Arisen : Nemesis Read online

  “Reamer, Rumpus – yeah, we can hear you up there. Welcome to the party. We’re taking heavy SAFIRE and RPGs from that structure, and could use some TGO on it. Let me talk you on.”

  Elijah leaned and pointed through the dim room and bright monitor glow. He said: “I’ll start getting you oriented to the human terrain. Seated in the middle at the radio is Peter Price, our senior Echo.”

  Kate, who had been doing little with her copious spare time lately but cramming on Special Forces and ops in HOA, knew that ‘Echo’ meant he was an 18E – a communications sergeant. She saw he was a big guy, but with rounded shoulders, like he was trying not to take up space.

  “Pete,” Elijah continued, “is our Jesus figure.”

  “Oh yeah, why’s that?” Kate tried to keep her eyes from darting to the cross around Elijah’s neck.

  “Because he always turns the other cheek, his compassion appears to be infinite – and he alway seems to be the one sacrificed so the rest of us can be saved.”

  “Got it.”

  “That’s a-ffirm. We are visual on the treeline.”

  “Okay, that’s us. You see the big-ass rectangular compound one-seven-five meters to our north-east? With the big-ass tower sticking out of the south corner?”

  Kate worked out that the troops in contact were the rest of ODA 555. They were evidently engaged, right that second. This was some pretty dramatic shit, close air support for a real fight out there somewhere. Elijah went blithely on: “On the left, seated, is Captain Brendan Jefferson Davis, our detachment commander. This is his very first SF job, and he’s exactly three months out of training at Camp Mackall. But don’t let the baby face fool you. Brendan’s had two previous combat deployments to OEF as a platoon leader with the 82nd.”

  Kate nodded.

  “On the right, standing, is Master Sergeant Jake Redding, our team sergeant. Jake’s been in SF, and in this detachment, for seventeen years.”

  Kate knew that the team sergeant, the senior enlisted man, was the guy who really ran the ODA – and was the personality around which the whole team revolved. Detachment commanders, often young officers, came and went, but team sergeants were the bedrock and institutional memory of the outfit. Still, seventeen years operational was a hell of a run. The vast majority of guys slowed down by that point, and were kicked out or kicked upstairs. Even from behind, this guy looked like he had seen it all. Something about his posture. Utterly relaxed – but also utterly unyielding. Like he was used to the world bending to his will.

  He probably was.

  There was also the conspicuous fact that his blue eyes had bored into Kate’s soul when he had looked back at her. It was like he saw straight to the bottom of her, before they had exchanged a single word.

  Kate looked on, noticing now that each man had his rifle with him. This wasn’t unusual given the state of unrest around here. But she also knew that SF guys, who were very accustomed to being a million miles from any help or support, and totally dependent on themselves for security, never went anywhere without them. If you went for a piss, you took your weapon. If you went to draw water, you took your weapon and a buddy. When the team ate, two men guarded the rifles.

  “Roger,” the radio squawked. “Visual on compound and tower.”

  “Right, that’s them. Kindly light them the fuck up. Attack vector south-west to north-east, your choice of ordnance. I have weapons release authority.”

  Still regarding the backs of her new teammates, Kate recalled a couple of other things she knew about this team she was joining. She knew that, for every five soldiers who put in for Special Forces Assessment & Selection (SFAS), only one would ever wear the Green Beret. She knew that you couldn’t just be tough, hard, and resilient to do their job. You also had to be smart and skilled, and were required to have foreign language fluency, plus solid cross-cultural skills. You had to be cagey. Political. Extremely adaptable. SF were looking for aggressive, adventurous, intelligent, type-A individuals – but ones who could also do calculated risk and creative thinking, and successfully deal with diplomats, journalists, foreign dignitaries, and warlords.

  Experience and maturity counted.

