ARISEN_Book Thirteen_The Siege Read online

Atop the Gap in the ZPW

  Pain shot through Hackworth’s fingers as he clung to the sharp edges of stone with cracking nails, trying to hold the weight of his too-stout body with late-middle-aged arms, thick dust choking him in the dark, the world shifting and tumbling around him, even as the train-wreck sound of the helicopter crashing into the Wall passed through and fell away below.

  This was where he had leapt to safety in the frozen seconds when it became clear the screaming military helo wasn’t going to clear the top of the gap. But now Hackworth’s eyes went wide in the dark, the matter of his own survival fading to insignificance, and he twisted his neck to look over his own shoulder and down at the ground thirty feet below and behind – just in time to see the crash.

  The Puma medium transport helo bulldozed into a large stack of building stones piled up beside a cement mixing truck, furrowing the ground and taking out the whole site in a cataclysmic collision of metal and rock, work lights popping out, surging blades cracking into the ground and breaking off, debris and bodies pushing out fifty feet behind it.

  But all this was happening far from the Tunnelers’ truck.

  So Hackworth began to breathe again.

  The British Army lorry they had commandeered still sat parked at least a hundred yards away, quietly tucked into the shadowed parking lot of the nearby quarantine area, not far from the sealed-up gate in the huge guard tower.

  Amarie and the others inside were safe.

  Hackworth looked back to the helo crash site, squinting his eyes to slits in anticipation of the explosion. It didn’t come.

  Maybe that’s just Hollywood crap, he thought.

  He gathered his strength to try to climb back up on the wall.

  He couldn’t hang around here all day.

  * * *

  Amarie’s eyes also went wide, and she traded alarmed looks in the dark with Brown and Cherie. The rear of the truck was lit only by a single flashlight propped in the corner. No one spoke, or even gasped, as the two appalling crashes sounded outside, one right after the other, then faded to near-silence – followed only by the sound of spilling and settling dust, and the sharp shouts of workmen.

  Amarie considered stepping out to see what in God’s name had just happened, but then changed her mind. Instead she picked up another empty rifle magazine and another box of bullets. And she resumed pushing the latter into the former.

  Brown had been left here in the rear because he’d been shot in the leg on the flight from central London; and Cherie because she was probably pushing eighty years old. And Amarie? In her case, it was because she was numb and in shock, hardly able to move or function, ever since… but she couldn’t even bear to think about it. She could hardly think at all.

  But she had a job now. She had to focus on that.

  Together, these three had been assigned the job of loading the rifle and pistol magazines by Hackworth, their leader, in consultation with Liam, their young and kidnapped Army truck driver. The fear was that, sooner or later, they were going to need them – to feed into the military assault rifles and pistols they had found crated up in the back of the truck.

  Brown and Cherie nervously blinked and resumed work, ignoring the shouts and tumult outside.

  “Whatever it was,” Amarie said to the others, “it’s their job to deal with. This is ours.”

  She got all the bullets she could in the magazine, straining painfully against the pressure of the spring, then placed it in the pile of full ones. And then she twisted at the waist and looked around, in a habitual and constant impulse to check on Josie, her one-year-old little girl. But Josie wasn’t there to check on. She had been left behind at CentCom, to try to keep her safe. She had been taken away from her mother.

  Amarie choked down a sob for the thousandth time.

  She’d somehow forgotten again.

  Her heart had been torn from her body. It was now beating on its own, far away from there.

  Amarie would probably never see her again.

  * * *

  Back up on what was left of the rebuilt section of ZPW, Hackworth was finally helped up the last stretch by the strong hands of Colley, the giant Moroccan, and his friend and deputy. Both now turned and regarded the scene around them.

  The first thing the pair did was account for the rest of their people. Miraculously, all were still alive, and unhurt. Hackworth himself had been closest to the point of impact. The others had been able to scramble to safety, without going over the edge.

  And now, once again, they had to decide what to do.

