Arisen, Book Eight - Empire of the Dead Read online

  Mayes coughed again, this time more violently, and Jameson saw a trickle of black blood seep down the side of his mouth and drip onto his uniform.

  “Do you understand what I’m saying? You have to use what is left of our forces to delay the onslaught. If you can win a few engagements, then all to the good. But the main thing is to conduct a harassing and delaying action – so we can have some chance of getting the vaccine rolled out. When and if that happens, you’ve got to start vaccinating everyone left alive – soldiers first, civilian next, in the field and on the run if necessary.”

  Jameson boggled at this. It was as if he was seeing the end days war-gamed out in front of him. He said, “But how is a vaccine going to stop them? They can still kill and devour.”

  “Sure. But with no new victims turning, that means the numbers can’t keep stacking up against us. We’ll have capped the size of their forces. It would also massively reduce the threat of the Foxtrots – they’ll flash through and wound people. But we tape them up and throw them back in the mix.” He coughed piteously, fighting to get his voice back. “And it will mean that everyone left alive can stand and fight.”

  Jameson nodded. He got it. This was their only hope. And it was slim enough. But it was real.

  “You’ll have other problems though.”

  “What?”

  “Riots in the city – order is breaking down. Gangs of looters, some of them armed. Our civic control is collapsing as the noose closes. London might devour itself before the dead do.”

  Jameson shook his head. Or, he thought, the city might fall from an internal outbreak. Just like this place did.

  “I have a lot to tell you, and little time to do it. And unless you can spring me a general out of thin air, you are it. Until someone of rank can get down here from Edinburgh and take charge. But God knows how long that will take, or even if it will be possible now. For now… you’re it. And you just got yourself a field promotion to captain… no, sod it… to major. Consider yourself the new Grews – and a damn sight more capable than he ever was. You can thank the dead for the privilege.”

  Jameson exhaled heavily, the reality of all this hitting him.

  “Okay,” he said. “What do I have to do?”

  Two Knives to a Knife Fight

  JFK - Bridge

  “…What?” Drake looked at Abrams in bafflement. The two were still standing out on the observation deck, having been drawn there by the streaking object rising up from the edge of land. And Drake was clearly stunned in the immediate aftermath of their Predator drone having somehow been shot out of the sky, right over their goddamned heads.

  “Sir, I said we just lost our eyes on the Admiral Nakhimov—”

  But before he could finish his statement, there were more reports pouring in from CIC on the open channel, and Drake was staggering back inside to hear them. The voice speaking now was one of Campbell’s subordinates, a male voice, young. Drake didn’t know where Campbell was. Fully tasked, probably.

  “Bridge, CIC. Be advised, poin—”

  Drake cut him off. “Who the hell did this?”

  There was a tiny pause on the other end as the junior officer shifted gears. “Sir, unknown at this time. We are profiling the missile now. Point of origin was on shore, just north of the naval base.”

  Drake turned around to see that Abrams had followed him back inside. Drake said, “We need to know what the hell is going on with that goddamned shore mission.”

  Abrams stepped up close to him. “Sir, respectfully, what we need is to get some kind of ISR up – and right no—”

  Drake silenced him with his hand. CIC was back on.

  “Bridge, CIC. Missile profiles as a Starstreak short-range MANPAD.”

  The Starstreak was a British man-portable air defense system, like the Stinger – except much higher-tech, more deadly, and a hell of a lot higher-velocity, traveling at Mach 3.5. This made it the fastest short-range surface-to-air missile in the world, and a serious threat.

  Drake knew all this. He was just having trouble calling up the details. As he blinked, it slowly came back to him. Now he had to try to process it – and to decide, and to act. What he said was, “I know I pissed those CentCom guys off, but I presume it’s not the British shooting at us.”

  “No,” Abrams said.

  “So where the hell would the Russians get one of those?”

  “Pretty much any overseas British military base they cared to scavenge.”

