Task Force Mars - Kevin Dockery [28]
As Falco adjusted his Mark 30 squirrel rifle, he made the weapon even longer as he slipped a cylindrical tube over the barrel and locked it into place. The big suppressor would cut down on a lot of the noise from the 10.2-millimeter caseless rounds, and the thin Martian air would prevent much of the remaining sound from traveling more than a few dozen meters. As far as the supersonic crack of the long pointed bullets went, any target they were aimed at would be struck down before the sound registered.
While Falco prepped his rifle, G-Man opened both of their packs. From within the containers he pulled rolls of what looked like bulky, shimmering, odd-colored rags. Unrolling the material and shaking it out carefully, G-Man set out one of the ghillie cloaks for Falco while he slipped his arms and hands into the loops made for them on his own cloak. Flipping a tiny switch on a control box the size of a pack of cards activated the electronics of the amazing cloaks. The shimmering suddenly disappeared, replaced by an exact duplication of the color of the ground all around the two men. Not even infrared heat signatures could be seen from a man properly using a ghillie cloak, and the two SEALS were more than expert in its use. Even in the growing daylight, the cloak made the big man disappear. It was only a shadow that slipped up to the edge of the ravine.
Through a miniaturized electronic binocular, G-Man looked at the enemy position. The range to the dome was 527 meters according to his laser range-finder readout, not a challenge to either of the long guns available to the sniper Team. Baby was lying against the side of the ravine, the powerful rail gun having far too noticeable a firing signature for it to be used as a concealed sniping weapon.
As he slowly moved into position next to his Team-mate, Falco had no such concerns about his weapon. The Mark 30 would be as quiet as he could make it, silent enough that the enemy he fired at would never hear what killed him. The Hammer, the manufacturer’s name for the Mark 30, was about to prove itself in combat for the first time.
The rest of the SEALS were preparing for a silent assault as the sniper Team moved into position. From long pouches among all their other equipment, long suppressors were taken out and slipped over the barrels of the G15 rifles. The back ends of the suppressors were thin enough that they would move into the receivers of the G15 weapons as the actions recoiled during firing. But the thick front ends of the cans would cut the sound of the shots to a loud hiss. Noise suppression was not so important out here in the near vacuum, but if they breached the dome and engaged in a firefight there—which Jackson had every intention of doing—the suppressors could provide a crucial element of stealth to the op.
These were the weapons that Sanchez and Marannis would use as they slipped ahead of the others to open the way. Both individuals were experienced point men. They were used to moving ahead of their fellow SEALS to open the way, uncover any booby traps, and make certain that the direction of approach led to where they wanted to go. At the moment each was a shadow in the base of the trench, moving without sound. They never had to say a word to each other as they operated in the night. Long experience had taught each man how the other thought, what he would do in any situation, how he would move, breathe, and react. If they didn’t have their helmets on, each would know the other by his smell in the dark. The two men would have been called ninjas in another time, in a place millions of miles away.
These were the men Jackson had available to