Now, however, Devon was beginning to feel like he should have opted for the more difficult weapon. Devon’s Ruger was loaded with a ten-round box-style magazine, which when empty had to be removed from the little rifle and refilled by hand. This reloading process was time consuming and took a fair level of fine muscle dexterity, both of which would be in short supply were he to get himself involved in a gunfight. There was one other thing that had the hair on the back of Devon’s neck nearly matching his K-9 partner’s. The Ruger was only good out to about a hundred yards, which placed him at a serious disadvantage if pitted against an opponent with a rifle designed for warfighting.
As these thoughts raced through his brain housing group, Devon’s eyes danced across the terrain to his left. The only positive in this situation, he thought, was he had the high ground, and if things got out of hand, he could slip over the southern side of the hill he was on and disappear into the countryside.
It wasn’t that the object jumped out at Devon, but more the object didn’t jump out at him, like several clumps of thicker grass and a few downed tree branches had. No, this was more like a snake colored the same as the grass was nearly invisible, but when your eyes swept across it, you knew something wasn’t right. Had Devon not been keyed up and searching for something, he likely would never have seen the abnormality.
Devon zeroed in on the curious spot in the grass below and to his left. He saw it again, and it was moving, like a serpent through the grass, visible only from above and invisible to anyone below or on the same plane.
Slowly the outline of a man began to take shape, and Devon realized he was staring at a man dressed in military camouflage. The man moved on his belly, slowly pushing a large black rifle ahead of himself with every slithering movement as if he were lying atop the keratin-infused scales of some giant ophidian. When the man stopped, Devon watched him bring the rifle to bear in the direction of John and the rest of the group.
To say Devon was scared would have been a grossly understated definition for what the teen was feeling when he saw the man with the rifle pointing at his friends—no, the man was pointing a weapon at Devon’s family. For the first time in Devon’s life, he felt as though he belonged to something more, something powerful, a collection of people from different walks of his former life. Jared, John and the rest of his friends had somehow distinguished themselves as his new family in the post-solar-flare world.
The thought of someone trying to harm his family before the solar flare would have sent Devon into a dizzying tailspin, but now he controlled the fear if but a little and began his own slithering movement toward the man in the grass. The Devon of a world dead six months now wanted to stand and scream at his family below, but he knew they would likely not hear him and, if they did, wouldn’t know what was going on until it was too late, so he crawled forward, intending to do harm to another human being in the defense of his tribe.
Crank walked beside Devon as he crawled, effectively destroying any of Devon’s intent to remain unseen were the man in the grass to glance over a shoulder in his direction. Devon stopped and gently waved Crank back. Miraculously the dog complied by lowering to the ground, but continued his vigilant watch over Devon’s movement toward the source of the scent.
Five minutes later, Devon felt he was within a hundred yards of the man in the grass, who’d himself stopped moving forward and was now glued to his rifle’s optics, his only movement being the occasional turning of a scope turret as the man readied for his shot. Other than the few adjustments to the scope’s windage and elevation turrets, the man never took his eye from his weapon’s scope. Devon raised himself just high enough to see down to where John and company were drawing abreast of the man in the grass. Devon knew somehow that when his tribe drew directly to the front of the man in the grass, someone from the group would die.
Devon hefted his weapon into his shoulder and pushed the safety button into the fire or the naughty position. John always joked with Devon about there being two positions a weapon’s safety had, naughty and nice. John didn’t need to explain further. Devon’s Ruger was in the naughty position as he began aligning the bead on the front sight with the cutout of his rear sight.
The distance coupled with the angle only allowed Devon a clear shot at what appeared to be the man’s buttocks, which was fine with Devon. He wasn’t processing the consequences of this shot like an adult would have. Devon was about to shoot a man in order to stop the man from doing harm to his friends. Devon never held a conscious thought nor harbored absolute intentions of killing this man. He was singularly focused on stopping the man from shooting anyone below, plain and simple, like swatting a fly away from one’s face.
