Arisen, Book Nine - Cataclysm (28 page)

Only running stood any chance of saving them. And even that didn’t. Elliott was on the back of the formation now – he’d been watching the platoon sergeant’s ass, but the sergeant had been herding his platoon, keeping them all in front of him. This wasn’t any slight to Elliott. It was just an oversight.

And now Elliott felt a white-hot pain in the back of his knee – and knew he’d just taken a shrapnel wound. And his running, not all that strong or swift or steady to start with, now took a hit.

Within seconds he was starting to fall off the back.

The air was thrumming with the overpressure of the explosions, churned-up dirt falling like the sky and earth had been inverted, the eardrum-shredding noise of the explosions growing even louder – and coming closer, bigger, faster, more terrible, with every second. It was almost impossible to keep the mind from shutting down in pure terror, total sensory and mental overload.

But, battling to stay functional, prodding his mind into action, Elliott quickly reached a conclusion: it was madness to stay above ground in this. If he did, he was dead. It was only when, not whether, he got killed – and it could be any second. He couldn’t outrun this. You can’t outrun shrapnel.

So he skidded to a halt at the outside edge of the crashing maelstrom. He turned around. And he started running back in the opposite direction, straight into the heaving cataclysm – and looking for the biggest closest shell crater he could quickly find. Once he got below the level of the ground, only a direct hit could take him out. Barring that, the explosions and shrapnel would just go by over his head. A crater was as good as a foxhole.

In seconds he found a huge hole in the earth that had been gouged out by a 105mm round and hurled himself into it, the impact of the hard hot earth knocking the wind out of him. He was stunned.

But he was alive.

* * *

“And now you fucking pick up. God save us.”

Colonel Briars was crouched in a copse of English elm trees, trying to master himself. He was actually on the verge of tears – not a great state for a leader of men, never mind a ground commander of infantry, a Para officer.

He was trying to master himself, and not doing well.

He could still hear the echoes of the last rounds of the artillery barrage bouncing around the fields of upper Kent. Mercifully, he was too far to hear the screams of the wounded. But right now his staff officers were taking casualty and status reports. And they weren’t good. It appeared that as much as half his manpower was gone, wiped out in a few terrible minutes. And it looked like D Company might be a total write-off.

“I need those helos you promised me –
now
,” Briars said, his voice shaking. “I need them urgently for casualty evacuation.”

“I’m sorry, Colonel. It’s as I told you. THERE ARE NO HELOS.”

* * *

“Everything flying has been urgently tasked, and in many cases re-tasked,” Miller said, trying to hear the transmission through the ongoing chaos of the JOC. He was already half-stunned from the disasters there – and could find no way to generate empathy for the plight of all those soldiers out on the ground. He was numb. Moreover, as a professional, it was his job to be. “You’re going to have to leave your wounded. We will get them medevac’d, or casevac’d, as soon as humanly possible.”

There was no response on the other end. It was like Miller was talking to a badly traumatized child, or small animal. Like the Para colonel couldn’t even think how to respond to this, couldn’t make his mind work.

Miller took a breath. “Colonel, listen to me. We need everyone still combat effective in this battle. You’ve got to get your men out of there. Our ISR indicates the barrage didn’t work – you haven’t broken contact. The dead are still locked onto you, and they are still coming.”

“No shit it didn’t work.”
An apoplectic pause.
“Get my men out to where? Our last orders were to retreat behind the Wall in the southern sector.”

Miller paused. “Who told you that?”

“A Major Jameson. He said he was in charge there now.”

Miller cursed. That wasn’t smart. That wasn’t the plan, and it wasn’t what they needed to be doing. In fact, they needed every combat unit out on the ground slowing the advance of the dead. As soon as the dead reached the ZPW and started piling up, the final countdown for London, and humanity, started for real.

He looked across the heaving JOC where Jameson was still nominally commanding, but really just trying to keep his head above water. Miller considered going over to consult with him on this. But the man clearly didn’t want to be consulted about anything right now – that was obvious from his face, body language, and tone of voice. He looked like he was going to shoot straight out the roof if given one single thing more to deal with.

