Adrian's Undead Diary (Book 9): The Dealer of Hope [Adrian's March, Part 1]

by Philbrook, Chris

  No joy.

  “Wake up,” Glen said, kicking Thomas in the foot. Thomas opened his eyes and saw that the sky had turned over to a shade of dawn blue, meaning he’d managed to sleep and dream for nearly five hours. His body still ached from his time behind the rifle, but the rest had done wonders for the bruises. Not nearly as much for his peace and calm.

  “What’s up?” Thomas asked in a whisper. He sat up and looked down at Glen, who was still lying prone with the M110, his focus on something outside their lair.

  “I’m seeing blip of movement north. Could be a goat moving between rocks, or a tango spotting for another mortar round. Not sure. Can you get eyes on and give me a hand?”

  “Of course.” Thomas grabbed the spotting scope from inside a small case nearby and crawled down low to aim it towards the north. He realized the problem Glen was having; their weapon location had dismal line of sight in the area Glen needed to be looking. Thomas found a tiny gap between the larger boulder and a smaller one, and dug out the tiny stones and loose dirt to make a small space to set up the scope. It took him a minute, but when he finished he had a great view.

  In less than thirty seconds, he saw a figure walking; wearing a traditional dark blue burka so many of the women here wore. He immediately reassessed the description of walking. She stumbled, and shambled without grace. The midnight blue fabric she wore on her torso was covered in a large, old blood stains, darkening the already deep blue to black. The stains ran all the way to her feet. There was no way anyone could survive so large a loss of blood. His mind went to little Rasa. Flashes of her dead body crowded his vision and hampered his thoughts. He shook the visual of her away, and zeroed in on the threat.

  “Dead woman at your 10:15. Two hundred fifty meters. Blue burka, coming around the end of a rock that looks like the fender of a Chevy truck.”

  Glen twisted the barrel of the M110 for a few seconds, finally giving up with a grunt of dissatisfaction. “I can’t get the angle.”

  “I can get her. She ain’t moving real fast.” Thomas reached over and stowed the spotting scope in favor of his M4A1. With his ACOG on, and the suppressor off, the shot would be gravy.

  “Sounds good,” Glen said quietly, returning his attention to the firebase and the eastern and southern approaches.

  The Ring man shouldered his weapon and quickly found the undead woman again. She’d moved about ten feet from right to left, heading to the west, and she had even less chance for cover than before. He lined up his shot, and let Glen know it was coming.

  “Sending.”

  “Good to go.”

  Thomas gently exhaled and let his finger contract on the trigger. The high velocity round kicked out of the barrel, rattling their eardrums, and popping the woman’s head apart an instant later. No blood, brain or bone flew away; the debris storm brought on by the head shot stayed trapped under the blue fabric of her burka. Her body ricocheted off the hip high boulder that looked like a truck and landed hard on the rocky slope of the northern ridge. It began a slow roll over small stones down, whipping the blue material around in a dead woman’s dervish.

  Something snapped near Thomas, and he immediately had a mouthful of dirt and a face that stung. Almost imperceptibly he heard something careen off the stone behind him, and he knew they’d just been shot at.

  “Sniper!” He yelled as he rolled out of the tiny opening he’d created with his bare hands not a minute before. As he rolled, he heard the echo of the shooter’s gun report in the valley. They were far away, and a talented shot. Maybe five hundred or six hundred yards. Thomas grabbed a stone the size of a helmet and heaved it into the space the bullet had passed through, effectively sheltering them from the shooter’s wrath.

  “Motherfuckers sent that woman out to draw our position. I should’ve known. Sorry dude.” Thomas was furious. He’d been baited into giving up their position, and he fell for it.

  Glen remained calm behind his rifle. “No bitching please. Let’s just find the cunt and shoot him.”

  “Gonna be a little difficult with them knowing our position and us not knowing theirs.” Thomas was still pissed as he brushed dirt off his face.

  “Nonsense. We know the angle the shot came at. Now we just need to flank him.” Glen was speaking tactically simple. Thomas knew he was correct. “I’ll drop back directly south, using the stones to get some space. Then I’ll head west as best I can and try to draw fire. Once he starts shooting at me, you move over here to this hole, and shoot him,” Thomas said as if he were retelling the story of how a trip to the grocery had gone.

