by Jack Murphy
With both vessels constantly moving and adjusting course through the channel in the ice, there would be no perfect ballistic solution. The ballistic computer in his brain would never have been able to keep up with the constantly shifting variables at play. Nikita dialed the range into the ring on the top of his scope and used a hold-off for wind using the Mil-Dot reticle in his scope.
On top of adjusting for the wind, range, and the constant movement of both ships, Nikita also had to compensate for the up-and-down pitch of the waves that were lapping up against the sides the Carrickfergus. The Kazakh sniper breathed evenly, preparing to squeeze the trigger. If he pulled the trigger when his crosshairs were perfectly aligned with the target, his bullet would miss because his crosshairs would be off the target by the time the bullet left the barrel. The Carrickfergus continued moving up and down with the waves.
Air humidity had already been accounted for in their previous engagements in the Arctic, so Nikita simply compensated for one minute of angle, or one inch at a hundred meters, as he had last time. The same went for temperature. A 20-degree decrease in temperature would cause a bullet to drop by one inch at 100 meters...or 10 inches at 1,000 meters. The Arctic temperature was relatively stable, but the temperature of the water sometimes changed, affecting that of the air.
“Wait until we are within AK range,” Deckard said to Nikita over the radio. “I want everyone to open up on them at once.”
Nikita looked at the three enemies setting up an SPG-9 recoilless rifle on the deck. Wearing black uniforms, they scurried around, preparing the crew-served weapon. He knew he had them dead to rights. There was no reason to wait and risk lives, hoping that they would not get a shot off at the Carrickfergus.
“Did you hear me?” Deckard asked.
Nikita did not acknowledge the order.
He breathed out, timing his breath with the harmonics of the waves that rocked their ship up and down. Having made his corrections for windage, distance, and atmosphere, he now had to time his shot perfectly, anticipating where his crosshairs would land a split second after he squeezed the Barrett’s trigger so that the bullet hit its target. Shooting from one moving vessel to another would be anything but easy.
Chatter kept coming over the radio, but Nikita ignored it. He knew he had the shot and nothing was going to stop him now. The enemy had the SPG-9 tube on a tripod they’d bolted to the deck, and were making some final adjustments. The bow of the Carrickfergus dipped down over a swell. Nikita let out his breath as the ship began to rise over the next wave. His sights drifted across the hull of the semi-submersible ship in the distance, gently gliding toward one of the recoilless rifle crew members. The .50 caliber sniper rifle bucked hard into Nikita’s shoulder.
It was the longest two seconds of Nikita’s entire sniper career as he stared through the scope, waiting to see a splash.
“What the fuck—”
Deckard’s angry voice came over the radio just as the shoulder of the crewmen Nikita had shot at exploded into a red mist. Spun around by the massive .50 caliber bullet, he fell backwards, bounced off the deck, and then rolled off the side and splashed into the ocean.
“I said hold your fire. We can't mass our fires yet!”
Deckard was pissed.
Nevermind. Nikita sighted on the next target and fired. Knowing that his rifle was sighted in correctly, he only had to time his shots correctly. Without waiting to see if he had a hit, the sniper transitioned from target to target, indexing them with the correct hold-off and then squeezing the trigger.
“Another hit!” Aslan cried out as he glassed the target with his laser rangefinder binoculars.
The second crew member was nearly cut in half as the second shot tore through him, spilling intestines across the deck. The third turned toward the carnage just as Nikita’s third shot drilled right through his knee, severing his leg. The next order of business was taking out the SPG-9 itself, then the radar and any other sensors he could spot.
Getting his sights on target, Nikita was about the empty the rest of his magazine on the recoilless rifle. With a grin on his face, he was just about to pull the trigger when the curtains fell and everything went black.
* * *
“I’m hit!” Nikita’s voice came over the radio.
“Son of a bitch,” Deckard cursed. “That fucking idiot.”
“I don't see the wound,” Nikita’s spotter said over the net in Russian. “He is holding his eyes.”
