Arisen : Nemesis Read online

  The attacker was close enough that she saw all four rounds hit.

  The guy didn’t go down, but just kept coming, arms reaching out for her as he closed the last ten meters.

  Motherfucker. Body armor – it had to be.

  But that could still mean either soldier or jihadi these days.

  She took two head shots, and then pivoted and took two on the guy on the left, even as the first dropped and slid into the dust at her feet like a buffalo. The second collapsed a little farther out.

  She looked down in the dim and hazy air now, at the bizarrely shaped head of the second one. He was wearing night-vision goggles. Last time she checked, the only people who had those were…

  She pushed the thought away. She didn’t have time for it – and down that road madness lay. Instead she scanned jerkily around to both sides.

  Jake and Elijah were nowhere in sight.

  Peering through all angles of the plane, now she heard someone call her name and spotted them – at the door to a big sheet-metal structure with a semi-cylindrical roof. They were holding the door, shooting intermittently – and shouting at her. And also, she belatedly realized, pointing.

  In her tactical training, an instructor had said something that stuck with her: “Whatever else is going on, it’s always a good idea to just take a look behind you from time to time.”

  She did.

  There were four figures fast-walking straight at her in a converging line. They had the firelight before them this time, and she could see they were an even mix of soldiers and jihadis. And they were ignoring one another completely, in their haste to get to her.

  Zero fucking sense…

  She faced forward again, tensed her fluttery leg muscles – and launched herself at the doorway of that sheet-metal structure. In six seconds she was there.

  Jake slapped her ass inside like she was a relay runner, Elijah collapsed inside behind, and somebody pulled the door shut. She banged into the hard steel of a large vehicle, and turned to see Jake and Kwon pushing two fuel barrels and a crate of something in front of that door.

  She safetied her weapon. Muscle memory again. Range safety.

  And she tried to restart her breathing.

  Alamo

  Camp Lemonnier - 555 Garage

  Kate had put out some rounds in her previous deployments. But in Afghanistan you usually couldn’t even see who you were shooting at. You pretty much just shot in the same direction as everyone else. Even in the attack last night, she’d really only been plinking at muzzle flashes.

  Today had been different.

  “I’ve never shot a living person at close range before,” she said, when her breathing and heart rate had gotten down to the point where she could say it without her voice quavering.

  “I think you still haven’t.”

  That was Jake. He didn’t elaborate on this comment, but instead unslung his weapon and laid it down on the hood of one of the vehicles, then placed his hands palms-down to either side of it. He looked around at the others, who were wedged into the narrow spaces around the trucks. Kate noted with some awe that all the trucks had either two or three mounted machine guns: a mix of M249 SAWs, M240 medium machine guns, and .50-cal M2s – the big boys.

  Eighty percent of the floorspace of the cramped garage was taken up by the three gun trucks, parked nose to tail. Much of the rest was maintenance and repair equipment – a vehicle lift, wheel aligner and balancer, workbench and tool rack, some welding equipment. All of this was lit by a single fluorescent strip hanging overhead.

  Terrible noises, muted now, could still be heard from the other side of the ridged steel walls. Occasionally, something actually bumped or banged into them. Nobody actually jumped in response. But everyone was jumpy. And nobody stood farther than arm’s length from their weapons.

  “Ideas?” This was Brendan, standing slightly back in the shadows, back pressed against a wall.

  “Yeah.” This was the guy Kate hadn’t actually met, the blond and tanned one. He wore staff sergeant stripes and no nametape. “Shouldn’t we be out there?” He gestured vaguely at the wall. The others got it.

  “Doing what, man?” This was Kwon.

  “Helping. Shooting.” He paused there. No one needed, or dared, say that they’d all just been out there shooting – mostly at other American soldiers. It hung in the air before them.

  The blond guy tried again: “Helping to defend the camp.”

  “Dude,” Kwon said. “The camp is gone.”

  “Then what the hell are we still doing here?”

