ARISEN_Book Thirteen_The Siege Read online

“Listen to me,” he said. “Don’t wait until it’s too late… to figure out how great Homer is for you.”

  His grip, she noticed, was slackening.

  “How great you are for each other. Together.”

  Ali squinted down at him. He was looking weaker, suddenly. She changed her grip on his hand, her fingers going to his radial nerve, pressing down to find his pulse.

  “Last thing,” Handon said, his voice quieter now. “Trust your instincts. They’re impeccable. But don’t try to win the war all on your own. You’re going to have to rely on people along the way.”

  Ali’s attention was torn now – between listening to Handon’s words, and counting his pulse beats and breaths. Counting in her head, she said, “The question is always who to rely on.”

  “Yeah,” Handon said, with the ghost of a smile. “That’s where your instincts come in.” His smile faded, and his eyelids fluttered shut. Suddenly, Ali couldn’t tell if he was breathing. And she couldn’t find a pulse.

  She shouted for Pred and Noise – loud.

  * * *

  “We’ve got to open him up,” Predator said. “He’s bleeding internally again. Get the wound exposed and prepped.” He was already flipping open his big med kit, and started sterilizing a scalpel, scissors, forceps, retractor, and clamps.

  Noise was already turning over Handon’s big, strong, limp body, and began unwrapping the wound over the small of his back. When he pulled the bandage free, blood poured from the wound onto the deck.

  It wasn’t blood he could spare.

  Even as they began, the pitch of the engines changed, and they could feel the plane starting to descend. Fick returned from the cockpit at a run and saw what Pred and Noise were doing. “We’ll have him in the hospital at CentCom in thirty minutes.”

  Pred just looked up at him with shining eyes, the meaning obvious on his face.

  Handon probably didn’t have thirty minutes.

  Rivalry

  Onboard the Fat Cow, 300 Feet Over North London

  “Fucking maroon machine, needing rescuing again.”

  “Why do Paras stand so close to each other at the bar?”

  “To form a brain!”

  “Oi! Shut it, or I’ll fucking shut it for you.”

  This last was not spoken by Major Jameson, but rather by Colour Sergeant Croucher – and Jameson thanked his personal god that the man was with them. It had been Eli’s job, as troop sergeant, to keep the men in line and disciplined, to reign in excessive screwing around. With him gone, Croucher was stepping up. He’d always been overqualified for his job as squad leader. With his fifteen years of combat leadership experience, he could kind of do everything at this point.

  In this case, he’d simply caught a look from Jameson.

  And then dropped the hammer.

  The rivalry between the Parachute Regiment and the Royal Marines was long-running and legendary. It came up every year at a rugby cup match between the two regiments – one so notoriously smash-mouth that a mobile blood-bank and emergency dentist were kept on standby beside the pitch. And it extended at least back to the Falklands conflict, where anecdotal evidence suggested the two rival units had been mostly concerned with outdoing each other and being first to seize strategic ground, leaving the Argentinians as an after-thought. After 57 Royal Marines had been ordered to surrender against 600 Argentinians by the Falklands Governor, the Paras had sung the 80s hit song “Hands Up” on board the ship home, and called the Marines “cross-dressing surrender monkeys.”

  But now the Royal Marines were on their way to bail out the Paras. And they weren’t missing the opportunity to gloat about it. At least until Croucher smacked them down.

  “This isn’t fucking rugby, you apes. Those men are dying out on the ground to save what little of this shit world is left. And we’re about to fucking join them. If you want to spend your last minutes on Earth giggling like a bunch of drunken baboons, you be my fucking guest.”

  Everyone shut the hell up, suddenly sobered. And Croucher nodded at Jameson, who just looked on.

  The helo kept winging its way north through the smudged brown light of early morning, its occupants sharing the pasty and surreal feeling of seeing the sun come up after being out clubbing all night, straight through to dawn. And they could also now see there were still construction lights lit upon the Wall off in the distance, beginning to sparkle and wink on the horizon.

  Or maybe those were muzzle flashes.

