The Orion Assignment

by Camacho, Austin S.

  To Morgan, it seemed a fantasy landscape where the earth met the moon.

  The long drive west had convinced Morgan that all of Ireland looked the same. A huge flat rock covered with a thick green carpet. Some giant prankster had pulled up all the trees and stuck them back into the ground close together in clumps for easy accounting. The dense grassy foliage covered the island like a verdant tablecloth. The Irish cut small holes into it to grow food.

  But Sean had dropped them off near the coast in the southwestern corner of Ireland, leaving Morgan and Felicity to walk farther toward the edge. In hiking boots and backpacks filled with camping gear, they invaded this foreign Ireland. It felt different there. This was true desolation. The air was crisper, sharper, and slightly scented by the distinct odor of the ocean.

  They stopped on a hilltop, where Morgan could look down on breakers rolling into the coast. The salt spray leaped and clawed at the sky. Here the velvet carpet came to a sudden end, its edges ragged and frayed. It was pulled back away from the jagged edges of the huge rocks that grew up like rotten teeth along the coastline. Here, where the ocean attacked the land, was a natural fury he had not suspected of this fairy tale country. This place was as raw as a panther’s snarl, and as barren and dismal as the lunar surface.

  Something about the atmosphere prodded the pair to silence. It was as if they didn’t want to compete with the crashing surf or the wind that moaned with so human a voice. They hiked nearly two miles following the coastline before the girl made a comment.

  “You hear that mournful sound?” Felicity asked, shifting her rucksack to a more comfortable position on her back. “Years ago, people used to believe that to be the wail of the banshee.”

  “Sounds just like the blues to me. Your friends choose to live here? I mean on purpose?”

  “No one bothers them here,” Felicity answered. “All the wanderers really want is to be left alone.”

  “Well that explains it. I guess we’re invading their territory. Whoever’s tracking us is real good, and he doesn’t want to be seen.”

  “I picked him up only ten minutes ago,” Felicity said. “If we just walk a bit more, I think he’ll report us to the camp and they’ll send out an official welcoming party.” Felicity looked around, staring into a clump of trees where she knew their watcher hid.

  To little Timothy, hiding among the trees, this duo was indeed a mystery. They were outlanders, but they seemed at home here. That alone struck him as strange. Both wore stretch corduroys and good hiking boots. Each wore a twill outing jacket, hers a jade that matched her eyes and set off her brilliant red hair. Their rucksacks were full, but the weight hampered neither of them. They were experienced hikers by all appearances. She had the easy gait of a country girl and the skin and cheekbones of an Irish woman.

  The man was dark, not like charcoal, but rather with a deeper tan than the boy had ever seen in his twelve years. And his hair was like black sheep’s wool. He carried a long canvas case across his back in addition to the ruck, and binoculars around his neck. He had a powerful stride, a city stride, yet it seemed suited to long distances.

  Little Timothy was known to his clan as an excellent observer. He would report these two in full detail to Papa. He would know just what to do.

  It was late afternoon when horses appeared at the edge of the thin woods. Felicity was sitting on a large rock looking out at the sea. Two of the riders, the more muscular pair, held back a few feet while the oldest of the three walked his stallion forward until he was looking over the girl’s shoulder. The wind whipped her long tresses, the horse’s mane, and the rider’s gray hair.

  “Is it really you, girl? Are you the O’Brien girl, the one we called `the mist’ back in the old days?”

  “Tis I, you old fox,” Felicity replied, turning with a smile. “I’ve missed you, O’Faolain. You and the boys are me kith. And I need you now.”

  “Young Timothy tells me you’re traveling with a black man. Where is he?”

  “In the trees,” Felicity replied. “Behind you. He’s had a gun on you. I couldn’t be sure you were still the man in charge hereabouts, and your clan hasn’t much of a reputation for hospitality to strangers.”

  “Behind us? Impossible.” O’Faolain turned to shout this joke to his men, but the words caught in his throat. Morgan stepped from the tree line and walked out between the two horsemen, holstering his automatic. He stopped next to O’Faolain, the obvious leader.

