Task Force Mars - Kevin Dockery [113]
The group immediately raced across the bloody tarmac, Chief Harris and Teal bringing Robinson on his stretcher behind. Sanders had vanished into the narrow hatch near one of the shuttle’s three engines.
“Gunners,” Jackson said, addressing Rodale and LaRue. “You got a few rounds left for a farewell volley?”
“Two rockets, LT,” Rocky Rodale replied, and LaRue held up one finger.
“See those tanks over there?” asked the lieutenant, gesturing to the silver cylinders looming over the low-cut brush. “They’re even bigger than barns. See if you can hit them in the broadside, would you?”
“You got it, sir,” G-Man replied with an anticipatory grin. The two men scrambled up the ladder onto the wing of the jetcar to gain the best line of fire toward the huge, motionless targets. LaRue raised his rail gun, and Rodale punched the target coordinates into the rocket launcher. Without a word of communication between them, they shouted, “Fire in the hole!” in unison as they let fly at the same time.
The copper and uranium slug from G-Man’s gun covered the one-plus klick of distance in the blink of an eye. Rodale’s rocket spit from the launcher and trailed after it. The plasmalike slug punched through the thin steel skin of one fuel tank as if it were tissue paper, and immediately the superheated metal ignited the combustible liquid within. The fuel tank erupted in a spectacular explosion, a fireball billowing skyward, spewing bits of flaming debris as the liquid inferno roared upward.
By then Rodale’s rocket had struck the neighboring tank, exploding against the exterior surface. The shaped charge was potent enough that much of the energy of the hit was directed inward; burning metal seared through the metal skin, plunging into the mixture of fuels within. A second later the second fuel tank erupted, a matching explosion sending a churning, smoking fireball to rise beside G-Man’s kill.
At the same time, Jackson heard another sound, a burst of fire spitting from the bottom of one of the shuttle’s engines. A second engine came online a moment later, and only the third—the one closest to the entry hatch—remained silent.
“All aboard!” Ruiz was shouting from that hatchway.
The three SEALS still on the surface of Batuun sprinted across the tarmac in record time, scrambling up the short ladder, assisted through the hatch by the willing—though none-too-gentle—hands of their Teammates. Robinson had been strapped to a cot, and the others were grabbing seats in a well-equipped passenger compartment. Looking up, Jackson could see right into the flight deck, where Olin Parvik was activating the engines.
“Parvik says we’ll want to be strapped in for this,” Ruiz said, indicating the padded seats on the lower deck. “He also says we have about ten seconds before liftoff.”
Jackson was just snapping the clasp of his harness into place when he felt the powerful crush of multiple G-forces pushing him into the seat. The rockets surged, and the small portholes immediately were obscured by a billowing cloud of white smoke. The shuttle blasted upward with crushing force, the roar of the engines loud enough to drown out any attempt at conversation.
But they all knew that they were leaving Batuun behind.
“Look at that SOB burn,” LaRue said admiringly as the shuttle coursed away from Batuun. The G-forces were lapsing, and the Teammates were able to sit up and look out the portholes that ringed the round, stubby hull.
No one had to ask what particular SOB he referred to: The gaping crater where the planetary defense battery once had stood was outlined in red, and a deep orange glow permeated through the thick smoke that wafted through the depths of the big hole in the ground. The flaming fuel tanks at the spaceport, though spectacular in their own right, were now tiny, sputtering plumes of smoke compared to the horrific devastation left by the explosion of the tactical nuke and the resulting meltdown of the