by L. J. Martin
But there's no answer. I drive the perimeter of the section and park in the grove of box elders, ditch the pizza coveralls in the back and trade them for white snow gear. I load up a backpack with water, my radio, ammo, and strap on my binocs with their hug-the-chest strap, my battle rattle belt, thigh holster and scabbard, then grab my combat helmet—it's black, which is okay in the darkness—with its tiny LED headlamp, attach its night vision scope and sling the .308 over one shoulder. I carry the M4 but don't bother to turn on the muzzle-mounted combat light. The headlamp is enough, even though it's dark as hell as the moon is not yet up. In a few seconds, I'm at the broken-down section of the barbwire fence and striding toward the out-of-place cottonwood on the crest of the hill, where I have a five-hundred-yard clear field of fire.
But it looks like this recon is for intel only, as I'm not about to start a war with a couple of dozen guys, particularly guys armed with Uzi's, AK's, and God only knows what else.
It's a good half hour to my planned emplacement, but it's as good as I remember. I clear a foot of snow off a fallen foot-and-a-half-diameter cottonwood, stomp the snow down behind it and arrange my gear so I have easy access. In a few minutes, I hope I'm a one-man army, even though I'd planned to have someone flanking these bad guys, and equally well armed. But I guess that's not to be.
My last piece of business is to tune my handheld to the channel matching that of the transmitter and delicate microphone in the teddy bear, engage the recording app on my iPhone, set it next to the radio, and sit back to listen and record the events of the evening. While I'm doing so, I focus the night vision binocs and then the scope on the SASS to the general distance of the buildings.
The first words I hear are a little distant and muted, but I swear the voice says, "Kill them one at a time until they talk."
I have a pair of ear buds in my pack, dig them out and plug them into the radio. That kills the speaker and consequently the ability to record, but I have to be able to hear.
It seems there's a loud murmur and I can't make anything out. Then a gunshot heard over the radio about blows my eardrums out.
I whip the ear buds off and rub my ears, then refit them to hear a guy screaming, "Get the fucking bitches outside. OUTSIDE! You're shooting holes in the fucking walls and if a stray one hits the wrong thing in the lab, we'll all be ground meat. Drag that fucking body out of here."
I hunker down and glue the binocs to my eyes. Even close up it's hard to know exactly what you're viewing through night vision equipment. As figures begin to appear, walking to my side of the outside of the huts, I can't tell if they're men, or women, or even armed, but I can tell there's more than a dozen human beings.
Then I see one small figure sandwiched between two larger ones, its arms seemingly over the shoulders of those flanking. They fling it aside. It crumples into a snow bank and is still.
The body the guy wanted taken outside.
It's too damn cold to take a rest in the snow.
Then to my surprise, five more of the figures are lined up, then are forced down to their knees with large hands on much smaller shoulders.
I get a very cold feeling up my spine, even colder than the weather dictates. I can't believe I'm seeing what I think is about to happen.
Grabbing up the SASS, I bring it among the dozen figures. Just as I see one stride to the rear of those kneeling, flame leaps from a handgun he's holding. One of the kneeling figures crumples, and the roar of the shot snaps through the branches of the cottonwood under which I'm positioned.
The game—the rules of engagement, have changed.
28
I'd decided I wasn't about to engage two dozen well-armed guys, but they left me no choice.
I'm probably fucked, but not before I fuck up a few of them. Mama didn't teach me to mistreat women, much less allow someone else to do so, and much much less allow someone to kill them.
I center the crosshairs on the shooter, take a breath, hold it and squeeze. The SASS bucks in my cradle, the guy is blown back, and others all turn facing my way. The suppressor makes the SASS almost impossible to hear at two hundred yards, much less five hundred, so they have no idea where the shot came from.
