Dog One

by Jim Riley

  “I thought this area was a dead spot?”

  “We’re picking it up intermittently. Stand by.”

  “Roger that.”

  It had gotten real quiet without Sarge whispering in my ear, and I noticed that I could hear exceptionally well with the helmet on. I assumed it had a built-in microphone that enhanced the ambient noise but would cut out or reduce very loud noises. I had a pair of Peltor ear protectors I used on the shooting range that did the same thing, only they didn’t cost a bazillion dollars. I heard a door down the hall open and close. I wondered if this room had already been checked when the building was first secured by these guys, like my broom closet had been. I didn’t know if it would matter or not, but I still wondered. The dot on the HUD moved to the door of the equipment room. As the door began to open, the floor plan disappeared from my HUD, and all I was left with was the crosshairs in the middle of the empty infrared screen. Sarge was magic with whatever he was doing for me.

  It wasn’t as bright through my screen as if the lights were on, but it was better than any NVG on the market today. All of the graininess was gone and no greenish tint.

  I couldn’t see what was happening at the open door from behind the filing cabinet. My field of vision started about five feet into the room. If he got past that it may be too late for him anyway. We’d have to see. The door continued to open, and I could see a wedge of light coming in from the hallway. Suddenly, the whole room lit up when the overhead light came on. My HUD instantly made the adjustment and I could hear the man breathing. The door stayed open for about five to ten seconds, then the lights went back out. When the door closed behind him, I let out my breath.

  “Is it clear?” I asked my eye in the sky.

  “Dunno. Satellite isn’t picking you up anymore.”

  I waited for a moment, then eased out from my hiding place. I needed to get my gear cleaned up and get moving. I had just under two hours to get the job done. My HUD had gone back to infrared, and I didn’t worry about turning the light on. I stepped into the middle of the room and looked down as something caught my eye. It was one of the Nomex gloves that went with my suit. I hadn’t had a chance to put them on before I went to hide and, undoubtedly, one had slipped out of my leg pocket and onto the floor. I wondered if the glove was what the guy had been looking at for so long while he’d been standing in the doorway. I hoped not. But I wasn’t that lucky.

  “Head’s up. Tango behind you.” Sarge didn’t shout it, but it was urgent.

  I spun around in time to see the door opening. I was about eight feet into the room and directly in view of the man opening the door. No way he was not going to see me, even if he didn’t turn the light on. The M28 came up to my shoulder, and I found myself trying to acquire the sights on top of the weapon. It had sights, but since I was wearing the helmet, it was very awkward to use them. The Middle Eastern male, dressed in BDUs, was attempting to bring his weapon up as well. I’m sure he was more startled than I was. I wasn’t expecting him, but at least I wasn’t completely unprepared to deal with him either. He, on the other hand, had stumbled upon someone in a black suit and helmet, who no doubt looked like he had stepped from a spaceship into a room that was supposed to be empty.

  The thought of him wondering if I was a spaceman crossed my mind at about the same time I settled the crosshairs in the HUD on his forehead and pulled the trigger.

  Sarge was right. The M28 was completely silent. No moving parts, and the kick was only slightly to the rear. Follow-up shots should definitely not be a problem. I just had to get used to not trying to aim it conventionally.

  The single shot had caught the guy in the forehead, and a lot of his gray matter blew out the hole in the back of his head. It made a nice pattern on the off-white wall six feet behind him. He had fallen straight down. The round had definitely performed as advertised.

  “Move, move, move. Take the partner.” Sarge urged. Just like most well-thought-out plans, ours had not survived first contact with the enemy.

  I moved out of the room and started down the hall. I saw that it was about thirty feet to the corner. Gadgets or not, tactics are tactics, and I quickly went into the same groucho walk that all operators use with my weapon up and ready. The groucho, affectionately named after the way Groucho Marks walked, is a way of moving that utilizes slightly bent knees. Instead of picking up and moving your feet, you attempt to glide them. It makes for a stable shooting, while moving, platform. Well, at least as good as it can get when you’re trying to move and shoot at the same time.