  “They’re both right,” Jake said, looking across at Brendan. “If there’s any defense left to mount, then we should be part of it. And if there’s not, then we should get the hell out of here.”

  Brendan’s youthful but serious face was impassive as he considered. “Our current position seems secure. What if we Alamo up here for now – and wait and see how things develop?”

  Kwon shook his head. “And what if this structure catches fire?” He nodded at the gasoline barrels.

  “Or we get surrounded – by too many to drive through.” This was the Jesus figure, Peter Price. He looked to her like a regular guy caught in a bad situation.

  Kate wanted to ask him, “Too many what?” She doubted she was the only one. But she kept the question to herself.

  “Okay,” Brendan said. “We hold tight for now – this structure stops both rounds and sick people, so my sense is we’re safest right here. We keep doing dynamic risk assessments, ready to pivot and blast out of here if the building is breached, or if the risk changes… or else when things quiet down enough outside to slip out. Meantime, I want a supplies and equipment manifest.”

  “Same as for the aborted mission last night,” the blond guy said.

  “Let’s run it down again.”

  “Sure.” He did it from memory: “Extended combat load-out: the trucks are completely topped up with fuel and loaded up with spare fuel cans, ammo cans, radio batteries, more ammo, and three days worth of water and food. Aso more ammo – linked 5.56, 7.62, and .50-cal, plus most of our 5.56 mags. Also Jake’s anti-elephant rounds, whatever he stores those things in. One AT-4 in each truck. Personal weapons, ammo, and grenades.”

  “And casualty care gear,” Elijah added. “One of the two big med rucks.”

  Brendan nodded, and exchanged a look with Jake. They seemed to be thinking the same thing: that this would get them where they were going.

  Wherever the hell that was.

  * * *

  “What happened last night?” Kate asked Elijah. The two of them were now apart from the others, leaning across opposite sides of the sloping tan hood of the frontmost vehicle, at the front of the garage.

  “We never made it out the front gate.”

  Kate arched an eyebrow.

  Elijah shrugged. “We were fully prepared to blast our way out of here. But it was total bedlam outside the wire – as in, twenty feet outside it. We might have gotten through the gate, but would have been instantly jammed up. There was no point.”

  “So what did you do all night?”

  “Manned the walls.”

  “Until…?”

  He didn’t answer. His look seemed to say: You saw it yourself.

  She took another look around the garage. The gun trucks were obviously souped-up, heavily modified Humvees. None had visible up-armoring, and the one in the front was actually without doors or a roof, just heavy steel roll-bars around the passenger area. All three had cages welded onto most exterior surfaces, all of which held water cans, gas cans, ammo cans, and other supplies. It looked like they were designed to support very long missions, in remote areas, far from resupply or support.

  The front one, right beneath them, had a big, long-barreled M2 .50-cal machine gun up high on a single mount rising from the open bed in the back; and an M240 on a swing-bar that could be fired by the front passenger. An AT-4 single-shot anti-tank rocket was strapped to the roll-bar. The truck-bed area in
back half-overflowed with bags, boxes, rucks, and unidentifiable supplies and equipment. A big knobby spare tire was bolted on the back, with a tire iron and heavy-duty hydraulic jack clipped in beside it.

  Something banged into the outside wall of the garage, which was the same as the inside wall, about two feet from Kate’s head. She jumped, despite herself, for about the twentieth time in the twenty minutes they’d been in there. They could still hear the sounds of sporadic firing, the occasional shout – and one very muted explosion. What was actually going on out there was anybody’s guess.

  And nobody was volunteering to go out there and find out.

  After the equipment manifest, Kate overheard the leaders planning and parceling out tasks at the back end of the room, which was slightly more spacious than the front.

  “Maybe we should send someone out for a recce,” Brendan said.

  “We’d have to pull down the door barricade,” Jake replied.

