manhandles black beard

“I have you dead to rights motherfucker!” said Sprinter. “Put your-“ I didn’t let him finish. I’d waited until the HK barrel wavered two inches to the right, then dropped to my knees, snapping my hands onto the unconscious body beside me, grabbing hold of each side of Black Beard’s kevlar body armor, and rolling left, pulling the body over the top of me. The first shots exploded into the night. Wide right, as I’d expected. I rolled once and came up onto my knees, yanking Black Beard’s body up in front of me. I now had two layers of Level 3 tactical armor and a human torso between me and the HK.

The HK416 uses a 5.56 x 45mm NATO cartridge, the same one used to kill Osama Bin Laden. By design, the 60-grain lead core tends to yaw inside soft tissue and fragment at the crimping groove. That makes it very good at shredding people’s guts, but very bad at penetrating all the way through an armored body. Keeping my head ducked low behind Black Beard’s shoulder blades, I charged. Sprinter fired the HK. One, two, three, four quick rounds. I felt two of them shudder into Black Beard’s center mass, maybe killing him. Neither penetrated all the way through. I lifted my head and peeked over Black Beard’s left shoulder. I was ten feet from Sprinter and closing fast. With a bellowing roar I shoved Black Beard’s body forward. As I’ve said, flinching is involuntary. Sprinter yelped and dodged to his right to avoid Black Beard’s flying body.
-Sledge vs. The Labyrinth, pg. 154