The Russians would be hurting and angry now, of that she was sure. Serious harm was on its way.
Borisov cursed as he pulled his men, literally, out of the corridor. He had one dead, one wounded, and one stunned from multiple hits on his body armor and a blow to the helmet which had not penetrated.
“Shooters?!” he yelled to the only survivor out of the two troopers who had led the breach, a man who had taken a bullet in the ankle. “How many? Show me.”
Borisov handed him a tablet and stylus and his hand shook as he drew, “Hard to see because of the bloody smoke and that spotlight. Four, maybe five shooters,” the man said. “In cover. A corridor, thirty to fifty feet. Some sort of barricade. Barrels. Obstructing the corner, no way around. You could try to climb over, but it’s a kill zone.”
Bondarev had heard and seen the probing attack fail and ran over, listening. “Do you have an RPG?” he asked. “Blast that barricade and whoever is behind it.”
“No, our heavy weapons were on the chopper that turned back” Borisov replied. He turned to one of his weapons experts. “You, load counter-defilade — you are to clear those barrels and disable whoever is behind them, then follow me in. You two — on my order we rush that barricade, get grenades around the corner so we can get over the top.” He gave Bondarev a withering look. “Major-General, my men can watch that exit, make yourself useful and help this man with his injuries.”
Bondarev looked down and saw the man’s lower leg was a bloody, shattered mess.
Rodriguez and O’Hare had pulled back to the tool room at the end of the second corridor. Nothing but a small dozer was going to move those graphite barrels and they had no desire to be near them if the Russians hit them with RPGs. They hunkered down by the door of the tool room and waited. The tool room might be a dead end, but it was a very defensible one. Unless the Russians had gas, of course. Or just decided to pull back and blow the whole base to hell. There was nothing they could do but wait and see.
They didn’t have to wait long. From the first corridor she heard the crack of suppressing rifle fire then more whip-crack explosions as shrapnel began flying around the barricade and rattling around the long corridor. The flying shrapnel took out their spotlight, making the corridor suddenly seem very dark.
“Defilade rounds,” Bunny said, pulling her head back in case of a ricochet. “But no RPG. They’re not taking us seriously ma’am.”
“Men. Typical,” Rodriguez grunted.
Developed in the first part of the new century, counter-defilade ammunition together with laser targeting systems on new generation combat weapons allowed ground troops to fire over obstacles and explode the round right above the head of defenders hiding behind them. The ammunition started as large bore grenade rounds, but grew progressively smaller until even heavy assault rifles could shoot counter-defilade ammunition.
Rodriguez watched cautiously as the end of the corridor a hundred feet away was filled with flying metal and the heavy graphite barrels were perforated, spilling the fine graphite slowly out onto the floor. Their barricade wouldn’t last much longer after all.
The covering fire paused and Rodriguez heard boots thumping down the corridor again and bodies crash hard against the barricade as the Russians stormed it. Grenades would be next.
“Now!” she called to Bunny and pulled her head back behind the door frame.
The GUA8/L cannon ammunition belt Bunny fixed into the ceiling pipes was 25mm laser guided fragmentary. Fired by a Fantom, it used the laser seeker on the cannon to determine when to explode the round to give the maximum chance of a kill even with a near miss. It could also be pre-programmed to detonate at a specific range if the pilot preferred. Bunny had overridden minimum safe distance protocols and set the rounds she had placed in the ceiling of the corridor above the barrels to detonate 0.01 seconds after firing.
As she pushed the button on her remote, 100 rounds of 25mm frag exploded simultaneously into the first corridor ending the very brief and extraordinarily violent war of Captain Borisov and his three men.
Mercifully, they were already dead before the grenades they were holding exploded.
From his position ten feet back where he was putting a splint and bandage on the wounded trooper, Bondarev had a 45-degree angle view into the mouth of the corridor and it was like looking into a slaughterhouse killing floor. Neither Borisov nor any of his men made it out. Smoke poured from the corridor.
“Idiot,” Bondarev cursed. Borisov’s remaining two men were still stationed further along the flight deck, watching the second door. “Hold your positions!” he yelled at them. “Prepare for the Americans to counter-attack!”
Bondarev grabbed the wounded man by his combat vest and tried to drag him away from the door, but with the weight of his gear and the rifle he was still carrying he was too heavy- He pointed at a blast deflector further up the ramp. “Get yourself over there, and get ready with that rifle, they’ll try to break out now.” The man started belly crawling, dragging his wounded leg behind him. Bondarev looked balefully over at the pristine blast door further down the deck, with only two troopers covering it. There was nothing for it; he lay on his belly at an oblique angle to the bloodied corridor, pointed his little Makarov optimistically at the entrance, and waited. He kept looking down at the other door. When they came, surely they would come from there too.
What he couldn’t know of course was that Rodriguez and O’Hare had only one way out of their redoubt, and it was over the barrels and out the mouth of the first corridor, straight into the muzzle of Bondarev’s Makarov!
They hadn’t counted on the thick, choking smoke from the detonation of the 25mm shells, and had to slam the metal tool room door shut and jam cleaning rags against the crack under the door to keep the smoke out. It made the 20 foot by 30-foot tool room that was their last refuge seem even smaller.
“How many rounds in that belt?” Rodriguez coughed.
“About a hundred. Seemed like a good idea at the time,” Bunny shrugged. “Now, not so much.” She took a slug of water from a bottle and handed it to her CO.
“Good to go?” Rodriguez asked, putting down the bottle and lifting her rifle.
Their next move was Bunny’s idea, of course. She was a fighter pilot. She didn’t have a defensive bone in her body and the idea of waiting in a 20 by 30 sarcophagus for the enemy to come and finish them — that wasn’t her idea of a plan. At all.
They’d agreed they’d ride out the first wave of attackers and then try to break out. It was possible the Russians had brought a whole company of airborne troops into the base, so they were fully aware it might be a very, very short counteroffensive.
“Yes ma’am,” Bunny said, giving Rodriguez tight smile and holding out her fist for a bump. Rodriguez saw it was shaking, and she put her rifle against the wall and grabbed Bunny’s fist in both hands. “We’re getting out of here Lieutenant, alright?”
“Hell yeah ma’am. Hooyah.”
They moved silently back up to the remains of their barricade. Looking around it, Rodriguez could see virtually nothing, no movement, just dead bodies and blood. The cavern outside was silent. Could they have killed them all? Not a chance she would take.
“Round two Lieutenant.”
Bunny held up her remote and put a thumb on the toggle switch. Moving it in one direction had triggered the 25mm ammunition belt. Moving it back again would trigger the second surprise she had rigged up for any uninvited guests. She had placed home-made ‘flash-bang’ pipe bombs disguised as electrical conduit pipes running the length of the wall along the launch ramp forward of the docked Fantom. Simple plastic pipes filled with a mix of aluminum powder and potassium perchlorate, they weren’t intended to bring enemy troops down, merely disorient them for a few vital seconds so that Rodriguez and Bunny had a chance to break out of the corridor and begin engaging their attackers.