ARISEN, Book Twelve - Carnage (30 page)

And they were halfway there.

But this also meant they were dead center in the middle of the wide-open flight deck. And in perfect view of the island.

But then they heard shouting go up behind them.

And something that sounded like a cheer.

* * *

Armour watched and waited as Drake pulled Campbell over to a station in the far corner of CIC. The two of them whispered back and forth, and then Armour saw Drake scribbling on a notepad. He tossed it on the station, then sat down in a chair, leaned back – and actually put his arms behind his head.

This kind of pissed Armour off. They were all about to be defeated and then die – and all she wanted to do was get out there and go down fighting. And Drake was literally kicking back. She rounded on him.

“What?” she said. “What’s happening?”

“We’re actually fine,” Drake said.

“What does that mean? What do we need to
do
?”

“Nothing,” Drake said. “We just let the ship keep coasting on the momentum it’s got.”

Amour looked up again at the overhead display. The breached sub with half the Red Army on top of it was only making ten knots. But it was gaining on them.

Drake exhaled, stood up, and looked around the compartment. “Meanwhile, we plan our counter-assault. We get to work on a detailed plan to take our ship back from these assholes who are already on board.” He exhaled and deflated a little. “That’s what I plan to do, anyway.”

Armour and the others were baffled. Why was the largest attack submarine in the world, and an extra 200 more Spetsnaz, no longer something they had to worry about? As Drake set down to the planning, he didn’t order anyone to participate. But his implication was clear.

They were welcome to join him.

* * *

When Lovell, Sarah, and Park reached the edge of the flight deck, a few feet from the outside ladder that led to the winch deck, Lovell hustled the other two down – but then couldn’t resist pausing and looking back. And what he saw there made his heart leap – mainly with pride, but also with hope.

He had tasked Corporal Meyer’s already badly degraded team with a second diversionary action – and another one that reckoned their lives cheap – and Meyer had undertaken it with aplomb. But now, as Lovell looked back, he could follow a shift in the fight no one had expected.

The Spetsnaz defenders, still in their elevated and covered positions, seeing the attackers expose themselves, took down two or three of them right away. But, then, as Lovell, watched, frozen and wide-eyed, it looked to him like they got overconfident. They also exposed themselves, coming out from cover, aggressively trying to pick off the last of the besiegers.

And then Meyer – and Lovell could both see and hear him from this distance – raised a defiant shout. And he rose and went leaping up the stairs of that outside ladder. And without hesitation, every surviving member of his team followed behind him. And the most amazing thing happened: it was working. Not expecting for a minute such an aggressive attack, the defenders were back on their heels.

The diversion had turned into a no-shit legit assault – a serious attempt to take back the bridge, which might even succeed.

Meyer and his guys might still all get killed – probably would, realistically. But they would go down attacking, advancing, on their feet. Not cowering, defending, waiting for death to come and find them. Then again, Lovell would by no means put it past them to pull this off. But he wasn’t going to have the privilege of seeing it. He had to go.

“YEAH!” he shouted at the top of his voice. “GET SOME!”

Then he turned and leapt down the ladder.

* * *

Down on the little platform just below the flight deck, Sarah had gotten out from under the ruck with the gene sequencer in it, and was at work powering up the winch, unspooling the cable, and giving herself a crash course in its use. She’d given her side arm to Park, who used it to cover the narrow metal stairwell Lovell now leapt down.

He unslung the sonofabitching weight of the CRRC off his back, opened it up, got it spread out on the deck, then found the little battery-powered air pump. Soon the craft was bulging and taking shape.

When Sarah turned to face him, bringing her rifle up to cover the stairs, Lovell said, “We’ll lower you down with the boat. Then I’ll send Park after you.” He smiled to try to reassure them both. Maybe this would be an antidote to the furious sounds of fighting and dying still floating down from the deck above them.

“We’re nearly clear,” Lovell said. The CRRC had taken shape enough for him to start slotting in the little outboard motor. But Sarah put her hand on his arm.

