Task Force Mars - Kevin Dockery [60]
He hadn’t wanted to use the mines unless he had to, but the chances were that he could take out a large percentage of the enemy force in the first blast. As the aliens moved into the killing zone, he held back on pressing the detonator, continuing to watch the Eluoi patrol.
The aliens moved well through the jungle, operating on both sides of the trail. The two scouts were followed by the main mass of the enemy, with the soldiers organized in two files, one on either side of the trail. The aliens looked competent, but it was obvious that they had never faced explosive weapons. They were too bunched up, with only a few meters between them. If they were under his training, Jackson knew that Master Chief Ruiz would have kicked their tails up between their ears for making such a mistake; at least it was a mistake to the SEALS. Maybe for these troops it was just an easy way for them to support one another with the odd weapons in their hands.
The two scouts were moving closer and closer. Then they passed the spot where Jackson and Chief Harris lay in concealment. The officer ignored the enemy passing only a few meters from where he lay. He trusted Sanchez and his partner, Marannis, to deal with them.
The soft thud of a suppressed G15 on single shot, instantly followed by another, told Jackson that the threat behind him had been dealt with. Now he watched as the killing zone in front of him started to fill up. There wasn’t any choice for him now. There were just too many of the enemy, and this would be his best chance. As he saw what looked to be the trailing man enter the far end of the killing zone with no one behind him, Jackson crushed down on the handle of the firing device in his left hand.
A thundering roar filled the jungle as the explosive charges all detonated as one. The cloth strips had held hundreds of dense metal fragments, each tiny cube capable of killing a man. And there were thousands of the fragments sleeting across the killing zone as all the SEALS in concealment opened fire.
With the initiation of the ambush being the detonation of the mines, the men knew that silence had taken a back seat to expediency. Chief Harris and G-Man closed off both ends of the killing zone with high-explosive grenades fired from their underbarrel launchers. Every one of the rest of the SEALS followed standard operating procedure and covered his field of fire with a swath of automatic fire from his G15.
Jackson and Chief Harris were joined by Sanchez and Marannis as their fire swept the length of the enemy column. Once one magazine was emptied, it was yanked out from the front of the weapon and the reload was slipped into place. The action of the G15 automatically fed a new round from the magazine into the firing chamber, and the controlled firing of the SEALS continued without respite for nearly a half minute, though it seemed a lot longer to the men doing the shooting.
Except for the crump of the grenades, the shooting that followed the exploding of the fragmentation mines was almost soundless. Each man went though his planned expenditure of two magazines, except for the grenadiers, who went through one magazine and then fired a last grenade. The crump of the grenades going off was the last sound of the firefight.
As the echoes of those explosions faded quickly into the surrounding brush, the SEALS lay still, listening. For a moment there was no noise—even the animals had fallen silent—and then there came a sudden crashing through the brush at the far end of the killing zone.
One alien had escaped. It always seemed that no matter how well an ambush was planned, there was someone who escaped. But the SEALS had a backup plan in place to cover