Authors: Jack Murphy
“I want that submarine,” Deckard whispered to Fedorchenko. “We can use something like that.”
“Deep sea fishing?”
“You are from a land locked country, what do you know about deep sea fishing?”
“I have dreams you know.”
“Alright, let's get the boys down that embankment and have them start taking cover behind these crates. It looks like they are loaded full of cocaine. White powder sandbags should be able to stop a few bullets once the shooting kicks off.”
“Da.”
Deckard maintained eyes on the objective, monitoring the guard as he absentmindedly paced the docks until a shift change that would never come for him. Fedorchenko glided back up the embankment and through the hole in the camouflage canvas that hung over the sub pen. A minute later, the assaulters began filtering down into the pallet yard. One by one they took up positions behind the crates, training their weapons on the guard and the living quarters.
Positioned on the extreme right hand side of their assault line was a machine gunner with an
Mk48
. An assistant gunner moved with him, carrying additional belts of 7.62 ammunition. The Mk48 was the size of a light machine gun such as the M249 SAW but packed the 7.62 punch of a larger general purpose machine gun such as the M240B. The Belgium made weapon was a gift from another merc outfit that Samruk hand tangled with in the recent past. The Kazakh soldiers were finding the Mk48 to be plenty effective for immediate support by fire.
Deckard's only concern was that one of the cargo containers that served as living quarters was situated behind the other. In the restricted confines of the submarine pen, it was impossible to get any kind of flanking fire. The second container was outside of their cone of fire and there wasn't much they could do about it at the moment.
Nodding at Fedorchenko, he acquired the lone guard in the holographic reticule of his rifle sight. The Kazakh Sergeant was in charge of his platoon and would be the one to initiate the raid. Easing his safety from safe to semi-automatic carefully as not to compromise their position by the loud distinctive click that Kalashnikov selectors make, he gently squeezed the trigger.
The guard seemed to react a moment before the rifle barked a stream of fire.
Before he could turn around, the Mexican triggerman was thrown backwards as if tugged off balance by invisible puppet strings. Propelled backward, he slipped off the edge of the dock and fell into the water with a belly flop. Deckard sent two more shots just as Fedorchenko fired but they proved redundant, the shots passing just over the guard as he collapsed into the sea.
Thirty audible clicks sounded as one. The Kazakh mercenaries were ready to get some. Deckard made a quick mental note to teach them how to wrap the selector switch in electrical tape to prevent the clicking sound, something he'd picked up on another battlefield in one of his previous lives.
The Mk48 went cyclic, the gunner holding down the trigger for fully automatic fire.
The Samruk mercenaries turned their guns on the living quarters, giving the enemy the wakeup call of a lifetime. 7.62 bullets sparked as they punched through the flimsy metal walls of the connex containers, the Mk48 sweeping fire from one side to the other as the gunner traversed the gun on its bipod legs. Several bloodied cartel members stumbled out of the container in their boxer shorts. The mercenaries made short work of them, each sprawled on the ground in seconds.
Then someone threw a grenade, just to prove that no good plan survives first contact with the enemy.
The explosion ripped through the docks, sending splinters of wood into the air. Several of the 55-gallon drums in the fuel yard exploded, the burning heat singeing the hair on Deckard's arm where he sleeve had been rolled up. The gasoline flooded across the submarine pen, burning with an intensity that drove the mercenaries back. The fire was intense enough that it was threatening to overtake their position. The gasoline used to power the submarine had spilled into the water leaving the surface layer of the water on fire.
“Fire in the hole!” Fedorchenko yelled, depressing the transmit button on his radio. It was an operational code word that alerted the entire platoon to evacuate off the objective as fast as possible, only to be used during extreme emergencies.
As one, the platoon stood up from their positions and peeled off, filing back up the embankment. Through the flames, Deckard could see the black outlines of human beings. Their forms shimmered in the heat mirage coming up off of the fire. It was difficult to discern their movements through the haze but they were there.
The heat was growing in intensity, the crates that the mercenaries had taken cover behind were now on fire. If they didn't hurry, the enclosed submarine base would become their tomb. Freeing knives from their sheaths, the mercenaries began cutting more holes in the canvas to escape from rather than wait their turn filing through one opening. Like rats trapped in a cage, their actions took on a certain kind of urgency.
Deckard stumbled up the embankment. Reaching up, he grabbed the canvas and slashed it with his Ka-Bar fighting knife. The smoke burned his eyes, causing them to water. As if Mexico could get any hotter, they had found a way to trap themselves in hell itself.
Clenching both sides of the slit he had cut, Deckard lunged forward and back out into day light and fresh air. Gasping, he looked around at the other mercenaries. They were coughing from smoke inhalation and had the black soot of carbon under their noses and around their red eyes. Fedorchenko gave him a thumbs up. All of the men had made it out of the inferno.
Doubled over, Deckard spat a black tar ball on the ground before standing up straight. The fire had burned through a large portion of the camouflage tarp covering the bay. The submarine would be able to escape the flames and there was no way to flank around, the embankments around the sides of the bay were too steep and rocky to maneuver around.
Unless there was an alternate way to intercept the submarine before it escaped.
