I watched Richard walk away, and a sudden resolution came over me. I had been given a peek, a sliver of understanding and insight into the sort of world Richard came from. I knew now that he was right. I made an oath of vengeance to pay the Paggianos back, believing they deserved to die and thinking I would be able to kill them, while at the same time thinking there was no way I could kill men I didn't know, who ruined lives every day with the drugs they created. Not only was it naive, but the self-rationalization would get me killed long before my task was completed.
With my mind finally clear of doubt, I turned and followed Richard back into the desert night.
In vengeance, there are no half-measures.
NINE
It took us an hour to get into position, moving only when the night-vision binoculars told us no one was moving around the encampment, and the sentry was on the far side, with the vehicles and trailers between us. We had skirted the camp until Richard found a good point for our ambush; a bit of scrub brush that would provide some concealment. Richard draped us with a thin camouflage netting he had taken from his gusset bag. It would break up our outline enough that hopefully, as long as we were still and silent, we wouldn't be noticed in the dim moonlight.
There, we hunkered down and waited for the sentry to make his final pass, as he came around the trailers and circled back in our direction. I was lying on my stomach, the Uzi aimed out in front of me, a magazine loaded and the bolt cocked and ready to fire, my finger well away from the trigger.
Richard leaned in close and whispered in my ear. "Here he comes now. We are going to let him go by. Once he gets about twenty feet away, I will pull away the net, and you are to fire. Put at least three bursts into him, even if he goes down with the first one. We can't let him get off a shot, so use at least half a magazine to make sure he's down and dead. Then, we'll get close and examine him."
In the moonlight, I could barely make out the sentry as he came closer and closer. I could hear his booted feet crunching through the loose sand and rock more clearly than I could see him. Richard spotted for me with the night vision goggles now. We were too close for the binoculars and Richard wanted his hands free in case he needed to bring his pistol into play. I could see his gun clearly now, held in his hand as he lay in the dirt next to me. It was a big black Heckler & Koch .45 automatic, and from my reading I knew it was designed with special forces types in mind, useful for eliminating sentries and guard dogs. A long, fat suppressor was screwed to the muzzle, and a small laser sight was attached to the trigger guard underneath the barrel. That a firearms manufacturer could justify designing a pistol for the explicit purpose of shooting unsuspecting men in the dark of night was both fascinating and terrible to me.
Richard placed his hand on my shoulder and brought me back to the here and now. The sentry walked past us, slow measured footsteps unhurried and without any pretense of stealth or caution. No doubt this guy had walked a patrol duty here dozens of times without encountering so much as a curious coyote or jackrabbit. He probably thinks there's as much chance of getting into a shoot-out tonight as some sleepy small-town sheriff thinks he'll be getting into a gunfight with a gang of professional bank robbers. Unfortunately for the sheriff, and for this guy, sometimes the day just doesn't turn out like you planned.
The guard was walking away now, just a few feet to go. I felt Richard lift the netting from the barrel of my Uzi and over my head. My mind raced. I could feel panic overtaking me, and for a terrible, awful moment I almost started to cry. I was going to shoot a man in the back, for fuck's sake. It was one of the lowest, vilest, most uncivilized things you could do to another human being, and I was -
Richard tapped my shoulder with a single finger. I fired.
The first burst was three, maybe four shots; just a soft, stuttering cough thanks to the suppressor. The Uzi spat brass into the dirt a few feet away, and I saw the dim shape of the guard stumble and lurch, heard him gasp. I fired again, a longer, raking burst that started near his thighs and rode up his body, perhaps half a dozen slugs. He toppled over and sprawled onto the ground, his rifle making a soft clatter as it tumbled from his hands.
"Up! Hit him again, one more burst!" Richard hissed in my ear.
I scrambled to my feet, almost firing the Uzi into the ground in my haste. I took half a dozen hurried steps forward, just enough to get a better view of the target, and then I brought the Uzi up to my shoulder and raked the dim shape from hip to head with another half-dozen rounds. I could see the body jerk and twitch a bit as each of the shots struck home, but I knew at that moment he was dead before he hit the ground; the last fusillade was just me punching holes in dead meat.