  Oh, yeah, Drake thought. The British were the only country other than the U.S. with a significant overseas military presence…

  “Last of her kind,” Drake said, finally.

  “What?” Abrams asked. “Sir?”

  “That was probably the last MQ-1 General Atomics Predator ever to fly.”

  Abrams was visibly trying to disguise his total failure to understand why Drake would be babbling on about something like that. He was on the verge of doing an end-run around the Commander entirely. Seconds were ticking off the clock; and every one of them had potentially lethal implications.

  He decided to try one more time. “Sir, right now we have absolutely no idea what the Admiral Nakhimov is doing. We need to get some kind of air up, to get eyes on them. And we need to do it right now.”

  * * *

  Because they were floating on the landward side of the carrier, Henno and Predator also saw the same bright streak across the sky, originating on land and arcing out over the water, that those on the Bridge did. But it wasn’t coming their way, there wasn’t a damned thing they could do about it – and they had a very heavy dead Russian diver to haul over the side of their boat.

  “Well, I just can’t think why no one thought to put a fish gaff in the bloody load-out,” Henno grunted, as they dragged the body in, and it flopped down into the bottom like a very large tuna.

  The first thing Predator did was flexicuff the body, wrists behind back. Henno snorted in amusement. “Hey, man,” Pred said. “I don’t want to end up like that dude who loaded a dead deer into his truck – only to have it wake up halfway home.”

  “Fair play, I guess. We’re on the hook for this dinghy.”

  They also both knew that only doctors could pronounce someone dead – and Spetsnaz guys were fucking dangerous. However, as Pred rolled the body back over, then got his mask and hood off, the deep blue tint of his face and lips told the tale. This dead man was truly dead.

  Pred patted him down. “No obvious wounds… then again, diving accidents have probably killed more people than syphilis.”

  Henno grunted. “Not divers at this skill level.”

  “Fair point. Hey, look – two empty knife sheaths.”

  Henno’s face remained impassive. “That might be a good sign. No one down there to take those off him – no one but our bonny boy. So Homer lives. What’s that on his neck?”

  It looked like a swatch of tattoo ink peaking out. Pred pulled the neoprene hood further down. It revealed Cyrillic text, which read: “мировые лохи”. Pred looked up at Henno, who squinted in at it.

  “Well, if my sixteen-week intensive Russian module don’t fail me… I think it reads: ‘fuck the world’? No, wait – ‘world fuckers’.”

  Pred snorted. “Nice cheery outlook these guys have.”

  Henno cocked his head. “Eh, might be their unit nickname. Look, it’s on a patch on his gear, as well.”

  Pred wrinkled his nose. “What the hell kind of unit nickname is that?”

  Henno shrugged. “Christ knows. The ones I heard back in the world were shite like reidoviki, for ‘raiders’, or okhotniki—”

  He stopped mid-syllable as the water’s surface to the north of them churned and splashed, and a phhttt phhtt sound whistled through the air over their heads.

  It took both of them a few hundred milliseconds to work out what the hell that was, and then drop down into the bottom of the boat. The incoming rounds were very much subsonic at this point, so they didn’t make that snapping noise of col
lapsing air pockets overhead.

  But they’d still kill them just as dead.

  The wild scattering burst of gunfire, from such an utterly unexpected direction – under the fucking ocean surface – continued for a full 2.5 seconds, kicking up splashes of water, and making the air over the raft a zipping swarm of lead wasps.

  “Dude!” Pred said, finally poking his head and his rifle up over the side of the raft, as the underwater enfilade finally stopped. “The fuck…?”

  Henno was down on his back in the bottom of the boat, weapon on his chest. “Amphibious rifle, mate. Which means there’s still someone else down there. Because I didn’t see one of those on Homer when he went in.”

  Pred shook his head, and tried to peer down past the surface of the water. “Fuck it,” he said. “I’m going in.”