Those who'd been on their knees are up and running away from the huts, into the snowfields, as I pan the crosshairs over the rest of them. I don't know who's a target and who might be another poor Russian girl who thought she was headed for the fashion runway in Chicago or New York. Then I see fire spit from another weapon, bring the crosshairs to the middle of his mass, pull off another, and watch him spin away and go down. Suddenly, the rest of them break back toward the buildings as screams and shouts echo across the snow. The crowd is quickly out of sight.
I consider hauling ass for the van, but twenty minutes to get there would be the best I could do. If these guys have half a brain, some of them will be in vehicles and soon circling the section. They could have a dozen guys in a half-dozen trucks hunting for me, and they'll find the van long before I can reach it.
I decide my best bet is to hunker down and see if they're stupid enough to stomp across the snowfields coming after an entrenched shooter who's already proven his marksmanship. I hope so.
Even with the suppressor on the SASS, a careful observer can spot the muzzle flash.
They’re offering no targets, but I have one advantage. I can hear some of what's going down inside the non-lab hut. The excited shouting is occluding most of it, but making some of it easier. I hear the word "cops," and hope they think it's half the swat teams in North Dakota.
But I know that won't last long, and it doesn't. I hear "trucks," and focus on the vehicles parked in front. I'm still at a distinct disadvantage as I don't know who to target, then decide that it'll do no harm to bust up some trucks. I empty my first clip at the engine compartments of the trucks but don't do much good, as two of them fire up and head out—just about the same time as I realize my hidey hole has been spotted. A half-dozen weapons open up. The cottonwood tree overhead and the branch in front of me start getting trimmed by what sounds to me like a cadre of AK's being fired.
I hunker lower in my hole and try to keep score. There were at least two dozen folks inside the hut. Two of them are dead in the snow, probably women. At least five have hauled ass into the snowfields—again, probably Russian girls. I knocked the hell out of two. So, if there were two dozen, now there are only fifteen. At least two and probably four, have left in two trucks—not that I think I've seen the last of them. I'm sure they're on the hunt. They’re the foxes, and I'm the rabbit.
As soon as the gunfire slows, then stops, I slip out the back of my hole and, on my belly in the eighteen-inch-deep snow, do the belly crawl thirty yards to the side—not easy in battle rattle and carrying two weapons. Staying as low as I can, I beat down another makeshift hidey hole and set up again with the bipod and SASS.
Now, it's be patient.
I don't have to be patient for long, as gunfire again opens up on my former location. I have a half-dozen half-decent targets of guys leaning around the sides of the Quonset huts and firing from the two windows in back of the hut where the meeting was taking place. But I don't want to give away my location unless I have a sure kill.
The fire, as I suspected, is covering fire, and some is spitting chunks out of the log I used for cover. Some is kicking up snow many yards on both sides of their target. So some of them seem to be marksmen, some hacks. I hope the hacks aren't so bad I get killed by a guy trying to hit a target ninety feet from me.
I fear I've underestimated some of these guys. It's damn good shooting with an AK at five hundred yards to be consistently knocking chunks out of my log. At least some of these guys have had some time on the range with a good instructor.
I watch carefully through the binocs as they have a wider field of view than the scope. Sure as Hell, two guys hustle off into the snow to the right, and another two to the left.
A little gift from God. I know the terrain well enough to know there's no re
al cover between them and the cottonwood. A few others are continuing their cover fire, so I get a wild idea and decide to give them some encouragement. I dislodge a flash grenade and lob it back to my former location. Then I turn the other way and cover my ears.
The blast lights up the night, and the noise is a shockwave across the snow.
The firing stops as they're trying to figure out if I've fired a cannon at them, or if something in my hole has blown up and scattered my meat all over the hillside.
I stay very quiet and very still, wanting them to believe the latter.
The firing stops altogether. I ease up over the edge of my new stomped hole and sweep the binocs from side to side picking out the two groups plugging through the snow making their way up the hill.
My ear buds are worth listening to again, and I hear them discussing the possibility that I'm dead meat.
Keep coming boys. In fact, send a couple more just for good measure. There are four on the hill, coming my way and probably eleven back in the hut, or huts.
