ARISEN, Book Twelve - Carnage (37 page)

And Alfa Group’s bunker was the drain.

Finally, Eli softly closed the stairwell door, shoved the other two ahead of him, and all three hauled ass to the top. When they got out on the roof, Eli took his trusty old crowbar and used it to wedge the door shut behind them.

And when he moved to the front edge of the roof and looked out… pretty much the entire singularity outside was pouring in.

And the courtyard was draining, fast.

RESULT
, Eli thought, smiling big.

* * *

Last off the rooftop, Jameson saw it happening down below. The undead lynch mob that filled the square was turning, running, and rushing through the blown-out double doors of the mausoleum. The area around the helo was already clearing out. “Holy shit,” he said aloud to no one. “I can’t believe that worked…
Go, go, go!
” He pushed the second-to-last man, Aliyev, down the stairs and ran behind him.

In seconds, Jameson, Aliyev, and the remaining Royal Marines of One Troop were out the front door, pushing out, and advancing into the square toward the helo. The five Marines were having to shoot a lot, and seriously watch themselves and one another, and Jameson had to be particularly careful to protect Aliyev. But they were mostly shooting dead in the backs of their heads. And it was mainly a matter of advancing as the dead retreated.

They’d be at the helo within a minute.

* * *

Alfa Group commander Akela tried hailing Lyudmila again, as he watched men set charges underneath the last big piece of stone blocking their stairwell. This one was too big even for him to deadlift. And it had badly injured a man when it crashed forward and down, as the area in front of it was cleared.

But as soon as they blew it into gravel, they would be free.

Akela already had two full platoons kitted up and ready to move into action. Their black-clad bodies, armed and armored like storm troopers, stretched down one of the nearby hallways and out of sight. After the invasion of their bunker, these men were ready for some payback. They were ready to get out there and kill some people.

It was strange that he couldn’t get an update from Lyudmila. But, then again, it didn’t matter. He would massively reinforce her, gain positive control of the entire area, and fix and finish the invading British force, probably in less than five minutes.

He would show the Brits whose back yard they had invaded.

But even as he nodded to the demo team, and they all moved back around the corner, he heard a series of heavy, fleshy thumps, followed by moaning – and then, nearly instantly, shouts of alarm, and rapid suppressed gunfire, ramping up.

When he led the charge around the corner toward the elevator lobby, he could see there were already several palsied and half-broken bodies sprinting and lurching down the corridor toward him, with many more pouring out of the elevator shaft behind them.

What in God’s name?

What he was seeing was impossible – but it also couldn’t be denied. Somehow, the dead were down there with them. The ZA had followed them home.

“Shit,” Akela breathed, drawing his side arm and firing rapidly down the hall at the invading mob.

I guess now it is we who are in the narrow corner.

He emptied his entire magazine down the hallway.

It didn’t even make a dent.

One-Way Trip

Red Square – Aliyev’s Helo Crash Site

Still pushing out into the rear of the advancing dead – as they single-mindedly flooded into Lenin’s tomb and then down the drain into the Alfa bunker – the reduced and exhausted Marines finally reached the objective it felt like they’d been trying to secure for half their lives: the MZ in the goddamned helicopter.

They immediately pushed out a security perimeter – but with a fat bubble on the south side, into which Charlotte now heavily and dangerously flared in, setting down the giant and ungainly Fat Cow cheek-to-jowl with Aliyev’s formerly sleek Eurocopter. After positioning Yap and Simmonds on the east and west sectors, Colour Sergeant Croucher set the wounded Younis down on the back ramp of the Chinook, dumped a bunch of rifle mags in his lap, and had him cover to the south. He clapped him on the shoulder as Younis gave him a thumbs-up, then took off to cover the north – by far the heaviest side.

With its raucous engine and rotor noise, the Fat Cow was fast becoming the new center of attention in Red Square, eclipsing even the free basement Spetsnaz buffet.

With those four facing out in the four cardinal directions, that left Jameson – personally guarding Oleg Aliyev, as the Kazakh all but dove headfirst through the cargo door of the Eurocopter, and scrabbled all the way to the deep darkness in back. In seconds he emerged with his long-lost coldbox. As he swung his legs out onto the ground, he held the prize aloft over his head with one hand – and with the other stabbed his raised middle finger at the huge “ЛЕНИН” letters on the front of the mausoleum.