  * * *

  “Fuck me… Major.” This was Charlotte, speaking into her ICS headset, though Jameson now sat right beside her in the cockpit. He’d climbed up here to get a look at what was waiting for them ahead and below. And what they saw was a swirling riot of cranes, cement trucks, and construction equipment, scrambling workers crawling over the scene like worker ants, casualties being treated and evacuated, vehicles fighting to approach, or to retreat, on the motorway that snaked south. But that wasn’t what Charlotte was commenting on.

  It was the crashed RAF Puma at the center of the site.

  This big rotary-wing airframe lay twisted and pancaked in the thin early morning light, lying among bent rotors, drifts of dust and debris, and spilled piles of stones. Nearby, a cement mixing truck lay on its side at the end of fifty feet of furrowed dirt. Jameson whistled, and Charlotte cursed again, recognizing the aircraft as a battlefield helo assigned to the Joint Helicopter Command at Andover.

  “Je-sus,” Jameson breathed. He looked across at Charlotte. “Take us over the top.” He needed to see the battle itself.

  As soon as she did, and they passed over the stone-and-steel border from the tumult inside to the carnage and chaos outside, the immediate decision Jameson faced became an easy one. There was no setting them down out there, not in the middle of that fight. Even if they’d had fast-ropes, which they didn’t, he would have hesitated to send his men directly down into that. The Paras were too closely engaged, there was too little open ground, and nothing like a rear area. It was a smash-mouth fight, and the defenders’ backs already up against the wall. The only rear area was behind the ZPW itself, and he instructed Charlotte to put them down there.

  As she pedal-turned them and they soared back over the Wall, low and just over the gap, sandblasting and blowing the hats off construction workers, Jameson heard Croucher’s voice speaking in his ear. “So who’s the bloody militia?” He was looking at figures on the top of the gap, ones holding British military assault rifles – but all wearing civilian garb. As the Fat Cow zipped low over their heads, Jameson found, to his amazement, that he actually recognized them.

  “Don’t even ask, mate,” he said, pushing his way past Croucher and back to the men. He boggled at how desperate things must be if the Tunnelers were fighting up on the Wall, nearly on the front line.

  Well, at least we didn’t save them for nothing…

  * * *

  “Can’t do it, Major!” the man shouted in Jameson’s ear. He wasn’t military, but rather a construction foreman, the best Jameson could quickly dig up as something like somebody in charge. The two of them looked upon the last of the Marines ferrying weapons, ammo, and equipment down the lowered rear ramp of the Fat Cow, dumping the heavy bergens in a random spot, evidently their ammo dump for now. Overhead, the helo’s huge twin rotors still turned, driving stinging dust into the eyes of everyone in the area, reducing visibility to meters, and turning the whole scene even more phantasmagorical than it already was.

  “We’re here to fight – so you lot can keep working!” Jameson shouted back. “And out past that is where the fucking fight is!” He pointed at the big vehicle gate in the guard tower, to the left of the collapsed gap. That gate was huge and solid – and firmly shut. Beside it was a smaller person-sized gate – but equally solid, and also totally sealed up, plus barricaded.

  Leaning in closer, gripping Jameson’s arm, which held his rifle, the foreman shouted, “And out there is where the fight fucking needs to stay! The dead are too close, and it’s j
ust too dangerous. I open that gate now, and I’d be hanged for a traitor. And should be!” The man pointed at the myriad ladders and scaffolding that rose up the inside of the Wall, just visible through the dust storm. “You can shoot from up top! Or you can go over the top, and climb down the other side. Your call. But the gate stays closed!”

  Jameson gritted his teeth. Not for the first time, the Royal Marines were having to adapt themselves to circumstances. It seemed to never be the other way around. He saw the rear ramp of the helo lifting back up again, and heard the engines ramping up, so he ran over and pressed his helmet up against the cockpit glass, also hitting his radio.

  “Where are you going?”

  Charlotte looked across at him before she answered. “If I’m going to be any help to you now, I need a different aircraft.”

  Jameson banged the bottom of his fist on the glass, then put his head down and ducked out of the way of the climbing helo.

  Go, dragon rider, he thought, with a contented sigh.