I let the boys headed up the hill cover two hundred and fifty of the five hundred, just so they can't get back home too quickly, then I set up on the two the farthest away. The breeze is up, not that anything but a wind would matter too much at three hundred twenty-six yards, which the rangefinder in my scope says is the target. I compensate about three inches; knock the guy in the lead, ass end over teakettle; then pan to the guy following, who's now hauling ass back to the huts at as hard a run as he can manage in the snow. I lead him three feet and squeeze off. He, too, spins, throws his weapon end over end as he does, hits the ground, but almost bounces back to his feet, and only slightly slower, keeps moving. The third shot of the series knocks him flying, and he's down for the count.
Then all hell breaks loose, all around me. I don't have the protection of the fat cottonwood log, and even as low as I can press myself into the snow, I can feel a slug crease my upper back. One whacks my helmet so hard I'm seeing stars and think, for a fleeting moment, that I've bought the farm.
But I shake off the rattling of my brain inside my skull and see I still have two targets coming my way. When I reposition the weapon on the edge of my hole, I realize that I must have been out cold for a few moments. They're only fifty yards down the hill and closing fast. I leave the SASS with the muzzle pointing up at a forty-five-degree angle, grab the M4 and hunker even lower in the hole, until I figure they're only twenty-five yards and closing. Setting her to full auto, I drape myself over the edge of the hole and pan a burst of thirty .223's sweeping both runners, who are, as quickly, doing backward somersaults down the hill. Then I pick up my weapons and run downhill diagonally like a wild man, until I realize I'm in a slight depression. I hit the snow again as a hundred bullets cut the air overhead.
29
My back is burning like hell. I hope it's nothing but a flesh wound and not bleeding too badly. Then I realize that I've taken one across the thigh. My head is aching and throbbing. I'm having a little trouble focusing and am wondering if I don't have a concussion.
Even if I do, I have to stay awake and alert. These guys are not the usual dipshit handgun-turned-sideways gangbangers. I'm wondering if these Russian guys weren't some of those in Afghanistan long before I was in Iraq.
They shoot like it's not their first rodeo.
I sigh deeply and wonder what the hell I'm doing here in a snowbank fighting half the Red Army for a lousy hundred grand, when I could be in some tropical isle among bikini-clad beauties hunting a beautiful G5 and looking to make three mil.
I hope my old CO forgets to call me next time—if there is a next time. Right now, I doubt it.
Fuck, I'm dizzy. I wonder if they'll find me if I just curl up, pull some snow over me and go to sleep.
Then I hear the crackle of a radio, and someone speaking a foreign language. The answer, in little more than a whisper, is "Da." “Yes,” in Russian, and the sound is not more than five or six yards down the hill from me.
I dislodge a concussion grenade from my battle rattle, pull the pin, give it a long three count and barely lob it downhill. Then I hunker down, shoving the helmet up as tightly against my ears as I can.
"WHAM!" It goes off, and I pop up to see a guy stumbling downhill, not twenty feet away. I stitch him up the backbone with the M4, then stumble a few yards on downhill at a forty-five-degree angle from the huts that are still over four hundred yards away. I'm hoping the crowd below won't fire, as their man is in the neighborhood.
I find another depression and fall into it.
It's all I can do not to close my eyes and go to sleep, but if I do, I know I won't wake up. I lie there for a few minutes, then decide I've got to take it to them if I want to live. I think I know exactly how to do so.
Stumbling to my feet, I run straight for the nearest hut and get about a hundred yards before I begin to see muzzle flashes coming from the edges of the huts. I dive into a snowbank and stay still as the snow around me kicks up, and the air above me buzzes with bullets.
I dig my iPhone from a coat pocket to check the time and see it's seven twenty. I've had a call from DiAngelo. But the last thing I want to do now is return a call. Then I realize that I've left the radio set on a channel to pick up the mike in the teddy bear and grab it out of my other coat pocket. I switch it back to Tony's channel, am returning it to my pocket when it buzzes. I put it to my ear and poke the ‘send.’ "Where the fuck have you been?" I ask, in not too friendly a tone.
