by Rawlin Cash
From there he went to Norman, Oklahoma and worked on a farm.
From there he went to Alliance, Nebraska, where he was shot for the first time. It was his seventeenth birthday. A fight over a girl named Sally Jane McNaught. It was a bad shot, a bullet to the gut that should have killed him. He recovered, but he knew those old wounds never truly went away.
He could still remember things like that. He could remember Sally Jane McNaught. He could remember the first dog he’d ever owned. He could remember how to fix the alternator on his grandfather’s Ford.
And he could remember Hale recruiting him.
By that time, Hunter was serving with the First Ranger Battalion at Hunter Airfield in Savannah, Georgia. In the army he’d found his place in the world. He was proud to be there. He was part of something.
Savannah suited him fine. He had a girl in town and he’d see her whenever he could. She was pretty, the kind of pretty that got noticed. The other guys teased him about her.
Lucy, her name was.
He might have had something nice with her. If the world was a different place, if the river of his life had taken another course, they could have had a house and some kids and he’d have been a good husband despite all the shit he’d seen.
Maybe that was reading too much into it. If he’d been asked at the time if he loved Lucy, he’d have said yes. He could still smell her hair when he closed his eyes. He could remember the feel of his fingers running through it. He could remember how soft her lips were, and the way she looked at him like he was the best thing she’d ever seen. He could remember the sound she made their first time.
But when the army asked him to move, he didn’t hesitate for a second. Her feelings never entered the equation.
He was already one of the best snipers in the regiment so when they realized who his grandfather was, and saw for themselves the tracking skills he’d learned from the old man, they wanted him for the Regimental Reconnaissance Company.
That meant moving back to Fort Benning, 250 miles away. He didn’t even say goodbye to Lucy. Instead, he wrote her a letter. It was a long letter and he put his heart and soul into it. He told her things he’d never told anyone. He told her what happened to his parents. He told her how his grandfather taught him to shoot. He told her his grandfather could be the kindest man alive, and the meanest.
When he got to Fort Benning the letter was there waiting for him, returned to sender.
He put it in a shoebox with his birth certificate and other documents and concentrated on becoming a ranger scout.
Recon company was an elite unit, part of the Joint Special Operations Command. Its scouts were the best in the service.
The training was grueling. There were stress tests, psychological screenings, mental aptitude tests, hundred-mile point-to-point navigation challenges. Out of a class of twenty, Hunter was the only one chosen.
He didn’t know it at the time but the CIA was already watching him. Hale was sometimes at Fort Benning, in from the city in an expensive suit, taking notes, snapping photos with an oversized Nikon and a zoom lens. He reminded Hunter of a scout at a minor league game.
Later, when he was stationed at Ar’Ar Air Base in Saudi Arabia, he saw Hale again. He stood out in that civilian suit like a sore thumb.
“Who’s the narc?” he said to his team leader, a staff sergeant from Quincy, Massachusetts named Doug Finkbeiner. Finkbeiner spoke like the guys in Good Will Hunting. He couldn’t say car or bar without everyone cracking a grin. Once, Hunter heard him say the Lord’s prayer and it sounded like another language.
“Black Ops,” Finkbeiner told him.
“CIA?”
“Yeah, and trust me, you don’t want to get mixed up with them.”
“Why not?”
Finkbeiner looked to see if he was serious.
He said, “Because that’s a one-way ticket.”
Hunter nodded but he wasn’t sure what that meant. He did some research but there was very little you could find out about CIA Black Ops with a Google search. He knew the CIA recruited from recon company but that was about it.
Hunter’s unit comprised four men rather than the usual six. There was Finkbeiner, a guy from New York called Kovac, and a guy from LA called Lopez.
Their role was to be inserted undetected behind enemy lines for clandestine recon, target acquisition, and intel gathering. They were also increasingly being used for direct-action strikes, especially rescue missions, man-hunting, and high-value-target hits. They could remain in enemy territory indefinitely, and had more infiltration and exfiltration techniques availably than any other unit in the army.
