Arisen, Book Nine - Cataclysm (4 page)

She seemed to go for that sort of thing.

Handon also couldn’t forget that Henno had been a renowned ladies’ man back in the world. With his witty banter, brooding self-confidence, and Sean Bean “bit of rough” good looks, he knew women went for him. Was he using his power now for evil? Just to get under Handon’s skin?

Despite steeling himself not to react, he hated the two of them being so friendly, flirty even. And, much worse, he knew Henno could sense that he hated it – could probably even tell that he
hated
that he hated it.

And it was possible he was taking pleasure in Handon’s discomfort.

This was seriously pissing him off.

The team had been trying to discuss operational matters, the damned mission parameters, before this extended digression. And they didn’t have time for distractions.

“…it’s only a flashbang,” Homer said, deadpan.

Handon only tuned in to the tail end of this comment, and only because of the way Sarah reacted to it, turning from Henno to Homer and laughing out loud. She was having a fine old time. Now Handon was reminded that the two of them had been alone together on their long overland journey across a third of undead North America. This was obviously some inside joke between them. Someday maybe they’d have time for Sarah to tell Handon the full story of that odyssey.

For that matter, maybe one day he’d earn her trust enough for her to tell him what happened to her back in Toronto – the mysterious dark chapter of her life that led to her marrying a totally unsuitable husband. She wasn’t volunteering it so far. And Handon wasn’t going to push her. He figured he had to give her space.

He just wasn’t thrilled with what she was doing with it right this second.

But thinking about personal crap like this was definitely not the kind of distraction he needed. Hell, at this point, he didn’t need distractions of any kind.

Checking his watch, he said, “It’s time.” As he stood up tall and erect, he radiated waves of authority. Chairs scraped floor and trays clanged.

Henno rose last, his chest open as he pushed himself up with strong, tattooed forearms. And his fraction of a gaze that slid off Handon communicated why he wasn’t rushing to obey this order. It said:

You’re only in charge of this team because the better man got killed.

No Quit In Them

JFK - 02 Deck Briefing Room

When Alpha filed into the briefing room for the mission brief, Fick and his Marines were already on station. This was the same room in which they had all met three weeks and many lifetimes ago, briefing for the insertion into Chicago.

“Well, we’re back in the car again,” Predator rumbled as he wedged himself into a seat. Both the seats and the rows of desk were made for human-sized people, not stone giants.

“At least you’re out of the tree,” Reyes said, getting the movie reference, and reaching out to fist-bump the big Alpha man.

Ever since the Marines had fought through hell to pull Alpha out of North America, the two teams had been brothers. There was always inter-service rivalry, and loyalty to unit was still written in blood. But, ultimately, it was, as they said: One team, one fight.

Handon looked up as both Commander Abrams, acting skipper of the boat, and LT Campbell, who’d be quarterbacking the op from CIC, walked in on a wave of
We’ve got a lot of shit to do, so you’d better make this good – and fast.

Without preamble, Handon spoke, his voice filling the room. “This is the first briefing for what we’re now calling Op Primum Cadavere.” Amid light snickers, he frowned and added, “Not my idea for the mission name. And, no, I’m not telling you whose it was.”

“Somebody who thinks Latin makes him sound smart,” Brady said.

“
Damnant quodnon intelligunt
,” Ali said, sitting slumped back in her chair, chin on fist. She looked over at Brady, who seemed determined not to ask what that meant. She told him anyway: “They condemn what they do not understand.”

“And now,” Fick said, leaning against the bulkhead beside Handon, “we all know who to blame for the mission name. Moving the fuck on.”

Handon said, “Alpha is call sign Cadaver One, the MARSOC element Cadaver Two. Here’s the full order of battle…”

* * *

Reyes raised his hand and said, “I thought we still had two helos left.”

Handon nodded. “Have, yes. But the one that slugged it out with the Russians is more Swiss cheese than aircraft.” He nodded at Ali, who was the only reason it had made it back at all. “The air wing maintenance guys have ruled it unflyable. They say they’ve got no idea how it stayed in the air as long as it did.”

“And if we need it anyway?”

