ARISEN, Book Eleven - Deathmatch (22 page)

This was an incredibly dangerous situation to be in.

And it was also incredibly galling. After all they had gone through, suffered and endured and overcome… only to have the prize snatched from out of their hands at the final moment. And Handon still couldn’t quite believe the conclusion he’d come to in his hole with Henno.

Why were these assholes back? Could it really for the same reason we are?

He pressed his helmet up against Ali’s and asked for her take on that question. She said, “I saw that Orca set down inches from Patient Zero. And they jumped out and grabbed it in seconds. Those guys knew exactly what they were there for.”

Handon shook his head in disbelief. “So you think they’re doing the same thing here we are?”

Ali shrugged. “If they’re trying to develop a vaccine, it makes sense they’d need an early virus sample. It’s probably what brought them to Africa in the first place.”

Handon straightened up, shut up, and thought on this.

So the situation was dangerous and galling. But it was also the situation they were in. And Handon knew he had to master his anger and disbelief, which would get them exactly nowhere. Conditions were always changing. And the response to it always had to be the same: adapt and overcome. If they packed it in every time things didn’t go their way, they’d have had very short careers.

Mistaking the nature of Handon’s silence, Juice said, “Damn, top. I saw you run through that wall of lead back there – then survive downrange of a minigun. Clearly God is on your side. Next firefight, I’m standing beside you.”

His expression darker than the storm-tossed sky outside, Handon said, “If you’d been standing next to me back there you’d have gotten shot.”

Juice took his point – dozens of rounds must have missed him by inches.
Fuck it
, he thought.
Can’t win.
He let it go.

But Baxter also failed to pick up on Handon’s mood, and ran with the theme. “We probably all should have died back there. Getting us all out alive… that was nothing short of a miracle.” But then he fell silent and his own expression darkened. And the others knew why – because of course they hadn’t all gotten out. His teammate, Kate, was still back there. For a second, he’d somehow forgotten this. Maybe it seemed too unreal to him.

Finally Handon spoke, obviously not thrilled by the self-congratulations. “Yeah, we keep surviving. But getting no closer to completing our goddamned mission.” He paused, lowered the tilt of his head, and looked around at the others. He then raised his voice to be heard by everyone.

“And not achieving the mission is bullshit. It’s unacceptable. Survival’s not the issue – hell, maybe survival has become the enemy of the mission.” He scanned faces, and saw a look of approval on Henno’s. “Maybe it needs to be the other way around. Maybe we all need to be dead. But finally mission complete. Once and for all.”

He went up front to make another radio call.

* * *

Ali watched Handon turn away and lean into the cockpit. From his hunched back muscles, she could see the tension in his body. She was worried about him.

And for some reason she now remembered a Hebrew phrase she’d learned from an IDF sniper she cross-trained with:
Dvekut baMesima
– literally, “glued to the mission.” Mission-focused. That was clearly Handon now, from top to bottom. It was great as far as it went. But like everything, it could be taken too far.

She thought back to those Spetsnaz shooters in the Stronghold, leaving their fallen men behind without so much as a backward glance. That was being mission-focused up to and past the point of sanity. Past the point of even being human – if, as Ali believed, it was our love for one another that made us human.

And she didn’t like it.

Fighting guys who didn’t fear death, who had no care or compassion for their own brothers, who’d forsaken love and humanity, who had perhaps jettisoned the very categories of morality, of good and evil… well, it put you at a big tactical disadvantage, to say the least.

And Ali was afraid they actually might all end up dead before this was over. Maybe having achieved their mission objective. Or maybe not. But all dead.

She mentally shrugged. As always, there was no choice but to carry on, and deal with the threats they faced. She’d been around the block enough times to know that some battles you chose, or at least could see coming. But others came out of nowhere.

And some fights chose you.

