The Outside Man

by Don Bentley

  Over the last several minutes, my eyes had started to adjust to the cabin’s semidarkness. The pile of boxes I had tripped over during Hammer’s passive-aggressive takeoff had slowly resolved into a series of familiar shapes—Pelican cases. Turning, I grabbed the crew chief by the shoulder and pointed toward the cases.

  “What’s in those?” I said.

  He shrugged. “Beats the hell out of me, sir. We’re supposed to be resupplying an Army ODA team. Or we were before we got the call to grab you.”

  Pelican cases destined for an Army Special Forces Operational Detachment Alpha, or A-team. Maybe I had faith as big as the proverbial mustard seed after all.

  Nodding my thanks, I shuffled over to the boxes and popped open the top case. What was nestled in the foam cutouts looked like my Christmas and birthday presents all rolled into one. An HK G28 rifle. The sniper system was reliable, accurate, and fired the heavier 7.62mm round, ideal for Afghanistan’s longer-engagement distances. It was also semiautomatic, which meant the shooter didn’t have to manually cycle the bolt between each round—a necessity for the urban, target-rich environment of Iraq. For these reasons, the weapon had been Frodo’s distance-shooting rifle of choice.

  Even after he’d been detailed to serve as my bodyguard, Frodo had refused to let his hard-earned sniper skills slip away. As such, he’d insisted on spending time on thousand-meter-plus ranges whenever possible. And since he was no longer with his Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, brethren, the task of serving as his spotter fell to yours truly.

  To be fair, I liked shooting as much as the next Ranger. Accordingly, Frodo switched off spotting duties with me frequently, taking the time to impart the mystical wisdom of long-distance shooting during the process. I’d always been pretty good with a rifle, but after five years with a level-one Unit sniper for a tutor, my skills had taken a decidedly more deadly turn.

  Reaching into the Pelican case, I grabbed the upper receiver. A Schmidt & Bender scope was mounted to the Picatinny rail, indicating that the sniper who owned this long gun had already zeroed the optic. I turned back to the Pelican case and found a torque wrench prefit with a sprocket nestled next to the upper receiver’s foam cutouts. After sliding the sprocket over the nuts attaching the scope, I tightened each down, ensuring the optic was securely mounted.

  As I tightened the nuts, I noticed two blue paint markings on the upper receiver that corresponded to two additional markings on the Picatinny rail. This made me smile. It was an old sniper’s trick. The markings ensured that the shooter remounted the optic to the exact same spot after each time the scope was removed so the rifle could be cleaned. Since the markings lined up perfectly, I was betting that the rifle had been zeroed to within an inch at a hundred meters.

  I didn’t know the mystery sniper’s identity, but I had a feeling he and Frodo would have gotten along just fine.

  I fit the upper and lower receivers together, the familiar weight comforting in my hands. The rifle certainly wasn’t zeroed to my eye, but it should get the job done at one hundred meters or less. Now I just needed to figure out what in the hell I was going to shoot.

  “Three minutes, Matt,” Pom Pom said. “The antiaircraft radar strobes are pulsing more frequently. We need to get this show on the road.”

  Reaching into the Pelican case again, I grabbed two twenty-round magazines. I was preparing to slip one into my tactical vest when I noticed the rounds inside were tracers. Forget Frodo. I was going to give this sniper a hug if we ever met. Inserting the magazine into the magazine well, I pulled the rifle’s charging handle to the rear and released it, watching as the bolt stripped a round from the magazine.

  “Pom Pom,” I said as I slid the second magazine into my chest rig, “did you ever fly helicopters?”

  “No—fixed wing all the way.”

  “Hammer—what about you?”

  “Nope.”

  Well, shit.

  “No worries,” I said, despite the fact that I was extremely worried. “Let me put this to you a different way: I need to bring down that helicopter without killing my wife. What would happen if I shot the fuel tank?”

