Free ARISEN, Book Twelve - Carnage by Michael Stephen Fuchs Page A

he actually had a more stable firing platform than she did, as she struggled even to get her eye down to her scope, firing out through a bullet hole in a helo windscreen.
    And as the two master snipers and arch-enemies blasted away at each other across open sky, Ali felt one of his rounds land on her – right in the chest, blunt trauma impact stopped only by her ceramic insert. Struggling to stay upright and keep her weapon online, she threw her bent elbow up in front of her face.
    Because she knew the headshot was coming next.
    * * *
    Firing from up in the cockpit. Shouts, tumult, and the ping of incoming rounds ricocheting off steel. And the Seahawk’s already wobbly flight getting even less steady, fast.
    And, wait – firing? What the fuck was Ali doing up there?

    Master Gunnery Sergeant Fick sat up even straighter on his hard jump seat and looked around the cabin. Everyone was still strapped in – good practice in a helo that was half shot-down already, and now evidently also under attack. But then he thought:
    Wait – this bird can’t go down.
    He knew that – it couldn’t go down because he had to be last. Fick knew it in his bones now, and he had made peace with it. Every one of his Marines was going to go down before him, as they all battled to complete this mission. And he was going to have to watch them fall, one by one – if he didn’t actually send them out to die himself. And he wasn’t going to get the privilege of dying until this shit was finally at an end.
    He had been cursed to be last man standing.
    But then he looked across the cabin at Reyes. The big Angeleno looked relaxed and vaguely amused, as he usually did in combat or other mortal peril. He had clearly concluded that either they were going to be shot down, or they weren’t, and all he could usefully do was stay the hell out of the way.
    And then Fick realized: Reyes was sitting right there beside him in this levitating tin can – one with its own tin-shredding blades built in, just waiting to detach and tear through the airframe, and the even softer human flesh within. And, aside from the two of them, every one of the living MARSOC Marines was back on the carrier right now. And all Fick knew for sure about their status, all he’d been told, was that they were fighting for their lives – and fighting for the life of the ship. For all Fick knew, or could possibly know, they were all dead already. And if they were, then that was it.
    It would be just him and Reyes left.
    Fick shook his head, as a ricochet pinged into the bulkhead beside him. And he thought: With my luck, I’ll survive the helo crash – just long enough to see Reyes die horribly and in pain. Just like in that fucked-up dream he’d had in the bomber.
    But then he thought: No – fuck all that.
    He tore at his safety strap, hefted his rifle, and launched himself toward the cockpit.
    Because he wasn’t going out like a punk.
    * * *
    No sooner had Ali thrown up her forearm in front of her face than the arm took an incoming round, meant to finish the fight by shooting her in the head. And she instantly had cause to regret that they had replaced their bulletproof liquid Kevlar assault suits with these goddamned bite-proof ones.
    Because now it felt like her radial bone had been shattered. Later, she’d work out that it was just cracked – and that the round had glanced off it and angled up to skate off the top of her helmet – then ricocheted off the bulkhead, finally coming to rest in the pilot’s thigh. Right now all she knew was that her arm erupted in pain, her head snapped back, and Cleveland started hollering.
    Chaos and madness.
    But in this moment, Ali mainly regretted that being shot was seriously fucking with her ability to do her own shooting – to engage Vasily out in the other helo.
    Unbelievably, she was losing this fight to him, again.
    But now a rifle barrel appeared to the right of her head, coming out of the back and between the two pilot seats. And