The first time Hunter spoke to Hale was right after a mission.
The mission had gone badly. The battalion Hunter’s unit was attached to was preparing a move into northern Iraq. The CIA had recruited local Kurdish peshmergas but things weren’t going their way. They were up against a militant Iraqi group called Ansar al-Islam and the group was using Ricin to hold back the Kurdish forces. It had to be cleared up before the battalion could be sent in.
The CIA located the chemical weapons facility in the town of Sargat and Hunter’s unit was to drop in, take out the facility, and destroy the Ricin stockpile.
They were inserted in a pre-dawn HALO drop. The jump altitude was thirty thousand feet, which meant breathing pure oxygen for the entire flight from Ar’Ar, as well as using an oxygen bottle during the drop. At that height, the plane was undetected, and when they opened their chutes three thousand feet from the ground, they were already low enough to avoid radar.
They landed in mountainous terrain north of Sargat and the plan was to move in on the town, a distance of about five miles, and get eyes on the weapons facility. They could then mark it by laser and call in an air strike.
They soon realized that whoever in the CIA chose the drop site had his head up his ass. The area was heavily defended by snipers. They made their way through a valley strewn with rock and scrub. As soon as dawn broke, Kovac took a sniper bullet to the neck. They scrambled for cover behind some large boulders but their position was precarious. They were pinned down by at least three separate snipers, positioned on the high outcrops overlooking the valley. Any movement drew immediate sniper fire. To taunt them, the shooters took potshots at Kovac’s body which was still out in the open, and Hunter took note of the marksmanship and direction of fire.
The rock gave them cover but it wouldn’t be long before one of the snipers shifted position and got a line of sight.
“They’re going to call in backup from Sargat,” Lopez said, as bullet after bullet bit into Kovac’s corpse. “When it arrives, we’re fucked.”
Lopez indicated the ridge behind them. Anyone coming up over it would have them clearly in sight.
Finkbeiner was trying to pin down the enemy sniper positions with a mirror on a wire but they were well concealed and the mirror was tiny.
When a bullet smashed it, Hunter knew they were in trouble.
“That was a hell of a shot,” he said.
Finkbeiner looked pale. “I know.”
“Six hundred yards?” Lopez said.
Hunter had an M24 chambered with .338 Lapua Magnum rounds in a five-round magazine and a Leupold Mark 4 scope. It was an excellent setup, accurate at over fifteen hundred yards.
“Seven hundred,” he said.
He was lying on the ground between two of the boulders.
“You comfortable down there?” Lopez said.
Hunter had one of the snipers through the scope. The man looked to be older, in his forties. His position was good but he gave himself away by rising to take shots at Kovac for no reason.
Hunter was patient. He’d grown up hunting. He knew how to wait.
The sniper lit a cigarette and was preparing to relocate. Whoever he was, he clearly didn’t think much of his Americans foes. He wasn’t taking any precautions. As soon as he moved, Hunter put a .338 Lapua Magnum round in his head and then scanned the mountainside.
/> No one moved. He knew there were two other shooters up there and he had no doubt one of them was on the move to get in behind their position.
“Any of you guys see anything?” he said.
“Three o’ clock,” Finkbeiner said.
Hunter scanned the area. There was movement in the scrub.
“What do you think?” Finkbeiner said.
“It’s a guy trying to get behind us.”
“Well, we’ve got about ten minutes before he gets a position.”
“Keep an eye on him,” Hunter said. “I’d rather not shoot into the brush. We’ll never know if we hit him.”
“We could send Lopez out as bait.”
“True,” Hunter said.
They needed to find the third man. If there was more time it would have just been a matter of waiting. Sniping was a waiting game, and the man who waits longest, who moves last, wins. But in enemy territory, with their position blown and their rear vulnerable, waiting wasn’t an option. Five miles from the town meant there’d be guys on their ass in a matter of minutes.