"I just got here. I thought you said nine o'clock."
"I said three hours before the time I tell you."
"Sounds like a friggin' war up there. I'm at the gates and there's no one here."
"There was a Hummer and two bad guys parked a couple of hundred yards up the driveway."
"Not here now."
"Okay. But don't come this way. Get off the driveway and kill anything that comes that way. Be careful. I think there's five or six Russian girls stumbling around in the snow trying to get the hell away from these guys."
"You got it. You're not coming this way?"
"Not until after I call you off. I'm going to try and light up the night again, if I can pull it off."
"Good luck, sorry I was late."
I merely grunt then again break toward the huts. I want to be only a couple of hundred yards from them, when I go to work on the lab. But I'm getting close enough that even a jerk who's a lousy shot might put me toes up. With the first muzzle flash, I dive into the snow and wait without moving.
I wait a good ten minutes. Then I eject the clip I've been using, put in a fresh one, lay the other one nearby, raise up and start stitching the lab building from one end to the other. Snow is starting to bounce all around me as AK's light up the shadows. I pop the clip, reverse it and stitch away, when something tears at my side and spins me to my back. But this is my only chance, I figure, and I insert my last clip. If this doesn't work, I'm using my Glock against a half dozen or more AK47's, and I know where that'll end. I don't have time to worry about how many holes are poked in my already well-scarred bod.
So, I'm back up and firing, then suddenly I'm slammed flat on my back. If it wasn't for the brilliant light, I'd think I was already in the coffin. I hear things begin to fall back to earth, and raise up enough to see flames shooting forty feet above the former—now missing—ridge line of the hut, and across what's left of it to the meeting hut that’s blown all to Hell as well. Pieces of corrugated tin are still floating, like deadly scimitars, out of the dark sky.
Fuck it, I'm going to sleep. I lay back and cuddle down into the snow. If any of those assholes have lived through that, they can have me.
The chatter of gunfire over the low hill toward the gate disturbs my hoped-for snooze. I know it has to be DiAngelo trying to take on automatic weapons with his sidearm and possibly a combat shotgun.
There is no rest for the wicked. I'm on my feet and stumbling through the snow, then avoiding the parking lot where three vehicles are on fire, than
ks, I imagine, to the blast from the meth lab.
It's not often a mangled body makes one smile, but the one I pass in the parking lot has a stub of an ear on the three quarters of the head left on a mangled neck. The stub doesn't look fresh like an explosion blew it away. I tromp on, until I can see the crest of the hill and two guys hiding behind a black Expedition. I find a stock watering trough, hunker down behind it maybe a hundred and fifty yards from the Ford, and I get back on my radio.
"You listening?" I ask.
It's a moment. I have to pay attention as the two guys behind the black Ford are firing toward the gate, using the Ford for cover.
It's a five count, but then Tony is on. "Yeah, I'm at the gate. You okay?"
"A little shot to shit, but still ticking. You want to see another fireworks show?"
"You don't mean…?"
"Stay down."
"You got it," he says.
I dial a number on my iPhone, and when it answers, I punch in my birthday plus a day, count to three, then the world lights up again as the heavy Ford does a full flip and lands back on its wheels. But the tires have been blown away, and it's burning like Hell. The two gunmen are out of sight, needless to say, and probably fodder for the coyotes. I'm sure an environmental report would not condone my feeding the coyotes spoiled Russian chunks.
"Nice one," comes from my phone.
"Thank the US Marine Corps demolition training course," I say then add, "Any chance you can pick me up about fifty feet on the other side of that burning vehicle?"
"It would be my pleasure."
I stumble around the Ford, keeping some distance as I don't know if the gas tank's blown yet. But can't imagine it hasn't. By the time I get twenty yards past it and rejoin the driveway, Tony's waiting.
"We got to get out of here," I mumble, as I climb into the passenger seat, "before the cops come."