Confirmed Kill

by Michael Z. Williamson

  “I’m fine,” he motioned. “Saya tidik apa-apa.”

  “Yo, buddy,” Wade said softly from a few feet away. “Ready?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “A poke in the eye with a sharp stick.”

  “Ouch,” Wade said without any real emotion. It was an acknowledgment rather than a commiseration. “Mel figures the village is defended.”

  “You don’t say.” It didn’t take a lot of intel for that.

  “Estimating the force about equal to ours. He wants to push in and capture if possible.”

  Kyle grabbed his phone. He wanted to hear this straight even if it was going to be the same as Wade told him. Passing orders down the line could result in “Capture France” becoming “Invade Russia in the winter.”

  “Mel, Kyle here, mostly functional and fully mobile. You say we’re to capture?”

  “Correct. If we can acquire a prisoner we’ll get intel some way. Or else we overrun the position and look for what we need. If they’re making this much noise, they’re a target.”

  “Understood. Where do you want me?”

  Wiesinger’s basic plan wasn’t too bad. An initial counterattack heavy on the ammo and light on the movement. The Aussies were to encircle one side, the north, and their locals the south. Bakri’s remaining force—he’d taken another casualty—was to set a forward perimeter. Kyle and Wade were to attack designated targets. If they could get a good reversal, it was likely the enemy would rout. They didn’t have highly trained Western special operations troops and Army Rangers as backup. Skulk and retreat was likely what they did anyway.

  And if the village was willing to make that much noise defending against a casual intruder, they had something to hide, that was certain. Serendipitous intel, if they could handle the situation.

  Bakri’s men mid women moved forward, slipping from tree to shrub to undergrowth. Kyle and Wade followed behind, SR25s out, with Wiesinger behind them holding both M4s. Bakri’s RPG gunner had two rockets left. The RPK machine gun had one drum of seventy-five rounds. They couldn’t spend ammo at U.S. rates for this.

  The village was barely visible as shapes. There were figures, but no clear targets yet. And they weren’t shooting. It wasn’t likely they thought the threat gone, so they had to be doing something else. Kyle paused, forcing his breath into long, slow, silent heaves, and watched for clues.

  Then he pulled his phone out.

  Dammit, Wiesinger had closed off. Probably a reflext, likely to save batteries or money, neither of which Kyle gave a damn about right now. Both were assets to be expended. He redialed in a hurry, and waited through three rings. While waiting, he donned the headset. Better to have it directly in his ears than trying to fumble it and a rifle.

  “Mel.” Wiesinger finally answered.

  “Explosives. I see possible crates and someone who may be capping something.”

  “Shit. Understood.” Wiesinger clicked hold and apparently made other calls. He was back in less than a minute. “You and Wade will take targets designated by Stephens and Fuller.”

  “Understood and standing by. Out.” He pulled the headset down around his neck.

  Kyle had dealt with explosives far too often to be reckless. These sideshow freaks were perfectly capable of screaming, “Allahu akbar!” and blowing themselves to smithereens, taking any bystanders with them. That was bad enough when the amount was in kilograms. When it was in tons . . .

  He’d been there once, facing a nutcase with a suicide switch and tons of explosives in the same room as he. He wasn’t eager to do so again, to put it mildly. His stomach flopped and felt acidic.

  When his phone vibrated again, he clicked it as fast as a video game button. “Kyle.”

  “Kevin Fuller here.”

  “Go.” He slipped the headset on, so he could keep hands free. He didn’t like the wire hanging, but he could deal with it when not moving.

  “Reference: central building. North side. Two men. Both targets.”

  “Roger, but going to take a few minutes to get into position.”

  “Better bloody hurry, mate. They’ve got what looks like a twenty-four-kilo crate.”

  “Understood. Tell Wade, too. He may be better placed.”

  “Roger.”

  Kyle shifted laterally a few meters, to find a thin spot in the foliage. Yes, there were two men, who appeared to be fitting detonators to bags of gel as they looked around furtively. And fifty pounds wasn’t so much, really. If he could get it to detonate, it would solve several problems. But was gel sensitive enough to detonate if shot? Or could he hit the detonator?

