Atlantis Rising: Chapter 2
The second chapter of the series.
Previous Chapter: Phoenix Rising: Chapter 1
Homepage: Atlantis
I've done some switching around of chapters, and a bit of off-line work, which brings this chapter into play.
19:46 Hours, Military Clock, December 11, Paris, France
When I came to, I panicked at first. I couldn't see a thing. Then I realized the power was out, and my vision was still fuzzy. I got shakily to my feet and sucked in a huge breath of air.
And instantly coughed it back up. The air was laden with dust and debris. As soon as I had cleared my lungs, I sucked in another breath and yelled “Report!” as loudly as I could.
No one answered. I looked around in the dim, moon-lit room: Hullo, it was night now. How long had I been out? My head, jaws, and ears were aching as if someone had sledgehammered it and then driven two blunt spikes below my ears.
Then, by my feet, Jamie groaned, muttering something about his head. I grasped his hand and helped him up. “The crap was all that?” He asked fuzzily.
“A bomb.” I answered simply.
He stood dizzily, leaning against a desk, while I stooped and gently slapped Holly's face. She jerked on the third time and started coughing. I smiled encouragingly, then did the same with Scarlett.
I looked around again and spotted Carter, half-buried under a desk. I dug him out, then looked down at Morrison. Definitely dead. His whole body was charred and he was missing his right leg. Real pretty. I crossed his arms over his chest and closed his eyes, but there wasn't much else for me to do.
My watch had been smashed in the blast, but my helmet, which was laying a few yards away next to a demolished support column, was still functioning. I slipped it back on, and the illuminated HUD informed me that it was 20:00 Hours. Eight o' clock PM.
I handed Carter his helmet, a rifle, and shook him fully awake. He cursed several times, then asked, “What happened? Why aren't we dead?”
I shifted uncomfortably. “Um, well...”
Jamie shook his head clear. “Sarge, you ever heard of Telekinesis?”
Carter looked taken aback. “What about it?”
Jamie pressed on. “How about the military's Psi Programs?”
“Rumors. Nothing else. It doesn't exist.”
“Well, tell that to Matt. Cause he's got it.”
I nodded stoically. “Hurts like hell afterwards, though. The other psi-soldiers refer to it as 'Hangover.'”
Scar and Holly both stood. Holly was already retrieving her rifle and rummaging through the ruined desks, until she found a laptop in working condition and had retrieved several boxes of ammo. These she loaded into a duffel bag from a broken down closet while Scarlett checked us all over for broken bones.
I myself had two fractured ribs, but Scar quickly bound those with a shredded sheet and a dose of morphine.
“Hey, bring a shot of that over here!” Jamie said as he emerged from the armory with a combat pack filled with weapons and ammo, and four more for the rest of us, similarly laden. I took one look at Jamie and decided not to ever let him have morphine. I locked glances with Scar and shook my head. She grinned. “Sorry, Jamie. Take it up with the boss.”
“Since when was I the boss?” I asked, but I was kind of pleased.
“Since you were the first up. Sir.” Holly said, handing me the laptop in a padded case. I took it and slung it over my shoulder, grinning disarmingly at her.
“Sergeant, we need to move. Can you manage?” I asked. Carter hadn't fared as well as the rest of us. His skull was fractured in two places and his ankle was sprained. Scar was fixing him up, but he needed to rest in a surgery suite for a while and have real doctors take care of him. Morrison had explained that the Fleet's V-22 Ospreys sent to pick us up would leave at midnight, in order to avoid any AA fire.
We had four hours to get to the coast. Carter would only slow us down, but there was no question of leaving him behind.
He grunted as Scar secured the splint on his ankle. “Yeah, yeah I can manage.”
I looked at his heavily bandaged foot and said, “I guess I'm driving.”
Carter tossed me the keys to the Humvee, and I hopped into the driver's seat as Jamie manned the MG. Carter got rode shotgun, in order to give directions. Scar hopped in the back, while Holly hailed the open comm.
“Any American units left in Paris, this is Private Holly Dayne, at the US Embassy. Repeat, any American forces respond.”
Almost instantly, another voice hit the comm. “Roger, Private Dayne, this is Corporal Richards, traveling with Private Davis. We're at the Embassy as well. Is Morrison still out there?”
“Negative on that, Richards.” Carter answered directly. “We're at the garage, can you make it here?”
