Suddenly, they were both out of ammunition. Perri fell back onto his haunches, pulling the empty magazine out and scrabbling in one of the boxes for another one. Dave had jumped or fallen down from the ladder, but was standing there looking at him in shock.
Ammo! he wanted to yell at him. Where the hell was that extra magazine? He jammed the rifle into his crotch, pulled the bolt back with one hand as he felt around in the box with the other, except he couldn’t feel anything in there now, let alone the ammo. Damn hand was numb. Why was Dave looking at him like that? He looked down at his waist where Dave was looking.
Ah, hell.
Rodriguez and O’Hare had been prepared for the blast. They had heard the sound of drills as the men outside bored holes into the rock either side of the door, and placed their explosives. So just being left behind the door to starve or die of thirst was apparently not something they were going to have to worry about.
But neither of them were really trained for what was about to go down. A massive concussive blast, yeah, probably supplemented by grenades thrown in by the attacking soldiers. That was a no-brainer. They were waiting around the corner from the door, a good distance down the long corridor where they wouldn’t be exposed directly to the blast, either from the door being blown away, or from grenade shrapnel. The barrels of graphite they’d put across the end of the first corridor each weighed about 400 pounds. They had hammered timber support beams into the wall behind the barrels to reinforce them and had to hope the barrels would be able to take whatever was coming and still provide some kind of protection. Unless their attackers were armed with rocket-propelled grenades in which case they could just stand off at a distance and reduce the barrels to piles of metal and black dust.
They also had a spotlight, one of the Pond landing lights, positioned above and behind the barrels shining right at the door. Bunny had observed that if it survived the breach, whoever was out there had better be wearing suntan cream because they were going to get burned.
They were identically armed. Both had HK416 rifles with flash suppression, and belts around their waists that held five magazines each. They had no grenades themselves. No body armor, no night vision goggles, so they had the LED lights in the corridor switched on. Some of the lights were sure to be knocked out by the blast, but they expected there would still be enough light for them to aim by. And for what it was worth, they had their flight deck helmets on. Not that they would stop a bullet, but they might just block some of the noise and protect them from flying debris.
As they sat with their backs to the wall, listening as the drills fell silent, and knowing what the silence meant, it occurred to Rodriguez they had never discussed surrendering. She knew why Bunny hadn’t raised it. She still believed they could win this fight, get out there, and launch at least one more drone.
But Rodriguez hadn’t considered surrender either. Not because she was a ‘death or glory type’; not at all.
Maybe it was just that age-old feeling that she didn’t feel like she could just give up, when so many others had given their lives — from Halifax and the others topside, to those who’d been crushed and drowned in the shockwave that followed.
Then suddenly the time for reflection was over — the world around her went white, and black, and her eardrums caved in and she found herself lying on her side with her rifle barrel jammed up under her armpit! Bunny was lying flat too, but looked like she had come through the explosion a little better — lying on her back, with her rifle crossed across her chest. Bunny rolled onto her stomach, swung around and started crawling towards the corner but Rodriguez grabbed her foot and pulled her back.
Sure enough a further series of blasts went off around the corner as the Russians threw in fragmentation grenades. The graphite packed steel barrels rocked against the timber braces holding them and some of the timber shattered, but they held, still blocking the corridor. It had taken a hydraulic dolly for Rodriguez and Bunny to get them into position, so it wouldn’t be easy for any advancing troops to shove them out of the way.
Through the ringing in her ears, Rodriguez heard boots in the corridor around the corner.
“Now!” she called, and they ran to their prepared positions, Bunny up against the far wall, her rifle between barrels, Rodriguez taking the near corner, sighting between the wall and the first barrel.
Through the still-settling smoke from the explosions she saw dark shapes advancing down the corridor toward her. Rifle on semi-auto, she worked the trigger as fast she could put the dot on a target.
Despite his bluster, Captain Borisov had never led his men in combat before. Police actions, yes. Anti-terrorist operations in Dagestan. But for the last four years he had been cooling his heels in Vladivostok, with the only real action outside training exercises being a bank robbery gone wrong in which three hostages had been killed before he was ordered to go in and end it.
In that situation, he had building plans, optic fiber and infrared intelligence on the location of the tangos and their hostages. He had multiple ingress points to choose from. His men had the advantage of darkness and night vision technology. They had hours to plan their action and more than enough personnel to execute it. In the end they lost one additional hostage, killed two of the armed robbers and captured three. None of his men had taken a bullet. It was called a success.
There was no way to get an optical fiber camera under the blast door or around the frame, nor did he have time to drill a hole. Lacking intel, his only option was to breach and move in fast to clear the area behind the door, snake formation, two by two. He didn’t like it. In fact he hated it. But he wasn’t going to let that damn VVS flyboy see a moment’s hesitation.
O’Hare and Rodriguez on the other hand had chosen the field of battle and their strategy was pretty clear. Kill, or be killed.
The naval officers weren’t trained weapons experts, but they had both received the same basic firearms training as Marines and they drilled their targets with short, controlled bursts. The return fire was also rapid and controlled, but what came their way thudded into the graphite barrels without ricocheting. The hammer of heavy weapons fire filled the corridor.
“Reposition!” Rodriguez called as soon as the weight of incoming Russian fire stuttered. She was sure she had hit a target or two and with enemy soldiers down in the corridor in front of them, the Russians couldn’t use grenades without risking their own men. She covered O’Hare as the woman pulled back out of the line of fire and threw herself down behind Rodriguez.
“Reloading!” Bunny called. “Did we hit anything?”
Rodriguez held a finger to her lips and looked around the corner. Heavy suppressive fire hammered the wall above her head but she’d seen enough. About twenty feet down the corridor, there was a dark form lying still. Behind that, another, being dragged away, and a cluster of black-clad troops falling back to the blasted doorway. She sent a few more shots after them, but then remembered her veteran father telling her a wounded enemy was more valuable than a dead one, because the wounded had to be looked after, while the dead looked after themselves. Gradually the suppressing fire died down.