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

But she simply didn’t have the necessary savagery.
    And that had cost her – nearly everything.
    She had managed, it now appeared, to get away from that engagement alive. But it was Vasily who had flown away with the prize – the American pilot, the commander of the carrier’s air group. And soon Vasily and his team, the Mirovye Lohi , were going to leave with the real prize: the Index Case.
    And they alone would have the key to curing the plague.
    They would be immune – and immortal.
    * * *
    In silence, Vasily leapt down a last series of crumbly banks that led to level ground, and stepped on to a rutted path that led out of the forest, and to the closest thing to a road in northern Somalia. There was still a lot of solo walking left to do, but he was very comfortable in his own company.
    Spetsnaz didn’t let in men who weren’t totally self-reliant, nor too many who would win congeniality contests. They looked for men who could operate without support, without sleep, without medical care, hungry and cold, wounded, half dead, in terrible pain…
    The imaginary pain in Vasily’s ear reminded him of the woman sniper again. The fact that she was a woman was nothing to him. The Motherland had always given capable women equal footing in the military, and many had distinguished themselves in the Red Army. During the Great Patriotic War, which is what they called WW2, over 2,000 women had served as snipers.
    Though barely 500 had survived.
    The most famous, Lyudmila Pavlichenko, had been credited with 309 confirmed kills – including thirty-six enemy snipers . Winning that many sniper duels was not luck. It was due to skill, resolve, and the absolute determination to prevail.
    And it required real viciousness.
    So Vasily knew women could fight. As could the one he’d faced in the air. He thought he had her dead to rights with a headshot more than once – but somehow she had slithered free each time. In the end, he’d had to take out the whole helicopter around her, including both pilots, as well as both minigunners.
    And that was how Vasily knew this sniper lacked the necessary viciousness. Because she had been down on the deck taking care of their wounded crew chief, instead of throwing herself back into the fight. The Russians’ own minigunner had been hit, too. But Vasily had taken his eye from the scope only long enough to tell the moaning man to get up and get back on his weapon. But he had whimpered that he was too injured to do so.
    “Then what good are you?” Vasily had asked.
    And so he had won the fight himself, while the minigunner bled out down on the deck. And that was the difference between him and the woman sniper: weakness. She had not ruthlessly rooted out every bit of weakness in herself – every trace of compassion, of humanity.
    She was weak, and so she had lost.
    Vasily, like everyone in Spetsnaz, knew you had to kill the weak parts of yourself, just as you killed everything in your way. To prevail, it was necessary to sacrifice humanity, compassion, weaker comrades – anything that compromised their strength, or their victory.
    And especially in a dead world that was trying to eat you alive, humanity was a luxury that could not be afforded – and love even less so. You had to do without love, and you had to overcome your own humanity, so as to become stronger than death, even more unfeeling than the dead.
    Only when they were stronger than death could death hold no terror. Then, death had no power over them. And death could not beat them.
    Nothing could.
    * * *
    “Vasily to Team One.”
    “This is Team One Actual.” It was Misha himself who answered. That rumbling warlord basso voice was unmistakeable. “What up, my negro?” Never mind his highly eccentric use of language.
    “I am mission complete, ETA twenty minutes.”
    “And what have you got for me, Vashushka?” Vasily didn’t like it when Misha used a diminutive form of his name, particularly one with a pejorative tint. But of