ARISEN, Book Twelve - Carnage (38 page)

* * *

“Hey, Ali,” Pred said, turning from the hatch. “What’s up?”

“Us – with a little help from you.”

Pred nodded, let his rifle hang, and interlaced his fingers. Ali stepped into them, then kept climbing – putting a knee, then a boot, on his shoulder, then pulling herself out the hatch and up onto the roof. She reached back to grab Pete by a forearm. Luckily, he was really light, and Pred was basically lifting him and handing him up anyway.

Ali blinked, realizing the rain had started again. And night was on the verge of falling.
Great – as if this wasn’t dangerous enough to start with, now we do it in the dusk with the plane dripping wet.

She spared one look back toward the line of vehicles coming up from behind, then grabbed Pete and led him across the top of the fuselage to the other side, then out onto the right wing. This looked to provide good access to the faulty engine, which was part of a big pontoon-type structure that hung from the wing, extending both ahead and back, and out the bottom of which emerged one set of landing gear.

“Shit!” Pete shouted.

“What?” Ali asked.

“Forgot my screwdriver!”

“Goddammit.” She pulled her Leatherman multitool from its belt pouch and pressed it into his hand, personally closing his fingers around it. “Do not fucking drop this.”

They were both low on the wing, for obvious reasons. And they couldn’t see the convoy coming up on the other side of the plane. Ali got down on her belly and aimed her rifle back anyway.

Receding behind them on this side, she could see the air traffic control tower, right alongside the runway.

Now that would be an outstanding overwatch position…

* * *

In the bouncing passenger seat of the lead chase vehicle, which was a formerly American Humvee with an open bed but enclosed passenger area, Captain Kuznetsov craned his neck, eyes going wide in amazement. Yes, he saw that right. There were actually two people
climbing out the rear hatch of the aircraft…

But before he could think how to react, they’d already clambered over the top, to the other side and out of sight. He replayed his mental tape of the last ten seconds – to the bit where the plane lurched to the right, smoke billowing from that side. There was also the fact that it wasn’t accelerating anymore, and the convoy was catching up. Suddenly it all made sense. He hit his radio.

“Whoever’s in the last vehicle – pull up on the right side of the plane. You’ll find a couple of half-assed aircraft mechanics out on the wing. Knock them off for me.”

The convoy was overtaking on the left, because after the plane’s lurch, there was no room to get around on the right. But a vehicle could still pull up behind the right wing.

Grabbing the rearview mirror and angling it toward him, Kuznetsov could see the last vehicle in the train doing as ordered. But now the convoy was taking fire from the open hatches of the plane. They needed to get the hell past it and out in front, where they could bring it to a stop. But as they got within sight of the front hatch, a booming noise penetrated over all the ambient noise, a giant hole appeared in the rain-spattered windshield – and the driver’s chest exploded, right through his body armor.

Kuznetsov reached over and grabbed the wheel.

Even as he did so, he heard the heavy machine gun in the bed behind them start
thunk-thunk
’ing, chattering blue murder.

* * *

Kate was mainly staying out of Jake’s way as he engaged the approaching convoy with his Beowulf .50. She knew the two-inch slugs he put out could penetrate an engine block, never mind a windshield and driver. What she didn’t know was that the lead vehicle in the convoy, an open-bed Humvee, also had a Browning M2 50-cal machine gun mounted in its bed.

Jake winced and withdrew as the hatch started erupting with incoming .50 BMG rounds – more than twice as long and four times as powerful as his outgoing .50 Beowulf rounds. All 50-cal was not made equal, and this was an unfair fight. It looked like Jake had only been lightly wounded by the time he got out of the open hatch. It also didn’t matter. Because, even as he took cover, the high-powered 50-cal rounds tore through the skin of the plane’s fuselage, as well as the inside bulkhead.

And then they tore through Jake’s body armor like it was cling film.

When he hit the deck, Kate dropped down beside him, and found he was still alive. But he was in a bad way.

She grabbed his drag strap and started pulling.

