Operation Orion - Kevin Dockery [14]
“Gotcha, LT,” Harry Teal replied. In less than a minute he had affixed a small packet of plastic explosive to the wall Jackson had indicated.
The Team backed into the other dead-end corridor, as far away from the explosive as they could get and out of the direct line of the blast effect. Jackson didn’t need to explain the plan in any more detail. Each man understood that the first blast, on the outer air lock, was intended to distract the enemy. The second explosion would blast in the side wall of the hostiles’ position and, they hoped, create the breach for the Team’s attack. Teal held his clicker at the ready, watching Jackson, and finally the officer nodded his go-ahead.
The first blast was a distant crump, barely felt through the metal of the surrounding bulkheads. The small hatch connecting the hangar to the ship’s interior should have been blown off its hinges by the charge, but of course they couldn’t see that. The ten seconds seemed to last for half an hour, but when the nearer explosive blasted, it sent a flash of light and debris through the corridor where the SEALS were waiting. Smoke churned through the air, and bits of metal and plastic bounced from the walls and decks, creating a small hailstorm of tiny high-speed fragments. Fortunately, the Mark IV suits were tough enough to withstand the bombardments of ricochets.
“Go! Go! Go!” Jackson shouted the unnecessary encouragement as his men, using their jets to move through the weightless environment, started for the breach torn by Teal’s second explosion. The first men, Marannis and Sanchez, were blown back by a gust of air—they obviously had tapped into a pressurized compartment—but almost immediately the pressure equalized because the T-shaped corridor had been sealed off from space and quickly filled with the air spilling in through the breach. The first two SEALS tumbled through, snapping off shots against vaguely seen targets in the murky interior. Two by two, the rest of the Team followed.
“Damn!” Falco snapped, dropping his long sniper rifle and tumbling backward, head over heels. Jackson saw a jet of air puffing from his shoulder where his suit had been punctured, but the quickly equalized atmosphere served to stop the leak. The lieutenant was relieved to see no sign of blood emerging from the tear in the suit, and the self-sealing material already was closing over the breach.
Meanwhile, the SEALS took the adjacent corridor by storm. Bodies floated: pirates who were bleeding and motionless where the initial bursts of fire had caught them. One, presumably killed by the initial blast, was twisted around so violently that his suit had torn; the man’s torso and head faced one way while his legs and feet were oriented the other way. Jackson saw three men slumped over a heavy machine gun, the weapon propped behind a half-bulkhead and trained toward the air lock where the first blast had occurred. There was an interior hatch behind the first, and the pirates had been covering that entry with a dozen weapons. Clearly the diversion had worked. The enemy had expected a frontal attack, but the Team had taken them in the flank.
With devastating effects, the CO saw as he powered himself forward through the debris of the brief, violent clash. At least a dozen pirates, all of them in space suits and armed with a miscellany of very deadly looking weaponry, had been prepared to defend against the breaching of the air lock. Some of them had been blasted by the force of the breaching charge, and the others had been too stunned to aim when the SEALS had come pouring through the hole.
“A few of ’em got away,” Sanchez reported. “They were heading farther into the ship.”
“Let’s not let them catch their breath,” Jackson admonished. “Full pursuit, Team.”
Even in their haste, the men did not forget their training or their partners. Two shooter pairs—Sanchez with Marannis and Keast with Robinson—probed the corridor in a coordinated advance, one man covering while his partner moved. Sanders