Arisen : Nemesis (32 page)

Kwon was just folding up the bipod legs under his 240 when the first RPG came in – directly from his rear.

Luckily he was fairly well covered up from the rear, and generally hunkered down. Unfortunately, he was totally out of position to fire in that direction or defend himself. He had to scramble. As he did so, heavy small-arms fire started up from the same direction – thick swarms of 7.62 rounds zipping through the foliage and banging into dirt and wood – and a second RPG streaked in, impacting in nearly the same point as the first. Unfortunately, this spot happened to be the base of a gnarled, twisted, and absolutely huge juniper tree.

And it started to fall over – right across Kwon’s fighting hole.

Oh, shit.

Sometimes the universe dictates tactics. He hefted his weapon and half-climbed half-rolled out. He could hear the wood shrieking as it split and twisted and heard the leaves and branches scraping and crashing through other trees on its way down. It looked like it was going in hard and Kwon needed to get well clear. But junipers can be wider than they are tall and this one landed on one of its big horizontal lower branches, which stopped its fall.

Now it rested on that branch, like an elbow, forming a triangle over Kwon’s hole.

So he hopped back in, getting out of the way of the incoming AK and RPG storm, then got his weapon emplaced to the rear and back in the fight. Whatever was coming for them from their six, Kwon was going to sling lead in that direction while he still had breath.

The squad net was going manic now. Jake was trying to paint a tactical picture, informed by Elijah’s drone view and Brendan’s radio traffic, and it was basically this: there was a whole second assault force, which had been traveling well apart from the first one, behind and beside it – and was now maneuvering in on them. Evidently, when the ambush was sprung, the second force had immediately swung around their flank, and was now attacking balls-out from their rear.

The perfectly planned ambush had been counter-ambushed.

Kwon guessed the main force must have split in two. And because they waited until they were under cover of the forest canopy before splitting off, and because the second force waited until it was in position before firing, it had all been invisible to the overhead drone.

There’d be time later for agonizing about how this had happened – how al-Shabaab had known to split their force, and be ready to counter-assault an ambush – if any of them lived.

Right now, it was balls to the wall – a wall of lead, smashing through the forest like a barrage of axes, over and all around Kwon’s position, as well as more streaking RPGs, lighting up the night. Dirt and half-rotted wood geysered into the sky, raining down heavily in every direction, like a kind of hot mulch rain in some earthy forest hell. Every explosion whited out his NVGs. It faded quickly as the goggles dynamically adjusted their light level, but it kept happening. And from the constellation of muzzle flashes out there, Kwon guessed they were looking at another fifty attackers.

Fifty on four. With surprise and superior position on the other foot this time.

Kwon only hoped the others had reacted as well as he had, getting their positions flipped around to defend and engage. And he was also lucky, he thought, sparing a look up at the arboretum now arching over his head. Not only had the falling tree not killed him – it was now providing additional cover and concealment.

Until a few seconds later, when one of the incoming RPGs made a direct hit on the branch holding the tree up in place – and it crashed down again, all the way this time. Reacting instantly, Kwon made another bid to roll out ahead of the impact. But the tree had less far to fall now and no surrounding trees to slow it down. It basically crashed down on his head.

Amazingly, he got his body clear. But he was still hauling his weapon after him and the tree got that, snapping the light-weight titanium machine gun in half.

And also crushing his arm – and pinning it in place underneath.

Now Kwon had lost the protection of the fighting hole – and, much worse, he couldn’t get to another position of cover. He was trapped beside this one, his ass hanging out in the wind of the crushing incoming fires. He hauled for everything he was worth. The arm hurt like hell – but it stayed put.

Well,
he thought, as glass and plastic shattered directly in front of his face,
at least I don’t have to worry about explosions whiting out my vision anymore
. Incoming AK rounds had smashed into his NVGs from the side, and he pulled them clear with his free hand. He had no night vision now, and couldn’t see a damned thing but the incoming tracers. He knew the NVGs were shredded. They were also irreplaceable.

