Hood shook off his paralysis and opened fire, aiming at Vlad’s chest. The rounds drove him back, eliciting another howl of pain, but this time he did not go down. Instead, he hunched over like a sailor leaning into the wind and started inching forward again.
Hood’s magazine ran out, but Rollie was already firing again, taking up the slack long enough for Hood to change it. The concentration of fire on Vlad’s chest had turned his upper torso completely black, but now blood was oozing through the fabric. Bullet resistant or not, the unceasing ferocity of the assault was finally taking a toll on the Russian. He managed another halting step, then his agonized howl went silent and he crumpled to the ground, unmoving. Hood immediately let go of his trigger. Rollie kept firing until the magazine ran out.
The air in the cave was thick with smoke, but through it Hood could see two more spectral figures moving beyond the walls — Wolfman and Sharky, running side by side, closing in for the kill.
Hood felt sick to his stomach. There was no turning back now, no hope of any outcome better than the death of two more brothers in arms.
But was that even possible? Taking out Vlad had required a sustained assault from both him and Rollie, and dozens of rounds — maybe even hundreds.
Hood choked down his bile and changed out the half-empty magazine in his rifle for a full one. Running out of ammunition wasn’t going to be a problem; he had four more full mags. The real concern was that the weapon wasn’t designed for sustained fire at full auto. He could feel the heat radiating from the barrel and upper receiver. The more rounds he put through the rifle, the more likely it was to jam or even blow up in his face.
But there was no time to wait for the rifle to cool down, and no alternative but to meet the approaching threat with overwhelming force. He pointed to the indicated passage. “There! Two of them. Twenty seconds!”
He counted down by fives, and then when he got to five, he shouted, “Get ready!”
Sharky was first to emerge, his filed teeth bared in a feral grimace. He had removed his balaclava, which meant a lucky headshot might be enough to end the threat — end his life — but luck was not on their side.
Rollie and Hood fired simultaneously, but the first round only grazed Sharky, creasing his scalp. He immediately ducked under the rest of the rounds, doubling over as if to run on all fours. Both men tried to track him, but Rollie’s weapon burped once and then went silent.
Jammed.
Some of Hood’s bullets hammered into Sharky’s exposed back, sending him skidding into a fetal curl.
A new sound joined the din, the lower boom-boom-boom of Rollie’s secondary weapon, but he wasn’t shooting at Sharky. Hood flicked his eyes in the direction of the muzzle flash and glimpsed Wolfman’s snarling face in the entrance to the passage. The impacts sent the Monster Squad field leader sprawling forward but seemed only to piss him off. With one arm thrown up as if to ward off the attack, he pushed off the wall and leapt at Rollie.
Hood swung his HK around to meet this new threat. He managed to squeeze off four rounds before the trigger went slack, the magazine exhausted, but the combination of his fire and Rollie’s was sufficient to halt Wolfman’s advance, if only momentarily.
Then Wolfman did something unexpected. Instead of renewing his attack, he veered toward the still-dazed Sharky, grabbed hold of his coveralls, and commenced dragging him back into the mouth of the passage.
Astonished, Hood let off the trigger. Rollie however, kept firing, hammering bullets into the retreating figures until they melted into the darkness of the passage. As soon as they were out of direct view, they transformed once more into ghost images, huddled in the smoke-like passage.
Hood just stared at them. What had he just witnessed? Compassion? Intelligence? Loyalty? Certainly not the behavior of mindless rage-beasts.
“What are they waiting for?” snarled Rollie. He holstered his pistol and then hurriedly tried to clear the jam in his primary weapon. After prying the crooked round free, he released the bolt and started forward. “Cover me!”
“Rollie, wait!”
But Rollie either didn’t hear or chose not to listen. With his smoking rifle at the high ready, he advanced toward the passage.
In the darkness beyond, the two spectral figures stirred, clearly sensing Rollie’s approach. Hood could see them moving, shifting position in preparation for a two-pronged attack, crouching like lions getting ready to pounce. Rollie might succeed in killing one of them, but the other would be on him before he could switch targets.
“Rollie! Get back here!” Hood shouted. “It’s an ambush.”
That got Rollie’s attention. He hesitated a moment, and then took a step back, lowered his weapon, and took something from a pouch on his chest rig — a green sphere about the size of a baseball.
“Rollie, don’t—”
With a deft twist Rollie popped loose the steel safety band and then yanked out the retaining pin, letting the spring-loaded spoon fly free.
“Frag out!” he shouted as he lobbed the grenade into the passage.
Hood forgot about everything else. All that mattered now was getting as far away from the blast as he could. But as he turned to head down the passage from which Vlad had come, he saw Mad Dog lying directly in his path. Barely slowing, he reached down and grabbed the shoulder strap of Mad Dog’s chest rig, and then started dragging him along. Rollie appeared an instant later, grabbed the other strap. They made it into the passage and another five meters or so before the world turned upside down.
The cavern walls protected them from the spray of molten shrapnel but did little to soften the effects of the overpressure wave. If anything, the close confines seemed to channel the explosive force like the barrel of a gun. Hood was knocked flat, and went skidding forward across the lichen covered cave floor.
Then, everything went black.
He knew he had not lost consciousness. Despite the protection afforded by his clothing and pro-mask, he could feel the flash of heat as the shockwave rolled over and through him. Something heavy struck his back. His body armor blunted the impact, but the object, presumably a chunk of the ceiling, stayed where it had landed. Smaller rocks struck him, and for a few seconds, he feared the entire cavern would collapse.
But then, stillness returned.
He reached up slowly, gingerly, to see if the glasses were still on his head. They were not, and he could only surmise that they had been knocked loose during his fall. He probed the rubble around him for a few seconds but was unable to locate them, so he instead flipped the NVGs down and activated them. After a second or two, the green displays lit up, but revealed little. The air around him was opaque with smoke and dust.
He raised his head cautiously and peered into the swirling dust cloud. He was, in that moment, grateful to have the pro-mask; without it he would probably not have been able to breathe at all.
Something stirred a few paces to his left. “Rollie? Still with me, brother?”
The shape moved again and then Rollie sat up abruptly, his pistol in hand. “Did it work? Are they dead?”
“I don’t know,” he answered truthfully. He searched the rubble around him until he found the glasses, or rather what was left of them. Casting the pieces aside, he got to his feet and quickly checked the rest of his equipment, and then readied his weapon, just in case. Only then did he realize that someone was missing.
“Where’s Mad Dog? Do you see him?”
Rollie bounded up, his pistol ready, and turned a slow circle. “He was right here a second—”
Something erupted out of the darkness just beyond him. With Rollie in the way, all Hood could see was a flurry of motion as Rollie struggled with a barely glimpsed assailant. Rollie’s pistol boomed, then boomed again, the rounds sparking impotently against stone.