Recoil - Andy McNab [58]
I’d stopped momentarily to make another adjustment to my bergen when the two front guns suddenly opened up. I dropped to my knees, got the AK in the shoulder, flicked safety down to first click – automatic – and squeezed the trigger.
‘Contact! Contact! Contact!’
Bright yellow muzzle flashes speckled the darkness just fifteen metres ahead. Then more, from maybe a hundred, hundred and twenty. It was hard to tell through the rain.
The gunners stood their ground and kept firing from the hip, doing their job, keeping the enemy’s heads down.
Sam had already raced forward, keeping well left of the gunners as they were rocked back on their feet by the recoil. I followed.
He was static in line with the gunners when I caught up with him, weapon in the shoulder, emptying a magazine into the flashes ahead. I stopped left of him. My AK kicked in my shoulder as I loosed off a five-round burst, then another and another, into the muzzle flashes ahead.
Within seconds the volume of our fire stepped up as guys arrived right and left of the gunners – just like in rehearsals.
I squeezed the trigger again. The working parts went forward, but nothing happened. ‘Stoppage!’
The AK had a couple of Achilles’ heels, and this was one of them. I fell to my knees again. It took an eternity to change magazines on these things and I wanted to present as small a target as I could.
I pressed the magazine-release catch at the back of the housing and rocked the mag forwards until it fell out of the front lip and into the mud. Screams of command and fear echoed in the brief moments of darkness between almost continuous bolts of lightning. I could feel pressure waves from both the thunder and the weight of fire. Rain sizzled on the hot barrel.
I grabbed a replacement from my chest harness, jammed the small notch at the top of the mag into the lip at the front of the housing, then rocked the mag until it was fully home and pulled back the cocking handle to force a round into the chamber.
AKs cracked all around me. Incoming rounds thudded into the ground. A string of tracer zinged off a rock and up into the air. Like me, everybody wanted nothing more than to dig the world’s biggest hole and disappear into it, but the sergeant-majors were on top of them and drills were happening quicker and slicker than many Western infantry would have managed.
Sam shouted to his team to form a fire group. We needed to suppress the enemy fire with ours. Whatever Sam wanted to happen next, we still needed to win the qualifying round.
‘Nick! Nick! Nick! On me! On me! On me!’
I ran towards his voice and saw Crucial and his group coming up from the rear.
‘Guns up front! Get your guns up front with the fire group!’
While Crucial relayed the order I threw off my bergen and pulled out the link. Sam was screaming at everyone who moved, ‘We’re going left flanking! Left flanking!’
Crucial’s guys were all gathered in, on their knees. He translated, and they immediately dumped their bergens too. Their streaming faces shone in the lightning. They were set in stony resignation: they knew something had to be done or both sides would just sit there and fire at each other until one lot’s ammo ran out. Then they would die.
Crucial grabbed my link and headed towards the fire base. Sam shouted to me, above the rain and gunfire, ‘Platoon attack.’
‘Porters?’
‘Not my problem. We tell ’em to sit tight. If they’re stupid, they’ll run. You don’t have to come forward.’
‘Jesus, Sam, I gotta get to Nuka . . . Let’s get on with it.’
His face hardened, and he stormed off to the left of the fire group, yelling a warning so the guys on the flank knew we were passing. I followed