Echo Six: Black Ops 5 - Strikeforce Syria by Eric Meyer Page B

up to Talley.
    "Abe, what are you doing? Half the Syrian Army is guarding that plant. We climb that wall, and they'll shoot us down like dogs. It'll be a massacre."
    He didn't answer until they were crouched in the shelter of the solid stone barrier.
    "This is our best chance. I'm counting on their commander having sent a lot of their troops after the gun to finish us off, so when the refinery explodes, it’ll take them all with it.”
    He knew it was a desperate measure, but they had nowhere else to go. Beckerman had given away their mission to the enemy, although Talley couldn’t blame him. The poor devil gave his life to warn them of the ambush. Even so, he doubted they had any hope of assaulting the weapons plant. The best they could hope for was to just to get away, to survive. But the Israeli girl was skeptical.
    "How do you know the Syrians aren't still there, waiting for us? We could climb this wall and drop into a hurricane of enemy gunfire."
    "I don't…"
    And then it came to him.
    The Albatross. Is it still overhead? Or has its time run out, and it's flown away for the remote desert?
    He took out the pad and switched on. He was immediately rewarded with an overhead view of the area, and he zoomed in. The wall came into focus, and he saw himself crouched behind it with his squad. The Syrians were deployed fifty meters away on the other side of the wall, as if they were waiting for them. A long line of troops, lying prone on the ground, with their assault rifles cocked and loaded, and ready to open fire. On each flank he could see a belt-fed PK light machine gun, which could spew out six hundred rounds a minute; heavy 7.62mm rounds, enough to chew his people into little pieces. He zoomed back out and saw the ZSU turning in the street. Farther away, an entire company of Syrian infantry was advancing, picking their way through the factories, climbing over fences and walls to reach them. It was a shut ended situation with no way out; when the oil tanks exploded.
    The ground moved, and a split second later they were hit by a blast of superheated air. Smoke roiled around them. Thick black smoke and fragments of steel rained down on their helmets and armored vests. The series of explosions lasted for almost a minute and then stopped, but the air was still boiling with black smoke, choking dust, and stone fragments. Guy was beside him, wiping the blood from his face where a shard of steel had gashed his forehead, and blood had poured down to obscure his vision.
    "How bad is it?"
    "It's nothing, probably looks a lot worse than it is. I don't know about the others."
    The blast had partially destroyed the wall. Fragments of rock had tumbled down over some of his men, but the effect had shielded them from the blast rather than do any serious damage. One by one, he helped his men to their feet. Their wounds were only superficial, like his. He thought about their next move.
    Whatever it is, it has to be now. The blast will have taken the Syrians by surprise, so it will have to be now before they recover.
    He took a chance, and peered over the wall now a half-meter lower, and he cursed. The wall had shielded the enemy infantry from the worst of the blast, and although some were dusting off the debris that had fallen on them, little had changed. They were still ready to shatter his men with concentrated bursts from their machine guns and assault rifles, the second they climbed the wall. He had to assume the ZSU was unharmed too. The vehicle was armored, and it was unlikely the explosion had done more than scratch the paintwork. The Syrians patrolling the other side of the refinery may have been hurt in the blast, but there was no way of knowing how many had been put out of action. He sank back down behind the wall, finally accepting the inevitable. The explosion had given them no advantage. They were still surrounded and still trapped.
    "It doesn't look good,” Rovere said quietly.
    "Not really, no. Any sane person would