ARISEN_Book Thirteen_The Siege Read online

  Both of them tumbled and disappeared as the huge and rumbling sound of a rockslide or tunnel collapse filled the night.

  The frontrunners in Elliot’s section angled them away from it. But as Elliot stole glances to either side, he could see all of them – every surviving man in 2 PARA – was now about to disperse into that shifting and shadow-blackened rubble field.

  And when he twisted his neck all the way around, he saw…

  The dead were following them straight in.

  Foxtrots in the lead.

  * * *

  Even darker darkness, choking cement dust, narrow passes twisting through towering piles of stone, the gravel and debris shifting under their feet, rock walls shaking around them from the nonstop firing of machine guns and rockets up above.

  And then the screams.

  The men of the Support Company were suddenly firing point-blank. Because the Foxtrots had leapt up after them.

  Now, as Elliot struggled to keep moving, to keep his feet, to keep his stinging eyes glued to the bouncing packs of the men in front of him, his heart was also in his throat, his soul wrung with a toxic combination of gratitude and self-disgust.

  He was grateful because they hadn’t instantly had to turn and fight the Foxtrots inside this lethal lunar wastescape. As their section had reached the edges of it – Elliot still in the last position, reliving the flight from the artillery barrage, death lapping at his heels – not wanting to see or know, he had nonetheless glanced over his shoulder again. And the Foxtrots were nearly on them, leaping and bouncing and shrieking and frenzied with some kind of horrible atavistic blood lust.

  And Elliot knew they couldn’t outrun them.

  They were going to have to turn and fight.

  And he had thought: Oh, God – how fucked are we?

  But then a miracle had occurred – a miracle, and a debacle. Rather than following B Company into the maze of rubble on the ground, the FNs had instead leapt frenetically up the piles of stone, following the louder and deeper noises of the heavy weapons above.

  And now they were just tearing into the Support Company.

  And it was Elliot’s gratitude for being spared that sparked his nauseating wave of self-disgust. Because those were also his brothers up there, facing a terrible end – dying, in fact, to save the rest of the Paras. They were his friends going down.

  They just weren’t Elliot’s section – his responsibility.

  This miasma of emotions tasted horrible in his mouth. Or maybe it was the plaster dust and stench of cordite. Because before he knew it, he and his men were firing again. The Foxtrots might be up above them, attacking into the teeth of exploding rockets and MGs firing until their barrels burned out. But the runners had stayed on the ground.

  And they were in there with them now.

  Someone was going to have to hold them off.

  * * *

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Guv!”

  Elliot didn’t turn at the sound of this. He merely stood at the chokepoint the others had all already passed through, thanking God that there was one, that he had this chance to ensure the men in his section could get away. He fired steadily, rhythmically, more and more rapidly, not using his scope in the dark and the close quarters. In a few seconds it would be point-blank range, anyway. He tried to breathe. He steadied his weapon against the rough vertical edge of stone to his right, engaging from a standing position. He tried to remember how many mags he had left in his front pouches. Because he knew he was about go empty again.

  And then a body slipped in to his left, squeezing into the narrow gap in the channel of stone, small and slippery and hard to stop, and then unsuppressed firing sounded in his ear, a hot shell case hitting him in the cheek just below his left eye. There was barely room for two in the bottleneck. Elliot had intended to hold it alone.

  But he wasn’t alone. It was Beevor. He had come back.

  Black palsied bodies fell in the wider area leading to the bottleneck, piling up, sliding in, and would soon be coming to rest at their feet. Elliot blinked in disbelief. Beevor, probably no more than nineteen years old, had come back to die with him.

  And when, during a pause in what had so far been a six-second mini-battle and holding action, Elliot glanced over his shoulder, he saw Craddock was also stopped, half-turned, rocking on his back foot, yelling at him and giving him a really pissed-off look. And behind him…

  The rest of 2nd section.

  “Fuck’s sake, Guv – not here, dammit!”

