Arisen, Book Nine - Cataclysm (7 page)

“So what happened?” Henno asked.

“Funny, in the end, after all his tough talk, he pleaded out and accepted loss of his badge and five years of parole… after ratting out all his buddies. He had a car accident six months later, killed instantly.”

Henno nodded his head seriously. “I’m guessing it wasn’t an accident.”

Sarah just shrugged. Her body language said it all.

“They ever come after you – his Mob buddies?”

“I got a couple of hang-up phone calls. Dark sedans parked across the street. Enough that I moved across town, didn’t give anyone my new address.”

“But you were still a cop.”

“Barely. He nearly took my career down with his. Why do you think I was never promoted past constable first class, in fifteen years of service? I was tainted. Basically, I flew too close to the flame. And I knew it.”

Henno nodded. He was starting to see where this was going.

“Not long after that I met Mark. Decent guy. No connection to the police, much less to organized crime. Stable. Didn’t drink, didn’t gamble. Was always nice to me – certainly would never hit me. Marrying him seemed to be a way to make my life safe. Not long after, when I realized I’d made a mistake, I doubled down by getting pregnant. Thought that might make the marriage make sense. But then I was really stuck – forever, even past the end of the world.”

Henno nodded and grunted. “Well, you’re free now.”

“I guess so. But at what cost?”

The two sat in silence for a few seconds. Henno could tell she’d just needed an ear to bend, had been waiting for one for a long time, and he was happy to provide it. Sure, he’d been flirting with her before in the galley, and down at the shooting range – he couldn’t ignore that Sarah was an attractive, fit, smart woman. And he certainly didn’t give a damn how Handon felt about it.

But now the tone had changed, and she had put him in her confidence. And he knew it wasn’t right to mix one thing up with the other.

The door knocked – but then opened before Henno could rise.

In walked Handon – and when he saw Sarah sitting there beside Henno on his bunk, he visibly swallowed whatever it was he’d had cued up to say.

Sarah looked up, alarmed.

And Henno stood, up to his full height. He hadn’t locked the hatch. But still he didn’t like Handon just busting in like that. There were boundaries.

Handon visibly reset, moving his steely gaze from Sarah to Henno. “I just got called out on the carpet by Abrams,” he said. “He tells me you put three of his sailors in the hospital. That true?”

“Aye,” Henno said. “Some people need thrashing.”

Handon blinked and shook his head.

Sarah’s face changed from alarm to dismay. Evidently Henno wasn’t going to explain to Handon any more about what happened. She didn’t know that, to a Yorkshireman, explaining yourself was about as appealing as crapping in public.

She jumped in. “Wait a second. What happened was—”

Handon cut her off. “I don’t care what happened. I’ve got far too much to do as it is. Mediating fights between soldiers and sailors is about the last goddamned thing I need to be doing, less than twenty-four hours before we step off.”

Now Sarah’s expression changed again – to anger. “That’s pretty insensitive. A girl was almost raped. And it was only because of Richie that she wasn’t.”

Handon looked baffled. “Who the hell is Richie?”

But then he remembered. That was Henno’s first name. Handon had never heard it used before – only seen it, once, in his personnel file, which he’d been shown on his first week in Hereford two years ago. And then Handon realized – his was not the only first name that Sarah had gotten. It was no longer a unique intimacy between them.

“Henno,” he said. “You’re on me. Right now.”

* * *

Henno followed Handon out into the companionway. Squaring up opposite him, but trying to keep the aggression he felt under wraps, Handon carefully said, “I don’t want this to get acrimonious.”

Henno paused, lowered his head, and squinted in a way that would have been terrifying to someone less of a bad-ass than Handon himself. “No,” he growled. “You really don’t.”

Handon took a breath. “I don’t know what happened. I don’t care. Maybe they had it coming. All I need to know is that you’re not going to create problems on this boat for us.” He paused, considering whether to go on. “And I need to know that I can depend on you to do your job on this mission.”

Henno straightened up, his expression taken aback. “Do my job? Are you having a laugh? When have I not done my job? You, on the other hand…”

Handon’s eyes narrowed. “What the hell does that mean?”

