ARISEN, Book Eleven - Deathmatch Read online

  ARISEN

  Hope Never Dies.

  First published 2016 by Complete & Total Asskicking Books

  London, UK

  Copyright © Michael Stephen Fuchs

  The right of Michael Stephen Fuchs to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any other means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the author. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  About the Author

  MICHAEL STEPHEN FUCHS, in addition to co-authoring the first eight books of the bestselling ARISEN series with Glynn James, wrote the bestselling prequels ARISEN : GENESIS and ARISEN : NEMESIS (an Amazon #1 bestseller in Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction and #1 in Dystopian), as well as Book Nine (#1 bestseller in War, #1 in Military Science Fiction) and Book Ten (an Amazon overall Top 100 bestseller). The series as a whole has sold over a quarter million copies. The audiobook editions, performed by R.C. Bray, have generated nearly a million dollars in revenue. He is also author of the D-BOYS series of high-tech special-operations military adventure novels, which include D-BOYS, COUNTER-ASSAULT, and CLOSE QUARTERS BATTLE (coming in 2017); as well as the existential cyberthrillers THE MANUSCRIPT and PANDORA’S SISTERS, both published worldwide by Macmillan in hardback, paperback and all e-book formats (and in translation). He lives in London and at www.michaelstephenfuchs.com, and blogs at www.michaelfuchs.org/razorsedge. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter (@michaelstephenf), or by e-mail.

  ARISEN

  BOOK ELEVEN

  DEATHMATCH

  MICHAEL STEPHEN FUCHS

  For 1SG Don Harper – for your service, goodness, and friendship (and the awesome militaria). SUA SPONTE.

  “But you will chase your enemies and they will fall before you by the sword; five of you will chase a hundred, and a hundred of you will chase ten thousand, and your enemies will fall before you by the sword.”

  – Leviticus 26:7-8

  “What was the lesson here? Simple. Don’t quit. Never quit no matter what. Keep going until someone tells you to sit down. Keep going as long as you’re able to move, no matter how poorly you think you may be doing. Just don’t quit.”

  – Eric L. Haney, Inside Delta Force

  The Beginning is the End is the Beginning

  Djibouti–Ambouli International Airport

  Hailey “Thunderchild” Wells bloodlessly grips the control wheel and throttle lever of an aircraft she wouldn’t have expected to be piloting if she lived until the end of the ZA. All around her, the Bombardier Dash 8, a big turboprop passenger and cargo plane, rattles and crashes as it accelerates down a rutted and overgrown runway, accelerating madly toward takeoff.

  Unfortunately for Hailey, as well as everyone else on board who would like to escape Africa in this thing, it is also accelerating directly toward another aircraft – a Russian attack helicopter, a Kamov Ka-50 “Black Shark.” Battle-scarred and menacing, it bristles with laser-guided Vikhr (“Whirlwind”) anti-tank missiles, 122mm rocket pods, and a 30mm autocannon – all of them pointed directly at Hailey’s face.

  And it is hovering over the end of the runway – exactly in the airspace the plane will have to pass through in order to take off.

  Even if the Russian pilot chooses not to turn the plane to flaming wreckage and kill everyone on board, there is no way they are taking off through it. And there isn’t a damned thing Hailey can do about it.

  “Oh, fuck it,” she says out loud. She pushes the throttle into the console. In games of chicken, in her experience…

  The bigger player usually wins.

  * * *

  Outside the hurtling plane, blasting and bouncing down the runway alongside it, are more than a half-dozen vehicles – SUVs, muscular pick-up trucks, even a couple of American Humvees – all of them bristling with weapons, as well. There are mounted 7.62mm and 50-cal machine guns, stacks of RPGS, and at least a dozen tattooed, scowling, and heavily-armed Spetsnaz – Russian special-forces commandos.

  This caravan of badass is now racing the aircraft – trying to pull ahead and cut it off, to keep it from leaving the ground.

