Undeclared War

by Dennis Chalker

  “Sounds good to me,” Max said, “but I’ll take the hook and line anyway.”

  “We’ll drop you in the area of this railroad bridge underpass a half-hour before sundown,” Reaper said indicating the bridge on the print. “Under the bridge is dark as hell, no one will be able to see us from the target. Sundown is at about 2045 hours tonight. That should give you a good hour of light to make your way past the Factory to this field where the billboard is. You can scout out the target from as close as you feel comfortable, but remember, the bouncers are right there at the front door. They’ll put the bum’s rush on you if you try and go by the eastern side of the building.”

  “No problem,” Max said, “I’ll work my way over to the field and set up my nest for the night at the bottom of the billboard or at whatever cover looks best. The only problem I might run into is if another homeless guy is already there. If the bouncers see me, I’ll only be another guy looking for a place to sleep. By the looks of these bridge overpasses here on the highway,” Max pointed to the highway intersection and ramps just to the south and east of the Factory, “there’s probably already a fair-sized homeless population up under them.”

  “We didn’t see any during our OP,” Reaper said, “but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there. So you set up as you see fit. But I want you up in the billboard by 2200 hours. That’s well enough after dark for you not to be seen and you can relax in place a bit.

  “We’ll use your truck for the insertion vehicle. Keith’s got a camper top behind the shop that we can mount up and use for moving you and your shopping cart into position without being seen. Bear and I can remain in the camper until we insert at 0230 hours. The raid itself is going to go down at 0300 hours.

  “Bear and I will leave the camper here in the neighborhood just to the southwest of the target. There’s almost no traffic to speak of in that area during the day, and in the middle of the night we’ll probably be the only ones walking around at all.”

  “So you think,” Ben spoke up. “What about gang-bangers or just street punks?”

  “If we run into any,” Reaper said, “it’ll be a bad thing—for them. Both Bear and I will have suppressed weapons if anyone wants to push the question of our being on their turf.”

  The men around the table went silent for a moment. The situation was an extremely serious one. Reaper’s comment did more to drive that point home than anything that had been said all day. Somberly, they continued listening to Reaper’s plan.

  “There are a number of large chimneys and ventilation stacks on the south side of the building. Several of them near the southwestern corner have reinforcing rods bolted to the outside of the stacks; some of them run right up along the corners. For Bear and me, those will be like a stairway to the roof.”

  “Yeah,” Bear said, “a stairway with no landings—no place to stop and rest or look around. How high did you say that roof was?”

  “About 120 feet,” Reaper said. “We’ll have two loops of line with each of us. If we need to rest or stay secured, we’ll just wrap them around the pipe or rods with a prussic knot and stick a foot in the loop.”

  “Okay,” Bear said. “I only wanted to see if you had accounted for my frail old bones.”

  “Right,” Reaper said with a grin. “You’ll outlast me.”

  Turning back to the photo printout, Reaper didn’t notice the lopsided smile that Bear had on his face. He also missed the sharp look that passed between Bear and Ben MacKenzie. Whatever it was that the two men shared, they weren’t willing to talk about it just then.

  “So we go in from the roof and make the hit on the admin offices,” Reaper said. “It should take us about a half-hour to forty-five minutes to make the climb and get onto the roof. That puts us on the target at 0330–0345 hours. We penetrate the building and search the offices. Anyone there, we secure them and continue the search. If we recover the hostages or Arzee is one of the prisoners, we leave by the stairs. If not, we extract the same way we came in with all the intelligence material we can find. Any questions?”

  “I’m going to remain with the extraction vehicle?” Ben asked.

  “Yes,” Reaper said, “that will give you the fastest means of pulling us out of the area if the shit hits the fan.

  “If we do have to abandon the target,” Reaper continued, “our emergency rally point is here,” he pointed to the print, “just north of the railroad bridge where we dropped off Max. There is no contact with the police, and as little contact as possible with anyone around the target. Guns are tight on this op, the rules of engagement have no slop in them.”

