Jack Coughlin - Kill Zone

First, he had to clean up Buchanan’s mess, including that sniper in Syria.

AS SOON AS KYLE SWANSONsaw the headlights of the troop carriers begin to move away from the crash scene, he swerved the pickup truck off the road to the right and down into a wadi that spread into a cultivated field. He stopped beside a thick stand of trees and brush and turned off the motor. The dust the truck had kicked up settled to the road, leaving no trace of their passing.

General Middleton whispered, “What are you doing? Get the hell out of here.”

Swanson held up a finger to silence him. Within thirty seconds, the two big armored personnel carriers roared past, heading back to the village where ammo was still crackling in the two separate fires.

Kyle jumped out, dug through his pack, and grabbed a claymore mine bandoleer. Middleton still wanted to move out. “What are you going to do now? Get back behind the wheel! Let’s go!”

“I’m going to plant a claymore out on the road,” Swanson said as he swung the bandoleer over his shoulder.

“A claymore won’t destroy a BTR-80, Gunnery Sergeant Swanson.”

“No shit, Brigadier General Middleton,” Swanson shot back. “But the next vehicle moving down the road will probably be one of those BTRs coming after us. With any luck the claymore can puncture the tires, maybe even the gas tank, and also take out whoever has their heads above the armor. The other BTR will stop because they will be worried about an ambush or another booby trap.”

“Think, Swanson! It’s a waste of time. The other one will just swing around the wreck and keep going.”

“No, dammit, you think! It will take me three minutes to plant this thing, with the trip wire. When the first BTR is hit, even if it is not disabled, they will stop to sort things out. That will mean at least a ten-minute delay. Do the math, general. We get a net gain of at least seven extra minutes… that is, if you will shut the fuck up and let me get on with my job.”

Kyle scrambled up the incline of the wadi and opened the claymore kit bandoleer. He loved these things, and his fingers worked fast as he checked off the familiar equipment-the powerful M18A1 mine, the M57 firing device, the M40 test set, the spool with a hundred feet of firing wire, the electrical blasting cap, insulation tape, and two wooden stakes. The whole deadly thing in a single handy package.

The Germans in World War II had invented the concept of a mine with a concave surface that would be capable of slinging a solid slab of steel through the armor of an enemy tank. By Vietnam, almost every American infantryman carried the modern lightweight version of the claymore, which was an inch and a half thick and packed with C-4 explosive and 700 steel balls that could devastate enemy personnel and take out thin-skinned vehicles. Swanson considered it the perfect ambush and perimeter defense tool. The trick was to remember how to place it correctly. It had not been named the claymore for nothing, because like its namesake, the ancient Scottish broadsword, it could cut both ways. The soldier setting it off with the clacker had to be at least about twenty yards behind it and under cover because of the back-blast. Embossed on the lethal side of the olive-drab casing was the reminder, FRONT TOWARD ENEMY.

Swanson braced the mine solidly into the dirt with its built-in spikes, stretched the trip wire low across the road, about four inches above the surface, and tied it off to one of the stakes. He ran a quick circuit test and stacked some brush and twigs over the mine. He was counting on the darkness, and the Syrians not expecting to be hit. When the BTR ran over the trip wire, those hundreds of steel balls would blow out up to a height of six feet and in a 60-degree arc, with a casualty reach of up to 330 feet.

He hurried back to the pickup, restarted it, and threw it into low gear. They crashed through the brush and up the side of the wadi, back to the road on the far side of the mine.

“What if a civilian vehicle comes along first?” asked Middleton.

“Jesus, you’re a worrywart,” snapped Swanson. “You want me to go back and put up a warning sign? With so much stuff going on, the civilians are staying put. And if it happens, it happens. But it won’t.” He was already tired of Middleton and they had a hundred miles to go.

They sped along in silence with the lights off, and Kyle eyed the familiar surroundings through his NVGs.

Middleton seemed to relax a bit. “They still call you ‘Shake’?”

“Don’t start that shit on me now, General. We can argue later. Right now, I’m sort of busy.” Swanson removed his foot from the accelerator and let the truck coast to a stop without touching the brake.

“Now what?” Middleton shifted in his seat, picking up the Kalashnikov.

“There’s a checkpoint up ahead, about a kilometer.”

“How do you know? Can you see it from here?”

“No, but I’ve already taken it out once,” Swanson said. “On the way in.” He climbed into the bed of the truck.

“So we’re going to do it again?” the general asked through the small window behind the passenger compartment. “How?”

“With Excalibur.” He unfastened the protective drag bag and removed the long sniper rifle.

“It’s too dark and too far away,” Middleton protested. “You can’t hit them from here no matter how good you think you are. All you’re going to do is alert them and give them time to radio for help.”

Kyle adjusted Excalibur and racked a round into the firing chamber, then threw his pack on the cab of the truck and pressed a groove in it to use it as a steady platform. He took off the NVGs and clicked on the scope, dialing it to night vision. The scene lit up almost like daylight as the sensors grabbed every available source of light and heat and amplified them, and then the computer enhanced the forms it saw.

One guard was seated atop the checkpoint shack, smoking a cigarette. The other was standing to one side. Both had rifles and were looking at the glow from the village, watching the distant fiery show instead of looking for intruders. Kyle put the crosshairs on the standing man and let the scope do the math and automatically make the adjustments while he took up slack on the trigger. The blue strip flashed and he squeezed the trigger to complete the shot.

The soldier was caught center mass and the big bullet tore through him as it slammed him back against a pile of sandbags. As Kyle racked in a new round, the other guard, apparently thinking his partner had tripped and fallen, stood and looked over the edge to see what had happened. Only two seconds passed before Kyle got the blue stripe again. He fired. At that last moment, the target moved, and the bullet meant for the chest went in above his ear and took off most of his head.

Swanson returned Excalibur to its sheath, dumped his pack into the bed of the truck, and climbed back into the driver’s seat. “There. That was easy, wasn’t it?” He put the NVGs on, gunned the engine, and took off.

As they maneuvered through the roadblock, Middleton saw that both guards were dead, and the skull of one had been crushed by the force of the bullet. Shake made a head shot in the middle of the night, while standing in the back of a pickup truck from a klick away, and thought it was easy?

“Umph,” the general said in reluctant approval. “You hit him in the head.”

Swanson just drove.

YOUSIF AL-SHOUM, STANDINGin the hatch of his BMR, saw the smoking ruin of the quad-barrel Zeus as they entered the village. Clumps of junk littered the street in front of the Americans’ house, debris blown over from the demolished building of the jihad fighters, which burned with fury. The door to the Americans’ place had been splintered by the force of the blast and was hanging on a single hinge. The body of the soldier he had left on guard was sprawled dead beside the steps. He ordered both vehicles to a stop, and his men formed a perimeter.