“Keep your eye on the truck while it gets here and Second checks it out,” she passed to Rabbit.
She was tempted to move to his side of the roof and do it herself, but he needed to get his feet wet. To her side in its case was her Kyocera, her hypervelocity sniper rifle, and with any other spotter, she might have told him to take it. Rabbit, however, had not snapped in with it, and without being able to key in the cheek weld and eye position, he wouldn’t be very accurate. No, better he keep his standard-issue M99. It had more than enough range to cover Second Squad, and he had it zeroed in for his shooting position.
She turned back to her area of responsibility. The Navy and Marine Corps’ scanners hadn’t found anything suspicious about the truck, but using something so obvious as a decoy was not unheard of. With short quick movements, she covered the mental grid she’d constructed, using both her prime focus as well as her peripheral vision to spot anything out of the ordinary.
One of Second Squad’s four-man fire teams was moving to where they could intercept the truck. Gracie shifted her focus to the two local security standing outside the library door. They’d arrived with the first three commissioners. Casually sucking on stim sticks, flare-barreled Munchen 44’s held at the ready, the impressively lethal-looking men didn’t watch the fire team as it left. If something was up of which they were a part, they were hiding it well. Gracie didn’t suspect the two guards of anything, but she had a firing solution for them already locked in, and her Windmoeller’s WPT-331 rounds had the penetrative power to defeat the Cryolene body armor they wore. Better safe than sorry.
She was more concerned with the young boy she’d nicknamed “Space Dog” due to the brightly-colored image on his t-shirt. Perhaps ten or eleven years old, he sat on the stoop of a home a block off the square. He wasn’t armed, the best she could tell, but he’d been sitting there for half-an hour, seemingly interested in the goings on. That might be merely normal adolescent curiosity, but he could be acting as a lookout, feeding information to the bad guys. Gracie had zoomed in on him several times with her scope, but she hadn’t seen any signs of him communicating with anyone.
“The truck’s almost here,” Rabbit shouted across the roof.
“Use your comms, Irving. You trying to paint a bullseye on us?” she passed.
“Oh, yeah. Sorry, Staff Sergeant,” he said, this time over the P2P.
“OK, then. Just keep an eye on them.”
She pulled up Rabbit’s feed, then reduced it and sent it to the top left of her helmet display where she could monitor it but still have a full view of her own area of responsibility. She quickly ticked through her known potential target list. Silver Hair was still in his garden, Red Shirt was walking along Calle Jones after going to the lone store still open, and Limp Man was no longer in sight. She shifted to the right where Route Robin led into the town and from where the major would arrive. A local policeman still stood at the edge of town, ready to hop on his scoot and escort the major and the rest of First Platoon to the library. He looked bored out of his head, something Gracie completely understood.
Closer in, she checked Space Dog, then Gollum 1 and 2, the two security guards at the library. Shifting her view farther to the right, she—
What’s with Potbelly? she wondered.
The older man, his protruding gut hanging over his belt, had risen from his seat on a porch where he’d supposedly been reading a novel for the last hour. The reader was now on the small table beside his chair, its screen dark, and the man was looking with poorly disguised interest to his left. Gracie followed his gaze’s direction, but nothing jumped out at her. That wasn’t a comfort—something was tweaking her instincts.
“I don’t have anything for certain, but something might be up,” she passed on the local command circuit, which was keyed into Rabbit and all the Marines from Second Squad. “Keep alert.”
“What d’ya got, Staff Sergeant?” Sergeant Rafiq asked.
“Nothing for certain, but Potbe . . . the man at Building 23,” she passed, using the number Lieutenant Diedre Kaster-Lyons, dual-hatted as the battalion intel officer and the scout-sniper platoon commander, had designated the house, “seems a little too interested in something.”
“The fat guy? Eric?” the sergeant asked. “I spoke with him. He seemed OK, happy to see us. Tired of the fighting and all.”
Maybe, but something’s up, she thought as she continued to watch him. I can feel it.