  “Be careful they aren’t trying to flank us too. I would I were them,” Glen said. He thought about it for a second, then grabbed the radio, “Firebase Walker, this is Punisher.”

  “Punisher this is Walker-Actual, we heard two shots, is all well?” It was Ellem’ voice once more.

  “Not so much Walker-Actual,” Glen replied. “We’re kindly requesting your eyes to the north to find a shooter, and light suppressing fire if possible so we can maneuver to flank.”

  “On it Punisher, give us a minute,” Ellem said.

  “Roger that, we’ll move on your firing,” Glen said quickly. He sat the radio down and turned to Thomas. “Let me do the running Tom. Your leg will slow you down,” Glen said.

  “I got it.”

  “I’m serious, man. You’ve lost a step since taking that AK round to the calf this summer. Besides, you’re a better shot than I am.” Glen was serious, and he made sense.

  “Alright, whatever.” Thomas wasn’t happy about the logic, but it was solid logic, and being smart was better than being dumb and brave any day. The two men went about switching off roles, as the marines in firebase Walker prepared to lay down covering fire to spring Glen from their shooting position.

  True to Ellem’s word, the marines opened fire after a few minutes. The firebase had two sentry towers, and Thomas saw through the scope of the M110 as four of the remaining warriors ascended the rickety ladders to the firing platforms above. They took quick firing positions low on the tower top amongst the piles of sandbags, disappearing behind the protective barriers. A young marine with out of regulation straw blonde hair disappeared behind the fortification with fortuitous timing. Thomas watched as one of the sandbags took a round from their sniper just inches from where the kid’s head had been a moment earlier. Almost a full second later the shot’s report echoed through the valley.

  The incoming round was met by the marines with un-aimed, and slow suppressing fire. With precious little ammunition to spare, the marines were simply firing rounds at the areas where stones could be hiding a shooter. In reality, there was a good chance that the sniper they were shooting at was well out of the range of their M4s anyway. They had to hope the sniper didn’t know that.

  “Go,” Thomas said.

  Without pause Glen leapt over the stone to the south, where the sniper hopefully couldn’t get a line of sight or shot on him. Glen’s body was only exposed for a second, but both men heard a round scream through the air with a snapping whizz. The shooter wasn’t perturbed in the least by the marine fire.

  “Walker you can cease fire. Your suppression isn’t working.” Thomas said into the microphone hanging beside his cheek. He heard yelling inside the distant wall of the firebase and the marine gunfire abated moments after.

  The Ring brother dipped his head low and listened to the sounds of the unfolding battle at hand. He could hear Glen’s gentle footsteps so very faintly moving from large boulder to large boulder nearby. Glen would move with incredible care and certainty from cover to cover until he was very far away from Thomas. Glen’s goal was to triangulate the points of the battle. He wanted the sniper at one tip of the triangle, Thomas at another, and he at the final point. That would theoretically divide the attention of the enemy long enough for Thomas to find the shooter, and put a round through him.

  Thomas fidgeted with the SEAL issued headset and waited patiently for his partner to give him the all
clear to roll the rock away that faced the north, and start looking for the man that was trying to kill them.

  One of the primary ways snipers manage to kill their targets is through fear. A single sniper–not even a particularly good one–––can pin an entire platoon of enemy men down because those men are deathly afraid that any piece of flesh they show will get shot off. It’s simple. Snipers are death from above, an unseen executioner that passes judgment and sees the sentence carried out ex parte. You cannot fight an enemy you cannot see, and especially so when they see all of you when you wish they couldn’t.

  One of the most effective weapons against an enemy sniper is patience. No matter how elite a shooter is, they cannot shoot what they cannot see, and if you remain out of their line of fire long enough, he runs out of time. If his or her target contacts support, a solitary sniper loses his advantage, and then has to face multiple enemies coming from multiple locations. If you are patient enough to lay low, more often than not the sniper’s paranoia, and concern for being flanked will cause them to flee, or begin to fire in a way that exposes them.

  The two SEALs were very patient.