  She knew that ODA 555, known as “Triple Nickel,” was one of the most exalted teams in U.S. Army Special Forces (SF), which were the largest such unit in the Special Operations Command (SOCOM). She knew they had been among the very first boots on the ground in Afghanistan in 2001, going in with a handful of other ODAs totaling about 350 men, leading and mentoring their Northern Alliance allies and calling in airstrikes, and conquering the entire mountainous and unforgiving country in weeks. This was something the mighty Red Army had been unable to do in a decade of bloody fighting.

  Two years later, Triple Nickel were part of a single SF battalion that had taken the place of an entire conventional division in the northern front in the Iraq invasion – keeping Saddam’s forces tied up there while the conventional Army and Marines drove toward Baghdad from the south.

  “Roger, we are tipping in now. Rumpus, Shotgun, confirm no change friendly positions and clear hot.”

  “Rumpus confirms. You are cleared hot, repeat, cleared hot.”

  And Kate knew that they had been nearly constantly deployed since 9/11.

  She startled as a sound exited the radio that was so unexpected as to be surreal. It was a woman’s scream.

  And then she remembered that her counterpart, the other female CST attached to 555 – everything in pairs – was supposed to have arrived forty-eight hours ahead of her.

  That REALLY didn’t sound good…

  Mass Casualty Event

  Camp Lemonnier - JOC

  At this point, the group of three – CPT Davis, MSG Redding, and SGT Price – who were quarterbacking the 555 split team, went into some kind of maximum overdrive. But Kate quickly lost the ability to track their conversation – because everything in the JOC picked that instant to go completely manic.

  She looked up to see another dauntingly hard man stride up to the General – he wore Command Sergeant Major (CSM) insignia, making him the senior enlisted man for the entire task force – and said, “General, we’ve recalled them, but both Medical Expeditionary teams have run into heavy weather getting back. They’re cut off – many of the surface streets are no-gos, some are blocked with piles of burning tires.”

  They’d both seen that type of coordinated chaos before, and neither liked it one bit. The General didn’t look away as he said, “Okay, let’s ge—”

  Which was when a tremendous explosion whited out the drone video view on the center screen. A truck full of task force personnel had just exploded. It wasn’t possible to see what had caused the blast. IED, probably, or perhaps a big, fast incoming rocket.

  The reports coming in over the open channels went from serious to frantic. And they were backgrounded now by the cries of the wounded.

  On the main screen, Kate could make out guys running forward to the now-burning truck. One grabbed a wounded and prone guy by the collar and dragged him into a culvert by the side of the road. Kate’s guess was the depression provided shelter from rounds that were cooking off in the truck. That’s what she would have done. There was also the possibility of secondary explosions – fuel cans or grenades in the vehicle.

  The General finally looked at his CSM. He said, “We’re losing the initiative.” He shook his head, then asked, “Who have we got in the med shack now?”

  “Skeleton staff. Almost all medical personnel are out on the ground.”

  The General turned and scanned the room. To her amazement, his iron gaze landed on Kate and Elijah. “You. You’re a goddamned SF medical sergeant. Stop playing with your balls, get your ass to the med shack, and do your job.”

  “Sir,” Elijah answered crisply, straightening up instantly.

  The General pivoted toward the other Triple Nickel guys at their station. “The rest of you – get the fuck out. You’ve got your own long-range radios. You’re just going to have to run your op fro
m your own team area.”

  “Roger that, sir,” said the young captain, standing. He didn’t look happy about this, but he did look like he was doing it.

  Already turning away, the General said, “And we’ll have that Reaper, too. Get it vectoring back to our AO, and get tactical control transferred to us.”

  On the screen, Kate could already see guys getting the wounded loaded up on the other truck while the healthy soldiers got out on the street and pulled security – and then started hoofing it back alongside the one working vehicle and toward the safety of the wire.

  She heard somebody mutter under his breath, “Hey, wow, it’s the goddamned Mogadishu Mile all over again…”

  If she hadn’t already sensed it, now Kate knew for sure she had dropped down into the middle of some real Black Hawk Down shit. It was the same thing all over again – the U.S. military trying to help desperate people and getting swarm-attacked for their trouble. Kate figured somewhere Bill Clinton was laughing his ass off. She could also see Apache gunships flying in to cover their hobbled withdrawal – and she knew that big mass of serious casualties would be rolling back in the front gate soon.

