Arisen : Nemesis Read Online Free PDF Page B

at risk – that the bad guys were going to try to overrun it. Or at least blast their way in and go on a shooting spree. That kind of thing had happened often enough in Afghanistan, though usually to smaller and more isolated combat outposts. But not always.
    She took her right index finger from her trigger housing and squeezed it several times in open air.
    Jake pointedly didn’t look at her as he kept talking. “The base is already weakened with so many teams outside the wire trying to help the civil authorities.” The sound of a belt-fed machine gun started up, chattering dully from outside somewhere.
    “Me,” Kate said. “I’ve got one. I’ve got a trigger finger.”
    Jake blinked once, slowly. “They’re trying to bring all deployed units back in now, but it’s not happening fast enough.”
    “Works fine, looks just like yours.”
    “And we’re Alamo’ing the fuck up until they do.”
    “Master Sergeant,” Kate finally said, her own voice rising to the occasion.
    Jake finally deigned to look at her. “It’s Jake.” He sized her up. “What kind of tactical training do you gals get?”
    Not pausing to be outraged by the casual sexism – which she figured was an attempt to wind her up and see if she’d react emotionally – Kate reeled it off: “CQB, combatives, small arms and crew-served weapons systems, tactical movements, reflexive fire drills, SERE school, squad designated marksman – I was the only female DM in my battal—”
    She nearly choked on the final syllable as another explosion, like the first but closer and louder, shook the floor.
    Jake looked seriously at Elijah. “She stays in your back pocket.”
    “Check,” Elijah said.
    “I’m serious.”
    “When are you ever anything but?” Elijah cracked a smile, then pointed two fingers at Kate’s eyes, pointed them at his own, then pointed at his back pocket.
    Jake was already leading the way out, rifle up.
    * * *
    The matter of pockets almost instantly became moot. This was a firefight, and everybody’s equal and on their own in a firefight.
    When the three of them stormed outside, Kate and Elijah found that full-on night had fallen on the camp, while they were inside and elbow-deep in blood, camped out under the hot surgical lights.
    But the darkness was also alive and malevolent with its own lights – muzzle flashes, firing from up on the walls, in the guard towers, and from out in the town. Fires blazed in at least a couple of different impact points, as silhouetted figures raced at them with handheld fire extinguishers. Most breath-stealing of all were the bright and angry streaks of tracers lacerating the darkness – both red and green, coming and going in both directions.
    Kate heard a jet-powered, fixed-wing aircraft blast by at low altitude – and then a rotary-wing one lift off, further in the distance. Thank God they had some air up. Apaches, she hoped. Those guys had been like the finger of God, and had saved her own personal ass more than once in Afghanistan.
    She shook her head now, realizing she was already trying to do two difficult things at once: keep up with the other two, who were running straight toward the sound of the guns – and also figure out what the hell was going on around her, which was usually the key to staying alive in combat. She worked out, firstly, that they were heading north, toward the fence on the side of Djibouti Town; and secondly that she was falling behind.
    Kate sucked wind and dug down deep to pick up her pace.
    And that’s when she heard the new sounds, even more ominous than the chaos going on all around her. The first was that of a big, low-pitched, straining engine – rising in pitch and then falling again, as someone up-shifted and accelerated. The second was a medium machine gun going cyclic. The engine noise was approaching from somewhere out beyond the wire, and still out of sight. But the machine gun was in that tower where she’d seen the SEALs.
    Looking up now, she