The man moving in the brush was being clumsy. Through the scope, his position was plain as day.
“I could get that guy with the Carl Gustav,” Lopez said.
“You got a flechette round?” Finkbeiner said.
“One.”
“We might need it later,” Hunter said.
“I don’t like sitting here,” Finkbeiner said.
Lopez loaded the Carl Gustav. Because of the size of it, he couldn’t shoot from under the rock. Hunter was about to call out the distance for him, it was an area round that sprayed shrapnel all over the place, it didn’t have to be dead accurate, but before he could call out the distance, Lopez stood up and aimed visually. He got the shot off but was hit through the top of the head by the third sniper in the same instant he fired.
The flechette round exploded into a thousand darts and took out the target but Lopez was dead.
“Fuck,” Finkbeiner said. He sprayed bullets in the direction of the third shooter but it didn’t do any good.
Hunter had a good idea where the third man was now, but it had cost them Lopez to get it.
He zeroed in on the third sniper’s location but he could already hear the sound of vehicles approaching from a track beyond the ridge to their rear.
“We’re out of time,” Finkbeiner said.
They had to take out that sniper fast. If they were still in this position when the new troops arrived, they’d be blasted to crap.
“We’ve got to go,” Finkbeiner said.
“Don’t do it,” Hunter said.
If Finkbeiner moved, he was dead. Hunter had seen enough of the enemy sniper’s shots to know that.
“If we don’t move, we’re cooked.”
Hunter reloaded. Five rounds. He took a shot as near to the third sniper as he could. Then he took a second and third shot, about a yard to either side.
Finkbeiner held his gun over the rock and sprayed cover fire without aiming.
The vehicles had stopped. They were out of sight and Hunter figured they were setting up mortars.
A minute later, mortar rounds came up over the ridge and exploded a hundred yards off target.
“The sniper will guide them in,” Finkbeiner said. “We can’t wait any longer.”
“Move and you’re dead,” Hunter said.
He scoured the sniper’s position but a second round of mortars struck. They had overcompensated by ten yards. The blast rocked the ground and showered them in dirt.
“Next one gets us,” Finkbeiner said.
Hunter knew he was right, but he’d rather weather mortar fire than expose himself to a sniper.
“Come down here,” Hunter said. His position beneath the rock offered good cover.
Finkbeiner looked at him, then at a dried up stream bed about fifty yards away. It offered a tempting escape route but there was no way he’d make it.
“Don’t do it,” Hunter said, reading Finkbeiner’s mind.
Finkbeiner looked toward the ridge, then at the stream bed.
“Get down here, you dumb fuck,” Hunter said, but Finkbeiner didn’t listen.
He dashed for the stream bed. Hunter cursed but got his eye to the scope and saw the sniper move. He pulled the trigger the same second the sniper did. The sniper fell out of his position and his body slid down the side of the mountain.
But Finkbeiner was already dead.
The next round of mortars fell right on target. Finkbeiner and Lopez’s bodies were minced.
Hunter covered his head with his arms and stayed wedged between the boulders. When the explosion stopped he couldn’t hear anything. He put his hands on his ears and his skin was sticky with blood.
The air was thick with dust and that dust probably saved his life. He staggered out of his position and grabbed his pack containing the .338 ammo. He left the heavier ordnance and the Carl Gustav but grabbed the laser guidance system.
Men were coming up over the ridge now but they couldn’t see him through the dust. Hunter couldn’t see them either, and he couldn’t hear anything at all, but he knew they were there.
He ran for Finkbeiner’s stream bed and moved along it a few hundred yards. He left it as soon as he could and climbed up the mountainside through an area of thick brush. He looked back at the former position. It was overrun with enemy men, about twenty of them. They were poking at the bodies of Finkbeiner and the others and would soon realize they were a man short. Hunter loaded the rifle and aimed at the men through the scope.
