Sohlberg and the White Death

by Jens Amundsen

  “I understand that you also shot and killed the man who was walking next to him.”

  “Yessir. He was carrying an R.P.K. on his shoulder.”

  Van Rensselaer remembered. He had been there that day at a lower elevation getting shot at by the Taliban—probably by that particular 7.62-mm machine gun. By pure luck he had not been killed during the failed Operation Anaconda. Six of his CIA colleagues had not been so lucky. “You think those two shots at four miles were lucky shots?”

  “Sir. Every shot that kills is a lucky shot. There’s so much that can go wrong. There’s a lot of variables for a sniper. Wind blowing one way at the mid-point and then another way near the target. Heck. We even have to account for the rotation of the earth since it takes about four seconds for a four-mile shot to arrive at the kill zone.”

  “But you get the job done.”

  “Yessir. But I’m not special. I’m no more special than any other sniper in the service. Like others I just know a lot of tricks to improve the odds.”

  “Like what?” said Van Rensselaer. He was on a recruiting mission and he needed to get a good fix on whether the kid was up to snuff. “What tricks?”

  “That day we left the ammo spread out on the rocks so the sun would heat them up. And we got us a lucky break.”

  “What break?”

  “My first shot was thirteen feet off target . . . I hit the soil to the left of the target. My spotter saw the dirt cloud kick up. We were really surprised when those Taliban just kept walking. Fearless. Absolutely fearless. They knew a bullet had landed nearby. They never took cover . . . they just kept walking right into the first killshot.”

  “Do you know why I’m here?”

  “No sir.”

  “The Company needs to borrow a few good men. Your colonel has no objections to you helping us out with Operation Peppercorn. . . . Have you heard about it?”

  “Sir. I think I have. Word gets around.”

  “Let me make clear what it is and isn’t.”

  “Yessir.”

  “You and your spotter will get dropped into a valley that’s known for helping the Taliban and attacking our troops. You will be all alone . . . no support.”

  “Yessir.”

  “You will pick when and where you strike. You can go after men who are out on armed expeditions or . . . better yet . . . you can pin down an entire village for days or weeks and pick off whomever you think is a threat.”

  “Yessir. That would be interesting.”

  Jake Van Rensselaer smiled at the kid. He had witnessed first-hand how snipers had injected paralysis into the hearts of the most fanatical of America’s enemies in Iraq. He wanted the same terror brought to Afghanistan. He doubted if the fearless Taliban fighters would react like the cowards in Iraq. But the women and children of Afghanistan would surely react another way when snipers picked off their husbands and fathers. Death would be unpredictable and come out of the blue and slay their menfolk right in front of them—like the invisible hand of an angry god. “So . . . does this sound like something you want to do?”

  “Yessir. Absolutely.”

  The CIA case officer had a Ph.D. from Yale in Elizabethan Literature. He noticed the eager glint in the young man’s eyes and he remembered what Ernest Hemingway had once written:

  "Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and like it, never really care for anything else thereafter."

  ~ ~ ~

  RAMADI, IRAQ (2006)

  He dreams.

  Dust. Heat. Scattered palm trees. A maze of tan-colored concrete buildings in central Iraq.

  Insurgents have been busy planting IEDs along the roads. The Arab killers have harvested plenty of American blood. It’s time to eradicate those who cultivate death on the dirty streets of Iraq. His avenger on this mission of annihilation is the standard M24 sniper rifle (7.62 caliber) with a Leupold M3A scope that has a built-in bullet drop compensator.

  He sets up shop on the rooftop of the ruined O.P. Hotel also known as “Ramadi Inn”. A 10-man sniper team spreads out in the other floors. They use so many sandbags in the living areas and the shooting blinds that it’s a miracle that the hotel floors don’t collapse.

  The 4-story hotel is the perfect place to hunt down rebels because it’s the tallest building in the urban wasteland and it overlooks a major roadway which has the ridiculous nickname “Route Michigan”. Billy Buchanan and his fellow snipers look forward to establishing control over an enormous area.