  “Which side’s he on?”

  Sarge flipped on the HUD and told me at the same time. “To the right and fifteen feet down.” The HUD stayed up until I reached the corner, then it disappeared.

  “Take that thing out of your pocket that looks like a short pen. It’s located in a pouch on your upper right chest.” I was about four feet from the corner and kept my weapon pointed there while I felt for the item. I found it and pulled it out. It did sort of look like a short pen. I pushed the button on top, and instead of a nib coming out, I got a new see-through view on my HUD. The pen was a camera. Not only that, but as I turned the barrel, the pen’s view changed from straight out the end to sideways. Without being told, I eased the pen/camera slightly past the corner. I saw that the dead man’s partner was leaning with his back against the wall and looking the other way.

  “Take him.”

  I eased out into the hallway and shot the man in the back of the head without any hesitation. Just has his partner had done, he dropped straight to the floor. The only sound was him hitting the high-dollar carpet.

  “Outstanding.” Sarge told me. It sounded like he actually meant it, too. “We’re committed now. We sweep the first floor. There is one more two-man patrol.”

  “Roger, one more team.” I hadn’t stopped to evaluate or think about how things were going. At this point, I needed to depend on my partner. If I tried to stop and think out the plan now, I would get bogged down. “Where to?”

  “Keep going down the hall. Sorry about that back there.”

  “Sorry about what?” I didn’t understand.

  “Him slipping up on you. Satellite lost the images for a second. They picked a bad second to do it.”

  “Hell, that wasn’t you fault.”

  “Still. You handled it well though, Dell.” His using my name bothered me. I had no idea why, it just did.

  “Where to, Sarge?”

  The floor plan popped up, and I saw two dots, one hallway down and to the left. I still hadn’t figured out how to judge distance on the map I was seeing, but I could tell it was about halfway down the hallway. Oh boy, I thought, a double.

  It was kind of weird doing an assault by myself. I was used to having a partner literally touching my back as we moved. By contrast, having Sarge’s voice in my ears in stereo was a little closer than I was used to. Coupled with him seeing everything I was seeing, it was almost like he was in my head. That could work on your mind after a while, I decided.

  I came to the corner and pulled the pen camera out. Once again, I switched it on, and once again, I had a see-through view of what the lens was seeing. I knew I would never be able to go back to doing normal SWAT calls with the equipment I was used to. It would be like returning to bows and arrows.

  I eased the camera past the corner and saw that the two men were facing each other, the closest with his back to me. Considering it was a double, I knew my best bet was to step out when the vision of the man facing me was blocked by the man in between us. The problem was that they moved around, and I was afraid that by the time I got ready to step out, he would be in a position to see me.

  Sarge saw my problem and had the solution. “There is a holder just under the barrel of the M28 that accepts the camera. That way, you can have your weapon ready to step out when the time is right.”

  Damn, if he wasn’t right. I put the pen camera in the holder and adjusted it so it was looking to the left as I held my weapon up. I eased i
t out past the corner and picked up the targets again. Within thirty seconds the closest man gave me opportunity by getting directly between me and the other guy’s line of sight. I popped the corner and held the crosshairs on the center of the back of the man’s head. In the same instant, I double tapped the trigger, then let go with another double tap. The first bullet struck the man right where it was supposed to, but before he could collapse the second one hit him as well.

  Unlike regular jacketed ammunition, frangible ammo doesn’t over-penetrate. That’s exactly what it’s designed to not do. However, my first bullet to the back of the first guy’s head had created a cavity which allowed the second bullet to exit the front and kill target number two. The second double tap I had let go was redundant, but safe is better than sorry. Besides, there was no way to know that would happen. I probably couldn’t have done that if I wanted to in a million tries.