Richard walked up next to me, putting his hand across the top of my Uzi and gently pointing the weapon down at the ground. "You've got him, William. Come on, quick. Let's check the body, confirm the kill. Can't leave him behind unchecked even if you're sure he's done."
As we approached the body, I could smell the blood. It was an awful, foreign smell. Modern, first-world types rarely know what a large volume of hot, freshly spilled blood smells like, and we’re better off not knowing. I found myself choking back against it.
Richard leaned in close. "Breathe it in, get used to it quick. Breathe through your mouth if you have to, it won't hit you as hard. Get past it as fast as you can."
I opened my mouth wide and pumped air into my lungs in quick, quiet breaths, trying not to gasp or gulp but rather just inhale and exhale as much air as possible. It helped clear my mind and kept me from feeling so queasy and faint as we reached the body and crouched down. I could see the guard's back was riddled with bullet wounds, at least eight or ten, and at least one bullet had struck him in the back of the head. The diagonal shot had torn through the skull at an angle and blown away a chunk of bone and scalp as big around as the palm of my hand. In the night, the colors were all washed out to shades of grey, but the ragged circle of dark, glistening flesh surrounded by blood-spattered blonde hair was unmistakable.
Richard reached under the body and felt the guard's throat for a few seconds, then withdrew his hand and nodded. "He's gone. The hit to the head flipped his switch for sure, but at least three of those body shots would have been terminal. Still, best to have made sure. Check his gun, but be careful. Don't make any noise, and make sure it won't go off."
I turned from the body, grateful to have something to do even for a few seconds, and I carefully picked up the AK. I saw one of my bullets had punched a massive dent in the stamped sheet steel receiver, and a second bullet had glanced off of the magazine a third of the way down its length, warping it badly. I showed it to Richard.
"Leave it, it's useless now. Come on, time to move. We don't know when someone's going to come looking for this dummy."
I stood up, took another few deep breaths, and tried to compose myself. Surprisingly, I found I was holding it together better than had I imagined. I wasn't shutting down, I wasn't bawling or cursing my lost innocence. Truth be told, the adrenaline was coursing through my body at a hundred miles an hour, every nerve singing and on full alert. You hear about such a thing as a "combat high", but now I understood what people meant by it. I pulled the half-spent magazine from the Uzi, put it between my teeth, and then pulled a fresh "stick" from my vest, reloading the submachine gun and tucking the half-empty mag into the empty pocket.
"Now what?" I whispered to Richard.
Without answering, Richard motioned for me to follow. We moved twenty meters back along the guard's route, heading towards the meth cooking trailer at an oblique angle. When we came within thirty meters, Richard stopped me and dropped down to one knee. I did the same, tucking the Uzi into my shoulder and propping its warm suppressor on my knee.
Richard pointed to the trailer. "I want you to empty a magazine into the meth lab. Walk the shots back and forth the length of the trailer about four feet off the floor. Hopefully we'll upset something delicate and start a fire. When your mag runs dry, reload as fast as you can. We want to draw these d
ummies out of their camper without them knowing what’s going on, then cut them down before their eyes adjust to the dark. Got that?"
I nodded. All hesitation was gone now. I was positively thrumming with the excitement of the moment. I brought the Uzi up, sighted down the weapon towards one end of the trailer, and squeezed the trigger. The submachine gun snarled deep and low thanks to the suppressor, brass spinning out into space and tinkling across the ground to my side, the slugs rattling and thumping into the wooden siding of the lab trailer like the frenzied, staccato hammering of a mad woodpecker. Near the end of the magazine I heard a brief, strangled cry from within the trailer. I realized I’d just killed, or at least wounded, another person inside the lab. About the same time, I saw a brief flash light up the curtained windows, and I knew I must have ignited something inside the trailer.
The magazine emptied, and just as I’d practiced while shooting on the range, I unfastened the empty mag, tossed it to the side, and pulled a fresh one from my vest. I slid it home smoothly and gave it a sharp rap on the base with my open palm to make sure it was seated tight, all in one fluid movement. I drew back the bolt, ready to fire; the reload took all of three seconds.
