Sniper Elite

by Scott McEwen

  Gil jumped up and grabbed his M4. “Sandra, call down a one-oh-five strike.” He went to the door and checked up the street to see a mob of men running down the lane toward the house, closing fast at fifty yards. “Make it danger close!”

  Sandra, sitting up on the edge of the bed again, keyed the radio. “Big Ten! Big Ten! This is Track Star. Be advised, I am still beneath the strobe. Need one-oh-fives on my position—danger close!”

  “Roger that, Track Star. We have them in sight. Take cover.”

  “Get down!” Gil shouted at Badira and Khan, grabbing Sandra from the bed and rolling into the corner to shield her with his body.

  Seconds later the first 105 mm artillery shell fired from the AC-130J Spectre’s M102 howitzer slammed into the earth so close that it blew a hole in the wall, shattering the oil lamp and killing the lead element of the attacking force just as they were arriving outside the building. Six seconds later another shell struck fifty feet away, blowing seven more men to oblivion. The remainder of the charging column stopped in its tracks, unable to hear the Spectre performing a tight pylon turn 10,000 feet over their heads, firing the howitzer at its maximum rate. Every six seconds a round exploded against the earth as the onboard digital fire-control system walked an unceasing barrage straight up the lane, effectively annihilating the entire attacking force, then going on to pulverize the command post.

  Gil activated the infrared strobe he’d attached to the top of his helmet and dashed from the building with Sandra over his shoulder. “Big Ten! This is Track Star Two,” he called out over the emergency band. “Be advised were are mobile. Heading north on horseback for the EZ. Follow my strobe!”

  “Roger that, Track Star, we have you in sight. Be advised they’re coming out of their holes. We’ve got multiple heat signatures. You’re totally surrounded except for the gap to the north. We’ll do what we can to keep it open for you. Over.”

  “Roger that.”

  Khan and Badira dashed from the house and hurried off into the darkness.

  “Vayan con Dios,” Gil said after them, kicking open the door to the guard shack and hefting Sandra into the saddle facing backward. He mounted up with her in front of him and told her to wrap her arms around him. “Keep a hand against that bandage for me. Duck your head now. We’re going out the door.”

  The stallion was good and spooked because of the artillery barrage, and it started to rear up the second they left the safety of the building, but Gil dug in his heels and reined him hard around. “Hyah!” he shouted. “Move your ass!” The horse bolted north toward the gap in the mountains three thousand meters away.

  Gil could see the bursts of orange tracer fire streaking down farther up the valley to the north, the Spectre’s 25 mm Equalizer cannon clearing the way for their escape as HIK fighters flooded in to block the pass. The human body splashed apart like a water balloon when hit by even a short burst of fire from the obscenely accurate weapon that flew so high above the battlefield that you couldn’t even hear it firing at you. To behold such an awesome display of firepower made it easy to feel like they were home free, but Gil realized that the Spectre’s forward-looking infrared eyeball could not see into the many caves surrounding the valley. His only hope was that the Spectre could keep the HIK fighters pinned down in their holes long enough for him and Sandra to slip through the mountain pass to the north, where Forogh and his uncles would be waiting to provide them a defensive perimeter.

  In order to perform the complicated extraction maneuver, the Spectre would have to break off its attack and fly a very precise south-north heading. The maneuver would take several minutes to complete and severely limit the aircraft’s ability to provide them covering fire.

  The stallion was strong and fast, and he bore their weight easily as Gil forced him on, faster and faster, keeping one eye to the night-vision monocular, watching out for any holes or rocks that might trip the animal up. He thought of his own horse, Tico, back in her stable in Montana. No way would Tico ever be forced to charge headlong into the dark like this at top speed. As he thought of this, a strange feeling overtook him, like a ghost finally catching up to him from behind. He felt suddenly as though he weren’t going to make it back this time, that he had pushed the envelope too far and that the God of War was about to turn his back.

  “Doesn’t matter,” he said to the night. “I never trusted you much.”

  “Me?” Sandra said into his ear, clinging tightly against him with both of her hands pressed against the occlusive bandage covering his wound, her face nestled into the crook of his neck.

