Target Deck - 02

by Jack Murphy

  When the grenade went off it performed as advertised. Rather than some big fiery explosion, the thermo-baric grenade collapsed the tower built on top of the bulldozer by creating a short burst of over pressure. One of the side panels crashed to the ground causing the roof to cave in. Deckard got to his feet and dusted himself off as the tank came to a halt. Whoever was inside had been pulped and would have to be soaked up in a sponge if someone wanted to attempt a funeral.

  The mercenary commander turned and walked away.

  “Now we have two dead,” Deckard said to the remaining mercenaries unemotionally. “One we can do nothing about and the other has live ordinance lodged inside him. Hide the body inside that warehouse that the tank drove through. We can't risk transporting him and having that RPG rocket go off.”

  “Yes sir,” one of the Corporals confirmed.

  “If I die,” Deckard added. “Make sure you come back and recover the body.”

  38

  “Backblast area clear,” the Carl Gustav Assistant Gunner screamed above the sound of the firefight. When the Samruk ground convoy rolled up to the enemy stronghold they immediately began receiving effective fire. They would be pushed off the objective area entirely if the mercenaries didn't act fast.

  The Goose gunner sighted in using the M10 scope attached to the recoilless rifle's v-slide lock mount. When he squeezed the trigger, the over pressure was so great it felt like he was underwater for a moment. The flechette round cleared off an entire section of the high walls of cartel gunmen. They had taken up positions on the walls to repel the mercenaries but the anti-personnel flechette round made mincemeat of them.

  “Cock safe,” the gunner yelled while cocking the weapon. The Assistant Gunner popped open the venturi at the end of the Goose, yanked out the expended shell casing and slammed home a fresh 84mm round.

  “Backblast area clear,” the AG yelled above the gunfire around them as he slammed the venturi shut.

  The gunner aimed at a different section of the wall and let the flechette round go. A pink mist hung in the air as an entire row of gunmen went down under the metal shrapnel he had fired.

  “Get the ladders up,” Sergeant Major Korgan ordered his men.

  With PKM machine guns from the assault trucks offering suppressive fire against any enemy left up on the walls, the assaulters surged forward from behind their vehicles and ran to the walls with their homemade wooden ladders.

  The former convent had been converted into a cultural museum by the government of Oaxaca before Jimenez had taken it over. The walled compound and stone cloistered buildings inside provided fortification to the defenders. Whether or not it was impregnable remained to be seen.

  The ladders went up and like medieval crusaders the mercenaries began scaling the walls.

  Meanwhile, the Goose gunner lowered his recoilless rifle. They were out of the game for the time being with friendlies having moved into their field of fire. The Samruk mercenaries got to the top of their ladders and climbed up onto the roof where the firefight picked up intensity all over again.

  The chatter of PKMs sounded alongside the chunk-chunk-chunk sound of the enemy's M240B machine guns. AK-103s popped off intermittently with sharper sounded M-4 carbines firing the smaller 5.56 round mixed in between. The sounds of death permeated across the entire city as civilians scurried indoors as fast as humanly possible.

  “What's going on here,” someone said from behind the Carl Gustav team. Turning, the two Kazakh mercenaries saw their commander arriving with seven other Samruk shooters. They were covered in sweat, some of them covered in blood as well.

  “They just went up the walls,” the Goose gunner yelled. “Sergeant Major Korgan is leading them.”

  Deckard nodded. He knew his man and he would be leading from the front.

  His chest heaved under his plate carrier and his uniform was completely soaked through with sweat. They had run about ten blocks from where they had killed the improvised tank to the objective. With their truck demolished they had little choice. They also had to shoot their way through a check point in the middle of the street manned by cartel gunmen. Jimenez had planned his defense in depth with layers or concentric rings of obstacles and fighting positions arrayed around his compound.

  “Six, are you out there yet,” Pat's voice came over Deckard's radio headset.

  “We just got here,” Deckard answered, panting between the words.

