Gracie almost laughed. Montana was a hotbed of back-to-nature agriculture, and she sure recognized the smell.
“It’s chicken shit, Lance Corporal! You never smelt it before?” another Marine said.
“Geez!” Eli muttered to no one in particular. “Who cares what it is?”
Gracie had to agree with her spotter. They were moving into combat, and this bozo was all up in arms because of the smell?
“Why would I ever smell chicken shit? What, they can’t get rid of it? And I don’t see no chickens here nowhere,” the first Marine said, looking around the fields.
“They use it for fertilizer. See those plants? They’re strawberries. They use the shit as organic fertilizer.”
“Bullshit, Korf! No one uses shit on food. It’d be unsanitary; that’s what it’d be!”
The two went on in this vein for a few moments without regards to security. The fields were probably clear of hiding SevRevs, but “probably” did not mean “certainly.” Gracie shifted her grip on her M99 and intensified her scanning of the area as that thought came to her mind.
Finally, Sergeant Vinter, one of the Golf squad leaders said, “Keep it moving, Wythe. We haven’t stopped.”
“About time,” Eli muttered to himself again.
After another klick and crossing Renter’s Creek, the strawberry fields gave way to knee-high sweet corn, which was far more benign. Either that or their noses were becoming smell-blind. Still, it was a welcome relief.
It took the company another 25 minutes to move through the corn fields and into the assembly area. The press was already there in full force, eager-beaver reporters and camcorder crews searching the Marines for interviews. A dozen cam-drones flitted overhead like dragonflies, ready to pounce.
The Rose Garden Farmers’ Market, where the SevRevs were holed up, was a mere 600 meters away, well within small arms fire. The Marines were all in their skins and bones, which should be protection enough against most small kinetic arms. The reporters in this backwater corner of the Federation had a hodgepodge of protective gear thrown together, but only a few had a decent degree of protection. Most any Marine had the ability to reach out 600 meters with his or her M99, so if it had been the Marines in the market instead of the terrorists, all of the reporters would have been at risk given their lack of appropriate gear. Gracie didn’t know the capabilities of individual SevRevs, but some had to be from planets that hunted for sport, and some of them had to be able to make that kind of shot.
Assembly areas should be covered and concealed from an objective, and 600 meters was simply too close. Staff Sergeant Riopel felt the government types thought that the mere sight of a battalion could make the SevRevs give up. He could be right, Gracie thought, not that any Marine gave any credence that their mere presence would cause a surrender. Regardless, she was sure there was no way that the CO would have approved this assembly area, and that it had to have been forced upon her.
“What a circus,” one of the Marines said.
That was something upon which Gracie could totally agree. But that was beyond her control. She had to get her mind in the zone.
“Over there,” she told Eli, moving to the public toilet she’d selected as her FFP.
The toilet was small, about five meters by five. It had looked good from the aerial survey, but she couldn’t know for sure until she could see it up close. It was immediately obvious that it would do. Made from concrete, it was in good shape and could easily hold their weight.
“Give me a boost,” she said.
Eli placed the sniper case on the ground, bent over, and cupped his hands. Gracie stepped into his hands, and with barely an effort, he raised her to where she could pull herself on top of the building. She got down on her stomach to take the sniper case and his M99 before offering him her arm. He grasped it, and with his legs on the building wall, scrambled up. Eli was a big man, and he was quite a load for Gracie, but she managed to give him enough support so he could grab the edge of the roof and haul himself up as well.
Both Marines walked to the edge of the roof facing the farmers’ market. Their vantage point, a mere 2-and-a-half meters up, let them look over the approach to the market, giving her clear fields of fire. With Fox Marines going to be between her and the market, she’d be able to fire over the Marines’ heads until the Marines actually reached it.