  “Bad idea,” Pom Pom said. “A rifle bullet isn’t going to cause the tank to explode, but most fuel cells are self-sealing. Besides, even if you do manage to puncture it, a rifle bullet isn’t big enough to drain the fuel anywhere near fast enough. You need to get that helicopter on the ground. Now.”

  “What about the engine?” Hammer said.

  “Come again?” I said.

  “The engine. Even though that bird has two, most civilian models are underpowered. Take out one of the engines, and the pilot will have to land. Immediately.”

  “That’s the spirit, Hammer,” I said, extending the bipod mounted beneath the rifle’s slim barrel. “I’m gonna take the shot from the starboard door, so I need you to come to an echelon-left formation. Put the helicopter at your two o’clock at a distance of one hundred meters. Then crab your nose to the left and hold her steady. That’ll give me the widest firing arc.”

  “Wait,” Pom Pom said. “It’s not that easy. We’ll need to rotate the engine nacelles up and out of the way so that you won’t shoot through our proprotors. That means slowing down to about one hundred knots.”

  “Sounds like more pilot shit to me,” I said, clipping myself to the airframe with a cargo strap the crew chief handed me. “Make it happen.”

  I knew what I was asking wasn’t exactly easy, but dwelling on the difficulty wouldn’t bring us any closer to getting Laila back. The pilots needed to do what they did best. So did I. End of story. Every second spent talking instead of doing just got Laila and her captors one second closer to the advancing Iranian horde.

  To their credit, the pilots didn’t argue. Instead, they delved into a terse conversation among themselves and the Osprey’s two crew chiefs to which I paid no attention. Not because I didn’t care, but because I couldn’t add anything of value. Instead, I hastily constructed a semistable shooting platform at the starboard door and began to breathe.

  Distance shooting really was as much an art as a science, but a good portion of it came down to body mechanics. In other words, the shooter needed to hold as perfectly still as possible while pulling the trigger rearward as evenly as possible. Any unintended movement by the shooter imparted unwanted changes to the bullet’s flight path. With this in mind, snipers paid an almost obsessive amount of attention to their respiration and heart rate.

  Edging behind the rifle, I welded my cheek to the buttstock. Then I closed my eyes, imagining myself on the range with Frodo spotting over my shoulder. I blocked out everything, the rage, the terror, the heartache, everything but Frodo’s steady baritone.

  Count backward from five. Concentrate on slowing your breath with each number. Five . . .

  I was dimly aware of the Osprey slowing as the nacelles rotated up, taking the proprotors with them.

  . . . your arms and legs are floating. . . . Four . . . your jaw is soft. . . . Three . . .

  One hundred knots’ worth of cold night air poured in the open door, buffeting my shirt.

  . . . your breathing is slow and even. . . . Two . . . the rifle is part of your body. . . . One . . .

  Opening my eyes, I watched the night sky float past my optic. At first, I saw nothing but stars and empty space. Then the helicopter’s shadowy outline swam into view.

  “Tally target,” I said, turning the circular knob mounted to the optic until a cherry red dot materialized in the center of the scope’s etched lines. Without night-vision optics, I was going to have to do this the old-fashioned way. Using the red dot as a visual reference, I shifted my body until the crimson spot was centered on the glowing exhaust of the helicopter’s left engine.

  My stomach clenched as the helicopter rose and fell in my crosshairs. Too much motion. Little pockets of unseen turbulence were sending both air
craft bobbing up and down unpredictably. No way to get an accurate shot.

  Remember—aim small, miss small.

  Frodo’s admonishment resonated. Dialing up the scope’s magnification, I targeted a specific aspect of the engine exhaust—the right lower quadrant. The inherent motion was still there, but because I was focusing small, the ups and downs seemed less abrupt. Less random. I could compensate for this. I could make the shot.

  “Range to target?” I said.

  “Two hundred meters,” Pom Pom said.

  “Too far. Close to within one hundred, and then clear me hot.”

  “Roger. Stand by.”

  I could hear the tension in Pom Pom’s voice, but I couldn’t dwell on it. I had my own job to do.

  The aircraft vibrated as Pom Pom fed more power to the engines. Then . . .

