by James Cook
“Glad to hear it.”
The scarred Texan covered me while I donned my ghillie suit, and when finished, I set my goggles to thermal mode and did the same for him. After sorting himself out and activating his NVGs and night vision scope, he pointed to a spot up the hill. “I’m going to set up over there. It’ll give me a good view over the hill without creating too much of a target picture.”
I looked at the spot and nodded. “Good thinking. I’ll set up fifty yards that way. Not much use in radio silence at this point.”
“Agreed. How many you reckon we’re dealing with?”
“There’s probably at least five of them, Tanner and his four men. I probably should have told you this earlier, but Tanner and I went through sniper school at the same time. I know for a fact he graduated top of his class, so don’t underestimate him.”
“Good to know.”
“Also, the fact he was able to shoot me in the dark tells me he has a night vision device. It’s probably safe to assume his men do as well.”
Hicks raised his rifle and made a scope adjustment. “Duly noted. We should leave the packs here and come back for them later, assuming we’re still alive.”
After taking a moment to line up my other FLIR device in tandem with my scope, and stuffing a handful of spare .338 rounds in my pocket, I followed him up the hill. On the way, I realized I had dropped my M-6 when Red bolted, and was limited to just my .338 rifle, Beretta pistol, Kel-Tec PMR-30, and backup piece. Not the ideal load out for a firefight, but better than nothing.
When I reached the top of the hill and settled in, cheek against composite plastic stock, it became immediately clear Hicks and I had a major tactical advantage.
FLIR. Forward Looking Infrared.
Night vision is great. If you have it and the other guy doesn’t, you’re probably going to win. But night vision has many of the same limitations as the naked eye. Take camouflage, for instance. Although night vision gives you a better chance at spotting someone who is heavily camouflaged in the dark, if he is an expert and hides himself properly, he can still get the drop on you. With FLIR, it’s a different story. FLIR allows you to see in the infrared spectrum—heat signatures. And no amount of conventional camouflage is going to hide a person’s infrared signature, especially when the ambient temperature is less than twenty degrees. In those conditions, a human body stands out like a torch.
Consequently, I spotted Tanner’s men with no problem.
FORTY-NINE
They were down the hill about a hundred yards away, closing fast, armed with AKs, equipped with NVGs, spread out at ten yard intervals. I assumed they hadn’t spotted us yet, being that there were no bullets ricocheting around my head. I radioed their locations to Hicks, who quickly spotted them as well.
“How you wanna do this?” he asked.
“Pick one and take him out, then back off as fast as you can. We don’t want Tanner getting a fix on us.”
“Copy. I’m ready.”
“Same here. Count us down.”
“On one. Three, two, one.”
We both fired. I took no chances, aiming center of mass. At a thousand yards, a .338 Lapua magnum round can punch through military-grade body armor like tissue paper. At less than a hundred yards, the match-grade 300 grain projectile I fired was traveling over 2700 feet per second and struck its frail human target with nearly 4900 foot-pounds of energy. In other words, it really didn’t matter where the bullet hit. The guy was toast. I watched him fall and caught a glimpse of his back. There was a ragged hole there, roughly the size of a softball. He was dead before he hit the ground.
Then I was moving.
At four-hundred yards, if Tanner had his scope focused anywhere near my position, he had to have seen the muzzle flash. He would also have established a vector on the thundering report, far louder than Hicks’ M-110. Which meant if shots started coming, they would probably be aimed at me.
I backed quickly down, worked my way about fifty yards toward the south side of the hill, then climbed back up. As I edged my way slowly over the hilltop, I caught sight of the two remaining gunmen. One flanked right, while the other attacked straight ahead, spraying potshots as he went. There was no sign of Hicks. I followed the guy going straight up the hill until he stopped to take cover behind a tree, then I let out a breath and fired. The bullet caught him in the side, bursting both his lungs and his heart like balloons, and kept on trucking. As the gunman fell, I heard a staccato series of thaks as the projectile spent its remaining energy busting through tree trunks.