The market was quiet, with only the slightest movement visible inside a few of the windows. A newsdrone buzzed the two Marines, an annoying gnat, but seeing nothing interesting, the operator or AI sent it on its way to bother someone else. Below them, Golf was falling into position and Fox was passing through to the LOD.[13]
Above them, a Wasp overflew the assembly area and the market. Air couldn’t engage the SevRevs with the hostages at risk, but this was all part of the psychological plan. A Wasp was a pretty nasty warbird, and if any of the SevRevs were having second thoughts, they might be rattled.
An amplified voice sounded out from where the psych team had assembled. “Inside the market, we are the United Federation Marines. You are trapped where you are. If you want to live, release the hostages. If you comply, you will not be harmed.
“If you do not release the hostages and resist us, you are inviting a certain destruction. It is up to you. Surrender and live or resist and die.”
No one expected the SevRevs to surrender as easy as that, but especially with all the press, the forms had to be followed.
“OK, this will do, and we need to get ready. Let’s get set up. Give me the Kyocera.”
She slung her M99 as Eli opened the weapons case. Most snipers would have carried his or her own case, but Gracie was much better with the M99 than Eli was, and even surrounded by Golf Marines and passing through supposedly safe terrain, she’d felt better with the M99 to quickly deal with any surprises. Snipers prayed to the gods of war with their liturgy of “one shot, one kill,” but for immediate action in close quarters, that wasn’t always the best course of action. The M99 threw out a shitload of small 8mm darts at hypervelocity speeds, and that could make hamburger out of any enemy who managed to get close.
Gracie liked the M99, and it was a fun toy, but her heart purred as she took her Kyocera in her arms. She still wasn’t too sure which weapon she liked better, this or the Windmoeller. The slug-thrower was basic, strong, and reliable, and that had its own allure. It was the workhorse, the pick-up that everyone wanted. The Kyocera, though, was sleek and sexy. It was the sportshover, the 0-100 in four seconds wonder.
From the target’s standpoint, either was bad news. The Windmoeller’s PGI .308, 172-grain, tef-sleeved round was bigger than the Kyocera’s Western polymer-cased 162-grain round. On the other hand, the Western round could be fired at much higher speeds. The round was pulled rather than pushed, so it didn’t have to obturate, and by goosing up the N’s, it could reach hypersonic velocities. Either round, though, would certainly mess up someone’s day.
For this mission, Gracie had chosen the Kyocera. The Kyocera was slightly more accurate up to 2,000 meters, but at 600 meters, she was confident that she could hit anything with either weapon. Something told her, however, that she might need to fire quickly, and as a semi-automatic with almost no recoil, the Kyocera had a quicker rate of fire. Gracie not only had to fire quickly, but the round had to get there quickly. If a target was running across an opening, she’d only have a second or two in which to acquire the target, snap off the shot, and have the round reach her intended victim. The Kyocera’s round could be over twice as fast in its trajectory than the Windmoeller’s.
Bill Kierkegaard, the other sniper with her in Golf’s position, had chosen his Windmoeller, and Gracie thought that balanced the two of them. She glanced over to where he and Dave Oesper, his spotter, were setting up almost 150 meters away, right at the edge of the road leading to the market. She wasn’t sure how effective he’d be, but with her grabbing the toilet building, he might not have had much of a choice.
“Give me the readings,” sh
e told Eli as she attached her bipod to the barrel clip.
Her Miller Scope was capable of them, but Eli had a truthteller, which was more accurate.
“Twenty-eight-point-three degrees, humidity seventy-two percent. Uh, I’m getting between eight and ten KPH on the wind, coming from your one-thirty.”
Gracie was on active-mode with her Miller, and the smaller scope’s data matched what he was telling her. She didn’t tell Eli, though, that she was checking his numbers.
“Range the front door.”
“Wait one. . .I’ve got 635 to the left jamb.”
“Roger that.”
The Miller had uploaded the atmospherics and would update them as necessary, but she manually entered the range if for no other reason than to let Eli see she was accepting his input. Since she was letting the Miller do the firing solution, the rounds’ velocity would be automatically entered into the calculations. Still, she couldn’t resist checking. It was still on 6.3, which converted to a muzzle velocity of 573 meters per second.