  Henno rolled over and got up. “No, leave it. If he needs help, he’ll find a way to come ask for it. Anyway, you’ll do nought down there but sink.”

  Pred couldn’t really argue with that. But he also found it very hard to sit still and do nothing. Looking around first, as if there might be someone around who would find this silly, he put his rifle down, leaned out over the edge of the boat – and plunged his huge head into the water. Upside down, he panned around, trying to make out something, anything.

  But there was nothing to see.

  * * *

  Homer had ID’d the weapon when he closed with the second enemy diver – the one who had swum up right behind him and touched him on the elbow – and now had it wedged it underneath his left arm. It was an ADS amphibious assault rifle, a very dangerous article.

  Specifically designed for Spetsnaz combat divers, it had a bullpup configuration (magazine in the stock), with a carrying handle above and a suppressor on the barrel – and even a 40mm grenade launcher underneath. It was the first such weapon that could be fired both underwater and above it, allowing Soviet frogmen to carry just one. A quick mag change to different ammo was all that was required when going from water to shore, or when boarding a vessel. The weapon’s effective max range underwater, with its specially designed cartridge, was only about 25 meters at this depth.

  But, luckily, it also had a minimum effective range – namely, the length of the damned barrel – and Homer had managed to get inside its kill radius, as he’d intended.

  The entire magazine the Spetsnaz diver fired off, on full auto, was probably due to his finger being wrenched across the trigger by Homer’s armlock. Thirty deadly darting lead fish left the barrel, raced through the water at a 45-degree angle, and headed for the surface, leaving tiny white trails behind them.

  Homer’s challenge now was to maintain this grapple. If the guy broke contact, and was able to reload, he’d make short work of the SEAL, probably stitching him from to crotch to neck with 5.45mm underwater-optimized PSP rounds.

  Not improving the situation was the fact that, over this guy’s shoulder, Homer could now see yet another enemy diver swimming toward them – at high speed. This one could see perfectly well the fight that was going on. Homer’s days of being mistaken for a Russian were at an end.

  Now he very much needed to finish one of them – before he was facing two. Or maybe facing the whole team, if this spot became a local center of attention. And Homer had absolutely no idea how many of these guys were down here. The water around the hull of the giant ship might be crawling with them.

  With his forearm under the guy’s tricep, Homer wrenched upward with all his strength. He hoped this would keep the man immobilized long enough for him to get a knife out. But the Russian seemed insensible to the pain, and just launched into a very rapid and seemingly well-practiced flurry of dirty tricks – like a boxing combination, but in some bruising aquatic street fight.

  First he put his left hand, palm out, into Homer’s face, dislodging his dive mask and wrenching his head back. He instantly reset that hand, formed a fist with middle knuckle protruding, and popped Homer in the left side of the neck, at the precise nerve point level with his Adam’s apple. Homer knew a hard enough strike to this nerve nexus can cause instant unconsciousness – but in this case just resulted in his chest and arm muscles going instantly weak and numb. Now, with Homer’s grip on him relaxed, the Russian brought both feet up, planted his fins in Homer’s chest – right on that slash wound, which stung like hell again – and kicked off. All taken together, this separated the two of them, the Russian floating smoothly away – with his rifle in tow.

  Homer figured that was it, then. This guy would be skilled enough to reload before Homer could close the distance again. And then it would be over. But he had no option other than to try. The guy might still fumble the reload.

  But as Homer paddled madly to reverse his momentum, catch up, and lock on again, he saw the diver simply sling the rifle back over his shoulder – and pull out a big dive knife.

  Either he carried no spare magazines, which seemed unlikely. Or else he was just such a hard-bitten badass that he relished a good underwater knife fight. Like he just never got enough of those.

  And that was when the second enemy diver floated in, touched the first one on the shoulder, then paddled smoothly out ten feet to the side, while drawing his own dive knife.

  So it was going to be two on one now.

  And Homer was reminded that this was why SEAL training was never fair. Because combat almost never was.

