7.62 speaks louder than words

  Fshing lights glittered on a slice of highway miles out over the curve of the metroplex, and sirens joined each other slowly. It had only been a few minutes sihe first burst of gunfire. In the DC lot, the vehicles whirled around the building like sgers cirg a fresh corpse. They didn’t want their prey to know where they would strike .

  EP watched them on the ss while trying to break into their voice els with Michael’s help. A war of movement and information had taken up the space given by the pause in the gun battle.

  The team had ged positions as much as possible to keep the enemy from getting the drop on them. Sam had retreated uhe mezzanine below Lindsey, who had shifted positions as much as she could around her defenses, and Philip had moved further east, closer to the offid out of line of sight from the broken ramp bay door. Only Luke stayed where he was. His ammo stash and protective pallets outweighed the be of any of the pces he could have moved to, and none of them gave the same lines of sight.

  The promises the team had made in their prep were starting to show, and EP could only hope the enemy would take some time to identify and exploit them.

  Two vehicles broke off the ring i and sped towards the ramp at the south side of the DC.

  “Multiple vehicles moving in on the south side, ramp bay door,” EP said.

  A momehe bay door exploded in a fsh.

  “Got em.” Lindsey aimed at the cloud of dust and flutterial and cardboard with her finger pinning the trigger, waiting. The sound of the grenade had barely died in the rafters when the armored SUV roared through the bay door a a pallet of boxes and a mail cart flying with a soft, muffled boom that was beaten down swiftly by the rattle of the PKP.

  Lindsey fanned her fire to pensate for the absence of tracers and sparks fluttered across the SUV as it crashed into another barrier pallet just ihe door. But this time, they caught it at an angle and started to slowly move it across the floor, even as their windows went white, and the air cracked apart around them.

  Suddenly, like a cool breeze on a hot day, the windows went bd gave out, and the engine roared died to a faint idle.

  It was a short-lived relief. A pickup shot through the bay door and smmed into the SUV. Immediately, its engine roared as it struggled to push the corpse filled SUV and barrier pallet out of the way. If they got clear, it and any vehicles in wait could drive into the forest of pallet racks in the ter of the warehouse, where they could prepare their move under cover.

  So, fighting against an impending iion, Lindsey locked her finger around the trigger. Shells pooled at her feet as she swept her iron sights over the truck, but despite the uing fire of the PKP, the two vehicles squealed forward on shattered ride-ft tires, pushing the barrier block out of the way, shedding plexigss and bullet fragments and even fuel and blood across the warehouse floor.

  Suddenly, the truck disappeared behind the SUV, finally clear of the roadblock, and in the instant, as Lindsey guided her iron sights in front of the SUVs hood, trying to lead the truck, a burst of muzzle fsh bloomed over the top of the SUV.

  The rounds fell like hail around Lindsey and cracked just past her in a percussive rhythm. Anht maegun. Some phantom part of her told her it robably an M249. The truck had stopped right behind the SUV, and other ons joined in from behind the doubled cover.

  In the deadly bee-swarm like wave of bined fire, instincts took over, and the gun jumped from target tet on its own, her body a servant to the will of the Spirit. She barely noticed an IR ser shoot out of the truck, prod her for a sed, then switch off.

  “Quadrant?” Luke hissed on the mic.

  “Eleveold him.

  They had mapped Luke’s fields of fire during the set up, finding paths of low resistahrough the racks and moving pallets when o give him line of sight on the ramp bay door and other obvious entrahen marked the targets with IR refleg stickers.

  “Roger, moving.”

  “Let them get itted,” Michael said. He sounded like someone who had never even been shot at. Grooving guitar riffs came in with his void Celeste ked i a gss somewhere close before the mic cut off. Lindsey, ying into the PKP the whole time as cracks and buzzes cursed at her head, wao scream, but she tur into another trolled exhale ahe PKM make all the noise instead.

  But, despite her well-pced shots, and the sudden twinkling out of a few of the fshing barrels, the enemy mae gunner held the trigger down like his barrel would st forever, and the double edge of her sound attuning earbuds was that she could hear every round impact the metal mezzanine, crack past her head, and thunk into the barrier pallet. It seemed they would never die. It felt, for a moment, like the PKP was shooting air.

  There was a bright fsh in her Nods as something exploded over the vehicles, turning all the windows white and stopping the fire dead. EP’s explosive drone.

  Lindsey exhaled, and her senses caught up with her as the tunnel vision subsided for a moment. She g the empty links hanging off the gun, the 25 round segments at her feet, and realized it had only been about twenty seds sihe SUV came in the bay door.

