Dag looked from the top of the bell tower of the pantheon to the captain and asked, “Do you have a sniper rifle?”
4
Using a key they had gotten from Captain Beaurigar, the brothers Dagenham gained access to the weapons locker inside the small armory building. The building was little more than a long hall lined with cots, like a barracks with three rooms leading off. One was Beaurigar’s quarters, the other was the head, and the last, the largest of the three, was the armory. The room was dusty and its long rows of empty gun racks well evidenced Miraval’s peacetime attitudes. There was an ample supply of body armor however and both men suited up.
There was also one case that was well-stocked and looked new, probably from whenever the last time Beaurigar had successfully wrangled some new supplies out of the National Guard’s meager budget. The sniper rifle was in the case, which Dag unzipped quickly, taking a moment to whistle in admiration. It was a DC-171 .3006 with a twenty-five hundred meter telescopic scope which Dag picked up and loaded with a fair amount of reverence. Alex slung his hunting rifle over his shoulder and grabbed a pair of older looking JK-9 Carbine automatics.
“You using both of those?” Dag asked.
“I’ll need to recruit a few men to go with us if my plan is going to work,” Alex pointed out.
“I wasn’t aware that you had a plan,” Dag replied.
“Making it up as I go,” he answered.
“In that case, we might as well take that with us,” Dag said, pointing to a long tube shaped weapon on the floor.
“I’m not trained on the grenade launcher,” he replied.
“Someone will be,” Dag answered as he picked up the weapon and the bandolier of rockets.
Another explosion rocked the town amidst the sporadic gunfire as they emerged from the armory and made their way back over to Beaurigar, who was arguing with a pretty brunette with short cropped hair who was wearing hunting camouflage and black hiking boots.
“I don’t care what you want,” Beaurigar was saying. “I want you out of this town, away from the fighting, Aria.”
“That’s not fair,” Aria protested. “You need all the help that you can get and I’m the best shot of anyone in this town.”
“She seems confident,” Alex observed.
“Even though she’s incorrect,” Dag added.
Beaurigar turned to the two men. “My daughter was just leaving,” he said.
Aria crossed her arms and shook her head, a savage angry look on her face.
Alex seemed to consider this for a moment and then passed her one of the carbines. “If you’re going to stay, you’re going to need this,” he said. Before the captain could protest, Alex turned to him and said, “We need everyone who is willing to fight.”
Beaurigar looked like he wanted to argue further, but said nothing. That was something Dag had always admired about his younger brother. He had a way to get people to do what he wanted, to follow him, no matter the circumstance. Alex had come awfully close to defying the orders of a superior officer, but the captain simply nodded his head and said nothing.
“It would be useful to have a third if my plan is going to work,” Alex said.
“You’ve got one,” a gravelly voice answered.
Tangrit, the town drunk, shuffled over. He still reeked of cheap wine and rum and a speckle of drool was running down the corner of his mouth. The sleeve where his missing left arm should have been was tied up in a knot just below the shoulder and the patch that covered his missing right eye was slightly askew.
“Alright, Tangrit, it’s time for you to get out of here,” Beaurigar said. “Unless you plan on breathing on the Dommies, I don’t think you’re going to be any help.”
“Last I checked, I’m the only one here who’s fought these sons of bitches before,” Tangrit growled. “And I’m sober enough to put some holes in those bastards.”
“Can you even shoot straight?” Beaurigar demanded.
“Won’t need to with this,” he replied, grabbing the rocket launcher out of Dag’s hand. Before Beaurigar could protest, he added, “I’ve been a bombardier my entire life. Ain’t nothing about this weapon I don’t know.”
Dag looked over to his brother. “That’s three then,” he said.
“Right,” Alex said. “Captain, I would appreciate you manning the barricade and leading the men there. Tangrit, Aria, you’re with me.” He looked at his brother with a sardonic smile and asked, “Feel like a climb?”