  And he moved out to start organizing his men for the fight.

  Power

  CentCom – Airstrip

  Twenty-five minutes after opening Handon up, and about thirty seconds after they’d finished re-clamping the artery, packing the area with gauze, and finally re-wrapping the wound – the last phase of which they’d had to do while the plane was actually landing – Pred and Noise lifted Handon’s pale and lifeless form and carried it out the rear hatch of the Dash 8 and down the lowered stairs, Juice assisting.

  Waiting alongside the end of the airstrip that bisected CentCom and Wandsworth Common was the same medical detail that had met the Royal Marines. The Alpha men ignored their instructions and outstretched arms and got Handon on the rolling gurney themselves, as Pred called out his latest vitals. “BP fifty-five over thirty, pulse thirty-five, respiration weak and irregular, maybe five to ten.” They’d already radioed in the nature of the injury, and the treatment he’d received thus far.

  By this point, the energized knot of medical personnel were already taking off at a run, pushing the gurney between them.

  And just like that Handon was gone.

  * * *

  Before they had even vanished from sight, another team appeared from the opposite direction, rolling a cart instead of a gurney. Alpha hadn’t only radioed ahead about their casualty, but also about their mission objective, which everyone knew to be much more important – and at least as urgent. Dr. Park descended the rear stairs now, met there by two people rolling the cart, who looked like lab techs, as well as a female officer. She nodded at Park, obviously clocking him as the scientist.

  “I’m Lieutenant Colonel Nesbitt,” she said, looking like she’d lived through this scene before. “Run the Bio Labs.”

  “Dr. Simon Park.” He put out his hand.

  She ignored it, looking around him. “It’s on board?” Park nodded. “How close are you?”

  “Twelve to thirty-six hours, best guess. But we cannot—”

  Nesbitt interrupted him. “I know, we can’t unplug the damned gene sequencer in the middle of sequencing, or you’ll have to start the whole process over. Don’t fret, got it covered. Come on.” The two lab techs, a man and a woman, were already picking up the contents of the cart and carrying them up the stairs and into the plane. Nesbitt and Park followed.

  Inside, they laid the equipment out, the first item obviously a portable power supply, or UPS. The second was a square gray box that one of the techs flipped open, revealing a few switches and lights, two power sockets, and two coiled power cables.

  “It’s a Hotplug,” Nesbitt said. “Normally used by law enforcement and forensics, to take desktop computers into evidence without powering them down and losing access.”

  “Where’d you get it?” Park asked.

  “Metropolitan Police Service. At our service. Watch this.”

  Moving fast, she used one of the power cables to connect the UPS to the Hotplug, causing its lights to go on, then plugged the other cable into the second socket beside it, finally holding up the last unconnected end. With her other hand, she produced a little gray device about six inches long, and an inch wide and deep. “Plug capture device,” she said. She plugged the second power cable into one end of it, then pointed to the other end. “Spring brass contacts. Go over the existing wall plug.”

  She followed the power cable from the back of the gene sequencer to the outlet on the cabin bulkhead. Park held his breath as she wriggled it loose and backed it out perhaps an eighth of an inch. The lights on the sequencer stayed on – the plug was still making contact. She then slipped the capture device over the top of the plug itself, the contacts touching the tiny bits of exposed metal prong. Then, without hesitation, she yanked the plug capture device – and the plug nestled inside it – out of the wall.

  The sequencer stayed on.

  She held up the three prongs of the plug like the head of a snake. “These are now exposed hot electrical contacts. But no worries.” She turned, plugged it directly into the UPS, and then removed the capture device. “Et voilà tout,” she said.

  Park smiled. Now all they had to do was carry the UPS, and the bigger and heavier sequencer, back to the labs together.

  Nesbitt caught his look, and nodded at the two lab techs. “That’s what those guys are for.”

  * * *

  While this was going on in the rear, everyone else on board had gathered their gear and started trundling out the front hatch and down onto the ground, rucks hitting the tarmac in a circle, weapons slung, tired eyes blinking in the early light. Hailey was last out, after bringing the engines offline and completing her shutdown checks.