  The tent of camouflaged fabric on the roof reminds him of hunting for deer and turkey. It’s not that much different. He starts out by observing what is actually visible from all sorts of angles through his scope and field glasses. He takes his time to learn how and where his targets usually operate. It’s not that hard to find the enemy. They almost always wear masks.

  Billy Buchanan scans around and finds a store with a Coca-Cola sign on the wall above the door. He carefully calculates the number of yards to the sign and to other landmarks. He writes these down in a range card which he will memorize.

  He takes a deep breath and focuses.

  He exhales.

  He aims at the “o” in “Coca”. The sign is 1,560 yards away—the endpoint of his gun’s range.

  The first shot is off by six inches.

  He re-calibrates and aims 12 feet above target. He also considers the Kentucky Windage which he learned from his father when hunting game. Billy Buchanan makes an horizontal adjustment for the wind without the use of any mechanical adjustments to the weapon.

  A deep breath.

  He exhales.

  He squeezes the trigger and keeps his right eye focused on the sign.

  The shot is slightly off—not as accurate as he desires. He likes to hit within 0.5 inches of his target.

  He adjusts for the wind and the spin drift of his bullet and aims 8 feet to the left.

  Another deep breath.

  He exhales.

  He squeezes the trigger.

  The red “o” in the white sign becomes a black hole.

  At 1:11 in the afternoon Billy Buchanan spots three masked men who are moving items from a house into the trunk of a car—the telltale signs of an improvised explosive device in the making. Another man steps out of the doorway and he has a rocket propelled grenade launcher slung across his shoulder. A belt of grenades crisscrosses his chest. Two more men step out and one of them is the obvious leader. The man gesticulates and points out instructions to the other men on how to set up the IED. A teenaged boy comes out of the door. He’s not masked but he’s carrying an AK-47.

  Billy Buchanan avoids looking at the kid’s angelic face. He can’t afford a case of “buck fever” which happens when the hunter sees a living object in his scope instead of a dead target. He can’t afford to think about a human being whose family will be shattered by grief.

  It’s time. Billy Buchanan could be a show-off but he never does so with a fancy and fatal headshot at a distance. He goes for the sure thing—the center mass just under the breastplate and ribcage.

  The soldier from North Carolina takes a deep breath and aims for the leader.

  The six men are more than 13.5 football fields away—a distance of 2,074 yards. This means that his targets are more than 500 yards beyond range. But the sniper from Spruce Pine knows that war is always the shortest distance between two points. Billy Buchanan goes for the leader who’s standing proud over the fatal contraption that will murder and maim American soldiers.

  The bullet kisses the man’s chest. The leader drops. By this time a second bullet is already flying at the man with the RPG launcher and grenades. The bullet strikes one of the grenades which explodes. It’s a Fourth of July fireworks show. Another grenade explodes. The lucky shot takes down all the men thanks to the chain reaction of the exploding grenades.

  Billy Buchanan does not think about his six dead enemies but about the dozens and dozens of American soldiers who will be saved b
y his killshot.

  ~ ~ ~

  LUTAYFIYAH, IRAQ (2004)

  He dreams.

  Dust. Mud. Heat. A smattering of palm trees. Irrigation canals. Adobe walls. Another miserable town south of Baghdad. Clusters of mud buildings on the road to Karbala.

  This time his instrument of destruction is a Barrett semi-automatic M82-A3 special application scoped rifle with a 10-round detachable box magazine of .50 caliber bullets. The barrel periscope has a 2,000 yard range. He prefers bolt-action guns because semi-automatics always jam. That’s one thing he can count on. But the war on mud villages has been good for the profits of arms manufacturers who need to push their semi-automatic junk on the battlefield.

  A crackling voice on the radio warns him that seven men with AK-47s have arrived in motorcycles. They have parked behind a wall of 9-inch-thick cinderblocks to ambush an army patrol that is going to walk right past them in ten minutes or less. Billy Buchanan can’t see the men but his spotter can because he is hidden up on the rooftop of a two-floor house to his left.

