Arisen, Book Nine - Cataclysm Read Online Free Page B

that shit.” Everyone seemed to be waiting for it. Fick sighed out loud. “Hudson.”
    Park blinked heavily. “It’s a Zulu hunt. That’s absolutely the key. Get me a victim from inside Hargeisa, and I all but guarantee I can complete the vaccine. Information is secondary. Just please don’t throw away any you come across. Curing a pandemic is like solving a complex puzzle wrapped in a deep mystery…”
    * * *
    LT Campbell stepped up to the lectern. She not only didn’t laugh at the periodic jokes and wisecracks – she looked like she’d never found anything funny, cute, or charming her whole life. “Your top cover will be F-35s flown by Morris and Wells,” she said. “They’re our only two breathing and healthy fighter jocks, and will be alternating – providing one hundred percent coverage with the air mission.”
    “Trust we won’t hear them – those afterburners?” Ali asked.
    “Affirmative,” Campbell said. “You won’t even see them – unless you need ’em.”
    Handon looked around. “And for the team on the ground, it’s melee weapons as long and as much as possible. We need to try to conserve ammo, due to the difficulty of resupply by air – as noted, the helo’s too loud, and the carrier air wing no longer has any palletized air-drop capability. But, mainly, the last thing we want to do is start shooting, even suppressed, if we can avoid it. It’s noise discipline first, last, and always.”
    “Yeah,” Graybeard said. “Africa was kind of a crowded place back in the day.”
    Fick nodded, seeing that everyone got it, but decided to stress the point anyway. “If I hear so much as a roach fart in that mother, I will smoke the shit out of every last swinging Richard in this bitch.”
    Everyone got that .
    * * *
    As Campbell finished up her segment, Handon turned to Fick and lowered his voice. “After everything we’ve faced so far, how much worse could Africa be? It’s just more dead guys, right?”
    Fick smiled that terrifying smile back at him – though he’d been practicing, under the tutelage of Emily, the civilian girl they rescued from the pirates, and was getting better at it. “Yeah, I’m sure you’re right. And this is a solid plan, for being totally batshit crazy and thrown together on the fly.”
    Handon nodded once. As always, the guys who were doing the planning were the ones who would be executing the mission – and whose asses were on the line. And Handon couldn’t ask for a better co-commander than Fick. The two had only fought together briefly, in just two engagements – the airfield fight and extraction, and the very tail end of the flight deck battle. But each knew the other’s capabilities, and each knew the other was at the peak, and probably the end, of an extremely accomplished military career. And each would also be leading their very best surviving operators – from the front.
    If they couldn’t get this done and save the day, no one could. Humanity was sending its last and best out as champions.
    As Campbell finished and stepped down, Handon straightened up, faced the room, and put his platoon sergeant voice back on. “Okay,” he said. “Briefing ends. Everybody get back to work. It’s already tomorrow, and there’s a lot more coming at us.”
    Fick also stood tall and spoke loudly. “It’s a hundred hours sailing around the Cape. Let’s try to be more ready at the end of it than at the beginning.”
    Handon took one more look around the room. “One last thing. There is no one else to do this. We are it.” He scanned the faces in the room. “This is the team. Selection’s over. So let’s get it done.”
    As the men began to file out, the commanders lingered up front.
    Handon squared up to Abrams. “Commander. What exactly is our plan for getting the mission objective – plus Park, his research, and ideally his vaccine – back to the UK? I know the original idea was the plane that brought the other scientists in. That’s out,