  “Eighty-five meters,” Pom Pom said. “Cleared hot. Cleared hot.”

  “Roger,” I said, moving the fire selector switch from safe to single with my thumb. I placed the pad of my index finger on the trigger, waited for the natural pause between breaths, and began pressing the trigger rearward.

  Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast. Fast is deadly.

  “Matt—wait!”

  Pom Pom’s voice cut through my concentration with the subtlety of a submarine’s dive Klaxon. I jerked my finger away from the trigger like I’d touched a hot stove.

  “What?” I said.

  “Make sure you fire straight up the rear of the engine exhaust. You don’t want to accidentally clip the main rotor.”

  Oh, sweet baby Jesus.

  “I have to shoot it straight up the ass end?” I said.

  “Yes,” Pom Pom said. “Otherwise you risk hitting the transmission, hydraulic pumps, or any of the other things that will transition the helicopter into a rock.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Anything else I should worry about?”

  “Yes, the radar strobes are no longer intermittent. We’re out of time.”

  I adjusted my hold so that the bullet would transition straight through the helicopter’s engine. Then I concentrated again on my breathing until I lost myself in the shooter’s zen, repeating Frodo’s mantra as I pressed the trigger rearward.

  Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast. Fast is—

  The shot broke, and the rifle kicked into my shoulder.

  The crimson tracer arced through the sky, passing below the engine exhaust and into empty space.

  Low.

  Damn it.

  Elevating my hold slightly, I started the shooting sequence again. The shot broke; the tracer passed through the exhaust.

  Nothing changed.

  What the actual fuck?

  I fired five more times in rapid succession, each tracer disappearing into the glowing void. As the fifth shot broke, a ball of fire belched from the engine exhaust. For a moment or two, the helicopter continued flying normally. Then the nose dipped, and the aircraft started a ponderous descent, thick smoke trailing from its left engine.

  “Got him,” I said, tracking the helicopter’s progress with my optic. “Got him, Pom Pom.”

  “Hell yeah!” Pom Pom said in her best cheerleader voice. “What next?”

  “Follow it down.”

  SIXTY-TWO

  Up until now, I’d thought I’d known a thing or two about terror. But I hadn’t. Watching a helicopter carrying my wife plummet toward the desert floor was terror incarnate. I stared, my heart in my throat, as the helo slowly lost altitude. Then it flared and disappeared in a cloud of brown.

  “Pom Pom,” I said, “did you—”

  “She’s down safe, Matt,” Pom Pom said. “Down safe.”

  Once again, the proverbial mustard seed had come through. Now it was time to transition to a role much more suited to me—the Angel of Death.

  “You carrying fast ropes?” I said, turning to the closest crew chief.

  “Roger, sir.”

  “Get one ready.”

  “The sixty or ninety?”

  Sixty was on the tip of my tongue, but I stopped to think. Fast roping looks cool. In fact, from a recruiting standpoint, fast roping ranks right up there with helocasting or HAHO jumps for awesome pictures. After all, what’s not to like about sliding down a rope beneath a hovering helicopter?

  Everything is the answer you’re looking for.

  First off, I was terrified of heights in the soul-crushing, panic-inducing manner small children reserved for the unseen monsters lurking beneath their beds. But that was just the tip of the iceberg. Fast roping was hard on the body in a way that even parachuting wasn’t. The average combat-loaded Ranger carries about eighty pounds of gear, counting his rucksack and weapon. But if you were one of the lucky few who got to hump specialty equipment like the radios, mortar base plates, or machine guns, that eighty pounds turned into one hundred plus pretty fast.

  Now, imagine sliding down a rope with one hundred pounds on your back, using only your hands and feet for brakes. Suddenly it doesn’t sound like quite so much fun, does it? That’s why no Ranger has ever asked a crew chief for the ninety-foot rope. Ninety feet of rope means a third more time sliding for your life. This in turn means a third more friction on your hands as you try to slow your controlled fall.

  Not to mention a third likelier chance of plummeting to your death.

