Even so, though, the grenades weren't doing a bad job. When he judged the time right, the screen adequate, he ordered forward two squads of men carrying much larger and more effective hexachloroethane, HC, smoke grenades. These they began to toss forward once they had crawled within throwing range of the screen laid by the grenadiers.
From both the forty-millimeter jobs, and the hand-thrown grenades, a mild cross wind blew an impenetrable screen; impenetrable by sight, that is.
That was when the commander ordered his assault team forward.
* * *
'Oh, you stupid, stupid bastard,' fumed Pendergast as he heard the shouts and scuffle of approaching men. 'What the hell did your men ever do to deserve having an idiot like you in charge? Didn't anyone ever tell you the difference between cover and concealment?'
Pendergast flipped the safeties off of the two clackers he still held in his hand. As the temporary plywood wall resounded with the impact of one or more men slamming against it, he muttered, 'Lord, for what they are about to receive . . .'
Then Pendergast squeezed the clackers.
* * *
Electricity, a mild charge actually, raced down the wires to two widely spaced claymores. At the mines, the charge nudged the otherwise fairly insensitive blasting caps into action. Deciding that the charge was sufficient, the caps did their job, exploding inside the pound-and-a-quarter of C-4 held by each of the two mines.
The Composition-4, a very high explosive, also shocked into awakeness, duly detonated, fragmenting both the case and the layer of seven-hundred-odd resinated ball bearings to its front. Those twin explosions likewise set off the det cord running from the fuse wells in the mines that had no fuses in them.
As fast as the ball bearings were moving, it was as nothing compared to the speed of detonation of the det cord. Before the projectiles had managed to travel much more than a foot, the second set of mines likewise detonated as the exploding det cord reached them. These in turn set off another strand of det cord each, which likewise set off another pair of mines.
In all, fifteen claymores, packing over ten thousand ball bearings, went off within approximately one one hundred and fiftieth of a second.
And that was not the worst of it.
This close to the blasts, the worst of it was the glass from the deliberately broken out windows that had served to cover and camouflage the claymores. This was no lightweight stuff; nothing but the best for the Treasury Department. The glass shattered under the blast, yes. But it shattered into fragments even more lethal than the ball bearings.
Those men nearest the wall, the one squad that had reached it first, were literally torn into fragments—chunks of bloody, disassociated meat. Farther away, where the glass had lost some of its initial velocity due to its relatively low density, it merely ripped and blinded.
The ball bearings were denser. They continued on unless stopped by something. In the case of twenty-seven 'agents' of the PGSS, that something was human flesh. They went down as if scythed, arms flying and torsos hurled backwards.
Body armor stopped many of the glass and steel fragments, of course. Body armor did not cover arms, legs and faces.
Those ball bearings that did not impact on a body, which was—indeed—most of them, continued on. Some of these went too high and were lost. Others buried themselves in the ground. In at least one case, however, a chunk of fourteen that had remained stuck fast together by the resin impacted on a grenadier who had neglectfully left his armored vest open. The chunk of steel and resin stayed together until it was halfway through his body. At that point, under the stress of rapid deceleration, the ball bearings said their goodbyes to each other and began to take somewhat different tracks out of the body.
And then, of course, came the glass—following the ball bearings dutifully. These slivers and splinters left a swath of screaming, face-tearing, blinded men in their wake.
Dutifully, the B Company commander had had his own head up, watching for signs of progress from his assault team. His eyes registered, indeed it was the last thing they ever registered, the sudden billowing of the smoke screen as the claymore on the far side of it detonated. Before another image could register, the man's face and eyes were hopelessly shredded by shards and splinters.
The commander felt nothing, at first; just the sudden shock of losing his vision. Then his ears were assaulted, first by the blast, then by the rising tide of horrified, anguished screams from the torn, bleeding remnants of his company.
Then came pain and, with the pain, realization. Following the realization of what had happened came the realization that it was to be permanent.
The commander added his screams to those of his men: 'I'm bliiinnnddd!'
* * *
Pendergast fought down the nausea that threatened to engulf him.
* * *
Sawyers didn't need to be told to understand what had happened to his B Company. The ashen faced, trembling, vomiting and demoralized remnants that staggered out of the smoke, some dragging bodies and parts of bodies with them, told all that was needed.
One man—Sawyers didn't recognize him through the sheet of blood on his face and the strange, uncertain, staggering gait—walked right into the path of unseen tracers. The burst took him in the legs and spun him end over end.
It was a very long burst. Before it ended, and while the man was still flying, one bullet—at least one—passed