Devon knew these military guys wore body armor, heck, Jared and John never went anywhere without theirs, and this guy’s head was hidden by the grass, so he could be sporting a helmet as well. Devon would just shoot him in the ass and get the hell out of the area. Solid plan, he thought, only he had a sixty-yard run uphill to get into position to drop out of sight on the other side, where Crank hopefully awaited his return. Devon prayed the added orifice he planned on giving the man in the grass would distract him long enough to allow Devon his escape.
Devon’s sights wavered with the tension of the situation, but he fought back hard, trying mightily to steady, align and place the sights on the man’s backside. His eyes seemed to be watering, or maybe he was sweating into them. He didn’t know at this point and didn’t feel he had the time to wipe his wet brow. The feeling that every second counted nearly overwhelmed Devon while he worked to ensure his shot performed as effectively as a .22-caliber to the ass could be expected to.
A deafening roar erupted from the man in the grass, and Devon knew immediately he’d waited too long. In that moment he found a clarity like he’d never experienced in his life. A calmness combined with a will to overcome and vanquish his enemy swept through Devon’s very soul. Snap, the Ruger popped in his hands, and just like that he’d fired on the man in the grass. It was the first time Devon ever intentionally perpetrated violence on another human, and he’d done it with a gun.
Ray sat atop the Humvee, hanging on only by splaying his legs out, creating a wide base. His sniper rifle lay across his lap as the Humvee moved along the little frontage road. When Ray toppled from the Humvee, John saw it and knew, before the report reached his ears, they were in trouble. A second smaller report cracked in the distance, causing everyone to either drop to the ground where they were or hunker behind the cover of the now stopped Humvee.
Two SEALs dragged Ray’s limp body to the opposite side of the Humvee, where they began lifesaving measures. John grabbed the reins of both Shannon’s and Stephani’s horses and shouted for Essie to hold on as he dragged their mounts behind the Humvee.
“Get off and get behind a wheel,” John hollered to the three. Jared followed closely behind and was about to dismount with the women when John turned on him.
“You’re coming with me. We’re going to flank these sons of bitches,” John shouted, red faced. Jared nodded, spurring his horse forward.
Before John left, he shouted to Matt, “Find ’em, put fire on their position, and we’ll maneuver on them.”
Matt gave a brisk nod and pulled a set of binoculars to his eyes.
“Hold your fire, boys,” Matt ordered. “Let’s not waste ammo.”
John rode hard to the south, the horse reaching speeds that if John were to be thrown would most definitely result in serious injury. Jared rode behind at the same pace, both horses sure of foot as they careened down the shoulder of the frontage road, running hard, somehow sensing their riders’ dire situation. John was almost positive the shot that toppled Ray came from the mountains to the west, so traveling south made them full-value left-to-right moving targets. If any rounds snapped past his head, he’d begin zigzagging in as unpredictable a pattern as his horse could handle. Until then John’s mission was to go south to a point he felt placed him out of the sniper’s field of fire, then
turn west and flank the bastard.
The second smaller-caliber pop John had heard after Ray was shot told John there were two bad guys in the hills, one with a real gun, and one with a smaller not-so-real gun. A kilometer south, John slowed his mount before reining it across a small irrigation ditch and through a field that ended on the far side against the mountains. John wasn’t absolutely positive he was out of the sniper’s line of sight, but by the way the terrain was situated, he felt comfortable enough to take the risk.
John and Jared’s speed was cut in half by the unevenness of the field’s surface, which John didn’t particularly care for, knowing someone with a long gun could change positions, placing themselves in a spot to rain lead on John and Jared. The faster he could be, the harder he would be to kill, and getting killed was the thing he was attempting to avoid. The horses were obviously winded by the time John and Jared reached the far side of the field, so John slowed their pace slightly. That was when Goat’s machine gun rattled off a five-to-seven-round burst. John glanced up at the mountains, but couldn’t see where the SEAL was placing his fire.
