Ian Slater - Payback

“Shit!” complained Gomez to Salvini and Johnny Lee, who were working frantically inside to pass the MANPAD box aft while pilot Eddie Mervyn stepped up to hatch two, ready to assist in getting Bone, if they found him, aboard, the chunky noises of the thick 12.7mm slugs nearby doing nothing for morale.

A dull whoomp invaded the maelstrom of combat in the surf-thick air, then another and another, the Payback team immediately recognizing the sounds as those of stick grenades being tossed, if not accurately, at least in the near vicinity of where the NKA had seen the team’s boot marks, still visible on parts of the fog-shrouded beach.

“Shite!” Aussie said, actually catching sight of an excited NKA soldier throwing one of the stick grenades in his direction, the NKA were getting that close. Aussie couldn’t fire because, having just spotted Bone floating away, he had swum after him and was now fighting the current to get him near the RS fifteen feet away. Bone’s gasps of pain were so loud they could be heard by Aussie in the raging surf that seemed intent on capsizing the RS, only the reversible-submersible’s computer-slaved stabilizer fins keeping it right side up. A stick grenade exploded no more than ten feet away. Aussie and the general, the only two Payback warriors apart from Bone outside the craft, felt the impact as a sickening punch in the solar plexus and below. Kevlar vests could stop a bullet and some shrapnel, but such vests didn’t cover one’s genitals unless, like Brady, you’d had a Kevlar cup custom-made to protect your privates, or what the big, black warrior referred to collectively as his “Bone”—the real derivation of his nickname.

The general unloaded his penultimate mag of parabellum, cutting down the would-be pitcher, another NKA behind the first not even getting his grenade from his brown khaki vest before he was riddled by Freeman’s AK-47’s bursts, collapsing in the waist-high surf, where his grenade went off.

By now Aussie had, with the strength of a SpecFor warrior and the will of a mule, managed to stand his ground in the punishing surf, left hand gripping the stubby, winglike stabilizer, his right hand having gained equal purchase on Bone’s Kevlar collar, pushing him up against the RS, Aussie’s body acting as an ad hoc breakwater on the less-exposed side of the RS, which pilot Eddie Mervyn had brought about as he’d seen Bone drifting. Instead of the RS’s bow facing the shore, Eddie had worked the thrust engine on MINPUS, minimum pulse setting, to turn south through approximately 90 degrees so as to use the RS like a big, floating log, its seaward side providing protection for the general, Aussie, and Bone.

“C’mon, Bone!” Aussie shouted yet again, his voice lost to anyone but Freeman and Bone in the roar of sea. “You can do it, Bone!” Aussie gave Bone’s collar a mighty push, which shoved Bone’s head level with the stabilizer-cum-step, Aussie’s strength almost pushing the Kevlar vest clean off Bone’s torso. Brady’s vest momentarily hid his head as he mustered all his remaining strength to lunge and grab hold of the step with his good right hand, Freeman giving him the “bum’s rush,” pushing his butt upward in concert with a collar push from Aussie.

The machine-gun rounds, which Aussie initially thought were evidence of the heavy 12.7mm antiaircraft gun opening up again, were in fact from an AK-74, the first round hitting Freeman’s Kevlar vest, one or two zinging off the RS’s rounded hull, the other two blowing Bone’s scalp off.

The wound was so horrendous there was no indecision — the protocol of ancient warriors from earliest times was clear in such cases. Comrades-in-arms may wish to save the man’s body if religious rule or political expediency or, as in the Marine Corps, tradition dictated, but there was no question amid the swirling maelstrom of blood, surf, and enemy fire in the fog. Freeman handed his AK-47 stock-first down through hatch two into the hands of whoever had reached out to help, then he grabbed hold of the edge of the stabilizing fin over which Brady’s jerking body was draped, Brady’s head oozing gray matter into the foam-crazed surf. As Aussie Lewis, his right arm tightly around his brother’s shoulder, steadied Brady in the crash of a wave that broke over them and the RS, the general quickly drew his HK sidearm and shot Brady point-blank in the temple. To pull the dead weight inside would be to risk everyone to more fire, and the fog seemed to be lifting.

“In!” Freeman told Aussie, who released the dead man then scrambled into hatch two, followed by Freeman.

“Where’s Bone?” In the ear-dunning noise of the storm, whose eye was now passing over them, they hadn’t heard the general’s 9mm.

“Dead,” said Aussie.

“Move out!” shouted Freeman, buckling into his seat’s H harness. The RS reeked of sweat, and hot oil from the guns.

Eddie Mervyn gave the thrusters their head in a tight forty-five-degree turn, and hit the Full Power Submerged button, everyone but Mervyn and Gomez slammed back into their seats by the sudden acceleration. It reminded Johnny Lee of seeing the naval aviators taking off from a carrier.

Within thirty seconds, the RS’s digital readout was registering 30 knots, the fast craft already a quarter mile out from Beach 5. Freeman ordered the RS’s MUSCLE-driven engines to be geared down to Slow Ahead, then Stop, prior to Reversing Mode, wherein, as the RS turned through 180 degrees, the bulbous, tear-shaped aerodynamic bow of the sub became the surface craft’s stern, while what only seconds before had been the submersible’s stern now, as the craft surfaced, became the water-slicing V of the RS. As the craft’s speed rose dramatically from MUSCLE-powered electric power to full-thruster diesel-jet power, the craft planed through wave and trough in a fast-moving shroud of spray that looked like gossamer from a distance but which to the seven men inside — especially to the wounded Johnny Lee and motion-sickness-prone Choir — sounded like a hailstorm of unprecedented fury. What was worse, it felt as if they were going over the speed bumps of wave crests at more than a hundred miles an hour, when in fact, as Gomez unhelpfully pointed out, they were doing only a mere sixty miles an hour.

The noise and juddering they experienced, despite the NASA-developed foam rubber that had been specifically designed to better distribute impact shock on the astronauts’ bodies during the shuttle’s reentry, was, in Salvini’s understated phrase, “fucking unbelievable,” every bone in their bodies feeling as if it would shake loose from their worldly frame.

“ETA at McCain ?” Freeman asked brusquely, ignoring Salvini’s complaint.

“At present speed,” said Eddie Mervyn, “1014.”

“May — be,” began Choir, his voice shaking like his bones, “we — can reduce speed a bit, General?”

“Why?” snapped Freeman in an accusatory tone. “You going to throw up?”

“Not if I can help it.”

“Then help it.” He paused. “They may be scrambling fighters. We’ll be all right once we’re into the battle group’s perimeter.”

“We could submerge,” Eddie explained to Choir. “But those bastards blew out our sonar mikes. We’d be driving blind.”

“Huh,” said Choir, in a surprisingly combative tone, certainly one that neither Aussie nor Salvini had heard from the Welshman when he spoke to the general. “We’re driving blind now . Can’t see dick through all the spray and shite hitting us.”

“Our GPS computer is still on track,” Eddie assured him, pointing to the screen. “There’s our course home. East nor’east. A straight line.”

Aussie had said nothing. He was disgusted with himself. He’d wanted to give Brady a heartfelt good-bye from one warrior to another, to a man he’d grown to like and respect, but he’d held back even in the moment of his comrade’s death. It had been a spineless surrender and right now the normally ebullient warrior didn’t want to be with himself. God forgive him for his cowardice.