Aruba Mad Günther

by T L Yeager

  The door locked on its own and couldn’t be opened from the inside. Even still, Maddie wanted insurance. She wrapped a rusty chain around the handle and hooked it to the stanchion of a shelf around the corner.

  She pat the door of the cooler twice and turned to leave.

  “Now get me to the desert, you old Dutchman,” Maddie said.

  “Yes, lunatic. Practice you will.”

  Geert started the truck and turned north on Sero Colorado, following the road away from popular Baby Beach. When it hooked left back toward Savaneta, Geert picked up an unnamed road that continued north into what appeared to be increasingly arid nothingness. The intersection lacked a sign with the name of the road but there was a touristy plaque telling them that Bachelor’s Beach, Boca Grandi and Grapefield Beach were all this way.

  Improvised dirt roads peeled off to the right as they drove. They ran to the edge of the island and disappeared. Little-known beaches lined this windward side of the island. The sea had an opposite personality here, darker and rougher than the idyllic leeward paradise. Angry waves threatened the stony cliffs that hid the beaches chiseled from the rock below.

  A brown sign announcing the Korrectie Instituut Aruba, caught Maddie’s attention. She looked left and was again reminded of the Arubans’ preference for geometric precision. The lines of the prison ran straight and at right angles to one another.

  “That looks like a shithole,” Maddie said.

  Geert turned his attention to the side window. “They don’t accept lunatics. So no worries.”

  A dust devil swirled in the distance, the vortex of dry sandy air sending cold chills down Maddie’s back. The facility looked lonely and extremely fucking hot. She’d rather die than waste away in there on account of her bad decisions.

  Before long they passed another sign announcing that they’d entered Arikok National Park. White letters on a brown background looked something like the National Park signs in the States.

  A mule slept on the side of the road. It painted a compelling picture with rugged textured hills rising in the background. Almost immediately, the landscape took on a more desert-like appearance. The low-slung bunches of cacti that had dotted the landscape a few miles back, had grown into tall pin cushions. Hardy ground covering plants and clumps of aloe vera filled the space between cacti.

  “There’s a road just ahead that dead ends in a draw. Tourists drive it sometimes but not much else. There’s a cave or something,” Geert said.

  Hills rose on both sides immediately after the turn. The road snaked away from the shore for a mile and then ended at a circle.

  “This is good. The hill there makes for a good backstop.” Maddie pointed out the front windshield. “I’ll drop the drum and then we can drive back out a ways.”

  They both got out and went to the back of the truck. On their way back from the Marine base, they’d secured a rusty fifty-five-gallon drum from a forgotten gas station. Geert helped Maddie lift it from the bed. They stood it up and pushed it back against the fence.

  As they drove away, Maddie turned in her seat. The road veered around a pile of rock that had slipped down the hill years ago. Above it, she could still make out the hilltop that loomed over the drum.

  Maddie tapped Geert on the shoulder. “That should do it.”

  She exited the truck, went to the bed and laid the tailgate down. The weapons had been wrapped in a painter’s drop cloth Geert had stored in the lock boxes running along the sides of the truck bed.

  Maddie slid the blanket onto the tailgate and unwrapped its lethal contents. She picked up the black assault rifle first and ejected the magazine. Next, she uncovered the ammo boxes hidden beneath another cloth and popped the latch on the one labeled 5.56mm. Inside thin cardboard boxes sat in an orderly row. Each box contained three stripper clips, each with ten rounds.

  It had been a while and her fingers had lost the muscle memory associated with loading a mag. In the minutes it took her to load all thirty rounds, Geert followed suit with the Glock. He was on the second clip before Maddie had finished her first.

  “Show-off,” Maddie quipped. Geert paused just long enough for a victory nod.