The gears in Deckard’s brain cranked for a hot second as he mentally transitioned from English to Russian. He had learned the language from spending so much time around the Kazakhs, but he was far from being completely fluent. Then it dawned on him.
“Get down,” he blurted as he reached out and pulled Otter down behind the wheel of the ship.
Shooting a look over his shoulder at Squirrel, he repeated the command.
“Duck!”
Squirrel dropped the triangle he was using to measure his sea charts and disappeared behind his desk. Deckard wore an ear bud and had a small microphone clipped to his shirt that connected to his MBITR radio. Clicking the push-to-talk, he transmitted over the assault net.
“Everyone get down behind cover. No eyes directly on the target vessel. They’re deploying visual-disruption lasers. We’ve got one friendly blinded already.”
“This is Shooter-Three,” the second sniper team reported in. “Make that two. My spotter just got tagged and is flailing around like Helen Keller.”
Once again, the enemy was turning the tables on the Samruk mercenaries.
“Get below deck,” Deckard ordered the sniper teams before turning toward the ship’s captain. In the distance, a cannon boomed.
“Must be that smoothbore they were mounting on the deck,” Otter said with wide eyes.
Deckard crawled past him to look out a side window where he would not have visuals with the enemy ship. Sure enough, a spray of white foam splashed down in the water just 30 meters off the Carrickfergus’s starboard side. Another blast sounded, and this time the 73mm recoilless rifle round slammed into the ice surrounding the channel, cracking it before the round exploded, creating a geyser of ice and water like that of a fat kid doing a cannonball off of a diving board.
Out of the corner of his eye, Deckard saw the screen of his laptop. He had left it open while playing Infinity Blade and he could see that someone had opened a shard right in front of his blade master. Crawling on all fours, he slid the laptop off the table and set it in his lap. Pressing the forward arrow, he moved his character into the shard.
He was immediately transported into the castle up on the mountain. The old mage was smiling at him.
“Busy?” the mage mocked him.
“Wait one,” Deckard typed. “It’s surf and turf night down in the galley.”
Setting down the laptop Deckard moved to the door. “Otter, back us off. We’ve closed the distance to about a kilometer, which keeps us out of their maximum effective range with that SPG-9, but not out of their maximum range. They can’t place accurate fire, but they are going to score a lucky shot—”
No sooner had the words left his mouth when Deckard winced, a hole suddenly blown through the ramp folded vertically upward for travel on the barge deck below. A 73mm anti-tank round carved right through the metal and was only stopped by the front end of one of their assault trucks. With the round slowed down, it still lifted the two front tires off the deck before blasting open the vehicle. A fireball burst into the air as the fuel tank went up, turning their world yellow and red.
Otter throttled down the engine while simultaneously yanking the hand mic off the wall and speaking over the ship’s PA system.
“Fire crew on the deck! We just took a direct hit!”
Chapter 19
A squad from Shatayeva’s platoon was out on deck with a hose and chemical fire extinguishers, quickly getting the blaze under control. Deckard was impressed. He hadn’t been paying much attention to the fire drills that Ot
ter had insisted they perform during down time, but now it was paying off.
While a cloud of fire extinguishing dust was being carried away by the sea breeze, another SPG-9 round fell short, splashing into the arctic water just in front of their ship. Another landed right off their port side. Otter had slowed them down, keeping them at a distance of about two kilometers from the semi-submersible ship, which of course was exactly what the enemy wanted.
Deckard’s pirate ship was packed to the gills with heavily armed mercenaries. In a stand-up fight, the enemy wouldn’t last, but every single action they had taken thus far told Deckard they had absolutely no intention of going man to man and gun for gun. The numbers were ticking down, and before much longer, they would be out of the strait and back into open water where the semi-submersible would be able to outrun them again.
They were out of range of the enemy’s weapons systems, but the enemy was also out of range of their own. Stand-off had been achieved by both parties, but it only benefitted the enemy, as it delayed Samruk, allowing them to make their escape deeper into the Arctic.