He’d worry about that if he lived through the next minute.

Right now, he tried to get to his side arm with his left hand. And he got on the radio, to do something very unfamiliar.

Call for help.

You Always Were An Asshole, Gorman

Ambush Site - Todd’s Position at the Gun Truck

There was absolutely no way for Todd to traverse the minigun around to get it on the attackers. Normally, that was exactly what the turret ring in the roof was for. But they had basically built a creature that was half gun truck and half tree. And sticking up out of the turret hatch Todd was wedged in with foliage, his only field of fire down into the kill box. He could have cleared it away given enough time, or help, but he had neither.

All he could do was drop down inside the vehicle, grab his personal weapon, crawl out one of the doors, scramble under the truck, and start shooting out through the tires. That he got this far without being shot initially surprised the shit out of him. The forest out there was going crazy.

But he was actually relieved only a few seconds later when he heard the call from Kwon – and then from Jake, providing details a few seconds after that. Kwon was trapped in his fighting hole and Jake had maneuvered there to support and defend him. And now Todd and Kate needed to move there themselves, to try and get Kwon unfucked.

Todd was relieved not because he couldn’t hold this position.

But because he couldn’t get a shot from there.

After the apocalypse of firing and explosions kicked off from their rear, it took him a while to realize – none of it was coming in his direction, at least not intentionally. It was all on Kwon and Jake –
all
of it. From the sound and fury of the attackers, and from radio traffic, Todd worked out that the counter-ambush force must have come around their own left flank – the side that didn’t have Todd and Kate’s dog-leg sticking out of it. That was how they’d been able to get into position so quickly.

And that was also why they were hammering the shit out of Kwon and Jake, while leaving him and Kate relatively untouched.

Now they had to motate – and they had to light a damned fire.

Todd reached back into the truck for a bandolier of 40mm grenades for the enhanced grenade launcher module (EGLM) under his SCAR, dropped back down, and shouted across the radio, “Kate, Todd, moving to you!” Then he speed-crawled to Kate’s hole, which was one position closer to their beleaguered brothers. He did this, as the citations say, “without regard to his personal safety and heedless of enemy fire.” The bastards weren’t shooting at him. But there was still a shitload of lead in the air, much of it coming their way.

He found Kate turned ninety degrees in her hole and half out of it, selectively engaging muzzle flashes to their rear. And she was hitting them. Todd grabbed her by the scruff of her neck – the collar of her plate carrier – and bodily hauled her out onto the ground. She went into a low crouch, weapon up, and facing the dangerous direction.

“
We gotta move!
” Todd shouted.

Kate’s NVG-extended face nodded. “
Go! Right behind you!
”

* * *

Maneuvering to Kwon’s position was not a cakewalk. But it was like death on a stick when they got there. Jake was pushed out ten meters, moving back and forth among several positions of cover to keep the bad guys from zeroing him – while also singlehandedly keeping them from overrunning the whole position, at least for a few more seconds.

It was perhaps forty on one – and Jake was holding his own.

He came in on the squad net, shouting to be heard over the gunfire and explosions:
“Be advised, some of these motherfuckers are wearing NVGs!”

Big surprise there
, Kate thought, as he and Todd neared Kwon’s position. Even before the fall, jihadis had been showing up with better equipment all the time. Now the world was theirs to scavenge.

Kwon clicked on the net:
“Can you kill them, please?”

“I am. But then their buddies scavenge the goggles from the bodies.”

Reaching the tree-covered hole, Todd saw now that Kwon’s NVGs had been shot off. “Hilarious!” he shouted. “They’ve got night vision and you don’t! Ha ha ha!”

Kate came piling in beside him, just in time to see Kwon flick Todd the bird with his non-trapped hand.

Todd raised his rifle to put out some rounds. “What a fine pass things have come to!” he shouted, triggering off.

When the sound of shooting to the rear made it clear to Jake the two-person cavalry had arrived, he fell back to coordinate. There wasn’t much cover, particularly where Kwon was, and everybody was trying to melt into micro-features of the terrain. Jake had seen guys caught in the open trying to crawl up into their own helmets before. And this was that.