Scary stuff.
Again, I backed off and started moving northward toward the last of Tanner’s men. About forty meters north of Hicks’ original position I reloaded my rifle’s magazine, then climbed up and peered over the edge. Tanner’s man was still moving in the same direction, trying to come at me from the north in a flanking maneuver. Roughly ten yards ahead, unbeknownst to him, crouched the slim, angular form of Caleb Hicks. I followed the gunman with my scope until he passed within a few feet of the stealthy soldier. I almost expected Hicks to stand up and slit his throat, but he proved to be much more practical. When the enemy was past, he simply stood up, placed the barrel of the M-110 against the back of his head, and pulled the trigger. Before the body hit the ground, Hicks was already moving, threading his way among the trees.
Nicely done, kid.
His voice sounded in my ear. “Gabe, what’s your twenty?”
I told him. He acknowledged and said he was on his way. When he reached me, he said, “Well that was surprisingly painless.”
I tapped my FLIR imager. “Gotta love technology.”
“So what now?”
“Tanner is still out there, and he’s not going to be nearly as easy to kill as these last four.”
“Be that as it may,” Hicks said. “We have the advantage now.”
I nodded and clapped him on the shoulder. “Okay, I have an idea where that first shot came from. I don’t think he’s changed position. If he had, he probably would have taken a shot at us by now. We’ll separate sixty yards, you on the north side, me on the south, and approach from two directions. You take my FLIR scope and give me your night vision one. I can get by just fine with my goggles.”
“You sure?”
“Positive. It’ll double our chances of spotting him before he spots us.”
“All right then.”
I had zeroed the FLIR scope on the M-110 many times, and knew what adjustments to make. Once it was attached to Hicks’ rifle, he helped me do the same with his night vision scope on my .338.
“That should be pretty close,” he said. “Wish we had time for a few test shots. Don’t be surprised if your first shot falls short. You might have to apply a little Kentucky windage.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll figure it out. Or die trying.”
Hicks chuckled and shook his head. “Let’s get this over with.”
“Amen.”
It took us the better part of an hour to cover the distance. We took our time, moving carefully, taking great pains not to disturb the foliage around us. Even with the imager at its highest setting, I had trouble making out Hicks’ shape among the dense forest. With just the night vision scope, he was a ghost.
There was a bit of sphincter puckering as we crossed the highway, but we made it across without incident. It was a long highway, and even with a scope, I knew Tanner wouldn’t be able to monitor all of it at once. The gamble paid off.
The hill Tanner’s shot came from loomed ahead, standing at the top of a long, wide hollow bisected by the highway. As I drew closer, the adrenalin began to wear off and I felt a warmth spreading on my side. A quick inspection revealed I had popped a few stitches there.
Forget it. Fix it later.
My hand, which had settled into a dull throb that I could mostly ignore, began to flare into pulsing, burning agony. It also itched like hell. The itching was a recent thing, having started that morning. I hadn’t been as diligent about cleanin
g and re-bandaging it as I should have been, and I worried it was becoming infected.
Another thirty yards of careful walking took me up the slope of the hill where the foliage thinned and the trees stood much wider apart. The voice of Instinct began to chirp again, so I radioed Hicks to stop and wait.
“What’s wrong?”
“He picked his hide pretty well,” I said. “Is the forest as thin on your side as it is on mine?”
A pause, then, “Yeah. Gonna be hard to sneak up on him through that.”
“Exactly. And if this fucker’s half as sneaky as I think he is, the approach on the opposite side is probably rigged with traps.”
“So what do you want to do?”
“Hang tight. I need a minute to think.”
We could try leapfrogging up the hill, but if Tanner got a bead on either one of us, we were toast. The only reason I was still alive was because of my body armor, a thought which rankled more than I wanted it to. Getting up there to him was going to be difficult in the extreme. Unless, of course, we knew where he was. Which meant that, somehow, I had to trick him into giving away his position.
“Okay,” I said into the mouthpiece. “I have an idea. Hold position until I call you again.”
“Can do.”