Potbelly—Eric whatever—was now looking in every direction except to the left, which might mean something, but then he sat back down, picked up his reader, and started to read again. Gracie wondered if her nerves were playing with her, making her see things that didn’t exist, but something still nagged at the back of her mind. She zoomed in on the man, and that something hit her. The reader. The display was off. Potbelly was “reading” a darkened screen.
“Stop the truck!” she passed. “Something’s wrong!”
From Rabbit’s feed, she could see the truck, now a mere three hundred meters from the village’s edge. Corporal Ben-Zvi, the fire team leader of the team preparing to search the truck, didn’t wait for orders from his squad leader. He stepped out onto the middle of Route Bluebird, weapon raised while his amplified voice called out, “You, in the truck. Halt!”
The truck sped up.
Gracie bolted across the roof before conscious thought registered what was happening, yelling for Rabbit to take her place on the roof’s east side. Ben-Zvi’s fire team had spread out and taken the truck under fire, but it was a big, hulking thing, and their M-99s weren’t having much effect on target. There was a whoosh as a Marine launched a Hatchet, but the missile hit high on the truck’s right side with an impressive but ineffectual blast, missing the engine block and anything vital.
Firing at a moving vehicle, through a windshield, and from a high angle, was one of the most difficult shots a sniper could make. Gracie had spent countless hours in simulators and on ranges from Tarawa to Alexander, but still, this was no sure thing, and she both hadn’t pre-calculated a firing solution and had no time to calculate one now. She’d have to go with her gut.
Firing from a height meant the round’s drop would be less, but firing through the windshield meant that the round would most likely deflect downwards when it hit. The WPT-331 rounds she’d loaded to take care of the security officers armor had more punching power than the standard WPT-310 Lapua sniper round, so the deflection would be less—but how much less?
Gracie hit the roof’s edge, flipping off her helmet as she brought up her rifle and laid it across the top of the low retaining wall. Her scope was zeroed at 300 meters. She had already ranged the edge of the first house where Route Bluebird entered the village at 445 meters. The truck was still 150 meters or so away from that, and the wind had been blowing north to south at a slight eight-to-ten KPH. She didn’t have time to enter any of that; it was pure Kentucky windage time. Unable to see through the windshield’s glare, she put her crosshairs slightly high and to the right of where she thought the driver would be. Just as she started to squeeze the trigger, she saw the slightest of cracks from the driver’s side door.
He’s not suiciding! He’s going to try and get out!
The car that Gracie had taken out on Jericho had been driven by a suicide bomber. This driver was either not as dedicated or was considered still still vital. If the latter, then this was just the initial act in a larger assault.
With a last-second shift to the right, figuring the driver would be scrunched over to be able to bail out, she squeezed off a round, and then shifted lower and to the left before firing off a second. The flower blossomed on the windshield as the 285-grain jacketed round punched through it, and the truck started to veer before the second round hit.
“Axel-Three, this is Dingo-Three. We are under attack. Cancel the mission,” she passed on the command net before adding, “But send the rest of
Charlie-One. We’re going to need them.”
“Roger, Dingo-Three. Understand you are under attack. Axel-Three-Five is being recalled. Will get back to you on Charlie-One.”
The major had to be pulled back, but Gracie thought they’d need the rest of First Platoon here in the village. She scanned for more fighters as the hovertruck left the road and slowed to a stop in a field of knee-high, green, leafy crops.
On Jericho, the suicide VBIED had exploded when the driver she’d killed released the suicide switch. This truck didn’t. Gracie looked over her scope at it, wondering if she’d jumped the gun by declaring a full-out attack.
The truck erupted into a fireball that roiled into the air.
Of course. It was on a timer so the driver could escape with his skin intact.
Gracie was half-listening to Corporal Ben-Zvi giving a quick sitrep on the net when the sound of firing from the center of the town reached her. She bolted back to her original firing point where Rabbit stood, peering over the building’s edge.