  Right now, many of the occupants of the caravan are also trying to keep from being murdered – by Predator, who stands in the back of one of the open-bed trucks, bellowing, and bodily pulling occupants out of their seats and hurling them like rag dolls over the side and onto the blurring tarmac below.

  Some of the Spetsnaz in the other trucks are targeting Predator with their weapons – but he is moving a million miles an hour. Others, in the truck he’s in, are trying to grapple with him – but he’s nearly seven feet tall, 325 pounds, strong as Odin, and fast as a rattlesnake. He relieves the front passenger of his rifle, then his pistol (when he draws that), then knocks his knife away with a vicious backhand slap – and finally picks him up by the strap on his plate carrier and hurls him out entirely.

  The screaming man hits the tarmac, bounces once, and disappears.

  * * *

  Just behind the cockpit, the front-left hatch of the plane is open – and US Army Staff Sergeant Kate Dunajski peers around its edge, curled around her M4 assault rifle. She steels herself and leans out into the blasting air, bringing the rifle to her shoulder and taking aim through her ACOG red-dot sight at the hovering attack helo directly ahead.

  But before she can even line up a shot, an incoming high-velocity round smashes the edge of the door frame, inches from her face, shattering and sending bullet fragments into her flesh. Reflexively, Kate ducks back inside, then hits her radio.

  “There is a fucking sniper out there, and he has got me seriously dialed in…!”

  * * *

  On the outside of the plane, First Sergeant Aaliyah “Ali” Khamsi clings to the edge of the bucking right wing, both her rifle and her body hanging down and swinging with the wild motion of the plane. She starts to pull herself back up to safety, but another incoming round hits the fuselage in front of her, sending bullet fragments into the bandage on her cheek – which is already covering wounds from previous near misses.

  “Yeah, roger on the fucking sniper. Over.”

  Ali shakes her head wearily.

  Oh, GodDAMMit – not THIS sonofabitch again…

  * * *

  Master Sergeant Jake Redding of Special Forces ODA 555 (“Triple Nickel”) leans out a hatch and engages the pursuing Spetsnaz convoy with his Beowulf .50, the two-inch slugs from which can penetrate an engine block. In this case, they easily penetrate a windshield and cause the driver’s chest to explode through his body armor.

  But that same vehicle also mounts a Browning M2 50-cal heavy machine gun in its open bed, the gunner of which now targets Jake, and the hatch around him starts erupting with impacts. He pulls back inside, but it doesn’t matter – the high-powered rounds tear through the plane’s fuselage, and then the bulkhead inside. Jake is hit and goes down.

  Stepping up to take his place in the hatch is Agency analyst Baxter, carrying a Milkor six-shot multi-grenade launcher. He leans out, sights in on the hood ornament of the lead vehicle – and fires off all six 40mm grenades. The truck’s nose goes into the tarmac and
the entire three-ton vehicle tumbles ass over teakettle, launching Spetsnaz guys out of the bed while doing flaming backflips down the runway at high speed.

  One down.

  Always a Way

  Camp Davis, Near the Summit of Mt. Shimbiris, Northern Somalia

  [Twelve Hours Earlier]

  The bullet-pocked, soot-streaked, and gore-splashed Special Forces gun truck shuddered up the dirt path, emerging from the thick forests that blanketed the lower slopes of Mt. Shimbiris, rumbling into the softly breaking dawn on the mountaintop. It looked like it had been through the wringer, flailed, pummeled, and then shat out the other side.

  “Joe Shit the Gun Truck,” as Juice had first called it.

  It was followed closely by a lumbering white SUV, a v8 Toyota Land Cruiser, which also had a Level III armor package due to its previous owners being private security contractors. This was the vehicle the survivors of U.S. Army Special Forces ODA 555 (“Triple Nickel”) had scavenged and used to get around in, before frantically getting the gun truck running again – when it had suddenly appeared they might have a mission for it.

  Seeing the USS John F. Kennedy steam into the Gulf of Aden, two days before, had changed everything for them.