  The Tunnelers had been helping with the reconstruction effort all through the night, ever since they made the group decision to stand and fight. To help. To throw in their lot with everyone in London, with everyone else alive. To stop looking out for themselves alone. Because they had finally realized their fates were tied to those of everyone else. They knew they could probably continue surviving on their own – they were good at it.

  But for how long? Certainly not forever.

  And, even if they did, what would their lives be worth?

  Now they had put their shoulders to the wheel. They were merely grunts, laborers, cogs in the rebuilding effort, directed by professional builders, who were in turn directed by engineers. It turned out they couldn’t simply pile up stones on top of what remained of the Wall. They had to clear out the rubble and debris, make one section at a time level again. Then the pouring of concrete began – followed by laying and aligning stones. Beams had to go in to support the whole edifice. Welders stood ready, as cranes retrieved huge sections of steel, readying them to go in as well.

  As manual labor, they had mainly been helping to get the stones up to the top and slotted in, pushing wheelbarrows and hauling on pulleys. It was backbreaking work, and none of them were in fantastic shape.

  And all were already exhausted when they got there.

  Worse, everything had been chaos around them, on both sides of the Wall. On the inside, apart from the small but frenzied military units moving in both directions, some trying to get up on the Wall or out on the ground, others trying to get away, there were jostling cranes, and tractors, and churning cement trucks beeping in the glare and shadows as they backed in, as well as an invading army of Polish builders in hardhats.

  Side-by-side with them, the Tunnelers had worked through the night, in the harsh glare of the construction lights that had been set up. And, worst of all, all along, and all throughout…

  They had heard the sounds of the battle raging down below.

  Not for one second could they forget what they were working for. Because whatever their efforts and sacrifices, they could hear and sometimes see those soldiers on the ground outside, fighting, struggling, and falling – trying to buy more time for the ZPW to be rebuilt. For London to be defended. And for humanity to be saved.

  Or at least kept from total destruction a little longer.

  And the Tunnelers also had a front-row seat to the collapse of the soldiers’ lines, as they’d been forced to retreat through the rubble field – the civilians looking down on the military rout like it was being staged in a lit diorama for their entertainment. They’d seen the rockets go in from the high piles of stones, and the machine-gunners taken down by the Foxtrots loping over the top like hungry velociraptors. And the men on the ground retreating through the towering rocks and debris back to the Wall, turning to engage the packs of runners hot on their heels.

  And then the flight of helicopters, and the men being pulled off the ropes, screaming as they fell – and, finally, the midair collision. Hackworth and Colley and the others had seen it all, the situation going from bad to worse to totally lethal. And even now the battle raged practically at their feet, as the remaining soldiers, having somehow survived and held off the runner packs, fired steadily into the front ranks of the first slow ones, as they staggered out of the rubble field, homing in unerringly on the gap.

  And on what lay behind it.

  Now they were coming from e
verywhere.

  Finally, after the latest disaster – the crashing helicopter taking out half of what they’d rebuilt of the Wall – the Tunnelers had another decision to make. Whether to dig down and accept this terrible setback, ignore the encroaching doom they couldn’t ignore coming for them, and carry on. Or else to pack it in.

  And now, belatedly, Hackworth remembered Liam, the eighteen-year-old Army driver with his child’s face and stick-out comic-book-creature ears, but who seemed to have an old soul inside him, along with an ironclad sense of duty – and who shared Hackworth’s given name, Will. Not seeing him anywhere, Hackworth started to worry. But then he leaned out and spotted him coming up one of the sets of scaffolding below, climbing up stair after stair, one side and then the other.

  And Hackworth’s expression went slack.

  Early on in the reconstruction effort, someone had taken the time and energy to plant a Union Jack flag on top of the construction site, right in the center of the gap. It had been torn and tattered, dingy and dusty and miserable – Hackworth thought perhaps it had originally flown on top of the Wall, then come down in the collapse, later being dug out of the rubble. And it had been clumsily mounted on a bent length of rebar, then stuck in between a couple of stones. Someone had even pointed a light at it.

