Sniper (Women of the United Federation Marines Book 2)

by Jonathan P. Brazee

  His circuit cut out, and Gracie couldn’t raise him again.

  The captain was still trying to raise him until Gracie cut in on the P2P.

  “He’s not going to respond,” she said. “He’s on a mission to prove he’s the best.”

  The captain erupted with a string of obscenities before saying, “He’d better hope that sniper nails him because I’ll have his ass if he survives.”

  Then, powering down her suit for a moment, she said, “Mubotono’s already on his way. And so are we. Mount up.”

  With the now familiar zing of bubble fields powering up, the thirteen Marines and one trooper moved to the hatch and exited the station. Gracie didn’t like the fart-catcher. With Spig gone, she was the smallest of the Marines, and the duct tape and scrubbers felt like she had a large cat clinging to her ass. It affected her gait. She was essentially going to take the same route as before, so without hesitation, she began to crawl where the scrubber was less of a constriction and more of merely an extra weight. T-Bone was up ahead of her, and part of her wanted to crawl up there and beat some sense into his head. But anger created mistakes, and mistakes could cost her and the captain their lives. She had to purge T-Bone out of her mind.

  She kept waiting to hear a shot ring out, and it wasn’t until she’d reached the same distance she’d had when Dutch had been hit that she began to acknowledge that either the enemy sniper had left the scene or that Bomba’s fart-catchers actually worked.

  Twenty minutes later, the toilet bowl canopy began to thin out. She’d have to slow down now as the two of them would be much more exposed. The HED 2s had decent camouflage capabilities with the same syntho-chromatophores that gave the Marines’ skins and bones their ability. It was good, but not great. Any trained sniper should be able to spot them if they made a mistake.

  On the plus side, she’d begin to have her own fields of fire, and it was possible that she could spot her target. She started scanning with her Miller, but still motioned for the captain to move up and use her glasses to search the area ahead. She hoped that one of them could catch a sign, any sign of the enemy.

  When the shot rang out, she almost jumped before realizing it was a Windmoeller, and it was ahead of her. It had to be T-Bone. She was still going to kill the guy when all of this was over, but she hoped he’d succeeded. She waited vainly for him to come back on the net, full of his braggadocio style while he boasted how great of a sniper he was. The net remained silent.

  Now, what? she wondered. Do we wait? Do we go confirm a kill?

  She was just about to displace forward when T-Bone fired again.

  You’d better have got—she started before a single, sharper report rang out.

  Immediately, T-Bone’s avatar went gray. An instant later, three more shots rang out, almost in unison, from two Windmoellers and a Kyocera. Gracie hadn’t been in a position to see any sign of the sniper, but at least three of her fellow snipers had. Gracie felt a surge of relief. With three acquiring him at once, surely he’d been taken out.

  “I didn’t see anything,” the captain said. “Did you?”

  “That’s a negative, but somebody did.”

  “Report,” the captain passed on the net.

  “Saw the shot and took my own. Probable hit,” Rez said.

  “Not so sure I was on target,” Dylan Tash passed. “Took a snap shot when I thought I saw something.”

  “Same here. I’m sure we both spotted him, but I don’t know if I hit him,” Bomba said.

  “What now?” Captain Lysander asked Gracie. “I’ve never thought about what you guys do if you can’t confirm the kill.”

  “Depends, ma’am. Usually, we don’t do anything unless we’re ordered to do the BDA.”

  “We’ve got one dragonfly still operable. I’m going to get the coordinates from Staff Sergeant Francisco and have it fly in for a look-see.”

  Gracie liked to keep her display relatively clean. She already hated being in the confining HED 2s, so the less she had to clutter up her vision, the better. But she toggled over to surveillance and hooked into the dragonfly’s transmission. The little drone’s visuals were surprisingly clear, and its track took it right over her position. She couldn’t pick herself or the captain out on the display, which was as it should be. She risked a glance up, but she couldn’t see the drone as it flew over.

