The Pilgrim Strain

by Edgar, C. P.

  “Sierra One to Top, over,” broke over the net.

  Sierra One was the team’s sniper Helechek. Rainer grabbed up his weapon and keyed his radio, “Go ahead, over.”

  “We have a victor moving into the target zone, over.”

  Rainer quizzically looked toward Helechek’s perch. He was approximately five hundred meters to Rainer’s three o’clock but lower in elevation and closer to the airstrip. He was completely invisible, having nested into an area in the mountainside that had small shrubs as well as tall grasses even on the cliff edges.

  Rainer knew that Helechek was looking down the barrel of his Dakota T-76 Longbow rifle. Chambered in .338 Lapua the T-76 could reach out and touch a target up to 1600 meters if the right conditions existed. It was also significantly less bulky than the Barrett M82A1 .50 caliber rifle which Helechek described as, “Big like American ego.”

  Rainer thought that Helechek was likely traversing his sights between objects within the target zone through his advanced optics system and calibrating for a potential shot. The only good thing about going private was the complete lack of caution his employers had in purchasing viable equipment. The team had only the finest the world offered, without the restrictions of “lowest bidder” purchasing.

  Rainer keyed his mic again, “Description.”

  “Flatbed truck occupied two times. Moving toward the hangar, over.” Helechek’s Romanian accent clipped his English. “Orders sir,” the tone indicating to Rainer that Helechek was able to neutralize if requested.

  “Monitor and report. How copy?”

  “Copy.”

  Rainer went to stand but thought against it and crouched instead. He slowly moved back toward the rock formation where he knew the rest of his team would be preparing for their night raid.

  The men had assembled as requested and were busy squaring away their gear. Kef was sitting on his pack eating an MRE. Daggan, who reminded Rainer of a bald Viking, was strapping two metal canisters into the interior of his Arc’teryx Echo Pack, making sure they were secured. Daggan tugged at his reddish beard, satisfied with his work and gave Rainer a wink. The Jew and the Toad were changing their socks, apparently competing for time.

  The Jew, also known as Marc Einberg, threw on his Asolo boots and seemed to tie his laces in one smooth motion. He whispered, “time.” Executing noise discipline as best as he could given his excitement at beating the Toad once again. The two were merciless in their competitions. Drinking, lifting, and women were their favorite sports but they would settle for small victories in the field.

  Einberg was powerfully built. A two-time collegiate NCAA wrestling champion, Einberg was deadly in a hand to hand scuffle. He was from Worchester, Massachusetts which proved to be a tough place for a five foot six inch Jewish kid to grow up amongst a bunch of Irish and Italian Catholics. He had a brutal “ball-busting” sense of humor, and could easily back it up if the recipient of the verbal lashing decided to step up to the challenge. Einberg gave the Toad a pat on the back and told him in a hushed tone, “It’s ok to suck. At least you’re good at it.”

  “Eat shit,” was the only response the Toad could muster, and not so quietly. He looked to Rainer for the evil eye he was certain to earn for breaking noise discipline. Luckily, it looked as if the Toad had escaped Rainer’s wrath this time.

  Justin Miller, aka the Toad, was the result of too much time spent in the gym. He wasn’t tall by any means, but he was menacingly built almost like stacking a brick wall onto two short legs. His nickname was a gift bestowed upon him during SEAL BUD/S and had something to do with the way he swam during that hellish trial. If the rumors were true, Miller had developed an unusually nasty case of crotch rot but had refused to be medically dropped which resulted in him sort of leapfrogging about the course.

  All the men, other than Daggan, carried the Colt CM901 chambered in 7.62mm, so that they could interchange magazines and redistribute ammunition during a fight. They were contractors, but their tactics weren’t renegade in nature.

  Daggan carried their only heavy weapon, an FN MK 48 with sliding stock as his primary weapon. It was currently dangling from the front of his plate carrier from a single point attachment he had custom made.

  Rainer took a knee next to his kit bag which had been set up along a depression made into a rock face. His kit was already wired tight in case they had needed to bug out while he was on watch, which would have only required him to fall back to this point to scoop it up. He broke open the top flap of his bag and retrieved a small touchpad with a 7.5 inch LCD screen. He pressed the upper right corner of the device turning it on and toggled through the commands until he was able to bring up the mapping system. The team utilized the device and its operating systems often and had code-named it “Virgin” theorizing that only a high school virgin would know how to use it.

  He keyed up his mic, “Sierra One, this is Top, over.” He noticed that everyone in the circle took pause from their activities to listen to the radio traffic emanating from each operator's earpiece. He needed to know what was going on with the vehicle that had just appeared in their target zone.

  “Go ahead Top,” came the reply.

  “Roger. What is the sitrep on the tangos?”

  “Victor stopped on the North side of the hangar. The two occupants dismounted and moved some equipment from the back of the truck into the administrative building using a side entrance, break.” The team could hear Helechek key off and then key back up onto the net. “The tangos then moved on foot from the administrative building to the rear of the hangar. No sign of them for the past three mikes, over.”

  Rainer looked at his watch and noted that darkness was about to befall the mountain valley. He radioed, “Ok. Need you to break camp and move to our position, over.”