Dude, Not Funny

JFK, Fantail Deck
[28 Hours Ago]

Commander Abrams stood at the railing, wide-eyed and blank-faced, and listened more than watched as the ship’s launch disappeared into the darkness of pre-dawn – and into the greater darkness of the shadow cast by the African continent. And Fick’s last words before stepping off echoed in his head:

Let’s get this over with.

Abrams exhaled into the cool air of the early morning. As usual, their grizzled Marine commander had it about right. And he had definitely captured the general sentiment, shared by everyone both on and now off the carrier. Everyone was tired – exhausted, really. It was easy to feel like they were all out of strength, maybe even out of resilience and resolve – those two priceless commodities Abrams knew the operators had in spades.

Alpha and MARSOC would carry on to the bitter end.

But could the rest of them?

Abrams increasingly doubted this, doubted it even about himself. He just wasn’t able to admit it to others. The commander of the vessel could never show weakness, or exhaustion, or despair. And keeping up this facade of hope, of optimism, of can-do good cheer… well, it created an enormous strain. And that was on top of the already crushing weight of command, of responsibility for the ship, and everyone on it, for the mission. For the survival of humanity.

And the longer Abrams walked around in Drake’s old shoes, the more convinced he became that it was this strain that had done him in. It wasn’t the gunshot wound, or even the grenade blast beside his head. No, it was the heavy gravity field of command – which no one could stand up in forever. It was the loneliness at the top. It was every decision, every buck, stopping with the commander.

And having absolutely no one to pass it to.

Staring out across the water as the coast of Africa slowly grew visible in the smudged morning light, Abrams already ached with his very cells to see that launch come back – with all the same passengers it went out with. But, much more importantly, with their mission objective on board – the first undead man, and maybe one of the last. Then he could put it on a plane back to Britain and steam the hell out of this spooky gulf, and away from this fell continent. This place that had already been so brutal, and so costly for them.

Thinking of it, Abrams decided to go back to the bridge and check on the progress of that damned plane.

But then he hesitated – and decided first to go down the ladder and exchange a few words with the two armed guards, both new additions to NSF, now permanently posted to the rear dock. This watch had been set up ever since Alpha team’s SEAL, Homer, had issued such eerily prescient warnings about the Russians in general – and Naval Spetsnaz units in particular.

Lucky for us
, Abrams thought as he descended the steps,
Homer also singlehandedly sank the Russian battlecruiser.
So that threat was now gone. Nonetheless, their bloody tangling with Spetsnaz – not least those combat swimmers planning mines all over their hull – had awakened them to their vulnerability.

And the ship-wide security posture had changed.

Some.

* * *

A half-hour later, the horizon out over the Indian Ocean was still lightening – and the two dock guards, Nelson and O’Malley, were trying not to fall asleep on their feet. This was despite the admonitions of Commander Abrams, who had clearly dropped by just to keep them on their toes. But with him gone, the dark, the silence, and the lapping of water were making it hard for them to keep their eyes open.

They were also brand new to Naval Security Forces, and had received only rudimentary training so far from Derwin and his cadre. Before this, they had both been Stores crew. But with NSF’s losses, and with the increasing demands of shipboard security, a lot of random bodies were being thrown at the problem. Unfortunately, Nelson and O’Malley’s bodies were both used to working regular daytime watches, and sleeping at night.

They both perked up, startling and turning, at the sound of some indistinct scraping noise. Both turned and raised their rifles toward the black maw of the fantail deck, behind and above them.

“Who’s there?” Nelson asked, his voice sharp. “Identify yourself and your business on this deck.”

No answer came back. There was only the quiet lapping of the dark water against the dock at their feet. The two turned in and looked at each other.

Nelson shrugged. “I’ll go take a look.”

O’Malley nodded. Watching the other ascend the ladder, he kept him carefully covered with his rifle. Only once did he steal a look over his own shoulder, at the glassy black surface of the ocean behind him. And he slightly wondered if he should be covering the other direction, facing out. His training hadn’t extended to this situation. But there was only one of him down there now. And Nelson was his teammate.