  Ultimately, Triple Nickel had opted to leave the SUV a few miles outside Hargeisa, before blasting in to rescue Alpha in the gun truck, its 50-cal minigun cutting a channel through the sea of multi-species dead rising up to submerge then, along with Hargeisa Hospital. Shortly after their escape, they retrieved the Land Cruiser and offloaded half the combined team, which relieved the overcrowding in the first vehicle. While the six operators of Alpha had been pleased to emerge alive from the burning, collapsing, exploding gravity well of Hargeisa, no one had really relished an eight-hour drive over rough terrain with ten people in a single open-bed Humvee.

  Now, as both vehicles rolled into a dirt parking area outside the gates of Triple Nickel’s bush camp, their home for the last six months, the occupants wasted no time in staggering out. Some pushed thick piles of expended bullet casings before them, which spilled and clanked on the ground, even as they enjoyed the blessed relief of getting solid dirt under their feet.

  Command Sergeant Major Handon, Alpha team leader and former Delta CSM, emerged from the front of the gun truck along with Baxter – the young CIA analyst who had survived the fall from its center in Hargeisa, then survived eighteen months in the al-Shabaab Stronghold, before escaping to hook up with Triple Nickel. Out from the rear of the gun truck climbed Predator (former Delta), Henno (SAS), and Noise (recent Sikh attachment and former SAS Reserve).

  Master Sergeant Jake Redding, the Special Forces team sergeant for Triple Nickel, was driving the Land Cruiser, sitting up front with Staff Sergeant Kate Dunajski – their Cultural Support Team (CST) attachment and de facto SF soldier, who had survived the fall of Camp Lemonnier, and escaped with her new team, the very day of her arrival in Somalia. Ali (Delta), Homer (SEAL Team Six), and Juice (The Activity, former SF) rode in back with them.

  Unfolding her limbs and gliding out of the rear of the Tahoe, Ali slung her rifle and nodded to Handon. “I’m going up on overwatch.”

  Handon nodded. “Where to?”

  “On the summit. Single best view in this shitty country.”

  Kate, climbing out of the other side of the truck and coming around, said, “Best overwatch point is—”

  “I can find the top of the mountain,” Ali said. And just like that she was gone, evanescing into the misty dawn. Kate watched her go, wondering what she’d said wrong.

  But she didn’t watch her as intently, or as wide-eyed, as did Zack Altringham – the senior CIA analyst, Baxter’s boss, and the man who had predicted the end of the world – as he stepped out of his tent and walked to the gate to meet the others. For a second, he imagined he recognized Ali – but quickly decided he must have been hallucinating. His lips remained parted, though, as he surveyed the dirt-streaked and heavily armed newcomers, the addition of whom nearly tripled the size of their group, literally overnight. When Zack saw the others off the day before, there had been exactly four of them. Now Baxter pulled him back toward the tent they shared, filling him in as they walked.

  Putting his ballistic Oakley wraps up on his head, Jake hefted his Beowulf 50-cal assault rifle with one hand under the magazine well, then led Handon and the others inside the wire. Sparing a quick look up at the hand-carved “Camp Davis” sign, he closed and barred the front gate, then turned to face the newcomers. “Guess you’re going to want to rearm and refit.”

  Left unsaid was: And then get back out there.

  Handon nodded. He could already tell he and Jake were on the same page. Handon was slightly tempted to ask about the possibility of a hose-down. After a full day and night of operations and desperate fighting in the bush, they all felt like they were wearing half of Somalia.

  But the world was dying, and seconds were precious.

  Jake tossed his head. “Armory’s there. Take what you need. I’ll meet you in the center of camp after I’ve gotten myself and my team squared away.”

  “Thanks,” Handon said, shouldering his ruck and trudging forward, his bruised and battered team following behind – into the most civilization they had seen in a while. The camp boasted a handful of canvas and nylon tents of varying sizes, interspersed with stacks of crated supplies and Tuff-Boxes full of equipment, with a big fire pit in the middle, and a slit-trench latrine and bag shower out at the edge. Rough and minimal – but squared away and operational.

