One Hit

by Jack Coughlin

  Swanson finished his beer and tossed the empty can into a barrel. When he took her hand, the rest of the crowd seemed to disappear. They came together and rocked in place.

  Molly whispered, “Maisie gave me her room key.” She leaned on his shoulder. “It has air-conditioning, clean sheets, and there’s more beer in the refrigerator.”

  “Then why the hell are we still up here?” He stepped back and gave her a twirl, and her skirt fanned out to show her legs as she spun. She came back to him, even closer now.

  “I thought you’d never ask. We can be back up here in time for midnight.”

  “Why would we want to do that?” Swanson looked at her, and the smile became a serious look. He was realizing the water was deep, and he was ready to drown happily. “I don’t want to waste a minute with you, girl.”

  “I know. I feel the same way, Kyle, and it scares me a little. It is best not to have real feelings in these battered places. But tonight I want you to take me, love me, and tell me everything is going to be all right. I want to still be in bed, naked and next to you, when the sun comes up tomorrow.”

  JANUARY 1, 1993

  The U.S. Secret Service provided a needed break to the daily schedule, which was becoming dangerously routine. President George H. W. Bush, who had ordered the intervention in the Somalian emergency, was in country for a firsthand look at the mission, and Swanson was providing countersniper protection at the airport. While Kyle and Molly had partied at the Sahafi yesterday, Bush had been aboard the USS Tripoli after digesting MRE field rations from a lunch with the troops at an airfield sixty miles north of the Mog.

  The Secret Service had the job of protecting the president, even in a war zone, and buttoned things up tight for the two-day visit. They automatically turned to Swanson for assistance because he was a known quantity and was already on site—their own snipers trained at the marine scout-sniper school in which Kyle had served as an instructor. However, they didn’t totally trust him.

  Troops secured the roads into the areas Bush visited, with more marines standing guard on the surrounding rooftops. The president, in a desert camouflage jacket, spent a half hour at a feeding station and an orphanage in Mogadishu. Seven hundred children clapped and welcomed him while the Secret Service sweated it out.

  Swanson stood with Corporal Smith in the main guard tower at the front gate of the airport, while other snipers manned other points and glassed the areas both inside and outside the facility at which the big blue and white Air Force One waited. With them in the tower was Secret Service agent Mark Deber, a lanky, square-shouldered man wilting in the heat. He had removed his suit coat, but sweat saddlebags puddled his white shirt. Deber knew Swanson from the Quantico training but was in the tower to keep an eye on both of the marines: a guard to guard the guards. Nothing was left to chance where presidential protection was concerned. It was the kind of challenge that Swanson enjoyed.

  “Deber, you ought to stick around here in the Mog for a while. You missed a big party last night, and we can take you to the hot joints downtown along the Green Line, catch some jazz.” Swanson swept his scope over the open ground beyond the fence, looking for telltale signs of a hide.

  “Fuck that. I’m outta here on the next plane after Big Bird. I don’t want nothing you got here, like maybe dysentery,” Deber said. “How’s the duty been?”

  “Pretty quiet. The Skinnies don’t want to mess with us.”

  “They just shoot each other,” added Smitty, who was examining the edge of the city.

  “Sounds like a deal to me,” said Deber. “Long as they don’t shoot at us.”

  “Got that right.”

  The president’s armored convoy arrived, and Bush spent some time saying hellos and thanking the people at the airport. Swanson smoothly scanned the exterior of the gate, then the interior area around Bush, tense and watching for potential threats. For the briefest of moments, the Unertl scope on his sniper rifle swept over the president’s face, and the twenty-four-inch barrel with its one-in-twelve-inch twist was pointed directly at his ear. It would have been an easy shot. Swanson kept the rifle moving.

  “That ain’t funny, Swanson. You were somebody else, I’d have taken you down,” Deber hissed behind him. The agent wondered if he had screwed up; had he really given the best sniper in the Marine Corps a free shot at the president? Swanson kept a grin buried deep. No harm, no foul.

  Then Bush was safely aboard the plane, and it was gone, heading for Moscow, where he was to sign a nuclear-arms-reduction treaty.

