by Leigh Barker
Smokey walked away. Winter walked away. Ethan and Gunny walked away. Loco turned to Andie, who’d taken the opportunity to fire up her computer and was sitting cross-legged on a flat rock and squinting at the small screen.
“You don’t believe in superstitious stuff, do you, Andie?”
She looked up, frowned and returned to her screen. “You mean like wishing the enemy on us by saying there isn’t one within a hundred miles?”
“Yeah, that. Exactly.”
“It’s not superstition,” she said, closing her computer and getting off the rock to follow the others. “It’s a fact.”
Loco watched them disappear around a sharp bend, looked back at the trail, and climbed up onto his observation rock from where he could see the trail across the jagged valley. And the Taliban.
“Shit.” He jumped down and ran after the unit.
He caught up with them and fell in behind Smokey, who glanced back and shook his head in reproach. “They’re coming, aren’t they?”
“Yeah, but it wasn’t me. I just said what I saw.”
They came out onto a long flat area running up to a sheer drop. The trail cut to the left and then curved around the cliffs in front of them.
“Good as any,” Ethan said.
Gunny walked across the smooth rock to the precipice and studied the cliffs opposite. “We’ll wait across there and give them a surprise.”
Ethan shook his head and looked past him. “Smokey, Loco.” He gave them a moment to come around the others, and he pointed at the cliffs. “You set up there and do your thing. We’ll double-time it to the village and get this cluster-fuck done and stowed.”
“Copy that, Top,” Smokey said, squinting at the steep cliffs. He pointed up to the left. “That outcrop there is the place. In the shadow and a clear view of this whole trail.”
“Slow them down; then get the hell out,” Gunny said, and waved Andie past. “Stay close, girl. It’s going to get noisy.”
“I’m a sailor, not a girl,” she said, but it was an automatic response, and she was already staying close.
“How long you need, Top?” Smokey said as they moved off around the cleft in the mountain.
“Half hour would be good,” Ethan said without turning around. “Hour would be better.”
“We’ll give you the rest of the day if you need it,” Loco said.
“Hour’ll be enough,” Gunny said. “Don’t be heroes. I’ve been to too many hero funerals.”
“If there’s any heroing to be done,” Smokey said, “I’ll let Loco here do it. He’s built for it.”
Winter looked Loco over. “He’s built for being easy to carry at a slow march,” he said and watched the sniper team breaking left off the main trail. “You think I should maybe hang around and make sure they don’t get into any trouble?”
Ethan watched Loco following his spotter up through the rocks. This was a good place for a sniper ambush. The trail was narrow and the terrain open on the bend with no way for anything except a goat to get up the cliffs and flank them. But it was still only a two-man squad. Winter would make a difference, he had no doubt of that.
He was the best warrior he’d ever known, and in his years he’d known the best of the best. Winter was a contradiction. He would step into the road to rescue a cat but show not an ounce of mercy to anyone who threatened him or any member of his team. Long gun, sidearm or barehanded, he had never met his match and probably never would. When God or the other one made him, they threw away the jig. He looked at the man for a moment. Tall and rangy, with snow-white hair for no reason God would ever admit to, and cold dead eyes that never seemed to change even when he thought he was smiling.
He remembered the day in Ramadi and the kid with the AK-47. He’d been what? Eleven? Twelve? Came out of an alley and stood there right in front of them with the AK between his knees while he tried to get it untangled from his skinny body. Nobody moved. What were they going to do? Shoot the kid?
He got the rifle free, looked up and started to raise it. Winter blew his head off, shrugged and walked on. The kid was young; the AK-47 wasn’t.
He met Winter’s steady gaze. “Loco can shoot the tit off a gnat at four hundred yards, but he gets carried away. Make sure he knows when to quit.”
Winter nodded once and started up the trail that was no more than a rain gulley.
Ethan watched him go for a moment, then looked back at the killing zone stretching out from the grey stone wall. He almost felt sorry for the men coming up the trail for what they thought was going to be an easy kill.