  Better try for the crate. If they ran, it averted the problem temporarily. If he scored a bang, it was gone, they were gone, and a message would be sent. The blast radius shouldn’t be great, the effect would dissipate in the open quickly, and the jungle would buffer it. It was worth a shot.

  The range was about one hundred meters. The fire had slowed to an occasional pot shot, as the attackers strove to coordinate their efforts while the defenders were hesitant to move on the offense for fear of being flanked or running into an entrenched force. Standoff.

  Luckily, the new injury had been his left eye. He winced as he closed it to aim. Add in the dust damage from earlier, and his eyes felt like hard-boiled eggs.

  Through the scope, Kyle could see one of them place a bag on the crate and start twisting a detonator into it, with a fuse of some kind, probably Detcord, trailing. He took careful aim and dropped a round right through the block.

  Blasting Gelatin would detonate if shot, or else he’d hit the cap. The flash caused his scope image to stutter. The bang shook the ground. His scope image returned at once and he could see lumpy red paint splashed across a wall. That was one of the two men. The crate became splinters in the air, falling, twisting lazily. The other shattered body fell several meters away, and wisps of steam arose from a hole in the loam. A few moments later, a stiff breeze swept past him in the woods. It was hot, chemical, and gusted in his ears.

  All hell broke loose. He’d accomplished something, alright. He’d kicked a nest of hornets. The fire wasn’t accurate, but there was a lot of it.

  Fuller read off another target. “Some arsehole just came out of the darker gray hut. RPG. Tracking. . . he’s moving left.” Weapons fire interrupted the conversation.

  “Skulking behind a pile of rubbish and a Toyota?” Kyle asked between bangs. There was movement there.

  “That’s him. I’ll tell Wade, too.”

  “Got it.”

  This was getting hot. There was something going down here.

  The enemy grouped into two elements, with hard cover of the buildings and several prepared fighting positions. That gave them a significant advantage for defense. At the same time, they probably didn’t know what size force the Americans and allies were, or where the elements were. This was where snipers, serving as designated marksmen, could be the force multiplier that would break the engagement.

  Only. . . Wiesinger wasn’t giving any orders, even for a frontal assault.

  Kyle dialed again. “Mel, Kyle here, I recommend we take targets of opportunity, with just enough supporting fire to convince them we’re still here. Press the advantage with accurate fire and we can inflict substantial casualties.”

  “Uh, yeah, sounds good. Not quite what I had in mind, but I approve. Stand by.”

  Not quite what he’d had in mind probably meant he’d frozen. The fights were getting stiffer each time. Which should give him time to adapt, but didn’t seem to. And now he was de facto commander of a platoon, which he’d never done in wartime and barely done in peacetime.

  So that explained the knot in Kyle’s guts. Usually at this point in a fight, he was icy calm and detached, coming back to reality and shakes afterward. His unconscious knew there was a problem this time, and he was nervous. Troops needed effective orders. If not, they needed ineffective orders so they had something to do and something to bitch about while they got shot to hell. No orders meant a go
atfuck.

  There was a slight increase in the rate of fire. Wiesinger had apparently ordered everyone to shoot accurately, which wasn’t a bad modification. If a handful of rounds came close and one hit, the psychological effect would be considerable.

  Kyle sought what appeared to be an RPK machine-gun muzzle, and waited patiently. A head rose just slightly after a while, and he was able to punch a hole through the top inch. The resulting thrashing and waving of limbs indicated debilitating pain at least, maiming or death possibly. Either way, there was no more shooting.

  The enemy was figuring out that they were outmatched. They fell back in a coordinated withdrawal, with suppressing fire at likely threats—a few bursts were within meters of Kyle, but far overhead. Then the fire tapered off. Kyle had no targets, and shortly, no one did. Silence reigned, part of it hearing damage from lots of shooting.

