ARISEN_Book Thirteen_The Siege Read online

  “I thought you said two to four days?”

  They both turned – and saw Lt Col Nesbitt walking up behind them. She’d heard the beeping, too, and was coming in to investigate. Park turned back to the sequencer and read the display again to be certain, not trusting his eyes. But it was true. It had finished sequencing the virus sample from Patient Zero.

  He felt like crying.

  Aliyev pumped his fist in the air and slapped Park on the back. “Yes! Yes! Simon, you’ve done it!”

  Park exhaled. “Maybe God is watching over us after all.”

  Nesbitt snorted. “That I doubt. Sometimes you just get lucky.”

  Park spoke over his shoulder. “Not in my experience. Not in the ZA.”

  Aliyev, still slapping him, said, “This is both alpha and omega of the entire plague…” But his voice trailed off, the jolliness fading from his voice. Park looked over at him, and saw Aliyev’s expression had darkened, though he wasn’t sure why. But then the Kazakh seemed to come back. “Simon, you have got its number – right here. You have beaten the bastard.”

  Park had been smiling, but now that faded, too. “It’s not beaten yet. Maybe the coffin lid is down. We still have to hammer it shut. But now at least the final work can start. Come on. We’ll celebrate if we live – and after we’ve saved humanity.”

  Aliyev slapped his back a last time. “We’re going to make it! It’s all easy sailing from here. All the obstacles have been cleared away – I can feel it!”

  Park didn’t respond. He was already back at his station.

  Patriot

  ZPW – Atop the Gap

  Jameson ducked under a pulley with its block-and-tackle swinging toward his face, dodged the spilling contents of a tumbling wheelbarrow, and cursed under his breath as two hot shell casings smacked him in the neck. He’d never before been caught up in a combination set-piece zombie battle and high-risk construction site rising up into the sky, both proceeding relentlessly, each oblivious to the other, and neither permitting time-outs.

  He eyed with suspicion the huge and hulking crane that sat on its treads behind the Wall, arm soaring high overhead, its heavy-gauge chains hanging and swinging a little too close by. Propped up near it against the guard tower was a gigantic section of steel plate. Jameson guessed this had been part of the Wall before the collapse, and that they intended to use the crane to slot it back into place at some point – somehow.

  But right now, all was chaos at the top of the gap where his men fought. But they had it easy, or at least safe – Jameson could see how much worse things were down below, just by sticking his head out and over, getting a view directly into the Paras’ lines and their desperate holding action out on the ground. He was beginning to understand why this all had to be done at once – the Paras were trying to hold so the Wall could be built back up. And they were all there so London might hold on a little longer.

  Until the vaccine arrived. If it even existed.

  But right now Jameson had blinders on, trying to do the small but critical job of getting his men positioned to best effect – to throw his tiny detachment into the fight, and hope they could be a force multiplier. He knew the accumulated combat experience of One Troop was a rare and invaluable commodity, and could anchor or even turn an entire battle.

  It only took him two seconds of assessing the tactical situation to make his first command decision: he wasn’t sending his men down onto the ground. It wasn’t that he wasn’t willing to get them killed. Actually, he was pretty quickly getting comfortable with the idea that none of them were getting out of there alive. No, it was simply a question of how best to spend their lives – how to extract the highest possible price from the marauding dead before the end. And Jameson concluded that fighting from an elevated position was going to pay higher returns. At the very least, they’d last longer.

  And time was the whole game. Time was everything.

  He ran along the line at the top of the Wall – or rather at the much lower top of the gap in the Wall – trying to keep from sprawling out on stray stones and cement troughs, the low sun and thin morning light not helping any, tweaking the Marines’ positions and slapping men on their backs as they hunkered down and engaged.

  All around them, high-stepping over the prone bodies of the riflemen, builders and engineers scurried and toiled – and these were not combat engineers, just good old British workmen. Hell, listening to their shouts and chatter, Jameson figured most of them were actually Poles, or other Eastern Europeans, which was also standard for London. They seemed to be hanging in, not panicking, and doing their jobs. But they sure as hell weren’t used to doing construction under fire, and Jameson worried about their steadiness. A falling pallet of bricks could get you killed just as quickly as enemy fire, or a swarming pack of runners.

