The Complete Hammer's Slammers: Volume 3 by David Drake Page A

additional movement there until the bolt hit the muzzle of the automatic weapon just lifting back over the transom to fire. Plasma converted fifteen centimeters of the gun’s steel barrel to gas. The superheated metal erupted in a red secondary flame as it mixed with air.
    How had Vierziger hit a target so small at thirty meters, with an off-hand shot?
    The jeep crashed into the half-open doorway at 50 kph. That was fast enough to crunch the front of the vehicle pretty thoroughly, though without doing serious damage to the building. The jeep’s plastic frame fractured in a series of angry clicks.
    Vierziger fired the remaining three 2-cm rounds into the wreckage. He picked his spots, blowing open a pair of fuel cells with each squeeze of the trigger.
    The hydrocarbon fuel normally realized its energy in a cold process using an ion-exchange membrane. Now it blazed outward, enveloping the jeep in fire hot enough to involve the body panels and upholstery as well. The mushroom of flame rose roof high. It barred the building’s rear street door as effectively as the presence of a tank could have done.
    And that freed Vierziger and his partner for other activities.
    Malaveda thought he saw the manhole cover move. He fired, rattling the disk in its coaming as the powergun bolts blew divots off the top of the steel.
    Vierziger stripped in a fresh clip, then tossed Malaveda his bandolier of 2-cm ammo. “Follow me, swap guns and load when I tell you!” he ordered. “Now!”
    The newbie had no business giving a non-com orders, but the present situation ignored what the Table of Organization might say. “Yessir!” Malaveda shouted.
    Vierziger wasn’t wearing body armor; he’d claimed it would interfere with his driving. Now he reached left-handed into one of his tunic’s front bellows pockets and drew out a red-banded grenade that he had no business carrying.
    He struck the safety cap off against the side of the building with casual ease. Malaveda had seen troopers trying to arm a grenade that way, proving how macho they were. He’d never seen anybody succeed so perfectly, and with such little concern, as Vierziger did now.
    Vierziger’s right hand was on the 2-cm weapon’s pistol grip, holding it like a massive handgun. He fired point-blank into the edge of the manhole cover. Sub-machine gun bolts made the steel disk stutter. The heavier charge flipped it like a tiddlywink. Vierziger tossed the grenade into the opening, put his back against the alley wall, and fired another bolt down the hole to disconcert anybody who might have the notion of throwing the grenade back up.
    The lid hit the pavement a meter from the hole, spinning on edge with a nervous clang-g-g-g until the grenade went off beneath. It was a bunker buster. It atomized a mist of fuel through the air ten cubic meters of tunnel, then detonated the mixture in a blast that ruptured the pavement all the way to the mouth of the alley. Vierziger, poised with his knees flexed, rode out the ripple of concrete, but the unexpected jolt knocked Malaveda down.
    Vierziger jumped into the pillar of gray smoke gushing from the manhole. “Follow me!” he shouted as be disappeared underground.
    Malaveda followed. It didn’t occur to him not to.
    There was a ladder. Malaveda climbed down it, facing outward; clumsy because of the sub-machine gun in his right hand and the bandolier of 2-cm ammo swinging from his left. The helmet slapped filters over Malaveda’s nose as he stepped into the noxious efflux from the grenade explosion. Four rungs down, he switched his visor to thermal imaging.
    In thermal mode, the helmet converted temperature gradients to shapes. Malaveda hopped forward to keep from stepping on the pair of bodies scrunched at the base of the ladder. Another corpse lay on its back a few meters down the tunnel.
    Vierziger moved ahead of Malaveda. The atmosphere swirled with blast residues which showed as pastels on the helmet visor.
    The tunnel was purpose-built as