"Here comes the whirlwind..." I heard Richard whisper next to me.
I saw out of the corner of my eye he had the night vision goggles propped up on his forehead, the H&K .45 held out in front of him in a two-handed grip, elbow propped on his knee. He might as well be waiting for a traffic light to turn green, for all the lack of concern in his features.
Two heartbeats later, the door to the meth lab trailer slammed open, and silhouetted in smoke and flame a man in blue jeans and a white t-shirt stained red, a respirator and goggles on his face, stumbled down the stairs and half-sprawled in the dirt. He was hollering something incomprehensible, but it was obviously heard by someone in the camper, because a moment later the flickering blue-white glow of the television ceased.
"Take him, take him!" Richard hissed.
I shifted my aim slightly from the camper to the foot of the lab's stairs and raked a burst into the wounded man. The shots jerked him to the side and rolled him into the dirt, but I couldn't see where I hit him from this distance. We were too far away from the trailer, sacrificing accuracy for the concealment of the desert night, well out of the illumination coming from the trailers.
I heard a deep cough from my side, and a fat brass casing spun past me. Richard grunted in satisfaction and I realized he must have finished off the "cook".
A moment later, the screen door of the camper flew open, and a tall, lanky man in shorts and a wife-beater came out, a pump shotgun in his hands, stock tucked into his shoulder. The man was looking down the barrel but not aiming, sweeping the muzzle of the shotgun side to side, always pointing it where he looked. I could sense he knew what he was doing, and I had to put him down quick. I took a breath, let it half out, made sure to use the sights on the Uzi, and squeezed off a single aimed round at the man, hoping for a head shot. By the firelight coming from the open trailer door, I saw the dark blossom of red suddenly appear high on the right side of his chest. The man staggered back half a step, then brought up the shotgun and fired.
I quailed at the sound. Up until this moment, everything had been relatively quiet. All my gunfire and Richard's single shot were suppressed, the loudest sounds had been the bullets hammering through the lab trailer and the muffled shout of the cook. Compared to that, the shotgun sounded like an atomic bomb going off. I didn't notice where the pellets struck, but I heard a faint whispering off to my right, the sound of the shot pellets cutting through the air. I lined up and fired again, this time a short burst of three slugs, and the shooter pitched back into the dust, arms and legs splayed out.
"Now, move!" Richard growled at me, and we scuttled off to my left.
Our move was just in time. One of the camper's windows shattered outwards, and a foot-long tongue of flame lit up the night as someone inside sprayed the desert with an automatic weapon. The ground near where we had been kneeling exploded in dust and small stones catapulting into the air. We dropped to a low crouch to the left of our original position, the burning trailer eclipsing most of the camper.
"Light automatic rifle fire, five fifty-six mil, probably an M-4. He just burned through a thirty-round mag. He’s reloading. Hose either side of the window, now!"
I brought up the Uzi and put a long burst through both sides of the window. When I switched to the right side and fired, I saw something fall into view inside the camper door. The shooter, right-handed, had been hiding behind the thin trailer wall as he reloaded. The Uzi ran dry as I finished my right-hand burst, and as I pulled the mag free and reached for my reload, I heard two men shouting, not from inside the camper, but from back behind it.
Richard pointed towards the back of the camper. "The windows, they crawled out. We need to move. We have to outflank them before it happens to us!"
With that we got to our feet and turned to run, only to be knocked flat when the world split in half with fire and thunder. Something nasty inside the lab had finally caught fire. The entire trailer, filled with vapors and gases and god knew what else, maybe propane tanks or bottles of volatile chemicals, blew out and up in a great rolling fireball.
I sensed Richard rolling to his feet, uncoiling into a combat crouch, the H&K in that steady two-handed grip, tracking back and forth looking for a target. But we were lit up almost like it was daylight, and I knew the advantage we gained staying hidden in the dark was long gone. I scrambled around in the dirt, trying to get to my feet, but my head felt like it was filled with cotton and I couldn't find the Uzi.
"Your pistol! Stop looking for the chatterbox and draw your sidearm!" Richard was shouting at me, all pretense of stealth gone.