  He reached the right flank of their line, anchored by Colour Sergeant Croucher. “How we doing?”

  “It’ll do,” the big senior sergeant said. “Could stand to get some men up on those ramparts there.” Croucher pointed.

  Jameson craned his neck up to one side and then the other. They were basically sitting in a deep depression in the Wall, where it had mostly collapsed and been partially rebuilt, between thirty and forty feet high, irregular and growing all around them as the builders slotted in stones and cemented them down. But, to either side, the original Wall towered to nearly a hundred feet. Those intact sections also had visible ramparts and firing emplacements, particularly the section with the gate to their left, which was more like a big medieval guard tower. Jameson could see a small handful of soldiers, he had no idea from what regiment, firing down from those positions. He wasn’t sure how to get his own men up there, but the scaffolding and ladders they’d used to get up here into the gap weren’t going to do it. And, anyway, the gap was what needed defending.

  The Royal Marines were the finger in the dyke.

  Now they fired steadily but carefully down over the heads of the Paras below – emphasis on careful. Not so much to avoid hitting their rivals and partners. But because they knew ammo was very quickly going to become their big problem.

  Speaking of which… Jameson thought, as he got hit with another shell casing, then moved past the end of the Marine line to link in with “the militia” Croucher had spotted from the air. He touched the elbow of the first Tunneler he found, and carefully lowered the man’s rifle, safetying it for him as well. The guy looked like he was holding an electric guitar, or maybe a puppy. “Where’s your leader?” Jameson shouted over the maelstrom.

  “There!” the man said, pointing farther along. “Hackworth!”

  Right, Jameson thought, recognizing both the face and the name, and moving quickly down there and accosting the man.

  “You’re reassigned!” he shouted.

  Hackworth nodded, starting out looking half-panicked, then pleased and surprised to see Jameson again – and, finally, profoundly relieved.

  “I need your people ferrying ammo up here!” Jameson pointed down to the big pile of rucks the Marines had left lying on the ground below. With reports that things were going to Hell fast, they had raced straight up top, not taking time to hump the precariously heavy bags.

  Hackworth nodded, then pointed off toward a parking lot with an Army truck in it. “We’ve got more ammo, there.”

  “Bring it,” Jameson said. “All of it. Bring everything.”

  Hackworth looked down at his rifle, as if considering whether to hand it over.

  “Keep your weapon,” Jameson said, knowing the time was coming when they’d need everyone with a trigger finger, however amateur and undisciplined. “But any of your people negligently discharge or endanger my Marines, and I’ll throw you down there to slow the dead – by letting them eat you.”

  Hackworth looked sobered.

  Jameson softened slightly. “Keep your people safe. Do your jobs. Stay out of our way. Go!”

  He did.

  * * *

  Two minutes later, having dashed
the chaotic length of the gap once again – it turned out much of small-unit combat leadership consisted of running around from place to place – Jameson dropped down beside Sergeant Travis, leader of Third squad, and who had commanded in Jameson’s absence during the Moscow mission. Now he anchored the other end of the line, the left.

  “Anyone got a SSARF?” Jameson asked. He meant a laser range finder.

  “Negative, don’t think so!” Travis said, not pausing his firing. He was taking single, carefully aimed headshots on stumbling Zulus about fifty yards out, as they emerged from the rubble field and locked onto the Paras below. Between the men down on the ground, and the plunging fire of the Marines and others, the dead were starting to form large piles out at the edge of the open ground that was the last buffer before the Wall itself. Now the dead were having to climb over the destroyed, which helped.

  But, with dawn having fully broken now, and their elevated position, those up top could also see beyond the rubble – at what was out there coming for them. The dead stretched to the horizon. In every direction.

  “Fuck it, have to eyeball it,” Jameson said, picking out impact points that were a minimum safe distance from the unprotected troops on the ground, estimating both the ranges and the bearings, relative to true north, which he checked against a compass. He took out a small pocket notebook and started scribbling down target packages.