  The coordinates of where Rez had fired were now superimposed on the display, and Gracie was trying to make out anything on the ground when another shot rang out, and a second later, the drone’s feed disappeared.

  He shot the drone out of the sky?

  Gracie wasn’t sure she could do that, and as a professional, she had to be impressed. As a Marine, though, she could feel a fire rising from deep inside of her, increasing her need to destroy her opponent.

  “I guess I missed,” Rez passed.

  I guess so.

  “Did anyone pick up anything?” Gracie asked, hoping someone had spotted the shot that had taken down the drone.

  The silence on the net was deafening.

  Finally, the captain said, “The Eagle Eye trace shows 175 degrees.”

  Gracie popped up the last position of the drone, then backtracked at 355 degrees. Either Rez had been pretty far off from where he’d spotted the round that had taken T-Bone out, there was more than one sniper, or he’d moved like lightening to get to a new position, all without being spotted. She wished she knew the answer, but she suspected that it had to be that Rez had never actually seen the target.

  She wanted to be sure, if she could, so she did a quick map study, and something caught her attention. She flipped the aspect to 3D, and a pattern became clear. There was a series of slight dips in the landscape, more like ripples of ancient waves on prehistoric sea beds. Covered with plant life, they were not obvious. But the terrain was there. If the area had been prepped, it could be possible for someone to move quickly and out of sight. It wouldn’t be easy, but it would be possible.

  The HED display was hardly the best available, and it could be unwieldy. It took her several tries, but she was finally able to highlight the ripples using her ocular stylus. She sent that out to everyone.

  “I think our target is using this to maneuver. Manny, I want you to shift left, then using Delhi as cover, get up and haul ass to an FFP in the vicinity of 22455-67395.”

  She suddenly realized that with the captain there, she wasn’t in command, and she gave her a quick glance.

  The captain nodded, so she continued, “Everyone else, get into a good FFP, then stay put until Manny’s in position. Manny, you and Riko keep your eyes peeled. If I’m right, you’re going to have clear enfilade if the target tries to move between positions.”

  “Roger that. We’re on our way.”

  “Now we wait,” Gracie told the captain.

  Chapter 49

  68

  “Hauling ass” was relative. For snipers on a stalk, it was still a pretty slow process, all the more so when the target was also hunting them. It was almost thirteen hours before Manny and Riko travelled the 1900 meters to their new position. Gracie had managed a good solid two hours of peering through her Miller before she had to start trading off with the captain, twenty minutes on, twenty minutes off.

  When Manny reported they were ready, it was a relief to be back on the move again. And they had to move. They all were the bait. It was extremely unlikely that 12 Marines could move in on someone who obviously had mad skills without being spotted, so Gracie’s plan essentially meant that she was offering up one of them to be shot at in order for Manny to take his shot.

  It’s not going to be me, she thought before feeling guilty about thinking that.

  If it weren’t her, it would be one of her fellow Marines. Whoever made a mistake would become the target.

  Gracie eased past her temporary hide and slowly crept forward, the captain right behind her. She’d been apprehensive with the captain with her. The woman had never attended scout-sniper school, after all, but s
he wasn’t doing a bad job, Gracie had to admit. And if she made a mistake that drew the enemy sniper’s attention, well, that was the luck of the draw.

  There was a slight depression five meters to Gracie’s right, but it was not deep enough to give complete cover, so Gracie ignored it. If she could pull up relief maps, so could anyone else, and that meant they’d be aware of the depression. If it didn’t offer full cover, Gracie wasn’t going to use it.

  As she crept forward, her thoughts drifted to the fart-catcher taped to her butt. Bomba hadn’t said how long the two scrubbers would last, but she’d begun to worry about that as she waited for Manny to get into position. Surely they would last long enough to complete the mission, she thought, but now, as she crawled, her butt felt vulnerable.