“Now we wait,” she told Eli as she settled into a good solid prone position.
She started glassing the market with her scope, planning shots. She lingered on an armed man who was on the roof of the market, looking back at the Marines, but until she was weapons free, she could not engage.
“Fox is moving,” Eli said beside her.
Gracie looked away from her scope and saw that the lead elements from Fox had stepped past the LOD.
“Any moment now, then. I want you to map and mark any target you can spot.”
“Roger that.”
She could feel Eli moving around the truthteller. The truthteller was designed to track trajectories. In this type of scenario, Gracie thought she wouldn’t need it for that purpose. She had to be on target the first time. If she had to adjust and fire again, she’d have failed. However, the truthteller also had the ability to mark targets and then upload those targets to her Miller. If the actual targets moved, the mark would move, too. All Gracie would have to do would be to click her zoom out, select a mark, and then click the zoom back to her standard magnification. It was designed as a teaching tool, to enable an instructor to identify a target for the student to engage, but Gracie thought it would be a slick way to engage multiple targets in a short amount of time in a real combat situation. She’d told the gunny she wanted to do it, and he shrugged, said others had tried it, but if she wanted to, it was her choice.
When Fox started moving, her friend on top of the market ducked down below the low wall along the edge of the roof. He had his UKI-52, the ubiquitous general-purpose rifle that Gentry made in the billions and distributed to every second-rate military in the galaxy, at the ready as he watched Fox company advance. The weapon was old and only had a maximum effective range of 400 meters, but it was relatively idiot-proof, and a head shot could kill a Marine. Weapons free or not, if he took aim at the Marines, Gracie was going to take him out and worry about the ROEs after the fact.
“How we doing on the targets, Gittens?”
“I’ve got eight so far.”
Gracie took a second to hit the slide on the side of her Miller Scope to zoom out. Red target dots filled her scope display. She had a veritable cornucopia of potential kills just waiting for her. Her scope AI tried to prioritize them, but the flashing dots indicated that it was confused. Gracie zoomed in on three, but none seemed any more dangerous than the terrorist on the roof. She zoomed back in on him. He was getting antsy, and Gracie knew he was about to break.
“I’m going to take him out,” she told Eli.
“But we haven’t been given weapons free.”
“Screw that!”
The SevRev started to rise as he put the UKI-52 to his shoulder. Gracie began to squeeze the trigger.
The Kyocera had an almost negligible kick, but at such a high velocity, the round broke through the sound barrier with an extremely sharp crack.
“Hit,” Eli said.
Gracie reached up to zoom out. She’d picked the Kyocera because it was semi-automatic, and she wouldn’t have to waste time cycling in a new round. But using the zoom in and zoom out to acquire targets took two moves, and the motion was almost the same as working the bolt to eject and chamber the next round on the Windmoeller.
“Weapons free,” Lieutenant Wadden passed on the platoon net, breaking MEEP.
Within a couple of seconds, Gracie was back on the next target, a SevRev, who was using the butt of an ancient energy weapon of some sort to break a window.
Stupid, Gracie thought as she aimed and fired through the half-broken window.
Plastiglass, especially when used as hover windshields, could partially deflect rounds, particularly the lighter Western rounds used in a Kyocera, but with him only centimeters behind the window, her round took him in the chest.
“Hit!” Eli said unnecessarily.
Heavy fire broke out from the market, immediately answered by the Fox Company Marines.
Gracie zoomed out, then back in, but that target disappeared behind the walls of the market. Zoom out; zoom in. A SevRev was rushing out the main entrance. Sight, trigger, crack. The SevRev’s head exploded into a pink mist. The tiniest motion at the side of the door caught her attention. It was the muzzle of another weapon, and just barely, the fingers of the man holding it. This would be a difficult shot, but she took it.
Her round struck the handguard of the rifle, sending it spinning to the floor. She’d hit a couple of centimeters high, she thought. She missed the fingers, but it had to have hurt. To her surprise, she saw a hand snake out along the floor to the rifle which remained just out of reach.
