Operation Orion - Kevin Dockery [79]
LaRue snapped his last magazine into the mechanism of his G15. “Fifty rounds left,” he told his partner.
Falco nodded; he had installed his final magazine a few minutes earlier, and even though he was conserving his ammo, he had only about twenty shots left, plus another ten for the Mark 30 sniper rifle.
“Of course I have a round for Baby,” G-Man said conversationally. “If I could get these bastards to stand in a nice, straight line, I could shoot through the whole lot of them.”
“Wouldn’t that be nice,” Falco said—or tried to say. His lips were virtually immobile, chilled through with frostbite. His nose, cheeks, and forehead were numb and coated with frost as the cold air spilled in through the broken faceplate to scour his skin. He had turned the heating module in his pressure suit up to full power, which had drained the battery nearly to the danger level, but at least the warm air flowing up through the collar had kept him from freezing to death.
Truth be told, he expected that he’d be dead well before the suit’s power pack was drained completely.
The two SEALS had been forced into a narrow alcove in the canyon wall, the chute that had been the source of the trench where they had started their last stand. The enemy, some two dozen in number, had circled around to block any further retreat up the canyon and now faced the two men in a semicircle of snapping carbines and hooded, faceless antagonists.
A few jagged rocks marked the entrance to the alcove, and the shooter pair had hunkered down behind them. Several meters back the chute became a chimney leading straight up the almost vertical wall. Even if they’d had the endurance to try to climb it, they would have been completely exposed to enemy fire. There was no escape that way.
The only reason they’d survived this long, Falco knew, was that the enemy troops had come out in such a hurry that they’d neglected some basic preparations. If they’d brought a full complement of grenades, for example, the two SEALS would have been blown to bits an hour before. Instead, the Eluoi had lobbed a few of the explosive devices toward them, but none had hit the mark. And after four or five of them had gone off, those attacks had ceased.
Still, the enemy troops were tenacious, disciplined, and skilled. They wormed steadily closer, using the snow for concealment and the occasional rocks studding the ground as cover. Many of the Eluoi laid down covering fire, rounds zinging and chipping off the rocks around the two SEALS, while a few of their number scrambled forward, bringing the semicircular noose ever more tightly around the pair’s dead-end position.
Falco dropped his G15 and picked up the Hammer, steadying the squirrel gun between a couple of rocks while he squinted into the snowbound landscape. His eyes burned and watered, almost freezing shut as the wind whipped past, and when he saw a hostile lunge forward from behind a rock, he snapped off a shot that missed by at least a meter. The Eluoi made it to the next position and dropped prone, unharmed and another six meters closer to his quarry.
With a curse, the sniper set aside the powerful gun and again hoisted his carbine. Unlike the members of the infiltration party, he and LaRue had not bothered with the noise suppressors. Their role, after all, had been to create a diversion. In spite of their predicament, he grinned fiercely at the realization that they had done that in spades.
LaRue snapped off a controlled burst, rounds puffing through snow, cracking into a rock no more than fifty meters away. The Eluoi hiding there rose very slightly to squeeze off a return burst, and Falco fired six precious rounds, watching in satisfaction as the parka-clad hostile twisted around to lie on his back, twitching a couple of times before falling still.
“Any more grenades?” G-Man asked.
“I’m fresh out,” Falco answered, having launched his last one five minutes earlier. “As soon as I get to a computer, I’ll scan the classifieds and see if I can find a good deal on some more.”
LaRue laughed, a sharp and bitter bark of sound. He popped