Somehow they had gone from occupying a perfect network of covered positions with the enemy caught in the open and being slaughtered – to being bunched up in the open with the enemy on the verge of overrunning them.

Sometimes in combat things go to shit with breathtaking speed.

“
You two have gotta lift this tree!
” Jake shouted. He didn’t need to add that he would do the fighting while they did the lifting. Kate slung her weapon and got into position. Todd hit Jake and swapped weapons with him, then passed him the bandolier of grenades. Effective fire was raking across everything. A round banged into Todd’s plate carrier, jarring him, but not stopping him. Jake threw himself down a few feet ahead of the hole and started walking 40-mil HE rounds out across the enemy front. The heavy whumping explosions were precisely placed.

And it was heavier firepower. But it wasn’t enough.

Todd and Kate exchanged a single nod, meaning,
One…
then both heaved for all they were worth. The tree didn’t budge.
One…
and they went again. It rolled slightly, but in the wrong direction – back over Kwon. Kate looked down to the trapped man, who had just had his arm additionally crushed. His lips were a tight line. He was visibly not making a sound.

Brendan busted in over the squad net from Camp Price.

“Triple Nickel, be advised most urgently. We’ve got visibility on your attacking force in the forest, from the muzzle flashes and rocket back-blast. And they are not only maneuvering around your flank – they are sending a breakaway force, which is moving STRAIGHT toward your vehicle. How copy?”

“Copy that,” Todd managed, as he heaved his shoulder into the rough bark of the ancient and unyielding tree.

The ambush team didn’t need to confer on what this meant, even if they had the time or breathing room to do so. The capture of their gun truck would be a catastrophe. It wasn’t so much that they’d lose their mobility and be facing a crushingly long march home – on the off chance they survived. It wasn’t that the team would lose half its priceless and irreplaceable fleet of special-ops gun trucks.

No, it was that al-Shabaab would capture their .50-cal minigun.

And then they would turn it on its former owners.

At which point their life expectancy would be measured in tenths of seconds.

* * *

“
Guys!
” Kwon shouted across both the air and the net, so he might have a prayer of being heard. “
It might be time for you to take off!
” This was the shoutiest Kate had ever heard the soft-spoken soldier.

Jake was out front maneuvering again, hopping from cover to cover, and putting out grenade after grenade, and mag after mag. “
It might be time for you to shut the fuck up,
” he said over the net, around heaving breaths.

Combat was now turning into both a high-intensity sport and an endurance one – simultaneously marathon and sprint. Kate wondered how long even the mighty Jake could keep this up. Though, surely he’d get shot or blown up before his wind gave out. So many rounds were coming in that Kate couldn’t believe she wasn’t a human sieve. So many RPGs were hitting the ground so close all around them she was amazed there was any kind of terrain feature left to shelter behind. The air was permanently hot from the explosions, and a haze of debris drifted permanently around them, disturbed only by the passage of hundreds of 7.62 rounds moving two thousand feet per second.

“Guys!” Kwon said. “Seriously!”

And Kate looked down just in time to see something remarkable: Todd grabbed Kwon’s pistol from his chest rig and took it away.

In response to this, Kwon merely looked annoyed and bored. “Come on,” he said. “You don’t think I’m going to go out like that, do you?”

Todd hesitated a fraction of a second – then shook his head, reversed the weapon, and handed it back.

“Besides, I need that. Down!” he shouted. Instantly, Todd hit the deck and Kwon blasted over his head, emptying all fifteen rounds. Two a-S guys had been sneaking up the ridge on their flank. They’d been smart: they hadn’t fired, so hadn’t revealed their positions either to the defenders or to the drone. And they’d gotten very close. Kate boggled again, at how she and Todd had missed them totally with NVGs – but somehow Kwon hadn’t, without them. Then she realized – they were wearing some kind of thermal cloaking.

Jesus
. This shit was getting real, and dire.

“Reload!” Kwon said, handing the pistol over.