  “We've got wounded up here. They had fighting positions prepared for us and we are getting pinned down.”

  “Where is Shooter-One?”

  “He is up here with us.”

  “Tell him to make his way back down and find a flanking position on an adjacent building. Maybe he can give you some breathing room to maneuver.”

  An RPG rocket whistled over the top of the convent and zoomed off into the city.

  “I'm going to take my element in from another direction and probe their defenses. If you can fix the enemy in place and keep them from withdrawing we should make it out of this. I need you and Korgan to hold out.”

  “We will,” Pat said over the sound of gunfire.

  Deckard knew he may have just handed his men a death sentence. It was a chance they had to take.

  “Goose gunner,” he said. “What rounds do you have on you?”

  “We have an HEDP round in our assault pack, the rest are on the truck.”

  “Perfect. I want you to blow the gate.”

  There was a small wrought iron gate that led into the compound. The mercenaries had wisely chosen the high road rather than the low one as they didn't want to get trapped in the cloistered courtyards with the enemy firing on them from the museum rooftops. Now, with the enemy distracted and fixated on Samruk's main force, Deckard would attempt a different method of entry and see if he could get behind the cartel gunmen. From there, they could launch a devastating assault against the soft underbelly of the cartel's defenses.

  “Roger,” the Kazakh affirmed.

  The AG loaded up the High Explosive Dual Purpose round and shut the venturi. He waved several of Deckard's teammates out of the way before declaring the backblast area clear. The gunner fired and the wrought iron gate blasted open on impact, jolted right off its hinges.

  “Nice job. Load up some HEAT rounds,” he said referring to the Gustav's High Explosive Anti-Tank munition. “Just in case. I think you'd prefer that over a thermo-baric grenade if another tank shows up.”

  Taking the lead, Deckard's AK-103 led the way as he jogged across the street and stepped over the remains of the metal gate. Moving through the doorway, he quickly ran through the thick stone entrance and out into the vaulted ceilings of the overhang that lined the near side of the courtyard.

  The firefight was raging above them. Tracer fire could be seen in the daylight, zipping overhead with occasional RPG rockets crisscrossing the sky. Down on the ground level, Deckard saw several corpses belonging to cartel gunmen. M-4 rifles lay next to them as a pool of blood leaked from under the bodies and between the cracks in the cobblestone floor.

  After the mercenaries got up on the rooftops, those down below quickly learned to stay out of the courtyard. Getting down on a knee behind the concrete banister, his eyes narrowed as he scanned the cloisters at the other side of the courtyard. It was almost too easy. Shouldering his AK, Deckard began firing into the shadows under the vaulted ceilings at the other end of the courtyard.

  The amount of gunfire that replied back was nothing short of unreal. Deckard ducked down behind the banister followed by the other mercenaries. The cartel gunmen had been lying in wait. The decorative sculptures between the banister and the stone floor left a lot of openings, forcing Deckard to roll laterally to change his position as enemy gunfire focused on his position and collided with the space he had occupied a moment ago.

  Sighting in, he burned through the thirty round magazine in his Kalashnikov in seconds as he fired a burst at every silhouette or muzzle flash that presented itself. Rocking the empty m
agazine forward, he tossed it aside and rolled again while reaching to the pouches on his plate carrier for a full mag. Flopping back on his belly, more gun fire attempted to catch up with him. Locking the new magazine in place he again pointed his AK barrel through the gaps between the ornamental sculpture foliage that decorated the cloisters.

  The other mercenaries acted in a similar manner, firing and then ducking down behind cover and changing position, reloading on the move as best they could.

  When Deckard acted on a hunch and fired on suspected targets, he drew a large volume of enemy fire but it simply was not as accurate as that of the mercenaries. Even though they were at a disadvantage and outnumbered two to one, the firefight was nearly over after several magazines worth of firing and maneuvering from each man. They had homed in on their targets and fired with both speed and accuracy, adding volume as appropriate.

