Arisen, Book Nine - Cataclysm (3 page)

But life had made it this far. And humanity was the best it had done. It had produced souls that could be tweaked by the beauty of a sunrise, engineers who could build supersonic stealth aircraft, and pilots who could thrill to fly them.

Hailey wasn’t the most skilled pilot in the carrier air wing, and she was never going to be. She certainly didn’t have a career, or accomplishments, to rival those of her brothers. She hadn’t achieved anything her father, the admiral, would have recognized as in any way exalted.

But none of that mattered. She was flying. And she was free again. With her light-brown bob of hair swept under her flight helmet, her slightly pixie-ish face beamed at the beautiful open sky around her.

But she also had a job to do. The TOC-jocks back in CIC would be monitoring her sensor-suite video and radar. But there was a reason they still put human beings in these aircraft. And Hailey needed her own intel and situational awareness. She flipped down her helmet video monocle, then zoomed and panned the camera until she could see the launch below. She knew she was too high up for anyone on that craft to see her, unless they really squinted. And she was much too high to hear – which was the point of her mission.

To see, and not be heard.

One of the carrier’s surviving EA-18G Growlers would have actually been a better ISR platform, not to mention would have used less fuel. But it couldn’t do close air support (CAS) if the guys on the ground got in trouble. The air wing had two F-35s left, and two healthy pilots to fly them, and they would be alternating, one in the air and on station at all times.

Hailey for some reason had gotten the first shift. But she didn’t care why. She only knew she loved to fly – anywhere, any mission. Also, there probably wasn’t much she could screw up on this one – so that was less of a weight upon her peace of mind.

With luck, she would do nothing but keep watch, relaying radar and video.

And if she had to do CAS, she’d do it, to the best of her ability. But she also knew that if the ground team were indoors, or under forest canopy, or in really close contact – where much zombie fighting took place – well, there wasn’t going to be a hell of a lot she could do for them anyway.

Maybe being the angel on their shoulders would be enough.

* * *

At Handon’s signal, the operators started unclipping and expanding the launch’s fold-out paddles. For the same reason they were inserting by water, and from far out in the Gulf, they were going to kill the engine and paddle the last stretch.

It paid to be careful. Not to mention quiet.

As Juice hefted his paddle, trying to figure out how he was going to lean out far enough to use the damned thing, he almost dropped it in the drink as something bumped into the boat –
hard
.

And it was right beside and beneath him.

Oh, God
, he thought.
Not another underwater herd, like on Lake Michigan…

Sitting across from him, Ali read his look. “No, it’s not that,” she said. “The waters off the coast of Somalia are swarming with sharks.”

“Seriously?” Juice boggled. He shot a look over the side. “Man-eaters?”

“Oh, yes.”

Behind her, Predator shook his head. “The hits just keep coming for this place. I can see why you left.”

Ali shrugged. “Just one more reason Somalia is everyone’s favorite holiday destination.”

Predator grunted. “Just ask Task Force Ranger – the ones who lived.”

“Less talking, motherfuckers,” Master Gunnery Sergeant Fick growled. “More paddling.” But in the privacy of his head, he was thinking:
That would be just like this FUBAR deployment – all of us getting eaten by sharks. Every other damned thing has gone wrong so far…

When he looked up, Handon was lightly shaking his head – pretty obviously thinking the same thing.

The two unit leaders were mentally in sync by this point.

And if they were lucky, their two teams would work together as seamlessly. Though luck had not been one of their big operational assets, not for a long time.

They were learning to do without it.

* * *

Hailey banked her sleek bird around, looping back up the coast and then over the Gulf again, to keep that speck beneath her and in sight. With the high-powered optics, she could see them approaching shore now – a silent little oblong shape, with a bigger white wake out behind it.

And with the increasing light, she could now also see other oblong shapes, lighter ones, gliding through the water all around them. The water was clear enough that the huge numbers of sharks that infested these waters were totally visible from above.

Good thing they can’t see what I can
, she thought.
They might never have gone out in the first place. They’d certainly be keeping their hands and feet inside the ride at all times…

And very soon they’d be on shore – with other creatures much more likely to try to eat them alive. They were brave sons of bitches, and Hailey wouldn’t want their jobs.