If he was very fast he could take out five men with five bullets. Before allowing himself to assess the outcome, he began pulling the trigger.
Five men dropped and the rest took cover behind the same rock he’d been under a minute earlier.
He could have tried to keep them pinned down but there were fifteen of them and they had mortars and probably grenades.
If Lopez was still with him it would have been the perfect time for the Carl Gustav and a flechette round.
He abandoned his position and began a slow and steady retreat in the direction of Sargat. The men would follow him and he’d be able to pick them off, one by one, over the five mile distance.
When he got to the position the first enemy sniper had occupied, he looked down on the men following him and took another shot at them. A man fell to the ground. The sniper position was well built and there was water, food, an additional rifle and ammo for it. He drank the water and took the rifle and ammo. He looked at the face of the dead sniper. This was the man who’d taken out Kovac. He wasn’t old enough to grow a beard.
Over the next twenty-four hours, he let the enemy follow him to Sargat as he picked them off one at a time. He managed to avoid being surrounded at any point and weathered dozens of mortar, grenade and rocket attacks.
By the time he reached Sargat, no one was still on his tail, although the men in the town were on alert. He rounded the town and located the Ricin facility. He targeted it without ceremony and called in the strike with the laser. A few minutes later, twelve Tomahawk missiles hit the factory. The facility was completely destroyed, along with all of the Ricin stockpiles.
Hunter watched through his scope the big piles of castor beans as they burned.
Their seeds were the source of Ricin. While countries like the United States and Russia had long ago given up on Ricin as a chemical weapon agent, the Iraqis, who had a hard time manufacturing more lethal compounds like botulinum or anthrax, still used it.
The extraction point was back in the mountains on the Iranian border, twenty miles north of Sargat. It took most of the day to get to it.
He saw a goat herder about a mile from the extraction point. He looked no older than twenty. Hunter should have avoided him but instead he traded him a knife for a pouch of tobacco and smoked it as he waited for his ride.
He hadn’t slept in fifty hours when he got back to base.
And that was the moment Hale chose to approach him, still o
n the hot tarmac of the runway, his bag on his back, the plane behind him already refueling.
“Welcome home, soldier.”
Hunter was numb. Finkbeiner, Lopez and Kovac had been his entire life for months. Their loss was raw, unprocessed.
“That was impressive work.”
Hunter stared at Hale but his mind was still in the mountains. He rolled a cigarette from the tobacco he’d traded and kept staring at Hale while he lit it.
“I’m sending in a CIA unit to bring back your friends.”
“Okay,” Hunter said.
“Now, I know this might seem like bad timing, but you’ve got to come with me.”
“What for?”
“An assessment.”
“I don’t want to take an assessment.”
“It’s just a test.”
“I know what an assessment is.”
“This one’s different.”
“I don’t care what it is.”
“What if I said we needed you?”
“I’d say the army needs me.”
“What if I said we can offer you training and missions that a ranger couldn’t even dream of.”
“I’d tell you, with all due respect, to go fuck yourself.”
Hale shrugged. He handed Hunter a document containing orders from the battalion commander.
Hunter read the document. It had been written by a lawyer. It referred to clauses in his existing contract with the army. It used a lot of ten-dollar words.
“What am I supposed to do with this?”
“Read it.”
“Like I read the fine print on my cell phone contract?”
“Something like that.”
“If you’ve got me by the balls, why even bother with the paperwork?”
Hale shrugged.
Hunter felt like punching him in the face but he knew it wouldn’t help. Hale had one of those faces you knew had been punched plenty of times before, and to no avail.
“Follow me,” Hale said, walking back toward the runway. “You’ll undergo CIA stress testing and psychological assessment.”
That was how they did things. That was the type of situation they loved. They got a guy in from a fifty-hour mission where he just lost everyone in the world he cared about, they got him at his most exhausted, they got him when he was at breaking point, and they saw how much more shit he could eat.