Jack Coughlin - Kill Zone

Turning to Excalibur, he checked the ammo load. He pulled the bolt back enough to slide a fingertip into the raceway and tap the brass bottom of the big.50-caliber round seated in the chamber, then pushed the bolt home again. Four more rounds rested in the magazine below.

Another hour passed and he hardly moved at all, just waiting. Black dark now. Dark as sin. It was time to roll.

The first thing he planned to do was tweak the single guard on the Zeus, apparently the only person still awake in the entire village. Swanson checked the logbook for the range, 547 yards, then brought Excalibur’s cool epoxy stock to his cheek, stared down the scope, and saw the figure standing motionless, probably leaning against a tire, with an AK-47 drooped across a shoulder. He was obviously having a hard time staying awake at one o’clock in the morning. The advanced night-vision ability of Excalibur showed every possible detail, not just a green shape, and Swanson fine-tuned the focus ring. He clicked the button to lock onto the target, and again to confirm the range. The GPS, the gyrostabilizer, and the laser communicated, and numbers flashed in the scope as the built-in computer continued to enhance and clear the picture and figure out the range, windage, and barometric pressure. When all was ready, the azure stripe flashed on the edge of the scope. It could just as well have been a neon sign spelling out, “This dude is history.” This was just target shooting and almost unfair. Almost.

The guard’s figure almost filled the scope and Kyle could see the young, bored, sleepy face. Adjusting to the final numbers, he dropped the sight to an inch above the center of the chest. Roy Rogers and John Wayne might shoot guns out of a bad guy’s hand, but professionals went for center mass, the sure hit. Swanson slowed his breathing even more, and the heartbeat followed suit, and the crosshairs of Excalibur did not wiggle.

It was unfortunate that this young man had been so low on the totem pole that he drew the midwatch guard duty. He had been on post for only ten minutes, since one o’clock, and Kyle had watched as the boy relieved the earlier guard. They stood four-hour shifts. Nobody would miss this fellow until at least 0500. Swanson exhaled a half-breath and started the easy trigger pull as his muscle memory kicked in-time to work-slow and smooth and straight and steady and squeeze. The rifle seemed to fire on its own, and although Kyle felt the recoil buck against his shoulder, there was no sound other than a quiet cough as the silencer killed the noise. In the scope, Swanson watched the big bullet slam into the guy’s chest and explode inside him, ripping his muscles and guts to pieces. The location, speed, and power of the shot did not give the guard time to cry out or even look surprised. He crumbled to the dirt beside the big antiaircraft gun, dead before he hit the ground. The front of his shirt was soaked in blood. Swanson used his thumb and two fingers to jack a fresh round into the chamber and swept the scope around the village. He heard a goat bawl and a dog bark twice, but nothing indicated anyone had heard his shot.

He moved from the hide on his elbows and knees, the other voice talking now, whispering, Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. He squelched the natural urge to get up and run to the downed soldier, and instead began crawling, fast but quietly, with the easy grace of a night predator.

SEARCH. EVALUATE. LISTEN.The game had begun. Swanson had to cover about the length of one and a half football fields, and while speed was important, doing it right was more important. He was out in the open for God and everybody to see, slithering forward, his heartbeat slow and his eyes constantly moving.

Just because the village was quiet did not mean that no one would be up and around. It could all change in an instant, but for now the only sounds were the scuffling of animals within the walls around the houses. Rocks slid beneath him as he crawled, and the weight of his pack pressed him down. The M-16 was cradled in his arms, and Excalibur was in its drag bag, sliding along behind him, attached to a D-ring on his web gear.

It took twelve minutes to cross the open space and reach the body, where he stopped to take a careful look around, checking likely places where danger might hide, points from which a threat might emerge. He had to be lucky every time he moved. The enemy only had to be lucky once to detect him. He was burning minutes, but not wasting them.

The glazed eyes of the guard pointed up at the night sky, but Swanson checked the pulse anyway and found none. It was a boy, no more than sixteen, probably a product of the radical religious schools who had joined the war for his true faith and paid with his short life, the end coming so fast that he had not even felt the shock. Tough shit, kid. Kyle jerked the corpse into a sitting position, stood, and pulled the guard upright against the side of the Zeus.

Propping him up with one hand, he peeled off the long strips of duct tape pressed along his uniform and secured the body to the hooks, rails, and protrusions on the big weapon. A belt of tape went around the waist and was tied to a heavy ammunition box. With the tape taking the weight, he crossed the ankles and taped them in place, crossed the dangling arms, and tied them at wrists. Swanson draped the AK-47 over the boy’s shoulders. The head lolled forward, which was fine, and he made a few adjustments to the clothes so as to obscure the bloodstains. Swanson took two steps back. To any distant passerby, the kid would appear to be dozing on the job, standing but sleeping.

The sniper checked the area again. Still cool. He knelt on the ground, reached into his pack, and pulled out a claymore mine, then carefully broke it open to get at the small ball bearings packed inside. He gathered a handful and rolled them, one by one, down a barrel of the Zeus, repeating the procedure until all four barrels were packed with dozens of tiny steel balls. Then he inserted the little rolls of C-4 explosive he had molded earlier. Each roll had a detonator. He opened the butt of his M-16 and took out the four-piece cleaning rod, which he twisted together into a single long, thin shaft that he thrust into each barrel to compact the mixture.

Time. Time. Tick-tock. Keep going. The voice was insistent. Swanson’s senses were honed to the rhythms of the sleeping village. This was their everyday life. Nothing was supposed to happen here, particularly at night. It was like a base camp for the jihad fighters, and routine gave them an illusion of safety. Many people had washed their clothes to get rid of the day’s dirt, and now the various shapes of cloth hung on lines behind the houses to dry overnight, shifting slowly in the low breeze and providing Swanson with an extra shield from sight.

He moved into the village, to the little store he had watched throughout the day. A low wall surrounded most of the two-story building, with a rollaway gate locked across the front. When open for business, the gate was pushed back to allow customers to wander in and out. The owners lived upstairs.

Kyle went over the rear wall and dropped into a crouch, pausing long enough to drop his pack and rifles inside the yard. From a lightweight vinyl holster near his left shoulder, he pulled a silenced match-grade.45-caliber pistol with an infrared laser scope, a competition-class weapon that carried an expanded magazine of fifteen rounds.

The front door of the store was locked, but a side window stood open to catch the night coolness. Swanson looked inside with his night vision goggles to avoid kicking anything, and then went over the windowsill. The pungent smell of spices was overwhelming. He did a 360-degree check of the room, holding his pistol in a firing position. Shelves, crates, a table with two chairs, a cooler in the corner, where an electric motor hummed. A stove was along the back wall beside a big cutting board on some cabinets. A carcass hung from a hook, waiting to be butchered. Cans were stacked in neat rows.