I stumbled to my feet and pulled the blocky automatic from my belt. I mimicked Richard's combat grip and scanned the area, looking for the two men who had escaped from the camper. I could see the truck nearest to the lab was covered in flaming debris, and the paint was beginning to peel and burn. Bits of burning wood siding and other flaming or smoldering debris were scattered all over the place, a score of little campfires in a twenty meter radius. The smoke had an awful, acrid, chemical reek to it and I dreaded thinking of what I might be inhaling.
"Fall back and circle to the left - we need to find those jerkweeds!" Richard shouted.
Richard began to walk with a crabbing, side-stepping motion that kept him facing the camper but moving to his left. I had practiced this sort of walk before on the range, but I was too disoriented. Instead I just held my pistol in my right hand pointed towards the camper and walked in a crouch as we circled around.
The first shots almost took me in the face. I heard the report of a pistol, and felt the snap-crack of the bullet as it passed an inch or two from my head. I saw the muzzle flash from more shots a moment later, coming from the right side of the camper. The shooter was obscured by the flames and smoke of the ruined trailer, and I sensed another pair of shots pass by the other side of my body. I swung about to face the shooter, pulling the Glock into a two-handed grip, and fired five times as fast as I could work the trigger. I didn't see the shooter go down, or if I hit him, but there was no return fire.
We continued to circle, slowly shifting back and to the left, the back of the camper and the dented white van coming into view. I was more terrified than I had ever been in my entire life, certain that, at any moment, a shot would ring out and I'd find myself tumbling into the dirt. I saw Richard out of the corner of my eye, calm and sure on the surface, but I could tell that underneath he was a tense as a drum skin. Beads of perspiration were running down his face, drawing channels in the coating of dust across his features. It struck me that despite his long, long history of service and slaughter, Richard was keenly aware of his own mortality at this moment.
"Could they have run off into the desert?" I hissed at Richard.
"Maybe, but we can't take the chance. Besides, they have to know it's just on
e or two men. Better to wait until we show ourselves and cut us down."
"So what do we do?" I asked.
"Make sure we shoot faster and straighter."
The moment was broken as the headlights of a pickup truck cut two paths of light out into the desert off to our left. The engine roared to life, and the tires spun in the loose desert dirt as the truck lurched forward, spraying a fantail of dust and pebbles. The driver must have slipped into the cab from the opposite side of the truck, and as he pulled away, an arm extended out of the cab and a two-foot jet of flame blazed at us. A line of bullet impacts raced towards Richard and me, and we threw our bodies to either side in an effort to get away from the barrage. Then the driver's gun ran dry, some sort of little submachine gun that ate through its ammunition in a second or two, and the driver raced the engine again, attempting to make his escape.
"Stop him!" Richard yelled as he came to his feet, moving so fast I could only marvel at how quickly he got his legs back under him.
Richard aimed the H&K and emptied it as fast as he could pull the trigger, running the pistol dry and beginning his reload before I had even fired my first shot. I brought up the Glock and fired off the remaining ten rounds, and halfway through Richard had finished reloading and started firing again.
The truck swerved once, twice, and finally skidded to a stop perhaps a hundred meters away. Richard broke into a run, reloading again as he ran, sprinting at a slight angle to the left of the truck. I stood and reloaded as fast as I could, then dashed after Richard, and as I ran I saw the driver’s door slam open. The driver stumbled free of the cab, silhouetted by the glow of the headlights in the dust cloud around the truck. The driver brought up his submachine gun and fired an erratic burst, ripping up the ground to my right.
Without slowing down, pistol out straight and level in front of him, Richard fired twice while at a dead run, and I saw the driver flop against the open door of the truck and drop to the ground. I couldn't believe the shot, at least thirty meters and in the dark, after running flat out for over twice that distance. By the time I caught up to Richard, I was already trembling with adrenaline and exertion, the pistol unsteady in my hands. Richard kept his pistol motionless, walking towards the driver at a quick combat crouch. I followed behind and to his right, my own pistol raised but certainly shaking.
Killer Instincts v5 Page 11