  The two snipers and the Secret Service agent all relaxed and took deep breaths. The president, the most important man in the world, was somebody else’s responsibility now.

  “Hey, Deber. Since you were ready to shoot me down like a dog a minute ago, how about giving me a present?”

  “What? You want a reward for being your usual asshole self?”

  Swanson slid the big rifle into its custom-made bag. “Not for me. I want a souvenir for a kid at a relief clinic. You got something that says WHITE HOUSE on it?”

  Deber patted his pockets. “Yeah. Here. They give these things out like candy.” It was a white cardboard square with a lapel pin that bore the presidential symbol, an eagle with flared wings and UNITED STATES OF AMERICA printed in tiny gold letters around the blue edge.

  “He doesn’t have lapels,” Swanson complained.

  “Not my problem,” Deber said. “I’m gone. You guys watch your asses.”

  On the way back to the stadium, Swanson considered the presidential trip. The Man had left Somalia, but Swanson and thousands of marines and the troops of other nations were still here, and it seemed that the president had begun to waffle on the planned exit. Originally, the plan was to have it all done before January 20, when Bill Clinton would be sworn in. On this personal trip, President Bush had given it more of an open ending. His spokesman was ambiguous, promising the Somalis would not be abandoned but conceding that some American troops might start handing their duties over to U.N. forces and withdrawing by the end of January. Bottom line was that Swanson knew his days left in Somalia were numbered . . . he just didn’t know the number.

  • • •

  DEQO SHARIF GAVE AN “I know what you did last night” grin when Kyle Swanson came to the Irish Aid Society relief center. She had been helping Lon with a delicate birth, and her face showed the fatigue. They worked when they needed to work, not according to clock hours, but somehow managed to keep their humanity intact. Sleep was not high on their priority list.

  “Molly is not here, Kyle. The agencies are having a conference about how to get more food out into the countryside.”

  Swanson said, “That’s okay, Deqo. Did you get to see President Bush today?”

  “No. We were busy here, as always, but it was good that he came to Somalia at all.” Her dark face frowned. “Did you marines hear about a big attack on one of the compounds of Ali Mahdi last night?”

  “Yeah. The local cops think it was planned by General Aidid, and was led by the general’s pet thug, the Cobra. They are bad news.” Swanson was always ready for a tidbit of intelligence to pass along. “What do you think it means?”

  “People say that it was an assassination attempt, but Mahdi wasn’t there, and he will demand revenge.” She adjusted her robe and looked at him with steady dark eyes. “It was also a sign, Kyle, to show everyone in Mogadishu that you marines don’t really control the city. You did not know about it in advance and could not stop it.” She sighed with frustration. “I think things are going to get bad again.”

  “You may be right, Deqo. You may be right. I will make sure the patrols continue to come by here.” Swanson took out the lapel pin. “Look, the real reason I came by today was to bring this little badge for Lucky.”

  “He’s in class right now. I will give it to him later.”

  He handed it over and watched her study the shining enameled seal of the president. “Tell him it’s a gift from President Bush and will help keep him
safe.”

  “Can it stop a bullet?” Deqo tucked it into the folds of her conservative purple guntiino, a long cloth that draped over her shoulder and around the waist. A matching cloth called a shash crossed her head.

  Kyle rapped lightly on the table and said, “I’ve got to get back. Please tell Molly I came by, would you?”

  “Of course. Thank you. Be careful.”

  “Don’t worry about me, Deqo. I carry the biggest gun out there.”

  THE FIGHT

  THE TENTH MOUNTAIN CALLED for help. Swanson thought they might be running low on suntan lotion, but grudgingly acknowledged the unit was spread thin, with soldiers posted all over Somalia, occupying other cities and keeping roads open. The fact that the Tenth headquarters had been set up in no man’s land within Mogadishu seemed to have escaped the attention of the planners.

  At the stadium, General Jack Klimp, the marine commander, received intel that the troublemaking warlord General Aidid was up to something, and marine assets were preparing to meet the challenge. The hard-eyed general found Swanson and told him, “Take some snipers over there and scout out what’s going on. This might be the fight we have been expecting. Maybe they are going to come out at last. Then get back here with a SITREP.”

