appeared, were currently unaccounted for. And, without proper satellite or AWACS coverage, they couldn’t even rule out the possibility that there were other Russian warships in the region.

Juice, along with the Marines, had fought and chased off a dozen Spetsnaz.

But God save us if we run into the rest of them
, he thought. He spat again, nodded to the commanders, and finally descended the ladder under his heavy insertion ruck.

This was it. Abrams looked at Handon and Fick and said: “Command Sergeant Major. Master Gunnery Sergeant. Deploy your team. Godspeed and good luck.”

Fick grunted. “Yeah, some good luck would make a change.” Not feeling like carrying it down the narrow ladder, he instead tossed his ruck over the railing and down onto the dock – where it skidded a couple of feet and nearly went into the water, part of it left hanging over the edge.

As Fick climbed down, Brady looked at the ruck and yelled up at him, “Hey, what the hell are you doing, Master Guns?”

“Oh, you know – bangin’ bitches and makin’ money.”

“You should be more careful, man,” said Graybeard.

“Hey,” Fick said, hitting the dock. “Do I go where you work and start knocking dicks out of your mouth?”

He threw first his ruck and then himself in the back of the boat, Handon climbing in after him. Reaching behind his own head, Fick banged his fist twice on the bulkhead the pilot sat behind.

“C’mon,” he grunted. “Let’s get this over with.”

The engine fired up.

And the little boat burbled off into the darkness.

Epilogue: Notes From Underground

Red Square - Inside the T-14 Armata Tank

“Hello? Hello?”

But Aliyev cursed himself for a muddleheaded fool – he could see perfectly well that the lights had gone out on the radio, and his connection to the
JFK
was gone. How the thing had any power to start with would remain a mystery. He slightly imagined somebody must have driven the tank around, powering the battery from the alternator, sometime in the last two years.

But it didn’t matter. It was just his restless mind kicking its legs again.

The important thing was: he had convinced them. Simon Park had believed him. That in itself was a minor miracle. That the American scientist was alive at all, that he was on an American aircraft carrier, that he had nearly perfected a vaccine for the plague, and that Aliyev had been able to reach him… well, those were all additional miracles on a scale he didn’t even have the strength to expose his mind to. Some things were so weird they could only happen in real life.

But the main thing was: they were coming for him.
They’re coming for me!

Aliyev slid off the radio operator’s seat and dropped down to the bottom of the tank, sprawling out in the cramped darkness that glowed green from his chem-light. The order of the day now was definitely to make himself comfortable. He figured at best, he had a long wait – and, at worst, an eternal one. There was still absolutely no guarantee they’d succeed in getting him out of there.

But it was out of his hands now.

Hands
. Speaking of which, dead hands were still slapping all over the outside of this steel behemoth, that dead meat rain continuing to fall on the tank’s exterior. Aliyev grunted.
This whole thing would be so much easier if the dead had other interests
, he thought.
If they forgot about the living a little quicker… or ever…

It was still at least conceivable they might eventually wander off, and he could make his escape out of there on his own. It kind of came down to what happened first – that, or him dying of dehydration. He checked his bug-out bag. He’d started with what was supposed to be three days worth of water, carefully rationed. But he hadn’t found any more on his refueling stops, and hadn’t had the time or breathing room to go poking around for it, so he was down to about a day and a half.

Super-annoyingly, he’d tossed the empty bottles. Now, he looked around for something to piss in, which he suddenly badly needed to do.

There was nothing.

Ohh, goddammit – this is gonna suck…

He took a deep breath in the green-tinted darkness, which was suddenly feeling a bit claustrophobic. Okay. He’d dealt with much, much, much, much bigger problems than the urine issue, most of them in the last thirty-six hours. He would work this one out somehow.

He just had to settle in, keep his cool – and wait for the cavalry.

