ARISEN, Book Eleven - Deathmatch (19 page)

The first target she saw was: the attack helo – exploding.

No, wait, it hadn’t exploded – something had just exploded on it. Hovering over a section of wall 150 yards away, ninety degrees from the section the Seahawk had just peeked over, it faced the interior of the courtyard. Inside of which, everything in sight was either burning, blowing up, already blown up, dying, dead, dead but running – or all of these things at once. The side-mounted autocannon on the Black Shark was firing short bursts into anything that moved. Though Kate wasn’t sure how they thought they could make things worse.

But as the explosion on its right side cleared, Kate saw the guy who had fired the RPG. He was standing on the wall’s parapet, about halfway between the two aircraft, facing the Russian one. He was now trying to load up a new rocket into his launcher.

Kate took a bead on him – but she honestly wasn’t sure whether to drop him or not. An RPG-7 could be a deadly threat to the Seahawk. While the heavily armored Black Shark might shrug off an 85mm shape charge, the thin-skinned American helo would not. But, at this moment, hopeless or not, the Somali was at least trying to knock down the Russian helo.

So maybe he was worth keeping alive.

Then, as Kate hesitated, she saw the strangest thing – and the question of whether to keep him alive became academic. Panning her sight over and up, she saw the right-side cockpit glass of the Black Shark lift up and open. And then she saw the pilot lean out, right arm extended, holding a small machine pistol or PDW… and then use it to just spray the ever-loving shit out of the RPG gunner – a long, accurate, rolling burst of full-auto, emptying what looked like a big-ass magazine.

The Somali’s RPG tube dropped from his hands, his arms windmilled – and a thick spray of red mist and viscera erupted from him as dozens of rounds tore into him. Kate had the impression he was on the verge of coming apart completely. Instead, he fell flailing into the undead lake filling the courtyard below.

Je-SUS
, Kate thought, pulling back from her scope. That was something you didn’t see every day. When she put her eye back to her sight, she saw the pilot had withdrawn both arm and weapon, but was now sticking his head out, inspecting for damage from the RPG hit, mainly on the right stub wing. There didn’t seem to be much, if any. And finally Kate saw the most amazing thing of all: it wasn’t a him.

The pilot was a woman.

And Kate had her right in her sights. And yet she hesitated before taking the shot. Maybe it was just surprise. Maybe it was a feeling of solidarity with another female soldier, one in a hard job for women to get or do in the military.

Or maybe she was just aware the autocannon on that helo was still going, and still exploding al-Shabaab guys off the walls. Hell, the pilot had just personally knocked one off herself. And those were the same al-Shabaab assholes who had imprisoned Kate down in the dungeon below them. And who had also killed most of her teammates, her best friends in this world: Brendan, Kwan – and Todd, who she had loved more than any brother. So, yeah, Kate had absolutely no problem seeing the al-Shabaab garrison being systematically exterminated, their dark fortress reduced out from under them.

And maybe that was why she didn’t fire on the helo pilot.

She startled and snapped back to the moment as the cockpit window slammed closed. Whatever her reason, or combination of reasons, she had hesitated. She hadn’t taken the shot.

And now the moment was gone.

Putting the Boot In

Interior of the Stronghold

“Up
where?
” Handon barked, keeping himself in Baxter’s back pocket, the three of them leaping up dark stairs, Henno in the rear. Smoke was filling the stairwell, along with the sounds of panicked voices shouting in Somali, gunfire, and the crescendoing roar of hundreds or thousands of dead closing in.

“Air traffic control tower!” Baxter said over his shoulder.

Wait – what? Oh, the hell with it.

Handon knew they had little choice but to keep going up if they wanted to live. The dead had already flooded the lower levels, and they could hear the screams below. Slightly more problematically, surviving al-Shabaab guys were also climbing for their lives – and Henno was having to spin and engage them.

They finally burst into open air, in one of the few surviving guard towers. Handon only hoped the Black Shark wasn’t planning on changing that fact in the next few seconds. He scanned around to get a visual on it – and immediately spotted both helos, each holding hover over a section of wall, one north and the other west.