The door to the Pantheon was locked after mid-day on most days, so Dag had needed to shoot the lock out and then kick the heavy oak door open. The Pantheon was a semi-circular building with small pools of water in the center. Alcoves with ornate carvings of each of the gods decorated the exterior walls. Statues of great men of Miraval stood watch over the water gardens.
Dag sprinted past all of these to the far side of the building and a small door that led to a winding staircase and the roof. The building had a parapet and was designed with crenellations like a castle of old. A piece of the stonework exploded around Dag as he ran to the center of the roof where the tall ivory tower rose into the late evening sky. Another sniper, he thought to himself as he dove and rolled toward the tower. Another shot ricocheted off the tower, showering him with pebbles of white brick. He was pinned down. There was no way for him to turn into a position to get a bead on where the shots were coming from without making himself too easy of a target. The ladder that led to the top of the bell tower was on the side that was taking fire. He would never make it to the top.
A spattering of machine gun fire suddenly opened up and Dag saw the red-orange muzzle flash spitting in the direction of the sniper. Alex! He had realized what was happening and was giving him cover fire. Moving quickly, he slung his sniper rifle over his shoulder, where it bounced against his hunting rifle, and he began the assent. The sniper got off another couple of shots, one of which ripped apart the stone just to the left of Dag’s hand. Each shot was answered by another staccato burst of fire from Alex and Aria. As he reached the top, Dag threw himself over the edge and into the crow’s nest beneath the large brass bell.
He cocked the sniper rifle quickly and began sighting along the hillside about fifteen hundred meters from the city’s edge. The darkness was making things difficult and no targets were presenting themselves.
“Damn,” he whispered to himself. Alex’s entire plan depended on him.
5
“Any news from the scouts?” Gunnery Commander Aloysius Haverford demanded. “They should have taken the city center by now.”
“Nothing yet sir. Shall we continue bombardment or attempt to advance position?” Gunner’s Mate Vyserion asked.
This annoyed Haverford. He had sent the majority of his scouting force, about two dozen men to secure the town center. It should have been a tea and cake run against the unorganized mountain men of Miraval. His hope had been that the bombardment of the town would have led to such chaos that they could waltz in unopposed. No such luck was with them tonight. Haverford could have advanced his force of three men and their cannon to rain fire on the city center, but if there was true resistance… His was only a scouting force after all. It would do no good to risk his life in a potentially futile pursuit.
“No, continue present bombardment,” he ordered.
The two men continued the laborious practice of loading the explosive-tipped mortar round into the front of the launcher’s barrel while another man primed the powder charge that would be ignited to fling the projectile into the city.
“It’s the rats own fault for putting up resistance in the first place,” he said to no one in particular as a column of fire belched from the launcher illuminating the dark night for a moment. “If they had just submitted to our authority like-”
Haverford’s sentence was cut off by his realization that he had lost the ability to speak. Unconsciously, he touched his throat to see what the source of the problem was and found a large hole weeping blood. Haverford tri
ed to mutter a word of abject terror, but it came out as mere choking gasp as he collapsed to the ground.
One of the gunner’s mates turned to where the Commander had fallen and opened his mouth to cry out, but no sound emerged. Instead a torrent of blood, brain stem and the back of his skull flew out his mouth as he collapsed on top of his commander. A third shot ripped through the forearm of the gunnery sergeant and he collapsed to the ground howling in pain. The limb had been ripped off at the elbow. He would be dead in a few minutes with no corpsman in the squad. Frantically, Gunnery Mate Vyserion’s eyes tracked the woods around them desperately trying to track the incoming fire. He saw a slight flash and then a heavy thud against the armor on his chest. For a moment, he held out hope that the armor had caught all of it, but then the message of pain finally reached his brain and he screamed. Vyserion’s last thought was toward the muzzle flash he had seen in the distance. It had come from the bell tower on the pantheon in the center of the town. It was an impossible shot. It was four impossible shots.
