ARISEN, Book Twelve - Carnage (14 page)

“It’ll stop it – or at least badly delay and degrade it. They’re out on open ground and we won’t miss. But then Cadaver Three in the vehicles…”

Handon finished for him. “…are dead.”

“Yeah. I don’t see any way they can get away from or survive that Black Shark.”

Suddenly Handon realized Ali was running alongside him. He looked across at her, seeing from her expression that she had gotten the gist of the conversation. Just to be totally clear, he said it out loud:

“If you use the last Hellfire to stop the convoy behind us, to save Patient Zero, then Pred and Homer will both be killed.”

“Yeah. Along with the Triple Nickel guys. But your group – and mainly P-Zero – will be saved. MAYBE.”

Although it was an impossible decision, there was only one possible choice. But before Handon could make it, two voices spoke to him simultaneously – one in each ear.

Ali said, “Hit the convoy. You’ve got to save the mission objective.”

And Juice said,
“Top, you’ve got to hit the convoy. And you’ve got to do it now.”

Handon’s skin went cold. Ali and Juice had just told him, in no uncertain terms, to sacrifice Homer and Predator – for the mission. And they’d done it so he wouldn’t have to make the decision himself.

“Do it,” he said to Juice. “Hit the convoy.”

When he looked over at Ali again, her expression was blank. Handon couldn’t tell whether she was masking grief, or if she was really okay with this. Looking back at him, she said, “It’s fine. Homer and Pred against a single aircraft? No way I’m writing them off.”

Handon kept running. And he wondered if she really believed that. He hoped he did. Maybe his guys would find a way to survive.

If anyone could, it was them.

That’s Gotta Hurt

Over Northwest Somalia, 5km from Djibouti Border

“We are visual on enemy convoy,” Nina said, as the smaller river valley, in the far northwest of the country near the Djibouti border, opened up ahead and beneath them, along with the rickety road bridge across it. The two American vehicles were just emerging out onto the bridge, heading toward them and going fast. But she could see them a lot better than they saw her, due to the Black Shark’s magnifying optics.

“Take them out,”
Misha said.
“We’ve almost caught the other group and the mission objective. But I don’t want this group fucking up the endgame. Kill them all.”

“Copy that,” Nina said, arming one of her remaining
Vikhr
anti-armor missiles. It was going to be just beautiful to see what it did to vehicles caught out in the middle of a bridge. She planned to take that gun-cam footage to every party she went to for the rest of her life.

But even as she released the weapon, she realized the convoy must have spotted her – because they came screeching to a halt two-thirds of the way across the bridge. And then both vehicles threw it in reverse and started scurrying back to the relative safety of the foot of the bridge, and the bit of forest beyond.

And Nina realized she might have been too eager. Her missile was blasting down toward them, and they were backing away from it at high speed. Suddenly she was having trouble keeping the aiming laser on the grille of the second vehicle, which should take out both of them. As she slowed the helo, fighting both the controls and the targeting system, she saw the gap between the two trucks stretch out – and before she could correct, the missile impacted right between them.

It took out a big section of bridge in a blistering explosion. And as the far vehicle, a big-ass souped-up Humvee, roared off the bridge to safety… the near one, a white SUV, braked hard – but too late.

It went sliding into the destroyed section of bridge, but some of the left side must have still been intact, because the right side of the truck rolled over violently into the gap. And, doing pirouettes like an Olympic diver, it plummeted and spun – all the way down to the river below, where it sent up a tremendous splash. And then it disappeared beneath the rushing waters.

No one could have gotten out. That was something, at least.

* * *

The Spetsnaz Team 2 convoy blasted northwest across open desert at outrageous speed, Misha’s vehicle in the lead, shocks bashing up and down like the frame rate had been speeded up. The RTO in back was sharing the space with the warheads of a bunch of missiles, which were stacked in the rear cargo area, but protruding over the back seat. He kept smashing his head on them as the truck bounced and heaved, and as he put through a call to Team 3 in the north, then passed the handset forward.