  Helechek said, “Roger, moving,” and the team could tell from his speech that the sniper was already on his way.

  Rainer turned to the team and asked, “You guys ready to get off this fucking rock?” He could see that Einberg and Miller shared a smile, Daggan huffed, and Kef gave a thumb up. That was a resounding yes in their community. “Be ready to move once Chek gets back.”

  Rainer directed his attention back to the small device he held in his hand. The mapping system showed him the area he was in using satellite imagery, and overlaid topography mapping with elevation markers over the image.

  Rainer had worked out the route during his morning downtime and had set up the waypoints and three phase lines. Integrated into the mapping were six camera icons which accessed the camera systems that the team had set up throughout their reconnaissance of the airfield. Each camera was mounted on a Mini-Spider tripod which allowed the operators to configure it to the terrain while maintaining level. The camera units were dome-like in their appearance and allowed for zoom, tilt, and pan.

  Each system contained a satellite uplink and antennae which allowed the team the capability to move down elevation into the thicker vegetation without losing sight of the target completely. The advanced lithium battery pack would allow the units to continuously provide feedback for up to twelve hours, but if Rainer just powered them on for a quick peek every so often they would last for a few days.

  The only problem with the units was that they were left behind, inevitably leaving a trail for someone to follow. Rainer didn’t like leaving tracks. He had felt that the benefit of visual intelligence, especially as they moved toward the target location, would outweigh leaving trace equipment. The decision being of particular ease in an area where the locals were tribal and there was no real law enforcement presence.

  Utilizing some tradecraft, the team had improvised the concealment of each unit into the surrounding terrain so the chances of them ever being discovered were very remote. Some archaeologist a thousand years from now would likely be the first person to find them.

  Rainer selected Camera 4 which was located at Helechek’s last sniper hide. The mapping system opened a box on the left side of the screen. A status bar indi
cated that a satellite was trying to establish a connection to the camera. A few seconds later an image of the airfield rendered and Rainer used the touch screen features to pan the camera left to right until he had the airfield administration building centered. He increased the zoom to its maximum capacity and the camera autofocused bringing the building into clear view.

  Rainer noted that there was a light source emanating from within the building. He didn’t see any movement beyond the occasional swaying of the brush encircling the front of the building.

  Rainer backed the zoom out until he could see both the hangar and the administration building and selected the motion detection option from the menu icons. He drew a red box around the administrative building and another at the entrance to the hangar and clicked on the set option. The camera would be continuously on from that point, draining the battery in a matter of hours, but the software would identify any movements by persons or large animals in the set areas alerting Rainer through a vibrate feature within the device.

  Satisfied, Rainer attached the portable tablet onto his left forearm and covered the unit with a camouflage Velcro flap. All the members of the team had a similar unit attached to their body, although Daggan preferred to put his in a dump pouch announcing that it was “too Gucci” and he wouldn’t want anyone to think he was gay.

  The radio suddenly came alive, “Sierra One coming in, over.”

  Kef, who had finished his meal but still had the spoon in his mouth, keyed his mic using his Silynx control unit attached to the front of his PPE Paraclete plate carrier on his chest above his rack of magazines. He took the spoon out of his mouth, carefully placed it in a pen holder on his shirt sleeve, and said, “Come on in Chek.”

  There was a minimal amount of movement thirty meters from their location, and even though everyone had heard the radio traffic they all seemed to tense at the sounds. They were, after all, seasoned combat veterans accustomed to being prepared for the unexpected.

  Helechek stood wearing his full Ghillie suit which had vegetation from the hillside interspersed with the synthetic materials. From their vantage point, it appeared like a bush had simply decided to stand up.

  Helechek trotted the final few meters and crashed down in front of his gear cache. He was sweating and the perspiration had worn through some of the camouflage paint he had applied to his face. He grinned at the group and asked, “Do I have time to eat?”

  Rainer spoke first, “No, we’re leaving. Get your shit on.” He gave Helechek his best grimace. He wasn’t falling for Chek’s bullshit, he knew damn well that the sniper had eaten in his hide. Helechek ate like no other man on Earth. Rainer believed that it was a product of growing up in Romania as an orphan, fighting for every meal, fighting to survive.

  Rainer was surprised at first that Helechek was so lean after having first witnessed his massive intake of food, but after a while he came to realize that it was in proportion to his excessive output of energy. The guy just never stopped. Everyone joked that he didn’t even sleep, or could not recount a time when they had witnessed him with his eyes closed. Kef joked often that Chek came from the Romanian mountains and was likely a long-lost relative of Dracula. Chek would usually return the comment with a hiss.

  The men stood and shouldered their sizable packs. They had all been wearing various forms of hats and caps but were now replacing those with their MICH Gunfighter helmets. They would be operating using GEN-III Night Vision Goggles (NVG) and needed the platform to attach the devices. Although wearing no helmet at all was always way more comfortable, nobody believed that catching a bullet in the dome or cracking a skull falling off a cliff in the dark would be a pleasant ending to the trip.

  They needed no verbal command to begin movement or to give order to their column. Each man knew his role. Kef and Helechek would push out ahead acting as a scouting element.