Killing US Marines is never easy, and today wasn’t going to be an exception. Not with Sergeant Jerry Winter waiting for them. The Angel of Death.
The Viking
Winter stopped on the trail leading up to the narrow outcrop where Loco and Smokey were setting up their sniper’s nest, and looked back at the blind bend in the trail where the unfriendlies would show. The sun was heading home for bed and cut harsh shadows on the ragged mountains. An hour tops and the trail would be in that shadow and so would the Taliban, and good as Loco was—and okay, Smokey too—two men were never going to stop them. He went back down the trail to the vertical rockface where the trail opened up onto the flat area leading to the sheer drop. He stood with the toes of his boots over the edge of the precipice and let his mind do its thing and work it out.
The insurgents would be there before dark; that wasn’t even up for discussion. Those guys would be moving faster than the unit could. As Gunny had said, it was their country. Not strictly true, since most of them were from Afghanistan and beyond, but near enough. Loco would drop them as fast as he could work the bolt on his M40, but it wouldn’t be fast enough to stop them scooting back around the cliff. And then…then they’d just sit and wait until it was dark enough to walk on up and slit their throats.
He moved back down the trail a few yards, dropped his pack on a rock, and pulled out the three spare magazines. With the mag in the rifle, that made a hundred and twenty rounds total. Maybe five hundred short of what would be needed to do the job without getting up close and personal. Funny thing about war these days. The movies show all the technology, and the Pentagon signs up for stuff that’ll kill a man in a crowd a thousand miles away, but it always seemed to come down to the soldier on the ground kicking the enemy in the nuts when the shit is truly flying. And tonight the shit would have wings, or his name wasn’t Jerry Winter. Which it wasn’t, but who knew that? And let’s face it, man, who gives a fuck anyway? Caring is overrated.
He pushed his pack into the rocks and noted a hatchet-shaped split to remind him where he’d stowed it. If he ever needed it again, and that was as likely as him winning the Derby on a nag named Dobbin. He smiled as the punchline from an old joke popped into his head. Take it easy, man, I’ve got to get up early tomorrow to deliver the milk.
He didn’t look back as he strolled down the trail and through the crack in the rocks, the choke point and the only thing that gave them any chance at all. Loco and Smokey would be watching him, wondering what the hell he was up to. Thinking is good for the brain, even Loco’s. Let them think.
Yeah, right. Thing is, what the fuck was he up to? Getting himself killed was the answer that came to mind. Not for the first time, though this one was probably going to breast the tape and finish the run. Maybe there wouldn’t be that many of them. Maybe they’d split up to cover more ground. Maybe they—yeah, and maybe Jesus could tap-dance. Face it, man, you’ve done some stupid things in your life, but this one takes the gold ring.
He was out of sight of the ambush now and on the trail winding around the mountain. On his own. The shadows were sliding on down the cliffs towards the trail. He heard sharp voices kicking off the cliff walls. Company, honey, put the coffee on.
Ethan had that feeling again. The itchy neck and the unease, like he got in fifth grade when Bomber Nash was watching him over the top of his glasses. He had two choices: get jumpy and swivel his neck like that kid in The Exorc
ist, or ignore it and get on with the mission. Until it, whatever it was, jumped out and bit him on the ass. The Taliban. You think? Christ, he was getting too old for this shit. Talking to himself. The shrink would love that. She was cute though. He stepped up onto a fallen slab of granite and looked back along the trail.
Is it okay to think docs are cute? Probably, they’re people, after all. Mostly.
Gunny and the kid stopped and watched him without speaking, but it was clear to him that Gunny felt it too, and he wasn’t resisting the need to keep looking back over his shoulder. The kid just kept glancing back at the backpack holding her computer, like she needed a fix.
Ethan waited for Gunny to look up, caught his eye and held it for a moment. Gunny nodded once, turned and headed back down the trail, unslinging his M16 as he went.