Chapter 35
Josh lay in the grass, watching the road far below while he waited to exact some level of revenge on John and the SEALs. He hadn’t been in the fight earlier, but he was still pissed they’d destroyed the Black Hawk and stolen a Humvee. Personally, Josh wanted to kill Buckley first, but tactically he knew this could not be. Snipers and crew-served weapons needed to be removed from the battlefield first and foremost. Emotional revenge killing would have to take a back seat to sound tactics and mission objectives.
The drone pilot’s voice sounded in Josh’s earpiece, telling him the SEALs were a mile out. Josh acknowledged the man and listened as the pilot vectored the Humvee crew toward their objective. The soldiers responded, giving their position and assuring the pilot they were stepping up their pace.
When Josh saw the Humvee along with several people on horseback, he cursed silently under his breath. His harassing element was not yet in position, which meant he could not blend into the battle the way he’d hoped to. Josh knew his FFP, or final firing position, was roughly half a mile uphill from his intended targets, but still he ached for the advantage the soldiers would have brought him. Josh was an arrogant ass for sure, but a fool he was not. He knew full well the type of men he was about to engage and was fully aware of their innate ability to turn the tide in battle to their favor.
Josh steeled himself to act without the support of the tardy soldiers and wondered what was taking them so long. He briefly thought about calling and getting their position, but decided against it. The time he’d take referencing his map would be a dilatory task, and he could not afford to subtract any benefit he currently enjoyed. No, Josh thought, he was on his own, and he would just have to make things work.
The rifle was pulled snug in his shoulder as Josh swept the scope’s reticle across the group below him. There were two women and a child. Josh discounted them almost immediately as he stopped the gently bouncing crosshairs on John’s serious face. Buckley was on horseback, riding alongside the same guy Josh remembered from the ranch house. Josh studied both John and his friend and found they carried only rifles. John moved the scope’s busy reticle to the slow-moving Humvee and studied the men sitting on the outside of the lumbering vehicle.
There it was, his first target sitting atop the Humvee, with a scoped long rifle cradled in his lap. A sniper’s biggest fear was, and always has been, another sniper. The reason behind this was knowledge, a sniper knew what a sniper was capable of, what he’d do, and the tactics he’d employ. Armed with this information, a second sniper on the battlefield was a dangerous adversary. In Josh’s opinion, there was only room for one sniper in any fight. Being ambushed by a bunch of men with machine guns was a terrifying experience to be sure, but walking along and just having a friend drop dead had the effect of sending seasoned warriors into a tizzy. Snipers gave their victims no chance to turn and gain an edge or withdraw from the playing field. A sniper was that thing on the battlefield that most closely brought full-grown men back to their childhood when the boogeyman haunted their dreams.
Well, even the boogeyman could use some help, thought Josh as he again lamented the absence of his support element. Moving the scope away from the sniper perched on the roof of the Humvee, Josh attempted to decern the weapons capabilities of the men inside the vehicle. Both front windows were down, but all Josh could make out were the men’s upper bodies, but no weapons. He knew they had with them a machine gun capable of reaching Josh’s FFP, albeit not with any great accuracy, and he’d seen a couple of M203 systems with these fellas as well. The grenade launchers he wasn’t too worried about unless the SEALs got a hell of a lot closer than he intended allowing.
Walking next to the Humvee was one of the guys with the M203 system attached to his rifle. Mister grenade man would be second in line unless mister machine-gun man showed himself first, at which time grenade man would be shuffled to third in line. Josh had finished sorting out most of what he planned on doing to these guys by the time the hapless group unknowingly aligned itself directly with Josh’s front. Josh used a few precious seconds to recheck a half dozen trees and bushes between the SEALs and himself, ensuring his wind conditions remained unchanged.
