Barnes was following orders, but he always took that extra second to place his shots. Sure, you could blast away in close quarters, but this was at a bit of range, and accuracy counted even with a shotgun. It wasn't sawed off and it had a limited spread. But he was there on the assault, the adrenaline surging through him; when he saw a Cong move, he swiveled and fired.

Fire, rack, fire, rack, fire, rack. There was something solid and reassuring about the way the shotgun chambered shells. He wasn't sure if he killed anything, he wasn't looking to see if the rounds hit, because he was too busy avoiding enemy fire after letting a round off.

That close, the Cong were taken off their feet, rattled by the intense sound of so many weapons firing at them, a withering amount of fire scything through the jungle foliage. Even if 5.56 and #4 buck weren't the most powerful of rounds, the volume of fire, and the accumulated noise were enough to put them off their movement; they'd caught them as they were trying to move and that was when any group was most vulnerable, as they tried to move to attack in one direction, only to be caught on the flank. They'd committed and were caught on the wrong foot.

There was a momentary lull in the fighting, or maybe it was just plain over that damn fast, but Barnes was already in cover behind a tree stump and putting rounds into the magazine; he knew his supply was becoming limited, and that was a concern -- he didn't have a backup weapon.

The yell for cease fire couldn't come soon enough, but then they moved forward to check the bodies. "Sarge, maybe we take the hats, blend in a bit. We can always get rid of them if friendlies get in the area, but right now it's our asses hangin' out in the goddamn breeze here." For his part, Barnes was grabbing a couple Cong grenades, and...

"Well, I'll be a sonofabitch." Some of the Cong were armed with AK and SKS's, but one of them were carrying what sort of looked like a grease gun, but wasn't. Still, it was light and handy enough to carry with his shotgun, and there were a couple ammo pouches for it. Buck wasn't looking to be carrying a huge pack of looted equipment through the jungle. 

Mindful of Bobby's need, he stripped a revolver and a canteen off another dead Cong and found his way back, "Charlie's gun and charlie's water. Drink up, brotha," he told Bobby after he popped the cork and got some down his own throat. 

He was tempted to light a newport, but there probably wouldn't be time to smoke it anyway.