He ducked instinctively and moved back behind the wall, which started coming apart piece by piece in front of his face. He slipped down to one knee and tried to wait out the pop-pop-pop of a carbine shooting, which meant the guy with the M249 hadn’t opened up yet. Of course, it was only a matter of time. Chances were the guy was waiting to get closer. Either that, or he wasn’t comfortable firing that heavy weapon standing up—
The wall behind him disintegrated before he could finish the thought, ripped apart by a barrage of brap-brap-brap gunfire that seemed to go on and on and on.
The M249 light machine gun had just joined the party.
“Keo!” Blaine shouted through the radio. “What’s going on? Keo!”
Keo could barely hear Blaine’s voice over the roar of the machine gun fire. He didn’t know how far the two soldiers were at the moment, but he guessed they would keep together, which meant slowly moving up the road toward him. At the moment, staying down and keeping his head from being detached from his shoulders by one of the SAW’s 5.56mm rounds seemed the more prudent move.
He swapped the M16 for the MP5SD then glanced to his left, wondering if there were more pieces of the house still standing back there when the machine gun suddenly stopped firing.
Keo sucked in a breath, thought, The hell with it, you only live once, and stood up behind what was left of the wall. There wasn’t much remaining, just about four feet of brick and mortar reaching up from the ground.
The two soldiers were still on the road. One of them was slightly crouched over and moving cautiously forward, but he was a good fifty meters away still. His partner was farther back and struggling to feed the ammo belt into the M249. That was the problem with belt-fed weapons. You never know when the next round was going to jam and ruin your day.
The one with the M4 saw Keo stand up and snapped off a shot. Too quick and the round missed by a wide margin, not even hitting what was left of the house wall. Of course, in the guy’s defense, there really wasn’t much left to hit.
As the man adjusted his aim, Keo returned fire. The man staggered down to one knee, so Keo guessed he had hit something. He kept pulling the trigger because fifty meters was a hell of a distance for the MP5SD, and Keo wasn’t taking any chances. He only stopped shooting when the soldier collapsed to the road on his stomach and didn’t move.
The one with the light machine gun saw his partner go down in front of him and tossed his jammed weapon and took off running back down the road. Keo was taking aim at his fleeing form when he saw something else — two of the trucks parked in front of the red house had fired their engines and were starting to move, their tires peeling and tossing dirt into the air around them.
“Keo!” Blaine was still shouting through the radio. “What’s going on? Are you alive?”
He didn’t waste time responding. Instead, he slung the MP5SD and brought out the M16 again, then calmly stepped out from behind what was left of the house wall and carefully took aim with the rifle.
One hundred meters for a grenade launcher designed to blow the crap out of something from four times that distance was almost child’s play. It was such an easy shot even a baby could have pulled it off. And he was definitely more skilled than a baby.
Nice, you almost believed it that time!
The trucks were burning rubber up the road, men in uniforms hanging on for dear life in the back, swarms of dust scattering in their wake. The soldier who had ditched the SAW had to dive out of the path of the oncoming vehicles when they were almost on top of him. He rolled comically sideways and landed somewhere in the ditch.
“Keo!” Blaine shouted through the radio. “Answer me, dammit!”
Blaine might have said something else, but his words were lost against the sound of the grenade launcher belching out a dull but incredibly satisfying ploompt!
The 40mm round landed near the closest truck as it was halfway to him. The driver, predictably, reacted badly to the sight of an explosion ripping a hole in the road directly in front of him and showering his windshield with chunks of asphalt. The man jerked on the wheel and the truck looked as if it had hit an invisible wall, turning sharply to the left and then rolling over onto its side before spinning forward once, twice, three times. It finally settled back down on its roof, sending showers of glass everywhere.
The second truck, seeing the first one spinning out of control in front of it — peppering the road with metal and plastic and aluminum, along with the two sad bastards who were in the back — came to a screeching stop, the smell of burning rubber filling the air.
Keo pulled back his right hand and found the main trigger on the M16 and fired, stitching the second vehicle’s front windshield with a series of three-round bursts. They were close enough now — less than fifty meters, he guessed — that it wasn’t too hard of a target. Of course, he was firing again and again just to be sure. God knew he had realized his shortcomings with long-range shooting recently.
Two men inside the front cab ducked as their windshield caved in on them. Men in the back dropped out of sight and one jumped down from the truck, lost his footing, and started crawling toward the back bumper for cover.
Keo backpedaled as he fired again and again, glimpsing more figures racing up the road behind the vehicles, weapons swinging wildly in front of them. There were simply too many of them. Way too many. So what else was new?
His eyes darted briefly to the two-story red house in the background. He thought about sending a 40mm grenade toward it, but that choice went out the window when he saw sunlight flashing off additional trucks blasting up the road.
Then he heard something — coming from behind him.
He glanced back, wondering how the hell they had outflanked him, and was shocked to see the Dodge Ram coming up on him fast. Blaine was behind the wheel, Bonnie in the front passenger’s seat holding onto the dashboard for dear life.
I guess they’re more useful than I thought.
Keo grinned at them — saw their terrified faces staring back — before he turned around and looked up the road. He grabbed a second 40mm grenade out of his pouch and reloaded the launcher. He did his best to ignore the sound of the Ram’s brakes squealing behind him as it came to a stop inches away. He was guessing it was inches away, because he actually felt the wind pushing against the back of his neck as Blaine nearly ran him over with the Dodge.
See, adjust, and fire again. So simple even a baby could do it.
The men from the house were about to reach the first two dead-in-the-road trucks while the driver and his passenger took the opportunity as Keo reloaded to scramble outside and run for cover behind the back bumper.
Wrong hiding spot, Keo thought, and fired and listened to the equally satisfying second ploompt! as the second round sailed.
This time the grenade hit its intended target, vanishing through the windshield of the second truck. The resulting explosion ripped across the vehicle and shredded the two men hiding behind it and tossed two more into the road, their clothes and hair and skin on fire. They might have been screaming, but it was hard to hear over the roar of flames and tires.
“Keo!” Bonnie, shouting behind him. “Come on!”
He tossed the M16 onto the ground and turned and nearly ran into the scorching hot hood of the truck. It was inches behind him. Jesus Christ. Blaine really did almost run him over seconds ago. He stared across the hood at Blaine, who stared back at him wide-eyed.