  “No, I was talking to myself.”

  “I had a really bad feeling the second before you said that.”

  He laughed. “Well, that’s not good, ’cause I had it, too.”

  “Just don’t let ’em take me back, Gil.”

  “Don’t worry.” He wrapped an arm around her waist to hold her tight in the saddle. “John promised to bring those one-oh-fives right down on our heads before he’d let that happen.”

  55

  WASHINGTON, DC,

  The White House

  It was shortly past dinnertime, and the president was in the corridor talking with the secretary of commerce when Tim Hagen walked up, casually clearing his throat and using his eyes to say, “We’ve got a problem.”

  “Excuse me a minute, will you, Mike?”

  “Certainly, sir,” said the commerce secretary.

  The president led Hagen into the Oval Office and closed the door. “You know I don’t like it when you do that,” he admonished. “You can say, ‘Excuse me, Mr. President,’ like everybody else.”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Hagen said, “but Sandra Brux is broadcasting from the Panjshir Valley on the emergency band. General Couture is mobilizing elements of the 24th Special Tactics Squadron, the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, a pair of B-52s from the 40th Expeditionary Bomb Squadron, and the entire 391st Expeditionary Fighter Squadron. This is an all-out effort to effect her extraction, Mr. President. She claims to be receiving assistance from indigenous personnel on the ground, and from what I understand, sir, a CIA Spectre gunship is already in the act of providing fire support.”

  The president darkened. “That’s odd. I gave orders half an hour ago that no one was to take any action at all. Now it’s World War Three over there!”

  “Yes, sir, but . . . well, sir, there’s no way Couture could possibly ignore a mayday call from a downed pilot anywhere inside the ATO. He’d be court-martialed, Mr. President.”

  “Fine! So is it that renegade SEAL or not?”

  “Nobody knows for sure yet, sir. There aren’t many details because the situation is so fluid . . . but I don’t know how else Brux could’ve gotten her hands on a prick one-twelve.”

  The president made a face. “On a what?”

  “Sorry, sir. The PRC-112 handheld radio—it’s used by downed pilots. That’s just what they call it, sir.”

  The president cut him a hard look, crossing the room to the desk, where he sat down and took his pipe from the center drawer. He stuck it between his teeth without lighting it and sat chewing the stem. “Okay, correct me if I’m wrong.” He took the pipe from his teeth. “But I’m thinking this is the point where we have to start praying for that hero over there to succeed.”

  “I’m afraid it’s worse than that, Mr. President. This is the age of Wikileaks. You need to get behind this operation yourself. Otherwise, word could leak out that you were initially against it.”

  The president’s temper flared. “It’s an unauthorized operation, Tim! I’m supposed to be against it!”

  Hagen held his ground. “With all due respect, Mr. President, that doesn’t matter now . . . not in the eyes of the public. This situation has turned into a full-scale military operation to rescue a female pilot—a photogenic female pilot!—who was raped and tortured by the enemy on camera. If this mission succeeds, and word leaks out that you didn’t back it up—or worse—if it fails, and word leaks ou
t that you didn’t back it up—”

  “Okay, I got it!” The president sat knocking the dried tobacco from the pipe into the crystal ashtray on the corner of his desk. “Most powerful man on earth, my ass,” he muttered in disgust. “Here I am at the mercy of a single lunatic running around over there against my direct orders, and if he succeeds, I have to treat him like a damn hero! But if he fails, I’m the one who ends up looking like the dumbass.”

  “That’s why they say the buck stops here, Mr. President.”

  “I never said that,” the president snapped. “That idiot remark belongs to Truman!” He tossed his pipe back into the drawer and slammed it closed, grabbing the telephone. “Get me the White House Chief of Staff,” he ordered. “Tell him I want to see him—now! And tell him I want to see the Joint Chiefs as well.”

  He hung up the phone and rocked back in the chair, pointing his finger at Hagen. “Now, what you’re going to do, my young friend, is figure out a way for me to burn this fucking SEAL to the ground—no matter what happens. Is that clear?”