“Yes sir. We're coming down.”
Another voice answered the hail. “Sarge, is that you?”
“Roger. Who am I speaking with?”
“Private Collins. I'm up at the registration desks. I've got two more soldiers with me here, they're unconscious. I've got French squads mobilizing on the front door. Need immediate advisement.”
“Roger that, Collins. We're sending a man up. Lock the doors and grab a soldier, meet us down at the garage.”
Meanwhile, Holly had been coordinating with another squad trapped out in the city, with another two squads hailing. This was chaos.
“Kenderson, get up to the front desk. See what you can do to get those soldiers down here. You've got about five minute before those Frenchie squads clear the barricade. Campbell, armory. Load up as many packs as you can carry with a rifle, an extra helmet, and some ammo. Leave the rest of the armor, its too heavy. Dayne, stay on the radio. See who else is out there, tell them we'll meet up at the garage here. But we're leaving in half an hour.”
“Half an hour, sir?” Holly asked incredulously. “The Frenchies are gonna be here in five minutes!”
Carter continued, face contorted in pain. “Miller, start barricading the staircase coming down from lobby. Kenderson, see if you can rig the Embassy doors to explode or something.” I grinned. “As soon as you get those soldiers down here, have them help with the barricade. Miller, get a wake-up dose into them as they come down. Campbell, as soon as you get two loads of packs down here, help out with the barricade.”
“Yes sir!” We all said, and scrambled to our separate tasks. Carter followed Jamie into the armory, rifling through his pockets, trying to find something.
I sprinted up the stairs to the main lobby. The smiling receptionist had mysteriously gone. Instead there was a single conscious soldier, about eighteen, two years older than me, muscling another soldier nearly twice his age and much larger down the hallway to the staircase. Scar hurried up and stuck a syringe full of some liquid into the unconscious soldier, who immediately blinked and started moving again.
Scar hustled over to the second unconscious marine and stuck him too. He didn't move. Scar frowned, checked the pulse, and then threw the guy over her shoulder with a worried look. She muttered a bunch of medical stuff to herself, nodded at me, and moved on.
I crossed over to the door, a toolbox repair kit that I had taken out of the Humvee in hand.
Carter hobbled up and deposited a satchel of C4 by my feet. “Have fun.” He told me, and limped back downstairs. I started wiring the explosive to a spring-and-pulley catch I was setting up, and about a minute later had the whole thing rigged to explode the door when it opened. I stuck a splintered piece of wood through the double handles, to ensure that the Frenchies came crashing through the door and not tentatively open it and not get blasted.
A slight snick behind me raised the hair on the back of my neck, and I instantly responded, grabbing my rifle and twisted around, gun leveled at the upper balcony.
“Whoa, dude!” the marine shouted. I raised an eyebrow. “And you are?”
“Private Strayer. Private Dayne called, something about a barricade?”
“Yeah, we need you down here. Come on.”
Right as we were starting for the stairs, another sound reverberated. I had seen too many movies and had fired too many guns not to recognize the cold clack of a charging handle being pulled, the bolt in the gun cycled, and the soft, icy press of the barrel in the back of my head.
A French voice spoke quietly in my ear, like a snake, but I gave no attention to translating, even though I spoke basic French. I whirled and smacked the barrel of the gun around, threw a left-handed jab. I blinked as my fist was intercepted and twisted around, but recovered quickly and countered the counter-strike. The Frenchie locked me into a grapple, and then we were rolling along the floor, fighting silently for our lives. Every time I tried to call out, the Frenchie saboteur either smacked my head or covered my mouth.
Private Strayer, meanwhile, was also grappling with his opponent. He managed a strangled gargle, and Holly's voice sounded in my comm.
“Matt? Is everything alright up there?”
I hoped my lack of an answer would be a good indicator, and sure enough a second later feet pounded up the stairs, and then Jamie was there with a gun pressed into the saboteur's skull. Jamie pulled the guy off, and I held him with my rifle to his chest while Jamie helped out Strayer.
“Guys, get out of there!” Holly yelled, and a second later a thump hit the door. I was faced with a tough decision. Could I really murder these two saboteurs in cold blood, execution fashion, while they stood against a wall?
Shooting at somebody in the heat of battle was one thing. But to take a man's life, and to see the light in his eyes go out as he knew he was about to die? I had always hated firing squads.