  All the men nodded their assent with what Reaper had just said. There could not be any danger to innocent bystanders on this operation. It was going to be as surgical a strike as anything they had ever done in the military. And the personal costs could be higher than any of them were willing to pay.

  Speaking up, Bear broke the uncomfortable silence that followed Reaper’s pronouncement. “You know, if we throw some mud on the camper and pickup, dab a little rust-red or primer-colored paint on it, it’ll look just like a jarhead’s paradise. No one will even want to look at it with that peeling paint it already has.”

  “Hey,” Max said, “don’t dis my truck, man. And don’t get that damned silver paint GM puts on their trucks. I’ve seen it peel a bunch of times—so that’s not my fault. She may look a bit worn, but my baby’s mechanically as sound as anything on the road.”

  “Just as long as it’s dependable,” Ben said.

  “As anything on the road,” Max replied, “I’d stake my life on it.”

  “I think you are,” Ben said.

  The warriors had no further questions about the basic plan Reaper had laid out. Everyone now had his own preparations to go through to get ready for the operation. Only the fact that they had all gone though extensive training and had a wide pool of experience between them even allowed for the possibility of a raid on the Factory being staged at such a short notice.

  Reaper continued to go over everything they had in the way of intelligence to see if he had missed anything. Deckert left in his van to shop for some communications gear. Ben MacKenzie had brought a variety of medical gear in the trunk of his car, the tools of his everyday trade as an emergency medical technician, and was checking over his trauma bag.

  Bullet wounds were not something anyone liked to think about at any time, and especially right then, but Ben made certain to be prepared to deal with anything that he could. His skills as a combat medic were considerable and he felt that he could prevent anyone on the team from having to answer the uncomfortable questions a hospital would ask regarding the treatment of gunshot and other wounds.

  For Bear, he dealt with the tools that made gunshot wounds. Behind the house and along the side of the shop, a measured range had been laid out for test firing and sighting in guns. Carrying all of the weapons both he and Reaper would be using, Bear headed to the range. Before they left for the op, Reaper would check out his own hardware himself, firing the weapons to refresh their characteristics to him.

  Bear had it in mind to check out all of the guns at once to make sure that there weren’t any mechanical problems at all. If any glitches arose in the guns, he still had time to fix the problems before they left for the op.

  For his own primary weapon, Bear had picked the Jackhammer shotgun. The short, nasty piece of firepower appealed to him. And using the gun on the people who had gone to such lengths to get them just seemed fair. The ten-round capacity of the shotgun combined with its cyclic firing rate of 240 rounds per minute made it a very powerful and compact chunk of firepower.

  For a secondary weapon, Bear would carry the Beretta 92-F with the Whispertech suppressor. Reaper would be using the H&K MP5K-PDW as his primary weapon That was a chunk of hardware that had always been a favorite of his back during his active Team days. Instead of a sidearm, Reaper would pack the Serbu Super-Shorty in the SKT thigh holster. The compact little pump-gun would be loaded with the
Mark II beanbag rounds in case Reaper had to deal with someone he’d rather not kill.

  There were only three ammunition cassettes ready for the Jackhammer that Bear could take with him on the op. If he had to get into a firefight, the thirty rounds of 12-gauge ammo would have to be enough for him. Switching cassettes in the Jackhammer was easy and fast. But removing the fired casings and then reloading the cassettes themselves was a slow process. All of the cassettes would be loaded with magnum Winchester OO buckshot, a heavy combat load Bear knew well.

  This model of the Jackhammer would fire three-inch magnum 12-gauge ammunition. Deckert had told him that the other guns, the ones that had been taken, would only fire the standard 12-gauge shells. The fifteen .32-caliber pellets in these three-inch, 12-gauge loads could deal with people, as well as the locks or hinges of any secured doors they had to pass through. Reaper had a set of lock picks, and the skills to use them. But there could easily come a time during the operation where speed would be a lot more important than silence—such as if they had to blast their way out of the place with Reaper’s wife and son in tow.

