ARISEN, Book Twelve - Carnage (47 page)

“This is for Brendan, you son of a bitch,” Jake said.

Al-Sif looked down and saw the grenade. And he stopped pulling away. Instead, he hugged Jake back, pulling him in close. And with a pained smile, he said:

“Do you want to fight? Or do you want to fuck around?”

The grenade went off.

* * *

The high-explosive anti-tank warhead of the bent
Vikhr
missile on the Black Shark stub wing erupted as Kate’s single 7.62mm round struck it – instantly firing an armor-defeating jet of molten metal directly into the cockpit, essentially melting Nina where she sat.

The rest of the helo refrained from exploding just long enough for Nina’s meltdown to be seen by Kate in the front hatch, Ali out on the tail…

* * *

And Vasily, who was just picking his head up off the observation deck, where he’d been knocked down by Ali’s bank-shot barrage to his back plate, causing him to eat dirt and debris.

“Nina…” he whispered, as the helo erupted in a blistering gout of towering flame, came apart in mid-air, and then showered down on the landscape – pieces of fuselage, rotor, and pilot arcing down gracefully on all sides.

But then Vasily’s eyes went wide, as he remembered the sniper chick. Rolling up into a sitting position, he pivoted and brought his rifle up – but before he could even get the scope to his eye, he saw her.

And there she was – fucking standing,
fully upright
, on the back of the hurtling plane, even as the front end rose into the air. She stood erect, rifle to shoulder, shooting posture perfect.

Vasily opened his mouth to shout his defiance.

* * *

Misha’s Predator laugh died in his throat as he felt the iron grip of a hand latching onto his belt from behind, and another on his arm. His head snapped to the left, locking eyes with the man who held him.

“You,” he said. The man-mountain was back up. Predator.

“Yep. And only room for one Predator on this ride –
brother
.”

With that, Misha felt a second hand latch onto his belt – and another one onto his other arm. His head turned that way. It was the bearded commando. And he was grinning at him.

Holding him from both sides, Predator and Juice walked him toward the rear hatch, picking up speed fast. At the last second, Juice spoke in Misha’s ear.

“
Do svidaniya
,” he said.
“Tovarishch.
”

* * *

Ali put the very last round in her mag through the exact center of the tattooed target reticle around Vasily’s right eye, and then out the back of his skull again. It was a bulls-eye.

And she stood there just long enough to watch him crumple.

Then she got down on her stomach and hugged herself some airplane. And she started crawling her ass back toward those goddamned hatches, one of which had better still be open.

Because they were airborne now, the plane lifting off into the setting sun – and zooming through the dissipating cloud of Nina and Black Shark. Ali tried not to get any in her mouth.

But she couldn’t keep from smiling.

They were away.

Adios, MF

Dash 8 – Rear Hatch

Pred and Juice stuck their heads out and watched for a couple of seconds as Misha, weightless, fell through open air. He had less than a hundred feet to fall.

And he came down not just on the tarmac – but in the thick of the zombie horde rushing across it from Camp Lemonnier.

“Here’s hoping he lives a few minutes,” Pred said.

Juice nodded, grunted, and spat tobacco juice. “C’mon. You’re bleeding to death, man. And I can’t have that.”

But before they could withdraw again, an upside-down head appeared at the top of the hatch, jutting down from the top of the plane. The head had very thick and curly black hair, which was being blown around crazily by the blasting wind.

“A little help,” Ali said.

“Ha!” Predator grunted, reaching up. “I got you, dude.”

He grabbed her upper arms, took her full weight, and effortlessly pulled her back inside.

She was safe. And among friends, who loved her.

And then she saw Handon, down on the deck, unmoving, but with Noise working on him. And her voice caught in her throat. “Is he alive?” Noise looked up and nodded once, before going back to work. Ali’s eyes teared up again as she squatted down beside Handon’s still form.

Now she was back with everyone she loved – all but one.

* * *

Kate and Baxter both rushed to the CCP, arriving at the same time. Kate pulled Jake away from his embrace with al-Sif. The grenade had hollowed him out – everything that had survived the ravaging by the 50-cal was gone. He was a tough son of a bitch, and took a lot of killing. But his rear plate had stopped the grenade blast.