Andie watched him go, lifted her rifle a little as if considering a thought, then let it rest against her hip. Smart kid.
“Come on,” Ethan said, jumping down from the boulder, “we’ve got to see a man about a missile.” He glanced back. “You up for this?”
“I say no, do I get magicked out of here?”
Ethan chuckled and walked on. “Yeah, SecNav’s got a spaceship watching us, ready to beam us up.”
“I knew it. Area 51.”
“You got it. Got a big ring to travel to other galaxies.”
“Saw the documentary. That gritty guy from the movies was in it.”
“Kurt Russell. Good movie.”
“No, the other one,” Andie said.
Ethan scanned the hillside rising at a sixty-degree angle from the trail. Just because the insurgents were coming up from the rear didn’t mean there weren’t any hiding out in the rocks. If there were, him and the kid on the trail with no cover wouldn’t last long.
“Richard Dean Anderson.”
“Was he MacGuffin from the TV?”
Ethan glanced back to make sure she was doing okay on the walking and talking. The kid was a girl—a woman. Women can do more than one thing at a time. So he’d heard.
“MacGyver,” he said, and returned to scanning the hills. “You’re talking about Stargate though.”
“Yes, that was it. Watched it as a kid.”
Ethan sighed. Yeah, course she did. He’d watched it in Afghanistan. Something to do when he wasn’t getting killed. That mess they’d called Operation Enduring Freedom. Some suit in an office in Washington. Never seen a firefight in his life. Call it something like that, it must be a good thing, right?
“How come you didn’t do something like that?” Something for her to think about. Instead of the ragheads waiting out there.
“Like what? Be a movie star?”
He laughed. “No, well, maybe. It’s easy enough. Easier than this shit.”
She was silent for a moment, frowning. “I do computer stuff.”
“Yeah, I know that. I mean inventing technology things.”
“Things that would mean I didn’t have to carry this.” She raised her M16 a little.
Ethan smiled. “You’re good at what you do. Better than good. You should maybe take it and get out of this life.”
He stopped at a long curve in the trail, moved up to the edge of some boulders the size of pickups, and checked the way ahead.
“I like it,” Andie said.
Ethan turned slowly. “I got the name of a woman’d love to meet you. She’s cute too.”
“You think I like girls, cute or otherwise?” It wasn’t an accusation, just a question.
Ethan leaned back against the boulder and studied her for a moment. He hadn’t really thought about it, but he could see now why he thought of her as ‘the kid’. She was barely five two, and with her close-cropped haircut, she looked just that, a kid. She was watching him steadily, waiting for an answer to a question that didn’t have one. If he said he thought she liked girls and she didn’t, the klaxon would sound. And if he said she didn’t like girls and she did…but he wasn’t going to say anything. No time.
He pushed off the boulder and stood still in the middle of the trail. “You hear that?”
She listened for a moment. “Sounds like gunfire.”
“That’s because it is gunfire. M16 and AKs.”
“You can tell that from here?” Andie said, turning to face south-west and the direction of the sound.
“Yes, and I’ll make a good guess who’s doing the firing.”
“But we’re miles away from the rest of the unit.”
He shrugged. “Four maybe. Mountain’s bouncing the sound back and forth like a pipe.”
“Should we go back and help? Or radio?”
“No, we’re going on. And radios won’t work in this terrain.” He looked up at the shadow on the hillside. “It’ll be dark soon, and it’s one, maybe one and a half klicks to the village.” He looked past her again. “The boys can handle it. Have before.”
He turned and walked quickly past the boulder, ignoring the hillside now. Anybody there would’ve had heard the ruckus and be heading that way. A good thing, for him and the kid. “Let’s get this done.”
Smokey was the spotter, but he didn’t need to do much spotting to see the insurgents when they came around the trail. They were running. Well, sort of jogging, but for some reason it scared the shit out of him. Running like they were heading for the beach. Surf’s up. Except they were running because they wanted to get to him and the others. And cut their heads off on the internet. Christ. This was surreal.