Then another thump hit the door, and I knew that wood wouldn't hold for much longer.
I decided that I didn't want to become a murderer this early in the war. I settled for two shots to each saboteur's chest armor, which served plenty enough force to keep them on the ground for a while at such close range from a G36c rifle. Strayer, Jamie and I ran for the barricade at the bottom of the stairs.
The door burst inward, and half a second later the entire satchel of C4 exploded, vaporizing the first squad at the door.
Several more marines had joined us since I had left for the door, and now we had a crew of about 15 marines, including my crew and Carter.
I fired erratic bursts from my rifle one-handed behind me, suppressing the French squads that came in after the first. The three of us vaulted over the chest-high barricade, and then Carter stepped up and handed me a deployable M60 MG. Jamie was likewise armed, and he stepped to the front of the right barricade of the double-staircase that split around an elevator, which had been disabled, the doors welded shut.
I stepped to the front, the other marines making way as I advanced and opened fire, mounting my MG onto the barricade itself. I opened fire on the swarm of soldiers that descended. The ones that weren't riddled with bullets quickly backed up and took peaking shots around the corner, but I shredded the wall and several bullets punched through, knocking down targets. Most of them did not rise.
Carter tossed out gleaming metal riot shields, and the soldiers quickly made a lethal wall of bullet-proof shields and vicious-looking gun barrels that poked out from between the holes in the line.
“That's it, sir!” Holly yelled. “No more contacts on the radio. If there are still marines out there, their comms. are busted.”
“Roger that. Alright, boys, get to the Humvees. Campbell, Kenderson, hold this line. Wait till the wave ends, then drop the MGs and we'll cover you. Miller and Dayne, wait at the door, then get back here once those two are through. Go!”
Jamie and I held the line. It was a lot different without the 15 marines helping to suppress them, because as soon as the fire had ebbed, three squads advanced down my one line.
Good thing Jamie had rigged the stairs to blow. He had even linked the detonator to a control switch on my armor gauntlet. So instead of fumbling for a detonator, I just reached down and pressed a button on my gauntlet, and about 12 Claymores erupted, 6 on both sides of the staircase, and shredded the three squads coming down.
The fun thing about Claymores was that it was a purely anti-personnel weapon. They were much less effective against armor, because the killing force of a Claymore came when the small explosive charge scattered the small, round balls that were encased in the housing of the mine at high speeds over an effective range of about three meters, spreading in a shotgun spread pattern. Basically, you got shredded as multiple metal balls ripped through whatever body part they hit.
That had evened out the crowd, and I took up firing again. The squads of marines behind me rushed through the door to the garage, and I threw a grenade up the stairs.
Return fire Swiss-Cheesed the barricade around me, and shots sparked and pinged off my armor. One cut a groove in my jaw, and my heart jumped. I was being shot at!
The Claymores were dry, I was running out of ammo, and that's when I realized Carter had never expected us to survive this. I shrugged and stepped up to the lip of the barricade again, and shouldered the responsibility of saving the other marines in exchange for my own life.
A kind of, unstoppable fury ignited in me as I realized that I was going to die, right here, right now, so early in this twisted war. It had barely begun. And I was ending, at sixteen years old. There was so much more I had wanted to do, so much I wanted to say, to my family, to Jamie, to Scar, most importantly to Holly.
It wasn't acceptable.
I let the fury roll out of me, and a wave of telekinetic force smoothly accelerated up the stairs, tearing at every solid object and blasting it backwards.
Then there was silence. The rest of the French squads had withdrawn and were milling around in the lobby, not wishing to come down and restart the attack. Good thing too, because that last blast had sucked everything out of me. I dropped the MG heavily, and Carter yelled at me over the comm., "Get your butt up here, Kenderson! We're all loaded, you're driving. Campbell, you're gunner, let's move!"
Holly and Scar had taken up firing positions at the door. So Carter had been planning on us surviving.
Jamie started running all-out for the door, but looked back, saw me hobbling along, and sprinted back, throwing my arm over his shoulder and half-dragging me towards the garage. Holly threw another grenade as Scar suppressed the French squads now swarming down the stairs, and then we were on the other side of the door, the girls took a few last parting shots, and then slammed the metal door. Scar was about to shoot the control panel when I moaned.
