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"Having fun?" I asked.
"Heavenly bliss," he gasped. I caught a brief glimpse of his crazy grin.
"Quit playing with that damned cat," I ordered. "We've got a job to do."
"Spoilsport." But Preacher managed to pull out his knife. He knew he would only get one chance, so he made it count. He plunged the blade behind the massive head, severing the spine. The cliff lion spasmed violently, then went limp.
Preacher rolled the carcass off of him. "The lamb shall lie down with the lion, and the meek shall inherit the Earth."
His forearm armor hadn't been designed to cope with large carnivores. It was intact, but the arm under it was crushed and mangled. I got out my medkit and tied a tourniquet. "Best I can do. Can you handle a rifle?"
Preacher looked blissed-out. "Amen to that, Sarge. I'm ambidexterous."
"Sarge didn't ask you about your sex life," White Cloud contributed.
"Soldier," I told White Cloud, "shut up and soldier."
Preacher retrieved his Kalashnikov, and we moved out.
A few minutes later we emerged from the gorge into a relatively open area. Deep snow smoothed over the uneven ground which climbed gradually into the white-out. To our left a rocky rampart curved toward and then away from us; an irregular scarlet glow reflected from the thick clouds over it. Either an active volcanic crater or a lava lake. The blizzard was less severe here, just snow flurries and moderate gusts.
The back of my neck started itching.
"Stay sharp, grunts!" I growled. "This looks like a good spot for-"
The world split wide open in a blinding brilliance and a deafening bang. I found myself flying. I got a quick whirling view of rifle slugs kicking up sprays of snow, and the squad scrambling for cover. Then I crashed through a patch of ice.
"-trouble!" I finished.
Slugs chopped the ice around me, ricochetting off my body armor. One punched through and sent a thrill up my left thigh. Another mortar round went off a dozen meters away, showering me with snow.
The fire was coming from the rampart and the higher ground ahead. Spotting a car-sized boulder nearby, I dove behind it. "Sound off!" I ordered.
Ski, White Cloud, Preacher and Schmidt reported that they were okay. Toglog had taken a piece of shrapnel, but he was still ambulatory.
The hail of depleted uranium slugs kept up unabated. Chips flew as my boulder was whittled away. The mortars were zeroing in on our positions. We snapped off a few rounds to keep our hosts interested.
"I figure twenty, twenty-five hostiles and a pair of mortars," I told the squad. "Anybody got the boppers targeted?"
"On it, Sarge," White Cloud answered.
"Show us."
White Cloud snaked out of his crevasse. He was a Di
"All right, it's hero time!" I growled. "You know the drill! On my mark . . . cover fire!"
Toglog's Enforcer coughed twice. The grenades chewed a piece out of the rampart where one of the snow puffs had been. Reloading, he took out the second mortar. Part of a combat-suited body tumbled down the slope, staining the snow red in its wake. Meanwhile White Cloud was working on the sniper positions.
"Charge! I ordered. Instead of going around the boulder, which might have been expected, I went over the top. Then I zigzagged up the slope, using what cover there was.
A slug glancing off my thick torso Nemourlon knocked me down. I jumped back up and kept going. Spotting the hijacker, I drove him back behind his rock with a burst from my Kalashnikov.
Ski, Preacher and Schmidt were tight behind me, adding their fire. I figured to punch through the ambush straight ahead, then hit it from the flank and roll it up.
Two hijackers reared up to throw grenades. White Cloud picked one off, and Schmidt cut the other in half with a clip-emptying burst. The exploding grenades removed any doubt.
Then the ground shook.
Not another tremor, but a full-blown quake that rumbled for at least ten seconds. Everybody was knocked down. Snow slid and boulders rolled.
A fifty-meter chunk of the rampart crumbled. Three hijackers on top tried to get clear, but they didn't make it. The pool of lava behind the rampart poured through the gap like water through a broken dam. The snow in its path exploded into steam.
The lava flow was heading for Toglog and White Cloud. Toglog scrambled up the slope toward us, and barely avoided a very hot bath. But White Cloud was closer to the rampart. Facing the onrushing fiery red river, he waved the Gauss gun over his head and yelled in Apache. Probably swearing.
The lava rolled over him, and he was gone. I wondered what it felt like.
A rifle slug at my feet reminded me that I wasn't here on a tour. I spun, spotted the sniper kneeling behind a rock, and blew out his helmet with a luck shot.
Gesturing with my Kalashnikov for the squad to follow, I started up the slope again. Ski and Preacher flanked me to the right, Toglog and Schmidt to the left. Grenades hurtled down. We picked them off in mid-air. The explosions kicked up a snow-screen which hid us for a few seconds.
Bursting through it, I saw that the nine surviving hijackers on this side of the lava river had assembled about a hundred meters upslope. That suited me just fine.
"Grenades!" I ordered.
Yanking a grenade from my belt, I threw it high and hard. Ski, Preacher and Schmidt did the same, and the Enforcer coughed. The hijackers bagged a few of the grenades, but the rest went off around and among them. Bits of equipment and bodies shot out of the pink-tinted cloud. Four hijackers dove for cover and laid down withering fire. One writhed on the snow, screaming.
We hugged ground to avoid the storm of depleted uranium slugs. I popped up long enough to finish off the wounded hijacker, and caught a bell-ringing ricochet off the side of my helmet for my trouble.
Time to finish this. "Fix bayonets!" I ordered. I hoped the hijackers were still monitoring our transmissions.
I clipped my knife to the end of my Kalashnikov's barrel, and added a three count for molasses-slow Toglog. Then I growled, "Over the top!"
I jumped up and ran flat out right at the hijackers, bayonet first. The deep snow was like quicksand under my driving legs. I heard the squad tight behind, yelling in four languages.
The hijackers' rifles spat desperately at us. A few ricochets felt like punches from the Fleet champ, but there were none of the clean hits needed to penetrate body armor. Not surprising. The sight of five red-flickering bayonets charging was enough to put a twitch in the most case-hardened marksman.
The hijackers were wearing combat suits like ours, only khaki instead of white. I targeted the big bruiser who seemed to be in command. He sidestepped my lunge, then clubbed me in the back with his rifle butt. I slipped and fell.
He was bringing the rifle to bear on my helmet as I rolled over. Too slow. I shoved my bayonet into his belly button, and eviscerated him with a Saigon Slice. He dropped on top of his steaming guts.
Getting up, I looked around to see who needed help. But it was all over. The other hijackers were down. So was Preacher; a full-auto burst had turned his chest into spaghetti with meat sauce. Ski, Toglog and Schmidt were cleaning their knives.
"What about the ones on the other side of the lava, Sarge?" Ski asked.
There were probably two or three of them, hidden by the clouds of steam. "Not a factor," I told him. "We'll be long gone before they can hike around it. Everybody ambulatory?"