And it looked like the Black Shark was pedal-turning to its left to engage the Seahawk – which reacted by putting its nose down and blasting forward, right toward them in the guard tower. But Handon knew it couldn’t run from the attack helo. Its laser-guided missiles would take down the Seahawk in seconds at this range.

But the Seahawk didn’t have to run from it.

Because now a whole new set of rippling explosions blossomed across the surface of the Russian helo – at the same time as a sonic boom tore through the air overhead, assaulting the eardrums of everyone left alive in it. It was a third aircraft, power-bombing down into the scene at hundreds of miles per hour, its Gatling cannon making a sound like ripping open the sky.

Thunderchild.

Their top cover was here – finally.

“
Result
,” Henno said, nodding once over his rifle’s reflex sight. But he didn’t lower the weapon.

Because they were all still in a gunfight.

* * *

“Yahoo, you’re all clear, kid!
” Kate yelped from the back of the Seahawk. She knew by rights that was the F-35 pilot’s line to deliver. But what the hell.

From her spot at the door, Kate was first to see the supersonic stealth fighter putting the hurt on the Russian helo. Somehow, it was still there when the smoke cleared, seemingly shrugging off a pasting of 25-mil as it had two RPG hits. But in the next two seconds it disappeared – even the mighty Black Shark turning tail and running. Five seconds ago, it had been the apex predator in this habitat. But now the king of the jungle had arrived.

And no one fucked with a lion – or an F-35.

Ali was already leaping back into the main cabin of the Seahawk, which now moved all around them, G-forces trying to pull them to the deck and the rear, as Reich put their nose down and headed for that surviving guard tower, to extract their team while the tower still stood – and was still above the level of the flood tide of dead.

Kate unclipped from her safety harness to make room in the door for Ali and Juice. From their body language, it was obvious they intended to be up front to pull their guys to safety.

She got ready to back them up.

* * *

Al-Sîf knew Baxter was smart, and rarely did things for no reason. So, seeing him sprinting for one of the buildings, he leapt out of his own hole and followed the pumping limbs of the white boy, making it in ahead of the rampaging dead. But he lost him once they were inside. Then again, al-Sîf had a pretty good idea where their former drone pilot was headed.

Unfortunately for him, he had to make his way there through the chaos that now gripped this place. The al-Shabaab guys still breathing air were in a total panic – as the exploding, burning, ravening vortex of the Stronghold collapsed around them. At one point, he had to shoot two of his own guys, as they came around a corner and took panic shots at him. Unfortunately for them, he had a superior weapon to their AKs, plus body armor.

Their bodies hadn’t even hit the dirt before the front edge of the surging horde of undead fell on them. The dead were inside now, lapping at al-Sîf’s heels, and the two fresh bodies slowed them just enough for him to throw himself into a stairwell, slam the door, and start leaping up. Survival meant going up, fast.

And going up might even mean salvation.

* * *

Handon clocked the UAV ground control station (GCS) in the corner of the guard tower, and now got why Baxter called this the air traffic control tower. What he was a lot more concerned with was the roof of the gazebo-like structure. For a second, he was afraid they were going to have to climb up on it to get pulled off – and up there they’d make outstanding targets. The Russians had been driven off, but there were still a lot of armed jihadis in here, and plenty of potshots were already coming their way.

But, all credit to Reich and Muralles, they brought their sleek bird into a hover with its 54-foot blades spinning inches over the roof, and the left cargo hatch just within leaping range of the main platform. Handon moved to boost Baxter over first.

“No!” Baxter said. “I’ve got to do something!”

There was no time to argue, so Handon turned to Henno and interlocked his fingers. With no hesitation, he put his boot in Handon’s hands, leapt up onto the wooden railing – and pushed off through open air, and across into the swaying helo cabin. He made it with a foot to spare, rolling to a stop. Ali and Juice were there to pull him in, but ended up mainly getting out of his way.

Handon went right behind him, climbing up and shoving off with his back leg. Due to the vagaries of wind and aeronautics, the helo lurched away while he was in midair, and he landed with half of him inside and half out, legs kicking at open air. Ali and Juice leaned out and dragged him in.

Kate stood ready to help, but there was no room at the hatch, and the others seemed to have it. Plus, they were in the two safety harnesses, so it seemed smarter to let them take it. Still, she looked with concern past them, down to Baxter.

