The RPG round exploded, and the Panzergrenadier didn’t jump over the barricade. Something must have gone right. With all the ammo gone, he tossed the useless RPG aside, and raised his rifle again. He held it above the barricade, looked through the sights on his HUD, and fired at anything that moved in the smoke. Until it showed empty.
He pulled the rifle back down, ejected the magazine, and searched through his suit stores for another. But the HUD was already telling him he’d fired his last round.
“I’m out,” he said.
“Join the club,” Kader said. “This is my last mag.”
Logan dropped the rifle, and grabbed the last grenade from his belt. If he was going to die, he’d do his best to take at least one more of the bastards with him, whether with the grenade or the blades on his suit’s hands. He didn’t need Beauchene on his case, as well as Volkov.
Grenades flew over the barricade, slamming down into the square behind them. Explosions tossed shrapnel and dirt into the air. Something creaked, and Logan glanced behind him. The flagpole wobbled, twisting to the right. Then an RPG round slammed into the ground beside it, and a Legionnaire dodged aside as the pole toppled and slammed to the ground.
Logan pulled the pin on his grenade, waited a couple of seconds, then popped up and tossed the grenade into the smoke. He began to crouch behind the barricade. But his left leg stopped moving half-way.
Red lights flashed on his HUD.
“Left leg primary actuator failure,” the AI said.
Shit. He twisted the leg, and it bent beneath him, slowly lowering the suit. Far too slowly, with his head still above the barricade. Now he knew why Beauchene had always told them to lean around cover, not fire over it.
The Montagnards fired. Rifle rounds hit the barricade, and one ricocheted off Logan’s helmet, knocking his head aside as he crouched. One of the Montagnards grabbed the grenade, and raised it to throw back. The grenade exploded, ripping off the Montagnard’s head, and turning his hand into a bloody mess of flesh and shattered bone.
Then the bright trail of an RPG rocket raced along the alley from the far end, illuminating the smoke as it flew. It exploded between the Montagnards. One collapsed to the dirt, his arms jerking toward the half of his head that remained on his neck. Another screamed and rolled on the ground, with only bloody bone where his right arm used to be.
The other Montagnards turned to look back toward the main street, staring into the smoke cloud that still hovered there. Rifles cracked from the far end of the alley, firing from the smoke, and spraying their fire across the dirt.
The remaining Montagnards fell in a bloody pile as the gaussrifles tore through them. Explosions boomed in the nearby streets, and the cracking of the gaussrifle fire intensified.
Two green squares flashed up near the far corners of the aid station building, and a dozen more appeared along the street and alleys nearby. Two suits crept along the alley, emerging slowly from of the smoke. Logan recognized that Russian flag on the shoulder of the suit in front.
“I see you made it, McCoy,” Bairamov said over the fireteam net. “We brought some friends.”
The crack of gunfire and thump of grenades intensified from the hillside south of the village square. Logan turned and looked that way. Dozens of green squares appeared on his HUD, streaming down the hillside toward the insurgents.
The red squares of the insurgents flashed and disappeared, or retreated. But more green squares approached from the far side.
Whoever they were, they had the insurgents caught in a crossfire. A few of the Legion markers showed suit or occupant damage, but the new arrivals were taking down ten insurgents for every man the insurgents hit.
“Who is that?”
“2nd platoon. We caught up with them on our way here.”
Volkov stood beside the barricade, and fired his rifle toward the mass of fleeing insurgents. “If you have ammo left, use it. Show these bastards who’s boss around here.”
“I’m out,” Logan said.
Bairamov tossed a magazine Logan’s way. “Here.”
Logan grabbed it in mid-air, and slammed it into his rifle as he limped to the south barricades on his suit’s failing leg.
2nd Platoon were chasing the insurgents back toward the ore truck, hitting them from both sides as 1st Platoon fired down the middle.
Logan crouched beside the barricade, and began to fire. A few of the Montagnards dropped their weapons and put their hands up. The rest fought on, but, caught in crossfire from three sides, they had few places to hide. Even Poulin was firing at them from the barricades.
The Panzergrenadiers were fighting to the last man, still launching grenades at 2nd Platoon as they retreated toward the truck. But only a handful of Panzergrenadier suits were still moving. The rest lay on the dirt, dead or wounded.
One suit leaned around the rear of the truck, between the truck and the trailers. He swung a rifle and fired. Metal and blood exploded from the back of a 2nd Platoon suit, and the suit fell to the ground.
Logan went prone beside the barricade, and took careful aim as the suit dodged back behind the truck. It reappeared a second later, firing over the truck’s engine bay.
Logan’s sight crosshairs lined up with the suit’s visor as the Panzergrenadier began to duck behind the truck again. For a split second, he could see the man’s face through the visor. A face covered with familiar scars.
Scar-Face. He should kill the murdering bastard. But if there was going to be any value in this mission at all, it wouldn’t be revenge, it would be protecting the decent people of New Strasbourg from Scar-Face and his friends.
And there were still better ways to do that than shooting him in the face.
Scar-Face ducked back behind the truck. He leaned out around the rear, between the truck and the first trailer, and aimed his rifle.
Logan’s rifle cracked. Scar-Face’s rifle went flying as sparks and blood exploded from his right arm. His suit slumped down behind the truck, and fell to the dirt.
CHAPTER 35
Bairamov shuffled across the village square. His suit was battered with deep and mangled dents, the visor was cracked, and the surface camouflage changed colour randomly as he moved. But it didn’t look too bad all-in-all, for being buried under a pile of falling rocks.
“You’re late,” Logan said.
“Took us a while to dig ourselves out of that mess in the mine. But at least we didn’t miss the fight.”
“You arrived just in time for the finale. And it would have been a different story if you hadn’t.”
Desoto stumbled across the village square behind Bairamov, dragging his right leg, with his left arm hanging loose at his side. He held his rifle in his one good hand.
“Not having much luck today, are you Desoto?”
“It’s getting better. I think.”
“Where’s Volkov?” Bairamov said. “We’d better check in before he thinks we deserted.”
Logan nodded across the square.
Bairamov grabbed the good arm of Desoto’s suit, and helped him toward the village hall, where Volkov, Merle and Poulin were talking.
Kader and two of the other Legionnaires had picked up the flagpole, and were lifting it back into place.
Logan grabbed it too, and helped them push the broken end down into the dirt beside the shattered remains of the base. It might be a metre shorter now, but the tricolour flag of France was flying over the village again.
Then he hobbled toward the aid station.
“Alice, visor up.”
He lowered his head so it would clear the roof as he looked in through the doorway of the aid station. Nicole was hunched over a man on blood-stained straw, holding his hand as a medic worked on his leg, where bone showed through torn, bloody muscle. The front of her dress was stained with blood.