The Assault - By Brian Falkner Page 0,48

it, slamming it shut. They began to run toward the building.

“Suppressing fire!” Chisnall yelled, and heard the fifty-cal open up overhead. Dust kicked up around the PGZ car and the bulletproof windows shattered.

The PGZ officers scrambled from the vehicle, taking cover behind it.

“One hundred and twenty meters,” Wilton said.

“Smoke, smoke, smoke!” Chisnall yelled.

A second later, a spinning canister came into view, followed quickly by a second. The canisters landed behind Fleming and Bennett and spewed out white smoke, almost instantly creating a dense fog. The soldiers, the fence line, and even the buildings behind them faded into vague silhouettes, then to nothing.

They were getting incoming fire now; he could hear the rounds hitting the building around them. The Pukes were firing blind, but Fleming and Bennett were taking no chances, running a zigzagging course toward the building so as not to present an easy target. Surely they were no more than a hundred meters now, thought Chisnall.

Monster’s fire from the roof of the building was constant. He, too, was firing blindly into the smoke. Anyone in their right minds would have hit the deck and stayed there. Wilton, also on the roof, was peppering the PGZ car, keeping the two officers cowering behind it.

The smoke swirled and parted near the fence line and the nose of the second Land Rover raced through it at speed, the fifty-cal on the back firing continuously. Fleming heard it and pushed Bennett to the ground as bullets kicked up dust around them. The faces of the enemy soldiers were clearly visible on Chisnall’s screen.

“It’s Yozi! Price, switch to frags!” Chisnall yelled.

“Copy that,” Price said.

A few seconds later he heard an explosion and saw a volcano of dirt erupt in front of the Land Rover. It lurched to the side but kept coming. Another grenade, another explosion, this one just in front of the Land Rover. It bucked and jumped, flipping onto its side.

Fleming pulled Bennett back to his feet and hauled him toward the building at the base of Uluru.

Fifty meters, twenty, ten, then the fifty-cal on the Land Rover opened up again. The big Puke, Alizza, had wrenched it off its mount and balanced it on top of the overturned vehicle.

“Get them inside!” Chisnall yelled.

On one of the monitors, he saw the front door of the building open, just as the SAS men reached it. Puffs of rock dust kicked out of the side of the building around them and sparks flew from the heavy metal door. He could see Brogan putting her weight behind the door, starting to close it as Fleming and Bennett ran inside.

More sparks from the door, hammer blows of the heavy machine-gun rounds, then suddenly Brogan was gone. Her head snapped back and her body fell away out of sight. There was a momentary gasp on her comm, then silence.

“Brogan!” Chisnall yelled. There was no reply. “Brogan!”

“They’re pulling back,” Wilton yelled from the roof. “Booyah!”

“I think Brogan’s down,” Chisnall said. He left the control room and ran toward the entrance.

The corridors seemed endless. They felt unreal, like a movie set. He had been able to deal with Hunter’s death, but that had been different. Hunter had been dead when they had found him. Chisnall hadn’t had to see him go down, like he had seen Brogan go down. Her head snapping backward with the impact of a bullet. Her limp, lifeless body falling.

He reached the mezzanine floor and saw Brogan lying behind the door. The door was shut, and Fleming was closing the interlocking bars around the perimeter to keep it that way.

Bennett was leaning over her. He looked up as Chisnall entered.

“Is she …?” Chisnall found the words got stuck in his throat.

“She’s alive but out cold,” Bennett said. “Took a bullet to the helmet. Helmet shattered and absorbed most of the force. I think the real damage happened when her head hit the floor.”

The ground seemed unsteady, and Chisnall grabbed at the railing of the mezzanine wall for support.

Then he keyed his comm. “Brogan’s down, unconscious. Everybody relocate to the entrance. It won’t take them long to call in reinforcements.”

He ran down the stairs and kneeled beside Brogan. Her shattered helmet lay beside her head. Blood flowed from a cut somewhere in her hairline, but it didn’t look serious. Her eyes were shut and she was breathing steadily.

“That was a little tight,” Fleming said.

“The timing was a lot closer than we expected,” Chisnall said without looking up.

“How did they get onto us so fast?” Bennett asked.

Chisnall