  “Keep moving!” Elliot shouted back at them, steeling and lowering his voice to sound like someone who ought to be issuing orders. “Find the Staff Sergeant and rally at the Wall!”

  Then he turned forward – and started firing again.

  And for some reason his constricted panic and fear all bled away. This was it – this was what he was meant to be doing: protecting his brother Paras. Finally, he would do his job, and he would save men’s lives. And it didn’t matter in the least if he fell doing it, whether he lived or died. All that mattered was doing his job.

  And not letting down his mates.

  But as his bolt locked back and he dropped the empty mag out of the well and reached for another, he felt a rough hand on his shoulder, and heard an equally rough voice and working-class northern accent in his ear:

  “Cheeky fucker!”

  And with that Craddock bodily yanked him out of the breach and shoved him backward. Elliot wasn’t expecting this and had no leverage to resist the force of it, and his feet tangled and he tripped and fell…

  Right into the arms of the rest of 2nd section, the other five men, who caught him and dragged him backward, restraining him as he tried to regain his feet and fight his way back to the chokepoint. The second-to-last thing Elliot saw was Beevor firing and reloading and Craddock stepping up beside him, then looking over his shoulder and snarling: “Go!”

  And then something exploded directly above the bottleneck, probably a rocket fired accidentally, or fired point-blank, and all the stone above gave way, and Craddock and Beevor disappeared as the entire gap collapsed and filled in with heavy crashing rockfall.

  Gravel fell on the survivors’ heads as well, the whole area becoming unstable. They had to get the hell out of there, and Elliot turned and ran with the others, utterly numb body and soul.

  Two more of his brothers gone.

  * * *

  Craddock and Beevor had held the line. And not for nothing.

  The slashing glare of brighter lights opened up ahead, as well as the looming mass of the Wall, or what there was left of it. It looked like 2 PARA was going to make it – they were exiting the rubble field.

  But the sound of machine guns and rockets from up above had ceased. The Support Company had all gone down – keeping the rest of them alive, at least for a few minutes longer. And in the sudden and unexpected near-silence, Elliot and 2nd section, running and bouncing and fighting to breathe, fighting not to fall on the shifting stones and dust, heard a sound like a chorus of a thousand blessed angels.

  The thrumming of rotor noise. Engines. Helicopters.

  It was their promised reinforcements. It was 4 PARA.

  Elliot had to battle not to fall to his knees and weep as his men finally emerged into the open area between the Wall itself and the rubble field – because he instantly had to turn and fight again. The runners were still coming through the piles of debris behind them – and he knew those Foxtrots, any that hadn’t disintegrated along with Para rocketeers firing right into their faces, would also be coming over the top.

  And the men now had to establish and defend some kind of HLZ. They had to protect the fresh paratroopers who would be coming down from the sky to help them.

  Everything out here was bathed in the glare of lights set up at various points around the towering construction site, and as the roar of engines and rotors rapidly crescendoed, Elliot looked over his shoulder and saw the power and grace and glory of a flight of British Army Air Corps Pumas soar
ing over the top of the gap in the Wall, their markings and protrusions vivid in the stark light.

  In seconds they were circling and forming up overhead.

  As Elliot took a bead on a runner bouncing out of the labyrinth of debris and squeezed his trigger, he realized this wasn’t a landing zone they were defending – it was a drop zone. There wasn’t enough clear ground for the whole flight to set down, most of the terrain too uneven. And it was also easy to imagine how the pilots and crews didn’t relish the prospect of being on that ground in the first place.

  As the helos formed up, hovering at thirty feet, thick fast-ropes got shoved out the side hatches. And with no delay, fully kitted-up paratroopers grabbed onto them with gloved hands and crossed ankles and began sliding down. Some of them were coming directly into the ranks of 2 PARA, the last of whom were still pouring out of the rubble zone and forming up in the open – but others came down at the edge of the piles of stone, or even onto the piles themselves. The helos had to maintain safe spacing, and everyone obviously wanted to make this insertion happen as quickly as possible.