Kate cradled his head in her arms, and she wept.

Looking up, she saw al-Sif also lying dead beside him. And she found it in her heart to mourn him a little, too.

Three feet away, blood dripping down his face and left arm, Baxter got down on his knees beside Zack, who was still alive. But his abdomen had been torn open again by Warchild’s boot. And it seemed a safe bet that Predator’s heroic field surgery had been undone. Basically, he was a mess.

“Hang on, Zack,” Baxter said, turning to go for help. But he was stopped by Zack holding his arm – his grip surprisingly strong. Baxter looked back down at him.

“I told you,” Zack said weakly, “I wasn’t going to die in Africa…”

Baxter’s breath caught, and he felt his throat constricting with emotion. “You were right,” he said, smiling through tears. “We’re off the ground. You made it out.”

Zack laughed weakly.

Baxter nodded toward the rear – at Dr. Park, the DNA sequencer, and Patient Zero. “And we can fix it now. We can make it all right. You did it, boss.”

Zack snorted, also weakly. “
Un
did it, you mean.”

Baxter knew what he meant. That he had undone his terrible failure – to stop all this from happening in the first place.

Zack released his grip on Baxter’s arm, and gave him a last little shove. “Go,” he said. “Finish it. Save the world.”

Baxter just nodded, too choked up to speak now.

Zack drew enough breath for one last ribbing. “Alpha Mike Foxtrot,” he whispered with a ghost of a grin.

Baxter finished it for him. “Adios…
my friend
.”

And as he expelled it, Baxter knew this breath was Zack’s last.

Around them, the plane banked over Camp Lemonnier, continued to climb, and turned northwest.

Straight toward Fortress Britain.

Or what was left of it.

The Siege of London awaited.

Epilogue One: Ten Mikes

Gulf of Aden – Open Water

Far down below and behind the plane as it rose into the dusky sky, a single dark speck motored through the twilight on the surface of the gulf, ramping over small swells of surf, and leaving a sparkling white wake behind it.

It was the CRRC, the combat rubber raiding craft Sergeant Patrick had humped on his back into the thickest fighting of the Third Battle of the
JFK
– and which Sergeant Lovell had used to deliver Dr. Park from the overrun ship to the hangar and their flight out.

In the stern, Homer knelt by the engine, holding the steering tiller and twisting the throttle all the way to the right, scanning forward, calm but vigilant. Down in the bottom of the raft, Chief Davis reloaded rifle magazines – from a box of 5.56 they had found washed up on the beach, near the ruined ship’s launch. Up at the prow, such as it was, Burns worked his personal radio, trying to make contact with anyone he could raise on the carrier.

The little raft was moving at its top speed, heading due east and out to sea – straight toward the hulking shape of the USS
John F. Kennedy
. The carrier still towered over the surface of the ocean like a big gray equatorial ice shelf.

Burns turned back to face the other two, his face a mask of concern. Shouting to Homer over the noise of the engine and the surf, he said, “I raised Chief Derwin. He’s alive, NSF are still fighting – and they’ve linking in with another force in CIC.”

“Very good,” Homer said.

Burns went on. “He thinks there are about fifty to sixty boarders left on the boat – all of them Naval Spetsnaz. They still hold a lot of critical stations. And Derwin says, and I quote, ‘They’re dug in like Alabama ticks.’”

Homer nodded, checked his watch, then scanned the ocean out ahead again. “Tell them to hang on. We’ll be there in ten mikes.”

“Got it,” Burns said, turning away to his radio.

Homer breathed deep of the lovely, clean, salty air, and marveled at the beauty of sea and sky, with night coming in over the open ocean. He glanced down at the ammo can in the bottom of the boat. It held 420 rounds for his and Burns’s rifles.

That was seven for each of the sixty Spetsnaz.

Shouldn’t be a problem
, he thought.

Epilogue Two: Mission Complete

Djibouti Airport – Runway

The Runt put the hammer down and blasted back across the overrun tarmac in his Humvee. After getting the turbaned man safely to his flight, he had cut the wheel and veered away from the lifting plane, then done a fast U-turn and headed back – toward the vehicle with Captain Kuznetsov in it.

