Tiger by the Tail by John Ringo, Ryan Sear Read Free Book Online Page A

yet, so it was their two carbines against a vastly superior weapon.
    They had just reached their new position when the Quad .50 started up again. Apparently the new gunner was not high, for long bursts immediately started hammering near them, making both men hit the deck. Large bullet holes punched into the wall behind them, the impacts shaking the wooden floor. The bullets flew so fast and furious that the top half of the metal wall behind them fell onto the two Keldara. Although they could have moved, the two men stayed right where they were, knowing that trying to free themselves would invite the gunner to perforate the wall and themselves with a hundred or so rounds.
    “Inara One to Firefly, request supporting fire on the following coordinates, over!” Yosif shouted over the din of the heavy machine gun emplacement.
    * * *
    “Given enough time, those guys would probably kill all of their own people, however . . .” Adams watched the emplacement fall silent again as Lasko shot the second gunner through the same hole, but a few moments later it started booming yet again. The Yosif team had been using the lulls to try to flank the big gun. Unfortunately, they couldn’t get enough of an angle to clear it before it started up again.
    “Mal to Team Jayne, what is your position?” Mike asked.
    “This is Jayne Leader. We are above the encampment and can see both teams pinned by heavy fire.”
    “Make sure that quad never shoots again.”
    “Affirmative.”
    * * *
    Oleg Kulcyanov stood approximately one hundred twenty-five meters away from the crippled but still devastating heavy machine gun emplacement. With the rest of his team watching for tangos, he brought what looked like an oversized shotgun to his shoulder and aimed through the M2A1 reflex sight at the thundering Quad .50.
    Mike had been looking for a suitable weapon system for the man-mountain that was Oleg for some time. A M249 SAW, while certainly impressive, seemed to be simply a waste of his capability to project direct fire support onto a target. Even the modern, kick-ass M60E4 just didn’t seem to be enough of a weapon for his primary team leader, difficult as that was to believe.
    Mike had been weighing the pros (overwhelming one-man firepower) and cons (realistic amount of ammo that could be carried and overall weight) of a chain gun right out of Predator . That was before Colonel David Neilson, the Kildar’s executive officer and lead trainer, had informed him about the updated Milkor automatic grenade launcher. The U.S. Marines had ordered mods on the three-decade old weapon that had brought it into the twenty-first century with a vengeance. Since even Mike couldn’t get his hands on an XM25 system yet, the MGL-140 would have to serve, and in Oleg’s hands, it was doing that quite well; it was both easy to use and devastatingly effective.
    Staring through the infrared sight that also compensated for drift, Oleg lined up his reticle on the emplacement and sent two high explosive anti-tank rounds at the target in less than two seconds. The HEAT rounds obliterated the remaining guns, as well as the pirate shooter, in an explosion that echoed off the jungle and out over the water. The blaze of flame that erupted from the emplacement sent fire fifteen feet into the air, and the impact flattened three huts around the destroyed gun.
    “Jayne Leader to Mal, target has been eliminated, over.”
    “Come on in and clean up the rest.”
    “Roger.”
    * * *
    “Patrick?”
    “Yes, Grezyna?”
    “Raven has picked up a small boat that has left the north side of the island, and is heading out to sea.”
    “What?” Vanner rose and walked to the screen. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe his wife, but they had been over the sat shots of the island with a fine-toothed comb and hadn’t found any sign of a hidden harbor or cave large enough to hide a boat. Sure enough, a boat was heading out to sea. All he could ID was that it was an open, center-console