  Her senses were on full alert. She’d much rather have been stationary in her hide, waiting for the other sniper to make a mistake, but they had to flush him out, and that was only going to happen by closing in on him. Gracie kept expecting to hear the report of a shot reach out to her, but silence reigned. Either the Marines were being extremely skilled in their stalk or the enemy sniper was being patient, maybe waiting until he had more of them picked out before firing.

  It was almost three hours later, while Gracie and the captain were only 400 meters from the rise, that the expected shot was taken. Immediately, Shaan’s avatar grayed out, and another shot was fired. JC’s avatar, right next to Shaan’s, went light blue.

  “Get ready, Manny!” Gracie passed needlessly.

  And nothing happened.

  Was this all for nothing? Gracie wondered, anxiety flooding her.

  She was sure her plan had failed when a single, very much welcomed crack of a Windmoeller reached her from Manny’s direction.

  “Target down,” Manny passed.

  “Give me a feed,” the captain demanded.

  Manny opened up his Miller’s feed, recycled fifteen seconds, and the image of a figure in some sort of ghillie appeared, a breathing system over his mouth and nose and hunched low as he ran along one of the ripples Gracie had spotted. With the magnification, Gracie could see the man’s face as he looked toward his left, the direction to where the Marines would be—all those except for Manny and Riko, that is.

  Manny fired just as the man turned to him, his face seeming to realize that something was wrong. Too late. He looked like he was starting to dive to his right when Manny’s round took him right in the middle of the chest. The ghillie evidently didn’t conceal any armor as the man fell back, both legs bent beneath him. He tried to rise, and one leg flopped out before he went still.

  “Any sign of anyone else?” the captain asked him.

  “That’s a negative. It was just him.”

  “Just him” had cost the Marines and FCDC at least two non-resurrectable KIAs, three more KIAs, and three WIAs. Against trained Marine snipers, that was more than Gracie would have thought possible. She stared at the image of the man, wondering just who he was.

  “We need to recover the body,” the captain said. “We’ve got to find out who he is. Staff Sergeant Carlito, you and Sergeant Delay are the closest. You’re up.”

  “Keep your head down, Bomba,” Gracie told the staff sergeant on the P2P. “We don’t know for a fact that there isn’t anyone else around.”

  She maneuvered to her right until she had a better view of the rise, but her attention kept drifting back to the avatars of her last two snipers, other than her, in the Port Section. Five of her section were down, KIA or WIA. Her stomach felt sour, and for a moment, she thought she’d have to rip off the duct tape as her gut spasmed. Gracie had dealt a lot of death in her career, but she hadn’t experienced it very often, and never to this degree. She tried to will the two forward without incident. She didn’t think she could lose anyone else and still function.

  Bomba and Tenner were cautiously moving forward, weapons at the ready, and as they reached the foot of the rise, Gracie began to hope that all was well.

  Which of course, meant it wasn’t.

  Two quick shots rang out, and Gracie lifted herself to her elbows to get a better view. Bomba and Tenner were hitting the deck, scrambling for cover, and Gracie let out a sigh of relief—before she saw that both Manny and Riko’s avatars had grayed.

  “No!” she shouted as she dropped back down to her belly.

  Where the hell. . .she started before her mind started going into overdrive.

  Sitting in her last hide for thirteen hours, she’d reviewed the terrain over and over, plotting possible FFPs, plotting routes. The area was embedded in her mind, and suddenly, as if the curtain was removed revealing the Oz, she knew exactly where the enemy sniper was, and more than that, where she had to be to engage him. Furthermore, while Bomba and Tenner were momentarily safe, when the gunman moved to his alternate position just a handful of meters away, he’d have the two Marines dead to rights in an untenable position.

  She marked a position on the map, then sent it to the captain.

  “Captain, right now, put everything you have on that spot with the M99. Everything!”

  Captain Lysander had been carrying a Kyocera, but that was more in case Gracie wanted it. She was also armed with her personal M99. At full combat load, she had over 4,000 of the small but deadly 8mm darts. And at only 400 meters away, she should be able to shred the area.