  In the event that they ran into something really resistant, Deckert had some other Law Enforcement ammo from the same MK Ballistic Systems people who made the beanbag rounds he was using. The ammo was QB-slugs, antivehicle/antimaterial tactical ammo. As near as Bear could tell, the rounds were loaded with plastic-coated gray steel slugs. Deckert said they would tear through nearly anything, especially a steel fire door inside a factory. Firing those rounds through the Serbu Super-Shorty would not be fun, their recoil would be terrific.

  Neat stuff all in all. They didn’t have a lot of material to work with, yet no one could have found fault with Deckert’s selflessness. He generously offered up everything he had available, despite the fact that the shop didn’t quite have the same size budget as the U.S. Navy.

  As Bear approached the shooting bench, he almost stepped on Max Warrick, who lay prone on the ground. Either the ex-Marine scout-sniper hadn’t been shooting, or the ammunition and suppressor on his rifle constituted the best combination Bear had ever “not” heard.

  Max had the TTR-700 rifle assembled and laid out across the rolled-up carrying case as a rest. As Bear stood directly behind Max, the TTR-700 quietly put out a round of EBR subsonic Thumper ammunition downrange. The bullet “clanged” into the steel gong target Max had set up behind the paper target holder. The shot had been incredibly quiet, almost undetectable as a suppressed gunshot.

  The ringing of the target was much louder than the shot had been. After leaning over and looking through a sixty-power spotting scope he had set up on a small tripod next to him, Max carefully jotted down a note in the data book he had lying out open on the ground. After he had finished writing, Max turned and looked at Bear standing behind him.

  “You need the range?” Max asked.

  “Not if you still do,” Bear said. “How much longer will you be?”

  “I’m just about done here,” Max replied. “I’m only confirming the final zero of the scope with this subsonic ammunition. A few rounds of 168-grain match ammunition to confirm where it hits and I’ll be done.”

  “Why are you going to use the louder match ammo if that quiet-ass subsonic is so good?” Bear asked as he set his burden of weapons down on the range table.

  “Might need the range of the 168-grain on the op,” Max said. “This EBR Thumper stuff is tits, it fires to about one minute of angle, only half an inch bigger than the best groups from that Federal Gold Medal match ammo. But it has the trajectory of a thrown brick—all subsonic ammo does. With a one hundred-meter zero, the bullet is hitting the exact point of aim each shot with the Thumper ammo. With that zero, I have a drop of fifteen and a half inches low at 150 meters. The drop is forty-two inches low at 200 meters.”

  Settling back behind his weapon, Max snugged it into his shoulder. “According to the scale on that aerial photo you guys came up with,” Max said, “the shortest range I’ll have to deal with from the billboard to the southeast corner of the building will be 122 meters. The longest range will be 165 meters to the far northeast corner. Since I’ll be so high up in the air on the billboard, my aim into the sixth floor will be a flat shot.”

  Raising his head, Max slipped several 168-grain supersonic match rounds from a ten-round red plastic holder into the magazine of the opened bolt action of the rifle. He closed the bolt and chambered a round in the rifle. He fired a shot that had a much louder, sharper “crack” to its report than the soft thuds of the EBR subsonic. The “clang” from the target sounded much louder when the bullet impacted an instant later.

  “Why the steel target?” Bear asked.

  “In case I have to put a round into somebody,” Max said as he looked up with a blank expression on his face. “Deckert said that he could make a new barrel for this rifle within a couple of hours, and destroy the old one completely. As long as I police up my fired brass either here or at the target, there won’t be anything to use as forensic evidence to connect this gun to this shop. That steel gong makes sure that there’s not going to be any fired bullets laying around that could be matched up to something the police find.”

  “It’s a weird mission having to look out for the legal end,” Bear said thoughtfully.

