Operation Orion - Kevin Dockery [70]
Something slammed into his chest, and he was lying on his back, straining to fill his lungs. The rasping of the breathing apparatus suddenly seemed terribly loud; there was no other sound. A film of red crept across his eyes, and he wondered with a sense of vague detachment if he was dying.
Finally, with a great effort, he drew a ragged gulp of air, expelled it, and inhaled again. His ribs throbbed, and his gloved hand went to his chest, feeling the semirigid plates of his body armor. There was a notable gouge in that armor, right over his sternum, but he probed further and determined that the slug hadn’t penetrated. Ignoring the pain, he rolled onto his side and then pushed himself up to one knee.
His heart sank at the sight of two more of his men down, one lying still and the other struggling feebly to roll just as Jackson himself had. Beyond, four SEALS were visible, hunkered into alcoves to either side of the passageway, shooting carefully aimed bursts from their silenced G15s. Return fire chattered loudly, and Jackson could see the sparks of impact as the slugs skipped along the floor or bounced from the walls and ceiling.
It was a hell of a pickle. The far end of the corridor was concealed by smoke, masking any potential targets. Sitting on the floor, with his back against the wall, he racked an incendiary grenade under the barrel of his gun, sighted, and launched. The mild recoil jarred his bruised chest, but he watched the round as it vanished into the smoke. Almost instantly a blossom of orange fire erupted, seething through the murk, fading into a billowing cloud of thick black smoke.
The Team didn’t need orders. Every one of the five mobile SEALS instantly sprinted toward the target, the two leaders snapping off several bursts of suppressing fire. Jackson pushed himself to his feet and saw that one of the fallen men, Rocky Rodale, had done the same thing and was checking his beloved rocket launcher. Spotting the LT, he gave a cheerful thumbs-up and turned to walk, a little unsteadily, toward the melee.
The other downed man was Schroeder. His helmet had been shattered, and his scalp was bleeding from a long gash. Jackson cursed silently as he wiped the blood away and was elated to see the man’s eyelids flicker.
“Stay here, son,” he said, clapping the burly SEALS on the shoulder. “We’ll be back for you.”
Rising to his feet, he jogged after the rest of his Team. He found them clearing a circular chamber at the terminus of the corridor. Three adjoining passages led away from there, and a spiral stairway climbed through the ceiling in the center. The far passage was wide enough for a small truck to pass; those to the right and left were the size of an average hotel corridor. The blast and incendiary grenades had done some damage, but the place looked to be a meeting room; the remnants of chairs and tables were scattered among more than a dozen dead Eluoi.
“Chamber secure, LT,” Chief Harris reported. “This wide passage seems to lead toward the outside hatch.”
Jackson pressed the speak button on his comlink. “Sanders, give me a sitrep.”
“We’re up against a tough nut, sir,” came the crackling response. “There’s a dozen or more hostiles holed up in a series of compartments. They have cross fire down the approaches, and we can’t get line of sight to hit them with a grenade. Orders?”
The lieutenant looked at the stairs climbing up through the domed ceiling and made a snap judgment. “I want you to leave those guys alone for now. Fall back down the stairs and follow the route we took. Tell Grafton to set up a defensive position down there, right outside the reactor room where we came in. Make sure he understands that he has to watch our backs. Someone will guide you when you get back up to this level.”
He sent Chief Harris and Teal, asking the corpsman to check on Schroeder while the chief brought Sanders’s detachment in. Meanwhile, Sanchez and Marannis checked out one side corridor while Dobson and Robinson investigated the other. The wide passage, they could see, ended in a sturdy steel door some twenty