Task Force Mars - Kevin Dockery [72]
LaRue anchored the bottom of the ladder as the master chief reached the area just below the door. He armed his grenade and pitched it hard into the doorway. The blast belched out smoke and debris from the opening as the SEALS’ NCO ducked down below the edge of the floor. Even before the dust had begun settling, Ruiz pulled himself up and over the entryway. Then G-Man started up the ladder, his rail gun and power pack dumped and left in the trusted hands of his Teammates. The big man’s long arms lifted him up the ladder with startling agility. Next came Robinson and Marannis, with Sanchez following a little more slowly but only slightly favoring his gimpy leg.
“Can you climb, LT?” Harry Teal asked as LaRue vanished above them. They heard the explosion of another grenade, muffled this time, as the two SEALS moved farther into the building, putting the little bombs out in front of them.
The suppressed fire of the G15s was eerily quiet, mere puffs of sound; the Eluoi defenders replied with chattering automatic weapons and the occasional sizzling burst from those deadly plasma guns. They had yet to take a hit from the battery-powered weapons, but the officer remembered the way he had used it like a welding torch to cut open doors on the starship. He suspected and fervently hoped that the range would be limited, especially in a smoky environment such as the corridor was certain to be, but he didn’t want one of his men finding out the hard way that the LT was wrong.
“Yeah,” Jackson declared. “You go first. I’ll anchor and then follow you up.”
Tracers came zinging out of the doorway as, within the building, more Eluoi soldiers recovered enough to return fire. Once more Ruiz’s gun snapped off a short burst, whisper quiet but very deadly, and as Teal scrambled upward, taking G-Man’s heavy load with him, Jackson could only wonder how his men were faring.
The answer came with another dull explosion from G-Man’s grenade launcher, echoed by Ruiz’s sustained firing. The two SEALS were clearly still full of fight. Rodale came running up to Jackson, and the lieutenant sent him up next.
By that time Harris and Falco were there, and Jackson had them hold the base of the ladder while he pulled himself up. His left hand was usable, but the arm couldn’t bear any weight, nor could he lift it over his head. Using just his right and his feet, the officer clawed his way up the ladder and gratefully offered a hand to Rodale, who pulled him over the ledge and into the shrapnel-pocked hallway.
He couldn’t see Ruiz or LaRue, but he could hear them firing not far away. The smell of cordite filled his nostrils, and the swirling dust and smoke stung his eyes. Leaving the last two SEALS to come up on their own, the lieutenant and Rodale charged down the smooth stone floor into the depths of the Eluoi garrison house.
Even as he ran, Jackson was thinking about the objective. Two of his Teammates, plus their civilian companions, were prisoners up at the top of this building. The SEALS needed to get there to effect a rescue before the Eluoi had the chance to move them out. It was as simple as that.
It was and it wasn’t. In the back of the officer’s mind was another reality: Zaro, the spy, was up there, too. That wasn’t the reason he had ordered this headlong, aggressive—some would say rash and foolhardy—attack. He would never risk his men on a mission of personal revenge. But Zaro was also a link to home, one of the very few Eluoi who had ever been to Earth’s solar system and who might know how to get back there. It was a simple truth that the spy, right now, represented their best chance of ever getting back home.
Jackson immediately noticed a number of doors, metal portals that apparently slid to the side, to either side of the corridor. There were at least six dead Eluoi