Then again, she hadn’t much wanted her own, very recently, when it had looked like she was going to have to go out alone and attack that Russian battlecruiser. Thank God, and thanks to one enterprising SEAL, it was now at the bottom of Saldanha Bay, which made her world a hell of a lot easier – and everyone’s much safer.

Then again, the ZA seemed to be very much an
if-not-one-goddamned-thing-then-another
sort of affair.

She tried not to wonder what was coming next.

* * *

Juice couldn’t stop himself from looking over the side constantly now, and suddenly he was able to see a huge pale shape gliding by just below the surface. It had bright iridescent blue spots, and Juice didn’t know what the hell it was.

“Jesus,” he said, “look at the size of that thing.”

Ali spared a look over the side. “Don’t worry. It’s a whale shark. It’s the largest fish that swims, but they only eat plankton and algae.”

“How big?”

“I don’t know. Forty feet? Twenty tons? Unconfirmed reports of bigger ones.”

“Fuck me,” Juice said. “There are a lot of them, too.”

Ali shrugged. “They give birth in the warm waters around here. This is part of the African rift, the hottest part of the continent. The hatchlings feed on the abundant plankton here, then migrate down the coast, past the Seychelles and on to Australia.”

“Oh, really?” Juice said. “How soon does that happen?”

* * *

Hailey banked it around once again. She’d be doing a lot of that, despite keeping her airspeed down close to her stall speed – both to save fuel, and to increase her linger time.

She took a look at the sky around her. She knew that all of Africa’s hazards weren’t on the ground. Up above it, the number one aerial threat was flocks of pterodactyl-sized vultures that went blasting around like packs of airborne dogs. They wouldn’t be up this high, but she’d have to watch her ass if she got down below five thousand feet. And if, God forbid, she had to land anywhere down there, she knew she was likely to face zebras and wildebeest migrating across any airstrip.

Basically, Africa had been dangerous to all known forms of life, never mind all forms of aviation, since long before the dead ruled – and long after the living stopped wielding RPGs and shoulder-fired missiles, which should in theory not be much of a threat to a last-generation stealth fighter like the F-35…

But even as she thought that, her electronic warfare suite went red and noisy – she had just been painted with radar.

What the hell?

That was weird. There definitely shouldn’t be anyone down there operating any kind of radar any more, never mind the kind that could get a purchase on her very low-observable (VLO) integrated airframe, with its composite materials and internal weapons and fuel tank.

But after a single second, it stopped again.

Her hunch was this was some kind of electronics anomaly, rather than real hostile reconnaissance – just a ghost in a very complex machine, a result of maintenance standards, not to mention availability of spare parts, going to hell. Nonetheless, she needed to report it to CIC, and was about to do so—

When she spared another look at the launch below.

And all those oblong shapes were
really
close to it now…

* * *

Checking both his watch and the instrumentation, the sailor piloting the shore launch reached for the ignition switch to kill the engine.

As his hand was a few inches away, suddenly the inboard engine, or maybe the rotors themselves protruding beneath the hull, made some kind of horrendous grinding and burbling noise.

And then the stern of the boat dipped down toward the water, causing everyone to scramble and lean to stay where they were – and sending a fat wave of seawater washing over the rear gunwale and flooding the deck and the tops of eleven pairs of assault boots.

A gigantic spotted fin breached the dark water behind them, followed by the whole twenty-foot-long tail underneath it, both terrible and ghostly in the dim light. Finally, most of twenty tons of whale shark came slapping back down on the surface of the water before rolling over, and sending a much bigger wave of salt water over everyone sitting in the launch.

And this was only the first of them.

Suddenly, the sea was coming alive all around them, submerged bulks bigger than the launch itself bashing into it from every side, as well as from underneath.

Within seconds, they threatened to crush the boat and pull its whole crew beneath the waves, before they had even reached shore.

They definitely hadn’t seen this one coming.

Sausage Fest

JFK Galley - 02 Deck
[72 Hours Earlier]

“I say we’ve got to insert by helo. There’s no time to drag our tired asses overland.”