Nothing seemed different, the wind continuing to blow at approximately four miles per hour at full value left to right, nearly all the way to his target. Josh drew a deep breath in through his nostrils, let it escape until his lungs reached their natural stopping point, at which time, he sealed any further air from leaving or entering his body. The index finger of his right hand slid across the rifle’s trigger, feeling the hardness of the metal as his finger flexed slowly into a curl that would eventually bring the trigger to the rear, releasing the deadly messenger of death to the man with the scoped rifle seated atop the Humvee.
The sharp crack of his rifle caused the weapon to leap backward, and for the briefest of moments, Josh lost sight of his target. This was normal, and Josh fought the weapon back under control in time to see the SEAL sniper crumpled on the ground next to the now stopped Humvee. Before Josh could rest the reticle on the next recipient of a high-speed projectile, something sliced into his buttocks, followed by what almost sounded like the report of an air rifle.
The combination of shooting into what amounted to be a hornet’s nest and immediately feeling like someone jabbed an ice pick into his ass pushed even Josh’s normally calm resolve to its brink. Instinctively he rolled away from the air rifle sound as he brought his rifle up. Nearly 150 yards to the south and above Josh, he saw a figure running while clutching a small rifle in his right hand.
“Motherfucker,” Josh swore through clinched teeth. His ass cheek and his hip were on fire as he got to a knee, trying to draw a bead on the fleeing figure. When Josh reacquired the scope’s ocular lens, he quickly realized the magnification was set too high for a shot at this new and much closer range. He’d dialed it up a bit in order to see who had what weapons before shooting the SEAL sniper, and now he was being punished for the little luxury. As Josh grabbed the magnification knob and cranked it to the lowest setting, he realized he was still sporting his nine-hundred-yard dope.
Working feverishly to bring his weapon’s optic into compliance for the 180-yard shot he figured to make, Josh stole a quick glance at the retreating man. The man who’d just shot Josh in the ass with what he was now realizing was most likely a .22-caliber rifle was nearing the top of the hill and would soon be out of his line of sight. Josh finished with his scope adjustments and pulled the rifle into his shoulder just as half a dozen rounds from Goat’s Mk 48 snapped over his head, impacting with the hillside in a dizzying array of dust plumes. The rounds were a hell of a lot closer than Josh would have guessed possible, causing him to abandon his endeavor of shooting the fleeing man with the squirrel gun and fall to his belly, where he slithered through the grass, hoping he was moving unseen. After ten yards, he leapt to his feet and limp
ed as fast as his bad hip and shot ass allowed. He made it over the edge of the finger and out of the SEAL’s line of sight just as another barrage of rounds whistled harmlessly overhead.
Matt was glued to the binoculars as he searched the mountains in the distance. Movement caught his eye, and he spotted a man running up the side of the mountain. The distance was too great and the binocular’s magnification too low for Matt to make out any details about the man on the mountain other than he appeared to be running away from the SEALs; therefore he was the shooter, but then…Matt’s peripheral was tickled in the optic by something else on the mountainside. A second figure, on a knee, and now Matt could see this guy was pointing a rifle at the fleeing figure, a large rifle, the type of weapon that could really reach out and touch someone.
In an instant, Matt made a decision. “Goat,” he called out, “that mountain straight out at twelve o’clock, second finger from the left, halfway up, hit it hard.”
Goat glanced up at the mountain, hefted the Mk 48 onto the hood of the Humvee, and let loose an eight-round burst, then waited for Matt to give him any adjustments. Matt watched the rounds land all around the man with the large rifle on the hill and was about to call to Goat for a repeat when the man got to his feet and began moving up to the right.
“Up twenty yards, right twenty more,” Matt instructed as the man with the large rifle neared the crest of the finger that would take him out of the SEAL’s line of sight.
The roar of Goat’s weapon battered Matt’s ears as the man with the large rifle made good his escape, disappearing over the top of the finger. “Check your fire, Goat. He cleared that ridge. Everyone, load up. We have to move before he can get the rifle back into the fight,” Matt barked, leaping back inside the front passenger seat of the Humvee.
The Jared Chronicles | Book 3 | Chains of Tyranny Page 34