ARISEN, Book Eleven - Deathmatch Read Online Free PDF

mist made it harder to see and hear enemy aircraft. But he wasn’t anticipating too many of those.
    Zack answered. “Somalia, while largely arid, also has a lot of river valleys, of various lengths, running from the coast inland. Most are just dry wadis for much of the year. But the heavy rains lately, and before that in the long rainy season in spring, have caused a lot of foliage to sprout up – fast. Really fast, and thicker than I’ve ever seen it. Now we’ve basically got these long strips of oasis snaking through the desert – and they’re seriously heavy bush.”
    Jake said, “Worse, the riverbeds will have dried and hardened again in the last two weeks. And now if a lot of rain comes down fast, which it looks like doing, it’s going to be flash flood city. A lot of those wadis are about to become serious terrain features.”
    Handon filed that under transportation problems – basically, it made it harder to get around. But that struck him as way down on a long list of problems they had to deal with.
    Everyone moved inside, to the biggest tent in camp.
    And they got back to work trying to solve them.

Walk Through the Fire
    Twenty Miles West of Moscow, at 2,000 Feet
    The great barren expanse of western Russia spooled by invisibly beneath the Beechcraft King Air, all alone and wind-buffeted in the empty black void of the sky. No running lights illuminated the aircraft. No radio signals came or went.
    A single carpeted aisle stretched the length of the cabin from the cockpit to the cargo area in the back. In the middle, in six rows of seats, one on each side, the twelve men of One Troop, 42 Commando, Royal Marines sat in silence and darkness. No interior lights lit the cabin, and the humming and vibration of the engines was the only sound – and nearly the only movement.
    The men were alone with their thoughts, with their fears, with their memories and loss and all their regrets. And not least with the weight of what they had to do now. And the knowledge of what would be waiting for them back home in Britain if they failed. There would be nothing – nothing but death covering their homeland, from first inch to last. London overrun and fallen. Everyone they ever knew or loved dead. Or not even dead – worse. The weight on the shoulders of these twelve men couldn’t have been heavier.
    In the front two seats, which due to chance or foresight faced backward, Major Jameson and Staff Sergeant Eli sat side by side, also in darkness and silence. But each was bearing an even heavier burden than the ten Royal Marines they led. Eli, though fatalistic at this point, and with an absolutely indispensable job to do as troop sergeant, seemed calm enough – head down, once again scribbling into the dirty, scruffy notebook he’d been carrying around with him ever since the fall.
    Jameson, though, couldn’t make himself do anything but worry.
    Because it was he who had made the decision to abandon his failing command of CentCom in London. And instead personally lead this hail Mary pass of a mission, this goal from midfield, to try to rescue the one man on the planet – if indeed he existed, never mind was still alive – who might be able to save Fortress Britain. Or at least keep London standing a little longer.
    Oleg Aliyev. The man with the power to kill even death.
    * * *
    Those rear-facing front seats forced Jameson to look into the faces of the men, all those he was about to lead into what was almost certainly their last mission. Or surely their last into fallen Europe, at least. It also seemed to leave him looking into the past – at all the years and missions and struggle behind.
    As well as into the faces of the men no longer there.
    Those lost in the first days and weeks, killed or infected as they fought their way across Europe after the fall. Briars and Lewis, who fell in the brutal 360-degree fighting in Canterbury, with its crashing trucks, errant air strikes, and collapsing multi-story buildings. Johnson,