“We’re not clear,” she said, darting her eyes up. “Probably every one of those bastards on the bridge saw us come down here.”

Lovell considered. He didn’t know whether they had or not, but their view certainly would have been unobstructed.

“And it’s pretty clear they know who Simon is – and what he’s worth.” She didn’t have to elaborate. The Spetsnaz attack on the hospital, and the nearly successful attempt to seize the lab, were both too well-supported, and too focused, for there to be any other explanation. They had been coming specifically for him.

“All the more reason,” Lovell said, “to get the hell out of here.” He moved to secure the still-inflating boat to the end of the winch line.

Sarah shook her head. “No. You’ll be totally vulnerable while hanging over the side – and then again when you’re down on the water and within easy shooting or grenade range. Someone’s got to stay back and hold this position. This deck. To cover your withdrawal.”

Before Lovell could say, “Yeah, me,” Sarah lifted up the bottom of her tactical vest. Her whole midsection was covered in blood.

“I caught one when we were crossing the deck.”

Lovell put down the winch line, his brow furrowing with concern. “Let me see that—”

But she cut him off and pushed his hand away. “I can already tell you. I’m pretty sure it’s through my liver.”

Lovell looked up into her eye.

“It won’t kill me fast,” she said. “But unless you know of a functioning level-one trauma center out there somewhere, and can get me there in the next hour…”

Undaunted, Lovell reached into his aid kit and yanked out an Israeli bandage – but even as he did, Sarah discharged her rifle right over his shoulder. A dark-helmeted head had peeked over the edge of the deck at the top of the ladder. Lovell pulled away, the hearing in his left ear pummeled, as Sarah fired five more times. It wasn’t clear if she’d hit anything, but the face disappeared – for now.

Lovell faced her again, moving the bandage to her midsection – when Park pivoted and fired over their heads and behind them. Lovell’s hand slapped at the holster on his vest, but there was no .45 there. He’d given it to Raible. Sarah turned, raised her rifle nearly straight up and snap-fired – her first round going right into the face there. The body it was attached to tumbled forward off the flight deck, forcing them to move to either side to get out of the way. It hit the railing with an ugly crack, then pirouetted over the side and fell nearly a hundred feet down to the ocean’s surface.

“Go!” Sarah said, moving to the winch control panel, her rifle still elevated, pointing back and forth from the top of the stairs to the deck edge over their heads.

There was no time to protest. With Park’s help, Lovell pushed the now-inflated raft out over the edge, where it hung on the taut winch line. Park gave Sarah her pistol back, then got in. Lovell grabbed the ruck with the sequencer and lowered it in. He then put one foot in – but managed to lock eyes with Sarah a last time.

“Always count on a cop,” he said. And Sarah remembered now, when they had been alone in the MARSOC weapons room, he had confided in her that his mother was a small-town cop. And that he had always planned one day to become one.

“Hey,” Sarah said. “The job of the police officer is to preserve life.” She nodded at Park. “His, in this case. Take care, Simon – and save the damned world, okay?”

Park nodded, evidently unable to speak.

Lovell climbed in, both of them hanging onto the line, trying to keep the boat steady as it hung in open air. Sarah moved the lever that started the winch lowering, and Lovell held her gaze until the hull of the supercarrier came between them. Both of them nodded. And at the last second he called back, quietly:

“Get some.”

Third Battle of the
JFK

JFK – Cargo Deck

With only herself to cover all angles of approach now, not to mention man the winch, Sarah arranged herself for best effect. A glance over the side told her the CRRC was going to be a couple of minutes descending the hundred feet to the waterline. And then they were still going to be vulnerable out on the water, until they got moving – giving anyone on the deck a clear shot. The expression “sitting duck” had probably been coined for such circumstances.

And Sarah wasn’t going to let Park get taken down now. They had both come way too far. She got a couple of rifle and pistol mags out and onto the winch control console, where she could get to them fast.