  “Felicity tells me you people control this part of County Cork. That you hate intruders and that you’ll likely help us keep the violence from touching your area. I hope my appearance won’t affect that decision.”

  The two men’s eyes locked and O’Faolain stared down for nearly a minute, evaluating. After probing Morgan’s eyes, O’Faolain’s lined and weathered face split into a wide smile.

  “I wondered if she’d ever find a man out there strong enough to be with her. You’ve got the fire lad and that’s for sure. Patrick! Pull this young buck up behind you, I’ll take the lass, and we’ll head back to camp. After we get a warm meal into them we’ll talk about this trouble they’ve got.”

  Morgan knew he was behind an excellent horseman as soon as he was mounted. The ride was fast but steady and smooth. Within a few minutes, they broke into a large, mostly flat clearing. Wagons painted in bright, cheerful colors and patterns were scattered about in a haphazard manner, and campfires dotted the area, laid out without any apparent plan.

  Morgan had never seen wagons quite like these. They were round, like huge wooden beer kegs laid on their sides. The doors on the backs looked like regular house doors. Near each one stood a few large draught horses. The relaxed demeanor of those big animals spread a peaceful calm over the scene. Children ran, women worked, men smoked and chatted. These people looked just like those he had seen in Dublin, except for the wariness in their eyes. They were just as friendly, but a bit less trusting.

  The group dismounted in front of a large central tent. The gray haired man who Morgan marked as the obvious leader strode over to Felicity. They looked at each other for a moment, before he threw his arms around her and gave her a bear hug. They slapped each other on the back and arms several times amidst loud laughter. Then Felicity waved to Morgan to follow and they headed into the tent.

  They sat on folded blankets in a rough circle and were served by a very young dark-haired girl. A younger man sat on either side of O’Faolain and five other men filled out the circle, as deferential as any general’s staff. O’Faolain took a long drink from his cup and waited long enough to be sure no one else would try to speak before he did. Then he looked at Felicity and said, “From the beginning, girl. What’s it about, and what’s it got to do with us?”

  “You’re not so far away that you’ve lost sight of The Troubles, now are you?” Felicity asked. Then, while they drank ale and ate the now familiar stew, she outlined her uncle’s problem. O’Faolain’s eyes followed hers as she described the church bombing and how they dealt with the hand grenade thrown into the public house. She quickly outlined O’Ryan’s financial situation and how it was his Achilles Heel. Without hesitation she explained their approach to weakening O’Ryan’s financial state. Finally, she told him about the weapons O’Ryan was planning to bring onto the coast nearby.

  “And that, I take it, is where you’ll be needing our help,” O’Faolain said. “I see why you want to do this thing, and Lord knows I don’t want those horrid weapons to come through my lands anymore than you do. But how in the name of glory are you going to keep the boys from just pulling up and landing somewhere else?”

  “That part I’ll leave to Morgan,” Felicity said. “He’s a trained sniper, you see. He’ll wait until the boats are ashore, then take out the leaders from a safe place in the rocks.” That drove O’Faolain’s eyebrows up, and the younger man sitting on his right turned and spat on the ground. Morgan marked him as the danger man in the room. His resemblance to O’Faolain was unmistakable.

 
This was some kind of council he figured, with all the decision makers in a circle on the ground. He wondered how Felicity fit into this all male group. His question was soon answered.

  “Do you know what kind of company you’ve fallen in with, my lad?” O’Faolain asked Morgan in his lilting accent, which was a little different from Felicity’s. “Well, let me tell you. This child wandered out onto the heath and had nearly died of exposure when we found her. Nursed her back to health, I did. Me and me old wife. This girl swore she’d repay us somehow. Well, everyone you save says something like that, don’t they?” He smiled around the circle, and all of the older men grinned back.

  “Well, it wasn’t a year later, we hit some tough times. Now I don’t mind telling you, we sometimes makes ours by taking from the rich and giving to the poor, that is, us. Well, this one comes to me and says `I know where there’s some good pickings’. Then she sallies on into Dublin one day and comes back with her pockets full. Turns out she’s the most talented natural pickpocket the good Lord ever put on this earth. That’s how we come to start calling her `the mist’. And that’s when I says, `one day, love, you’ll get yourself into a bind. When that day comes, you can count on O’Faolain’s clan to get you out of it. You’re our own kith and kin and that’s for sure. And that’s how it is.”