  Done in one, Elliot thought, catching himself smiling.

  They weren’t alone, they hadn’t been abandoned. They had help, and weren’t going to die out here alone. At least not yet.

  And then… and then…

  Elliot’s hand slapped at his radio pressel with a spasm. But his words choked in his throat, and he realized he had no idea what channel the reservists used, never mind the helo pilots. And as he looked on, frozen in horror and paralysis and helplessness, first one, then another, then a third Foxtrot appeared over the tops of the highest rubble piles, powering and lumbering and leaping and shrieking…

  And they leapt through the glare and blank ink of the open air toward the vulnerable men fast-roping down from the stationary helos – and in one case toward the open hatch of an aircraft itself.

  The first man screamed and struggled as the manic undead horror latched onto his body and tore him from the rope, and the two intertwined and struggling figures tumbled and pirouetted toward the ground, twisting around each other like a tandem parachute jump gone horribly wrong. The zombie tore into the soldier even as they both fell to the man’s certain death on the rocks below.

  Battling through total nervous system paralysis, Elliot blinked once – and he engaged, trying to make shots on the leaping Foxtrots. But it was all for nothing. He couldn’t hit them, and he couldn’t tell if he was hitting them, or hitting them in was in the wrong place, and even if he was they were already airborne and on their way. A second man, and then a third, was torn from the ropes and fell into a twisting swan dive – and then two on the next helo over, seeing this, arrested their descents and started trying to climb back up, too heavy to manage it, and blocked by the men on the rope above anyway.

  Elliot spared a look to either side at his men. They had been firing into the runners emerging in twos and threes, but now all stopped and looked up at the slow-motion horror show playing out overhead, lips parted in disbelief – just as Elliot knew his own mouth hung open, from the dust and cordite again coating his tongue.

  And then his heart took a leap for his mouth – as the pilot of one of the Pumas finally saw what was going on, or else heard the screams, or maybe one of the Paras in back, seeing his buddies being savaged below, shouted into the cockpit… and he revved the engines, and veered away from the rubble pile and the barrage of Foxtrots it was firing.

  Elliot didn’t know whether the pilots were still wearing their NVGs, but he knew the goggles impaired depth perception, and he could only watch in frozen horror as the veering helo rapidly closed the short distance to the next one over, on its immediate right.

  Oh, no no no… Elliot thought, but couldn’t speak.

  But then at the last second, the pilot of the second aircraft saw the incoming danger, or was warned of it by a crew chief, and rolled and tilted his rotors to the side, lurching out of the way with a few feet to spare.

  Oh, thank God. Elliot almost started breathing again.

  But too soon. Because that second helo didn’t stop.

  Its pilot, no doubt frantic to avoid a crash, and fixated on the incoming threat to his left, overreacted – and seemed to be oblivious to the third helo in the formation, which held its hover precisely in place to his right. Either the crew of that one had no idea anything was amiss, or else they were just determined to get the men on the ropes safely to the ground.

  It didn’t move an inch.

  And metal shrieked and blades ground and sparks poured on the ground in buckets as the second Puma slammed into it. For a few seconds, both aircraft stayed in the air, trying to recover and maintain positive lift.

  But Elliot somehow knew both were wounded – mortally.

  “RUN!” he shouted, powering to his feet on a tsunami of adrenaline, and lurching forward like a sprinter. But as the uneven whanging and whumping of warped rotor blades raced at the back of his head and filled his sensory world, Elliot couldn’t stop himself from looking back over his shoulder.

  And he saw it all.

  The second helo, the one that had caused the collision, went down fast, slamming not just into the ground of the open area – but straight into the ranks of 2 PARA, most of whom hadn’t even had time to get to their feet to try and get away. Elliot tried to look away from the bewildering and soul-crushing tableau of a 12,000-pound aircraft with fifty-foot rotors powering into a crowd of helpless men on the ground. He couldn’t manage it, to tear his eyes away, so he also saw the fate of the third helo.