  He desperately wanted to clear his dislodged mask with air from his regulator, and get it back on. But there was no time. Another annoying thing about combat: one rarely got to call timeout for minor equipment failure – and almost no equipment was so minor that its failure couldn’t get you killed. So Homer simply hauled the Russian knife out of his leg sheath again, into a solid underhand grip.

  And he got ready to dance again.

  Only this time with twice as many partners.

  On the upside, he remembered the first Kasatka he had taken off the earlier guy was still floating by its lanyard from his left wrist. He moved that hand in a wax on motion and got the second knife into an overhand grip.

  Knives akimbo.

  Homer suddenly felt very alone down here.

  God surely hadn’t forsaken him.

  But, for the foreseeable future, his left hand was going to have to be his dive buddy.

  The Fight of Their Lives

  Jesus Two Zero - CSAR Mission, Over the South Atlantic

  So now the CSAR mission had a second casualty – the rescue swimmer, who was rolling around on the deck, clutching his face, and screaming. And the main cabin was looking like nothing so much as a field hospital on the losing side of some blood-drenched nineteenth-century battle.

  But there was nothing Ali could do for him in this moment – not least because she was the last man standing back there. And it was back to the first rule of battlefield medicine. She couldn’t help anybody if they were all dead.

  One reason the Spetsnaz sniper had been able to make his impossible two-in-one shot on the door gunner was that the Seahawk’s pilot had, with the cessation of incoming minigun fire, leveled them out again. Ali could almost hear the two of them up there start breathing again, when the metal storm that had been lashing them blew over.

  And so it was now, when they were flying nearly level again, that Ali got a second, better look at her nemesis – the opposing sniper in the other helo. She slid back to the right side, brought her weapon up onto the window ledge, and sighted in. Her opponent’s success so far had perhaps made him cocky, because he had fractionally raised his profile in the doorway, just a bit back in the shadows of the interior.

  As his head came into view and passed her crosshairs, Ali instantly took the shot – and then, as per long practice, looked to see where it landed, so she could adjust if necessary and fire again. The first thing she saw was that she had missed – because the head was still there.

  But then, just as the light shifted, her scope landed for a fraction of a second on his face, and what she saw was: a scarred,
and scowling, and tattooed mask of hate, pasted on what was obviously a complete and total hard man. His visible tattoos included a dagger sticking through his left eye; and, rather tauntingly, a red target reticle, or crosshairs, circled around the right one. The final tattoo on his face was text. It read: “мировые лохи”.

  Nice, Ali thought. Classy dude.

  Much scarier than the hardness and the hatred, though, was his coolness and poise. His soul somehow came out of those cold green eyes, and the message it transmitted was: I’ve got all eternity to kill you.

  With a start, Ali realized she was hypnotized and ogling, when she should be fucking shooting. So she took her second shot – sparing the ballistics calculations and shooting on instinct and inference – in the same instant he took his.

  His incoming round clipped her ICS headset on the right cup, tearing the whole thing from her head.

  But hers clipped his fucking ear. Most of the ear disappeared, the rest left hanging off. Then he spun out of view again.

  And she definitely wasn’t going to consider this dude to be down. Not until she personally saw a round go through that fucking bullseye – which he’d been thoughtful enough to paint around his eye for her. Because she damned well wasn’t going to let that go to waste.

  And also because: fuck him.

  For some reason, a wave of peace now washed over Ali and calmed her hyper-firing nerves and neurons, as she realized for the first time, and for certain:

  She was in the fight of her life.

  * * *

  Whirl… parry… paddle… flutter-kick… stab… try to breathe…

  This was like fighting off circling sharks. Homer was deep into it now, trying to take on two skilled combat divers at once. SEALs learn an unbelievable amount about fighting, and more than virtually anyone about diving. But actually fighting underwater just doesn’t come up all that often, so it wasn’t a big focus.