I backed off slowly, putting about a hundred yards of thick forest between myself and the clearer approaches up the hill. Then I took off my ghillie suit, lashed a couple of long sticks into a shape like a crucifix, and draped the ghillie suit over it. Then I crept back the way I had come, got as close to the hillside as I dared, and leaned the rig up against a tree.
Not the tricky part.
I unslung my rifle, set its foregrip in the crotch of a low limb, right about the level the stick man would hold it if he were trying to aim, and lashed it in place with paracord. Despite the cold, beads of sweat dripped into my eyes as I worked. That old familiar prickling sensation tingled between my shoulder blades. Once finished, I breathed a shaky sigh of relief and moved a few yards to my right, taking cover behind the trunk of a massive beech tree.
“Okay, Hicks,” I radioed. “Keep your eyes on the hilltop. I’m gonna try something here. He might take a shot.”
“Roger.”
The next part was crucial. The goal was to throw a stick, disturb a tree limb, and fool Tanner into taking a shot at the dummy sniper. If I threw the stick too hard, Tanner would know it was a ruse. But if I did it lightly, just enough to draw the eye, there was a good chance he would take the shot.
Taking up a stick I had chosen for the purpose, I took aim, held it in a light grip, and tossed it. It spun twice through the air, flying in a slow, lazy arc, and, as intended, one end barely kissed a thin branch, gently agitating it. A few seconds passed in silence. Just as I began to think he hadn’t seen it, or had seen it and wasn’t fooled, a shot rang out. The ghillie suit flew backward, the bullet hitting one of the sticks supporting it.
Hot damn.
“Got him,” Hicks said.
Tanner must have realized he’d been fooled, because a volley of bullets began to pepper the woods around me, aimed seemingly at random. He must have figured out that whoever triggered the decoy must not be far from it, and was trying to flush me out.
“Hicks, I’m pinned down. Can you try to draw his fire for a few seconds?”
“On it.”
Several shots rang out from the M-110. They must have been uncomfortably close, because Tanner shifted aim and began firing in Hicks’ direction. I stood up, drew my knife, and sprinted to where I had left my rifle. A few quick sawing motions later, it was in my hands.
Moving farther up the hill, I caught a flash in my FLIR imager. It was brief, there but for a fraction of a second, but I had it. Raising my weapon, I peered through the night vision scope and waited for him to fire again. There was a slight motion under a pile of leaves between two boulders, and then another flash.
“Gotcha, motherfucker.”
The boulders were in the way. I couldn’t shoot Tanner, but I could damn well shoot his weapon. As I sighted in, one of Hicks’ shots hit the boulder to Tanners left, sending sparks and a spray of granite into the air. The former CIA agent kept firing, undeterred.
Remembering Hicks’ warning, I centered the reticle, estimated the range, lifted my point of aim a little higher than I normally would, and fired. The .338’s reputation as a competent anti-material rifle held. Tanner’s weapon—a Dragunov, by the look of it—slammed against the boulder to his right and fell from his hands, clattering down the hillside. A pair of legs appeared behind the boulders and the tall, lean figure of Sebastian Tanner emerged. He belly crawled backward for a few seconds, then stood up in a crouch and turned to flee down the hillside.
“Like hell,” I muttered, then worked the bolt, shifted my aim, and fired again. The reticle was centered on his chest but the bullet went low, hitting him in the right hip. With a shriek of agony, he fell and rolled halfway to the bottom of the hill, coming to a stop not far from where I stood.
Keeping my rifle steady, I approached cautiously. With a cry of effort, Tanner sat up and fumbled for a pistol on his chest rig. I stopped, took careful aim, waited until the pistol cleared its holster, and fired again. Tanner’s weapon, and about half of his right hand, spun away into the darkness. He cried out anew and lay on his side, clutching his right wrist.
“The next one will be your head,” I warned as I drew near.
Without my ghillie suit, he had no trouble recognizing me. I stepped up the rise and stopped less than ten feet away from him, gun leveled. Blood poured in great streaming gouts from his ruined right hip and mangled hand, sending up shimmering white heat waves in my imager. Unless I missed my guess, he was not long for this world.