  Brendan sighed. “Okay. Let’s get the tanks topped, then.” There was a pause, during which no one pointed out that they’d driven exactly a half-mile since the tanks had last been topped. Brendan responded to the silence: “We don’t know how long we’re going to be out there, or how long the unrest will last. Every drop may count.”

  Jake said, “Pete – get on the radio, every local frequency. Try to find out what’s going on out there.” He paused. “And who, if anyone, is still alive.”

  This had made Kate belatedly notice that all the others were wearing their team radios, with throat or chin mics. Not all of them had been last night, when some had probably rolled out of bed and straight to the fight. Kate’s radio was in its usual pouch on her vest, so she dug her chin mic out of her assault pack, and asked Elijah for the channel of their squad net.

  Wired in, now she was really part of the team.

  * * *

  As the two of them did informal guard duty by the big front garage door, the two team leaders, Brendan and Jake, led two different ad hoc mission planning groups in the rear. Their calm, level voices could be heard going back and forth, and floating through the dim space beneath the glowing light.

  From her spot at the front, Kate ogled the heavy weapons and ammo on the vehicles. “You guys go out loaded for bear.”

  “Unh-uh.” Elijah shook his head. “These are just our Daisy Red Ryder BB guns – good for chasing off squirrels and crows. We had to check our big guns at the door.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Elijah stroked his mustache, which still glistened with sweat. She had the sense that he, and the others, might be a couple of days away from their last shower. “Washington started to develop this idea that the task force ought to be focusing on peacekeeping, stability, and military-civilian projects. And that the schwacking of any remaining bad guys ought to be done from drones at fifteen thousand feet. Nice and clean, not too much collateral damage – and no Americans in flag-draped coffins. The new task force commander folded – and locked up anything that makes too big a boom in a heavy weapons locker, under guard. All our really good toys are in there.”

  “And what, I shudder to ask, are those?”

  Elijah opened his mouth to answer.

  Instead, the deafening clatter of heavy rounds started banging on the wall two feet behind his head, like gravel in a hurricane. He dropped to the deck. When it stopped, and he got up and examined the wall, it had four square feet of dents and deformities in the metal. But it had held, and none of the rounds had penetrated.

  Rising up over the level of the truck hood, Kate squinted at the damage. “Jesus Christ…” she muttered – then saw Elijah frown slightly, and also saw that gold cross twinkle around his neck. She made a mental note to tone it down.

  Before either could speak again, the sound of a straining car or truck engine started growing in volume. It was heading directly toward the semicircular front wall of the garage, which consisted mostly of a metal roll-up door, which could be raised with a chain.

  Like a PTSD sufferer, Kate flashed back to the night before when she heard that VBIED racing at their outside wire, just before it detonated. She wondered if she were the only one hearing this one now; then she wondered if she was going mad, hearing things that weren’t there.

  But within five seconds, there was no question not only that it was real – but also that it was headed directly at them. The engine noise became a roar now – and was accented with the sound of full-auto firing. Rounds started banging into the roll-up door. Everyone inside backed away and hunkered down, sheltering behind the vehicles.

  Crouching, sweating, eyes rabbit-wide, Kate wondered if they should all be trying to get the fuck out of there. But nobody was moving – either they knew something she didn’t, or there just wasn’t time to react. The engine became a scream, multiple weapons on it going cyclic, and the steel rain against the door like God’s own load of gravel being fired at them out of a hundred-barreled auto-cannon. Rounds started to penetrate and slice through, admitting slashes of thin light, then ricocheting around the steel surfaces in the garage. Everyone inside started making out with the floor.

  As Kate braced herself for the impact and tried to pray but couldn’t think of one, tires squealed like a warren of dying bunnies, and the whole roaring, blasting, full-auto-firing apparatus swerved at the last possible second and went careening off to the left, its chariot-of-the-apocalypse sounds slowly fading.

  Kate realized she was looking right into Elijah’s shining eyes, where they both crouched down low at the rear of the front truck.

  Someone shouted, “Anybody hit?”