“Report,” Misha said, holding the phone with one hand, and steering with the other – with two fingers actually. This struck Kuznetsov, who had at least regained a place in the lead vehicle after Vasily’s departure, as a little unsafe, given their speed and the terrain. But he mentally shrugged. Misha got people killed every day. And on any given day, there were a thousand ways that might play out.

“Okay,” Misha said. “I don’t see either of these groups of anus-monkeys making it to the airport. But if they somehow slip through, you know what to do.” He passed the handset back, then put his left hand back where it had been – cupping his crotch.

But immediately another call came through.

“It’s the
Akula
," the RTO said.

“Da
,” Misha said. “The fucking drone was shot down how? How can you not fucking know? Well if it had been a ground-launched missile you would have seen it. You can see a hundred miles in every direction from the air over this fucking wasteland. Could they have another attack aircraft up? Well fucking figure it out and call me back.”

Kuznetsov said, “Well?”

“The UCAV is toast. Possibly taken down from the air.”

Kuznetsov craned his neck to look up through the glass sunroof, and scanned the skies around them. Then he did the same with the windows on the sides, front, and rear. Their vehicles were out in open desert, totally exposed from the air.

“Seriously,” Misha said. “That’s what I was thinking.” He eased off the accelerator and slid out to the right of the five vehicles racing behind them. When nothing happened, he powered the window down, stuck his hand out, and impatiently waved the second vehicle forward.

It pulled ahead of them.

Misha waved again – even more emphatically.

The next vehicle pulled forward.

At last, Misha swerved left again, sliding into the number-three spot in the convoy. Kuznetsov squinted with concern. If Misha was actually giving up his warlord privilege of leading from the front, he must believe the threat to be real. He said, “We should adopt tactical spacing, as well.”

Misha grunted and nodded. Kuznetsov hit his team radio.

* * *

There was absolutely no way Juice and Baxter were going to make the same mistake that had allowed them to survive the UCAV’s air strike on them. The last Hellfire on their Predator had a range of five miles, and their optics and laser designator realistically stretched to about half that. They were going to do this shit from stand-off distance – too far out to give their targets a shot at them, or a chance to dodge.

Because Rule #11 of a gunfight was: “Always cheat, always win. The only unfair fight is the one you lose.”

Al-Sif still drove uncomplainingly, keeping the hammer down, as the other two sat hunched over the mini-GCS in the second seat from the front. On the little screen, in that classic drone-vision that had become so familiar in the era of video-game warfare, they could see the six trucks of Misha’s convoy tear-assing across open wasteland.

“I fucking love drone strikes,” Baxter said, positioning the targeting laser on the hood of the lead vehicle.

Juice nodded. He had to admit that smiting your enemies from a couple of miles out – and from the safety of a trailer in Nevada, or a rolling jingle bus – definitely beat shooting it out face-to-face.

But only when it worked.

“The rear of the lead vehicle, not the front,” Juice said. “That should take out the first two. Unfortunately, you’re not going to create a bottleneck or killzone as there’s no actual road, never mind shoul— shit!”

“What?”

“They’re adopting tactical spacing – look.” Luckily, the maneuver was starting from the back, with the trailing vehicle slowing, and the one after that doing so only when a gap had opened up. “Launch, launch – now!”

Baxter hit the button.

A puffy trail of white smoke erupted from the bottom of the video frame, and then a black dart looped back into it from the left, straightened up, and turned into exhaust only as it dropped unerringly toward the convoy.

Baxter simply held the cross-hair, which directed the targeting laser, on the back of the lead vehicle. After a flight time of nine seconds – 2.5 miles at 995mph – it exploded spectacularly, the ripped-open remains of the truck body somersaulting forward and doing flips, kicking up geysers of dirt each time it hit.

The driver behind had almost no time to react – but somehow the front-seat occupants managed to fling the doors open and dive for it, as their truck crashed into the exploding wreckage of the one ahead, and they hit the packed mud, limbs and weapons rolling and flapping.

“Damn,” Juice said. “That’s gotta hurt.”

He was in a good position to know.

He’d just been there.