“Keep us two kilometers off their ass end,” Deckard said as he threw open the door and left the bridge. Scrambling down the stairs, he ran into the billets where both platoons were preparing their gear and standing by for orders.
“Ivan? Where the hell is Ivan?” he asked.
One of the Kazakh mercenaries came running up. In his mid-thirties, Ivan was the nickname for one of the original soldiers Deckard had hired out of the Kazakh military services. He’d had extensive training on mortar systems during his military service, and he had only become more technically and tactically proficient under Mendez, an American who led Samruk’s mortar section—until he had been killed during a previous mission. Much like Nikita, the Kazakhs had stepped up to replace their foreign mentors after they had been killed.
“Zakazy?” the Kazakh asked.
Deckard gave him some basic instructions to prepare the section’s mortar tubes for action. Ivan and his six-man mortar team had been sidelined in the Arctic until now. Once Deckard finished, Ivan darted away to round up his men and get to work.
“Why are we backing off?” Fedorchenko asked as he stepped forward to confront Deckard. “Let my men take them down.”
This was not the kind of conversation they should be having in front of the men, but Deckard fully understood how frustrated the platoon leader was.
“Did you see Nikita doing the clucking chicken? Serves that dumbass right. We need to set the conditions before we take another pass at them.”
It had taken Deckard a long time to adjust to his role, even though he still slipped the leash at times. Not long ago, he had been in Fedorchenko’s shoes, always gnawing at the bit. Their campaign against a Mexican drug cartel had taught him to bide his time. The Russians and Chinese nationals they were fighting knew the American character well and were counting on him blundering into situations unprepared.
“Use some tactical patience and I’ll get you on target,” Deckard assured him.
Then he heard heavy footsteps coming up behind him and knew that Cody had just entered.
“HEY!”
“Turn down the volume, Cody,” Deckard said as he turned to the computer hacker.
“You guys are morons. The lasers are easy to defeat.”
“Why didn't you clue us in earlier, then?”
“I didn’t think about it, OK? Fuck.”
“Spit it out already.”
“Use your night vision and leave the daylight cap over the lens. Then put a fucking pirate patch over your other eye since the PVS-14 monocular goes over the other one.”
“Shit, why didn’t I think of that?”
“Because you are a fucking moron.”
Cody was the only one who got away with talking to Deckard and many other people on the Carrickfergus like that. He was an electronics whiz kid, but also a dirty civilian who never served in uniform. They just had to put up with him and his autistic, Tourette’s shit sometimes.
“The laser might burn out the tube if you take a direct hit,” Cody warned.
“But it is still better than being blinded for the duration of the battle,” Deckard finished. “Fedorchenko, let Shatayeva and Ivan know. Bring extra batteries because they will freeze in ten or fifteen minutes when you are exposed to the elements. I want all of you ready to go for the next round.”
Taking a look from one of the windows, Deckard could see the fire brigade wrapping up now that they had extinguished the flames. Meanwhile, Ivan’s mortar section and a few other men were helping him on the deck. They had pulled out some lumber, and one of them already had a hammer and nails out and had begun banging away. A few others were hauling up bags of rice they had to help ease the pain of a steady MRE diet.
Deckard climbed up the stairs and back onto the bridge. The ship’s captain was crouched down and steering the ship by looking at one of several deck-mounted cameras. One had been taken out by whatever ship-mounted laser the enemy was using, but the other was thankfully still functional.
Nikita would be lucky to keep his job after that last stunt, but with him out of the way, Deckard would be getting directly involved in making sure the second attempt wasn’t a clusterfuck. Keeping his head below the window, Deckard donned his kit, throwing on the body armor that had already taken two direct hits from a Tavor assault rifle. Then he pulled on his parka, chest rig, wool watch cap, and gloves.