Handon shook his head. “Getting killed in a helo crash is no help to anyone. Anyway, keeping rotary-wing aircraft and other giant noisemakers out of the AO is a feature, not a bug. If we need medevac, or fast extraction – or, best of all, if we actually achieve our mission objective – then we secure an HLZ and the one remaining Seahawk comes in and pulls us out.”

Fick said, “I don’t know what you ladies are bitching about anyway. It’s only two hundred and fifty miles overland from Djibouti to Hargeisa. It’ll be a goddamned Sunday drive in the countryside.”

Handon nodded. “And with a little luck, we can scavenge military transport from the base there.”

Ali snorted. “What, no jingle bus?”

“Sure,” Fick said. “You goddamned hippies can put NPR bumper stickers and a bobble-head Jesus on it if you want, just as long as we’re rolling. Now. Here’s what ISR says we’re looking at when we hit American soil…”

* * *

As Fick briefed on the outlook for Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, Handon tuned out and scanned the faces in the room. And what he found himself looking for was something deeper than any intel in the briefing.

Simply, he was trying to judge what his guys had left in the tank.

Everyone was exhausted, rubbed right down to the bone. Two years of frantic OPTEMPO and unrelenting missions had culminated in the bullet and Foxtrot festival that had been Chicago, followed by the heart-in-mouth street fight for that airstrip on Beaver Island, their WW2-vintage bomber only getting off the ground at the last possible second… and then all of them jumping out over the Stalingrad-style Battle of the
JFK
, where they’d somehow held off a surging tide of ten million dead, the whole mess unlike anything any of them had ever seen, or even had nightmares about…

And then finding they’d escaped that, and gotten all the way across the Atlantic, only to be attacked out of a blue sky by the flagship battlecruiser of the entire Russian fleet, one of the most lethal ships that ever floated… then Juice and Ali and Homer all nearly buying it, slugging it out toe-to-toe on land, sea, and sky with hardman Spetsnaz killers who were almost as good as Alpha – and twice as brutal and remorseless…

Basically, it had been a long damned deployment so far, to say the very least.

Scanning faces, including the Marines, Handon saw that not one of them showed it – but he knew that virtually every part of them hurt. Even the areas of their bodies that weren’t wounded. Sure, they’d been shot, stabbed, blown up, swarm-attacked by packs of runners, and had Foxtrots jump on their heads. But they’d also HAHO jumped through a crashing storm into a knot of skyscrapers, fought a 360-degree street battle through thousands of dead, been dragged behind a speeding powerboat – or caught between it and a bigger one. They’d come down in crashing aircraft, had others crash down on their heads, dodged thermobaric missile strikes, chased mini-UAVs around the flight deck.

Some of them had been peppered with bullet fragments by deadly Canadian and Russian snipers – guys who had killed hundreds, and knew how it was done. There’d been near-misses with anti-personnel IEDs, collapsing buildings, religious nutjob assassins, burning forests, exploding underground fuel tanks, that snaking trail of flaming aviation fuel that had nearly burned Gunny Fick to death. They’d been blown up by Zulu jihadis, winged by flaming Zulu machine gunners, stabbed, shot, and crossbowed by asshat wannabe pirates – not to mention lit up by their four-barreled 14.5mm anti-aircraft gun…

When Handon added it all up, he figured it was a damned miracle anybody on either team could even walk at this point.

But they could – and they were going to have to.

They were all going to have to reach down one more time.

And they were going to have to, finally, once and for all, get this shit done.

* * *

“I am aware that the further into the bush you go, the greater the risk to the team.”

When Handon focused back on the room, he saw that Dr. Park had taken the lectern – their special briefing guest star.

“But the closer we get to the original victim, the better our odds that the final vaccine will be universal. Patient Zero, the first victim, is the ideal. Every additional transmission past him slightly decreases the likely or statistical effectiveness of the vaccine. How low are we willing to go?”

Judging from the silence in the room, the gravity of this had sunk in.

Park resumed. “Since you’re starting at Camp Lemonnier, yes, an American soldier would be a good start. I gather the camp went down very early – plus we’d have
something
, a sample much earlier than the ones I have now. At the same time, anything you can find out about the origin of the virus is potentially helpful.”