One of the last members of her own team still alive.

* * *

Breathing like a sprinter, hyperventilating, Baxter removed a fragmentation grenade from his webbing, pulled the pin, and stared at the GCS. On the very day of the fall, he had risked his life running back into their burning safehouse to retrieve it – and it had saved the lives of everyone on his team, allowing them to punch out of Hargeisa and escape.

But eighteen months later, during their bloody assault back into the Stronghold, Zack had convinced him not to risk his life again for it, so he left it behind. And it almost killed them shortly after, firing a Predator-launched Hellfire at their gun truck, and another at their bush camp, leaving them homeless in the ZA, which not a good place to be homeless.

Baxter had learned his lesson. The GCS and the Predator were too dangerous in the wrong hands. He let the spoon of his grenade pop, opened the lid, dropped the grenade inside, then closed the cover again, and finally climbed up on that railing.

And he leapt.

* * *

But he wasn’t going to make it. Kate could see that with instant and terrible clarity. The reason was much worse than gusting wind. It was someone targeting them with RPG fire –
accurate
RPG fire. One of the sparking warheads whooshed right under their nose, causing Reich to climb and lurch away.

Baxter flailed at open air, arms finally slamming into the cabin deck, armpits and vest pressed against the edge – but the rest of him hanging and swinging out below. And in that instant, both Ali and Juice were facing away, as they finished dragging Handon to safety.

Kate fell forward between them and grabbed Baxter’s arms. And over the top of his helmet, behind him, she could see the door to the guard tower blast open again.

And al-Sîf come barreling through it.

* * *

The erstwhile al-Shabaab commander didn’t even slow down. Seeing the hovering helo, he powered himself up onto the railing and leapt across himself. Bigger and stronger than Baxter, he managed to get half his body across the lip of the hatch, just beside where Kate was hanging onto her teammate. As Reich corrected, and the helo lurched back toward the tower, al-Sîf began trying to scrabble his way in.

But he instantly felt a looming presence over him – and when he looked up, he found Henno glaring down at him. And the Brit didn’t look like he was about to help him in.

Hanging on for dear life, al-Sîf yelped up at the big soldier, “You said you’d take me!”

“And you said you’d deliver fucking Patient Zero.” Henno put the thick black sole of his assault boot directly in al-Sîf’s face – and then, his full weight behind it, he put the boot in.

As the Somali rocketed down and back toward the platform, he could hear Henno shouting after him:

“And a deal’s a deal, ya cunt!”

* * *

Leaning out even farther, Kate managed to grab Baxter by the drag strap on the back of his vest. She then used all the upper-body strength she had to haul him inside. As she yanked, Ali and Juice reached down to help, and Baxter’s center of gravity finally passed over the lip – just as the entire airframe rocked from a massive explosion, a hit with an RPG.

Baxter stayed where he was, held solidly by Juice and Ali. But Kate, squatting over him and leaning halfway out the hatch, pitched forward…

And she tumbled out, headfirst.

* * *

“RPGs!”
Muralles yelled over ICS.
“We gotta go – NOW!”
He was a highly trained military aviator and combat veteran, and he knew that on any given day he might have to hold hover under fire. But right now he was looking directly into the faces of multiple RPG gunners running along the parapet toward them, decreasing the range from “close” to “point blank.”

The Seahawk had survived that first glancing RPG hit. But in a few seconds, these guys were going to put one right into his cockpit. And then they would all die – air crew and operators alike – as the aircraft plunged to the ground in a maelstrom of twisting flame and metal. Right then.

And right there.

* * *

Much like five seconds ago, Kate was using every bit of her upper-body strength – only now to avoid falling to her own death. It was just twenty feet to the ground below the guard tower, and she could survive the fall. But it wasn’t dirt down there.

It was death. Death on a stick.

As she looked down past her air-pedaling boots, she could see hundreds of rampaging dead, in all three flavors, some of them gnawing on al-Shabaab guys, many of them still alive and shrieking. In fact, at any moment, a Foxtrot was likely to spot her, pull a zombie Michael Jordan, and drag her right off the platform.