  Kyle and ten of his men piled into Humvees and tore out of the stadium down the 21 October, and were inside the gates of the Tenth HQ compound within minutes. Once again, he found no outward signs of any real gunfight, but the army guys said the usual harassing fire being spat at them had increased.

  “Come up here and take a look,” said a colonel, who led the sniper up to the flat rooftop of the three-story building, which had been baking in the sun all afternoon. The officer pointed to another compound about six hundred meters away, where a crowd of Skinnies milled about three long warehouses. “That’s where Aidid is now storing some of his heavy stuff. We have never seen that many people around those buildings at one time.”

  As if to emphasize the point, a rifle popped and a bullet ricocheted off of the three-foot-high parapet surrounding the Tenth headquarters’ roof. Swanson raised his and played over the area. There was no court-of-law proof of any recent big firefight, but the colonel was right: those warehouses and the large crowd were a real threat, and it was growing. The rules of engagement still mandated that as long as the Somalis did not brandish their weapons, the marines would not open fire. Swanson believed that was about to change in a hurry. With its combat power dispersed elsewhere, the available cooks and clerks of the Tenth Mountain HQ were putting aside their paperwork and suiting up with load-bearing gear and rifles.

  “I’ll be right back,” Kyle said. He left most of his snipers with the army dudes and hauled ass back to the stadium.

  Klimp’s staff had spread out the biggest map they had, and Kyle pointed out the warehouses and reported the crowd of Somalis there was whipping up its courage. Aidid apparently was ready to do some damage, and although the effort probably was to be directed at his rival warlords, the U.S. troops were in the way.

  Klimp wasn’t going to give an inch. His plan was to wrap a bubble around and over the suspicious compound and bring out his own heavy infantry, armor, and air power. If Aidid so much as wiggled, he would be crushed. Kyle dashed back to the Tenth HQ, this time carrying his huge M82A1A special-application scoped rifle with its 10× Unertl scope. On the roof, psyops people with portable loudspeakers were warning the militiamen to surrender by dawn.

  When night fell, the darkness came with a rainstorm that slashed in from the Indian Ocean, and heavy winds spun across the ragged city with a discordant, threatening hum. The cold and merciless rain soaked the sniper teams on the rooftop. Visibility fell to zero, blinding Swanson’s night-vision goggles. He took them off. The wind was blowing the sheets of rain almost horizontally, right at them, and wiping a hand over his face did not help. No one could see anything in the dirty night, but beneath the storm’s roar, he heard the growlings of large engines and a lot of shouting over in the Aidid camp.

  Kyle repositioned the M-60 machine guns on the roof and brought up a forward air controller to coordinate the helicopter gunships that might be needed. Newer deep growls of other machines joined the noise as marine armor took stations. The loudspeakers never shut up: “Surrender at dawn!”

  The night and the river of rain stretched into an eternity of anxious misery, and Swanson could only wonder what was going on down below where the Skinnies were gathered. He and his spotter, Corporal David Delshay, the Apache, built a ragtag shelter and occasionally took breaks to go inside to dry out and have something hot to drink. His boots were full of water, his clothing was soaked, and he shook like a puppy as the chill seeped into his bones. Sleep was impossible, and battle was certain to come with the daylight.

  The African storm tapered away just as the sun began to light the sky, and when the veil of mist lifted, Kyle got his first good look at what had been happening. Tanks and other heavy weapons had been driven out of the Somali buildings and were revving up in the courtyard, and the militiamen were all carrying weapons. Kyle squared into a sitting position between the parapet and a rooftop air-conditioning unit and dialed the scene close with his powerful Unertl scope. The loudspeakers squawked last-chance demands to the Somali warriors to surrender. That wasn’t going to happen. The warlord’s men, idle for weeks, were spoiling for a fight.

  General Klimp watched the brewing situation with real-time imagery back at the stadium. His marines were also weary of the boredom. Klimp got Swanson, his best sniper in the best position, on the circuit.