  Next, Maddie pulled the Accuracy International from the canvas drop cloth. Its desert color had a matte finish, good enough that it would’ve disappeared if she set it on the ground. Accuracy International wasn’t a household name among shooters in the US. The predominant reason for this was because its products were manufactured in England. There were plenty of solid US manufacturers with long range systems. Unlike most material goods, the US had a thing for Made in America when it came to the military and their weapons.

  Internationally, the AI rifles were revered with a sort of mystical fervor. Many nations fielded their snipers with AI models. International sniper competitions were filled with AI shooters, and the weapons system were credited with the longest kills in the Afghan war—a hunting ground where open space offered ample opportunity for real world max range testing. Firing at the resort from across the salt pan would be a cakewalk. Maddie just needed to get acquainted and make sure it was threading half dollar groupings at five hundred yards.

  She pinched the protective plastic off the scope. A black Schmidt and Bender appeared. Her heart skipped a beat. It was the first time she’d thought about the reticle. She shouldered the weapon.

  “Whew.”

  “Mildot or MOA?” Geert asked.

  Maddie lower the rifle. It was heavy, maybe fifteen to twenty pounds unloaded. She looked at Geert and smiled. “You’re a smarter son-of-a-bitch than you let on. You damn Dutchmen are trouble.” She paused a beat. “Mildot, thank God.”

  Maddie loaded three mags with the Lapua Magnum rounds. “I’ll be back,” she said turning to her left. The hill was lower on that side and it provided an unobstructed sight line past the rock slide.

  “Try to keep it down. Not too loud,” Geert said.

  Maddie held an ‘okay’ sign over her head.

  Rocks and gravel filled the road bed with boulders marking the hill. Several were weathered flat over the eons. Maddie scrambled up and found one shaped just enough like a tabletop to work.

  She unfolded the bipod and stretched out on the bare rock. It supported the rifle and her body, except for her sneakers which hung off the edge. She rolled to her side and extracted the phone from her pocket. After launching the calculator app, she set it down on the rock near the trigger.

  Using her right hand, Maddie lifted the bolt action. She slid it back, the even sound of oiled surfaces gliding past one another returning some sense of familiarity. It clunked at the back as the breach opened wide enough for the round at the top of the magazine. A hint of the slick tang wafted up, the gun oil sweet like buttered coconut.

  She pushed the round home, into the chamber, but left the safety on while she made adjustments. Starting with the cheek piece, Maddie fine-tuned the rifle until it fit comfortably. Then she focused on ranging the target.

  Modern snipers are blessed with the simplicity afforded by laser range finders. Maddie had found none in the lockers and Koning said designated soldiers were responsible for managing the equipment. Luckily, the mildot equation was still stuck in her head, like her childhood telephone number. Using the height or width of a target and the mildot measurement, a long-range shooter could accurately estimate the distance to target.

  Maddie looked over the top of the scope. It had been a while since she’d played the range guessing game. For years, it was more a habit than conscious task. Driving in the car or from the window of a building, she’d pick a person or object in the distance to estimate. It was easiest when humans were involved. Different human characteristics such as the face, hands and head become indiscernible at specific ranges. The face can be seen at 100 meters but disappears by 200. At 400 meters, the body appears headless, and so on.

  Oxidation had overwhelmed the 55-gallon-drum many years ago. The auburn flakes served as compelling camouflage in the desert landscape. With t
he naked eye, Maddie could see the circle where they’d turned around. The fence posts and rails where wisps, lines thinner than you get from a sharpened number two pencil. The drum was just a smudge of color variation amidst the sea of brown.

  “Five hundred and fifty meters,” Maddie guessed. She laid her cheek on the stock of the rifle and scanned for the drum with the wide three power magnification of the scope.

  The breadth of the scopes zoom range was beyond anything Maddie had used in the past. Zoomed out, it magnified objects three times their actual size. Ridges on the side of the drum were visible and the rails of the fence were contoured. Maddie turned the adjustment to the full twenty-seven magnification. Peering through the lens again, she felt like she could reach out and scrape the rusty chips flaking from the side of the drum.