Before he knew it, Deckard had jumped onto the canvas and was running across it. The fire was melting through the fabric and holes were sprouting up all around him. The commando tripped, falling on his face as the fire popped another tether from the fabric, causing it to go slack. Struggling to his feet, Deckard ran. More holes continued to appear in the camouflage covering, the entire mess threatening to collapse at any moment and plunge him into the inferno below.
Going for his knife, Deckard lunged forward and slashed the blade across the canvas. Grabbing the edge with both hands, he somersaulted forward and through the opening he had cut. Hanging on, he could feel his gloved hands beginning to slip. It was only by some miracle that he had judged his position on the covering correctly.
He was dangling directly over the metal connex containers that the sub crew and security personnel lived in. Releasing his grip, Deckard fell the ten feet to the metal roof, his boots coming down hard, knees bent to help break his fall. The sub pen was now a haze of black smoke, the heat threatening to overwhelm him. Under his combat gear, even the veteran soldier felt as if he might pass out, a sure death sentence. If the fire didn't get him, the smoke inhalation would.
Moving to the lip of the connex, he hooked the inner part of his boot on the edge of the container and held on with one hand, lowering himself off the side in a spider hang. Kicking off with his foot, he dropped the rest of the way to the wooden dock. Putting his Kalashnikov back into operation after having it slung across his back, Deckard ran in the only direction available, towards the sunlight that barely penetrated the smoke.
The entire dock rocked into the water, causing him to stumble once more. The fire was eating through the wooden pylons, making the entire platform unstable. Tears streamed from the corners of his eyes as the smoke began to sting. With his legs driving him forward, Deckard knew his body was red lining.
Suddenly, he burst out into daylight, the sun hanging in the morning sky above the ocean. Behind him, the canvas that had been concealing the bay collapsed into the fire with a whoosh of hot air and black smoke. By now, most of the flames had been smothered by the collapse or extinguished as the dock sank into the bay.
A bullet exploded at Deckard's feet, wooden splinters sent tearing into his pant leg. Rolling behind a forklift, he came to a knee as a cascade of auto fire clanged off the metal framework of the heavy lift vehicle.
“You okay down there Six?” Fedorchenko came up on the net.
“I'm not dead,” Deckard replied into his radio.
Peering from behind his cover, he saw the trigger man who had been shooting at him disappear down into the mast of the midget sub. Metal on metal sounded as the port hole slammed shut. White water churned behind the sub as it began to pull away from the dock.
“We're trying to flank around but we have to hack through the jungle to get to you.”
“See you soon,” Deckard terminated the transmission and broke from cover in an all-out sprint.
Boots pounded across the sinking dock, the sub quickly picking up speed as Deckard chewed up the ground between himself and his target. Unfortunately, he was running out of dock. The pier was about to end as he vaulted into the air. Weighed down with nearly forty five pounds of weapons, ammunition, and body armor, he managed more of a leap than a jump, coming down hard on the metal fuselage of the submarine. Slipping, his feet splashed into the water as he found purchase, grabbing a hold of a periscope that snaked from the top of the sub.
Pulling himself up onto the submarine, he moved towards the mast sticking from the center of the giant metal cylinder. It was amazing that cartel engineers were able to put together a functioning midget sub in a dry dock somewhere deep in the Colombian rain forest. It looked like something straight out of a WWII movie. The porthole was tightly secured he discovered, grunting as he gave the handle a few tugs. Inside he could hear frantic voices arguing in Spanish.
Looking over his shoulder, Deckard could see his platoon of Samruk soldiers at the edge of the bay, looking out to sea as their commander grew distant, the submarine making haste for the open ocean.
“Six-” the Kazakh platoon leader's voice crackled over the radio.
“I've got an idea.”
Deckard wasn't carrying any breaching charges or other explosives aside from a couple flashbangs and fragmentation grenades. He had one chance to improvise something before the sub filled its ballast tanks and plunged beneath the waves. Unzipping his med pouch, the American pushed through his tourniquets, bandages, and celox gauze before he tore free a plastic IV bag full of Hextend fluid. The IV was meant to be given to gunshot victims to help boost their blood pressure after massive blood loss.
Deckard had other ideas.
Tearing a flashbang from its pouch, he used a roll of white medical tape to secure it to the IV bag, wrapping several lengths around the two items to hold them together. Pulling on the hatch, the mercenary commander did his best to identify where the locking mechanism was located. Placing the IV-flashbang satchel over it, he taped it in place on the hatch with more medical tape.
He had created an improvised water impulse charge. Normally, C4 plastic explosives would be used in conjunction with a container of water. Water didn't compress under pressure so when an explosive charge was placed behind it, the force of the detonation pushed the water straight through anything in its way. Holding the satchel in place, Deckard yanked the pin from the flashbang and ducked behind the submarine's mast.
The flashbang went off with a shock wave that would have left him bleeding from the ears if he hadn't been wearing hearing protection. Looking over the lip of the mast, Deckard saw that his MacGyver antics had paid off. A ragged hole had been blasted through the hatch. Flinging it open with one hand, he kept his distance as gunfire shot up and out of the porthole.
Dropping another flashbang down into the darkness, Deckard waited for it to detonate before throwing his weight over the lip and down the ladder leading into the sub. The interior stank of the sulfur residue left behind by the flashbang in the enclosed space.
The inside of the sub was poorly lit, several yellow bulbs mounted on the ceiling and running the length of the sub barely illuminating anything at all, especially now that several had been shattered by the flashbang.