I hobbled up to the door, used my combat knife to pry the cover off, and switched around the wires so that the door alignment was reversed, and the door wouldn't slide open when someone hit the button, but instead try to close further.
As an added measure Scar stuck a grenade priming-pin-first into the crease of the door, so that even if it did open the grenade would obliterate the first squad.
We continued hobbling along, and I slowly regained my strength. By the time we got to the Humvee, Scar had injected adrenaline and glucose boosters directly into my bloodstream, and I was back at peak capacity. The Hangover would start in about four hours, right after we got onto the Carrier, hopefully.
I shook my head clear and got behind the wheel. The rest of the crew filed in, and several more Marines piled into the back. Several other Humvees revved their engines, and then Carter signaled for me to take the lead.
I gunned the engine and sent us rocketing out the garage. Squads of French soldiers and several armored trucks were heading for the entrance, and Jamie opened fire. The heavy rounds tore through treads and wheels and left them in the dust. Our Humvee convoy was followed by the M1 Abrams tank, and it blasted through whatever was left, accelerating to about 60 miles an hour. Not bad for a multi-ton armored cannon.
I tried to keep the speedometer around 60 so the tank could keep up with us as I swerved around corners and burning obstacles. We met with a little more resistance, but each scattered French squad meant somebody radioing where we were, and it didn't take the French commanders long to triangulate our position and to figure out where we were going.
"Heads up, wing coming in hot an' fast from 5 o clock!" Jamie yelled, and started pouring brass casings. I twisted around to look; three Dassault Mirage F1s, France's close-air-support fighters, were leveling out into an attack run.
Even as I watched, the lead bird took several hits to the right engine and caught fire, dramatically stopping in mid-air and flipping end-over-end until it blew up, some distance behind and below the two other fighters. Jamie crowed, yelling, "Eat it, you maggot-faced Frenchies!" and continued his suppressive fire.
The M1's turret swiveled into position, and an 8-shot Surface-to-Air Missile Box locked target and opened fire. All eight missiles rose and followed the second Mirage, whose pilot quickly sent the agile craft into a steep dive and deployed chaff flares. It dodged the missiles, but it had sacrificed its attack run to do so, and now circled back around to come in again, a clear gain of maybe two minutes, more precious than gold at the moment.
The heavy beat of the machine gun on the Humvee next to us suddenly cut out, to be followed by a huge WHOOSH as the jeep caught fire and the Mirage's missile detonated. I looked back a second later, and saw only a burned-out wreck of a frame; the tires and most of the chassis had been consumed, and the occupants inside, and everything else shredded. Jamie ducked back into our Humvee as the other exploded, throwing deadly metal shrapnel everywhere: as lethal as gunshots.
I swerved as another missile buried itself into the gravel and then blew up, carving a huge chunk out of the road and leaving a divot big enough to pass as a tank-trap. The rest of the Humvees and the Abrams circled around it, and then the Mirage was past us, with everyone still firing at it.
I consulted my HUD as we sped between sky-scrapers and historic monuments. Just another couple klicks to the beach, and then - what? We couldn't very well take the Humvees out into the open ocean, not to mention the tank and its crew. Were we going to swim for the Carrier? Where was that Osprey?
The two Dassault Mirage F1s were now circling in for another attack run, and off in the distance I could hear rotor blades, presumably transports bringing more French soldiers. Holly was rummaging around in the ammo compartment of the Humvee as Jamie spewed rounds at the F1's. Someone in another Humvee kicked open a door and fired a heat-seeking missile from a shoulder-launcher at one of the birds, and it peeled off again. These pilots weren't taking any chances.
"Left here!" Carter shouted suddenly, and I threw the jeep into a hard left turn without hesitation. Just ahead I could see an open courtyard of some sort, with multi-leveled apartment buildings and a parking garage surrounding.
"Need more ammo!" Jamie yelled as the belt ran dry. Holly handed him a particularly larger box of ammo with some words in red stamped on the sides. "Niiice," Jamie crooned, loaded the belt, and braced himself. A second later I felt a solid thud-thud-thud-thud as the machine gun thrummed, spitting out 25mm shells instead of the regular 7.62mm ammunition. I whooped, the adrenaline clouding my brain. A giddy joy rose in me as the second F1 took a string of shells to the joint of its right wing, which promptly tore off and sent the fighter into erratic spins. A shell found the cockpit. No one ejected.