  Wiesinger called through Kyle’s headset. “Kyle, we’re going in. Follow Stephens and cover the left, south.”

  “Roger that.”

  Kyle rose slowly and crawled forward. The silence could be a ruse or there could be a few suicidal types behind. He waited until he saw the Aussies spread on the ground at the edge of the cut growth, which was in the process of growing over the abandoned village. It was amazing how fast things grew here.

  Then Kyle was easing out onto the grass, which was still eight inches deep and enough to hide him in part. Wade was a few meters over. Wiesinger wasn’t in view. Either he was slightly behind or was waiting to see what happened. Under the circumstances, if he really was acting as commander, that was reasonable. Kyle couldn’t help but feel it was an excuse.

  But that assumed the man wasn’t just behind his field of view. And that wasn’t something to fret over with threats in front.

  Bakri’s men moved in, and shortly, it was clear the village was vacant. There might be a few wiggling wounded or someone cowering behind, and those could be threats. But the main force had retreated in the face of their fire.

  Which seemed too easy to Kyle. If he had a defended position with hard cover against small arms, he’d have held it until the attackers ran low on ammo, which on foot in the jungle shouldn’t take long.

  But then, these groups were experienced, smart and trained, but not to the level of Rangers or the SAS. And they couldn’t afford casualties. Besides losing force, they’d lose manpower for working and income.

  The force regrouped in the middle, still low and covered by buildings in case of a counterattack. They put sentries in an outer perimeter, and swapped ammo around to even things out. It was getting pretty tight on ammo. Wiesinger had shot a lot. The Aussies had been frugal, but had borne the brunt of the advances thus far. Kyle and Wade wound up with six thirty-round magazines apiece. Kyle gave four empty mags to Anda. They were compatible with her weapon. She grinned, nodded and stuffed them in her home-sewn pack.

  There wasn’t time to do much cleaning, but he did open the receiver of his M4, wipe the bolt carrier down, and add some more oil. The SR25 hadn’t been fired that much. He gave it a few drops of Cleaner Lubricant Preservative and grabbed an MRE to munch on. It was the last complete one he had.

  The good news, he supposed, was that with ammo and food gone he had much less mass to haul.

  It took less than five minutes to quarter the area, and everyone was ready to proceed.

  “Time to search in detail,” Wiesinger said. Bakri nodded and sent a team of five men on a patrol.

  “Considering the reception, we might not want to eat anything here,” Wade said.

  “Good advice,” Stephens agreed. “Could be anything from worm-infested dog feces to strychnine waiting for us.”

  A bang shook the ground. Kyle dove for cover with everyone else.

  “Booby trap,” Stephens reported. “Some wounded arsehole had a grenade.”

  “Right, let’s cover this slowly,” Wiesinger said.

  “Not yet, Mel,” Kyle cautioned.

  “Why?”

  “How many bodies do you see?”

  Wiesinger looked around. “Four . . . five.”

  “We have two. We were attacking a defended position. If they have five casualties, where’s the rest of them? Could be fifty, a hundred of them.”

  Wiesinger looked stunned. He apparently hadn’t even thought of that.

  “I’ll take perimeter,” Stephens said. “Akbar,” he called, than rattled off some local language. Kyle didn’t need to catch the few words he did to grasp, Expect a counterattack and look for bigger booby traps.

  “Mel, there could be entire buildings full of tons of explosive here.” The hair on his neck was standing up as he recalled a low building in the Carpathian mountains that was on the receiving end of this logistical chain. There’d been a ton there. How much could be here near the source?

  “Yes, but we need intel.”

  “I agree, but don’t open anything without a lot of peeking.”

  “Understood, Kyle.” Wiesinger appeared to get it about five percent. Hopefully, that was enough.

  If not, what happened next was. There was an outhouse behind one building, on the edge of a clearing that had once been a field. It was a modern composting type with a “turd gobbler.” One of the locals approached it and eased the door open. A flash, a bang, and the whole thing caved in, taking his body with it.