  “Cease fire, cease fire!” Deckard yelled.

  There was plenty of gunfire raging on the roofs above them but there was no indication of enemy movement in the courtyard. Still, better safe than sorry.

  “All stations on this net,” Deckard transmitted. “I'm taking a friendly element through the northwestern courtyard. Check fire.”

  Deckard let his AK hang by the sling and opened a pouch on his plate carrier. Inside was a yellow smoke grenade canister.

  “Who else has a smoke?” he asked in Russian.

  One of the mercenaries produced a High Concentrate smoke grenade. Deckard's colored smoke was supposed to be used for creating visible signals for friendly helicopters and such while the Kazakh's was for concealing movement. Both would serve their purpose in this instance.

  “You throw near and I'll throw far,” Deckard told him. Pulling the pins, both men tossed their smoke grenades into the courtyard and waited for them to begin billowing smoke. In case of any cartel gunmen in windows or anywhere else, they wanted their movement concealed while they crossed the large open area to the other side of the courtyard.

  “Go!”

  Deckard shot off and disappeared into the smoke. The white smoke surrounded the mercenaries as they ran across the open ground. They had nowhere to go but forward. When he moved through the white smoke and into the yellow smoke he knew he was almost there. Emerging on the other side of the courtyard, Deckard found himself exposed out in the open but it was a short sprint back under the cover of the next exterior hallway.

  Under the vaulted ceilings and somewhat behind the cover of the cloisters facing out into the courtyard, Deckard tried the large wooden door and found it locked. An explosion sounded up on the rooftop. Over the assault net, Deckard could hear dozens of voices. Some of them were high pitched, the firefight becoming an all out frantic battle for survival at close range. One by one, the Kazakhs emerged through the smoke and joined him at the door.

  Deckard used his hand to motion laying a strip down the side of the door, a hand and arm signal to let his Kazakhs know that they needed to blow the door. One of the mercenaries came forward to unroll a flex linear charge. Peeling back the transparent film on the contact side of the charge, he stuck the triple strand detonation chord down the side of the door. With the task completed, he tied in the initiation system and the entire assault element backed off to a safe distance, the demo man trailing shock tube behind him that connected to the explosives.

  The mercenaries stacked up, one behind the other. The first man pulled security on the door while the second initiated the charge. Wooden splinters went flying into the courtyard as the explosives ripped through the door. The Samruk International mercenaries pushed through the door and began clearing their sectors of fire.

  As each assaulter high stepped over the destroyed door, they also had to step over the body of a cartel gunman who had been guarding it and had gotten a little too close to the blast. A wooden shard had penetrated his skull right between the eyes. They found themselves in an old archive with books and manuscripts overflowing from shelves that lined the walls.

  At the end of the oblong shaped room was the next doorway. Deckard rolled his last fragmentation grenade through the door and held his men back as they waited for the blast. The rumble shook the ground beneath their feet. Flowing into the next room they were greeted by enemy gunfire. Another archive room had been prepared with a built up fighting position inside it, a sandbagged pill box that protected a M240B machine gunner. They had been waiting in ambush all along.

  The sandbags had protected the gunner from Deckard's frag grenade, and now the first two assaulters were cut down by a wall of lead as they entered the room. On hearing the heavy rattle of the bolt hammering away at bullet after bullet, Deckard came in low. He was already halfway through the door as the number three man and was not able to turn around unless he wanted to get shot in the back.

  It was a second archive room and scraps of shredded paper rained down on the former Special Operations soldier as he dived to the ground. The number four man also made it through the door and dropped down beside him. The remaining five Kazakhs halted at the door before the machine gun could slice them to ribbons. That didn't stop the gunner from wildly pouring fire through the door and raking it across the shelves of 15th Century manuscripts.

  They had also thoughtfully removed the desks and other furniture from the room to give the gunner an open field of fire. Deckard clicked the selector switch on his AK-103 up from semi to fully automatic.

