ARISEN, Book Eleven - Deathmatch (31 page)

Nonetheless, some instinct she was hardly aware she had told her that, since it was only her in the Team Room…

This station was hers to defend. That was her job now.

Her first thought was to arm herself, and she cast around the compartment for weapons. While there were some crates of rockets stacked against the wall, there were no rifles or pistols. When the QRF was in here, they kept them on their persons at all times. And any not in use were carefully manifested and stored in the MARSOC weapons and stores room, one deck down and a few frames aft.

Then she spotted those three flashbang grenades, otherwise known as Brady’s juggling balls. She put one in each pocket, and clutched another in her hand. She made sure she knew where the pin was, and that her fingers were wrapped tightly around the spoon.

Then, racking her brain for what else needed to be done, she looked back to her own station, the desk. On it sat the laptop – though it was asleep, and needed a password to wake again. But beside it sat a thick white binder, lying open, which Emily knew contained the entire mission plan for Op Primum Cadavere, the shore mission to recover Patient Zero. And lying beside that was a keycard – one that would unlock the weapons and stores room. Emily knew this because she had to go in there occasionally, and that’s how she did it – and also because it had “weapons room” written on it in black Sharpie.

She immediately realized she needed to secure all of this. Because, still on her own, everything in this station was her responsibility. But before she could move, she heard noises outside. Not voices. But something else. A loud sizzling sound. And then thick showers of sparks started spraying inside.

Emily got under cover – fast.

* * *

The four Marines of the on-call QRF had no need to leap to their feet at the sound of the general quarters alarm, because they were already on them. They were using the dojo Handon had set up in the hangar deck, sparring with knives and bare hands while wearing full battle rattle – which they had to stay in while on call, when the QRF could be spun up at any time. But of course they also loved the physical challenge of working out fully loaded.

Abrams hadn’t gotten five words into his announcement before the four of them were off the mat, weapons in hand, running flat out for the hatch.

By the time he got to
“repel boarders”…

The Marines were already gone.

* * *

Also on the hangar deck, but way over on the opposite end, past the organic farm in the section still devoted to maintenance of aircraft, Chief Davis and his trusty sidekick Pete had just finished packing up their tools and supplies into two big blue-and-gray camo backpacks. They turned to face Wesley, and behind him Burns and Jenson, all of whom were watching and waiting.

The five men froze as the tannoy went, standing in a loose but tense knot as they listened to the announcement. Both Pete and Wesley jumped at the concluding gunshot. The only two whose faces didn’t show any real distress were Davis and Burns. Both of those men had seen it all.

“Okay,” Davis said, as the silence returned. “Are we still going?”

Wesley opened his mouth but didn’t speak, while grabbing at his radio. He knew exactly whose advice he needed right now. “Derwin, come in. Derwin, what’s your status?”

Nothing came back.

Wesley didn’t know if it was because they were buried belowdecks – there were supposed to be repeaters all over the ship for the radios NSF used – he only knew he didn’t like it. And he knew that Derwin would know exactly what to do.

Because Wesley sure as hell didn’t.

All the cells of his body told him to get back to the NSF Ops Room, to take charge of his team, and to lead them in what was always their very first job: to defend the ship. But he’d just been given a critical tasking by the man who was in command of their shore team, and thus the mission to save the world.

Turning and looking behind him, he saw both Burns and Jenson looking at him expectantly – and also wide-eyed and adrenalized, in the case of the younger man. And this experience was starting to become familiar. It turned out that leadership, particularly combat leadership, began at the exact spot where the clear path ended. Where confusion reigned. Where critical priorities clashed in irreconcilable conflict. And where the stakes were enormous, and lives could be lost or saved in fractions of seconds.

As NSF commander, Wesley’s first duty was to the ship, and to his men. Or was it? Was that eclipsed now, by his duty to humanity, and the shore team battling to save it?

“Come on,” he said, his voice steady, his eyes meeting in turn those that looked to him. “We’re going up top.”