The Runt – whose real name was, he now remembered, Aleksis, and which he decided to start going by again – Aleksis knew the captain was still alive when he left him. He hadn’t regained consciousness, and they hadn’t had time to carry him across to the other Humvee. But he was alive.

And Kuznetsov was one of the few men in
Mirovye Lohi
who had never gone out of his way to be cruel to Aleksis.

Moreover, he was the only comrade he had left.

Out in the distance, he could see the undead horde flooding into the airport through the downed fence, racing one another across the tarmac. He needed to reach Kuznetsov before the dead got to him. He did – just barely. By the time he screeched to a halt alongside the other Humvee, the half-dazed officer was firing his side arm out the missing windscreen at the front ranks of the dead.

He didn’t notice Aleksis until he shouted, “Get in!” Kuznetsov turned, his eyes working out what he was seeing. But he shook his head. “No. This vehicle. You drive.”

Aleksis didn’t understand – until the captain climbed in back and got behind the 50-cal still mounted back there. As he threw himself into the driver’s seat and started the engine, Aleksis heard the deep
thunk-thunk
of a short burst from the fifty. It still worked.

Aleksis gunned the engine and cut the wheel, but Kuznetsov shouted at him to stop. “No! Straight on – toward the end of the runway.”

“What?” Aleksis said, even as he complied. “Why?”

“The
Polkóvnik
,” Kuznetsov said.

Aleksis ground his teeth. He hadn’t thought Misha was still alive. God knew he was happy enough to think he was dead.

And he wasn’t thrilled about getting killed trying to rescue him.

* * *

Kuznetsov didn’t think Misha was alive either. But he had seen his body fly out of the plane as it banked around and headed away. The altitude he fell at was low enough – and the surface he fell into, namely meat, soft enough – that it was just possible he had lived. If he did, he’d have the additional problem of keeping from being eaten. But Kuznetsov wouldn’t want to be the undead horde that tried to take Misha down. He figured it could go either way.

In any case, it was his duty to find out.

As the banged-up Humvee smashed into the surf of the first wave of runners, Kuznetsov started firing selectively. Mostly, the cattle-catcher on the front of the vehicle took care of those that got in the way. But as they neared the spot where Misha’s body had come down, he started firing non-stop, clearing a circle around them. He was soon able to make out that the dead hadn’t fallen on Misha’s body to devour him.

That was either a good sign or a very bad one.

As they pulled up alongside the oversized figure, which lay at the center of a very big pool of blood, Kuznetsov figured that was it. But then he saw Misha stir.

Jesus – could he have survived that?

Kuznetsov spun the heavy machine gun all the way around, to knock down the dead on all sides who were getting interested in them. Mostly, they were all still mindlessly running toward where the airplane had last been. But when he spun back again, he saw… Misha was on his feet.

But he hadn’t survived after all.

And he hadn’t conquered death in the end.

He was up and he was coming at them, arms outstretched, eyes milky white, his gigantic muscular body moving spastically. Steeling himself, Kuznetsov lined up a shot on his head. He was only going to get one chance at this.

He fired a burst of ten rounds.

Misha’s head exploded, and he twisted and fell over on his stomach. His body was covered head to toe in blood – but something protruding from the stump of his neck glinted and caught Kuznetsov’s eye.

“We have to go!” Aleksis shouted from the driver’s seat. He was now firing his own side arm out the missing windshield. He was right. They did have to go. But something stopped him.

Leaping from the back, Kuznetsov ran to Misha’s body, knelt down – and pulled out the syringe. He then jumped back in the truck bed and pounded on the roof.

“Go, go, go!”

Aleksis complied, doing a U-turn that involved knocking down and rumbling over a half-dozen animated corpses, then got them moving back toward the terminal building, accelerating at the Humvee’s outer limit. Soon they were ahead of the horde, the last runners disappearing behind them in the last light.

What they were going to do now was anybody’s guess.

But, letting go of the machine gun, Kuznetsov held up the syringe and regarded it. It was still a quarter-full of some diseased-looking milky liquid. He saw Aleksis looking back at him through the rear window.