“Ha!” he shouted. “Fuck you, Vlad! We’re out of here, you cocksucker!”

Jameson relieved him of the coldbox, and popped him on the back of the head. “Get in the fucking helicopter – the other one!”

Aliyev was only too happy to comply.

But not as happy as the four other survivors of One Troop – Croucher, Yap, Simmonds, and Younis – who collapsed by sectors back to that rear ramp and piled in back, along with Jameson and Aliyev. There wasn’t nearly enough room for the six of them, with most of the cargo compartment still piled high with full fuel blivets. Nonetheless, they sprawled out over these highly flammable waterbeds, and on top of one another. Jameson scrambled over the top until he reached the flight deck.

Charlotte was already pushing power to the engines and pulling pitch, trying to get them off the deck, as dozens of dead hands slapped at the helo’s metal skin.
“Get yer feet in!”
Charlotte shouted over ICS, as she finally brought the rear ramp up. Stealing a glance in back, Jameson could see that, sure enough, the Marines in back were kicking at dead hands, arms, and faces. With a little luck, they’d kick them out before the ramp closed all the way.

Throwing himself into the co-pilot’s seat, Jameson shouted into his radio, “Eli, we’re coming to you! Be ready to extract from the rooftop!”

He immediately felt eyes on him, and turned to see they were Charlotte’s – wide and shining with emotion she couldn’t yet give voice to. But it was Eli who spoke in Jameson’s ear. He sounded tired, but strangely content. And he definitely didn’t sound like he was in a hurry.

“Negative, boss. No room on that bird. And too much weight already. Look at you trying to lift off.”

Now Jameson’s eyes went wide. “We’ll make room!”

When Charlotte spoke, her voice was choked with emotion but also steady and firm. “He’s right. I can barely get it off the deck now. And we’re only just going to have enough fuel to get back to London.”

Jameson couldn’t speak. He knew full well they were both right. They’d gone through all this exhaustively in their planning. The helo was only supposed to refuel the plane – it never had the capacity to get the whole team out, or even the two-thirds of the team who were still alive. But now it was also the only aircraft they had. And, more to the point, they had Aliyev and his priceless pathogen on it – and they absolutely had to get them the hell out, whatever the cost.

Still, Jameson opened his mouth, intending to say,
For God’s sake, just one more – just take Eli!
If Charlotte hadn’t weighed everyone and everything on board, plus done a bunch of math, she couldn’t know for sure they couldn’t take one more.

And Jameson didn’t think he could make it without Eli. He’d been there since the very beginning, and Jameson always assumed he’d be there ’til the end. As troop sergeant, as second-in-command, as best mate, he was the indispensable linchpin, the only thing that allowed Jameson to get through the day.

But before even the first syllable could pass his grief-constricted throat, he knew the idea of taking Eli alone was a non-starter. There was absolutely no way – not in hell, not in this fallen world, not in any conceivable universe – that Eli would get in that helo and leave two of his men behind.

Jameson’s mind raced, and he tried to formulate a plan. They could fly back to the Hippodrome, retake their plane from the Russians… but they had no idea how big a force of Spetsnaz held it, and even if the plan worked and didn’t get them all killed or shot out of the sky, it would still require another round trip back to overrun Red Square to pick up the other three and ferry them to the plane. And it would mean keeping Aliyev and the MZ in harm’s way every second – while, also every second, back home, England was dying.

Jameson knew he couldn’t dice with fifty million lives just to save three. Even if one of them was more important to him than all those others put together. Hell, he couldn’t even justify sacrificing Amarie and Josie to save Eli. He knew Eli would never let him. Eli was too good a man – too heroic.

And a hero was one who sacrificed himself that others might live.

As the Fat Cow slowly and laboriously rose above the square, tilted its stubby nose forward, and started angling west, it quickly became clear that its path would take them right over the top of Lenin’s tomb. And as they approached it, Eli spoke once again in Jameson’s ear.

