ARISEN, Book Eleven - Deathmatch (21 page)

And he had a big smile on his face.

Jameson flipped his own NVGs up and regarded the transformer, and the thick bundle of insulated wires Eli had his hand wrapped around. Reading his troop sergeant’s mind, he said, “Great idea. But a facility like this will have back-up power. Not to mention emergency lighting.”

“Sure,” Eli said. “But modern emergency lighting uses small transformers in the fixtures, which step down the voltage from the main current. A catastrophic surge like the one I’m about to hit them with will blow all those transformers.”

Jameson squinted. “You’re sure?”

Eli shrugged. “Not a hundred percent. But emergency lighting is designed for blackouts and hurricanes – not deliberate assaults by clever Royal Marines.” He winked, then pulled Simmonds over, assigning him to do the honors once they got down there. “Don’t fuck it up,” he said.

“Also, definitely don’t fuck it up,” Jameson added. Then he hit the button to call for the elevator.

“Seriously?” Eli asked. He pointed at the stairwell door.

Jameson shrugged. “Any damned fool can be uncomfortable.”

Eli recognized the line – it was from David Stirling, founder of the SAS. He shrugged himself. Why walk when you could ride? And if it was good enough for the Long Range Desert Group, it was good enough for him.

The elevator dinged.

* * *

Running flat out, one Alfa operator grabbed a second one.

“What? What is it?”

Pulling him into a mad dash down the hallway, both of them unholstering their side arms, the first answered, “The elevator is coming down!”

“So?”

“So no one’s scheduled to come back in. And the mobile patrol isn’t responding.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.”

The two of them skidded into the elevator lobby, nearly running into four other Wolf Pack men – ones coming from the team room, though, shrugging into body armor and charging rifles. The six hard-bitten and experienced operators instantly self-organized, taking cover and forming a semi-circular firing squad for whoever emerged from that elevator.

Two beats passed, silent but for the sound of breathing.

The elevator dinged.

The doors slid open.

Inside was a rucksack, sitting in the middle of the floor.

The six operators, as one, tensed to run.

A supernova paroxysm of voracious and implacable fire filled the lobby from front to back, one side to the other, and floor to ceiling, then carried on from there, channeling down the three hallways that let off it, filling them with flame as well.

The explosion immolated, consumed, and vaporized the six Alfa men, as well as the elevator doors, the car itself, and the whole lobby, leaving a gaping hole in the wall, behind which the shaft rose up into blackness toward the surface of the earth.

And then all the lights went out.

* * *

Two seconds after the power went, and as the rushing columns of fire burned themselves out, a smaller explosion sounded down the hall – as One Troop breached the door at the bottom of the stairwell. Behind it, eleven Royal Marines were stacked up, weapons ready, NVGs down, IR illuminators lit, all of them breathing hard – in part from having descended ten flights of stairs, but mainly from tension and adrenaline. They also knew it was going to be murder climbing back up them.

But only for those lucky enough to live that long.

They spilled out and flowed through the bunker, like an implacable army of soldier ants, invading another colony, killing all the occupants – and hunting for their queen.

* * *

Akela stepped out of the interrogation room into the coal-black hallway. He couldn’t see the pistol in his own hand. As the rumbling sound of the explosion finally settled, he could just make out the sounds of suppressed firing – followed by shouts, and the pounding of running feet.

He closed his eyes, took a couple of short breaths, and then moved quickly but carefully toward the team room, all by memory and touch. Once inside, he could hear others scrabbling around, until someone finally got a visible tactical light on, then jammed it in a locker door where it provided enough illumination to work by. Akela got his walk-in locker open, got a pair of NVGs on his head, and then hefted and charged his rifle.

He was about to order the others to grab more NVGs and get them distributed, but they were already doing it. He pointed at the two operators who looked most geared up already. “On me.”

They were reacting to the incursion quickly – and, more importantly, they were reacting well. But Akela could tell from the sounds that the intruders were already deep into the bunker.

And moving fast.