  But Hackworth realized now it had come down again, taken out by the careening helo.

  And now it was back – yet again.

  Young Liam was carrying it up, climbing the last stretch, a teetering ladder mounted on the top level of scaffolding, holding the pole with one hand. The flag itself was in even worse shape than before, but the superimposed red St. George’s Cross of England, white diagonal St. Andrew’s Cross of Scotland, and red St. Patrick’s Cross of Ireland were all still visible. He stepped off the ladder, looking dusty and determined, and planted it on what was left of the Wall.

  Hackworth looked at Colley, and they both nodded.

  That seemed to decide it. They got back to work.

  * * *

  But less than an hour later, the situation below and out beyond the Wall had gone from urgent to calamitous, from distressing to terrifying. Hackworth looked down upon it and tasted the dread in the back of his throat.

  He could see the soldiers still fighting on the ground, holding off the mass of the dead. But they were continuing to get killed and infected, going down one by one, ticking toward extinction, mainly by the runners and the odd Foxtrot who leapt ahead, through, and over the ranks of the slow ones. Each additional soldier who fell constricted Hackworth’s heart in his chest – because that was one fewer between them and what was coming.

  There were also a few armed soldiers with them up top on the construction site, standing out at the edges and guarding them. But the first of them had already gone down, falling from the gap when a runner pack had gotten through the soldiers below, slammed into it, and caused a small collapse. The guard fell, screaming, straight down into the runners, and was eaten alive, in full view and hearing of those working above. As his screams finally, mercifully faded, Hackworth turned to Colley, who was pushing a wheelbarrow, both of their brows furrowed with concern.

  Shit was getting extremely real.

  And now Hackworth heard another scream, from closer, preceded by a fraction of a second earlier by a shriek. The shriek was a Foxtrot. The scream was Alderney – one of their own. He was the aging French shopkeeper, who had always vigilantly watched over Amarie. But despite that, and his age, he had insisted in going up on the Wall and pitching in with the others.

  And now with a cold wash of horror, Hackworth, followed by Colley, dashed to the sound of his screams, in time to see he had been pulled over by a Foxtrot, which must have leapt over the ranks of defending soldiers, bounded up above the smooth section of Wall at the base, then scrambled up the uneven surface of the rebuilt section above that – then finally latched onto Alderney, and dragged him back down.

  Leaning over the edge, mouths parted with horror, Hackworth and Colley could see two soldiers on the ground turn and pour gunfire into both writhing bodies, the frenzied dead man, and the still living one. Both finally stopped moving.

  Alderney was dead – good and dead.

  What they’d just witnessed couldn’t happen. But it had. Even up here, they weren’t safe. And this was with the defense still holding. Peril was everywhere. And no one was safe.

  “That’s it,” Hackworth said, straightening up and facing his trusted friend. “This isn’t a construction site. It’s a battle.”

  Colley knew where he was going with this. “I will bring the truck up. And we’ll get the guns.”

  Fifteen minutes later, the Tunnelers were all down off the Wall, all standing in a rank, and all armed. And Liam – the only trained soldier among them – was giving a five-minute lesson on the operation of the weapons: safeties, chambering rounds with the charging handle on the L85A2 rifle and slide on the Glock 17 pistol, using the SUSAT optical sights on the former and the iron sights on the latter. And removing and replacing magazines.

  It all flashed by very quickly. Most of what most of them got was: Point and pull the trigger.

  When Liam had finished, Hackworth hefted his own rifle, the unfamiliar weight awkward and cumbersome, tensed his body and scrunched his face – and fired a test shot into the ground. The force of the recoil shocked him. He lowered the weapon from his shoulder and looked at it from the side, then asked, “There are thirty bullets in there?”

  Liam nodded.

  Hackworth shook his head. He didn’t like to imagine how this thing would kick on full auto. And he didn’t intend to find out. Then again, none of them had intended any of this. It was just the surreal and perilous corner they somehow found themselves boxed into.