Then, suddenly, muted through the heavy armor of the tank, he heard what sounded like silenced gunshots, coming thick and fast and heavy, from somewhere outside. This was punctuated by the banging of footsteps, what sounded like big face-stomping boots, up on the body of the tank above him.

Aliyev looked up at the hatch above.

Then he checked his watch.

No. Fucking. Way.

* * *

Why, oh why, did I not learn how to lock the damned hatch? I had all eternity!

This – namely, not locking shit – was a serious ongoing problem with him, one he was evidently doomed never to solve. And one day it was going to get him killed. Most likely today. Because now Aliyev was hanging on to the inside of the tank hatch for dear life, as someone or someones on the other side tried to haul it open.

It had taken him two seconds to work out that the Brits and the Americans had
not
gotten a rescue force to him in six minutes. Whoever was outside right now was someone else. And something deep in Aliyev’s bones told him he did
not
want to be rescued by these guys.
I mean, in theory, okay, maybe.
But he hadn’t had a great experience with the Russian survivors he’d met so far.

And he was also hyper-aware of sitting at the exact epicenter of the former Soviet Empire – and of Putin’s resurgent Russian one, which in its way had been more oleaginous and menacing than the first.

No, thank you very much, all things equal, Aliyev would stay in his tank.

But of course he didn’t stand a chance in this hatch battle. After only a few seconds it was pulled firmly up and open – and Aliyev almost along with it.

Behind it in the black night were spectral figures with pointy NVGs for faces, and bristling with weapons. Both the night-vision goggles and the rifle barrels were pointed right down inside at him.

“
Ne shevelis’
,” said a slightly loud but extremely deep and rumbly voice.

Aliyev didn’t move – at first.

But when strong and unyielding hands reached down and dragged him out of the hatch, he spontaneously started his best kicking-and-screaming routine.

“
No!
” he yelped in Russian. “
You can’t! I’ve got to stay here! I’ve got to sta—
”

The kicking didn’t seem to bother these guys, but the screaming did – and a gloved hand, with a super-hard plastic covering on the knuckles, slugged him right in the mouth.

“
Zavershenie ebat’ vverh, Kazahskij chervja
.”

Aliyev wasn’t sure how they knew he was Kazakh – okay, after all these years, he hadn’t completely lost his accent, but it wasn’t like totally obtrusive either – and he definitely objected to being called a worm. Nonetheless, he did actually shut the fuck up, and immediately. Also, his vision went wobbly, and his consciousness woozy, over the next few seconds – from that brutal punch in the mouth.

And in those seconds, he was able to make out at least a dozen similar wraithlike figures, all dressed the same, all with night-vision goggles, all with very big guns, on and around the outside of the tank. The ones on the ground were shooting again, in all directions, defending the position from the ranks of approaching dead. They all carried what looked like AKs – except blacker, sleeker, and higher-tech, and with accessories slapped all over them: scopes, laser sights, silencers, grenade launchers, motion trackers, chainsaws… Aliyev didn’t even know the hell what.

And all around the tank, as far as he could make out in the darkness, were the bodies of destroyed undead in Red Army overcoats. Dozens or maybe even hundreds of them. All the ones that had recently been chasing him so energetically back and forth around the giant square.

At least they got theirs
, Aliyev thought.

Now his new captors, having got him out on the ground, proceeded to hog-tie him, ankles and wrists, arms behind his back, and then hoist him up from four corners and carry him off, the whole group moving away from the tank and into the yawning darkness of Red fucking Square.

The last thing Aliyev saw was those history-bloodied cobblestones, now covered in black gunk and debris and shit and two years of post-civilizational neglect, going by two feet under his face, as they carried him along face down.

And then he lost consciousness.

* * *

But he woke up again only ten or fifteen seconds later. He’d only been punched in the mouth – and had probably only passed out due to the stress and exhaustion anyway. He initially still couldn’t see much other than the cobbles going by beneath him. But if he really worked at it and craned his neck, he could look forward.