"Top of the garage!" Carter was yelling in my ear. "Evac point!"
I accelerated into the lead, spinning to a quick stop at the entrance to the building. All of us spilled out of the Humvees even as the last Dassault Mirage tore one Humvee apart with its heavy machine guns and completely obliterated another with a missile. I grabbed my G36c and ran, Holly right behind me, with everyone else on their heels.
The heavy thumping of rotors was closer now. We all dived inside the garage walls as the Mirage's missiles blew portions of the courtyard.
All except one of the bigger marines who was carrying Carter. He was cut nearly in half by a line of bullets, and Carter went sailing to the ground outside cover. He tried to pick himself up, but his legs were now shot up and broken. He crawled into the marginal cover of a stone bench even as I was calling orders.
"Set up a perimeter on the roof, try to keep that F1 off my head!" I yelled as I dashed back out the open garage door and towards Carter. Jamie and Holly followed me out without even being asked, and Scar was preparing her med-kit to treat Carter once we got him back.
The F1 circled back around, and I dived for cover as its seemingly endless supply of missiles tore up trees and blasted concrete. Jamie ran back into the Humvee and started up the MG again, but Holly and I had been separated by the last attack. I waved her back to the garage and sprinted ahead into the next piece of cover.
The Mirage wasn't taking kindly to being shot at, after its two buddies had been shot down. It came straight for me, heedless of the rounds Jamie was throwing at it.
I backslid into cover, sliding easily on the thick impact plates attached to my back, holding down the trigger of my assault rifle. More bravado than anything, because the chances of me hitting anything was next to zilch.
Regardless, I quickly found myself behind a low stone wall, maybe twenty yards from cover. I was about to start out again, but the path there was quickly torn up by machine gun fire; a French armored truck was making its way towards me, and infantry were already pouring out the back. Carter was so dead.
The Mirage came in again, but this time it was headed for Jamie. He barely managed to get out of the jeep before the missile slammed into it. God, how many jeeps had this thing wasted?
Scar suddenly opened fire, and one of the infantry threw is arms up as her semi-auto sniper fire cut into their ranks. Holly had scavenged an MG off one of the Humvees, and she was flinging down suppressive fire. Someone was apparently still in the Abrams, because a 120mm shell tore greedily into the armored truck. There wasn't much left after that.
The rest of the soldiers had now gotten to the roof, or close to it, and the multitude of rifles sent the French infantry scattering for cover. This was my chance.
Without warning, I jumped up from where I had been lying prone and dashed to where Carter was firing his SMG sidearm at the French ranks. I grabbed him and threw him over my shoulder, as I had been taught in basic training, then started running for the garage.
Nearly at the same time, the Dassault Mirage circled and leveled out for an attack run, pointing straight at the entrance. It was now a race: if I couldn't make it to the door before the Mirage's missiles, I was done for.
I put every ounce of my failing strength into my legs, pumping them, left, right, left, right.
And then I was at the door, almost through it-
-but so was the missile. It landed mere feet behind me and exploded in a fireball of orange and yellow flames.
There was no thought to it at that point. I don't know how I did it, but on some inner survivalist instinct, I turned and threw up a psi-shield before us, letting myself be carried further into the garage by the enormous explosion, safe on the other side of my bubble.
The shield was only semi-tangible, but it radiated power. It separated us from the explosion with a cool, liquid blue semi-physical semi-transparent distortion. Cool as in temperature, cool. It seemed almost cold to the touch.
But as I felt my energy rapidly fading even as we were shot away, I let the shield shatter and absorbed the kinetic energy from the shatter back into my body. Carter and I landed on the hard asphalt with a thunk; we were safe, inside the dark parking garage.
Holly ran down and dragged me a little ways off as Scar set to work on Carter. I moaned, my head hurting again, and she jabbed a syringe of some sort into my leg. I let out a mild yelp as the needle penetrated my femoral artery, and Holly injected a pain-reliever. My head quickly grew unclouded, my eyes refocused, and the throbbing in my head started to fade off.
She helped me up, and I grabbed my rifle and hobbled to the open wall. Outside, we were being surrounded. Scores of trucks and jeeps rolled to a stop just outside our effective rifle range, deploying scores of footsoldiers. About ten men per truck, times six trucks, made around 60 men, each armed with an automatic rifle and grenades and a sidearm. Plus the Mirage, which had now been joined by not one, not two, but three helicopter gunships and as many transports, each with another 25 Frenchies to deploy. All to take out around 25 Marines? Come on!