  “Well then, I’ll leave you old friends to catch up on things and iron out the details of tomorrow’s fun,” Morgan said, rising. “I’d like to go check out the territory. Walk the grounds a bit. You understand.”

  “Indeed I do, lad. Unfamiliar lands do make a body nervous.”

  Morgan stepped out of the tent into the gathering twilight. He walked a good two hundred yards before turning. He knew who he would be facing, who had followed him to the edge of the clearing. He wanted his follower to be able to speak without his elders overhearing. Morgan guessed that this was the future leader and he wanted him in on the mission. But they would have to come to an understanding.

  “What’s your name, son?” Morgan asked.

  “I’m Danny.”

  “Danny O’Faolain I take it?” Morgan pressed.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, and I’ll be asking the questions.”

  “Okay. What’s on your mind, son?” Morgan leaned against a tree, with his hands in his pockets. He wanted to present the least threatening front possible.

  “I want to know what makes you so sure that you can make this incredible rifle shot. And why do you care about what happens here in Eire? You don’t look very Irish to me. And why should my people get involved?”

  “You don’t want much, do you?” Morgan said with a grin. “Well let me give this a shot. First, you should get involved because it’s your turf. And because Felicity O’Brien asked you to. I care because she cares. She’s my best friend and I guess that makes me as Irish as I care to be. That’s enough for your elders but not enough for you, I see. And that’s how it should be.” Morgan took a deep breath and looked into the younger man’s eyes.

  “You don’t want your people involved with an amateur. That’s fine, because I’m not one. But I’m not a thief either. I’m a professional soldier. I’m a mercenary, and in that business there’s an elite class. Planners. Night raiders. And snipers. I’m one of the best. If those crates come up on shore within the range of my rifle I can hit them. But we’ll need numbers to stop a whole landing party.”

  Danny O’Faolain reached to his waist and drew a short dagger. “So, among the elite, are you? Some great fighter from a foreign shore come to save the poor micks, huh? Let’s see you prove it.” For a moment, Morgan feared he had made a big mistake. With unexpected speed, the tall Irishman flipped the blade into his hand and threw it just to Morgan’s left. It thudded home in a young three inch tree fifty feet away. Morgan whistled.

  “You ain’t bad there, pal,” Morgan said, reaching into his right boot. “Of course, trees don’t duck or shoot back. However…” His arm blurred, and an instant later, a black blade sprouted out of the tree trunk just a half inch from the Irishman’s knife. Morgan turned to Danny O’Faolain. “Satisfied?”

  “For now. But I’ll be watching tomorrow. I’ll be watching you close.”

  “Yeah, well be up early,” Morgan called as the younger O’Faolain walked away. “If the sun’s up, I’ll already be gone.”

  - 18 -

  There was no way to tell if the mist was moving in from the ocean or out from the land. The cold crept up from the rocks. Morgan stared through his Steiner binoculars out toward a small natural inlet. He sat nestled in a granite formation that nature had cut into sharp angles. This was the nearest cover or concealment to the most likely landing site. He was five hundred fifty yards from his probable target, in the dawn’s first light, with a thin mist and a little bit of a tail wind, at a slight elevation from the target area.

  “Piece of cake,” he said, hoping the lie was convincing.

  In truth, these were pretty shoddy conditions under which to attempt the shot of the century. A dozen skeptics surrounded Morgan. The wanderers carried FN-FAL rifles which they had gotten God knows where, plus a few Stens. They were prepared to ride into the midst of the smugglers on horseback, laying down a barrage of fire, hoping to route them in confusion. This, of course, after Morgan took out the smuggler leader and a couple of key men with a few well placed shots.

  “It can not be done,” Danny O’Faolain said, shaking his head. “It’s got to be half a kilometer even after they reach shore.”

  “Can you do it?” Felicity asked, her voice a little shaky.