* * *

Jameson nodded as Eli and Croucher touched him on either shoulder then headed off to the left and right – while Jameson went straight up the middle. Those two each led a four-man fire team, while Jameson’s was only three – but the other two were Sanders and Halldon, two of the most reliable men, and he was happy having them on his six.

As they surged forward into the black-and-green subterranean first-person-shooter-scape of what was quickly looking like a significant underground complex, Jameson initially held his fire a lot more than he engaged. His fire team approached, passed, or spotted a lot of people running around in the dark. But the majority of them were unarmed, and didn’t even really present as operational, or in some cases even military. Jameson saw little point in shooting people he could just avoid. Despite what they’d had to do to the patrol in the square, he had no taste for indiscriminate killing.

But then, inevitably, the wheel turned. As they approached an intersection of hallways, Jameson “sliced the pie” to the right, clearing around it fast but a few degrees at a time, knowing Sanders would be doing the same on the left, while Halldon faced forward. And down at the next intersection were two real shooters – advanced AKs, vests, and NVGs. They were facing ninety degrees away, looking back down a parallel hallway in the direction Jameson’s team had just come from.

He hesitated for only a fraction of a second, knowing even as he did that hesitation was going to get him killed. The man in the rear spun to face him even as Jameson squeezed his trigger, missing low and catching him in the throat. The man crumpled forward, hands going for his neck. By this point, his buddy was spinning, sliding into cover, and firing – all at once – engaging more quickly than Jameson could have predicted, or could even believe. Luckily, he was already dropping to the deck and the rounds snapped over his head.

But smashing into the tile floor, he knew in his bones this guy would be able to hit him in his prone position before he could fire again. And at this range, there was little chance he’d miss. But then he saw the man jerk from a hit in the head as his NVGs sprayed glass and plastic, and he pitched over backward. In the same instant, Jameson saw a suppressor and barrel extending over his head, as Halldon pushed out over the top of him, covering his commander, and teammate.

Jameson tried to get his breath. And get back to his feet.

Because they weren’t nearly done. And, as the seconds ticked away, this wasn’t going to get any easier.

Some Fights Chose You

On Board Jesus Two One, Over Central Somalia

Handon thundered back from the cockpit into the main cabin of the Seahawk like a man on a mission, which he was. Those in back worked out what that mission was from the G-forces that once again pulled at them and pressed them into bulkheads and one another.

It was to get this goddamned aircraft – which the pilots had understandably gotten away from the Stronghold and immediately taken in whatever direction seemed safest – getting this goddamned aircraft turned around and flying at its top speed in the direction the Russians had disappeared in. With Handon’s goddamned mission objective, namely Patient Zero.

Now Juice, Henno, Baxter, and Ali all fell into a pile of bodies as the helo came out of a severe banking 180, straightened up and leveled out, put its nose down again, and blasted forward. But somehow, alone of all of them, Handon didn’t fall over, or even lean. It was as if he had his own personal gravity field – as if his will and resolve alone made him impervious to the laws of physics.

As Juice straightened up, Handon grabbed him.

“What the hell happened back there?” he asked.

Juice spat tobacco juice out the gunner’s window as he considered this question, which he knew was a good one. How the hell did the Russians know exactly where and when Alpha would be taking receipt of Patient Zero?

“My guess? Hacked comms. They just listened in on us setting up the whole thing with al-Sîf.”

Handon shook his head in disbelief.

Juice shrugged. “Listen, this could get worse before it gets better.”

“How?”

“If the Russians hacked CentCom’s old encryption key, what else can they hack into? Russian cyberwar teams were as good as anybody before the fall – as good as the Chinese, better than the Israelis.”

Handon cocked his head and considered this.

“We need to think about control connections to things like drones. When we’ve got something flying over our heads with thousands of pounds of explosives, we really want to make sure we’ve got positive control.”

Handon said, “You mean the drone jocks on the
Kennedy
need to make sure they have positive control.”

“Not necessarily.” Juice reached into his ruck and pulled out a device that looked like a hardened laptop, but with video game controls on little wings on either side, and a rubberized antenna. Handon recognized it as a Universal Mini Ground Control Station (UmGCS), used for controlling drones from the field.