  And someplace to operate from was exactly what Handon needed right now.

  Watching them march off in file, Jake waited for Kate, then said to her, “Take first watch.”

  She nodded and headed toward the one small sangar, which looked like a stubby guard veranda, nestled at the junction of two stretches of wire, in the southwest corner of camp. Instead of falling in at the end of the Alpha train, Predator stepped off in the other direction with her. “I’ll come along,” he said. “Help keep you awake.”

  A tiny part of Kate wondered if the huge man thought she couldn’t handle guard duty. But she dismissed that, knowing the two teams were going to have to work together, right out of the gate.

  Plus she already liked this guy.

  * * *

  There was still a morning chill way up there on the mountain, so Jake got a fire going in the “Dakota fire hole” they had built in the middle of camp. The sunken pit ensured that the flames stayed out of view of prying eyes, dead or alive. And the chimney and airway tunnel ensured that it burned hot, keeping smoke to a bare minimum. A pile of sand and an entrenching tool nearby meant it could be extinguished in seconds.

  The fire was crackling by the time the others had finished helping themselves to the ammo stores and started trickling back in ones and twos and circling around.

  “Thanks for the top-up,” Handon said, Velcro’ing down a last mag pouch on his vest as he took a seat, then laying the vest on the ground beside his rifle. The nearby “camp armory” had turned out to be a corrugated metal shed, and inside Handon and the others had found tens of thousands of NATO standard rounds, as well as standard magazines. There were 30-round STANAG mags for the rifles, 15-round Beretta mags for M9 pistols – and 8-round 1911 mags for the .45s that were rather more popular among special operators. There were also magazine loaders, and several of the Alpha guys spent a good twenty minutes pushing 5.56 or 7.62 rounds into their empties.

  Those with non-standard mags always carefully slotted them back into their pouches when reloading. Yeah, the extra half-second might get them killed – but not as surely as being unable to reload at all in the next engagement. And, this being the ZA, there was always a next engagement. Plus they all knew the next time they found replacements for their special-snowflake mags might be long past the end of the world.

  As the others in Alpha filtered back in, they took up places around the fire – as Zack and Baxter, the Agency men, ferried out stacks of MREs and bottl
es of water. It had been many hours since anyone in Alpha had fired down anything more than a quick energy bar, washed down with hot water from their CamelBaks. Most of them were dehydrated from the daytime heat, the walking and running in full combat load – and the nearly non-stop fighting, much of it in a building that was burning down around them.

  And all of which had gotten them, Handon could not forget for a second, exactly nothing.

  “We tried to radio the carrier as soon as we saw it steam into the Gulf,” Jake said to Handon. “Didn’t get a response. Are you using new encryption keys? And forgot to update us?” Jake sure hoped they were. CentCom had made them all standardize on one encryption key over a year ago. And, as far as he knew, they hadn’t issued a new one since.

  Juice frowned behind his beard. “Unfortunately, no. I’ve been yelling at anyone who will listen over there to update their damned keys on some kind of a schedule. They say they don’t have the resources, and already have more critical problems than they can handle. And, of course, that there are no living enemies out there trying to listen in.”

  Juice, after the brutal fight with Russian Spetsnaz in the South African warehouse, was in a unique position to know there were still enemies out there – as was everyone on the carrier, which had nearly been sunk by a Russian battlecruiser. But Juice figured that was probably a briefing for another time. He shrugged. “We religiously update our team radios every two weeks.”

  Jake smiled at Juice. He couldn’t conceal his pleasure that, of the tiny fraction of humanity that had survived the fall, one of his old teammates – and one of his favorites – had somehow made it this far. The two men had a lot of history together.

  Jake looked back to Handon. “We also tried to contact you through CentCom, but couldn’t even get through – to anyone there. Didn’t they tell you we were here? We’re on their damned survival registry. What’s the point of the thing?”