Henno paused and gathered steam. “It means that, for starters, on this one we are
not
skiving off to go rescue any more random civilians. You got that?” Handon knew full well Henno was talking about their misadventure with the pirate ship, where Handon’s sympathy had been tweaked by a girl’s call for help – one that turned out to be a trap. And he knew he was vulnerable here. It hadn’t been a great call on his part, and had almost spelled disaster for the mission.

But it also wasn’t Henno’s place to be second-guessing Handon’s command. And he didn’t much like his tone. But, then again, he knew as well as anyone that authority was earned. And they had to be able to work together. And Henno might even be right on this one. So he made an attempt to dial it down.

“Okay,” he said. “You won that argument. I’ve gotten religion on that one.”

He meant they would be mission focused. But even as he said the words, he knew he wasn’t even convincing himself – not totally.

Henno definitely wasn’t satisfied. He said, “And we are
not
going to hang about, held at gunpoint by random civilian nutters we’ve stupidly tried to rescue.” This time he meant Emily’s sister – who had put a gun to Dr. Park’s head, and tried to blackmail them. Henno had wanted to kill her instantly, but Handon had made him hold off. That incident too could have easily gone a lot worse than it did.

Henno went on. “I can’t be doing with any of that again. Anybody points a gun at us, anybody fucks with the mission, I’m going to slot ’em. You got that?”

Handon nodded, though it pained him to do so. Because the lesson he felt he had learned in Michigan was still with him – that if they didn’t safeguard their essential humanity, then they were as good as dead already, and were fighting for nothing. But, as insubordinate as Henno was being, he also had an excellent point. If everyone was dead, if the world fell, then their humanity didn’t matter in the least.

If the team didn’t get the job done, it was all over.

Handon had never really known how to reconcile those two imperatives – saving the world, versus safeguarding their own humanity. But right now, with the endgame looming, he figured Henno probably had it right. And they both of them came from a culture where being right was a lot more important than holding rank, or being in command.

But then, even as he thought that, Handon succumbed to another impulse. Maybe he just couldn’t stand the sneer on Henno’s face. Also, he found himself flashing back to Sarah in his cabin – right on his bunk. So as Henno was turning to leave, Handon grabbed his shoulder and said: “Just as long as
you
’re clear on one thing: that I’m in charge of this outfit.”

Henno powerfully shrugged free of Handon’s grip, and turned back to face him. “This is Captain Ainsley’s outfit. A man who knew that the mission came before everything. And who gave everything he had, or ever would have, for it.”

“Ainsley’s gone,” Handon said. “And I’m going to continue to make the calls for the team – right, wrong, or indifferent. You got
that
?”

Henno shrugged. “We’re going to do what needs doing. End of.”

Handon took his meaning: it was the mission or nothing. And he decided he might have to leave it at that. It was basically an impasse – one that could easily turn into a stand-off. Or worse.

Just hopefully not at a fatal moment.

As they were both turning to leave, Handon twisted at the waist and said, “There’s one other thing. Those three sailors you knocked out. Two of them woke up with their ship’s ID cards missing. You know anything about that?”

“No. Why would I?”

Handon nodded, and mentally shrugged it off. That didn’t make any sense to him either. Henno would have no reason to take them. And he would be unlikely to lie about it if he did. One thing about Henno, Handon thought: you rarely had to wonder about his motives.

And you pretty much always knew where you stood with him.

Something to Fight For

JFK - Hospital

Fick nodded to Sergeant Lovell as he pulled up another chair by the bedside. In front of them was the half-mummified form of Corporal Raible, who had been terribly wounded by an IED blast on the shore mission to SAS Saldanha. They had gone there to secure desperately needed supplies – but they’d run into a team of Spetsnaz commandos who wanted them just as badly.

Fick swallowed hard as he looked from Lovell over to his injured Marine. Raible was all messed up – ventilator, yards of white bandages, salve on his large variety of burn wounds. Much worse, he had a lot of soft tissue damage, which was going to be a long time healing, if ever.

Worst of all, they’d had to take off his left leg below the knee.

