ARISEN, Book Twelve - Carnage (11 page)

This was all happening in the space of a few seconds – the flight time of the UCAV’s incoming Hellfire. But Baxter had seen it launch off its rails, heading unerringly toward them… but then suddenly its flight path got squiffy and confused, and it looked like it had no idea where it was going.

The smoke barrage on the face of the bus was working.

But it also looked like the Hellfire was going to miss high and long, overshooting them. And the bus was still slowing – which meant it might not be so high and long after all.

“
Accelerate!
” he shouted toward the front. “
Faster – go, go!
”

Al-Sif complied – hastened by Baxter’s sense of urgency.

He jammed the accelerator into the floor.

* * *

Juice didn’t know the jingle bus had it in it. After slowing to something like school-zone speed, now it bucked, its engine wound all the way up, and it accelerated like a Ducati. Maybe it had this spare power so it could haul around eighty Somalis with chickens in their laps. And since he was by no means expecting this, Juice slid backward on his belly toward the rear, arms flailing, digging in like a climber trying to self-arrest.

But he never reached the back edge of the roof.

Because the bus then swerved violently to the right – and tossed Juice off the left side and away like he was a flaming turd. As he flew through open air, he neither saw nor heard, but only felt, the passage of the incoming Hellfire rip through the air between him and the bus, maybe a few feet above them both.

It exploded in the road less than 100 feet behind them – just outside its lethal blast range, a fact Juice was grateful for as he hit the dirt with his shoulder and started rolling and tumbling at 60mph, the heat and overpressure from the blast chasing him, as the ground and his own weapon pummeled him senseless.

Somehow, his dumbass smoke camouflage trick had worked.

When he finally rolled to a stop in the mud, his vision was literally spinning from all the high-speed rotation. But he could see the bus was intact – because it was still racing up the road, leaving him behind. And as his head involuntarily ticked from side to side, following his spinning vision, he heard a roar overhead – and looked up and focused long enough to see the UCAV blasting by, still going the opposite direction. But it immediately pulled a 180-degree banking turn, straightened up, and fell in behind the fleeing bus.

It was coming in for another attack run.

Baxter popped up in his ringing ear.
“Juice! Munition is away! Repeat, our Hellfire is away!”

He tried to stand up. When that didn’t work, and he wobbled and fell back on his ass, he figured God was telling him to sit his ass down. He slid his left hand out on his barrel rail to check if the laser designator was still on – or even still there. It was, on both counts. He brought the weapon to his shoulder.

And he tried to sight in on the tail of the UCAV.

Within seconds, the next Hellfire – their own, launched by Baxter from the Pred – zipped over Juice’s head. Battling to hold his rifle and laser steady, he bucked himself up with some good old smack talking.

“Take it up the tailpipe, Ivan!”

One second later, a brilliant explosion erupted over the road in the middle distance. Not lowering his rifle, Juice squinted to make it out. Yeah. It was definitely over the road – too high to be the bus. His improvised laser-targeting had worked.

The UCAV was toast, falling from the sky in flaming pieces.

* * *

Juice just lay back in the dirt and let Somalia spin around him, a little slower with each revolution. He had some injuries from his tumble off the bus. But he was too loopy to deal with them. When he felt as much as heard the bus rolling back down from the north, he weakly raised his right arm from the dirt to hail them over.

He heard the schoolbus-style door whoosh open. And then he saw Baxter’s face, expression serious, lean in over his.

“Oh, good,” Juice said. “You’re back.”

“Come on,” Baxter said, clasping his hand to help him up. “Cadaver One’s been shot down.”

“What?”

“And the Spetsnaz convoy is going to catch them.”

Juice blinked several times. “How do you know that?”

“Because we’ve got drone coverage again.”

“Ah.”

