Free Battleground by Keith Douglass

Fernandez stared at the figure through the night-vision goggles. The man lifted a weapon.
    Fernandez hosed him down with two three-round bursts, and saw him take the 9mm rounds and roll off the table. Another form down the way sprinted for the far door, and made it before Fernandez could bring his weapon around.
    He checked the rest of the room area by area. No more bad guys. “Second room right clear,” he said into the mike. He came to his feet and sprinted for the next door. Three rounds came through it and he dove to the left, and skidded against the wall three feet from the opening.
    He pulled a hand grenade from his harness, popped the safety pin, and threw it into the room. The explosion brought a pair of screams that trailed off. Then silence.
    This time he looked around the side of the door about three feet off the floor. Inside was an office with two desks. Two bodies lay sprawled in the aisle between the wooden desks. A form lifted up beside a filing cabinet and fired three rounds from what Fernandez figured was an AK-47. The rounds missed.
    Fernandez sighted in on the side of the cabinet where he had seen the Kenyan and waited. Almost a minute passed, but Fernandez held his sight. Then the Kenyan leaned quickly out from steel filing cabinet, but before he could fire, Fernandez nailed him with three rounds from the “room sweeper,” and the Kenyan slammed to the rear with half his throat shot away.
    The SEAL ran into the room with his MP-5 ready, but he found no more living Kenyans. He hurried to the far door and looked around the doorjamb. He saw a figure lunge up from behind a line of file cabinets and throw something.
    A grenade.
    It hit once in front of the door, bounced true, and Fernandez tracked it through the open door on his night-scope. He caught the hand bomb, and in the same motion threw it back the way it came. He jolted against the wall outside the room, and a second later the grenade went off with a blast.
    Fernandez heard no human sound from the room. He edged around the door again and looked. File cabinets against the walls, some down the center of the room. He saw a bloody head on the floor halfway along the files. A moment later he touched his mike.
    “Clear three right,” he said.
    Lincoln’s hurried call came just after his message.
    “We may have a problem in room two my way. I hit a staircase, and somebody is up there covering the whole damn room but gives me no target.”
    “Hang tight,” Fernandez said. “I’m out of rooms and on my way.”
    A minute later, Fernandez slid to a stop beside an open door. Lincoln was by the other side. Fernandez checked through the door, and jerked back at once. Two slugs drilled through the air where he had been.
    “He’s got some night vision too,” Lincoln said.
    “What’s in the room?”
    “Stores, looks like lots of food and office supplies. No good cover down there. Except maybe that stack of what looks like boxes of paper halfway down to the left.”
    Fernandez took a look from head height. “Yeah.” He put a slug into the boxes and jerked back. They never even wiggled. “Cover,” he said. “You spray that stairwell top and I’ll get to the boxes. That’ll give me a good angle to shoot straight up the stairs and nail the bastard.”
    Lincoln pushed a fresh thirty-round magazine into his MP-5 and nodded. He poked out the muzzle and pounded off three rounds, then adjusted and nodded at Fernandez. Twelve rounds on full auto slammed into the top of the staircase as Fernandez charged the fifteen feet to the stack of cases of paper, then rolled to a stop below them out of sight of the stairway.
    Lincoln kicked six more rounds up the top of the stairs. Then Fernandez added his firepower, with the advantage of the angle. He slapped twelve rounds out of his weapon, and heard a scream from up the stairs.
    Fernandez saw a hand appear at the top of the stairs holding a grenade. Before it could be thrown, Fernandez drilled the arm with three