“SAM,” he yelled.
He sprinted for the nearest rock, and dove behind it. He glanced back at the drone’s camera image on the HUD just in time to see it catch the nose of the missile as it approached the drone. Then the signal dropped out. A split second later, the boom of the exploding warhead reached Logan, as the drone disintegrated into a cloud of debris that glittered in the sunlight as it fell toward the village.
“Contact,” Desoto yelled as rifles cracked.
Logan leaned around the rock. Chips flew from it, thrown up by rifle fire from a rifleman lying prone in the grass a couple of hundred metres away. Logan pulled back fast, and looked up the hillside. A man was running downhill, heading toward the rocks beside the river. Logan swung his rifle that way, and fired a burst. The insurgent’s rifle tumbled through the air as blood spurted from his body, and he fell to the ground.
Red squares appeared rapidly on his HUD as the others marked targets. At least a dozen men were moving over the hillside, and heading down it toward the truck, with their weapons held ready.
Rifles cracked from below Logan on the hillside as the other Legionnaires began to fire. Some of the red squares stopped moving, around insurgents smart enough to take cover now they were taking fire themselves.
Logan grabbed the grenade launcher from his back, selected HE grenades, and raised the muzzle high for indirect fire over the rock. The impact point showed as a circle on his HUD. The insurgents were smart enough not to group up enough for him to hit more than one with a grenade.
He aimed at the nearest square, then twisted the launcher a few degrees ahead of them to allow for their movement, and fired a burst. The launcher boomed, and the grenades arced across the sky.
He picked the next-closest target, and sent another burst heading their way.
Then the booms of the first explosions reached him. Logan pointed his rifle around the side of the rock just as the second grenade burst hit, and looked through the rifle sight on his HUD. Dirt spewed into the air from the explosions, and one of the insurgents tumbled to the ground with his face and chest smeared with blood.
“Insurgent down,” Logan said, and tagged the man as dead. If he wasn’t, he didn’t look like he was going to rejoin the fight any time soon.
Rifle rounds slammed into the rock near Logan’s hand.
He pulled his rifle back, and fired a third burst of grenades over the rock. With the drone gone, the launcher was the closest thing to artillery support they had, and he might as well use it.
The insurgents on his HUD moved as soon as they heard the grenades launch. More rifle rounds cracked from the far side of the village, and another of the insurgents went red.
“Insurgent down,” Gallo said.
But the rest of them had got out of the impact zone before Logan’s grenades landed. Indirect fire over the rocks just gave them too much warning. At best, he was merely annoying them now, or forcing them out of cover where the others could shoot at them.
He slung the launcher and held his rifle tight as he looked behind him. He wasn’t far from the village. Maybe a hundred metres remaining before he’d be in cover behind the closest house in the row along the street.
But there was no cover between here and there.
Unless…
He glanced behind him as something hissed. A dark trail of smoke raced through the air, flying down the hill toward the truck, accelerating as it moved.
The mule ran forward, past Bairamov and the truck, before it exploded in a cloud of smoke and flames. The burning legs of the mule collapsed to the ground in front of the truck.
“RPG,” Bairamov yelled.
Logan swung out around the side of the rock, aimed his rifle toward the man holding the RPG, and fired a burst. The man dropped the RPG and dove to the ground as dirt erupted all around him where the rifle rounds impacted. Logan ducked back as two insurgents returned fire at him.
The rest of the team fired toward the man with the RPG. Logan waited a second, then he crouched, and ran toward the stream, just a few metres away. Then jumped off the bank, down into the water.
Rifle rounds cracked above his head, but his legs sank more than a metre into the water, and the riverbank covered his body and head as he crouched and crept along it toward the village. In a few seconds, he was clambering out onto the bank of the stream where it passed the row of houses.
Then he crouched at the corner of the closest house, and peered around it.
Just don’t let there be a hidden IED…
“Taking a lot of fire here,” Gallo said.
Logan leaned further around the corner of the house.
He couldn’t see the insurgents through the tall grass in the fields, but he could see where they were marked on his HUD. He aimed the grenade launcher toward the nearest red square, and fired a burst. Then moved on to the next, and fired again. He could at least keep their heads down to take some of the heat off Gallo.
Logan fired off the last of the grenades, and slung the launcher. He’d had plenty more ammo in the mule, but that was history now. Bairamov must have used the robot to block the RPG before it could hit the truck.
“Moving,” Gallo yelled.
Gallo’s square moved on Logan’s HUD.
Logan fired his rifle at a random selection of insurgents as Gallo moved toward the truck.
Then another RPG round roared over the hillside.
“Fuck,” Gallo said,
The back of his suit exploded in a shower of blood, flames, and debris as the RPG round slammed into his chest. The suit stood upright for what seemed like minutes, with a huge, ragged hole ripped through it. Logan could see the dirt and grass of the hillside between the bloody remains of Gallo’s arms and abdomen.
Then it tipped forward, the knees bent, and slowly tumbled to the ground.
“Man down,” Logan yelled. ‘They got Gallo.”
Logan fired his rifle at the nearest insurgent. But, now Gallo was no longer firing, the insurgents were aiming at him.
He ducked back behind the house as rounds ploughed through the dirt around him. Eight or nine insurgents were still firing out there, and there were only three Legionnaires and two Compagnie men, with no heavy weapons, no drones, and no backup.
Logan could still see the truck beyond the buildings where the road curved around along the clifftop. Another RPG round flew across the hillside, trailing smoke toward the truck.
Dirt exploded from the road as the RPG round impacted just behind it. The rear trailer wobbled as the blast hit it.
“Truck, move on,” Bairamov said. “You’re a sitting target out here.”
As the truck’s tracks began to move, Bairamov ran towards it. Insurgent rounds threw up dirt around him, and sparks flashed from the back of Bairamov’s suit as one impacted there. Then he was on the far side of the truck.
Bairamov jogged along beside the truck. His rifle cracked as he leaned between two of the trailers, and fired a long burst in the direction of the RPG.
Dirt and stones flew from the ground nearby, and the man backed behind a rock. The Compagnie men in the truck fired wildly from the windows, spraying bullets that hammered into the ground around the remaining insurgents.
Logan crouched, and lined up his rifle sights on the man holding the RPG as he loaded another rocket. Logan swung the rifle slightly, placing the crosshairs on the front of the rocket, instead of the man.
Then fired.
The rifle kicked against his shoulder. The grenade exploded in the man’s hand as the round hit it.
His arm and the remains of his head tumbled through the air above the rock, and the rest of his body splattered across the dirt and rock in a red, gooey mass.
“RPG’s down,” he said.