  “April, that ser tagged you,” Michael said. “Probably got you on some kind of overy map.”

  Liepped to the left and repositioned herself. Not much else she could do.

  EP watched as two more vehicles that had been making a feinting charge at the north ramp made sharp squealing turns and headed for the south ramp, where her drone had just gone off over the two vehicles.

  “Two more on that ramp, April.”

  “Alright Joe,” Michael said. “Get into it, but hold your fire.”

  “Fug A.”

  Luke had barrier pallets arranged around him in a staggered star for multiple positions. EP watched him gather his gun by the belt and bipod, step backwards, take a half-moon Kali-esque sweeping step with his , and pivot into his new position like a dancer with a 80 year old Mae gun ptform as a partner. It was, given the surroundings, uedly graceful, and in three seds he was set up in his new position like he had been there for hours.

  As if ohe two vehicles roared in the bay door, bumper to bumper.

  “Now,” Michael said, but his words were cut off by the MG3. He could have saved his breath. Luke opened up the moment he heard the engine roar echo off the ceiling.

  The painfully id pns of the two forces collided with each other in seds.

  The first vehicle, aruck, stopped dead behind the bombed-out trud SUV, and another mae gunner opened up from the back window. From of all things, the hacked web cam on the mail desk PC, EP saw that the gunner rone in the back seat fag the driver’s side, surrounded by ptes and sandbags, and had pressed the barrel of his FN MK48 lMG in 7.62 up to the gss aher let the first burst drill a hole in the armss, or used a hole that had just been drilled out i. Either way, he doused himself in brass and links and sprayed the general area of Lindsey’s position with red tracers.

  The sed vehicle turned hard and drove past the first until it was sed from Lindsey by the massive pallet racks. As it rocked on its brakes, five men, two with LMGs, got out and got into position to ehe PKP. On one of her hidden, miic drones, EP could hear someone yelling at the truck gunner, helping him correct his fire.

  It was a strange feeling of pleasure that washed over EP, like nding a bo or something in a game, seeing the sed vehicle tagged on her fire-map, right in the ter of one of Luke’s quadrants.

  “Joe fire on quad ten now!” Her voice broke into a girlish squeal, but she didn’t care. Luke ughed into the mic, pivoted slightly, and poured the most beautiful saw burst she had ever heard into the men positioned behind the sed vehicle.

  They had parked at an angle for maximum prote against the PKP, but had wrongly assumed Luke’s MG3 was uo reach them through all the cover at the ter of the warehouse.

  And it cost them dearly. The rounds skipped off the hood, the ground, the side of the vehicle, sparked wildly off the pallet rack frames, lighting up the bullet’s paths in EPs aerial view, and in a sed three of the gunmen were just odd-looking piles on the ground, their loads of ammo, guns, and armor nothing more than useless things for bullets to tear to pieces. EP ughed with tears in her eyes.

  But the truck guill fired, and the st two men on the vehicle behind the pallet racks figured out where the death was and got to cover, picked up the two belt feds, and id into it. They khey couldn’t hit Luke, so Lindsey got the full brunt of it.

  “Mother fuckers!”

  EP, her joy soured into panic, queued up one of her st bomb drohe team’s MGs went off unwaveringly, until Michael’s cool, calm, and strangely murderous voice came over the line.

  “Talk it out guys.”

  Luke and Lindsey ughed into the hough for Li was more like a gasp, and then started talking.

  The PKP went wild for two seds, then died, and the MG3 picked it up without a gap, then two seds ter it was back to the PKP, and soon they had the rhythm.

  EP called out the quadrants most needing a little tlc, or where the enemy was under cover, or where the fire was just short of the mark, and it became like some kind of lethal team exercise.

  After about ten seds of uninterrupted fire, the momentum shifted, and the fire from the attackers died down.

  Again, ically, the relief was as short lived as its ending was brutal.

  Two heavy-riding Suburbans sped up the ramp and into the warehouse. SAWs and rifles bloomed out of the windows and over the roof, and the survivors around the other vehicles resumed their fire on cue.

  “Shit!” Lindsey id into the trigger as the two vehicles sped by, but half a sed ter they were behind the forest of pallet racks, and a breath ter the truck squealed away after them. She sent rounds de the whole time, but it hadn’t been enough.

  Now she was going to have to py fug peek-a-boo.

  How would it feel to search for a needle in a junk stack while your friends fought a mae gun battle yards away? ime, the walls are closing i episode, Killboxes.