“We’ve also still got one Hellfire left. So come on!
Come on!
”

Juice didn’t have the strength to say it, but as he let Baxter haul him to his feet, he hoped his expression said it all:

Oh, yeah? Well, I’m not doing that lasing while bus-surfing shit again…

Lightning Bolts Out of Their Asses

JFK – Bridge

“
Kapitán
, the island is secure – every level except their Ops Center. All entrances and stairwells are strongpointed and wired to blow.”

“Very good.” Captain Leonov, the Spetsnaz mission commander, knew it had been a long shot at best on taking their Combat Information Center – which would be the most secure compartment on the ship. But it didn’t matter. With the bridge taken, and with positive control of the vessel, plus all external and internal communications systems destroyed or seized, there was little the carrier’s ops staff could do to affect events.

And definitely not before it was too late.

Leonov went back to his radio, and to fielding updates from his teams across the ship. Their take-down was going well – but it wasn’t in the bag yet. His next call was from the team tasked with taking the ship’s magazine, and armory.

“Report.”

“Sir, it’s as you thought – the magazine is a bare cupboard. No Sparrows, no thirty-mil.”

Leonov nodded. He knew it – the
Kennedy
had been defenseless from the beginning. No anti-ballistic missiles, no rounds for their Phalanx close-in weapon system – an inferior version of their own Kashtan multi-barrel autocannon.

On the other hand
, Leonov considered,
their Phalanxes are still on the right side of the water, unlike our Kashtans.

But the carrier was going to make an entirely decent replacement for their sunken battlecruiser. Not nearly as fearsome. But the ability to launch and recover fixed-wing aircraft would be of enormous utility. And the nuclear reactors, and desalination plant, were priceless.

And Leonov was self-aware enough to know there was a personal aspect to this – for all of them on this mission. Like everyone on his team, he couldn’t deny that taking the
Kennedy
, and putting its crew to the sword, would go a long way toward salving the bad wound to their pride from losing the
Admiral Nakhimov
. The gigantic warship had been a floating symbol of their national greatness, their indomitability, the fact that they were stronger than death, stronger even than the end of the world. And for the Naval Spetsnaz brigade assigned to it, it had been their fortress, from which they rode out to conquer and destroy their enemies.

Until it wasn’t – and it was suddenly at the bottom of the ocean.

The shock of this to the men couldn’t be overstated. But the response was equally obvious: make the Americans pay – in blood, and many times over. And take back what had been taken from them: a gigantic nuclear-powered warship to sail the seas of the post-Apocalypse, until Russia could reclaim its glory, and rule the world.

“And the armory?”

There was a short pause on the other end that bespoke the angst of a Spetsnaz operator having to deliver bad news.
“We don’t hold it. It’s being defended by a significant enemy force.”

“MARSOC Marines?”

“No.”

“Naval Security Forces?”

Another pause.
“They look like regular sailors. But they substantially outnumber us, and they’re well armed and well organized.”

“I don’t give a shit if they’re ten feet tall and firing lightning bolts out of their assholes. They’re almost certainly all barbers and electrician’s mates. Are the four of you on your feet?”

The man on the other end declined to report his one WIA – namely himself.
“Da, Kapitán.”

“Then you should be able to cut through an arbitrary number of those cockerels. Just hit them hard, they’ll panic and fold, then hunt them down and roll them up.”

“Da, Kapitán.”

“And be advised,
Leytenánt
. We’re getting reports of armed sailors all over the damned ship – armed with big-ass hybrid assault rifles. I’ve got one guess where they’re getting them from. This is on you. Fix it.”

Leonov put down the radio, picked up his binoculars, and looked out the front screens. And, right on time, there it was – the fin, breaching the surface of the gulf. And coming in fast.

Very soon, their take-down would be in the bag.

* * *

Parlett, Roy, and two other militia, all that could realistically fit shoulder-to-shoulder in the passageway outside the armory, were hunkered down behind their barricade of crates and holding the line. They were squared off against the four-man Spetsnaz team that held the magazine, forty yards away down the hall.