“You see the bad guys, right?” Loco said as he put his scope to his eye.
“Yeah, I see them. Man, they’re fuckin’ running.”
Loco was going to say something. Shoot them, or some shit, but the leading insurgent’s head came into sharp focus in his scope, and he squeezed the trigger.
Smokey saw the guy’s head kick and a spray of red mist spread out in the fading light and got the idea. Instinctively he checked that his magazine was locked, pointed his weapon at the Taliban, now frozen in mid stride by the sight of their man’s head coming apart, and fired. At seven hundred rounds a minute and way less than the hundred-yard maximum effective range, his Colt SMG did what it was supposed to and emptied the thirty-round magazine into them before they had time to register that bits of them were being blown off.
Loco ignored the panic the submachine gun had caused and calmly picked his targets. And there were still plenty to choose from. The first one to recover was bringing his AK47 up when a 7.62-mil-round ripped his windpipe out from under his chin. He lost interest. Then to his left, same thing. The insurgent had got his weapon into action and was emptying his thirty-round mag as fast as the weapon would fire.
Loco needed just one round. He put it in the guy’s left eye. But the rest of them weren’t Boy Scouts out for a jog and had recovered. Ten, twelve of them in sight and more coming around the bend, now all firing up at the suddenly very exposed outcrop that was home to him and Smokey.
Their AK47s were old, but still around for a very good reason; they were good weapons, really good. They were way inside their four-hundred-yard range, and pretty well all those still alive were just standing and firing. Loco didn’t need to do the math, but it did it for him in his head. Ten, twelve ragheads, thirty-round mags. Three hundred rounds plus. All heading their way. Nobody, that being no body could live through that, even hiding in the rocks. Bullets and rocks. Ricochets. Western movies love them. Loco, not so much.
Smokey was reloading, and Loco shifted his scope across the mass of faces, skipped the one who looked like he was about to cry for his momma, and put a round in the chest of the man next to him. The one with the angry expression. Man, it wasn’t personal, no need to get all cross about it.
More insurgents crowded around the bend. Twenty, thirty, maybe a hundred, Loco didn’t count them. He stayed with the ones who’d been there a while and were getting settled.
Smokey got his SMG back into action, but they both knew their folks would be laying flowers on their empty caskets.
Loco and Smokey ignored the newcomer and stuck with killing them at a steady controlled rate. No excitement, no gung-ho. Just killing machines.
Caught in a crossfire, the insurgents were getting chopped to pieces and, without proper training, couldn’t process what was happening, so they did what anybody with any sort of instinct for self-preservation would do. They ran.
The sniper team stopped firing as soon as they broke. The only ammunition they had they’d hiked in with them, so throwing it at the retreating enemy was just stupid.
Gunny stepped out from behind the jumble of fallen rocks and looked up at them for as long as it took to see they weren’t dead. No wave, no cheery welcome. Just a look. The man had a rock for a heart. But Loco didn’t care; he could’ve hugged him. And got over the punch to the head that would’ve brought. It would’ve been worth it.
It wasn’t over, Gunny knew that. Sensible thing would’ve been to get the hell out of there before the sun completely disappeared, but nobody ever accused US Marines of being sensible, not if the accuser wanted to stay upright. Anyhow, if they ran, they’d be out on the trail with their asses hanging out in full view when the insurgents caught up with them. So they’d stay put right here, where it was safe and cosy and there was lots of cover. Right, all three of them. That’d work just fine.
So he changed position. The insurgents would’ve seen his location, and if they hadn’t seen him, they’d know where the bullets had been coming from. He’d be someplace else when they came sneaking around in the dark.
He stood at the edge of the precipice next to the trail and looked down. He could step off. That was all it would take, just a step and he’d be done with all this crap. And who’d watch out for Sally and the kids? The same guy who was watching out for them right then. The guy banging her. The bank manager. The bank manager, for fuck’s sake.