  She heard a strained voice over the radio. “Bravo One-Six is Charlie Mike! We are RTB – ETA eight mikes!”

  Kate felt Elijah’s hand on her elbow. “How’s your CLS?”

  “Up to date as of last week.”

  “Come on, then.”

  She spared a last look over her shoulder at the carnage, the chaos – and the guy presiding over it. She could see now his nametape read Præsidium. And she felt an instant dislike for him – based on his obvious dislike for her new team.

  She and Elijah, as well as the other three Triple Nickel guys, were all leaving at the same time – though they blasted off in different directions the instant they exited the JOC. As the others trotted off, Kate could hear Brendan mutter, “We shouldn’t have sent so many – or else we should have sent everyone…”

  Jake, the team sergeant, clapped him on the shoulder to reassure him. “Take it easy, sir. It was the right call…”

  * * *

  “What’s with that dude?” Kate asked, already panting as she struggled to keep up. Elijah moved fast for a little guy. Back in the Q-Course, the infamous Special Forces training, someone had once told him that he never imagined a guy that small could move that fast over rough terrain carrying a pack that was 100% of his body weight.

  “What – the task force commander?”

  “Yeah.” Kate shepherded her breath. She was already getting the impression, soon to be confirmed, that the base hospital was on the opposite side of the camp. Meanwhile, they had a lot of partially open ground to cover. The base consisted of a large number of one-story semi-permanent structures – rigid cylindrical tents with solid ribs underneath – and a few more solid, multi-story buildings. Off in one direction, she could see endless rows of off-white rectangular containerized living units (CLUs).

  It was at one of those that she had first quickly dropped off her personal gear, before being shot at and diving into the JOC.

  Now there were people running in various directions, though not in any coherent one – whatever was going wrong, it kind of seemed to be everywhere all at once. Or else everyone here was as disoriented as she was, with equally little idea of what the hell was actually going on. The sun was heading toward the horizon fast and a breeze was picking up, foretelling night. This multiplied the air of foreboding.

  Everything bad happened at night.

  Elijah narrated, not slowing his pace. He seemed to have plenty of breath for both. “The General’s like most flag-level officers in the conventional forces – has his reservations about SOF, putting it mildly.”

  “Such as?” Kate didn’t quite bring her rifle to her shoulder, but sort of curled around it, like a deadly security blanket. Gunfire was still cracking off outside the wire. No rounds were snapping inches over her head this time, but she still had the strong impression these weren’t strays – but intentional, aimed incoming.

  This sense was reinforced when she heard the percussive BOOM of a large-caliber, single-shot weapon – her eye moved to the guard tower in the nearby north-west corner of camp. Laid out up in it, she could make out a shooter behind a sniper rifle, as well as a spotter with his scope, kneeling beside him. Both wore reversed ball caps, one of which said “USS—” something. The Oakley shades, expensive Peltor ear-pro, and big Trident tattoo on a bicep told Kate these were not angels on their shoulders, watching over them – but rather frogmen. Navy SEAL snipers. She felt instantly safer.

  Though she was also seriously pissed off at whoever was plinking at them. She didn’t mind being shot at herself – but having her teammates shot at was just seriously not okay. It didn’t matter in the least that she’d only been on this team fifteen minutes.

  Looking down again from the guard tower, she realized Elijah was answering her last question, albeit now from ten yards ahead of her. He didn’t seem at all worried about the incoming, his rifle resting on its single-point tactical sling, and his bandana-covered head not ducking all that much. Maybe he figured his God would protect him – or else if now was his time then off he would go with a joyous heart. Kate had her reservations about God people. But you had to admire their serenity.