  Kyle had been listening to the increasing radio traffic through an earbud. He had an armor-piercing round in the chamber of his SASR, and five more ready in the clip below. The other snipers and machine gunners along the wall were sighting in on potential targets when the distinctive whopping sound of approaching helicopter gunships joined the morning din.

  Beside Kyle, the forward air controller saw something new roll out of the warehouse: a four-cannon ZSU-23/4 called the Zeus, a powerful weapon that could erase the incoming attack birds from the sky as soon as they appeared. “Oh my God,” the FAC yelled into his radio. “Abort! Abort! Abort!” The choppers immediately stopped on a dime, just out of range, and hovered behind the headquarters building.

  The situation was at the point of no return. None of the Skinnies had yet fired, but neither had they surrendered, and they now were showing off anti-aircraft field guns and tanks. Swanson heard a familiar voice in his earbud; Klimp was asking if the sniper could disable the Zeus without hurting any of the Somali fighters. The big gun was a game changer that could not be allowed to join a fight.

  Swanson adjusted his scope to center the evil-looking multiple cannon. The best way to ruin it would be to slam an armor-piercing round through the ammunition canister that fed belts of ammo to the weapon. It was located in the middle of the cannon. Corporal Delshay lasered the range, and Kyle dialed it in while he told the general what he had, adding that there was no guarantee.

  “Take the shot,” Klimp ordered, and Kyle fired. The powerful .50 caliber bullet punched straight through the metal ammo canister as if it were thin cardboard. Then the round punched straight through the gunner who was seated behind it. The man went over backward, dead, and hell erupted. The battle was on.

  Another Zeus answered Swanson’s opening shot with thundering blasts from its quadruple guns directly at the sniper’s position. Chunks of the rooftop parapet were pulverized with impacting explosions, and Swanson pushed away onto his back as green tracer rounds flew overhead and ate at the protective barrier. The other marines and soldiers opened up in response. The Apache grabbed Swanson’s jacket and rolled him back into position. “Get up!” Delshay yelled. “Take that son of a bitch!”

  Kyle repositioned and started firing, no longer having to worry about not hitting anyone. His armor-piercing rounds quickly shredded the second Zeus as the world roared in his ears and the militiamen got their first taste of the Marine Corps in
full battle cry.

  With the anti-aircraft guns dead, the FAC called in the hovering gunships, and the lurking choppers pounced over the rooftop like predatory panthers, their miniguns slashing deadly paths through the Aidid compound. Swanson and Delshay were showered with the falling hot brass of the spent cartridges. It was open season.

  Kyle reloaded and began pumping armor-piercing rounds into the gunner and driver positions of the Russian-made tanks while other marines raked the enemy foot soldiers. Firing erupted all around the perimeter, and the big marine tanks crashed forward to add their machine guns and cannons to the scrap. All three warehouses caught fire. Satisfied that the major enemy machinery was dead, Swanson looked to individual fighters who were hiding in buildings that overlooked the battle zone so they could shoot back at the Americans. They died as soon as they appeared. The compound that only minutes before had been the militia’s striking power was littered with junk and bodies.

  The firing stopped, and Kyle lowered his rifle to reload. As he put in a new clip, a neatly dressed man walked onto a balcony, and the sniper instantly recognized General Aidid. The leader was greeted by cheers from the Somali militiamen, who had just taken a thorough beating. Aidid examined the ruins of the ludicrously one-sided battle, then looked with disdain toward the American positions a few hundred yards away.

  A bare-headed marine who was reloading a large rifle was looking back at him. It was the same one who had manhandled him in their earlier confrontation. The Swanson Marine! Again! Damn him!

  Kyle steadied the mighty SASR so that it pointed directly at the warlord, who realized that his fate rested on the trigger finger of the man he had grown to personally hate.

  “I’m locked onto Aidid,” Swanson spoke easily into his radio. An easy three-pound twitch on the trigger would end the warlord’s life. A second man who had come onto the balcony also recognized what was about to happen and stepped in front of Aidid. It was the bodyguard, the Cobra, and that didn’t matter at all to Kyle, who did not adjust his aim. A big SASR round would just burrow through both bodies as easily as it had torn through the armor of the Zeus quad-fifty.