  Greeting the rest of the team was another small group of CentCom personnel, led by a tired-looking but cheery second lieutenant, who also appeared to be looking for whomever was in charge. Ali accosted him.

  “Miller,” he said, sticking his hand out.

  “Ali,” she said, taking it. He looked like he was looking for her rank on her uniform. There wasn’t any. He rolled with it.

  “We have guest billets in the main complex,” he said. “We’ll get your people settled and squared away.”

  Ali nodded. “Them. Not me.”

  The British junior officer seemed to get it. She was driving this train, and needed to get briefed on their situation. Ali eyed her exhausted and banged-up group. She knew Predator and Fick had cuts that needed more than bandaging – they needed to be stitched up. Others had taken serious head trauma, such as Juice and Wesley, or even minor gunshot wounds, like Kate and Noise. Hailey herself had recently crashed a fighter jet in the desert. They all needed, at the very least, to get checked out. “We have other wounded,” was all she said.

  Miller nodded. “Med wing first. Then billets.”

  Within a minute, everyone else was being led off in the same direction Handon had gone, presumably toward the med wing of the prison, all humping their weapons and gear.

  Everyone that is but Fick.

  “You’re more bacon than Marine, Master Guns,” Ali said, regarding the thick bandages on his arms, and one on his face. He also had a small but bloody bandage on the end of one finger, the tip of which had been shot off in the second ambush at Djibouti Airport.

  “If I die, you can cook and eat me,” was all he said about that.

  Ali knew better than to try to argue with him. Miller led the two off at a quick walking pace, following behind the others, but angling away toward a big hulking modern building that abutted the main prison complex.

  Ali caught Miller staring at her out of the corners of his eyes.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Sorry,” he said. “It’s just that I can hardly believe you’re here – that you exist. You, the vaccine, are what we’ve been holding on for, all this time. You lot are… well, you’re it.”

  He seemed to shake off the sense of unreality, and launched into a sitrep – giving Ali and Fick, just as he’d given Jameson before them, the bad ne
ws about the fall of the south, the collapse of the defending forces, and the faltering defense of the collapsed section of Wall, all as they walked. The difference this time was their reaction. After he told them about the beleaguered Paras fighting a losing battle at the Wall, he paused and looked across at Ali again.

  “What?” she asked.

  “You’re not going to turn around and race up there to fight?”

  “No,” Ali said, Handon’s last words to her playing in her ears as she spoke. “No, we’re not. That your command center?” She nodded up at the four-story building that lay ahead.

  “Yes,” Miller said. “SHQ – Strategic Headquarters. JOC at the top level.”

  “Take us up.”

  * * *

  The other difference between them and Jameson was that Ali and Fick had never set foot in CentCom before. But by the time they got up top, they’d gotten the lay of the land.

  Anchoring the whole facility on the northwest side was what had formerly been Wandsworth Prison – a walled complex of mostly connected buildings that had been substantially renovated to accommodate the military presence and activities. It included barracks for all personnel stationed there, as well as guest billets, the med wing, armory, canteen – most of what you’d find in any decent-sized military base.

  The old prison buildings were surrounded by ancient-looking twenty-foot-tall stone walls, dotted with guard towers, with a massive medieval gate in front on the north side. It looked more like a castle or stately home than a prison.

  More strikingly, the original walls had been massively extended, the new sections linked into and expanding the original smaller ring. The larger circle now enclosed virtually all of the large urban green space known as Wandsworth Common, creating a much larger complex around it. But it was a ring within a ring, the original prison walls still intact, so to get from the outer circle to the inner one required using one of the gates built into the prison walls.

  Scattered across the Common in the larger ring lay a number of outbuildings, including warehouses, sheds, a motor pool, and a dedicated quarantine facility. Bisecting the Common diagonally across its middle was the good-sized airstrip they had just landed on, at the end of which sat the charred ruin of what had been a large aircraft hangar. Ali could see an intact helipad in front of that, and nearby a row of helicopters parked up on the grass – including a Puma, as well as the familiar battle-insect shapes of Apaches, a pair of them, but the British variant with more powerful Rolls-Royce engines.