  But tonight things were different. For one, I wasn’t combat loaded. Two, since I was outmanned at least three to one, four or five to one counting the pilots, I needed the element of surprise for as long as possible. So far, the Iranians didn’t seem to know we were behind them. But that would all change if the CV-22 came to a hover and browned everything out.

  “Pom Pom,” I said, eyeing the thick lengths of rope, “will we get a dust cloud if we come to a hover at sixty feet?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “What about ninety?”

  “Probably. But it won’t be nearly as noticeable.”

  Ninety it was.

  “All right,” I said, helping the crew chief drag the hefty rope bag to the edge of the platform, “here’s how this is going to go. Come to a hover behind the helicopter. I’m going to fast rope out. Once I’m off the rope, pick up an orbit and give me some cover with your .50-cal ramp gun. Got it?”

  “How do we know when to get you?” Pom Pom said.

  “That’ll be easy. As soon as you see me with my wife, come in hot. If any of those fuckers are still alive, smoke ’em.”

  “Roger that,” Pom Pom said. “Coming to a hover. Ropes, ropes, ropes!”

  The crew chief kicked the rope bag out the platform door. Next he leaned into space, checking to ensure the rope had made it all the way to the ground by verifying that the green IR chem light affixed to the end was horizontal, not vertical. Then he turned and slapped me on the shoulder.

  “Go, go, go.”

  I cinched my VTAC sling tight, securing the HK to my back, and reached for the rope. This was when I encountered my first problem—I had no gloves.

  “I need gloves,” I yelled to the crew chief.

  “What?”

  “Gloves,” I said, pointing at his hands.

  “Shit,” the crew chief said. “I don’t have any for fast-roping. But you can have these.”

  He pulled off his Nomex aviator gloves and tossed them to me. I seated them with two quick yanks. Before I could think about the pain that would come next, I caught the rope, wrapped my feet around the length of bucking nylon, and slid into space.

  SIXTY-THREE

  A word about gloves. Not all are created equal. For instance, the gloves used to shield the hands of fast-roping Rangers were the equivalent size and thickness of welders’ gloves. They weren’t designed for dexterity. They were designed to keep the friction generated during the slide for life from blistering your hands.

  In compari
son, aviator gloves were designed to protect their wearer from a flash fire while still offering the nimbleness a pilot or a crew chief needed to action all the magical buttons and levers that kept their aircraft aloft. To put my dilemma in even simpler terms, I was grabbing a scalding pot while using a paper towel instead of a pot holder.

  The results were just as predictable, not to mention unpleasant.

  Even without a rucksack and extraneous gear to weigh me down, ninety feet on a rope was a long slide. About halfway down, I could feel heat radiating through my thin aviator gloves. By three-quarters, I was gritting my teeth against the pain. But it was still too much. With about fifteen feet to go, I had to choose between blistering my hands and stopping to allow the friction-generated heat to dissipate.

  Option one meant potentially affecting my ability to shoot. Option two would cede the element of surprise. Neither option was good, so I did what Rangers always do in situations like this.

  I improvised.

  Clenching my jaw against the pain, I slid for another half a second, trying to shrink fifteen feet to somewhere north of eight. Then I let go.

  And fell.

  Next to my chute not opening, falling off a fast rope has always been one of my biggest nightmares. Then again, personal phobias tend to lose their potency when trained killers have the woman you love. I was in the air long enough to realize that I was falling, which in turn meant that I’d let go closer to twelve feet than eight.

  Then I hit the ground.

  I executed a PLF, or parachute landing fall, trying to dissipate some of the kinetic energy. Unfortunately, even the outstanding men and women who taught at the Army’s airborne school couldn’t have imagined this scenario. My knees were bent, but the jarring collision still sent a flash of pain the length of my spine. Based on previous experience, I’d just herniated a disc or three. But that rather unpleasant sensation quickly took a backseat to the feeling of red-hot nails punching through my kneecap. Apparently, my chosen landing zone was littered with stones, and my right knee had just found a rather large one.