Miller just had to make an executive decision. It had to be done. He keyed his mic. “Two Para is ordered to stay in the field. Everyone is needed.”

“The battalion is at half strength! Half my men have been wiped out! I’ve got dozens of critical WIAs!”

Miller exhaled, then checked his local version of the map board. “That’s received, Colonel. I’ll tell you what. Withdraw to sector November Mike Four Niner. That’s the northernmost sector of the ZPW – the outside north edge of London. It’ll be calm there, at least for a while longer. You can man that sector. You’ll have time to refit, care for your wounded, maybe casevac some of them.”

“And still no airlift? Do you have any idea how far that is on foot?”

Miller took another breath. “Be advised, Colonel. You have to get your healthy troopers out of there – while the enemy is distracted by the wounded, and before they lock onto the rest of your men.”

“Go to hell.”

Miller guessed that counted as signing off.

He had a hundred other queued calls anyway.

* * *

It seemed to go on forever.

Hours of sheer terror, down in his hole, with shrapnel and body parts and even whole trees whipping by overhead, or else dropping in on top of him – the whole time Elliott praying that a shell wouldn’t land in his improvised foxhole at that exact moment and turn him to meat vapor.

Then again, if it did, he’d never know it.

They said artillery never hit in the same place twice. But Elliott knew that with the advanced targeting systems, they could drop two rounds on a two-pence coin if they wanted to. So that was just wishful thinking.

But then, even more suddenly than it had started… it stopped.

And now he could make out two things.

The first was the moaning of the wounded. It rose and fell and howled. There were cries, moans, screams, and soft sobbing.

The second was the voice of Colonel Briars himself, their commanding officer. He must have had all his subsidiary radio nets linked for automatic rebroadcast of this transmission. He was speaking to everyone in the battalion personally. And he actually sounded as if he were in shock, which made Elliott think maybe he was doing more harm than good by addressing them.

But it was what he said that made Elliott curse out loud.

Colonel Briars was telling them to move out – and to leave the wounded behind. For the first time in his military career, Elliott didn’t even consider obeying an order.

Some things were out of line.

Might Work

JFK - Bridge

“Doctor Park again for you, Commander.”

This time Park marched onto the bridge not just with Sarah Cameron in tow, but also Lieutenant Wesley, who was wearing the blue-and-gray camo Navy working uniform, with an NSF badge on his left breast pocket, a side arm in a belt holster – and a single silver bar on each collar point, representing his rank as Lieutenant (junior grade).

Park had a laptop, and each of the others had a thin folder of papers.

Abrams hadn’t totally expected to see them back, so he just waited for it.

“We’ve got our mission plan,” Park said.

“And it’s good,” Sarah added. “It’s viable.”

“You get with Sergeant Lovell?” Abrams asked.

“Yes,” Sarah answered. “He provided all the mission planning templates – and went over everything with us with a fine-tooth comb.”

Abrams sighed and looked over to Wesley. In the end, it was he and his men who were going to have to do this thing if Abrams approved it. “What about it, Lieutenant? You wanna get in the war?”

Wesley’s face did little contortions as he considered.

“Never mind,” Abrams said. “Just tell me – what’s your take on this plan?”

“Might work,” Wesley allowed.

Abrams shook his head. Maybe that was as enthusiastic as Englishmen let themselves get. He picked up a phone and rang CIC. “LT, I need you for half an hour. To help review a mission profile. Yeah, right now. Briefing room.”

He hung up and stood. “You three follow me. We’re gonna go upstairs and you all run me through this, and see if you can sell it to me. More importantly, you’ll have to sell it to LT Campbell. She’s the one who quarterbacks the shore missions, and is also the one who will have to watch you die – live on drone video – when it goes wrong.”

The group of four exited and ascended the inside ladder.

Forty-five minutes later, they returned to the bridge – Abrams and Wesley looking a bit less happy than Park and Sarah. With their planning documents, they had made an impressive case that a shore mission to Jizan in Saudi Arabia to retrieve a DNA sequencer might actually work.