  “Two more tangos down on the first floor.” Sarge announced. He was no doubt reporting the facts in real time to someone. The CP, for sure, maybe even the Pentagon.

  “Is this floor clear?” I asked him.

  “Affirmative.”

  “Good. Take me offline except for you. I want this to be private.”

  “I can’t do that, Dell.”

  “Do it, Sarge. Do it now.” I didn’t bark at him, but it was obvious that it was not up for discussion.

  “Okay. We’re offline. Just me and you.”

  I didn’t know if I could believe him, but I had no choice, so I proceeded as though it was true. “Two things are going to happen here today, Sarge. I’m going to finish my mission and secure that bomb. And I’m probably going to die doing it. So I need something from you.”

  “Name it.”

  “Don’t call me Dell. In fact, don’t say anything to me that keeps me holding on to my life. I’m nothing but an asset to get the job done. Realistically, my chances of walking out of here are hovering around the single digits. I can live with that. But if I hold on too tight, I just might hesitate. And dying ain’t so bad, but failing, then dying, sucks.”

  “Roger that. What do you want to be called?”

  I hadn’t thought that through. “Well, I have a close friend that calls me Road Dog.”

  “That doesn’t roll off the tongue. How about just Dog One?”

  “Roger that, TOC. Dog One it is.”

  I heard a faint voice in the background through my mic and figured it was someone in the TOC. Sarge acknowledged something and then spoke to me.

  “New plan, Dog One. We are now under a new clock. The teams you just took out will be getting a status check in twenty minutes. But first, while you’re there, we need you to check the exterior emergency door for any devices. That will be our ingress for HRT.”

  I roger’d that and had to ask Sarge for the floorplan on my HUD.

  He put it up and said, “By the way, you can do that yourself, Dog One. There are three small buttons on the left and right upper quadrants of the helmet. The first is your NVG and Thermal override buttons, the second brings up whatever file is loaded as the primary file. In this case, it’s the floorplan.”

  “What’s the third one for, my favorite song track?”

  “No, it’s an advanced option you don’t need to be concerned about.”

  I hoped it wasn’t some kind of self-destruction device to blow myself up if it looked like the enemy was going to capture me. I started to make a joke about it and decided I didn’t want to know.

  I saw on the HUD that the exterior door on the first floor had been marked by someone in the TOC with an icon. I only had to go a short way down the hallway I was already in, and it should be on the left. I could have asked Sarge for directions, but I was beginning to tire of having to be told every move. It made me feel very handicapped.

  I continued down the hallway until I found the door. It was a standard, gray metal, thirty-six-inch exterior door with a panic bar and an automatic closer at the top. Not standard was the fragmentation grenade attached to the door by way of a short metal wire. The wire was fastened to the door with a screw and then twisted around the pin of the grenade, which had been dangerously shortened. The entire rig was secured by a bracket attached to the wall and had obviously been made beforehand. It had probably been secured in place fairly quickly. Nice alarm system. The door would have gotten about a half-inch of movement before the pin was pulled free.

  I told TOC what I had found and was told to simply cut the wire and bend the cotter pin down. I did it with a Leatherman’s tool I got out of a side pouch pocket from my LBV and was ready to move.

  “Dog One, standing by.”

  “Roger that, Dog One. Give me a minute.”

  I knew the bosses were deciding the next move. It wasn’t like there were a lot of options, but you had to do the very best with what you had. I was hoping the climb back up the wire cable shaft was not in the revised plan.

  “Dog One, this is TOC. We have a revised plan. There’s only one more two-man patrol between the first-floor ingress and the hostages. We want you to take them out before moving to your primary objective.”

  That’s what the hold-up had been in coming up with a new plan. Now that saving the hostages was not a huge sidestep on the way to the primary mission, they had decided to take the chance. Maybe they were impressed with my skills and thought I could pull it off, or maybe they were already starting to feel the political pressure of the fallout if a bunch of hostages died.