"Matt!" Holly yelled over the noise of the rotors, drawing me back to inside the garage. "Look!" She pointed up at the sky, but whatever she was pointing at had just passed behind a cloud, and a second later four more missiles crashed into the building. They were going to take us by brute force.
"We have to get to the roof. Carter, can you make it?" Holly asked.
"I have to." Carter replied grimly. Scar slung his arm across her shoulders, and Holly jumped forward to do so on the other side. I shook my head clear and followed Jamie up, covering the rear.
Jamie had grabbed quite a few toys from the Humvee. He had his G36c slung over his back and was holding a SPAS 12 automatic shotgun. I glanced at an ammo crate he was balancing on one shoulder. On the side was stenciled, FRAG 15: CAUTION EXPLOSIVE
I grinned. A Frag 15 shell was basically a hollow metal slug filled with explosives. It was used by counter-terrorist forces to blow open doors and break down walls and stuff. Anti-material. That thing would carve a man-sized chunk out of a grizzly bear and leave it bleeding on the ground.
"New toys?" I asked, still breathing heavily.
"Like it? Yeah I thought it would make a good welcoming present for the Frenchies."
"Do you have any fishing line?"
Jamie pulled a roll of line out of one of his infinite pockets.
"Duct tape?"
Jamie rolled his eyes. What good pyromaniac didn't have duct tape? He handed me a roll.
"Explosive?"
"Okay, now that's getting redundant." Jamie handed me two frag grenades.
"We'll meet you up there," I called to the girls and Carter. Jamie looped one end of the line through the two grenade rings while I tied down the fishing line across the stairway. He put the grenades out of sight behind the entryway and tied down that end to the other side of the door. We now had an almost invisible tripline connected to two grenades. Jamie secured the grenades and the line with a generous amount of duct tape to make sure the rings were pulled, and we now had an almost undetectable trap.
"God, I love explosives." Jamie sighed. I thumped him on the arm, pumped fists, and then we both were running for the roof. Good thing we were in shape. All this running up ramps and stairs kind of took the wind out of you.
"Sir, they're advancing on the building." A marine stated calmly.
"Hold 'em off. Shouldn't be much longer." Holly reassured them.
Grimly, I reloaded my rifle. Jamie crouched by the open stairwell, after having pumped three explosive slugs into the elevator. He shut the door with his boot heel and started wiring explosives to go off when the door was opened. I used a TK assisted grip to crunch the handle and shot the control panel with my sidearm.
One of the marines had a SAW, which was an acronym for Squad Automatic Weapon. Basically a big machine gun. He set up at the lip of the stone wall surrounding the top floor, and momentarily was flooding the lower levels in brass casings. Jamie, usually the sniper, was currently engaged in door guard, so Scar filled in for him with an M21 Designated Marksman's Rifle. Holly was doing something on her laptop, and a second later she gave a pleased hum, which was followed by all the lights in the parking garage cutting out in the dim moonlight, and all the street lamps and light fixtures in the courtyard coming ablaze with even more power.
The French infantry were thus exposed, and the riflemen on the garage were able to pick them off at leisure.
But that wasn't to stop the gunships and the Mirage from circling back. The guy with the SAW was quickly pressed into Anti-Aircraft duty, and he kept the gunships mostly out of range. I emptied round after round at one helo. There was plenty of ammo, and the sustained fire might damage it. Jamie opened up some slugs every time the F1 made a run, but the transports were too big and heavily armored for the Frag 15 to do much if it decided to land on top of the building, or worse yet fast-rope men down to the top.
All it needed was a break in the line.
"Jamie! C4?" I yelled from a good AA covered position, my back pressed to a utility generator of some sort, my sides protected by pipes and rotors. Hunched low, Jamie dashed across to me, backslid into the little alcove created by the utility stuff, and started rifling through pockets. After a couple seconds he produced a block of C4, a remote detonator, and a roll of duct-tape.
I yanked a grenade off of my assault vest, taped it to the C4 block, and plugged in the remote detonator. I made five of these, in the hopes that the C4 block could penetrate the armor of one of the transports and the frag grenade would obliterate the occupants.