  Even better was the fact that the reticle was in the first focal plane of the scope. This allowed the crosshairs and mildots to change in size with the magnification. It was modern technology. The lack of this functionality had long prevented variable power scopes from being adopted for military use. If the reticle didn’t accurately resize with the magnification, then distance estimation was impossible.

  After turning down the magnification, Maddie set about measuring the height of the drum. She ran its top edge through the center of one mildot and held it steady as she assessed its size.

  “One point five,” Maddie said out loud. She lifted her head from the optic and let the rifle rest on the rock. With her left hand, she tapped the calculation into her phone. “Height of the drum is thirty-five inches. Multiply that by the twenty-five point four constant... Then divide by the one point seven-five mildot measurement.” She hit the equal key. “Five hundred and eight meters.”

  Maddie studied the windage and elevation dials on the scope. Both were set to their zero-stops. Assuming a one hundred meter zero and a standard elevation adjustment, Maddie clicked the elevation knob five times to compensate for the distance. Based on the rifle’s reputation, she was skeptical if she needed to make any changes off the zero setting.

  The Lapua Magnum round left the barrel at over nine hundred meters per second. It would remain supersonic way beyond one thousand meters. This wasn’t necessarily a good thing for Maddie. Although the snap of the rifle would be muted from inside the house, the soldiers would hear the supersonic crack of the round as it tore by them on a miss or through them on a hit. Any soldiers in the area would hear the smack of torn flesh and the supersonic wave of the bullet at nearly the same time. The two sounds arriving together would tell them a bullet was the source of the destruction.

  Rounds like the 7.62mm fell below supersonic speed around 600 meters. The benefit is that the bullet impacts and no sonic wave accompanies it. People near the impact are stunned by the spontaneous explosion of gore without anything to associate it with. This hesitation allows the sniper to acquire and hit, one, and sometimes two more targets before enemy combatants sort out what’s happening. Maddie wouldn’t have that luxury.

  Even though she was unfamiliar with Accuracy International rifles, she was keenly aware of the 338 Lapua Magnum round. The Lapua was designed to penetrate body armor at distances beyond ten football fields. It had been adopted by big game hunters to hunt the big five animals in Africa. The round was a beast.

  It would tear through the hot, low density air of Aruba, its trajectory remaining flat over ridiculous distances. With the wind at her back, as it would be in the house, she expected the notorious trade winds to have less effect than one might have imagined when mentioning ‘sniper’ and ‘Aruba’ in the same sentence.

  Maddie lay her cheek back on the adjusted stock and sighted the helpless drum. It had been five years since she pulled a trigger. With the crosshairs resting center of mass, she drew back on the thin strip of metal married to her pointer finger.

  The rifle bucked. A charge of flames and heat jetted at right angles, directed out by the muzzle break. Cupped by the valley, the report ran out and away with tremendous speed.

  Maddie reacquired the target just as the metallic dong rung out. The drum was shrouded in a haze of auburn dust, a black dot marking the hit.

  56

  Surfside Resort, Aruba

  Anas had sounded the fire alarm around 7:30 that morning. This first alarm was to direct the hostages to the website. He’d updated it with a map of the resort that showed numbers for each of the four buildings. A schedule was also posted. The evacuation was to begin at 9 A.M., and he didn’t want it delayed.

  The website instructions were specifically directed to hostages holding a passport from any country besides the United States or Great Britain. Anyone who could prove they were not citizens of those two countries was to be released.

  Each of the four buildings had a time. The schedule showed the first would be cleared beginning at 9 o’clock. The plan was to continue in two hour increments. Building Two at 11 o’clock, Building Three at 1, and Building Four at 3 in the afternoon.

  It was just minutes before nine in the morning. Teams were in motion, moving into position to begin the evacuation. Anas waited to deploy another drone to the airport. This decision was made in part because it was counter to what Fazul wanted. In addition, he waited because he wanted to focus on the evacuation, which he feared might turn into another bloodbath.