  Hagen hesitated.

  “What, Tim?”

  “Well, sir, if the mission fails, burning him probably won’t even be an issue. He’ll likely be dead—he may be dead already. But if it succeeds, sir . . . well, sir, a photo of you putting the Medal of Honor around the neck of the hero who saved America’s new sweetheart will look fantastic in all the papers.”

  The president’s gaze turned flinty. “That’s not burning him.”

  “Begging your pardon, sir, but that’s exactly what it is. The entire modern world will know his face, and within a week, they’ll know everything else there is to know about him. For an operational US Navy SEAL, Mr. President, particularly one as gung-ho and private as this one . . . there’s nothing worse.”

  A slow grin took shape on the president’s face. “That’s perfect. Hell, it’s perfect all the way around. Remind me so I never forget to send you a Christmas card, Tim. You’re a ruthless bastard. Now what about Pope? Wasn’t he supposed to be keeping these SOG people under control?”

  Hagen stood tugging on his lower lip, taking the time to give his response some very serious consideration before finally saying, “Well, sir, to be frank, Pope’s a horse of a different color. He’s . . . well, we don’t want to mess with Pope. Nobody really knows what he’s capable of. My recommendation is to think of him in these terms: in four years—provided we win the election—he’s somebody else’s problem.”

  “What happened to the buck stops here?”

  “Well, like you said, sir . . . that’s an idiot remark.”

  56

  AFGHANISTAN,

  Panjshir Valley, Bazarak

  Gil reined back on the stallion to slow him. The terrain had grown too rugged for a full gallop, and there were too many trees for someone with a rifle to hide behind. He knew the Spectre was watching from above, but there were ways for an infantryman to evade infrared temporarily, and Afghan mountain fighters knew them as well as anyone. He trotted the horse down into a dry arroyo and aimed for a gap in the trees.

  “You’re going to have to keep yourself in the saddle,” he said to Sandra, letting go of her and switching the reins to his left hand to draw the 1911. He felt her arms tighten around him as he urged the stallion to pick up the pace where the ground began to smooth out across a natural paving of trap rock. He unscrewed the suppressor from the pistol and stuck it into his pocket. The hair on his neck had begun to stand up, and he didn’t need the extra eleven ounces of steel hanging off the front of the weapon if it came time to throw down.

  There were plenty of HIK fighters in the mountains to the east, west, and south, many of them moving in their direction, but the gunners up in the Spectre were saving their ammunition for any targets that might pose an immediate threat.

  “Key the radio for me,” he said.

  Sandra lifted the PRC-112 that hung from a lanyard around his neck and keyed the mike.

  “Big Ten, this is Track Star, do you have a visual on our friendlies to the north? Over?”

  “Roger that, Track Star. Twelve hundred meters due north of your position. We count twenty-plus individuals arranged in a phalanx south of your designated EZ. We also count twenty-plus horses in the trees. Over.”

  “Roger that, Big Ten.”

  Farther on Gil rode the stallion up out of the arroyo into an almond orchard. The earth was dry and hard-beaten by the goats and sheep that trampled it day after day. The low limbs made it hard to ride, but it would be quicker than skirting the orchard. As they made their way through the trees, the air pressure seemed to increase suddenly around them. A pair of sonic booms clapped overhead, and the sky was filled with the brain-scrambling roar of two Pratt & Whitney afterburning turbofan jet engines. The horse reared up, and Gil nearly fell from the saddle as he fought the animal under control.

  “Son of a bitch!” he hissed. “I guess that’s the goddamn cavalry.”

  “Crazy flyboys,” Sandra said into his neck.

  They could hear the distant explosions of ordinance being dropped on the mountain to the west, but they couldn’t see exactly where because of the trees.

  “That should drive them back into their holes for a minute or two,” Gil said.

