ARISEN, Book Eleven - Deathmatch by Michael Stephen Fuchs Page A

to fail. And that CANNOT happen. I can’t let it. I won’t.

    I’ve got to slot the fucker.
    As the two warriors stared death and hellfire at each other, the air between them rippled and twisted with imminent violence.
    And nothing moved in that clearing.

When Death Holds No Terror
    Summit of Mt. Shimbiris, Northern Somalia
    Holy fucking shit , Ali thought, watching the two Alpha men through her scope, from her OP up on the crown of the mountain.
    This had clearly passed beyond punch-up and gone straight into the zone of bloody murder. In amazement, she thought: This could really be it. One of these men was seriously going to gut the other like a fish. Worse, she didn’t know who she would put her money on. While obviously rooting for Handon, she had enough street-fight experience to know the meaner man, unconstrained by humanity or scruples, usually won.
    And that was Henno down to his boot soles.
    She used the pause in their murderous slow-motion collision to do another visual sweep of the forest slopes around them. The complete dissolution of authority and team structure, happening even sooner than she had feared, didn’t mean she could stop being vigilant in overwatch.
    She still had a job to do.
    She panned by something in the shadows – then panned back, fast. There. It was gone almost instantly, but she’d definitely seen it. She had convinced herself it was her imagination the first time, when she’d been half-asleep, and thought she saw something moving down below. But not now. Now she was wide awake. And she hadn’t imagined it this time. She couldn’t have. If she had, it would mean she was losing her mind. And that couldn’t happen.
    She wouldn’t allow it.
    No, there was someone out there, up on the mountain with them, but lower down, in the forest below – someone watching them, even as she watched for him. And she somehow knew, deep in her bones, who it had to be.
    Her nemesis .
    He was back.
    * * *
    A small, hunched shape slipped away into the shadows cast by the forest canopy, and slithered down the steep and dripping slopes of the mountain. This humanoid shape also had something long and thin strapped to its back. Facing forward and picking up speed, he scanned the forest through slitted eyes – and one of those eyes was circled by a target reticle. It was the same crosshairs he saw every day through the scope mounted on the SV-338 sniper rifle on his back – but tattooed in black and red ink around his right eye.
    And it wasn’t the only tattoo on his face.
    While he jarred visually, Vasily moved without sound. It was a big part of his job to get into and out of places in silence. And right now he was getting out – descending the sodden slopes, and descending farther, leaving the summit behind. It was a long walk down the mountain and back to the forest encampment Vasily called home for now. But he didn’t mind. Anyway, he was home wherever he laid his sniper rifle.
    He was home as long as he was close to the fight.
    As he slipped through the shadows of the dripping forest, he reached up to scratch his earlobe – forgetting once again that it wasn’t there anymore. He felt constant phantom sensations from the shot-off ear: phantom pain, phantom irritation – and goddamned phantom itching.
    These phantasms were a haunting legacy left to him from the ghostly sniper chick he had faced, in dueling helicopters, over the open water of the south Atlantic. Vasily felt he knew a great deal about this enemy sniper, after only one engagement.
    He knew she was good – seriously good. But anyone could tell that about her, probably from over 1,500 yards out. And she was smart. She was also tough and determined – which were more important than being smart or good, more important than almost everything else. But not everything.
    Because Vasily also knew this: she wasn’t vicious enough.
    And it was because of this failing that he had won his sniper duel with her. Their skills were closely matched.