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

it started firing. Ali looked back and saw it being operated by Fick. And he wasn’t shooting out of the existing bullet holes in the glass. No, he was just blasting away straight through it, making his own firing ports, like goddamned Robert DeNiro in the bank robbery scene in Heat .
    He nearly instantly took a round in the chest himself and fell over backward. But he’d bought Ali a priceless second.
    Or maybe a lifetime.
    Maybe both.
    * * *
    Even as Fick had bolted forward to the cockpit, Henno was unstrapping himself and standing up – and then he started pulling Kevlar panels off the bulkheads. These were lashed there to provide some protection from gunfire to those in back. But they also came off, which was most often helpful after you’d been shot down, and needed to defend the crash site.
    But now Henno laid these flexible panels over the bagged-up body lying in the middle of the cabin. Then he stood over it, a leg on either side, rising to his full height, standing like David, rifle at the ready.
    And he thought: Even if we crash and go down in flames, if I can somehow protect the brainstem of this dead bastard …
    Then Patient Zero wouldn’t be destroyed.
    Which meant they were still in business.
    Or whoever was left alive would be.
    * * *
    Remaining strapped into his own seat, Reyes had been letting his mind wander – and had been thinking about his daughter. There was this one playground he used to take her to, part of an urban reclamation project in East L.A. It was kind of the one nice place within walking distance of their home – which was in a neighborhood he could afford. Joining the Marine Corps had been an attempt to secure a steadier income.
    To help build a better life for her.
    But he had just started to call up that image – the mind, as everyone knew, did crazy shit in combat – when he realized there actually was something useful he could do in this aircraft, other than wait for it to crash, or to not crash. And it was because he saw Handon up on his feet – hauling open the cargo door, snapping into the safety harness, and then hanging his ass halfway out into open air to engage the other helo with his rifle. Reyes probably couldn’t shoot around him. But there was the window on the opposite side.
    He unstrapped, rose, moved to it – and leaned out as far as he could, rifle first.
    Initially, he couldn’t see the Black Shark.
    But then, as it drifted with wind, and gunfire, and the vagaries of backward flight and nose-to-nose combat – there it was.
    Reyes started firing, as fast as he could pull the trigger.
    * * *
    Ali dug down. She fought through the pain in her arm and chest. And she steadied herself and her rifle. She had to make this shot. She had to finish this motherfucker – or they were all finished themselves. But suddenly she realized she didn’t have to do it – not on her own, anyway. She didn’t have to do this alone.
    Fick was back on his feet – it took a lot to knock him down, and nothing had yet been found that could keep him there – and he was shooting from between the seats again. And Ali couldn’t see it, but with her eerie talent for feeling the battlefield, she knew there was outgoing fire coming from both sides of the airframe. And now it was obvious the others were pitching in.
    That her brothers were in the fight right alongside her.
    There were now four weapons engaging the Black Shark – and engaging Vasily, the sonofabitching sniper in its open cockpit.
    And now Ali remembered an old chestnut. The first rule of gunfights was: “Bring a gun.” But the second was: “Bring all of your friends who have guns.” Some fights you had to face on your own.
    But most were won or lost as a team.
    * * *
    “That’s it,” Nina said, rounds from four rifles pouring in on them now. “We’re done.” She reached across Vasily to close the cowling.
    “No!” he shouted, still firing and chambering, firing and chambering. She got it, she really did. He had