Sniper (Women of the United Federation Marines Book 2)

by Jonathan P. Brazee

  The top three floors had been apartments, three on each side of the center corridor. These took a little longer to clear. Gracie hadn’t practiced clearing for a while, but she was feeling at home as the six Marines took one side of rooms while Kierk and Oesper joined the fireteam clearing the rooms on the opposite side of the hallway. By listening to the shouts, she could gauge their progression. Moving up a floor, they started to clear the next set of three apartments.

  Grace was ready to go in when the point man, Lance Corporal Wistern shouted “Coming in left,” as he entered, then the completely off-the-script “Oh, shit.”

  Corporal Huynh, the team leader immediately shouted out, “Ignore them, Irish. Keep clearing.”

  Gracie was on PFC Ailiet’s ass and was already entering the room when she saw the six bodies lying on the floor. She stopped dead in her tracks.

  “Don’t stop. Clear this room,” Huynh said.

  Gracie’s position was merely security while the fireteam did their search and scans, so she had ample time to look at the bodies. This was obviously the family that had stayed in their home. The Josh hadn’t picked them up because they were dead. The bodies had started to bloat, and Gracie was glad she’d had her nose filters emplaced as a precaution against booby-traps.

  All six were lying side-by-side. All were face down. All had been shot in the back of the head, even the baby. All were dressed, but the mother was missing one shoe. For some reason, Gracie wondered where that one shoe was.

  “Shit,” Eli whispered beside her.

  The father had his right arm on one of his sons. Gracie took a step forward, and she could see that whoever had executed this family had shot right through the father’s hand to kill the boy.

  Gracie had killed eight people, but she felt the gorge rising in her throat. With a herculean effort, she kept it down. She was not going to lose it.

  “The lieutenant says leave them. Battalion’s going to contact the locals to recover them. Let’s keep going,” Huynh said.

  Gracie was somewhat in a daze as they cleared the last five apartments, two on the fifth and three on the sixth. She was glad Huynh seemed to be with it. She’d become a liability, and she wasn’t sure why. Gracie had been in combat as a grunt, and she’d killed as a sniper, but this had hit her hard.

  Snap the hell out of it, Crow!

  When Huynh asked her which room she wanted to use, she had to concentrate before choosing. Her subconscious, she realized, had already selected the best room to use as she had the choice already made.

  “You’re supposed to stay quiet up here,” Huynh said, “until the civvies recover the dead family and get out of here. Then you can set up.

  “Hell of a thing, huh? These pogos are fucking animals.”

  Gracie and Eli sat back against the wall to wait until the two teams were alone and they could construct their hide.

  “You OK, Gittens?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Pissed, but fine,” he told her. “Who would do something like that? And a baby, too!”

  “Hornet-Four, this is Hornet-Actual,” the lieutenant passed on her P2P.

  She reached up and keyed the mic on her ear bud.

  “This is Hornet-Four.”

  “Are you doing OK? I’ve had reports that you seem a little shaken,” Lieutenant Wadden said.

  “I’m OK. Just a little surprised, that’s all. We’re just waiting until the building is clear before we construct our hide.”

  “Do you need to come back? I don’t want you out there unless you’re 100%.”

  “That’s a negative. I’m fine. The mission is a go.”

  She knew the lieutenant would be watching her bios on his display. She took a couple of deep breaths, trying to calm herself down. She was fine, she knew. She’d just been a little shaken.

  Evidently her bios hadn’t crossed some magic red line, because he came back on the hook with, “Roger, I understand. It looks like it will be a good hour before the bodies are recovered, so just settle yourselves.”

  Meaning I’ve got an hour to get back in the game or you’ll pull me.

  Which was fair, she knew. The lieutenant had to make sure she was up to the job.

  “Roger, understood.”

  War was not a pretty place. People, even civilians, died. And in the long run, executed in their home or getting caught in a bombardment made little difference. Dead was dead.

  She settled in to get her warrior face back on.