  His radio went just as he’d started. “Major – we’re all set up, emplaced and prepped.”

  But before Jameson could respond, he heard panicked shouting and increased firing, ramping up – mostly, but not exclusively, from below.

  Ah shit, he thought, looking up – and then down and over.

  Not a moment too soon.

  * * *

  Down to four now, Elliot thought. Half the original section.

  Another of his men had just been taken down by a runner that broke through the withering massed fire of the Paras – one either faster or luckier than the others, or just a beneficiary of the law of large numbers. And Elliot knew the law of large numbers was exactly what was going to get them. That it was going to get a lot worse before it got better. And – that it was actually never going to get any better. They could never put a dent in all the dead that were coming for them. However much fire they put out, they kept suffering these small breakthroughs – and they were only going to get bigger. Until the Paras were overrun, and finally wiped out.

  No matter what I do, Elliot thought, I’m never going to be able to keep my men alive.

  Sergeant Bhardwaj stole a look over at the junior man, saw the look of despair creeping across his face, and shouted at him. “I need you to brace up, Walker! Got me?”

  Elliot shook his head to clear it, and rallied. He stole a glance to his own right, at the survivors of his section. He had to stay alive for them. He had to stay effective. And he had to keep their faith alive, somehow. But there had at least been a little injection of hope now. He craned his neck to regard the reinforcements who had slotted into the gap in the Wall above their heads.

  “At least the bloody hats are finally here!” Elliot yelled.

  Bhardwaj smiled. “Hat” was the Paras’ traditional derogatory term for pretty much anyone in the military who wasn’t a Para.

  Elliot raised his specialized sharpshooter rifle and resumed firing, but the bolt almost immediately locked back. That was his last mag. “When’s our next ammo drop?” he shouted.

  The Staff Sergeant just shook his head. “I’ve already radioed the bootnecks up top to make themselves useful and get us something to shoot.”

  “Oh, you’re kidding me,” Elliot said. “It’s the bloody Marine commando bailing us out?” But despite his hardwired impulse to give them grief and abuse, he was secretly relieved, just as he knew the sergeant was. They both knew how elite a unit the Royal Marines were – just like the Paras, in fact. It was always the similarities that rankled, not the differences.

  Still, Elliot thought, this is bad.

  Looking up again, he definitely didn’t see any ammo coming down. Facing a million dead was one thing. Fighting them with bayonets would be another altogether. But there always had to be a way. Some way to hang in, to hang on. He steeled himself and dashed forward to the body of a fallen brother Para – he didn’t have to go far – knelt down, and picked up the dead man’s LA85 assault rifle, slotting the man’s remaining magazines into his own chest pouches.

  But he also slung his own weapon on his back, not ready to part with it. He then darted back to his spot between Bhardwaj and 2nd section. But even as he spun back around to engage, he saw things had gone from bad to terminal, all in seconds.

  A pack of runners had broken through the great mass of stumblers, then another, and another, reinforced by at least a few leaping Foxtrots. All had been hidden by the massive crowd of slow ones, as well as the rubble, but now they were out in the open – and moving fast, with very little ground to get across. There was no way the Paras could stop them in time, or even slow them. And they were coming straight at them.

  Really, they were coming for the gap in the Wall, and what lay huddled behind it – the last remains of humanity.

  The Paras were just in the way.

  Elliot looked over at Bhardwaj. He honestly didn’t know whether to get the hell out of the path of the incursion, or stand there and die with the others. He was waiting for orders, for a decision he couldn’t make himself. But before he had to, the ground out ahead of them started exploding in great surging geysers of dirt and meat.

  He hit the deck and covered up.

  * * *

  “Adjust fire!” Jameson shouted into his headset mic. “Right fifty, drop thirty, fire for effect, ten rounds!” There’d been no time for bracketing, much less laying in target packages for the two sections of mortars, both nicked from CentCom, that he had left to get set up behind the Wall. They just had to go. Now, even as he heard the next flight of mortar rounds whistling high overhead, he kept calling it out. “Creeping fire, walk it in! Adjust in two-mil intervals! Continuous fire! Pour it in!”

