“EMT! EMT Over here!”
Marion heard almost none of this, the noise canceling receiver in his helmet doing the job that was supposed to open his ears all the better to radio signals that were now being jammed, but he did sense the change around him and he turned. The men on the ground, the blood flowing free, for a moment none of them seemed real, or right, somehow despite the injuries all around him.
He automatically broke the seal on his helmet, pulling it off, “What the hell happened”
“We don’t know!” Someone yelled as he rushed forward, but their yell was cut off by the sudden overabundance of answers to his question.
The air filled with the sound of whizzing, whining, projectiles and more meaty smacks of bullet in flesh sounded around them as men yelled in pain and fell. Over those cries, this time the distinctive crackle of gunfire made itself known, and the men began to mill in panicked confusion.
Marion dove for the closest injured man, yelling above the commotion to enforce his will over the men in his command, “Grab a man and get behind the trucks! Get behind the trucks!”
He was already scrambling along the ground himself, one hand locked around an injured man’s coat shoulder as his remaining hand scratched at the asphalt for purchase in an attempt to speed his motion forward.
He ducked his head under the frame of the fire truck, still dragging his man along with him, and the sound of bullets slapping into the metal above his head prompted Marion to call out one last time.
“Get behind the trucks!”
“Colonel! Look!”
Pierson squinted against the sun as the sound of gunfire reached his ears, automatically grabbing an imager to give himself a closer look at the situation. In the distance he watched the firefighters as they suddenly broke from their grouping and scattered, most of them scrambling like mad for the cover of the trucks that owned the streets.
“Muzzle flash, sir!”
The report of muzzle flash whipped Pierson around, his eyes tracing the direction of the trooper’s and the imager filling in the rest.
“We’ve got tangos to the south, based on the rooftops,” Pierson said calmly, as if dictating notes to his secretary back in the office. “Sniper crews, I want them neutralized asap.”
“Sir!”
He ignored the confirmation of the order, turning to the remainder of his men. “The rest of you, we have civilian rescue workers in trouble, and from the looks of it they’ve been saving our people. Don’t know about you, but that don’t sit right with me. Let’s give them some cover, boys!”
“Yes Sir!”
“Move it!”
The men broke quickly, some looking for better ground to perform their role as counter snipers, while others put the height of the closest buildings between them and the gunmen they’d spotted, intent on closing the distance as quickly as possible.
Colonel Pierson hefted his own XM-90, and took the lead of one of the groups heading toward the firefighters’ position. In addition to the civilians in trouble over that way, he had spotted some of his own people among the rescued injured. He’d be damned if they were cut loose on his watch.
Trooper Mackenzie carefully edged forward, crawling on his belly as he made his way through the last fifty meters or so of plants. Along the way he’d ruined a few hundred dollars of strawberry plants, and permanently stained the hand tied Ghillie suit he’d taken such care of over the past few years. It wasn’t that big a deal, of course, since any stains would only serve to make the camouflage even more difficult to detect. Even the reddish tint of strawberry juices. Nature was funny that way.
A few feet to his left, Trooper Givens was also huddled down deep in the broad leafy plants, his imager glued to his eyes as they both looked over the huddled masses of people that lay just across the open rotunda before them.
“No sign of radiation gear.” Givens said after a moment.
Mackenzie nodded, sending a brief prayer of thanks upwards as he pulled his rifle drag bag forward. “You ID any tangos”
“I see four from here, Mac,” Givens told him, “you’d think they’d have more men, though.there has to be a couple thousand people down there.”
“Doesn’t take an army to hold civilians hostage, Son.” Mackenzie told the younger man, “I’ll bet that there’s not more than a half a handful of legal guns in this entire city, and all of them are owned by folks living out in the ‘skirts.Outback Jacks, all of them. Not the sort of folk you see down there.”
Givens nod was slight, almost motionless, “Yeah. I hear you. Still.four guys, even with guns, isn’t a lot to hold that many people.”
“No, no it isn’t, but we only see four. There’s more of them down there.” Mackenzie said quietly, breaking the seal on his drag bag as he lay on his side, and slowly drawing his rifle out.
The accurized marksman’s weapon he carried was at once the oldest and, in some ways, most sophisticated weapon his team fielded. The Parker Hale Model 98 was the only weapon in the squad that still used one of the old Cold War NATO rounds, the 7.62mm rifle round, and its lithe frame encompassed some of the most sophisticated engineering in any weapon they fielded.
The design was also over twenty years old, more than twice the age of any of their other standard issued weapons.
Age didn’t bother Mackenzie, though, he trusted his weapon. He’d fired thousands of rounds through it over his years of service, most of them admittedly in training scenarios, and it had never let him down. Nor did he expect it to begin today.
The scope fixed to its mounting brackets wasn’t twenty years old, however. In fact, the advanced optics were some of the latest issue the Special Air Service Regiment had received. Sporting multiple zoom levels and electronic overlays for thermal, light amplification, range finding, and of course the ubiquitous network relay link so it could speak to other information sources within the squad, the electronics mounted on the old rifle were some of the most advanced anywhere in the world.
This would have been more of a comfort if half the systems housed in its plastic frame weren’t currently out of commission due to the signal jamming.
He ignored his misgivings, suppressing an involuntary shudder when the electronics powered up with a neatly inaudible whine, and pushed the weapon out ahead of him as he rolled slowly back onto his stomach and rested his cheek against the pad of the rifle’s stock.
“In position.” He said softly, speaking to Givens.
“Roger.” Givens replied, gently lifting his head up out of the leafy plants until he spotted the next fire team. He flashed them a curt two fingered wave, followed by a closed fist, then sank back into the cover of the plants.
The waiting had begun.
Along the edges of the field the other four members of the team began to move in, taking their time now that the signal had been given. Mackenzie softly worked the bolt of his rifle, watching the terrorists through the powerful optics as he slid the first 7.62mm NATO round home. He counted the hairs waving across the right eye of the closest man, noting that the whites of his eyes were somewhat bloodshot.
It was nice to see that someone else was having a lousy day.
Lieutenant Greene eased himself up against the black concrete ridge that divided the line between the monorail and slowly eased himself to the edge of the obstruction so he could peer out around it. He had led his Interpol Starters along the monorail line, taking cover in the cement and steel construction, right up to their target area without incident.