  Over the course of three morning hours Glen had managed to move almost 75 yards away before he even contacted Thomas over the comms. When Glen reached a spot he felt useful enough, he began the game.

  “Thomas I’m going to raise my helmet, and see if he takes a shot. If he does, I’m gonna displace like a rabbit on meth, and hopefully you can see a muzzle flash if he fires again.”

  “Go for it.” It wasn’t the best plan, but with just the two of them out in the valley, they had very few options.

  Thomas listened for the shot at Glen’s helmet, and he wasn’t let down. The sharp crack of the high velocity bullet rang out after a single moment, and Thomas took his cue. He pulled the stone blocking his shooting path away with his left hand and sighted down the scope with his right hand on the grip of the rifle. Thomas managed to do all this with both his eyes open. One eye was focused through the crosshairs of his powerful optics while his left eye remained hazy and unfocused, seeking out a second flash. He was ready to fire as he scanned right to left, looking for the sniper’s position.

  “I’m okay,” Glen said over the comms. “I think he’s to the north east a bit. I held my helmet showing that way and he saw it fast. I’m going to move again. Get ready.”

  “Roger that.” Thomas swung his field of vision more intensely to his right, to the north east Glen mentioned. He looked for anything out of the ordinary. Strange colored bumps at the base of boulders, stones with ill placed protruding lumps, or strange, elongated irregularities that could be a camouflage covered shooter. He looked for anything black, or anything angular. Nature didn’t make many straight edges, and many amateur shooters forgot to adequately mask the straight barrel of their weapon.

  Thomas heard the shot ring out half a second after his eyes saw the orange spark and diminutive puff of dust. His primal mind, his warrior mind was thankful he’d seen the blossom of the flash. It meant the bullet wasn’t intended for him. Instinctually he slid his left eyelid closed and moved the scope to the spot on the ridge’s fringe where he’d seen the small burst of light from the gun barrel.

  “I’m good.” He heard Glen say. The shot had missed.

  Thomas only barely registered the comment. In truth, the words were lost on him. His primal mind, the warrior mind, had given him tunnel vision in every possible way. He heard the noise from his friend, and knew he was safe. The message wasn’t given with enough intensity to pull his focus from murdering the man who’d just shot at his best friend.

  The crosshairs of the scope moved quickly across the terrain, but with fluid grace and precision. Had an artist conceived of it they would’ve painted the movement it as if it had traced a ballerina floating across a grand stage of performance. Thomas was literal grace under fire.

  The perpendicular black lines stopped on top of a faded brown object that looked to be a small stone beside a larger, darker brother. Thomas’ eye picked out a small, jet black spot near the base of the light stone, and realized that it was the tip of a barrel from a rifle. As his vision absorbed the scene, he realized that the shooter was covered in an earthen colored burka not unlike the blue one the undead woman had been wearing from before.

  Thomas’ entire body worked like a rehearsed symphony in concert. His left hand had just finished pushing the stone aside, but now was already returning to the scope atop the M110 to adjust for wind at the barrel, as well as wind at the target, the elevation, and the range for the shot. His four fingers and thumb did all this based on his mind’s assessment that the shooter was 550 meters distant, and was about fifty meters higher in elevation than he. Unconsciously he factored in for the breeze (moving at five miles an hour from east to west here in the valley at the moment), as well as the rotation of the earth (not likely a factor), and as he emptied his lungs gently of the crisp afghan air within them, he contracted his trigger finger gently, freeing the firing pin to hit the primer on the round, and sending a projectile out the heavy weapon’s barrel.

  A shooter loses the sight picture through the scope when they fire. The recoil of the weapon shakes it, simply enough. When the weapons settles, the best shooters have already put the crosshairs back on the exact spot they’d just sent a round. The M110 was semi-automatic, and had served Thomas as a fine weapon for regaining his sight picture since he’d started to use it. Thomas got his eyes back on the location where he’d put the round just in time to watch the body roll away from the boulder it had been behind.