  Shrieking, whining, mortally wounded, panicked men still clinging to the rope trailing behind it, it wound its power all the way up to a horrendous shriek and tried to gain enough altitude to get over the forty feet of wall in the gap and back behind it to safety – but didn’t make it, instead slamming into the stone and scaffolding and a single big crane that topped the gap, not to mention the workers who stood frozen all along it.

  And the sixty-foot-long and sixteen-foot-high aircraft sheared off at least ten feet of newly constructed wall, sending stones and half-dried cement plus body parts hurtling over the back side onto the ground, before crashing down on top of them, invisible to the Paras, but extremely audible, just on the other side of the now re-destroyed rebuilt Wall.

  That’s it, then, Elliot thought, blinking in the darkness brought back by the destruction of half the lights above and behind them.

  That’s us fucked – all well and truly fucked.

  * * *

  “It was Beevor,” Elliot said.

  “What!?” shouted Staff Sergeant Bhardwaj over the sound of his own roaring rifle.

  “Never mind,” Elliot muttered, raising his weapon. He didn’t know why he had just remembered that. He certainly didn’t know why he said it out loud. But it just came back to him that it had been Beevor – he was the one who insisted Elliot take his turn sleeping, when they’d first reached the Wall, and the trench line. When it had looked like they might be safe for a little while, and all so desperately needed rest.

  Now, pausing to reload again, Elliot realized with a shock that might be it. That half-hour or so of kip, interrupted and amputated by the falling of the ZPW, might actually be the last sleep he would ever get. Or that any of them would.

  Actually, he realized, getting his mag seated and engaging again, there’s one last sleep left to all of us.

  The big one.

  But at least they would all go down together – as brothers. Which, when Elliot had been running through the enemy lines of the advancing dead after that artillery barrage, trying to get back to the battalion, had thought was all he wanted. Just to fight and die with his friends. And now he was going to get it – good and hard.

  He’d also wanted the chance to save some, to save just one other Para. But he hadn’t been able to save anyone, not in the end – or not for long, anyway.

  Maybe dying alongside them was the best he could do.

  The firing ramped dow
n as the latest wave of runners coming out of the rubble fell, and Elliot lowered his weapon and leaned his back against the chilling stone at the base of the ZPW. Their backs were now literally against the wall. There was nowhere else to retreat to.

  And there were damned few of them left.

  The reinforcement operation had been a total catastrophe, even for those helicopters that hadn’t crashed. The others had held hover only long enough for the men already on the ropes to get safely to the ground. Then they’d aborted, and bugged out. It was obvious that trying to fast-rope men into that environment was worse than dangerous – it was counter-productive. Elliot wasn’t sure if the crashing helo had killed more Paras than the reinforcement flight as a whole had inserted. But he knew, in the end, only a handful of the reservists had safely made it to the ground.

  “All right, mate?” Bhardwaj asked, turning to face him, putting a hand on Elliot’s shoulder, and looking him in the eye with deep and genuine concern. All Elliot could do was nod and blink his half-lidded eyes. But then he almost laughed, and Bhardwaj realized he was looking around behind him. Turning, he saw what it was: BHQ. The depopulated remains of Battalion Headquarters, where it had originally been set up, right beside the Wall. Amazingly, it was practically still intact: a couple of set radios on tables, camp chairs, some of them now turned over.

  And even a fucking tea service.

  Bhardwaj laughed out loud, and Elliot followed suit, the two of them stoking each other. It was totally absurd, and completely irresistible. They giggled like schoolboys.

  “Shall I be mother?” Bhardwaj managed around guffaws. It meant he was offering to pour the tea. Elliot just heaved and shook his head, as tears made furrows in the dirt and dust on his cheeks, coughing and sputtering and shaking.

  But then he looked past BHQ out to the rubble field. Because he knew that was also the grave site of the battalion’s entire command element – Colonel Briars, their officer commanding, the company and platoon commanders, the senior sergeants. All of them covered in stone and debris, their monument a symbol of the folly and hubris of man.