Outlaw Platoon by Sean Parnell

Author:Sean Parnell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins US
Published: 2012-02-29T16:00:00+00:00

Fourteen

Blood Brothers

Chris Brown’s pistol cracked. Campbell’s rifle bucked. Wheat double-tapped another insurgent. Pilon’s SAW chattered. Sabatke ducked into his Humvee and snatched a pair of M18 Claymore mines. Withering AK fire be damned, he planted one next to each front fender, facing down the hill.

Galang’s men squeezed closer. They had us, and they knew it.

A head appeared in Sabo’s turret. No helmet, just filthy hair caked with blood. Our artist lived. A rush of relief flooded through me.

He pulled himself up to the fifty and quickly checked it over. It still had a few rounds left. He swung the weapon down and soon found a target. He triggered a burst. Then another. A fifty-cal at point-blank range creates an indescribable mess out of human beings. For those nearby who somehow escape its wrath, the carnage it wreaks inflicts paralyzing terror.

Emerick was holding his own.

To the north, a sudden swell of gunfire rose above the din of our own battle. I could hear AKs and enemy machine guns hammering furiously at some new target. Fifty-cals, 240s, and a Mark 19 answered back.

Captain Dye and Delta Platoon had joined the fight. They were coming in across the enemy’s right flank and would have to shoot their way through the insurgents assaulting Sabo and Greeson’s section of the line. If we didn’t coordinate with them, we ran the risk of accidentally shooting at each other while aiming at the enemy in between. I’d have to make sure that did not happen.

I backed off the crest, rose to my feet, and ran for Greeson, who was picking his shots from behind a tree.

The enemy made a rush at Sabo. He killed them with a Claymore. Those mines are like shotguns on steroids or Civil War cannons loaded with grapeshot. They spray a kill zone with hundreds of tiny steel balls that shred anything unarmored in their path. Their optimum range is twenty to thirty meters. In a defensive fight, they form the last line of defense before hand-to-hand combat.

Screams and shrieks of pain filled the air. Sabo detonated the other Claymore. Emerick’s fifty went dry.

I reached Greeson and took a knee next to him. From his vantage point on the northern edge of the line, we could see Delta’s Humvees in the valley below us. They’d stumbled into Galang’s flank security element, which had sparked a vicious secondary firefight that had distracted the enemy and stalled their attack.

Mortar rounds rained down on the hilltop again. A fresh stream of RPGs joined in as Galang’s support-by-fire element risked hitting its own men in the hope of finishing us off before Delta could fight its way to us.

The linkup between our battered platoon and Delta had to go flawlessly. There was no margin for error here. After all we’d been through, I could not stomach the idea of one of my men getting hit by friendly fire. I broke cover and started running downhill. Greeson shouted something and came after me, but I ignored him.

Delta’s rigs

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