Net Force - Tom Clancy [16]
Odom and Vasquez opened up with their H&K assault subguns, unleashing a canvas-rip full-auto barrage of high-cyclic 9mms from hundred-round drum magazines.
Reeves and Johnson bailed left and dodged their way across the street, stutter-stepped for the cover of a big tractor-trailer. The truck was long dead, the tires burned and melted away, the metal of the cab and trailer pockmarked with old bullet holes and darkened by soot and graffiti.
Chan and Brown bailed right, adding fire from their weapons as they ran broken-field lines across the killing zone.
The modified SIPEsuits the team wore should be enough to stop most of what the locals had to throw at them. The vests and pants were of cloned spider-silk hardweave, and held pockets of overlapping ceramic plates that would turn pistol or rifle bullets, provided they werent armor-piercing hotloads. Helmets and boots were Kevlar, with titanium inserts. The backpack CPUs were shockproofed and double-ceramic-plated. The tactical comps encrypted radio, satellite uplinks and downlinks, gave heads-up ghost displays, with motion sensors, IR and UV spookeye scans, terrain maps, even instant flare-polarizers built into the helmets retractable blast shields. The Net Force suits werent as heavy as regular Army issue, since they had no SCBA, no distill, no biojects. For this kind of assault, in and out in one day, they didnt need full infantry bells and whistles; even so, the suits added twenty pounds to a wearer.
Howard popped up and shoved his Thompson submachine gun over the top of the Dumpster, cooking off several three-round bursts at the hidey-hole where the guy with the rocket launcher was. The tommy gun was definitely low-tech, an antique built in 1928, and had first belonged to an Indiana sheriff during Prohibition. Howards greatgrandfather, being black, wasnt officially allowed on the force in those days, but the white sheriff hed worked for knew a good man when he saw one, regardless of his color, so there was an unofficial Negro who spent twenty years making good money enforcing the law, even if it was off the books. When the sheriff died, he left the tommy gun to Grampa Howard. They called it a Chicago typewriter in those days.
No time for a stroll down memory lane now, John! Duck!
The rocket man had kept his head down, too, but somebody in the stairwell with him let loose a return blast of small-arms fire that pinged and clanged against the heavy Dumpster. Its battered steel was still thick enough to turn the bullets. Howard was glad of it, too, suits notwithstanding.
Fire in the hole! Reevess voice over Howards com interrupted the sounds of gunfire.
The grenade Reeves tossed into the stairwell went off. More shrapnel spanged against the Dumpster, and the stink of burned explosive washed over Howard, along with smoke and dust.
Two seconds passed. All shooting stopped.
Clear! Johnson yelled.
Colonel Howard stood. He saw Johnson grin at him and give him a thumbs-up gesture. Howard returned the grin. His men-well, five men and a woman-stood at the ready, weapons seeking possible targets as they scanned the street and buildings for more trouble. It would be stupid in the extreme for a local to stand up and wave hello to the nice Americans just at that moment.
Howard tapped his helmet flatpad, toggled on his heads-up display and got a digital time-read. He usually kept the display off when things actually got hot-he didnt want to be shooting at phantoms created by his computer. You were supposed to ignore such things with enough practice, but when real bullets started zipping past, it was amazing how many well-trained soldiers opened up on a heat-sig