Task Force Mars - Kevin Dockery [83]
“All right, we use this garden as our perimeter, but stay in the trees: Don’t let them spot you from above. Harris, can you see to the consul? Get her somewhere as safe as you can find.” He glared at the Shamani woman, who still seemed strangely impassive in the middle of the chaos. “For God’s sake, keep your head down!” he ordered.
“I shall do that,” she replied, allowing Harris to take her arm and lead her laterally through the woods.
The SEALS found firing positions, with Teal, Marannis, and Sanchez on the far side of the garden, which was a mere twenty meters across. Jackson settled himself behind the stump of a large tree that apparently had been felled by a saw fairly recently, since the base was still solid and had begun to rot only where the cut had been made.
Would the Eluoi reconsider? They had to have taken scores of casualties already, and the fight had cost them a half dozen aircraft. Maybe they would decide that the SEALS were not worth rooting out of this redoubt. Maybe the sun would set soon, and they could separate and slip away in the darkness. Maybe—
Jackson’s train of maybes was interrupted by the flash of an off-white helmet some twenty meters away. He squeezed off a shot, sending the Eluoi diving for cover, and reconsidered.
Maybe his Team was just screwed.
“I would like a weapon,” the consul de campe said to Chief Harris, sounding very decisive.
The chief had overturned a stone park bench that he had found just under the canopy of trees. At one time a park visitor might have sat upon it and admired the flowers in the garden. Now, tipped over, the seat provided a bulletproof barrier facing the enemy, and the sturdy wide marble legs to either side gave the chief and the Shamani woman a little bit of flank protection.
“Really?” he said, completely surprised by the request.
“Would you allow me to use that?” Char-Kane added, pointing to the chief’s sidearm, the VP90 10-millimeter caseless pistol in the holster strapped to his leg.
He shrugged. With several clips left for his G15, he didn’t need the pistol for the time being. “Sure,” he said. Unsnapping the holster cover, he pulled out the handgun, checked that there was a round chambered, and set the weapon to semiautomatic.
“This is the safety,” he explained, showing her the little switch. “I’m flipping it off, so don’t point it at anything you don’t want to shoot.”
“I understand,” she replied solemnly, taking the pistol that he handed to her butt first.
“I’d hold it in two hands,” he counseled. “It’s gonna kick back when you pull the trigger. It’ll fire one bullet every time you pull.”
She nodded and leaned over to peer around the leg of the park bench, impressing the chief, who was going to warn her not to raise her head over the top of their protective barrier. He leaned out on the far side and spotted a pair of white-clad soldiers worming forward, not ten meters away.
He sighted down the barrel of the G15 and planted a slug right through the helmet of the nearest Eluoi, killing the man instantly. The fellow’s comrade crawled next to the corpse, using the body for cover, but when he raised his head for a look, Harris sent a round whistling right past his ear. The soldier dropped back, pressing his face into the ground.
Harris was stunned by a loud report right next to him and whirled around to see Char-Kane, her red eyes wide, holding the smoking pistol in both hands. She glanced around the bench leg, then turned to the chief.
“You are right. It has much kick,” she reported. “But I seem to have killed the”—she paused, groping for a word, then concluded proudly—“son of a bitch.”
He glanced past her, saw the body only a couple of meters away, and whistled. “Nice