  As his warrior mind gave up control to his rational mind, he watched as the earthen colored body tumbled diagonally down the slope of the ridge. It flopped around, rolling over and over, eventually disrobing itself of the beige burka, revealing the body of a woman. Thomas judged her to be older than the first woman he’s shot, with thicker hips, and a fuller breast. Thomas’ shot had hit her just below the neck, directly in the space between the collar bones. The power of his rifle’s bullet had annihilated everything between ribcage and spine, neck and nipple. Her lungs had been scattered on the ground ten feet behind her before she even knew she’d been shot.

  Thomas shot her tumbling body again without malice. This shot left nothing above the neck, reducing her skull and brain to the equivalent of fleshy slag. Her body came to a rest against another free standing boulder and began to leak a red stream of blood beyond it.

  “Shooter’s down,” he said to Glen. “Make your way to the firing position slowly in case there is a second shooter. I can’t see you from my angle, but the spot is 550 meters distant from me, at my 12:30, about fifty meters uphill at the crest of the little ridge. I’ll cover you as you move.”

  “Roger that,” Glen replied.

  Glen moved out, protected by the same power of fear that had just caused him and his friend to take cover for three hours. The turn of events was supremely satisfying.

  Glen moved with Thomas and the best shooter from Firebase Walker providing over watch. The two angles of fire gave him reasonable protection should there be a second sniper hiding somewhere on the ridge. Mercifully, the wind kicked up fast enough to muddle a long range shot. It was hard enough to shoot someone at five hundred yards without a fifteen mile an hour cross breeze. Funny that something so simple could make you safer from something so dangerous.

  Glen moved from large stone to boulder, and from tiny hillock to ditch one twenty foot burst at a time. He would only move after getting the all clear from Thomas, and he moved to the next closest piece of substantial cover. He took no risks with his life, and that caution mean the two hundred meter trip took almost twenty minutes. When the SEAL reached the decapitated and ruined body of the woman that had tried to kill them, he shuffled slowly, bent over at the waist with his weapon ready to fire. He dropped to a knee and rapidly searched her body for anything useful. After a minute, he abandoned his examination and moved uphill to where her rifle was.

  He scoop
ed up the Soviet made Dragunov rifle and slung it over his back. He picked up a canvas bandolier containing a few of the smaller magazines that the rifle used, and he backed away. Glen froze and moved behind the stone the woman had died next to, taking cover from something beyond Thomas’ vision and shouldering his M4A1. Thomas watched and waited for his friend to tell him what he saw.

  A minute later, Glen triggered the comms unit, and spoke, “There’s vehicle movement at the far end of the ridge exit. I see two large trucks full of tangos, but something is wrong. They’re acting weird.”

  “Keep eyes on. The Walker shooter and I have you covered, see what happens,” Thomas responded.

  “Aye aye.”

  And they waited. Thomas tried to read the body language of his buddy as Glen leaned over the large boulder and observed the potential threat downrange with his rifle. Glen remained still, but after nearly ten minutes of observation, he stiffened, and Thomas knew something had changed.

  “Fuck, we gotta collapse on the base. Major enemy on the way.” Glen had already turned around and was moving towards the base’s entrance fast. He wasn’t even trying to stay in cover now; this was a full retreat with haste.

  Thomas knew enough about his friend to realize whatever he’d seen was bad news, and he needed to move at the same rate, and damn fast. He got to his feet and got the M110 over his shoulder so he could grab up the packs filled with communications gear, food and ammo. He put the straps over his shoulders as best as possible and put the rest into his offhand so he could wield his M4A1 like a giant pistol. He never moved without a weapon in hand anymore.

  The two SEALs sprinted separately to the firebase’s entrance. Prior to the rise of the dead the base had no proper gate or door. They hadn’t finished construction on the fortifications when what passed for society in Afghanistan fell apart. To help complete the door requirement, the marines had strewn random boulders around the perimeter of the base. The soccer ball sized stones made for a great small vehicle deterrent, with the added bonus of tripping up the undead quite easily. It was fortunate that the deceased paid precious little attention to where they were going. The two naval special warfare men leapt over the stones and dodged around them with grace, despite their speed and heavy loads. Thomas did move with pain though, as Glen saw, and suspected he would. His mangled but healed calf would be the source of discomfort for the rest of his life, and with the added strain of almost 140 pounds of gear the damaged muscle pulsed with soreness.