Fick shook his head. He’d already had a quick conference with Doc Walker and the surgical staff. And it wasn’t like the ship’s hospital had a bunch of top-shelf prosthetics just lying around. Getting Raible’s leg replaced was probably going to be a project for after they saved the world.

Meanwhile, he was just going to have to hang tough.

Right now he was still all drugged up and blissed out – sleeping through it.

Lovell, who had been in charge of Raible on that mission, looked over to Fick and said, “It was a pretty close-run thing.”

Fick nodded. “Yeah, well, you made it. And you got the job done.”

“I kept thinking that was exactly how the LT bought it.” He meant the MARSOC team’s original officer and commander – who had stayed back to hold a choke point while the rest of the Marines, including Fick, ran like hell and escaped. “Running for the boat across an overrun port, shooting in every direction, rockets raining down from the drone overhead.”

Fick just nodded, expressionless. This wasn’t one of his favorite memories. Because he still knew it was he who should have bought it on that mission, not the LT. But he had let the young officer hang back, knowing it would be his last command decision, then saluted and ran away. That was how he had ended up in charge. He’d told himself then, and in the days that followed, that he’d done it for the greater good – because he was a better leader for the Marines than their original commander. It was a terrible thought, a guilty thought.

But, ever since then, the only way he could think to redeem it was to do everything in his power to make it true. To be the best possible leader of these men, and to keep them alive. Of course, Fick couldn’t say any of that then, and he couldn’t say it now. He just kept nodding, and kept any expression off his face.

Lovell shook his head. “Man. Those Spetsnaz dudes were good – and hard.”

Fick believed it. He also still wasn’t totally clear on how a handful of dinged-up Marines had beaten them.

Lovell caught his expression, and tried to explain. Basically, their temporary leader, Juice, had improvised like a mad genius – intercepting the radio signals the Spetsnaz team used to remote-detonate their IEDs, then ordering a fake retreat to lure them into their own traps, and setting them off by hacking the signal.

Fick nodded, impressed.

Lovell blinked once. “I had my doubts about Juice. But the dude’s extremely solid. He’s a great combat leader.”

Fick nodded. Everyone in Alpha was.

He was glad it was them he would be going into the shit with.

* * *

Ten minutes later, Fick stopped in the middle of an otherwise deserted companionway and looked up. It was Emily – again. Also stopped and looking up at him.

“Hey,” she said. “I was looking for you.”

In truth, he’d kind of been looking for her too – hoping to find her in the MARSOC team room, where she’d spent a lot of time lately doing valuable support work for them. He’d wanted to say goodbye before they stepped off. But he didn’t quite feel up to admitting that. Maybe she’d think it was weird.

“Oh yeah,” he said. “What for?”

“No real reason. I guess I just wanted to see if you needed anything from me before you leave.” She paused and cocked her head, her thin and light blonde hair spilling over her face. “Okay, that’s not true. I wanted to see you before you left.” She put one ankle behind the other and twisted slightly, coquettish.

Jesus
, Fick thought.
She can’t be flirting with me?

He was happy that he seemed to be turning into some kind of father figure for her. And after the fucked-up redneck Whiskey Tango childhood she’d had, all of it overshadowed by her mother’s series of shitbird boyfriends, the last thing she needed was another incestuous father figure.

Nah
, he thought finally. It’s probably fine. It’s just her being a girl.

He relaxed and smiled. It was the genuine and heartfelt smile he’d slowly been learning, and which, unlike his old strained one, didn’t make him look scarier. It made him look human. “C’mon,” he said. “I’ll buy you a hot chocolate.”

As they fell in side by side, he looked across and saw red marks on her arm. “What happened there?”

She shook a bit more hair down in front of her face. “Nothing,” she said. There were also things she wasn’t ready to share with him. “Just rough-housing with Ben and Izzie,” she said. Fick knew she had two jobs on this vessel – support staff to him and the Marines, and part-time live-in
au pair
for Homer’s kids.

Mainly to change the subject, she said, “There’s not really hot chocolate, is there?”

“
Tsk, tsk
. You shouldn’t be so cynical.” After traversing another stretch of hallway, they ducked into the 03 Deck mess, which was smaller and less used than the one on the deck above. At the moment, there was no one eating and only one guy on duty inside.