He turned to face in again.

* * *

Nelson crested the top of the ladder and stepped onto the fantail deck, which was like a giant porch recessed in the flat vertical stern of the ship. It was also currently very dark, with the outside lights blacked out as a matter of operational security, and very little ambient light yet from the rising sun.

Nelson got his flashlight out and panned it around to first the port and then the starboard side of the deck. He could see cabinets with gear stacked on top of them, piles of crated supplies, a big coil of nylon rope – all of it casting deep shadows behind his light. And there were a lot of dark corners.

He stepped forward carefully and quietly, trying to get his light into each cranny as he rounded on it, while also trying to keep his rifle pointed in the same direction. In a minute, he had cleared all the way to the starboard side, and immediately spun in place while raising his rifle – already laughing at himself for being irrationally frightened of what was in the dark behind him.

There was nothing there, of course.

In another minute, he had cleared all the way to the port side. He then turned and walked back to the top of the port-side ladder, already saying, “Oh, man, we’re just hearing things…” But as he stepped to the railing and looked down, his voice trailed off.

Because O’Malley wasn’t there.

There was just enough ambient daylight for that to be totally obvious. The dock wasn’t small, but the whole expanse of it was laid out and visible beneath him. And unless he swam away, there simply wasn’t anywhere for O’Malley to go – nowhere except up one of the two ladders. He must have snuck up there on one side while Nelson had his back turned clearing the other.

Lowering his rifle, he shined his light ahead again as he walked back toward the starboard side. “Dude, not funny,” he said. But when he reached the end… still no O’Malley.

Brow wrinkling with concern, breath going shallow with adrenaline, Nelson turned and descended the stairs – fast. When he hit the dock, he spun around in a full 360, panning his light and rifle in all directions. But when he completed his circle and faced out again toward the ocean, something drew his eye downward.

Squatting down and peering into the surface of the sea, he imagined the water was disturbed – by more than just the regular lapping that had been putting them to sleep. And that disturbance seemed to be increasing. Nelson leaned out farther, shining his light straight down into the dark and bottomless ocean.

But its beam just reflected back in his face.

Faith Burning Bright

JFK – Officer’s Quarters
[Today]

In the small but private cabin she shared with Handon, Sarah Cameron finished making up the bunk. She folded down the blanket under the two under-stuffed pillows – one indented from her own head, the other still fluffed, or as fluffed as it ever got. Then she dressed out in leggings and a long-sleeve top. The gym on the
Kennedy
’s gallery deck was always cold, even well into the morning watch.

She was up early for a workout because she needed to get it in before Dr. Park started work. There was now an armed NSF guard permanently posted to the hospital, and another outside Park’s cabin, who went on duty as soon as Sarah tucked him in for the night. But she still didn’t like leaving him alone during the day. After watching Park nearly die on their zombie-filled misadventure belowdecks, four words constantly echoed in her head:

You had ONE job!

No one, certainly not Handon, had ever said them to her. They were her own admonition to herself. Because she knew that job was keeping the most important man on the planet safe – which made all her past policing and protective duties fade to insignificance. Even protecting the PM, and the Queen, both of which she had helped with once or twice during big public events in Toronto, now seemed trivial in comparison.

Sarah stole a quick look at her scuffed-up Mini-14 rifle propped in the corner. It was a pretty unimpressive piece of hardware, certainly compared to the beautiful SCAR-L assault rifle Marine Sergeant Lovell had hooked her up with. A strong case could be made that Lovell’s breaking of the rules was the only reason she, or any of her team, had survived the immolation and flooding of Jizan in Saudi Arabia.

But she’d had to ditch the beautiful weapon, trading it for a chance at surviving the flood that Wesley unleashed – which in turn had been the only prayer any of them stood of getting out of there. She still hadn’t told Lovell she’d lost the weapon, and wasn’t looking forward to that conversation.

But then she thought:
Too much ruminating, not enough lifting.