6
Dag ejected the spent round from the barrel of the sniper rifle and allowed himself a small moment of satisfaction. The last mortar firing had lit up his targets like a spotlight and once he had seen them, he could differentiate their silhouettes from the many trees around them. He had taken them all down in just a few seconds. One was only wounded as he had started to move right as Dag fired, but it looked like a grave injury. The target had not gotten up at least. If Alex was going to make his move, now was going to be the time. Reaching above his head, he grabbed hold of the bell hammer in one hand and did his best to brace himself for the coming cacophony. He rang the bell four times, the tone echoing out into the town. It was the signal he and Alex had agreed upon for Alex’s attack.
With the mortar team removed and Alex’s team almost certainly moving into position, Dag turned to the east and sized up the situation. The town had to be mostly evacuated by that point as Captain Beaurigar had joined the line of defense and was firing down the Overlook Road instead of supervising the townspeople. Maybe he had simply had no choice. All but two of the constables lay dead behind the makeshift barricade and one of the two National Guardsmen had been unable to continue fighting because of his injuries. Dag knew they had to be running low on ammunition too.
Sighting through the telescopic lens on the sniper rifle, Dag started hunting targets. The Overlook Road ran to the east of the town center through a small neighborhood before it came to the cliffs and turned north, following the cliff past the vineyards on the outskirts of the city. The advancing Dominion force was moving meticulously toward the town center and Dag had a guess as to why. Although it was tough to tell in just the moonlight and what light was cast from the fires to the north, the Dommies looked like they were wearing light armor and carrying rifles: a scouting column, most likely sweeping the area before the main infantry column arrived.
Generally, a group of scouts like this would find a target like Harren Falls and then sit back and wait for the reinforcements to march through the city. Someone apparently was either trying to win themselves some glory or a war prize or two to send back to the Dominion. They were not expecting any kind of organized resistance and they were clearly not accustomed to fighting this type of war. The infantry would have burned their way through the city in a shock-and-awe campaign. The scouting unit’s caution was doing them a disservice, allowing time for the townspeople to escape and for Dag and Alex to plan their counter-attack. Now, their artillery support was gone and their tactic of slowly creeping up the road using houses and sheds as cover was going to fail once Alex got around behind them. Dag just had to buy them a little more time. Tensing his finger around the trigger, he waited until one of the Dommies stuck his head around the corner he had hidden behind, and then he fired.
7
Alex, Aria and Tangrit were hidden behind a rock wall that lined Mrs. Jameson’s vegetable garden, trying to simultaneously draw the enemy sniper’s fire while still not being shot. Alex and Aria took turns firing their automatic carbines in the general direction of where the shots were coming from. They had not picked up a good read of where the sniper was entrenched, knowing only that he was somewhere in the woods beyond the last row of homes on the north side of town, and neither was willing to stick their head out long enough to spot him.
There was a loud boom as another mortar round was launched, followed by loud rifle cracks ringing out from the bell tower behind them. A few moments later, Alex heard church bells echoing in the night.
“Right, that’s the signal,” Alex muttered. “Dag’s taken out the mortar nest. We’ve got to get through here.”
“Not going to happen until that sniper is dead,” Aria responded as she turned and fired into the woods again.
Tangrit, who had been mostly silent, suddenly said, “Buy me some cover.”
Jumping to his feet, he took off at a run, heading toward Mrs. Jameson’s house to the left of their position. Alex reacted quickly and popped up from his position of cover and opened up full with the carbine until every last shell was spent. Aria joined him a moment later and kept the fire going until Tangrit had made his way to the back porch and forced open the door to Mrs. Jameson’s home. A sniper round ricocheted off the top of the wall in front of them, showering Aria’s face with pebbles and rock shards. She fell backwards, clutching her face.
“Aria!” Alex shouted as he rolled over to her and dragged her body back behind the wall.