  The world out to the front was turning to pure Armageddon – and getting closer fast. Jameson bowed to good sense and survival instincts when Travis bodily yanked him down under hard cover. He let the thundering barrage go on for ten seconds, before remembering that soon it would be in the Paras’ line – and soon after that in their own, up in the gap. “Cease fire, stand fast, cease fire!”

  “Roger that. Standing fast.”

  That was Corporal Sledge, who Jameson had left behind to set up and command the pair of two-man mortar teams. He was a rock, dead reliable – a small man, but ten feet tall in courage, presence, and steadiness. As the explosions ceased, Jameson stuck his head out over the hunk of stone to his front and looked down. The breakthrough had been stopped.

  Hell, it had been liquefied.

  With the returning silence, he could now hear increased firing – and also Croucher’s voice in his ear.

  “Major, check your six.”

  Jameson turned and moved toward the ladders and scaffolding – which were now swarming with soldiers, wearing combat helmets, and the British Army’s characteristic big pouches flopping on the backs of their belts. And, most reassuringly, all of them carried weapons – mostly L85A2 assault rifles, but every eighth or so armed with a Minimi 5.56mm light machine gun, and even a couple of Gimpys, GPMG 7.62mm medium machine guns. The MGs, once emplaced, would make a big difference, perfect for a fixed defense.

  As long as the ammo held out.

  Jameson squinted at the nearest shoulder patch and recognized the insignia of the City of London Royal Fusiliers. They were Army. And they were reservists, what for many years had been called the Territorial Army. But they were fucking here, and Jameson nearly wept.

  The newcomers were not only slotting into available positions among the Royal Marines and the handful of other fighters in the gap. But they also started appearing in thick ranks way up on the parapets and f
iring positions above and to either side on the uncollapsed sections that flanked them. And their fire was already having an effect.

  The situation had been recovered. For now.

  As he caught his breath, Jameson scanned the ground below in the rear, until he spotted the Fusiliers’ command element setting up a mobile CP. He hit his radio: “Croucher, you command. Help get the squaddies slotted in. Be nice.”

  “No worries, Major. I love the fucking TA.”

  Jameson slung his rifle and started climbing down.

  * * *

  “Lieutenant,” said the reservist commander crisply, putting his hand out. “Captain Cartledge.”

  Jameson took his hand. “It’s Major, actually. Field promotion.”

  The captain cast his eye down to the two pips on the rank slide in the center of Jameson’s chest, but then snapped a salute, shifting gears. “Major,” he said. “What are your orders?”

  Jameson turned and surveyed the scene. Kitted-up reservists scurried around two half-ton trucks, unloading equipment and supplies. His eye then went out to Sledge and his three other Marines in their shallow mortar pits.

  “Got any trained mortarmen?”

  “Affirmative. Four sections of 81mm.”

  “Get them emplaced in an arc anchored by the two you see there. And relieve my two crews.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Jameson’s men had been trained on support weapons – on all kinds of weapons – but it wasn’t in their blood. At their core, they were bred for a commando role, not a fixed defense, and definitely not indirect fire from a rear area. Mainly, Jameson wanted his people back together – and all up top.

  He looked back to the trucks. “Ammo?”

  “Both vehicles full to bursting.”

  “Good. The Paras out on the ground are hurting for resupply.”

  Cartledge eyed the big gate nearby.

  “Don’t even,” Jameson said. “Tried it myself.”

  Both of them looked up to the gap.

  Six minutes later, Jameson was back up on top again, commandeering and repositioning several of those pulleys he’d had to duck under – along with a half-dozen of their operators. Very quickly, he had the builders hauling crates of ammo to the top of the Wall. It was backbreaking work, but they got two crates up there without mishap. Now the trouble was getting them down again – the pulleys simply weren’t positioned to lower materials out over the other side. The builders were working to move them, but too slowly for Jameson’s taste. He shouted, directing them, but the language barrier crept in.