  Kate held Elijah’s gaze. “What were they?” she asked. “Last night, outside the gate. And coming out of the hospital this morning. What the hell was that?”

  He held her gaze as well, his expression neutral. “The zombie apocalypse?” He wasn’t smiling, much less laughing. That sense of humor Kate liked was nowhere in evidence.

  Well, Kate thought, relaxing slightly. Things could be worse. At least they were hunkered up in their snug and safe little Alamo. Despite the close call with the careening vehicle, their walls hadn’t been breached, and the position still seemed secure.

  But just as soon as the sound of the truck finally faded away… a new one intruded on the huddling team. It was the whump-whump of helo blades, followed by a thrumming rumble that Kate recognized as the dual turbo-shaft engines of a UH-60 Black Hawk.

  She opened her mouth to ask Elijah if this could be another medevac flight coming in, thinking that might actually be a good sign. Maybe the base had been secured by the defenders after all, maybe they were consolidating around the landing pads…

  But she didn’t get the words out.

  The noise of the approaching ground vehicle had taken about ten seconds to ramp up to crushing enormity and hair’s-breadth proximity… but this one was at full volume and on top of them in less than two.

  Over their heads, screaming, the roof of the garage peeled open to the sky.

  Spunkmeyer

  Camp Lemonnier - 555 Garage

  Shattering noise and violence.

  Utter violation of their sanctuary, which was suddenly wide open to the elements, the ugly and smudged brown light of early morning, and whatever evil was devouring the base around them.

  The concrete floor beneath them bounced what felt like a foot as the helicopter crashed to earth – their space invaded by a giant mechanical raptor, as if coming down to pluck the chicks from their nest.

  It was in fact a UH-60 Black Hawk. And it was coming inside.

  The 54-foot rotors had torn open the curving roof of the garage instantly, without prelude or duration of time, a huge section of ridged steel simply peeled off and swept away – but not before the nose of the Black Hawk knocked down the vertical side of the wall and crashed in, its angular snout snuggling up to the side of the middle gun truck and pushing it back four feet into the wall on the other side.

  What the FUCK? Kate found herself mouthing for about
the dozenth time since her arrival. Once again, this simply couldn’t be happening – it was like she was on the set of some disaster or horror movie, the only place people could be so unlucky. She had no idea how she was still alive.

  The good news was this was more of a controlled crash or even emergency landing – the aircraft was basically level with the ground. It probably just wasn’t touching down in exactly the spot the pilot had in mind. Or maybe he’d had no choice. The other good news was that the rotors were spinning down fast – either because of the impact with the building, or because one of the pilots was bringing the engines offline.

  The bad news was that the impact knocked the rotors loose on their mounts and they were now wobbling badly – and spinning both lower and higher every second. Or maybe they were just all fucked up from tearing through the steel of the garage, like a Ginsu knife through a tin can.

  Kate stayed flat down on the deck – she had zero desire to be the tomato in the Ginsu scenario – but she did reach out her hand for Elijah, who was over on the violated side of the room. He crab-crawled to her across the gap between vehicles, his weapon scraping floor – not that anyone alive or dead could hear it.

  The whole room was still screaming all around them.

  From her spot, Kate could make out every detail of the deeply scored dark-gray paint on the helo’s fuselage, the three dusty glass panels revealing the cockpit behind, and the bright sparks dropping from the rotor assembly and cowling overhead and rolling down the outside of the airframe like electric raindrops.

  She looked to the left to see what the hell the others were doing – mainly because she wanted to act, but simply couldn’t think of what to do. She found she couldn’t see anyone – either because of the rotor-whipped dust and debris or because they were all hunkered down out of sight.

  Or maybe they were a lot smarter than her – and long gone.

  But she found her brain spinning up more quickly than it had this morning. Basically, she knew they had to get out of there. The side with the fucking helicopter was obviously a no-go – and that was also the side that had the human-sized door, the one she’d raced through less than a half-hour ago. That left the big vehicle door to her right.