  Chapter 22

  8

  “I’ve got movement,” Eli said seven hours after the civilian authorities had picked up the bodies of the family. “Two fingers to the right of the Barber Shop.”

  Gracie swung her scope to the building with a white and red-striped section of the wall that they’d designated the Barber Shop. A man was standing in front of it, doing a bad job of looking casual as he looked up and down the street. He slowly stepped back until he was leaning against the wall.

  No matter what else he was up to, the man was breaking curfew. Lots of people broke curfew, and while that was worth noting, it was not in itself enough of a reason to call in the cavalry to pick him up.

  With what Gracie thought was forced casualness, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a stimstick, twisted it open, and put it in his mouth, just a man getting a breath of fresh air and sucking on a stick.

  My ass, Gracie thought.

  “We’re 342 to the front door, right?” she asked.

  She was sure she was correct, but she’d developed a habit of asking Eli for ranges to the various landmarks to make sure he had them down pat.

  “Yep, 342.”

  “Go ahead and call him in,” she said.

  She could have just as easily keyed her mic and called in, but with a potential target, she liked to eliminate as much distraction as possible. She even turned off her earbud except to incoming P2P calls.

  “Battalion’s diverting a dragonfly: ETA two minutes.”

  “OK. I’ve got our friend here. Let Kierkegaard know we’ve got a nibble, then keep glassing the area to make sure no one else shows up.”

  She watched the man as he continued to suck on his stimstick for the next five minutes. There wasn’t a commercial stimstick on the market that took that long to discharge, so it was pretty evident that the guy was up to something. The question was if that something was worthy of a death sentence. He could just be waiting for his neighbor’s wife to sneak out for an illicit rendezvous, after all. That would be stupid, given the fact that he was in what was for all intents and purposes a war zone, but stupidity by itself was not a crime.

  Battalion hadn’t weighed in. The man would have been scanned with every piece of gear the dragonfly had, which wasn’t much when compared with more robust systems, but it was more than the two of them had. If he were an obvious danger, battalion would have told them.

  After another five minutes, Gracie was getting bored. The man was doing nothing but standing in the shadows. She was just about to give up that he was going to do anything when he quickly slid to his left. Gracie thought he was bolting down the alley on the other side of the Barber Shop, but he reappeared in a moment pulling a bag.

  “Battalion says he’s got explosives,” Eli said, his voice brimming with excitement.

  The man looked up and down the street again, then pulled out a circular object with a cone on one side. Gracie didn’t specifically recognize it, but she was sure it was a shape charge of some sort, and something like that could even take down a PICS.

  “I’m taking him out,” she said.

  As the team leader, she had authority to engage a target she viewed as a threat to this mission. Battalion could shut her down, but they had to specify that. Nothing said meant they concurred.

  The man was crouching, busy attaching the mine to the side of the building down low to the ground and pointing out to the street. She knew once armed, he’d obscure it from view with some trash or debris.

  At 342 meters, 345 given where he wa
s along the building’s front, this would be an easy shot.

  A child with a slingshot could drop him, she told herself.

  Still, there was no hurry, so she turned to Eli to confirm the atmospherics.

  Eli had the binos in his left hand, holding them up to his eyes. His right was down by his side, and he was slowly flexing the forefinger.

  He’s pulling the trigger!

  Gracie looked back downrange, and the man was still attaching the IED. She could drop him right now. Beside her, Eli was taking shot after shot in his mind.

  What the hell am I doing?

  “Gittens, you’ve fired my Kyc,” she said, more of a statement than a question.

  He turned to look at her, a puzzled expression on his face as he said, “Yeah, a couple of times. Why?”

  Before she could change her mind, she held up her Kyocera and said, “Time for you to earn your salary. The shot’s yours.”

  He froze for a second, then asked, “Are you sure?”

  “Unless you don’t want it. If you do, our friend down there isn’t going to be there forever, so you better hurry.”

  Without another word, he immediately grabbed her weapon and got into his sitting position. They had set up the hide just inside one of the windows, both of them on a metal workbench they’d dragged over. The window sill made a decent base for the Kyocera’s bipod. Within five seconds, he had the weapon on his shoulder and was sighting in.