* * *

It was the opposite of stunned silence in the Triple Nickel gun truck as it powered backward off the bridge and back into the narrow stretch of river-valley forest beyond it. In fact, everyone was talking at once – calling out what they were seeing or had seen, shouting orders and suggestions, expressing recommendations or opinions.

“Okay, shut the fuck up!” Jake said from the driver’s seat, skidding them into the thickest bit of forest, and as far off the road as he could get them, which wasn’t much. This left them facing straight back up the road and out onto the bridge, which was still burning and smoking.

They had all seen the missile impact – couldn’t miss it, as it had gone in right in their faces as they tear-assed backward away from it, chunks of wood and cement banging on the grille, hood, and roof. And a quarter-second later, they’d had a box-seat view as the SUV disappeared into the hole the explosion had made. There’d been no way they could miss that, either – just as there’d been no way for Homer and Pred to stop in time. It all happened in seconds.

Everyone shut up now but Noise – who was hailing Pred and Homer on their local channel. All the others, Jake, Zack, and Kate, could hear this in their own radio earpieces, all tuned to their squad net. And they could all hear the response.

None. Nothing came back.

But what did come back was… the Black Shark, descending regally into the river valley on a hurricane of moving air, right over the center of the bridge, like a lion draping itself over its kill, the rotor wash blowing away the smoke that marked what was probably the grave of the two Alpha men. This position also left all its weapons systems – missiles and rockets on the hard points, autocannon – pointed straight down the road.

Directly at the survivors in the gun truck.

Jake was in command again.

He made an instant decision, and he barked it out.

* * *

“
Move, move, move, move!
” Misha bellowed, his voice like a force of nature, windmilling his huge left arm as he led the recovery effort from the drone strike on their own convoy. “You fucking ballerinas get your tight little asses in gear!”

He and Kuznetsov were both out on the ground, leading. Their vehicle was fine, though they’d had to lock the brakes, sending them sliding to a sphincter-puckering stop before they reached the two vehicles that had been hit. The lead one was a total write-off, as were all four of its occupants. The second hadn’t been able to stop and had smashed into the first, as well as the blossoming Hellfire explosion. The five occupants of that one, two of whom had dove for it, were in various states of hurting.

Misha had the wounded – those too injured to carry on and fight – laid out in the dirt. He didn’t bother with the dead. Mainly he redistributed men and materials into the four surviving trucks. It was a tight fit, but it happened. And then he got the remains of his convoy hauling ass again.

In six minutes flat.

* * *

“Cadaver One from Four!” Juice shouted into his radio from the front of the still-hurtling, and still-jingling, bus.

“Send it.”

“The good news is we hit the Spetsnaz convoy good and hard. Two vehicles destroyed and at least eight casualties.”

“Received. The bad news?”

“They didn’t give a shit. They reconstituted and got their surviving men and vehicles moving again – in minutes.”

“What – already?”

“They fucking left their wounded out in the desert.”

There were a couple of beats of heavy silence on the other end. Juice could interpret this. He knew Handon was thinking the same thing he was: after an IED strike on an American convoy, the site would practically be turned into its own forward operating base. The survivors and quick reaction force would set security, bring in helo medevacs, get the wounded stabilized and shipped out to a field hospital. They’d also remove or destroy sensitive electronics or else tow the disabled vehicles back to base.

None of that, of course, was happening here.

Basically, Alpha had made the rookie error of assuming their enemies would act as they would, and value the things they did – namely life, and the lives of their own brothers. But these Spetsnaz motherfuckers simply didn’t care. They were like an inversion of the values of the American and British operators. Brotherhood didn’t matter to them, nor did morality, nor right action, nor honor.

Only one thing did: victory.

And so far that was working out pretty well for them.

Maybe they had the ZA beat.

* * *

Neither Handon nor the others from the second shot-down Seahawk stopped running for a second while Handon talked to Juice. He was bringing up the rear – with Fick carrying PO in the middle, Reyes on one side of him, Henno on the other, and Ali leading the way, her remarkable vision scanning ahead. But there wasn’t a whole hell of a lot to scan, as they were moving across more or less undifferentiated brown wasteland, with only occasional rises or rock formations marking any change.