* * *

When the tannoy went, Captain Martin was still sitting propped up on the floor of the reactor control room, which he still held – though the pool of dark-red arterial blood around him on the floor was wider now. He was just making another soul-scraping effort to drag himself up far enough to reach the wall phone, when he heard the general quarters alarm, and gratefully slumped back down into a bloody pile of British officer, weapons, and magazines.

“
Thank fuck for that.”

Now help would be coming. And he wouldn’t have to defend the ship singlehandedly. But, mainly, he could leave off trying to reach that cursed phone. And maybe try to get his wound wrapped up.

He picked up his weapon again, which was slick with his own blood. And he resumed staring at the open hatch on the opposite side of the compartment.

“Now if I could just get that damned hatch closed…”

* * *

Up in the Female Enlisted Quarters on 02 Deck, Seaman Alisa Armour levitated out of her bunk, hit the deck wide awake – and immediately dug into her footlocker, rooting all the way to the bottom, until she found it.

Buried under her rolled-up socks was a standard-issue 9mm Beretta M9 pistol, with 15-round capacity, in a holster attached to a duty belt. On the other side of the belt was a dual pouch with two spare magazines. All three were fully loaded. Amour raised her lean form to its full height, and reverently strapped on the gun belt.

Officers, and chief petty officers and above, got issued these side arms as a matter of course. Armour was only an unrated sailor. But she had been given the weapon as a member of the militia that fought in the flight deck battle. While others had been made to turn theirs in afterward, in the chaos that followed their exodus she had found it easy enough to hold on to hers in secret.

She didn’t even know why she had done so, except it had seemed like some kind of a symbol to her – a symbol of belonging. Belonging to something greater than herself. While the Battle of the
JFK
, never mind their mad run to retake Ammo City, had been by far the scariest and most harrowing moments of her life…

Nonetheless, fighting side-by-side with Parlett and Roy and the others, and especially under the command and guidance of CSM Handon, the former Delta guy and Alpha Commander, had also been the great honor of her life. Never before had she felt so completely needed and fully utilized, like fuel totally consumed by the flame. Nor had she ever felt such a sense of belonging.

And deep down, she knew, or at least feared, that she would never feel those things to that extent again. That the great challenge of her life was now behind her. Keeping the pistol was her way of hanging on to the memory, and hanging on to hope that she would be needed once again, for some inspiring and all-consuming purpose.

And as the portentous words of the general quarters announcement echoed in her ears, and replayed in her head, her first and only thought was:

We’ve got to put the band back together.

The militia. Her teammates. Parlett and Roy, for starters.

Pulling on the buckle of the gun belt to make sure it was tight, she dashed out into the dim passageway – where she immediately ran into Parlett, who had come here looking for her. She could tell from the bright light in his eyes that his immediate reaction had been the same as hers.

“Where’s Roy?” she asked.

“I think he’s at his duty station – and if not, we seriously need to get his ass to it.”

Without hesitation, Armour took off at a run behind him. “My thinking exactly.”

She and her teammate were on the same page.

* * *

Two decks up, in the Gallery Deck Gym, Sarah Cameron monitored her form in the mirror while she did deadlifts. Proper form was everything. Or maybe it was just something she could hold onto – while everything else always seemed to be spinning out of control.

It was only when the raucous and dangerously loud song on her MP3 player came to an end that she even heard the tail end of the general quarters announcement. Her heavily loaded bar crashed to the thick rubber mat and she yanked her earbuds out and listened for four seconds.

Okay
, she thought.
I get the point of that no-earbuds rule now.

Then she headed out the hatch at a run. In two minutes she was back in her cabin. In another two, she was dressed and kitted out with her weapons and gear.

She took a couple of deep breaths and looked at the hatch.

And she realized she had absolutely no idea what was out there. She only knew that, whatever the hell it was, she needed to be between it and Simon Park. As she took another steadying breath and braced herself to move out, something yanked at her attention from the edge of peripheral vision. It was the satphone Handon had given her.

