The Marine aiming the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW) in Sgt. King's team was Corporal Calvin Denny. Corporal Denny was a pretty big kid from Louisiana with a cool manner about him that everyone liked. No situation ever got too hot or too hard that Corporal Denny couldn't keep smiling through it. Right now, Corporal Denny was still smiling although, he may have been the only one for a few hundred meters that felt that way. Sgt. King had just told the men to prepare to fire on incoming PLA troops moving this way. Everyone was making their profile's as low as they could - digging in and taking aim into the oncoming forest. Sporadic gunfire was going on ahead and to the side of them.
Suddenly, the first PLA soldier appeared in Denny's sight. Corporal Denny took a second to make sure it wasn't a Marine. It only took a second as those fatigues didn't have the familiar tiger print on them. He pulled down on the trigger and braced himself for the weapon's kickback. The PLA soldier was thirty meters away in medium cover but the very first round landed square in his chest and the body went flying backwards. There was no way to see if the others landed on him or how many of the following bullets sprayed the area behind him. Some definitely hit around the target as tree bark went flying just behind him.
The sound of an smg rang out a little to the left and Denny caught the faintest glimpse of light coming from the trees. He heard some tree branches crack above him and realized he was being fired on. In one quick motion he swiveled the M249 about twenty degrees and let loose three bursts from the SAW that tore up the area he was squinting at. Suddenly a small object came hurling through the woods and landed a good five meters in front of them. Grenade? To Corporal Denny's left, about five meters away, was Corporal Ferris. Ferris evidently saw the object too and came to a similar decision regarding its identity.
"Grenade!", he shouted and ducked down.
Corporal Denny lowered his head behind the fallen log a split second before the grenade exploded in a deafening roar. Mud started raining down on him immediately. His heart was racing and after taking the luxury of a quick breath, he peaked back out and saw two more PLA soldiers moving in, this time only twenty meters away with their guns blazing at them. He could hear the sound of the M4s around him going off now pretty steadily and he took aim at the approaching menace. He sprayed six bursts in all. He was acting hastily not waiting for the shots to land before moving to the next target. This made the majority of the bullets go in between the two targets.
Luckily Ferris was also aiming at the men and was a bit calmer. Between the two of them,they took down both the men, Corporal Denny with the power of his M249 and Corporal Ferris with a more calculating M4. Next, Denny saw some movement deeper in the forest and fired at it. He couldn't tell if he hit anything but the brush and dirt around the area took a beating for sure. There were a few more minutes of sporadic firing at anything that moved but they didn't see any more PLA soldiers coming at them for another few minutes. At this time, Sgt. King came running over and dropped down in between Ferris and Denny.
"We're moving out", the Sgt stated.
"One klick back the way we came. The LT is afraid we're gonna see some heavy ordinance raining down on us any minute."
With that, the men packed up their gear. Denny took a quick look around at the remnants of the skirmish. The forest was a disaster area. A couple of trees had been cut in half and came down. The ground was littered with fallen branches. The tree bark was etched and scratched everywhere and a thin haze of smoke permeated the air. But the vision that caught his eye the most was the crater that was just in front of him where the enemy grenade went off. It was larger than he expected and smoke was still drifting up from it. It was ghastly, something from the underbelly of hell. Slowly Corporal Denny felt his face tighten and he was aware that a smile was reappearing on his face.
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