Aria’s hand clung to her face and Alex could tell she was doing all she could to keep from crying out in pain.
“Let me see. Let me see,” Alex demanded.
He was able to at last pry her hands away from her face and get a look at the injury. Blood was streaked across her cheeks, chin and forehead, but none of the shards had injured her eyes. A few pieces of rock were still imbedded in her face and he carefully pulled them out, eliciting a cry of pain each time.
“I know it hurts, but you’re going to be fine,” he told her.
Squinting through tears, Aria just nodded.
The windows of Mrs. Jameson’s house suddenly shattered and flew outward along with a gust of flame as a red streak arced from her house out into the woods. The rocket detonated with a roar and a new inferno was suddenly blazing in the trees. A moment later, Tangrit sauntered out of the back door of the Jameson house with his grenade launcher in hand and a savage smile on his face.
“Got the bastard,” he reported gleefully before seeing Aria’s condition. “Is she all right?” he asked.
“Fine,” Aria replied through gritted teeth. Picking up her weapon, she turned to Alex and asked, “Do you think that’s all the snipers?”
“Dommie sniper teams travel in pairs,” Tangrit replied. “Unless they had more than one team out there, we should be clear.”
Alex nodded and looked at Aria. “Can you make it?” he asked.
“No problem, boss,” she replied as she pulled herself to her feet.
In the light from the fires burning through the northern section of the city, he could already see that she was probably going to be scarred by the wounds she had taken. Alex felt a swelling of sympathy for her rising up inside him.
Apparently, the emotion was written all over his face because Tangrit said, “Scars are just the gods’ way of reminding soldiers how lucky they are to be alive. There will be time for sympathies later.”
“He’s right,” Aria said.
Alex nodded and took off at a jog down Second Avenue. Fewer homes were on fire on the street, although the smoke was heavy and thick all the same. The acrid stench was making Alex feel woozy and with the disorienting nature of the night considered, the fires and the smoke were not helping anything. He was hearing gun fire coming from behind him and to the left as they came to a cross-street. The street sign had been blown up by one of the mortars.
“I think this is Deep Falls Street,” Aria rasped, her voice rough from the smoke inhalation. She pointed to one of the
houses on fire. “Isn’t that Captain Hyerdahl’s house there?”
Captain Hyerdahl had been a merchant mariner before retiring to the Crest. He still liked nautical themed decorations for his home though and had a large cannon shaped weathervane on the top of his home. The heat of the fire had melted most of it to slag, but Alex was pretty sure she was right.
“This way,” he coughed, pointing to the eastern section of the street.
The fires were worse here, the heat almost unbearable as they sprinted down the gravel pathway. Alex was beginning to wonder if he had led them on a suicide mission when they at last passed the final home on the street, a large colonial two story that had collapsed inward on itself. It looked as if a mortar had hit it directly. The neighborhood was surrounded by a six foot high brick wall which separated the homes from the few small farms that ran alongside the Overlook Road. They emerged from an opening in the wall into a cabbage field.
“Looks like they left the farms intact,” Aria observed.
“An army marches on its stomach,” Alex replied. “They’ll burn our homes, but try to keep our crops. That way they get to keep on marching without having to worry about supply lines.” He took a moment to take in some deep breathes of fresher, smoke-free air, before signaling them forward with a wave of his hand. The sound of gunfire was much closer and clearer now that they were in the open. “Be ready for anything,” he whispered as he led them across the open field.
There was little cover in the cabbage field and what little there had been had apparently been commandeered by the Dommies. There were three of them crouched behind a full hay wagon that they had managed to drag from the field onto Overlook Street. They were positioned on the road just before it turned to the west and headed straight into the town square. In addition to the three Dommies crouched behind it, there was one standing behind them barking orders. None of them were looking back to the field and therefore did not see Alex or the others dive for cover in the dirt.
Partisan (The Invasion of Miraval Book 1) Page 3