  Gracie began to have second thoughts. Eli was twice her size, and his cheek weld and everything else was much, much different than hers. She considered taking back her weapon and telling him to use his M99. At such a short distance, he should be able to make that shot. But then again, at such a short distance, he should be able to use her weapon as well.

  “That’s 342 meters,” she reminded him.

  “Got it.”

  “What’s your temperature?” she asked.

  “I’ve got it. All of it.”

  She bit her tongue. She had to let him take the shot. She reached down to the deck and picked up her M99. If he missed and the guy bolted, she’d go full auto on him.

  Hurry up and take the shot! she silently implored.

  The man looked like he had the IED in place, and he looked around for the bag he’d had it in. It was just out of reach, so he stood up. . .

  . . .and Eli immediately took the shot.

  The man dropped as if he was poleaxed.

  “Where’d I hit him?” Eli asked, his voice cracking.

  “I. . .sorry, I missed it,” she said realizing she’d forgotten that with him as the gunner, she was supposed to have shifted to spotter.

  “But he’s dead, right?”

  She grabbed the binos and zoomed in. The guy was on his back, one leg bent underneath him. It was hard to tell in the darkness, but it looked like he’d been hit in the upper chest. Blood, almost black in the dim light, was beginning to flow from under him, spreading across the sidewalk. He wasn’t even twitching.

  “He’s dead. Clean shot, Gittens.”

  “Woah!” he said, taking the binos from her to view his handiwork.

  She turned back on her comms and said, “Hornet-Actual, target at 7643-4882 has been eliminated by Hornet-Four-Bravo. Request a collection team.”

  “Did you say Hornet-Four-Bravo?” the lieutenant’s asked.

  “Affirmative. Hornet-Four-Bravo.”

  “Roger. Understood. Give Bravo my congrats.”

  “The lieutenant says congrats,” she said.

  “Oh man, I was so nervous! But that was righteous!”

  “We’re not relieved,” she told him, “so since you’ve had your shot, how about giving me my Kyc back.”

  He looked slightly disappointed, but that barely dented his high as he returned her weapon.

  They’d been using the Kyocera as firing it was far less likely to be noticed, and even with a dead pogo on the street, other bad guys wouldn’t necessarily know of it. The kill hadn’t affected their mission. The two of them settled in. They’d cover the collection team—unlike with the murdered family, it would be a Navy-Marine team for this in an attempt to gather any intel—and then finish the mission.

  As the two sat side-by-side on top of the table, she reached over and patted Eli’s arm.

  “Good shot, HOG. You did good.”

  “HOG,” she heard him whisper in wonderment.

  Chapter 23

  8

  “. . .other than that, nothing at all since 0430,” Gracie told Kierk. “And with that, I gladly turn it over to you while we grab some Z’s.”

  Gracie wasn’t sure she liked the four-man teams. She was familiar with Eli and comfortable with him, and it was taking some getting used to Kierk and Oesper. But one advantage was that they could switch off and get some rest. The two teams had been in the hide at the top of the White Castle for 35 hours already, and that was a little long without getting some rest.

  The White Castle was a large, six-story building that had lost one entire corner to some sort of explosion. The two teams had taken over the opening, putting up several tarnkappes and netting to keep them out of sight. But even if others couldn’t see them, they had superb fields of observation, and Gracie had been pretty sure that they’d see some action. But while Marines had been attacked twice the day before and three times during the night, nothing had been within their sector.

  Gracie and Eli slowly crept backward until they were far enough back and shielded by the remaining walls to sit up.

  Eli took out two Bamble Bars from his pocket, asking, “You want one?”

  Bamble Bars were strictly geedunk, snacks from the tiny snack bar Top Freeman put up. Civilian geedunk was allowed back at camp, but not out in the field. The wrappers did not self-destruct as what happened with their issued rats, and for snipers in particular, their code was to leave no sign of their presence. Gracie was the NCO here, and it was up to her to enforce discipline.