  “Roger the new plan. What’s my ingress to the floor?”

  Sarge pulled up the second-level floor plan and was giving me the layout when he stopped mid-sentence.

  “Stand by, Dog One.”

  I could hear the frustration in his voice. I knew from my own experiences that that frustration almost always came from Command either not being able to make a decision or changing their minds. I was right.

  “Mission shift again, Dog One. You’re going to go straight to floor six where the bomb is.”

  “Roger the new revised plan. Going to floor six.” I knew better than to ask what had happened or to offer advice. Sometimes Command could be schizophrenic. You just got used to it.

  Sarge brought up the sixth floor on my HUD and pointed out what was known. The office where the bomb was located was in the north hallway, not too far from the west end and to the right as I would be getting off the elevator. I had liked the part about taking the elevator up to the sixth floor. That was way better than the stairwell, which still only had intermittent satellite thermal imaging coverage anyway and was beyond description better than the shaft.

  There were two, and sometimes three, people in the room with the bomb. The third person was half of a two-man team currently patrolling the floor. I had to guess that the two-man teams on that floor would be made up of the flight-suited men I had seen in the beginning. I also assumed they were going to be a little more dialed-in than the men I had dealt with so far.

  I got into the elevator and pushed the number six. The doors closed, and I braced myself against the left-hand wall. Sarge had told me there was one team presently around the corner and down from elevator; however, from where they were, they would not be able to see the elevator when it got there and the door opened. I planned for Murphy’s Law and got ready to engage them anyway. Besides, even if they weren’t standing there, the “ding” of the elevator arriving may cause them some concern if they heard it, and they may come running.

  The plan was to engage the first two-man team as soon as possible, then work my way to the second on the opposite end of the building. When those threats were taken care of, I could concentrate on the bomb without having to watch my back. The big unknown with the bomb was whether or not they could set it off remotely or suddenly by just pushing a button.

  The elevator had just passed the fifth floor when Sarge spoke to me. “Dog One, we have movement of the team nearest the elevator. We’ll designate them Tango Team One. If they continue, they’ll come right to you, but you should b
eat them there with no problem.”

  “Roger that.”

  The doors to the elevator opened, and no one was there in the hallway yet. I hit the switch on the elevator panel and locked the door open, then cleared the door of the elevator to the left just enough to level the M28 and point it down the hallway. Sarge had already switched off the floorplan to clear my HUD, and the crosshairs hovered head-height at the edge of the corner. I changed my mind and stepped back into the elevator. Sarge saw the movement of my dot on his screen, as well as the view from the HUD, but didn’t ask what I was doing. He just kept me appraised of what I couldn’t see.

  “They’re coming to you and should be at the far corner in five, four, three, two, one.” It got quiet, and I could hear them talking as they came around the corner and entered the north hallway. I didn’t want them to walk all the way to the open elevator doors because I would be trapped inside, and they would have the advantage. Besides, the room with the bomb was at the other end of this same hallway, and I wanted to keep all the noise as far away from it as possible. I was counting on Sarge to give me movement update. He didn’t let me down.

  “Still walking toward you. Looks like side by side, and about halfway to you.”

  I didn’t reply. I flicked the selector switch to full auto and side-stepped out of the elevator with the M28 already up to my shoulder.

  It takes a minimum of about three seconds for an average person to respond to a sudden and unexpected event. The information has to be taken to the brain by whatever sensory input receives it, then the information is processed. The brain decides what it wants to do, then sends a signal to whatever part of the body that needs to move or respond. For highly-trained and switched-on operators, you can shave almost a full second off that. Both the men of Tango Team One had been dead long before their three seconds were up. Knowing what I was going to be looking at when I stepped out of cover, I picked up the first man’s head quickly and pulled the trigger. The M28 had a manageable cyclic rate of six-hundred-and-fifty rounds per minute, and I had planned on only expending a very small part of that in three round bursts.