Graybeard raised his hand. “Is this a Zulu hunt – or a fact-finding mission?”

Before Park could answer, Brady mocked up a whiny voice and interjected, “Is this gonna be a standup fight, sir, or another bug hunt?”

Fick leaned forward. “You secure that shit.” Everyone seemed to be waiting for it. Fick sighed out loud. “Hudson.”

Park blinked heavily. “It’s a Zulu hunt. That’s absolutely the key. Get me a victim from inside Hargeisa, and I all but guarantee I can complete the vaccine. Information is secondary. Just please don’t throw away any you come across. Curing a pandemic is like solving a complex puzzle wrapped in a deep mystery…”

* * *

LT Campbell stepped up to the lectern. She not only didn’t laugh at the periodic jokes and wisecracks – she looked like she’d never found anything funny, cute, or charming her whole life. “Your top cover will be F-35s flown by Morris and Wells,” she said. “They’re our only two breathing and healthy fighter jocks, and will be alternating – providing one hundred percent coverage with the air mission.”

“Trust we won’t hear them – those afterburners?” Ali asked.

“Affirmative,” Campbell said. “You won’t even see them – unless you need ’em.”

Handon looked around. “And for the team on the ground, it’s melee weapons as long and as much as possible. We need to try to conserve ammo, due to the difficulty of resupply by air – as noted, the helo’s too loud, and the carrier air wing no longer has any palletized air-drop capability. But, mainly, the last thing we want to do is start shooting, even suppressed, if we can avoid it. It’s noise discipline first, last, and always.”

“Yeah,” Graybeard said. “Africa was kind of a crowded place back in the day.”

Fick nodded, seeing that everyone got it, but decided to stress the point anyway. “If I hear so much as a roach fart in that mother, I will smoke the shit out of every last swinging Richard in this bitch.”

Everyone got
that
.

* * *

As Campbell finished up her segment, Handon turned to Fick and lowered his voice. “After everything we’ve faced so far, how much worse could Africa be? It’s just more dead guys, right?”

Fick smiled that terrifying smile back at him – though he’d been practicing, under the tutelage of Emily, the civilian girl they rescued from the pirates, and was getting better at it. “Yeah, I’m sure you’re right. And this is a solid plan, for being totally batshit crazy and thrown together on the fly.”

Handon nodded once. As always, the guys who were doing the planning were the ones who would be executing the mission – and whose asses were on the line. And Handon couldn’t ask for a better co-commander than Fick. The two had only fought together briefly, in just two engagements – the airfield fight and extraction, and the very tail end of the flight deck battle. But each knew the other’s capabilities, and each knew the other was at the peak, and probably the end, of an extremely accomplished military career. And each would also be leading their very best surviving operators – from the front.

If they couldn’t get this done and save the day, no one could. Humanity was sending its last and best out as champions.

As Campbell finished and stepped down, Handon straightened up, faced the room, and put his platoon sergeant voice back on. “Okay,” he said. “Briefing ends. Everybody get back to work. It’s already tomorrow, and there’s a lot more coming at us.”

Fick also stood tall and spoke loudly. “It’s a hundred hours sailing around the Cape. Let’s try to be more ready at the end of it than at the beginning.”

Handon took one more look around the room. “One last thing. There is no one else to do this. We are it.” He scanned the faces in the room. “This is the team. Selection’s over. So let’s get it done.”

As the men began to file out, the commanders lingered up front.

Handon squared up to Abrams. “Commander. What exactly is our plan for getting the mission objective – plus Park, his research, and ideally his vaccine – back to the UK? I know the original idea was the plane that brought the other scientists in. That’s out, obviously.”

Abrams clapped Handon on the shoulder. “Way ahead of you, Sergeant Major. We’ve got an identical aircraft, another Beechcraft, inbound from Britain.”

“Great,” Fick said, standing nearby. “Try not to push this one over the side with a goddamned tractor.”

“Roger that, Master Guns. Negative on the goddamned tractor.”

* * *

As the two teams gathered up their notes and crap, and filed out and back to their duties, Handon’s last comment about selection was causing more than one of them to think back to the beginning of the long journey that was culminating with this mission.