  “…he also doesn’t like SF poaching his best, smartest, and most experienced soldiers. He doesn’t like that we have our own chain of command – one that operationally bypasses him, the nominal battlespace owner. He’s pretty sure his guys could do our jobs, if they had half our budget and training time. He really doesn’t like our hippie grooming standards. And, if I’m honest, I don’t think he likes our fancy rifles, either.”

  Kate had noticed that most of the SF guys carried SCAR-Ls – the expensive SOF Combat Assault Rifle, Light version in 5.56mm.

  Her head continued to rotate on her neck, trying to generate a coherent picture. There were too many pixels in her field of vision and everything was moving – and judging by those last snippets of drone video she saw, everything outside the wire was writhing like snakes, or aliens. There was also way too much noise, but her gaze was instantly drawn by a guy twenty yards away, running in their direction, who went sprawling out headlong, tangling up with his rifle. At first Kate thought he’d been shot. But he’d just tripped on one of the thick rubber mats they put down between buildings to flatten the mud into submission.

  “What were you doing before you got here?” Elijah said. He was starting to almost sound like he was exceeding his resting heart rate.

  “What, me? Familiarization patrols in Chora for my replacement, inventorying and booking in team equipment, and filling out approximately one metric shit-ton of change-of-station paperwork, which I didn’t have time to do earlier.”

  Elijah nodded. “It was a six-month tour in Urōzgān Province right? So back-to-back deployments now?”

  Kate shrugged. Everybody was doing multiple deployments.

  They reached the med shack – just as the first truck of wounded was hitting the front gate. She was glad she didn’t have the MPs’ job of getting them inside the wire safely. It looked like death on a stick out there.

  Elijah held the door open for her.

  A stray round thwacked into the wood as she entered.

  Rage Boy

  Camp Lemonnier - Med Shack

  The next two hours were a technicolor, Ninth-Circle-of-Hell, nauseating blur. There were blasted and burnt guys, one or two gunshot wounds – and more than a couple of traumatic amputations. There were third-degree burns and a lot of horrifying soft-tissue damage. The wounded, and their buddies, were also pretty gender diverse. This had been one of the Medical Expeditionary Teams that had gotten hit – basically a hospital on wheels, ready at a moment’s notice to go out to the aid of civilians in need of care. As such, they had more female personnel than a combat unit, or the task force at large for that matter.

  No one ever really got used to female casualties. Even Kate d
idn’t.

  Everyone in her old unit had been trained as a combat lifesaver (CLS) – the basics of hemorrhage control, tourniquets and pressure dressings, and packing large wounds, as well as emergency airway management. She’d had additional medical training as part of her outreach role – in Urōzgān they’d done clinics for the locals. Now she piled in everywhere she could lend a hand – often literally, pressing down on wounds while others did the skilled work.

  A lot of the wounded were doing self-care. They were best trained to do it.

  And this first group, from the destroyed truck, were not the last. Scuffed-up peacekeeping units and combat patrols continued to trickle in. Kate got the strong impression these guys had fought their way back to friendly ground. Shit was getting ugly out there. She was very glad she was in here, insulated from it.

  For now.

  She stayed close to Elijah and followed his lead. He clearly knew his stuff. Kate knew that the six-month Special Operations Combat Medic Course, run at the $40-million-dollar Joint Special Operations Medical Training Center at Fort Bragg, was one of the most challenging courses in this or any military. Few got through it in one go. And that would have been only the beginning of Elijah’s training.

  Within two hours, triage was done, the most urgent cases had been stabilized and/or wheeled in for trauma surgery, and Elijah all but dragged her to a sitting position up against a far wall.

  “You’re taking ten,” he said.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Well, I’m not. We’re taking ten.”

  Kate swallowed her objections. She knew that much of what passed as heroism was really about managing your resources. Focus and commitment were great. But the game was usually really about endurance.

  They slumped down side-by-side against the slightly out-of-the-way wall and breathed. Elijah looked over at the pouches under her eyes, and the redness around the edges of them. He said, “You sleep on the flight over?”