“Get down. You can see just as well if you’re prone, and you won’t be exposed,” she told him, jerking him down by the collar.
“I’m hit, Sergeant,” someone passed on the net.
Without her helmet, Gracie didn’t have her display to see who it was, but she swung her scope to the two security guards. One was crouching, weapon ready as he scanned for a target, and the other was running forward. Gracie put her crosshairs on him, ready to take him out if needed, but he reached the wounded Marine and dragged her back to the base of the library.
Guess they’re not part of this.
Someone was, though, and Gracie’s job was to take him out.
“I’ve got someone. Looks like he’s got a Halstead,” Rabbit said.
“Where? Give me a location.”
“Uh . . . Building 38, second floor.”
“Building 38, 185 meters,” she mumbled, then “Take him out.”
Such a close distance was child’s play to a Marine with an M-99, much less a trained sniper. She left the target to Rabbit as she searched for more. She heard the whisper-snap of darts as Rabbit fired, then an excited “I got him!”
“Well, HOG, go find your number-two kill,” she said, wanting him to focus on the task at hand.
“A HOG, really? But that was with my ninety-nine.”
He was right. A kill like that wouldn’t be tallied as a sniper kill, so she’d jumped the gun on anointing him a HOG. Now wasn’t the time to get into technicalities though.
“Later, Irving. We don’t have time to discuss it now.”
“Roger that,” he said. Gracie heard him quietly add, “Shit, a HOG.”
A string of automatic fire opened up, but with the sound reverberating between buildings, Gracie couldn’t pinpoint its origin. Putting that weapon out of her mind for the moment, she shifted back to Potbelly. The man was gone, his reader abandoned on the floor of the porch. She kept scanning the direction where he’d been looking. Tension Gorge was not a very densely populated village, but there were still enough buildings to intermittently mask her view. She was dead sure, though, that there was somebody there.
A flash of movement proved her right. Two people, pulling an ancient but effective looking crew-served gun that she didn’t recognize but looked like an anti-tank weapon of some sort, passed between two buildings, moving out-of-sight before she could aim and fire. She swung her barrel to cover the other side of the house that now masked them and waited. Automatic fire still echoed in bursts throughout the village, but she slowed her breathing, letting her sight picture become her world. A few moments later, a head peered around the corner. At 210 meters to the home’s front door, she could easily drop him, but she wanted the gun in the open.
Come on out! The coast is clear, she implored him.
He turned back, said something, then disappeared for a moment, reappearing holding the crew-served gun’s controls, leading it forward. He pointed towards the square as he said something to his companion, who followed him into view.
Gracie and Rabbit were not exactly in stealth mode, and their position had to have been noted, but the two FLNT fighters didn’t even look her way.
Your loss.
When they were five meters out from the house’s protection, Gracie squeezed the trigger, going for center mass. The man dropped as if poleaxed, and Gracie cycled her action, swinging to take the second man into her sights. With cat-like reflexes, the second soldier bolted back into cover. Gracie snapped off a shot, but she was sure she’d missed.
“Staff Sergeant, do you got eyes on whoever is on our asses?” Sergeant Rafiq asked between heavy breaths.
“Where’s it coming from?”
“Through the fucking wall, from the north. It’s chewing the shit out of the place, and we’ve got no cover.”
“Lance Corporal Irving, we need to find that automatic weapon. Move to the edge over there and see if you can spot it.” She keyed back to the command net and asked, “Rafiq, what’s the status on your platoon? I’m not hearing anything. When’s their ETA?”
A round pinged just below Gracie, taking a chunk of cerocrete off the wall.
So much for them ignoring us.
“As soon as the major’s lifted out of there, they’ll break free. We’ve got a Minidrag on the way, though. ETA is six minutes.”