  “Yeah, it is,” Max said as he settled back down behind his weapon. With a smooth, practiced motion, he eased back the bolt of the rifle and caught the ejected empty brass from his last shot before it sprang from the receiver.

  “From what I can tell, Reaper’s between a rock and a hard place,” Max said as he looked at the brass cartridge case he held between his fingers.

  “I figure that I wouldn’t be around if it wasn’t for him and what he did for me back in Storm,” Max continued. “He has whatever help I can give him. If it takes a big chunk of my time afterwards because of some legal bullshit—so be it.”

  The ex-sniper punctuated his comment with another shot. The muffled crack of the bullet, immediately followed by another loud clang from the steel gong, took less than a second. The deformed slug fell to the ground among the others that had been fired that day.

  “I think I’ll just wait until you’re done,” Bear said thoughtfully. “Maybe I should use that same steel target.”

  “Maybe,” Max agreed.

  As Max finished up with his weapons, Bear drew out the Jackhammer from its case. The gun looked like something from a science fiction movie but was reasonably light and easy to handle. He had one cassette locked in place in the weapon and was ready to fire. Deckert had told Bear that the new Jackhammer had been test-fired and operated properly. But Bear wanted to familiarize himself with the firing characteristics of the very odd gun.

  “Okay, Bear,” Max said as he got up from his firing position, “the range is all yours.”

  “Great,” Bear said and he stood a little to the side of where Max had been. The Jackhammer didn’t eject fired cases. The ammunition stayed in the chambers of the cassette through the firing cycle. With no ballistic marks being left on shotgun pellets when they were fired, he didn’t have to worry about leaving traceable projectiles lying about. So Bear just tossed an empty can downrange as a target. Before the can hit the ground and bounced, Bear snapped the Jackhammer up to his shoulder and pulled the trigger.

  Boom…Boom…Boom roared out as Bear fired a three-round burst in under one second. Gouts of dirt erupted into the air as the shot loads smashed into the backstop. The empty can was nowhere to be seen—it had almost disappeared when the first swarm of buckshot smashed into it. Even Bear was startled by the power and sound of the Jackhammer. Max just stood there for a second, stunned.

  “I think you got it, Bear,” Max said.

  “Yeah, it does look that way,” Bear said with a big, wide grin across his face. “You know, I think I may like this gun.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Preparations for the operation moved forward rapidly and smoothly—a reflection on the level of professionalism of ever
yone involved. Reaper wanted the team ready to launch at 1900 hours. That would give them time to transport to the area, including a cushion in case something went wrong, something as simple as bad traffic. Reaper wanted to put Max and his gear on the street by 2015 hours at the latest.

  It had been an incredible rush to get everything together. When the preparations were done and they stood ready to go, there was plenty of time to do one final briefing and a brief-back. For now Reaper declared them good to go, with only the final details to be worked out.

  Deckert had proven himself more than capable, even without the use of his legs. He had almost literally stripped the shelves of their fledgling company to make certain that they all had what they needed for the mission. When the gear he wanted turned out to be something they didn’t have, he simply went out and bought the stuff. Reaper knew he owed a deep debt to these men. Not only did they risk a lot, including their freedom, to help him get his family back, some of them had emptied their wallets out to pay for it.

  Some of the setup for equipment had just been funny. For the op they would employ the weirdest insertion platform any of them had ever even heard of before. Max’s pickup truck had been fitted up with a well-used camper shell that Deckert had behind the shop building. Keith had said that someone years back had given him the camper as a deposit on a high-level gun that the guy never came back for. After a few years had passed, he considered the camper abandoned and thus his property.

  The only trouble with the camper was the fact that it had been up on cinder blocks and the lifting jacks had been torn off years ago when the camper fell over during a windstorm. Watching two SEALs, a Marine, and an Air Force PJ trying to lift the camper onto the pickup truck would have been a good video for one of those “funniest moments” shows.