“How?” he asked as he lay gasping. “I hit you center of mass. That was a kill shot. You should be dead.”
I rapped my knuckles on my vest. “Dragon Skin. Best there is.”
He let out a rusty, grating laugh. “Son of a bitch. Why didn’t I aim for the head? I should have known you’d have some trick up your sleeve.”
I took off my goggles and took a few steps closer, gazing down at him. The moon had emerged from the clouds, shining pale and cold on his ruined face. “Was it worth it?” I asked. “Was it really worth it? All these people dead on both sides, and for what? So you can bleed your last lying in the dirt on a random hillside in middle-of-nowhere Missouri? Why couldn’t you just let it go, Tanner?”
He laughed again, his lone functioning eye growing dim. “Why…couldn’t you?”
I opened my mouth to reply, then closed it. The eye had gone blank. Empty. No one home to talk to.
I drew my Beretta, waited for the death rattle, and put two in his head. Just to be sure.
For you, Elizabeth.
*****
Hicks radioed his position to me and informed me he was wounded.
“How bad?” I asked, picking up the pace.
“Got me in the right leg, low and outside. Missed the bone and the big artery, but it still hurts like a son of a bitch. Bleeding pretty good, too.”
“Hang in there. I’m on my way.”
I found him propped up against a tree, rifle across his lap, a wide gauze bandage around his leg. It had already bled through. “Hold still,” I told him as I took out my first aid kit. “I’m going to patch this up a little better.”
He grimaced and nodded silently.
First, I cut away the old dressing. Then I cut a slit up the outside of his pants leg so I could get a better look at the wound. Hicks was kind enough to detach his tactical light and shine it on his leg. The bullet had gone through and through, leaving a ragged circle of torn flesh in its wake. The bleeding was bad, but not arterial. If I could get it stopped, Hicks had a good chance to recover.
Reaching in my medi-kit, I grabbed a bottle of iodine. “This is going to hurt,” I said.
He nodded. “Just do it.”
He hissed through clenched teeth as I cleaned the wound,
taking my time and doing a thorough job. Once finished, I took out a packet of QuickClot, held the wound open, and poured in the powder, making sure to pack it in both perforations. Hicks ground his teeth and cursed vividly, but remained still.
“All right, the worst is over. Now we just need to wrap you up.”
I packed the bullet holes over with gauze, wrapped more gauze around his leg several times, then sealed the whole works with compression tape.
“There,” I said. “That should get the bleeding stopped. Think you can stand up?”
“Yeah. Give me a hand.”
I picked up his rifle, slung it over my shoulders, and helped him to his feet.
“We need to find the horses,” he said. “No way can I make it all the way back to Brownsville on this leg.”
“How do you propose we do that?”
“Just get us back to where we turned ‘em loose. They’ll wander back there eventually.”
I frowned at him. “How do you know?”
The young soldier grinned. “’Cause that’s where I left the feed bag.”
I threw back my head and laughed, then ducked under his arm and supported him as he walked.
“Caleb, my friend, you are a steely-eyed missile man.”
FIFTY
The hand was infected.
On the ride back to Brownsville, it grew steadily worse. A red streak started from the base of my diminished left ring finger and began tracing its way across my palm and up my forearm. By the time we rode through Brownsville’s main gate, I was feverish, sweaty, and generally felt like I was dying. Which, in fact, I was.
Hicks, on the other hand, was healing nicely. His wound had sealed too much for stitches, so Ethan and the other medics simply cleaned it as best they could, prescribed antibiotics, and put him on limited duty for a couple of weeks. He was examined first, since he was the one on active duty, then they worked their way to me.
“Lucky for you, we have antibiotics now,” Ethan said, examining my hand under the olive-drab tent of a hastily erected field hospital. “Just stay in bed for a couple of days. Once the meds kick in, you’ll be back on your feet. Make sure you take the full cycle.”