He re-refocused on the radioman and the civilian going through the crash site, and aligned his finger with the trigger guard. Taking a measure of his own breathing, he willed a few slow, deep breaths, wishing that they had felt comfortable enough over the last ten days to get some running in. They hadn’t, and he was still breathing too hard from the climb up the hill to take up the trigger. He found himself wishing Carlos were here. This range was at the limit of his ability on a good day, at a firing range, and with a spotter. It was dark, raining, with no spotter, and he had no idea what the wind was doing through the canyon.
The only indicator of the wind he could pick out were tracks of the occasional spark or ember kicked up by the dozens of small fires surrounding the crash site. The radioman turned to look back towards the larger group, and the RC-298 was presented to him side on.
*
Chapter 20
Idaho, Earth
“It’s them.” Starret stood up as he looked back at his minder. “I recognize that logo.”
He pointed his flashlight back at the unit symbol on the nose section of the Osprey. The image of a well-endowed Valkyrie riding a horse with lightning bolts in either hand was charred but still visible.
“You’re certain?”
“Unless this Kentucky National Guard unit happened to lose another Osprey in Idaho tonight.”
“Good point.” His guard nodded in agreement.
The man turned away from him and looked back to where Simmons waited with the rest of his men. Starret watched, considering his options. He could run, but knew he wouldn’t get far. There was too much light from the scattered fires, and for some strange reason, the idea of getting shot in the back appealed to him less than dying on his feet.
He was still watching his minder when the man was blown off his feet and shoved back five yards, as if an invisible baseball bat had just been swung out of the heavens. He followed the trajectory of the man in what seemed like slow motion. It wasn’t until he focused on the unmoving form on the ground that he realized most of the man’s chest was gone.
In the second that it took for him to realize what had just happened, a second round impacted the earth next to the dead soldier, and kicked up a spray of muddy ash. The echo from the supersonic crack of the bullet reached him, its echo muted by the weather. He crouched down behind the remains of the Osprey’s nose section as another geyser of mud kicked up next to the body of the soldier. It had almost hit drone uplink lying in the mud. The sniper was trying to kill the laptop, he realized. Simmons’s link to the drone somewhere overhead.
He ducked down further and looked out as another round came in and missed yet again. He glanced over his shoulder and could see Simmons pointing in his direction and yelling something to his men. He acted before he knew what he was doing. Starret sprinted out from behind the nose section, grabbed the handle of the laptop’s case, and sat it up on its bottom, orienting it broadside towards the direction the shots had come from. He had the trajectory of Boyd’s body to go by to guess the general direction.
He ran the short distance back towards the remains of the Osprey and cover. He almost made it. Automatic rifle fire exploded behind him. Several shots screamed off the metal carcass of the aircraft to either side of him, accompanied by sparks. He felt something tug at his shirt between his shoulder blades and for a split-second thought that they had missed him.
He crashed to his knees, wondering why his legs wouldn’t work. Looking down, he spotted the two exit holes in his chest that he couldn’t feel. He struggled to get his feet out from under him but he couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. He collapsed to the side, not even feeling the ground when it came up to meet him.
Lying in the wet ash and mud he could see the aluminum case through a shrinking tunnel. Another shot missed, barely. The case was rocked for a moment before it settled down, remaining upright. Why couldn’t this guy shoot straight? He was dimly aware of boots pounding into the ground near his head. There wasn’t any pain. He could feel the cold, wet earth against his cheek and knew it for what it was; his final connection to the world. His life ran out of his chest and formed a steaming puddle inches from his face. Just beyond, the metal case sounded like it had been hit with a sledgehammer. He saw it fold in on itself and roll amid a discharge of sparks.
Kyle’s elation at finally hitting the drone control unit was brief as the group of tangos opened up in his direction. He’d fired enough rounds that the barrel of his rifle would be standing out like a freaking light saber on infrared. It had only taken one of the men below to switch their NVDs to infrared to spot his location.
Automatic rifle fire blinked at him from down the valley. The muzzle flashes reminded him of a video he’d seen on cable TV of a stellar nursery popping off new stars from a dark, amorphous cloud of gas. The whistles from the rounds going overhead, a couple impacting nearby trees, didn’t leave anything to the imagination as he rolled behind the cover of the large rock to his left.
In the dark, with no IR signature broadcasting his location, he knew they’d lose him as a target and start to move. He grabbed up his radio.
“Move, seven tangos.”
“Moving.” Jeff’s voice came back to him almost instantly. “Ten in relief, two civilians holed up.”
He swore to himself. The number meant the two cowboy brothers and the father-son ranchers, the Ballards, were rolling with Tom and the husband-and-wife team of pilots. Jeff, Hans, and Dom were going to have their hands full.
He conjured up a mental image of the narrow valley with its stream at the bottom. The two parties below him would each have about a half mile to go before they had line of sight with each other. The bad guys knew he was across the river and uphill from them. They’d have to send somebody across the creek to try and deal with him.