  “Let’s just say it’s on the outside edge of possibility,” Morgan said with a grim smile. “If I get lucky.” He surveyed the area while he unpacked his rifle. A small wooden shack stood not far from shore. That would be their meeting point. Wagons waited nearby, onto which he was sure they would load their cargo. He could let them get closer, but once unpacked he figured they would break out machine guns and maybe even grenade launchers to assure themselves a safe trip. No, the only time to hit them was as soon as they landed.

  Morgan had filled his back pack with loose earth. It served as a rest for the barrel of his SSG69 sniping rifle’s barrel. The twenty-five inch barrel’s tip extended over the edge of the rise Morgan was settling behind in prone position. Morgan loaded five rounds of 7.62 millimeter ammunition into the rotary drum magazine and seated it with a solid slap. He pulled the plastic stock snug into his shoulder, and pressed his cheek tight against it. He tuned out the crowd around him, settling his breathing into a steady pattern. Only then did he take the safety off. He worked the bolt, chambering a round.

  He was ready to go to work.

  Three tenths of a mile away, a rubber raft slid up to the shoreline. Through the rifle’s twenty power scope Morgan watched five black clad men slip into the waist-deep water and drag their boat onto the land. Felicity knelt beside him, watching through the light gathering Steiner Miltary-Marine binoculars. They illuminated shaded areas and never needed focusing. If he missed, she would be able to correct him.

  Four rafts were now sliding to the shore. Each carried five men and four or five wooden crates. Morgan relaxed his eyes and let his partner scan for the leaders.

  “The head man is third from the right, right now,” Felicity said in a low whisper. Morgan never even considered the possibility that she might be wrong. On her way to becoming a top notch thief and con artist, she had trained herself to read body language, eye contact and hand gestures to tell who in a group did the telling, and who the listening. If she said so, this was the man.

  Morgan zeroed in on the target and a smile spread across his face. He recognized this man. Morgan had put that face into a wall on a Paris back street not so long ago, and it looked as though Morgan had broken his nose in the process. A gracious fate had placed a man who tried to kill him at the other end of his telescopic sight. This would be a pleasure.

  Morgan had sighted the rifle in at four hundred fifty yards. It was the farthest he figured any
sane man would try for a man sized target. Here he was, violating one of his own cardinal rules already. Still, in testing this rifle had exhibited almost no windage drift. All he needed to worry about was elevation. He waited for his target to stand still for a moment and settled his crosshairs on the top of the man’s head. From this distance, he figured the bullet should impact eighteen or twenty inches down. That would put it at about the tip of the breastbone.

  The leader of the smugglers placed his hands on his hips, shouted an order, and struck an arrogant pose. He was smiling, his body facing the small band of raiders on the hill, his head turned to the water. The wind held its breath. Morgan just stopped breathing and squeezed his trigger with the same gentle touch he would use to caress a beautiful woman’s most sensitive area.

  The blast was deafening and everyone in the wanderer party jumped except Morgan. Loud as it was, the men on the shore could hear no noise at that distance. The target stumbled back three steps, clutched his rib cage, looked around in surprise, and fell over onto his back. One of the others called to him, not yet alarmed.

  Right through the lungs, Morgan thought.

  Incoming stimuli: first, the mule kick to his right shoulder. The slight ringing in the ears, despite ear plugs. The thunder of horses’ hooves as the wanderers charged the smugglers, hollering all the way. The comforting smell of cordite. Then Felicity’s voice, more strident than before.

  “Number two is to the right about ten feet, standing in a raft.”

  Morgan had faith in his partner. She knew the field of vision through the rifle scope was too narrow for him to scan for a target. Also, a moving target, even a slow one, would be impossible to hit at this distance. In the seven tenths of a second it would take for a bullet to reach the shore, it would be easy for a man to move six feet in any direction. She had accounted for all these variables in less time than that, and chosen the best target.

  The face he zeroed in on was quite intent. The smuggler was concentrating on his own telescopic sight. No doubt he was locked onto an approaching wanderer. Morgan squeezed the trigger again, and his sight picture went out of focus.