“That the one Zorn had in his MRAP?”

“Thought it might come in handy.”

“So you plundered it.”

“Seemed a shame not to.”

But Handon waved this off, along with the concerns about Russian hacking. They had more urgent problems right now, and he couldn’t worry about everything, or consider every possible risk point at once. Right now, aside from actually catching the goddamned Russians, he needed to think through the ramifications of their comms being compromised.

As was common in tight units, Juice read his mind. He tapped his own radio. Handon took his point. Juice had insisted they all manually rekey their team radios every two weeks.

“But this still means our comms with everyone but us are compromised. The carrier. Our air support…”

Juice smiled again. “Thunderchild has got our new key.”

“What – seriously?”

Juice nodded again.

Handon switched to the CAS net and hailed her himself.

* * *

Five thousand feet over the spinning rotors of that Seahawk, a couple of miles north and going 400mph faster, Hailey “Thunderchild” Wells was in pursuit – of that Black Shark. After bailing out of the Stronghold, the Russian helo had dropped down into the ground clutter of the Galmudug bush – but Hailey knew it had to be down there somewhere. She just had to spot it. CIC had reported that, before they were lost to radar, the two Russian aircraft, Orca and Black Shark, had split up and headed in different directions.

And right now Hailey needed to find that damned attack helo. Because while it wasn’t a threat to her, it was still extremely dangerous to the shore team – half of whom were crawling south in defenseless ground vehicles in open desert, the other half piled into an unarmed and unarmored Seahawk.

She intended to find, fix, and finish the threat.

But now her radio went.
“Thunderchild, Cadaver One Actual.”

“Go ahead, Cadaver.”

Handon said,
“Listen carefully. Do you still have our squad’s radio frequency – and encryption key?”

Hailey looked down to her radio display and saw the actual Post-it note stuck on the console. Containing a channel number, and a sequence of two-digit numbers, this had been pressed into her hand by the bearded commando, Alpha’s JTAC, at their last mission briefing. “Just in case,” he’d said.

She was surprised she had even remembered to bring it, or that it had survived in her cockpit this long. But there it was.

“That’s affirmative, Cadaver.”

“I need you to key that in – and switch channels.”

Hailey’s eyebrows went north, but he sounded serious. “Roger, Cadaver, wilco. Meet you on alternate channel.”

She let the plane fly itself for ten seconds while she typed the encryption key on a touchscreen keypad. Then she switched channels.

“Cadaver One, Thunderchild, commo check.”

“Solid copy, Thunderchild. What’s your location and status?”

“About thirty clicks north of you now. I’m going to pursue and destroy that Black Shark. You’re not safe until I do.”

“Negative, negative. That target is a luxury right now. You have to follow the other air contact, the Orca – and you HAVE to stay visual with it. Repeat, do NOT lose that Orca, how copy?”

Hailey considered. Evidently Handon had the same report from CIC she did – that the two aircraft had split up, and both dropped below radar coverage. And it was the second one he was interested in. She got it.

“Roger that, Cadaver. Will reacquire the Orca as priority tasking, and update status then.”

“Thanks, Hailey. And stay on this channel. Cadaver out.”

Hailey switched off – and then took her F-35 into a banking turn that generated significantly more G-forces than even the most agile rotary-wing aircraft on the planet.

Or in history.

* * *

Handon instructed Juice to update Cadaver Three, their trailing ground convoy, about the compromised comms – and to use only their own squad net to talk to them, when at all possible. After that, he considered his next task – and realized it might actually be resetting his head. Because mindset was everything, and his had just had a hell of a shock. It was going to require a big mental adjustment.

He sure as hell hadn’t expected to end up fighting Russian Spetsnaz, or chasing them across half of Somalia to recover their mission objective. None of them had – with the possible exception of Juice. But they were now fighting enemies who were a thousand times more unpredictable than the dead, and a hundred times more skilled than half-assed pirates, or Islamist militia. Enemies who could outwit them, outmaneuver them, lure them into compromised tactical postures. And who also had explosives, attack helicopters, and God knew what else at their disposal.