  They cleared the orchard as the F-16 Vipers were completing their bomb run and turning back toward the south for Bagram Air Base. With just over a thousand yards to go before they linked up with Forogh’s people, a pair of spider holes opened up in the ground right in front of them, and out popped two young Hezbi fighters hoping to catch a glimpse of the jet fighters before they were gone. At first, they seemed every bit as surprised to see Gil as he was to see them. He reined the horse left to give himself a better shot with his right hand and popped off two quick shots, killing them both.

  Four more spider holes instantly opened up, and this time the men inside them came out firing. Gil shot two and killed them outright, digging his heels into the horse to send it bolting toward the gap in the mountains. The two remaining gunners continued to fire wildly at them from behind. The horse was hit multiple times and whirled around, groaning in pain and terror. Gil fought to get him under control as the gunners stopped to reload. Sandra held onto him for dear life, but the centrifugal force of the horse whirling around broke her grip, and she flew from the saddle.

  This is it, Gil thought, fighting to keep the horse from trampling her. This is how I go out—fuck.

  A 105 mm howitzer shell impacted between the gunners and blew them both to atoms. A shell fragment struck the horse in the brain and killed it instantly, sending it toppling from its feet toward where Sandra lay on the ground. Instead of jumping clear, Gil stayed tight in the saddle trying to steer the animal away, not realizing that it was dead on its feet. It crashed down on its right side, pinning Gil’s leg beneath it.

  He pulled with all of his force, trying to free the leg, but it wouldn’t budge an inch. “Sandra!” he said, grabbing her wrist.

  She lifted her head and dragged herself up against him. “I’m okay.”

  He jerked the M4 from his back and put it into her hands. “Keep under cover here behind the horse.” He unclipped the Remington from his harness and rested the bipod on the horse’s rib cage, putting his eye to the scope and searching the surrounding terrain. The enemy was moving toward them now from both the east and the west.

  “Here they come,” he said. “It’s time to get you the fuck outta here.”

  “What about you?”

  He keyed the radio. “Big Ten! Big Ten! This is Typhoon! You’re gonna have to make the drop on my present position! I’m pinned under the horse and cannot make the EZ! No time for cover fire! You have to line up for your drop run now! I will keep the enemy at bay! Over!”

  “Roger that, Typhoon. Lining up for the run. Give us three minutes. Over.”

  “I don’t understand.” Sandra was saying. “What drop run?”

  “Surface-to-air recovery,” he said, switching out the subsonic ammo i
n the Remington for a ten-round magazine of .308 Lapua Naturalis hunting ammunition. The Naturalis round had a special valve in the nose of the bullet to not only guarantee its expansion upon entering the body, but to control that expansion so the round did not break apart, not even upon striking bone. He put his eye to the scope, placed the reticle on the closest bad guy five hundred yards out, and squeezed the trigger. The bad guy grabbed the base of his throat, flipping over backward as if he’d been clotheslined.

  Gil took his eye from the scope and touched Sandra’s face. “You’re going out of here on a Skyhook, honey.”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head and starting to cry. “I can’t leave you down here. We don’t leave our people behind!”

  “The Northern Alliance will come for me,” he said. “Well, they’re not exactly the Northern Alliance anymore, but they used to be, so don’t worry.”

  “Where are they?” she demanded, swiveling her head around. “Why aren’t they here? They don’t even know the horse is dead!”

  “There aren’t enough of them for a fight this close to the village, but they’ll see the drop. They’ll see the drop and they’ll come. Don’t worry about it. Your mission is to get—hey, what the fuck is this?” He grabbed at her belly where the bloody gown was showing through the open cloak. “You’re fucking bleeding, Sandy!”

  “I didn’t want to you worry,” she said lamely. “I got hit just before the horse went down.”

  He grabbed up the radio. “Big Ten! Expedite! Expedite! Track Star is hit! Repeat! Track Star is hit! Belly wound! Repeat! Belly wound!”

  57

  AC-130J SPECTRE GUNSHIP,

  in the sky over the Panjshir Valley

  John Brux unbuckled his harness and climbed out of the pilot’s seat. “Jesus, Dave, she’s been hit in the fucking belly!”

  “Where the fuck are you going?” the copilot called over his shoulder. “I’ve never done this before, John!”