  Hackworth looked to his people, who appeared equally at sea in the role of half-assed, less-than-half-trained militia, and looking if anything more terrified than he felt. Then he looked up at the scaffolding and ladders placed against the vertical stone surface rising before them. And he tried to steel himself.

  They were going back up on the Wall.

  Ghost

  Onboard the de Havilland Dash 8

  Firing, rapid and steady. Explosions. Banging small-arms fire, the odd grenade blast. The streaking of RPGs.

  Master Sergeant Handon’s team was still being taken under heavy fire from the compound, its dirt face a constellation of muzzle flashes. They still somehow had to break contact and exfil. The dead black of the central Asian night surrounded them. The buzzing of gunfire and rumbling of explosions made the dirt shake around him, vibrating against his prone body.

  No, wait – that was the buzzing of the aircraft engines, four big turboprops, and the turbulence of the air…

  No, not that either. They were stationary on the tarmac now, the engines merely idling. But, yeah, the walls were shaking and buzzing. Something heavy slammed into the outside of the bulkhead beside him. A body.

  With an unspeakable surge of effort…

  * * *

  Handon levered his parched eyes open a fraction of an inch.

  Darkness. It was still dark all around him.

  Until it wasn’t. Shearing muzzle flashes and bright grenade blasts sheeted the porthole glass, illuminating the black interior of the cabin for fractions of seconds, like lightning. With tremendous effort, Handon looked down his body, and saw a dark tube snaking out of his arm. It disappeared behind a boxy machine squatting nearby.

  In the next flicker of light, he looked up – and saw a face. A beard. And a turban. The bearded man sat in silence, watching over him. But he wasn’t looking down at Handon. He was staring rapt at something he held in his hand.

  Out of the object came a voice:

  “Better fuel up fast, ’cause we just touched down in Foxtrot City, motherfuckers…”

  It was a voice Handon knew well, one that was unmistakable. He croaked, trying to respond, but couldn’t make his own voice work.

  PREDATOR.

  The t
hing in the man’s hand was a radio. And it was this the voices leaked out of. A female one now.

  “Nearly halfway!”

  More firing, heavy and violent. Explosions. Moaning. Another body slammed into the bulkhead, shaking the plane on its wheels—

  “Six o’clock! Eight o’clock!”

  “I got it! I got it!”

  Then something came down into the roof overhead, hard.

  “Up top! Up top!”

  “I fucking got it!”

  A blurred figure hurtled in through the open hatch, grabbed something, disappeared again. Handon couldn’t focus.

  “How much longer!?”

  “I don’t know – six minutes? Eight? Sixty percent full!”

  The woman’s voice again. Handon exhaled. It was a voice he knew from somewhere. Also from across some radio net, from some mission long ago. But he couldn’t place it.

  “Shut up and hold the fucking perimeter.” That was another female voice, a different one. But this one Handon also knew well – knew it as intimately as his own mother’s, and would know and hold close until the day that he died.

  ALI.

  A young man’s voice now. “I don’t know how much longer we can hold!”

  The turbaned figure put the radio down on the deck. He looked down and locked gazes with Handon, his eyes shining with compassion and concern.

  Noise.

  He picked up his weapon, and ran out the hatch.

  Handon’s eyes slammed shut again.

  * * *

  Shooting, explosions. Heavy small-arms fire.

  Handon looked again at the constellation of muzzle flashes from the commanding position of the compound. They were pinned down. They were never going to get out of there unless he got this situation handled. They were going to take heavy casualties. The mission was going to fail.

  And he had to make a decision.

  “Dragur,” he said.

  No response.

  “Sergeant Dragur, front and center!’

  Handon blinked heavily and peered around. When he did so, he thought he was back in the plane again. And once again, a figure sat hunched over him in the gloom and the deep shadows, elbows on knees. But this one had a very different aspect. He wasn’t sitting in vigil – but in judgment.