He checked his ammo, and realized he only had two five-round mags left for the .338, with one round in the chamber. After that, he’d be down to using his M4 and would have to get a lot closer before he could do anything but harass the bad guys. He unscrewed the suppressor from the end of the Lapua; they knew he was here. The barrel itself was still warm, but he could hide most of it with his body as he moved.
He crawled directly backwards, ten feet or so, before he began going forward at an angle, passing to the downhill side of his original position. The words of a forgotten instructor rang in his head - Don’t be where the enemy expects you to be. Crawling while cradling the rifle under his body, he moved forward at an angle, downhill towards the river.
He’d gone about forty yards when he stopped and brought out the rifle. He ignored the crash site. These guys weren’t going to remain in place any more than he would have. He scanned directly ahead on his side of the creek and then swung the scope uphill, checking his right flank. Nothing . . . not that he expected to see anything. It was too soon for them to have gained his elevation, and he had no idea how long they’d utilize the creek bed before striking uphill towards him.
He swung the scope slowly back down to the bottom of the valley. The crash site was as empty as he knew it would be. He found himself wishing they were up against a hundred Strema and their Napoleonic tactics instead of highly trained professionals.
Locating a new position to shoot from was difficult, but his night vision gave him enough sense of the hillside’s topography that he could pick out a shallow draw that cut across his path of travel. He tried to remember if this draw went all the way down to the creek. If it did, it would be a decent ascent path for whomever the ISS squad sent to his side of the creek. He decided on speed over caution; he came to his feet and sprinted to the edge of the draw and its line of exposed rocks along its edges. He crossed down into the bottom, where wet mud sucked at his boots, and had started up the far side when he heard a rock rolling from somewhere in the draw below him.
Gotcha! They were using the draw for the cover it provided, same as he was. He froze in place and swept the area below him with his scope. He didn’t pick up on any movement
and couldn’t see anything other than the shallow depression of the draw and its rock-lined bottom. Praying he had time, he moved quickly up the final ten feet of the slope and moved behind a wall of exposed rock. It was a decent perch; he could cover the valley’s trail along the creek below him. He only had to turn around to get a decent angle on the draw below, off his left shoulder.
He cursed his own shooting and how many shots it had taken him to kill the drone uplink. He was down to eleven rounds to support Jeff and the rest of his team, but he had to be alive to do that. Which was why he focused on his own immediate threat, and the rocky area of the draw, slightly below and off his left side.
Listening as carefully as he could, he tried to filter out the steady pounding of his heart. The rain was so light it was almost a mist, and further muted the sounds around him. The view through his scope showed nothing. Turning back to the creek, his eyes looking through his NVDs were immediately drawn to the rest of his team, moving quickly down the narrow valley trail crammed between the hillside and the creek itself.
They were moving towards the elbow in the creek, where it and the entire canyon bent sharply around a hillside of rock. He knew the other team was approaching that same bend from the other side. He could recognize Jeff’s lanky form in the lead, followed by Hans’s gigantic frame. It was a moment before he spotted Tom Soares. The fellow Green Beret was off the trail, up the side of the opposing hill, and moving on a parallel track slightly behind those below him. Jeff was as good a soldier as they came, Dom and Hans were solid, and he had no reason to doubt Tom’s skill. The two pilots, the Bowdens, assigned to the special forces or not, were in his mind, just pilots.
The Ballards were ranchers; the elder had mentioned being a Marine about the time he and Jeff had been born. Further down his list were the two rodeo cowboys he hoped had remembered to bring their rifles. It was a lot to ask from a group of people that had no business getting into an engagement with a special ops team, at night, and on the move.
He just started to refocus on the area in the draw when a clatter of rocks below him sent a surge of adrenaline through his limbs. He spun around in time to see a trio of deer, pushed uphill by whatever had spooked them. One of the animals caught his scent and stopped, looking in his direction. The small deer’s eyes stood out like dim light bulbs in his night vision before the animal blew out a snort and surged uphill, with a grace and speed that made him jealous.
The animals had probably been bedded down somewhere in the draw below before their sleep had been disturbed. He carefully laid the sniper rifle aside and loosened the sling on his M4. Spinning it around to his front, he unclipped it, brought it up to his shoulder, and waited.
Automatic rifle fire erupted from the bottom of the canyon and echoed up the sides of the hill around him. He ignored it; he had to be alive to help his friends. A radio blared to life close by, too close. He did a double take as he realized in a panic that the radio had hissed from his right, above the rim of the draw he sat on.
He’d fucked up. They’d boxed him in. They’d sent two groups at him, one up the draw, and another directly up across the hillside that now was somewhere off to his right. He was set up somewhere between the two. Moving as slowly as he could, he turned his entire body and scanned the hill above him. Nothing. He followed the slope of the hill down until the outline of a helmet stood out around the edge of a waist-high boulder. He held his aim point, as the gunfire in the bottom of the canyon exploded again and then stopped just as abruptly.
The enemy soldier stood, his own rifle and scope up on his shoulder, pointed into the draw uphill from his position, and slowly tracked down towards him. He waited as long as he could for another soldier to show himself, but this arm of their pincer looked to be alone. He couldn’t wait any longer.