Come on, do it! she implored her unseen target.
Sure enough, she saw the top of a head. Just as it gave a flinch, she fired between the head and the rifle. The round took less than a second to reach the doorway, but that was enough time for the SevRev to dart forward to recover his rifle. He recovered a bullet to the neck instead and instantly collapsed.
“Target 6!” Eli told her.
She zoomed out, acquired it, and zoomed back in. Deep within the second floor, almost in the shadows, a figure stood, his hands holding what looked like a detonator against his chest. Gracie could only see his torso, but his posture was that he was watching Fox get ever closer.
With the sturdy plastiglass between them, and with him so far back, the shot was easier contemplated than actually doing. Gracie did some quick mental calculations. She’d fired through windshields on the Moving Vehicle Range back on Tarawa, but not with the Kyocera. She’d used the heavy Barrett for that. Still, it gave her some basic comparisons.
“I’m taking the shot,” she said as she aimed right by almost a meter.
Mother of All, let me be right.
She squeezed the trigger, and a moment later, the window shattered. The body in the background stumbled and went to his knees, clutching his left shoulder. With an expression that almost looked like rhapsody, he reached for something on the floor, and Gracie’s next round took him high in the chest. Another man rushed into the scope’s field of view, and Gracie dropped him as well.
Whether someone else reached what Gracie was sure was a detonator or if the SevRevs had backups, she never knew, but the market erupted into a huge fireball. Gracie flinched as the light flared in her scope. A moment later, the shockwave hit.
“Holy shit,” Eli murmured.
Flames and smoke climbed into the air.
Gracie jumped back onto her scope, searching the maelstrom for targets.
“No one’s surviving that,” Eli said.
But people had. Bodies rushed out of the rubble. Gracie almost blew the first person away, but she was sure the man was a hostage, not a SevRev. She held her crosshairs on him for a few more moments before a woman stumbled out of the ruins, her shirt in tatters. More and more people appeared, most looking to be in pretty bad shape. Only a few seemed to be OK. Others stumbled around due to injury and probably shock.
Gracie glas
sed each one, conscious that a SevRev could be using the hostages as cover.
The first Fox Marines reached them and started funneling them back. They would be isolated and interviewed at the collection points, but Fox had to clear the ruins before the area was declared secure. Gracie’s mission was still in place—she had to support Fox as they entered the ruins.
The stream of hostages escaping the flames petered out, but Gracie ignored them. Golf Company would deal with them. But after a few brief firefights, things had quieted in the rubble of the market. Flames were still roaring, but anyone that deep into the rubble was most likely dead. It would take a while for the all clear to be sounded, but it looked as if the Battle for Rose Garden was, for all intents and purposes, over.
Gracie finally allowed herself start to relax and wind down. She’d been keyed up, and it was only now beginning to dawn on her that she’d just killed, four, no, five men. She’d snuffed them out like candles. She felt empowered.
She just started to turn to Eli to see if he’d captured each kill on his truthteller—she’d got probably two on her Miller scope, but she’d shifted too quickly for the others—when shouting erupted below them. She looked down and saw two Marines on the ground, one wrestling with a civilian. The Marine had his hands locked around one of the civilian’s while the civilian pounded away with his free hand at the head of the Marine.
Something told Gracie that this was serious, more than just a panicked hostage being subdued. A Marine was in trouble, and that was enough for her. She pulled down her weapon, but immediately realized the distance was too close for the scope to be of any use. She should drop it and grab her M99, but her instincts told her that delay, as short as it would be, would have drastic consequences. Instead, she released the rail lock and her 28,000-credit Miller Scope fell to the concrete roof where Gracie could hear it shatter. With a naked weapon, she sighted down the small nub of a front site at the struggling pair. The back of the Marine’s head was between Gracie and the civilian, but the slightest twist as they fought gave Gracie all the target she needed. She snapped the trigger instead of squeezing, and an instant later, her round punched a hole clean through the civilian’s head.
Sniper (Women of the United Federation Marines Book 2) Page 4