  He watched from the comfort of his office as the team started at the twelfth floor of building one. The doors were opened and passports checked one at a time. There looked to be twenty or more hostages standing single file in the first hall.

  Halfway through the line, a call came on the radio. “We’ve got two hostages who claim to have lost their passports.”

  “Tell them to get back in their room, or you’ll shoot them,” Fazul responded.

  They complied.

  The rest disappeared from the hall, moving out of the camera’s eye as they were released to head down. Anas lost them in the stairwell but picked them up as they emerged at the base of the building. A second team of eight soldiers corralled the group until the last of the hostages emerged from the stairwell. The team that had checked the passports accompanied the last hostages out and then transitioned them to the second team. The group was then escorted to the front entrance of the resort and released. They were told to walk to the main road and turn right.

  “Walk down the highway past the mall. Police are waiting there. Anyone who runs in panic will be shot.” That’s what they were told as they were released.

  Soldiers on the roof monitored their progress down LG Smith Boulevard. Anas had them turn the webcam so he could live stream the exodus for the world to see. They’d walk to the edge of the mall, their pace quickening the further they went. Eventually they veered right, off LG Smith Boulevard and into the mall where Aruban police, tucked behind cover and safe from another rogue RPG attack, called them in off the street.

  Why do I not force my opinion when I know I am right? Anas wondered. He had worried that the evacuations would take longer than planned. Just ten minutes had been allotted to clear each floor. Walking the hostages from the stairwell of Building One to LG Smith Boulevard took nearly ten minutes by itself. The soldiers then still had to hurry back to receive the next group.

  Fazul had dictated that it be done one floor at a time. Multiple floors would create a hostage to solider ratio that he felt was dangerous. And so, instead, the team in the building complained of impatience while the one doing the escorting was run as if training for a marathon.

  By the time they released the hostages from the ninth floor, they were already twenty minutes behind schedule.

  It was nearly ten o’clock by the time a fully-charged drone was up and off to the airport. Anas stopped it briefly, hovering above the police to watch as they loaded released hostages onto buses. He’d download that video to the web for all to see.

  From there, it was only seven miles to the airport. The flight took under ten minutes. Using the map on his computer, Anas directed the drone to the center of t
he airport. He stopped it short of the runway and initiated a pirouette to have look at the hangar. As the building panned into view, the connection with the drone was lost. The video feed went blank first, and then a second later, he lost the flight data.

  The drone was preprogramed to handle this situation. It would automatically climb to two thousand feet and begin a return flight home. Anas waited for the connection to reestablish, assuming he’d recapture it once it gained altitude.

  “The evacuation goes well,” Fazul said as he entered the office. “Slow but orderly. They fear for their lives.”

  Anas was staring at the blank screen.

  “Tell me you have good news,” Fazul continued.

  “I need more time Fazul. I’ll call you when I have something.”

  Fazul came over to Anas’s side and leaned down toward the blank screen. “Where is it?”

  “I’ve lost contact.”

  “You said it could cover the island. The airport is only a short distance away.”

  “It made it to the airport, but then I lost it.”

  “Send another.”

  “Dammit, Fazul. Get out! I can’t work with you hovering over my shoulder. It’ll come back on its own.”

  “It better. It’s been hours.” Fazul straightened. Anas could feel him looming above.

  “What have you been doing in here with all the time?” Fazul asked from behind.

  It was yet another dagger. The handle on the office door clicked as Fazul unlocked it. Anas looked back and made eye contact with Isabelle as the door swung open. She was on the floor, playing with a deck of cards.

  “Look, so cute. Like the child you never had, Anas.”

  Anas stood. “I’ve had enough, Fazul. Get out.” He pushed his brother from the door.

  “Thirty minutes. That’s it. Show me video. Otherwise I kill the girl and her father. Then I put a gun to your head while you post it.”