Ice Station - Matthew Reilly [35]
Schofield was momentarily confused. What the hell had caused that? Then, suddenly, it hit him, and he spun and looked back at the –
All of a sudden, Gant yelled, ‘I’m dry!’ and Schofield snapped back to the present. He immediately opened fire on the A-deck catwalk while she reloaded.
As he lay down a suppressing fire on A-deck, Schofield saw Legs and Mother hurry out onto the B-deck catwalk behind Rebound. They were firing for all they were worth back into the tunnel from which they had come.
Legs went dry. Schofield watched as Legs popped his clip and let it drop to the catwalk, and then grabbed a fresh magazine. No sooner had he jammed it into the lower receiver of his gun than he was hit in the neck by some unseen opponent inside the western tunnel.
Legs flailed backwards, losing his balance for a second, before turning his gun back toward the enemy and letting loose with an extended burst of gunfire that would have woken the dead. In 2.2 seconds thirty rounds were spent and that clip was dry, too. Mother grabbed him and yanked him out onto the catwalk, away from the tunnel.
Now wounded and dripping with blood, Legs began to fumble with a new clip. The clip slipped through his bloody fingers and fell out over the railing, dropping fifty feet through the air until it splashed into the pool at the bottom of the station. At that point, Legs cut his losses, tossed his MP-5 and pulled out his Colt .45. Single fire from here.
Schofield and Gant continued to sweep the uppermost deck with their fire. Gant had watched as Legs’ clip dropped all the way down into the pool; had watched as one of the killer whales banked upward to see what it was that had fallen into its domain.
Mother went dry. She cut the empty clip and reloaded fast.
Schofield watched anxiously as the three of them – Mother, Rebound and Legs – moved along the catwalk between the west and the north tunnels of B-deck, heading toward the north tunnel.
They were almost there when suddenly Buck Riley burst out from the north tunnel with four civilians in tow behind him.
Right in front of Mother, Rebound and Legs!
Schofield saw it as it happened and his jaw dropped.
‘Oh, Jesus,’ he breathed.
This was a disaster. Now four of his people were out in the open, with four innocent civilians! And any second now, the French would appear and cut them to ribbons.
‘Book! Book!’ Schofield yelled into his helmet mike. ‘Get out of there! Get off the catwa –’
And then it happened and Schofield’s horror was complete.
In perfect synchronisation, five French commandos burst out onto the B-deck catwalk.
Three from the west tunnel. Two from the east.
They opened fire without the slightest hesitation.
What happened next almost happened too fast for Schofield to comprehend.
The five French commandos on B-deck had just pulled off a perfect pincer manoeuvre. They’d flushed Mother, Rebound and Legs out onto the catwalk and now they were about to finish it off by firing upon them from both flanks.
The appearance of Buck Riley and the four civilians was an added bonus. It obviously hadn’t been expected – when they had appeared out on the catwalk, all five of the French soldiers had had their guns firmly trained on Mother, Rebound and Legs.
As it turned out, however, they never got a chance to turn their fire on Riley and the civilians anyway.
The three French commandos who had emerged from the western tunnel fired first. White-hot tongues of fire shot out from the muzzles of their guns.
At point-blank range, Legs, Mother and Rebound were all hit. Mother in the leg, Rebound in the shoulder. Legs took the brunt of it – two to the head, four to the chest – his whole body becoming a shuddering explosion of blood. He was dead before he hit the ground.
But that was all Schofield saw.
Because that was when it happened.
Schofield watched in amazement as, at the exact moment