  “Bound up,” Deckard ordered the mercenary next to him. They only had a moment to act before the gunner realized that they had dived to the ground rather than collapsed under his fire.

  Coming to a knee, Deckard locked the AK into the pocket of his shoulder and held on tightly to the pistol grip and fore end, wrenching the rifle into his body. Holding down the trigger with a gloved finger, he sprayed the aperture where the machine gun barrel was blasting rounds from.

  The gunner jerked a burst of fire that crept right up to Deckard's flank and sprayed just inches to his side and up the library shelf behind him. The mercenary on his opposite flank sprung to his feet and ran for the pillbox. The reciprocating charging handle on his Kalashnikov continued to cycle back and forth, the bolt spitting out hot brass as the M240B gunner pivoted his gun and homed in on the mercenary that was bounding forward.

  Deckard's gun went dry but the other mercenaries were now coming through the door to support their comrades. Deckard dropped the mag and executed a combat reload in less than a second, but that second cost the mercenary running to the bunker his life.

  Even with the other Kazakhs laying down their suppressive fire, their teammate was cut down before Deckard and the remaining four mercenaries converged their fire on the aperture and the M240B fell silent. Crossing the room, Deckard came into the pill box from behind and put a couple insurance rounds in the machine gunner. He examined the M240 but noted that the receiver had been damaged in several places, including the trigger assembly having been shot off.

  So much for commandeering the weapon.

  Coming up to the next door, they could hear men scrambling on the other side and the distinctive click and clack of weapons being made ready, magazines locked into place and bolts racked back to chamber the first round.

  “It is clear,” Deckard yelled in Spanish. “I machine gunned the gringos to pieces!”

  When the door opened, Deckard held his AK out from behind the corner, only exposing the weapon and his hands while letting off a burst on full auto. The blind fire caused enough confusion to give one of the Kazakhs time to lob a frag grenade through the door.

  The mercenaries chased the blast, stepping across the threshold to opposite sides of the door. As Deckard moved behind them his vision suddenly whited out and he felt pressure in his ears. Stumbling backwards he tripped and fell. As his vision began to clear, two human forms in front of him abruptly merged into one, a man with long black hair and carrying an M-4 rifle in his hands. The shooter was reaching out to grab him by the collar of his camouflage uniform when Deckard got his AK
back up and held down the trigger. He rattled through the rest of his final magazine but didn't hear a thing.

  His would-be assailant spun and jerked as 7.62x39 bullets tugged at him, churning his insides into a mess before finally going down under the torrent of gunfire.

  Before he could make it to his feet, he saw another cartel gunman turn towards him, having heard the shots from Deckard's Kalashnikov. He was still seeing stars floating across his field of vision as he acted on muscle memory, his dominant hand going down to the drop leg holster on his right side and thumbing down the retention hood as his palm came to rest on the grip of the pistol.

  Yanking the 1911 out of the holster, Deckard held it out in front of him and squeezed off round after round until the gunman went down. Getting to his feet, he staggered forward, his empty Kalashnikov bouncing off his chest as it hung from its sling.

  Through blurry vision, he saw the two remaining Samruk men being led off at gunpoint. The three of them had been stunned by a flash bang grenade giving the enemy enough time to pounce on them. They dragged the two Kazakhs off but were unable to capture Deckard alive before he gathered his wits.

  Gaining target acquisition, Deckard took out one of the cartel gunmen who had been leading the Kazakhs outside. As he went down one of the other gunmen returned fire forcing Deckard to take cover behind an overturned desk. With his slide locked back on an empty chamber he reached for the magazine pouch on his pistol belt. The now empty AK was in the way so he shrugged out of the sling and sent it clattering to the ground before reloading the pistol.

  Thumbing the slide release, Deckard rose from behind cover and fired a snap shot at the gunman standing in the door way. It was a rushed shot, but the .45 caliber bullet ricocheted off the stone wall and into the gunman's eyes, sending him bucking backwards.