Finally, he pulled on an Ops-Core helmet and attached PVS-14 night vision goggles. Reaching up in front of him to feel around, he made sure that the black rubber daylight cap was attached to the front of the monocular. The 14s were designed to amplify existing light, so during the day, when testing the NVGs for functionality, the cap was left on to protect the sensitive lenses inside. In this case, they would be using the goggles in broad daylight.
“Otter, when I give the word, I want you to start closing the distance. Where are we now?”
“Two point two kilometers.”
“Keep us there for now.”
Pulling the edge of his watch cap down from under his helmet, Deckard used it to cover his left eye while the night vision monocular covered his right. Stepping out onto the upper deck, he found Aslan hiding behind cover with the Barrett and Nikita’s HK417. The blinded sniper had been taken below deck to see the medic.
“Give me the Barrett,” Deckard said in Russian. “Make yourself look like me. Cover one eye and use night vision over the other with the daylight cap.”
“Roger.”
Deckard reached into Nikita’s Drop Zone assault pack and withdrew his PVS-22 universal night sight or UNS. Attaching it to the Barrett's picatinny rails in front of the Night Force 10-power scope would also protect his eyes if the enemy decided to laze them again. Closing his eyes, he flipped up the PVS-14 on its pivot mount and then stared through the green tint of the UNS and Night Force scope combination.
The mercenary commander let out a deep breath as he snugged the rifle stock into his shoulder. Although a school-trained sniper with actual combat experience behind a long gun, precision marksmanship at long distances was a perishable skill. Being able to effectively place rounds at over a thousand meters required not just school house training, but constant range time to maintain proficiency. Deckard hadn’t worked as a sniper in a long time, and as much as he hated to admit it, Nikita was now a better shot than him when it came to long-range engagements. Much better.
But Nikita was flopping around the med bay right now, so it was what it was. Now Deckard would make sure that their fire was synchronized and massed for maximum effect.
Down below, the mortar section had finished framing out a wooden box and was filling it in with the bags of rice while two of the men prepared 82mm high-explosive rounds to drop down the tube. Deckard glanced through the scope; the semi-submersible ship was still cutting back and forth through the channel in the ice.
Ivan was yelling orders to his section as they dropped the mort
ar base plate on top of the rice bags. Their improvised platform would stand in for the dirt in which the base plate would normally be set. With the plate in, they then slid the actual mortar tube onto it by the pivot knob at the end and attached the bipod legs.
“Ivan, are you set?” Deckard asked over his comm link.
Below, he saw the mortar section leader speak into his radio.
“Roger.”
“Otter,” he radioed to the helm, “get us within one kilometer. Close the distance.”
Aslan had his night vision goggles on and slid in next to Deckard with his HK417.
“7.62mm is going to get batted around something fierce in this wind,” Deckard said to Nikita’s spotter. “But you can spot for the mortar section and make corrections.”
“Da,” the Kazakh answered, curt and to the point as always.
The Carrickfergus hummed as Otter throttled the engines, again closing on the enemy. The ship swayed beneath them as he dodged through the ice channel, making corrections as he sped them up. As they got closer, SPG-9 rounds began raining down around the Carrickfergus. They were out of maximum effective range, but the enemy was going to try to put some suppressive fire down to keep the pressure on the Samruk pirate ship.
“All stations on this net,” Deckard transmitted over the assault net. “Everyone hold. Initiate on my fire. Acknowledge my last, over.”
Ivan, Fedorchenko, and Shatayeva radioed in to confirm his order.
“Closing in on one kilometer, boss,” Otter crackled over the comms.
Another 73mm round slammed into the ice off their port side, creating another mini-volcano of water and ice. Deckard looked through the green-tinted rifle sight and homed in on the recoilless rifle crew. Unlike Nikita, he was going to take out the weapon system itself, which in this case was more important than the humans crewing it. They could actually be replaced.
“One point two kilometers,” Aslan reported, reading off the red digital numbers in his rangefinder as he lazed the target.