  It’s time to thread the needle. This means that he can easily put a bullet inside a 10-inch target that is 680 yards away—a distance of 5 football fields.

  “Is it the wall that has a wrecked car out in front?”

  “No,” says his spotter. “It’s the wall next to the three palms.”

  There’s a problem. Billy Buchanan has been looking at the wrong wall. The men behind the wall are one mile or 1,760 yards away from him. That’s 2.5 times further away than his preferred kill range with the Barrett semi-automatic. But today it’s 124 degrees in the shade. Bullets travel faster and longer when it’s hot.

  To kill or not to kill.

  He aims the weapon and breathes in slowly.

  Inhale.

  The first rule of killing is proper breathing. Without it you can’t concentrate on the target.

  Hold your breath for two or three heartbeats.

  Then exhale.

  Two heartbeats.

  Inhale.

  The second rule of killing is to shoot after exhaling. The killshot is most precise when your body is completely still.

  Hold your breath for two or three heartbeats.

  Then exhale.

  Two heartbeats.

  Inhale.

  The third rule of killing is to use the right ammunition. He loves the MK-211 Raufoss .50 caliber rounds that he has loaded into the gun’s magazine. The Norwegian company Nammo Raufoss makes the world’s greatest bullet. Under international treaties the Raufoss MK-211 is a legal anti-matériel weapon designed to stop armored helicopters and armored vehicles with the power of a small 20mm cannon. Other than the hypocritical Norwegians everyone knows that the bullet is mostly used for its devastating anti-personnel impact.

  Hold your breath for two or three heartbeats.

  Then exhale.

  Two heartbeats.

  Inhale.

  The heart of the Raufoss MK-211 bullet is an armor-piercing tungsten core. The bullet has an explosive component that first blasts through concrete or light armor. The bullet then explodes a second time thanks to a delayed fuse and it bursts into an incendiary funnelcloud that shoots hundreds of pieces of burning shrapnel into human flesh on the other side of the concrete or armor.

  Hold your breath for two or three heartbeats.

  Exhale.

  The bullet sprints out of the barrel. A second and third bullet run after the first one. A delicate puff of pink concrete dust rises like smoke from the wall. A few minutes later the patrol reports that the insurgents were shredded to pieces above the waist and that blood spray from the enemy had swirled up as the pink in the cloud of concrete dust.

  ~ ~ ~

  CHORA, AFGHANISTAN (2007)

  He dreams.

  Dust. Heat. Arid valleys and stark mountains. Isolated oases smudge the valley floor with green patches here and there. Another miserable town of Urozgan Province in south central Afghanistan.

  Mud walls.

  Children and veiled women scurry about.

  Farmers work their fields.

  He realizes that the Afghans are a proud and independent people who are just like his people in the Appalachian Mountains. He has no hostility against these people however backwards they or their religion might appear. Although Billy Buchanan has no personal fight with the people of Afghanistan, he has business there. He’s now an advisor consultant to NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

  The sharpshooter stands on a mountainside that overlooks the valley and a distant clot of adobe mud buildings at the edge of an oasis. The CIA is also there. Jake Van Rensselaer is standing next to him along with Pierre Touvier—a retired French colonel who’s a military advisor with the French forces in ISAF.

  Jake Van Rensselaer points at Billy Buchanan and says:

  “Colonel Touvier . . . this man is a prodigy. A prodigy! . . . I’m glad you’re here today to see him at work. He’s going to teach the good people of Chora a lesson on why they can’t help the Taliban or al-Qaeda. We’re not going to tolerate them attacking and killing our men.”

  In a soft monotone and in perfect English the retired French colonel says:

  “How many dead on our side?”

  “One American . . . one Australian . . . and two Dutchmen. . . . Plus sixteen dead allied Afghan soldiers. . . .”

  Dutch soldiers gather around the American sniper to learn how they can blanket a town with sniper fire while avoiding civilians.