  To Gracie’ surprise, the captain rose to one knee, completely exposing herself, before opening fire. If the enemy sniper had been watching their position, the captain would have been cut down before she could fire, but the gods of battle were watching over her, and the captain was blazing away like some Hollybolly hero.

  Gracie didn’t need to be watching her like some awestruck schoolgirl. She jumped to her feet and took off, the fart-catcher bouncing on her butt and threatening to throw her off stride. She’d considered juking and dodging to throw anyone targeting her off, but she thought speed was of an essence, and she had to cover over 100 meters, in full gear, and over uneven terrain. It was an all-out sprint.

  An M99 was a quiet weapon, and once Gracie had covered 20 meters, she couldn’t hear the captain firing. She couldn’t help herself, though, from glancing up to the captain’s target. Pieces of fungal-plants were flying into the air as the high-velocity darts struck, their tiny fins spreading out as the points felt resistance. Gracie was positive that the enemy sniper was at the point—if they were lucky, the captain had already taken him out. If they weren’t as blessed by the gods of war, then at least she was keeping his head down.

  She hadn’t zeroed him, though. While Gracie was still 30 or 40 meters from her goal, a shot echoed from above her. On her display, the captain’s avatar flickered light blue, then back to bright blue, then back to light blue again. Gracie didn’t bother to try and figure out what that meant, but a glance back up showed that there weren’t darts impacting anymore.

  Shit! she thought as she tried to redouble her speed.

  Gracie was completely in the open, and the sniper couldn’t miss seeing her. She probably had two seconds at the most before he targeted her. Her short legs churning, she surged the last few meters, diving over the tiny fault-line as the expected sound of the shot reached her.

  Gracie landed hard, knocking the breath out of her, and it took a moment for her to realize she hadn’t been hit.

  Take that! she thought, deliriously happy that she was still alive, and more than that, in a position that put her and her opponent on almost an equal footing.

  He still had the high ground, but he couldn’t move without exposing himself.

  “Captain, are you all-right?” she passed on the P2P as she caught her breath.

  “I. . . I think I’m hit.”

  She thinks she’s hit? Is she or isn’t she? Gracie wondered, confused as to the captain’s response.

  She’d figure that out later, but for the moment, she passed, “Stay down. Don’t become a target.”

  To Bomba, she passed, “You’re in a bad position. He’s going to ignor
e you now while he attends to me, but you’ve got to move in case he gets me. Try and slide over another 50 meters to your northeast. You two might be able to get some cover and concealment there.”

  “Roger,” Bomba passed.

  Gracie could hear the concern in his voice, but he didn’t bother to try and talk her out of anything, and that was somehow more comforting than if he’d done that. He was relying on her abilities as a Marine sniper to defeat their opponent.

  His confidence fanned her own, bringing it back to life. She’d take this asshole on. She’d bought Bomba and Tenner more time, if nothing else. The enemy sniper could read terrain just as well as Gracie could, he certainly realized he was in an exposed position, and he knew Gracie was his biggest threat. Anyone else could wait.

  Gracie quickly passed to the two remaining Starboard teams to keep alert. Neither team was in a position to help her, but they could be if Gracie were taken out and the sniper made a mistake in moving to engage Bomba.

  With the others briefed, she had to address the situation at hand. Gracie was on a natural platform, some 25 meters long, and protected by a 70 cm high lip. The platform was mostly rocky, but it had some vegetation scattered across it. On top of the lip, the plant growth was thick, providing excellent concealment.

  Three-hundred-and-twenty meters away, the enemy sniper was prone along one of the ripples. He had excellent cover from the front, towards the station, but from Gracie’s position, he would be exposed if he retreated down the ripple, he’d be exposed if he tried to climb up and over the crest, and he’d be extremely exposed and an easy target if he tried to come down the slope. He was a good 20 meters higher than Gracie. The only way to avoid her would be to move forward through his previous position, the one that the captain had just shredded.

  Shit! Gracie thought.

  While she was collecting her thoughts, she could very well have been doing that, slipping to the front and then moving to a different FFP.