  There was still the very real possibility that they may encounter unfriendlies in the area. The men were aware that in Papua New Guinea the environment was alive with hostilities. If the vegetation, insects, animals, or landscape didn’t kill you, a spear-wielding tribesman spooked by specters walking around wearing space suits just might.

  Rainer, Miller, and Einberg made up the center of the column with Daggan taking up the rear with the heavy gun. It was now nightfall. The men became rhythmic in their practices of moving to a point, listening, scanning for threats, and acquiring their next point. It was slow, cautious work but with any luck they would make it to their final phase line without incident nor encounter.

  ***

  Daggan had been firing continuously for the past several seconds. Rainer was on a knee exchanging a fresh magazine into his rifle, placing the spent one into his dump pouch which hung on his support side of his battle belt.

  He yelled to Daggan, “Check your rate of fire!”

  He wanted Daggan to maintain a burst pattern limiting his use of ammunition. They had lost sight of the last two as they had run into the forest at the edge of the airfield, and Rainer was unsure of how long this contact might last. They had zero options for resupply or reinforcement.

  Daggan relented pressure on his trigger and his weapon finally fell silent although the barrel clicked periodically as it began to cool. He half yelled over to Rainer, “What the fuck just happened?”

  It took Rainer a moment to gather himself, thinking about what he had just witnessed. Everything had been going to plan. They had traversed the entire movement to their final phase line without incident. Hell, Rainer didn’t even recall seeing one living thing the whole route just meter after meter of dense vegetation.

  Just as he had approached Kef who was located at their rendezvous point at the edge of the forest south of the airfield, he was held up by radio traffic from Helechek. Rainer had drifted down into the prone next to Kef, his body enveloped by the vegetation.

  Helechek had been kicked out to an elevated position approximately eight hundred meters to the west which had a great vantage of the entire complex. He came over the radio, “We have indigenous persons entering the airfield from the northeast, at least seven persons including two children, over.”

  Rainer looked to Kef who just sighed. Rainer thumbed his Silynx grip and said, “Are they moving through the area or stationary?”

  “They are moving across the airfield toward the buildings. No visible weapons, at least not the kind we are worried about, over.”

  “Ok, keep an eye on them,” he said, and then looked to Kef whispering, “what do you think?”

  Kef grabbed at a blade of grass obviously thinking about their situation and the ramifications of any action on their behalf. Neither man thought that killing children was an option unless absolutely necessary and usually that was because the child was wielding an AK-47.

  Kef looked up at Rainer and said “I’m in no hurry to rush out of here and be compromised. We can have Chek maintain over watch while we move around to the northeast of the airfield and higher ground. Chek and our element will have crossing fields of fire and high ground advantage while we wait them out.”

  Rainer gave pause to think about the situation. He had two nagging issues tugging at him. Who were the two tangos that had come in earlier in the day with the vehicles?

  They had been near invisible since arrival. Also, why had they failed to detect any indigenous people while they had been conducting surveillance on the area for the past couple of days? Rainer knew from experience that Murphy’s Law would be omnipresent during missions, but instinct told him the timing seemed too perfect.

  There was a sudden vibration on Rainer’s left wrist which startled him given his heightened sense of awareness. He immediately tore the Velcro cover off of the tablet. He was receiving a motion detection warning and clicked on the camera icon to bring up the feed. Kef was watching Rainer and anticipated the issue. He keyed his mic, “Chek, sitrep.”

  “Group of seven has halted movement in the middle of the airfield, over.”

  Rainer knew that fro
m Helechek’s position he was unable to see the front of the hangar and probably had no visual on the administrative building. The system finally established an image and Rainer and Kef both looked on. The motion detection had been tripped on the front of the hangar, and the two could see that the doors were silently opening. There was only minimal backlighting within the interior of the hangar, but Rainer could make out some movement from within. He tensed as he thought that maybe they had been wrong in believing that the hangar had been empty. Shit.

  He keyed his mic, “Red team on me.” Kef pushed back about three meters and with one motion rolled to one side, ditched his pack, and then was back up on his gun sights. He knew from Rainer’s tone that they were going to be going hot and fast.

  Einberg and Miller moved into position five meters to Kef’s left and dropped their gear. Daggan had positioned his kit behind and was on a knee waiting for orders.

  Rainer spoke making sure he lit up the mic so Helechek could listen in, “We’ve got possible hostiles in the hangar. Motion sensors picked up the hangar doors opening, and the cameras are showing some movement on the inside within the shadows. We’re going to operate under the assumption that the hangar is housing an opposing force of unknown size.”

  “Daggan and I are going to move east along the edge of the airfield until we can see the front of the hangar and can establish a base of fire. Kef you take the rest of the team west along the edge and then move to the hangar along its southern side preparing for assault. See if you can see inside and get us a look at what we are up against.

  If you get compromised, Daggan and I will light it up and you fall back to the forest edge and put up a skirmish line. If it all goes to shit we’ll fall back to phase line green. Sierra One will be cleared to engage all hostiles during assault and in the event of withdrawal. Roger?” Rainer got a thumbs up from each member of the team.