She grabbed it, jammed it in a pocket – and stepped off.

* * *

About thirty seconds after Abrams’s final announcement, the automated general quarters alarm came on, and sounded throughout every corner of the ship. It echoed down empty passageways, and ones thick with running bodies. It soared out over the great open prairie of the flight deck, bounced off the bulkheads of the cavernous enclosed space of the hangar deck, passed through stacked bunks, and officers’ cabins, engineering stations, and all five levels of the island.

It started with a two-tone whistle, then a voice that said, “General quarters, general quarters, all hands man your battle stations.” Then a pulsing klaxon sounded. Then the voice and the klaxon repeated. And then again.

And it didn’t turn off.

Swim, Bonesmoker

500 Feet Over Northern Somalia

Hailey “Thunderchild” Wells blasted over the northern Somalian coast, coming in from the Gulf of Aden, watching the sky for aerial hazards such as packs of turkey-sized vultures. Having escaped the
Kennedy
, and the frustrating timidity of command, she now had the hammer down, and was keeping it there. Alpha was naked every minute until she got back on station. Her radio went – again.

“Thunderchild, Tugboat Jack, transmission – priority highest!”

She just sighed out loud inside her helmet. Hailey was pretty sure she knew what this was going to be about – the same thing as their last three transmissions. Part of her felt like there was little point in responding. She wasn’t returning to the carrier, not until her fuel state dictated that she do so, no matter what they said, or threatened her with.

Then again, she couldn’t realistically do without support from CIC and PriFly – and they could do without her even less. This was a marital spat, not a divorce.

“Jack, Thunderchild, send it.”

But, to her surprise, no response came back. She even tried again. Only silence.

As the riverine valleys of eastern Somalia loomed ahead and below, Hailey definitely wasn’t looking back. But if she had peered back over her own shoulder in that moment, what she would have just been able to make out was: a distant, tiny, and faint series of explosions tearing through the telecoms array on top of the island.

But all she heard was silence.

And all she saw was her mission, which lay ahead.

* * *

“Why will you not show me the map?” al-Sîf demanded, half his attention on the road and half on Kate’s face in the rearview.

For a few seconds she found herself unable to speak.

Was this asshole kidding?

Finally she took a deep breath and found her voice. “Because, you son of a bitch, you were the one who dragged me out from under our gun truck, hog-tied and gagged me, then put me down in that dank hole in the fucking ground.”

His eyes went wide. Like he had actually forgotten all that. Or it was ancient history. “I am also the one who just pulled you back up into that tower, instead of letting you fall.”

When he saw the lethal look on Kate’s face, he swallowed his next comment. He was going to remind her he was also the one who had convinced Sheik Godane to keep her alive, as a bargaining chip, when he wanted to execute her. So now Kate actually owed him her life twice.

And it was exactly that fact which was intolerable to her.

Fuming, Kate remembered this was the shitbird who had murdered Brendan, Kwan, and probably Todd, too. Being saved by him was like owing your life to the fucking Holocaust. She was seriously considering topping him right then and there, dumping his body, then driving the bus herself. But somehow she couldn’t shoot him down in cold blood.

But she also couldn’t stay here with this guy.

“Stop the goddamned bus.
Asshole
.”

“Fine. Good riddance. You are a headstrong woman, and more trouble than you are worth. And a pain in my a—”

“
Boss, halkaas ayaad tahay?”
He was interrupted by a staticky voice emerging from under his vest.
“Ma jiraa qof jira?”

Kate drew her M9 in a blur, swept the safety with her thumb, leveled it at the base of his skull, and hauled the hammer back.

“You son of a bitch. You’ve got a radio?”

“Of course.” Al-Sîf continued to steer the rocking bus. But he’d taken his foot off the accelerator, and they’d begun to slow. “One of yours, as a matter of fact.”

Kate’s face blossomed into a smile, the anger evaporating. “Stop the goddamned bus – and hand over the radio.
Asshole
.”