  As the shouting died and the current bizarre state of normalcy returned, Kyle vowed to squat behind a tree if he needed to go.

  But Wiesinger seemed to get it now.

  “No one go into a building. Watch for wires. Scan windows first.”

  The search was rather brief. It wasn’t that there were traps there: There weren’t any buildings not trapped or mined. The personnel had departed into the jungle on foot, leaving a mess that they hoped would nail anyone who found it.

  Kevin Fuller was tasked with setting charges to detonate the whole mess. He moved cautiously but quickly. He did a recon and stared through a few windows before starting. He returned muttering curses.

  “Whole bloody thing’s wired together,” he said as he took a crate and started fixing detonators. “Looks like about a thirty-second delay. We, or whoever, was supposed to discover one, start on it, and the whole shebang goes off, taking anyone in the radius with them. Looks to be about six tons total.”

  “Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of having it stored to send elsewhere?” Wade asked.

  “No, it’s not an efficient setup. Instead of fusing every charge, they’ve fused one crate per building. The rest will follow as at least a low order blast. There’s a wired remote, a radio, and the trips and timer. Moderately competent. Anyway, we put this there and run,” he said, pointing at a building that had been rather stuffed, including crates under beds. “Denies them this load, and will draw a lot of attention they don’t want.”

  “Attention we don’t want either,” Wade noted.

  “Right,” Wiesinger said. “But we’ve got to take it out or wind up facing it.”

  “No argument, Mel. It just sucks to be us.”

  Wiesinger admitted, “Gentlemen, I’ve learned in the last few days that there’s a lot not covered in the manuals.”

  “Yes,” Kyle agreed. Just yes. Was the man getting a clue at long last?

  Ten minutes later, they moved out in column, slowly and with lots of advance and flank. The Indonesian Army would be after them, as would the terrorists and any other groups who may have been told by either side that Bakri was a betrayer. The first time Kyle had done this in Pakistan, the risk was of a firefight with hicks. The second time, it was of arrest by non-friendly Romanian government agents with a reputation for brutality, or a confrontation with a mad bomber. This time, it was pretty much three different well-trained armies who might hunt him.

  No pressure.

  Nor had they acquired much intel. Anything sensitive had either been taken along by their enemy or was protected by bombs. It was frustrating and angering.

  Still, they’d been accomplishin
g the secondary objective. A lot of explosives weren’t going to be used for terror. Seven or more tons so far, which had to represent a big investment on someone’s part. But they didn’t have the key figures behind it yet, so it wasn’t a solid win.

  Their first two missions had been completed, even if as bloody messes. Not every mission could be perfect, but dammit, Kyle wanted to get the people, not the tools. The people were the real threat.

  A tremendous roar announced a mass detonation behind them. That felt good. Several tons of explosive would not be used to attack civilians. But it was all a matter of shoveling back the ocean with a pitchfork. More would be forthcoming if they couldn’t hit the people behind it.

  So they had to work on that.

  Stephens and his locals were making phone calls, trying to get a few more hints. With active cooperation four ways, they might find a lead. Who had heard of the new hostages? Wasn’t it great? Did they need more? Who would know? Is there a number? Yes, please leave a message. It’s regarding some further supplies I may have for him. Yes, we both know what we’re talking about. Allah Akbar.

  It wasn’t too suspicious. The rumor mill was in full swing. One source credited Bakri with taking the hostages. Another claimed Bakri had set up the last ambush by the Kopassus. Bakri took it in good humor, suggesting a few other rumors to be put out about himself. It was brave of him. He was effectively a marked man no matter who found them. Anda scowled. It was rather obvious her interest in Bakri was more than professional, and she didn’t want to see him dead.

  Rumors they got aplenty. Facts were far fewer, and most were items they already knew.

  Kyle noticed everyone bunching up. They were looking at something, and he headed that way, alert for any threats others might not notice. There was a break in the trees, which probably indicated a human feature. In this case, it was a road for lumber operations, well rutted, muddy and red. With tire tracks.