Gracie had half-expected the delay in the platoon. They couldn’t just leave the major out there on the road, cooling his heels. The Minidrag was a nice piece of news, though. The Marines had two “Dragon” drones. The “Mini” was the smaller, but depending on its combat load, it could still pack a decent wallop. It would have been providing overwatch for the column bringing in the major, and she was frankly surprised that the S3 had cut it loose to support Second Squad and her sniper team.
As Gracie watched, chunks of the closer wall of the store in which Rafiq and two of his fire teams had taken cover blew out into the square. The enemy gun was shooting all the way through the building.
“Fuck! Can you get them off our ass, Crow?” Rafiq passed. “If we weren’t hugging the deck, that would have cut us in two. I don’t think we can wait for the Minidrag.”
“I think I have the position, Staff Sergeant,” Rabbit shouted, forgetting her earlier admonition. “I saw a flash.”
“Wait one,” she passed to Sergeant Rafiq on the P2P. “Let me see what I can do.”
“Hurry up, Staff Sergeant. I’ve got one down, and I don’t have anything to engage.
Gracie slid back behind the retaining wall, then crouched and scooted to where Rabbit hunkered behind his section of the low wall.
“Give me your helmet,” she ordered.
She should have put hers back on—then she could have simply downloaded his feed—but it was still 20 meters behind her, so she threw on his. She reversed his feed 60 seconds and started it up again. Her image appeared first from what looked like just after she dropped the FPL fighter.
Don’t look at me, Rabbit. Look out at the bad guys.
She heard her voice telling him to move over to try and spot the shooters, then the herky-jeky footage as he ran to the roof’s far corner. He was scanning, back and forth when there was a flash at the corner of his vision immediately before the burst of automatic fire could be heard. Gracie made a mental note of the building from where the flash originated: Building 14, the Ag Co-op, which was a two-story office building made from the same cerocrete as the bank on which she now perched.
She gave Rabbit back his helmet, then did a quick turkey-hop to orient herself before dropping back out of sight. From her adjusted position, the window on the building would be about 465 meters, still an easy shot. Gracie’s longest kill to date with the Windmoeller was 2005 meters, so this would be child’s play—if she could acquire a target.
She entered the data into her Miller, then eased up and brou
ght the window into her sights. A sharp report from behind their position startled her for an instant, but the cracka-cracka-cracka was from a Marine M110, the standard automatic slug-thrower for a fire team. Corporal Ben-Zvi’s team had engaged, and she hoped they’d taken out the soldier she’d missed. She acquired her sight picture again, and the muzzle of a barrel immediately edged out before firing off another string of 15 or 20 shots. This was their baby, but the gunner hadn’t exposed himself. She was pretty sure that whoever he or she was, they knew exactly where she and Rabbit were and didn’t want to become targets.
“Can you get them?” Rabbit asked as she slid back down to sit on the deck, back against the low wall.
“You didn’t happen to bring a Hatchet, did you?”
“No, Staff Sergeant. You didn’t tell me to.”
She hadn’t expected him to have brought one of the little personal anti-armor rockets, but it hadn’t hurt to ask. Semi-smart, the rocket could take out most armor or blast its way through any civilian construction.
She shrugged, then half-turned her torso to reach up and touch the wall’s rounded top. It was about 10 centimeters thick. Only three buildings in the entire village were made of cerocrete, and she had to figure that they had probably been constructed in a similar fashion. Cerocrete was more expensive than the pressed vegaboard that was used for most of the village’s buildings, and not surprisingly, it was more robust. The walls of the building in which Rafiq was taking cover might as well have been paper for all the protection they were providing, but cerocrete was different.
How different? she wondered, dropping her magazine and checking the rounds inside.
There was one of her remaining WPT-331 jacketed rounds in the chamber and two in the magazine. The WPT-310 Lapua was a much better round for long distances, but the 331 had more punch. She didn’t know if it could punch through 10 centimeters of cerocrete, however. Once again, the math of sniping had raised its head, but this time, she didn’t have the numbers to plug into the equation.
Nebula Awards Showcase 2019 Page 7