“There’s also no time to fuck it up. If the rotor noise draws a singularity, then that’s us fucked – for the duration.”

“Okay, good point.”

“And drone surveillance shows Hargeisa more crowded than your mom’s house on payday.”

“Mom says hi, by the way.”

“Ha. Tell her I’ll be by at eight. And I want those sheets washed for once.”

Dr. Simon Park threaded through the galley, then sat down amid the roaring laughter at the long table colonized by the Tier-1 operators. He had no illusions that he was one of them. Then again, after all they had suffered and sacrificed to pull him out of that bunker in Chicago, which he’d had every reason to think would also be his tomb, he felt like he owed them something. For starters, whatever help and expertise he could offer. He needed to make sure he was available to them, and doing his part.

That ethic had been etched into his soul now.

As he sat down, the front of his tray bumped into Henno’s, opposite him. The British hard man looked up from shoveling sausages into his mouth, and his expression turned. He was looking at the visible bits of corn in Park’s veggie sausages. On his own plate, Henno had meat with meat, and meat sauce. Plus thick-cut fries. Potatoes were always going.

Ali was sitting one spot over. She caught the visual exchange between Henno and Park, and asked “Where’d they get meat?”

Henno tossed his head at Juice, farther up the table. “Saldanha. Juice’s handiwork. Tinned stuff, but not bad for all that.”

“Ugh,” Ali said. “Canned meat.”

Henno grunted. “I’ve been in the British Army since age sixteen.”

“So?”

“So you’ve obviously never had bully beef.” Henno looked at Park’s plate of rabbit food. “Filthy seed-eater,” he said, leavening the epithet with a slight grin. “You can be as vegetarian as you like, mate. You think the rest of the world will hesitate one second before devouring you? You’d better keep yourself at the top of the food chain. You won’t like the bottom.”

Sarah Cameron, the only non-Alpha person there other than Park, sitting further up by Handon, leaned down the table and weighed in. “That’s absolutely right. I knew a lot of vegetarians in Toronto. None of them are here now.”

Park nodded thoughtfully, not taking offense. “No, I suppose that’s right. There’s little getting around that life exists by devouring other life. A plant may not have a nervous system – but it’s still made up of exactly the same amino acids. Me and this corn have a common ancestor. And now it’s going down so that I may live.”

Still chewing, Henno looked up at Homer. “We missed a trick. Could have had fresh dolphin meat for brekkie.”

Homer smiled but didn’t respond. Among those there, only Ali knew that he and Henno, when launching their undersea attack on the
Admiral Nakhimov
, had to evade military dolphins – which the Russian Navy had trained to locate and attack enemy divers. As had the U.S. Navy, for that matter.

Ali sat toying with her food. “Chris Kyle said all real warriors were meat-eaters.” She was referring to the most lethal sniper in U.S. history – who had survived four deployments protecting Americans and Iraqis in the brutal fighting of Fallujah and Ramadi, only to die trying to help troubled veterans, when one turned his gun on him at a shooting range.

Noise, one spot up on the other side, nodded. “
Shaitan Ar-Ramadi
. The Devil of Ramadi. Chief Kyle counted much crow.”

“Oi,” Henno said, as he polished off his plate. “Aren’t you Sikhs supposed to have your dagger on you at all times?”

Noise nodded politely. And pointed at his own head.

“What, under your turban?” Henno pushed his chair back, big arms bulging. “Nice one. That might yet come in handy.”

* * *

Handon, sitting farther down beside Sarah, kept his own counsel, and listened to Sarah talk with Henno about hunting. He had shot grouse and pheasants back in the north of England. And Sarah had shot most everything that walked, ran, hopped, or flew in North America. She’d had to, to survive.

Henno was smiling at Sarah and being a little too charming – and she seemed to be enjoying it. That was a little weird, as previously it had been Henno who seemed most to judge her for failing to save her husband and son back in Michigan. But whatever offense Sarah had taken at that, she seemed to have forgotten it now. Maybe she was attracted by Henno’s obvious unconcern for what she thought of him, his refusal to curry any favor. Maybe it was just his rough air of confidence and capability.