* * *

Kuznetsov managed to continue steering the Humvee, while simultaneously reaching across the driver’s body to open the door on that side. He shoved the corpse out onto the blurring and now glistening pavement that spun by beneath them, and then slid over into the driver’s seat.

He was pretty pleased with this sequence of maneuvers, and not at all unhappy that his machine gunner had suppressed whatever shoulder artillery had been pounding them – not least because he was now sitting at the site of the last artillery strike.

But then Misha started bellowing in his ear, totally dissipating whatever pleasure he felt.
“Stop shooting at the motherfucking plane, you uncle fuckers! Or do you fancy a nine-week submarine trip around the tip of Africa, up past Europe, and across the entire Black Sea?”

Kuznetsov touched his radio button. “Understood.”

“And if anyone hits the Index Case, I swear to Christ they’re swimming back! With no fucking arms. They’ll be a no-armed swimming motherfucker – with NO arms.”

Kuznetsov sighed, and steered. That had gone out on their local channel, and he trusted the men would comply. There was no enemy that frightened them half so much as their own commander. And that system had its advantages.

Since there had been no foot on the accelerator for a few seconds while the Humvee was between drivers, they had fallen back to the number-two position. Now Kuznetsov was rather pleased by that, too – watching, blank-faced, as the vehicle in the lead position started exploding, then flipped up into the air…

And flew over the top of them.

* * *

From behind the three rows of seats, Baxter had watched Jake go down as the front hatch erupted, bits of plastic, steel, and insulation filling the air. Within seconds, Kate was dragging him down the aisle and behind the left row of seats, opposite Zack. Having finished sewing Zack up, Noise dashed over to help assess and treat Jake. This was truly becoming their casualty collection point.

But Baxter saw there was now no one manning the front hatch.

He stood up, unslung the Milkor multi-grenade launcher from his back, where it had been riding since he took it off al-Sif back in the river valley. But then he froze, needing to steel himself.

“You can cover the front hatch?” Noise asked, looking up from working on Jake with Kate’s help, all of them covered in blood now.

Baxter sighed. “Hey, I’m just here to drink beer and fuck fat chicks.”

And that was all the steeling he required. The spirit of Maximum Bob flooded through him, and gave him the cheerful courage he needed. He strode to the hatch, brought the Milkor up to his shoulder, took aim on the hood ornament of the first vehicle in the line outside – a big Toyota Hilux pick-up with heavily armed men in both the cab and bed, and coming up fast.

And he fired off all six 40mm grenades.

The driver wrenched the wheel, but this only contributed to the truck’s nose going into the tarmac, its ass coming up – and the whole thing tumbling ass over teakettle, launching Spetsnaz guys out of the bed, then tumbling end over end down the tarmac at high speed in great gouts of flame, in perfect Jerry Bruckheimer style.

Baxter nodded, content. He was out of ammo for this thing. But he was also pretty sure it would be a while before they attempted to pull past the plane again. Nonetheless, he dropped the Milkor and brought up his M4.

This was his post now.

* * *

Pred ducked back inside the rear hatch, as the unfortunate Toyota Hilux did flaming backflips and disappeared down the tarmac. Looking up the cabin, he could just make out Baxter dropping the multi-grenade launcher.

“Damn, dude,” he said. Baxter wouldn’t hear him. But it didn’t matter. It was a heartfelt tribute.

As soon as the somersaulting explosions passed, Pred popped back out, tucking himself into the lip of the hatch. He already knew the plane’s skin wouldn’t stop high-velocity rounds. But it was still his job to defend the aircraft until it got off the ground.

Particularly with Ali still out there.

Then again, she was usually pretty good at taking care of herself.

* * *

Ali lay on her belly on top of the right wing, facing the rear, but glanced back to check on Pete. He was also belly-down, but facing forward, inching out onto the long engine housing suspended beneath the wing. He was trying to reach an access hatch on the side of it, just behind the propellers.

And the plane was still bouncing like a sonofabitch, despite no longer accelerating – having slowed in fact. There was also water streaming off everything now from the light rain that had started up, which as Ali had predicted definitely didn’t make any of this any less dangerous.