“I knew this was a one-way trip, mate. But don’t worry. We’ll be right behind you. We fought our way off this shitty continent once. You better believe we can do it again.”

Jameson tried to speak, but found he couldn’t. He was totally choked up with emotion, stunned into silence. And as they passed over the roof of that mausoleum, he looked down and saw his best friend looking up at them – and he saw Eli knock his fist into his helmet three times, and then wave at them once.

As they flew away into the night.

* * *

Watching the ungainly, overloaded Chinook soar over the tops of the buildings that ringed Red Square and disappear into the blackness, Staff Sergeant Eli drew a deep breath – then clapped his two men, Sanders and Halldon, on their shoulders.

“Nice work, lads,” he said.

“Yeah, cheers,” Sanders said. “But what now?”

Eli squinted, looked thoughtful, and craned his head around, peering out across the dark expanse of the square as it continued to empty of the dead. “Now I think we go get our plane and our pilot back. Because I for one am fucking sick of walking the boots off our feet, tabbing overland back to Blighty.”

Looking incredulous, Halldon said, “Wait – even if we do get the plane… our fuel to get back was on that helo.”

Eli smiled and slapped him on the back again.

“One problem at a time, mate. One problem at a time…”

The Tyranny of Hydraulics

Djibouti Airport – On Board the Dash 8

Ali bodily relocated Kate from the front hatch of the rattling plane, so she could stick her head in front of Jake and get a look at the pursuing Spetsnaz convoy. Yeah, they were gaining. But, no they weren’t going to catch them. The plane was still accelerating, and would pretty quickly outpace the ground vehicles. They were, basically, home free.

She pulled her head back inside.

A god-awful shrieking sound pierced the cabin, and the plane lurched to the right, seeming for a horrible frozen second like it was going into the ditch on the right side of the runway. Nothing surprised Ali anymore, or threw her off her stride anyway, so she moved to the right-side windows, only to see great belches of dark smoke pouring from the cowling of the engine. And the propeller itself wasn’t spinning, not even a single rpm.

It was totally frozen.

“Goddammit,” a mousy voice said by Ali’s ear. It was Pete, the young mechanic, looking out the window over her shoulder. “Come on!” he said. Ali followed him a few frantic paces up to the flight deck.

“What the hell!” Hailey shouted when they stuck their heads in, as she fought the controls to keep them on a straight line.

Ali felt a hand on her back. It was Kate, who shouted, “Hey, can this thing get off the ground with only one engine?”

Ali shook her head. She didn’t know the specs on this thing, and also slightly wanted to ask what she looked like – a UN relief supplies bush pilot? But instead she reported what she knew based on fundamental aeronautics. “Even if it’s got the power to get us off the ground, compensating for the asymmetric thrust will be a nightmare.” They could already see Hailey fighting that battle. And once they were in the air, with the extra drag of the dead engine and propeller, the wounded and angry bird would require even larger flight-control deflections to keep from rolling over on her back and crashing – which is what a plane with only one operating engine out on a wing will do fast without intervention from the pilot.

Ali wasn’t going to take the time to go look, but she was also pretty sure they weren’t going to outpace the Russians this way.

Peering out at the seized engine, Pete said, “I know what this is. It’s the damned propeller brake. It’s a known problem with these Pratt & Whitney engines.”

Still battling the shuddering yoke, Hailey looked like she’d just as soon be in a jet-powered aircraft. “Is it hydraulic failure?”

“No, it’s the opposite of failure – it’s overzealous hydraulics!”

“Can you fix it?” Ali asked.

“Yeah!”

“Can you fix it
without stopping the aircraft
?” She didn’t have to belabor the obvious: if they stopped, they were all dead.

Looking unhappy but resigned, Pete said, “Yeah. It’s actually an easy fix – I just cut the hydraulic line to the prop brake.” He sagged a little further. “If I can get out on the wing, I can do it.”

“Come on,” Ali said, pulling him back through the cabin toward the rear hatch – which wasn’t any closer to the right-side engine, but was farther from the working engine with the spinning propeller blades on it. As she led him through the cabin, she thought:

Fuck it. I need a better overwatch position, anyway.