But then she realized her strength was starting to flag, most likely from the blood loss. So she went ahead and retrieved that Israeli bandage from where it fell. When she lifted up her shirt and wiped the blood away, though, it was obvious the wound was all the way out on the side of her waist, where only fat and a little muscle had been perforated. There had been enough blood that she knew Lovell would buy the liver story. But this wound definitely wouldn’t kill her – at least not if she stopped the bleeding.

Resting her rifle barrel across the top of the winch console, she started getting it wrapped up. Whatever was going to happen now, she needed to be awake for it. She needed to be operational.

Tucking in the end of the bandage, she leaned back into the corner behind the control station, taking some of the weight off. This also gave her a good look up the ladder, directly ahead of her, and the area of flight deck above where the second attacker had appeared.

Still no one came. Maybe they’d had enough.

Half-sitting, she felt a familiar pressure in her left front pocket. Not taking her eye off the danger points, she used her bandaged left hand to reach in and remove a small leather bifold wallet. When she flipped it open and laid it on the console before her, one side showed an unflashy blue-and-red badge. And in the other was her warrant card, with her photo, rank, and warrant number. This was her warrant from the state and the Queen to serve as a police officer.

Though she had never shown it to anyone but Handon, she’d carried it every day since the fall. Of course she had no police powers outside of Canada, not to mention there was no Canada anymore. But even now, she felt naked without it. And now, standing this last post, she felt like she was fulfilling her true purpose – preserving life. And, with a little luck, maybe even all the life that was left in the world.

Sarah felt like herself again.

Though thinking of Handon definitely opened a can of mental worms. And in a way, she realized this last act was her being faithful to him – faithful in death. Of course she regretted that she would never see him again. But, then again, if he didn’t survive the shore mission, this would be her following him into the dark.

No one on his team seemed to think he could be hurt, certainly didn’t believe he might be killed. He was like a father figure to them, and he made them feel safe. But Sarah knew him – well enough to know that he would spend his life in a heartbeat if completing the mission required it. He’d just been both lucky enough and good enough to get this far without it coming to that. But no one was perfect.

And no one could be lucky forever.

She focused on taking some deep, steadying, oxygen-rich breaths, and then refocused her vision on that ladder and that deck edge above. She could maybe afford to get a little reflective here. She just couldn’t get distracted. Or lazy. They were too close to the endgame.

Two grenades dropped and clattered down on the deck on the other side of the console. She leaned over, grabbed one, and scooped it over the side – but way to the aft – and then the other, which exploded in mid-air maybe twenty feet away, just beneath the level of the deck, half-stunning her. She gritted her teeth, brought her rifle up, and ducked back behind the console.

A face appeared at the top of the ladder and she shot until it disappeared.

Then… silence again.

No – no one could be lucky forever. And she wasn’t nearly as good as Handon was. Sarah considered that she had been willing to die on her own shore mission, recovering that gene sequencer. But somehow, against outrageous odds, she had survived. So maybe it was only now that she would truly atone – sacrificing her life to get that device, and mainly Park, and his guardian, Lovell, the hell out of there.

She looked to her left at a scraping sound. It was the inside hatch to the gallery deck. Someone was working the latch from the other side. Trying not to hyperventilate, Sarah got her pistol in her left hand – which had a hole in it and hurt like hell, but seemed to still work – and pointed it in that direction. Her rifle, lying across the console, her right hand on the pistol grip, still covered the ladder.

And then she saw slack piling up on the winch line spool. That meant they were down. Using the hand with the pistol, she stopped the motor. They were down on the water now – and just needed a little more time to motor away. Sarah had to give it to them.

So she’d survived the cleansing flood on shore. But maybe there was no shortchanging the Reaper in the end – or karma, or fate, or the great wheel, or whatever your conception of it. And this time, unlike back at the cabin, she would be sacrificing only herself. Not her family. Not the brothers she had gained and come to love so much on this journey. Only herself.

The hatch flew open – at the same instant as another shooter appeared at the top of the ladder.

Sarah rapid-fired in both directions.