She stole another glance over her shoulder and saw they still had a good long stretch of tarmac ahead. She knew this runway was more than 10,000 feet long, lengthened to accommodate the gigantic C-5 Galaxy transports the U.S. used to pour men and materiel into the region.

Then she realized something was blowing up, lighting the dim air on the other side of the plane. Within a few seconds it resolved as the remains of a pick-up truck, tumbling to a halt on the runway a hundred yards behind them. But that wasn’t really her problem.

Her problem was the non-exploding vehicle that had just pulled around the tail of the plane and was now accelerating toward them. Luckily it was an enclosed SUV, and the shooters in back were only just getting around to sticking themselves and their rifles out the windows to engage her.

She ignored them and just shot the driver – in the face.

When the passenger dropped his rifle to reach over and grab the wheel, she shot him too – also in the face. Then she shot the back-seat passenger who reached up and around the two bodies for the wheel, albeit in the hand, which was all she could see of him.

Finally, she depressed her barrel and shot first one front tire, and then the other. Both blew out violently, causing the front end to spin and dig in – and then this vehicle also to start doing somersaults down the tarmac, albeit less dramatic sideways ones, rolling over and over on its long axis. And it wasn’t exploding, just crunching and warping.

Nonetheless, Ali didn’t envy the one or two living guys left inside. That did not look like a fun ride to be on.

“
Dude – what the fuck?
”

She glanced over to see Pete staring back at the carnage.

“Hey, you need a hand getting that cowling open?” she asked.

* * *

“Goddamnit,” Kuznetsov said aloud, as he looked back and saw the SUV tumbling down the tarmac in great showers of sparks and shredded steel and glass dust. And, behind it, he also saw Misha’s Humvee swerve to avoid being taken out by it, then gun its engine and continue catching up with the main convoy.

Kuznetsov didn’t really want responsibility for this anymore, and knew Misha had seen what happened, so he got on the radio. “Misha, do you want me to send another vehicle to that side?”

But it wasn’t Misha’s voice that came back.

“Only if you want to lose four more men, Captain. No, this one is mine. You leave her to me.”

Kuznetsov struggled for a second to place the voice – then scanned the skies behind them. Sure enough, there was a black speck way out on the horizon, but growing fast.

It was their Black Shark attack helo.

And the voice was that of their sniper.

Vasily.

Predator’s Lament

Djibouti Airport – On Board the Dash 8

From the rear hatch, Pred realized the wide variety of badass Spetsnaz operators in the four surviving vehicles, all of them heavily armed, were no longer shooting at them.

He took a bead on a dude manning an AEK-999, a modern Russian 7.62mm machine gun – but held his fire, mainly because this guy wasn’t shooting either. Neither of them were likely to fare too well in an exchange of lead at close range – there were no winners in that kind of gunfight, just degrees of loser. But Pred knew the airplane around him had a hell of a lot more vulnerable electronics and hydraulics than the truck did.

Maybe the Russians knew that, too, and that was why they checked their fire. Or maybe it was because they knew Patient Zero was on board. Either way, it suited Predator. What he was worried about was them moving up to pass again, and cutting them off, stopping the plane without damaging it. But at least for now, nobody in the convoy looked enthusiastic about taking the lead – Baxter had seen to that, with his 40-mil six-shooter – instead just gunning their engines and jockeying.

So at least for this second, it was a stand-off. Détente.

Pred used the time to expand his situational awareness. He looked past the convoy for the first time – and realized this runway paralleled the single fence that separated the airport from Camp Lemonnier. He could see a couple of the guard towers dotting it – including, he was pretty sure, the one where he’d had to keep Handon and Henno from killing each other.

Much good that did them in the end…

Then he realized he could also see throngs of dead pressed up against the fence. Lemonnier was exactly as overrun as they’d left it, if not more so. As Pred squinted, he realized the dead weren’t just pressed against the fence – they were heaving against it, piled up and raging, desperate to get out. It must have been the sound of the aircraft engines, or perhaps all the general mayhem perpetrated by two teams of operators, doing their best to murder each other. And Pred knew from a lot of history that any large group of dead who wanted to get through a fence were eventually going to do so.