They’d even nearly convinced the notoriously skeptical LT Campbell. She had worked hard to poke holes in their plan, asking questions like:
What if you fall behind schedule, and this drags out? What if you need rescue – a QRF? Are we gonna have to run CAPs and CAS missions for you with aircraft we don’t have? What if your helo goes down – who’s going to CSAR all your asses then? And what if more Russians turn up on shore when you get there?

But none of these seemed fatal, or had no answer to them. Now Abrams might actually have to approve the damned thing.

And Wesley might have to go out there and actually do it.

Abrams scanned the group through narrowed eyes. “Okay. Lieutenant Wesley, you’re dismissed. Start getting your team ready.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Wesley said, a little pleased with his improving impersonation of an American naval officer.

“You, too,” Abrams said to Sarah. “Assist him. I want a moment with Dr. Park.”

Sarah nodded and she and Wesley turned and left.

Park opened his mouth to get persuasive again – but Abrams cut him off.

“You really believe that this is necessary?”

“Yes, sir, I do.” Park said. “I believe being able to do the sequencing the instant they get back with the virus sample could shave days off the time to a working vaccine.”

Abrams just grunted in response.

Park continued. “And you heard the same thing from CentCom that I did – days could make the difference. If we get back to Britain and everyone’s dead… I’m not sure how much difference the vaccine will make at that point.”

Abrams seemed to soften. This was a point he couldn’t ignore. “Okay. You’ve got provisional approval. I’ll give final sign-off when the NSF team has done all their mission prep and they’re ready to step off. Whether it’s helping them, or progressing the vaccine, you’d damned well better be doing something useful meanwhile.”

Park nodded, already trying to focus on everything he needed to do now.

The most important man in the world was getting more so. He wished there were someone else to share that mantle – savior of the world – as well as help carry the burdens that were his alone. But as far as he knew there wasn’t. So, as he had heard the operators say many times…

He was just going to have to get it done.

Thunderdome

Camp Lemonnier - Outside Thunderdome

Brady and Reyes found what they sought after circling about a third of the giant structure.

It was another heavy chain-link section of fence between squat HESCO barriers. Behind that was ten feet of HESCO-enclosed passageway, which then turned ninety degrees to the left. The ninety-degree bend was a common configuration – it meant an explosion outside the barriers couldn’t injure anyone inside. There were also a lot of stacked fencing sections on the ground, and there might be another gate around the corner. That would make sense for herding Zulus, an airlock kind of configuration.

While Reyes moved to the gate handle on the right side, Brady carefully checked out the hinges and the area behind them on the left. Sure enough, there it was – a primitive IED, clumsily disguised. It was a grenade duct-taped to one of the fence-posts, with a clear filament wire attached to the pin on one end, and the far side of the gate on the other. When the gate swung open, it would pull the pin.

Wordlessly, Brady took his knife, slid it through the fence, and put pressure on the grenade’s spoon. Then he nodded to Reyes, who worked the latch, and slowly pulled the gate open. The filament pulled taut and the pin came free and dropped to the dirt. But the spoon stayed where it was, under Brady’s knife. Reyes slipped through the gap, retrieved the pin, and replaced it in the grenade.

The two Marines nodded in sync, well pleased. Brady withdrew his knife, rose, and moved to enter. And Reyes pulled the gate wider to let him in.

Too late, he saw the second stretch of filament, leading to a second grenade on the opposite side – and this one had been pretty damn masterfully disguised.

The spoon popped and flipped through the air, hitting Reyes in the chest and dropping to his feet.

Aw, shit
, he thought.

* * *

Homer moved parallel to the outside wire now, scanning both inside and out. The fence was so far intact, though it had obviously been repaired in sections. There were also a number of visible dead, standing or staggering around outside, between the camp and the town. Homer wasn’t making any noise, but he did pass through the field of view of some of them, and they started stumbling toward the fence to check him out.