He dropped the soldier with a three-round burst at a distance of about forty yards. The last two rounds had crawled upward through the man’s neck and face as the suppressed assault rifle seemed to almost puff out its rounds. The ammo, however, split the air with cracks that were going to be very recognizable to whoever was behind him.
He spun back around to face the draw beneath him, and scanned the rocks. He was slammed back against the rock as muzzle flashes from automatic fire opened up below him. The impact from the rounds spun him off target. A searing pain exploded out of his left shoulder as he collapsed behind the large rock formation. The shoulder was an afterthought compared to the cannonball that had just caught him in the chest. The shock to his system took a second to clear before training and adrenaline kicked in. He didn’t move, didn’t breathe, and wasn’t even sure he could.
He heard the clatter of loose rocks as somebody was climbing up the side of the draw directly beneath his position. They’d suckered him, splitting up like that, sacrificed one of their own to get him to reveal his position. Flat on his back, he lifted his chin to his chest, and saw his feet sticking out in the open. They would have already seen him.
Expecting a grenade to bounce over the lip of the rock into his lap, he stayed as still as he could. That part was easy, he wasn’t sure he could draw a breath. He pulled his 1911 .45 caliber from its holster low on his gut, flinched at the sound the hammer made as he thumbed it back. He leveled the gun at the edge of the big rock, just above his own boots. His arm was struggling to hold up the weight of the sidearm, and he did his best to ignore the shaking that he could feel in his hand. The muzzle of the soldier’s weapon broke the edge of the rock, aimed right at his legs.
The enemy soldier’s next step was half a stride too long. Kyle fired and missed in the fraction of a second before the other man fired. The man’s gun hadn’t come up, and he did his best to ignore the flashes of pain in his legs. He fired again; the soldier’s head snapped back with a spray that he could see even in the dim light. He fired twice more, hitting the man’s center of mass and blowing him back down the hill.
He managed to suck in a breath against the desire to scream in pain. Both of his legs had been hit. He struggled to ignore the pounding in his ears, the echoes from the shots reverberating in his head, striving to hear if there was another hunter out there waiting to finish him off.
He felt at his chest, and found the two impact lumps in his chest plate. That was going to leave a mark. He almost laughed in delirium. The crushing pain in his chest stopped that in its tracks. His left shoulder was bleeding, but the feeling was coming back in his fingers at the end of that arm. He managed to sit up, doing his best to ignore the pain it caused his legs. He’d been hit twice, once in each leg. One round had just creased his right calf; the other had caught his left thigh, through the meat of the quad and out the other side. He breathed a sigh of relief that he didn’t have any lead still in him - just holes that he needed to patch if he wasn’t going to bleed out.
Shrugging out of the top half of the ghillie suit was an exercise in self-flagellation. In the end he had to draw his knife and cut most of it away. He laid out the contents of his small first aid pack, certain the eye-watering pain was the only thing that was keeping him from passing out. That, and the sounds of the firefight raging at the bottom of the canyon; his people needed him.
Jeff dropped the soldier who had been trying to get an angle on them by moving up the creek. It didn’t do much to improve the tactical situation. The lady pilot had been the first one hit, followed a few seconds later by her husband. She might still be alive, but she hadn’t moved. Her husband had lost his shit. He’d taken a tango with him, but he had paid for that with his life. The man had been hit so many times, he’d been dead before he hit the ground.
Pete, the old man, had seemed like a tough old bird, but he’d lagged during the run to try and beat the ISS team to the bend in the canyon. They’d lost that race, and Pete had been slow in figuring that out. He’d stayed upright for a second too long before he’d gone down.
One of the idiot cowboys had been hit; which one, he couldn’t be sure. He had stopped trying to remember which was which a week
ago. The line of profanity streaming from their position confirmed they were both alive. They both were up and servicing their weapons, and right now, in his book, they were warriors.
“Dom, how many you think?”
Dom popped around the edge of his own rock and fired a burst at the edge of the hill that crept down off the mountain to their left. The crest of that solid line of rock defined the curve in the valley. The creek, over eons, had bent itself around the rock protrusion, which at the moment was one hell of a line of defense for the ISS team.
“You get one in the river?”
“Yes.”
“Then I think we have taken two.” Dom was looking at him. “Kyle must have gotten at least one.”
Kyle? There had been way too much gunfire up on the hill above the far side of the creek, and their friend was no longer answering.
They had to give Tom the time to get over the ridge of rock above them and get behind the enemy. They didn’t have the cover to get to the rocks and close with the enemy that was already there. They’d have to make their own.
“You and I need to get to that line of rock.”
Dom’s square head nodded once. “Agreed.”
Jeff keyed his mic. “When I say go, everybody fire, and keep their heads down. Aim for where the trail bends around the rock. Hans, keep an eye on the creek bed.”
“Us too?” It was one of the cowboys. He controlled the impulse to scream that yes, everybody meant them, too. He ended up stifling a short laugh before hitting his mic.
New Shores: The Eden Chronicles - Book Three Page 28