  In less than two hours Billy Buchanan takes down seven Taliban sympathizers at an average distance of 1.145 miles.

  Later in the evening an exhausted Jake Van Rensselaer falls asleep after two shots of single malt scotch. Billy Buchanan and the Frenchman sit next to a fireside in a large courtyard. The stars sparkle like fat diamonds thanks to the pure mountain air.

  Col. Touvier passes the flask to Billy Buchanan and says:

  “I’m impressed with what you did out there today.”

  “Sir. It was nothing special. A sniper’s work is simple. . . . Get the best ground possible. Set up a blind so that no one can see you inside. Load good ammo into a good gun with a great scope. Think smart. Be patient. Fire away. Kill as many of the enemy as you can.”

  “Too bad that your idiot politicians and generals don’t think like you.”

  Billy Buchanan passes back the flask. His tongue swishes the sweet sherry and smoky peat flavors in his mouth. “Sir. I’m just a soldier. I do my job and leave the big picture to others.”

  Col. Touvier takes a final swig of the Laphroaig malt. “You are a good soldier and that’s no small thing. I’m sure you Americans also have the saying . . . ‘A small rudder turns the big ship’.”

  The dream fades away.

  ~ ~ ~

  SPRUCE PINE, NORTH CAROLINA:

  OCTOBER 25 OR SIX MONTHS AND

  13 DAYS AFTER THE DAY

  A small rudder turns the big ship.

  Billy Buchanan had never thought much of the French. But with hindsight he now appreciated their subtle ways. He’s had enough time to think about the offer. The money will change everything. He has to take it because his family can’t live off the tiny pension that he was left with after he was forced out of the Pentagon by the Politically Correct lynch mob. His little furniture business won’t survive the lousy economy. He will answer Col. Touvier’s inquiry which arrived in a coded e-mail asking if Buchanan Rustic Appalachian Furniture Company could manufacture a special order dresser.

  The retired soldier left his wife in bed and went to make coffee in the kitchen after checking in on his five sleeping children—ages one through ten.

  ~ ~ ~

  While he waited for the coffee to percolate Billy Buchanan thought about how he got his first gun when he was seven years old and his first boxing gloves when he was eight. He marveled at how boys—and now girls—in his part of the world inherit firearms from their parents and grandparents and other relatives. Like precious heirlooms—no, like
precious jewels—handguns and rifles and shotguns pass from one generation to the next in a rite of passage in this remote northwestern corner of North Carolina.

  Hot water shot upwards into the glass knob of the cover lid. A soothing gurgle emanated from the percolator. He remembered what Jake Van Rensselaer had said after the CIA case officer heard about the family traditions of the Buchanans and others in the Appalachian mountain region:

  “You’re given firearms when you’re little kids? . . . That’s the damn craziest thing I ever heard about. But I’m from Manhattan’s Upper East Side. I guess that getting your first gun is like some redneck bar mitzvah. . . . You hillbilly yokels are gun-crazy savages. . . . And that’s why America needs you hillbillies in the Army. We need you from Appalachia and Dixie and Utah and Idaho and other red-meat eating states. You think we want some prissy sissy boy from Harvard or Princeton out here in a war? . . . You think some weakling pothead could shoot anything other than his mouth off?”

  ~ ~ ~

  Billy Buchanan poured his coffee and drank it in the family room. He sat on one of the beautiful chairs that he had made from hickory saplings which he had harvested from the tops of mountains and ridges in north Georgia, southeast Tennessee, and northwest Alabama. The expert marksman and carpenter stared at the enormous wood-and-glass gun case that he had built into a wall. He gazed with fondness at his first gun—a Winchester Model 94 from 1932 that still worked perfectly.

  The Buchanan family men had owned Winchesters since 1894 when the first ones rolled off the manufacturing floor. Guns for hunting and protection were as common in the Buchanan household as chocolates at the Hershey home. On his tenth birthday his grandfather died and left him two Winchester Model 70s: one made in 1936; the other in 1940.