Enough militia, veterans of the flight deck battle, were still turning up, looking to arm themselves, that when someone on the line got hit – and it had happened twice – they could be replaced. It had become a stand-off with the Russians, both sides staying under cover and shooting at targets of opportunity. A couple of times, a sailor had used his hybrid rifle to launch a 25mm grenade down at them. But using a grenade launcher in a small steel passageway belowdecks seemed like an invitation to disaster. In any case, the American sailors weren’t counting on this stand-off to last. Parlett figured the only reason Spetsnaz weren’t attacking was they were now significantly outnumbered.

And the defenders had finally gotten organized.

Armour was inside, coordinating the distribution of weapons and ammo. She had fallen into a leadership role without quite intending to, or thinking too much about it. People just responded to her. Now she was making sure everyone got the weapons they were trained on, and enough ammo – but not too much.

Militia members continued to pour in from their rear to get tooled up – and then, covered by the defenders outside, rushed back out in small groups to try to strongpoint, reinforce, or retake various parts of the ship. Those with radios were following the instructions of CIC who, still trapped in the island, were nevertheless moving pieces around the board like a grandmaster playing several games of speed chess at once. But it was high-stakes speed chess, where every piece taken was a human life lost, and getting check-mated or running out of time meant forfeiting everything.

Losing the ship and everyone on it.

But the ship-wide defense was finally self-organizing – much of it made possible by the quick-thinking and courage of Armour and her brothers taking and holding the armory.

But then… then the rush came. They should have known Spetsnaz weren’t going to be content with a stand-off. Armour dropped the handful of magazines she was digging out of a crate and ducked down, as pummeling noise and flame blossomed outside the hatch, and sparks bounced off the bulkheads.

Something was exploding in the passageway.

She hefted her rifle and ran toward the point of maximum violence and danger. When she got to the barricade, everyone – Parlett, Roy, and the two others – was down on the deck.

And the Russians were charging down the hall.

* * *

The hospital was also still under siege. And when next Spetsnaz assaulted inside, there would be no counter-assault in their rear. They had eliminated that threat – killing, wounding, or driving off Browning and his NSF team. And this, their next attack, would be less sudden and more deliberate – but no less violent and aggressive.

And this time their target had a hatch that wouldn’t shut.

They didn’t need to blow up the barricade. They simply shoved it over and through, knocking everything to the deck behind. And through that opening came the next grenade volley. And this time not all of them landed out in front of the cover the defenders sheltered behind. Some of them landed behind it.

Screams and groans followed the percussive series of explosions as hospital personnel, pretty much all untrained combatants, had their bodies pummeled and torn by grenades exploding way too close, yet still tried to get up and get their 9mm peashooters in the fight.

Sergeant Patrick popped instantly from his position, anchoring the right of their line, and started firing – in quarters this brutally close, it was hard for either side to miss, but a lot of rounds were plunking into body armor, including side plates – but now the attackers had cover of their own: the pieces of the barricade they had knocked down. And some of them used it to lay down covering fire while others bounded forward.

Patrick, even while ducking back down to reload, realized that one invader was punching straight through the middle of their line – and was about one second away from flanking Walker on her left, which meant he was two seconds from killing her. Patrick broke cover and intercepted the guy, engaging him with a rapid grouping into his side. The man went down, but so did Patrick, hit once in the hip and once in the shoulder by one of the attackers under cover near the hatch, and to his right.

And now he was trapped out in the open. His only cover was another body, and he huddled up behind it. But with him serving as the local object of fixation for the attackers, Walker did something Patrick never would have expected – she broke cover and raced straight into the teeth of the assault, on the left side. With the defenders distracted, she scrabbled up into the lee of a crate that was now part of their line. Patrick brought his weapon up over his body and covered her. The guy on the other side of the crate, not three feet away from her, ducked down.

And then, to Patrick’s considerable astonishment, Walker reached up and simply slid the barrel of her shotgun up on top of the crate. Then she locked eyes with Lovell. He took one hand from his weapon to make a nudging motion to the left. She adjusted her aim. The guy behind the crate started to peek up and out. Patrick nodded once.