  Gracie thought about that for about half a second before reaching out a hand and taking the bar. She twisted the package open, took out the bar, and put the wrapper in her pocket.

  Problem solved.

  She took a bite, and then leaned back to decompress her brain for a few minutes before she could attempt to fall asleep. Even if they hadn’t seen anything, they’d been on alert far too long to be able to simply drift off. Well, at least she couldn’t, she amended as he saw Eli, head back, and already out cold. The wrapper for his Bamble Bar was in his closed fist, so she leaned forward and pulled it out, putting in her pocket with the other one.

  She settled back, but while she was tired, she wasn’t ready just yet to nap. She felt along her belly; the familiar build-up of pressure was just beginning. Scout-snipers couldn’t leave any trace of their presence. Females had piss-snakes and everyone had piss-bags to take care of urine, but feces could be a little more problematic. The solution was to take their FIPs, the Fecal Inhibitor Protocol, but better known simply as “butt-pluggers.” The required length of time determined which grade of protocol was used. The two teams were scheduled to be out for 60 hours, so they were on the “B” protocol, and now over half-way through the mission, the pressure was just beginning to build up. When they returned, they would be given the “dam breaker,” the counteracting injection that would release the build-up.

  Gracie hated the FIB. She hated the whole process, and she hated that it presented a danger should she get gut-shot. But it was SOP, and that was that.

  She would be relieving Kierk in four hours, so if she was going to get some sleep, she needed to get on it. She took out her earbud and tried to blank her mind, and she was just drifting off when an explosion sounded in the near distance, followed almost immediately by the shock wave.

  Gracie sat up, immediately on the alert.

  “Where is it?” she asked Kierk as she inserted her earbud.

  “Behind us,” Kierk answered. “Close!”

  The tac net was abuzz with chatter. Gracie’s AI wasn’t
robust enough to gather in the transmissions and isolate what it thought were the most pertinent, so she toggled over to the Bravo Command.

  Golf had been hit and hit hard. One of the platoons had been patrolling only a two streets over, and someone had brought down an entire building on them.

  Firing opened up, and not with the familiar buzz of Marine Corps’ 99’s.

  “Let’s go,” she shouted at Eli as she grabbed her Kyocera and slinging it over her shoulder.

  Ignoring stealth, she ran through the tarnkappes to the remaining edge of the wall. With Eli on her ass, she swung herself around the edge, and dangling 50 meters above the ground, and hauled herself up to the roof. The cloud of dust two blocks away was all she needed to know.

  “Cover the approach,” she yelled at Kierk as she ran across the roof.

  Their hide was within the edge of Barrio Blanca, which meant the streets were barely more than alleys and the buildings were either adjoining or close together. Gracie didn’t even hesitate but jumped to the next building, covering the two-to-three meters with a good meter to spare. Eli landed heavily another half-a-meter past her and rolled before coming to his feet.

  Firing sounded to her right, and she saw a prone man with a Rustov, three rooftops over shooting down towards where the building had gone down. Gracie stopped, and without working her firing solution, aimed low. Too low. She squeezed the trigger and the round hit the rooftop just short of the man before skipping up into his hip. He twisted in pain for a second before Gracie’s adjusted second shot took him in the chest.

  The task force’s lone Wasp buzzed the street, its 20mm chaingun an angry buzz as it hit an adjoining building. Gracie had to trust her telltale to let the pilot know she was a friendly.

  The next building was only a meter away, but a full story lower. Gracie had to slow down to make the jump, afraid that a twisted ankle could keep her from the fight. Gracie heard Eli’s M99 pissing away, but she didn’t stop to look. She darted to the right to see if she could get eyes on the fight. She was still a block off of Camino al Norte, the road where the building had gone down, but the adjoining two blocks were made up of a line of one-story shops. With Camino al Norte a major thoroughfare, Gracie could see the ruins of the downed building. The back half was mostly still standing, but the front had collapsed into rubble.