Gavin Smith: Special Purposes: First Strike Weapon

“What is the reason for your failure?” Ivack demanded.

“Mostly the absence of any Stingers.”

“The intelligence was good!” Ivack insisted.

“And yet…”

“Did you find any trace of them? Did you take any of the mujahideenprisoner?”

“Anyone fit enough to hold a gun is in the mountains,” Vadim told him. We burned this village for nothing , he decided not to add.

“So you found nothing, but still managed to get one of your men killed. What extraordinary incompetence,” Ivack said, smiling coldly. Vadim knew he was trying to goad him, and frankly, he was doing a good job. Under normal circumstances he would have ignored the young fool, but he’d had little sleep in the last ten days.

“We think we encountered your American, though,” Vadim said. He saw the rest of the squad approaching out of the corner of his eye. They weren’t bunching together, they were sticking close to cover and keeping up their situational awareness. They were, however, close enough to hear Ivack, which probably wasn’t ideal for morale. Vadim nodded towards the Spaniard’s body. They’d laid him on his poncho, used two fence poles to turn it into a stretcher. The Mongol, the squad’s hulking medic, had lodged their dead comrade’s severed head in his ruined chest cavity to stop it from rolling around; he was their friend, but they were all practical people. Ivack blanched when he saw the mess the corpse was in. “Looks like he’s been hit by a Dashka , doesn’t he?” The Dashka was the DShK 12.7mm heavy machine gun. “Except it was fired from a sniper rifle. That’s a big round for a sniper rifle. Is there anything the KGB wants to share?” Vadim stretched his aching back and shifted his slung AK-74 into a slightly more comfortable position.

“Do you have the sniper?” Ivack managed. He looked as though he was about to throw up.

“I have my own snipers hunting him.”

“Then let us hope they can salvage something from your failure,” Ivack snarled, lips pulled back from his teeth. He was trying to brazen his way through his obvious horror at the Spaniard’s ruined body. It was clear Ivack had not been in Afghanistan very long; this sort of thing was positively commonplace. Vadim hadn’t stopped maintaining situational awareness either – it was a good reason not to have to look at Ivack. He was aware, and less than pleased, that Gulag had moved in closer, presumably to better hear what Ivack had to say. Farm Boy had moved in as well. Skull’s AKS-74 looked like a toy in the big Georgian’s hands. At close to six and a half feet tall, blond, blue-eyed, Private First Class Genadi Nikoladze looked like some kind of Aryan ideal. He was by far the fittest member of the squad.

Birdcall. Vadim looked over at the Fräulein. She’d heard it and was speaking urgently to the VDV officer, who ordered his men not to shoot as Skull and Princess grew out of the snow-covered landscape. They pushed the hoods back on their concealment suits as they made their way into the village. Princess made for Farm Boy, pulling the concealment suit off, and Skull headed towards Vadim and the KGB lieutenant.

Princess, at four months, was the newest member of their squad. Private Tasiya Yubenkova was athletic, slender, with crystalline blue eyes, platinum silver hair and the cheekbones of a Romanov. She was quite striking, a trait that tended to cause her nothing but trouble. Vadim tried not to grind his teeth as Ivack leered at her. His weren’t the only eyes following her, however, as she slid her Dragunov sniper rifle into a hard leather back sheath and crouched down to fold the concealment suit back into her pack.

“Report!” Ivack demanded as Skull approached. The Chechen sniper ignored him. After the Spaniard, Skull had been with Vadim the longest. He had been part of the ‘Moslem Battalion’ that had spearheaded the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and assassinated Prime Minister Hafizullah Amin. Junior Sergeant Elimkhan Kulikova’s nickname was well-earned: dark-haired, olive-skinned, and always trying to grow a beard in the field, he had a gaunt face, and the skin on his head looked oddly taut, as if stretched across bone. Some of the more superstitious soldiers in the Soviet 40th Army, those who were frightened of Asians, considered him a spectre of death, a reputation only enhanced by his aptitude as a sniper.

“How’d she do?” Vadim asked. He couldn’t help himself. He knew that Princess was more than capable: she was a world-class shot and had been attached to an anti-assassination squad within the Russian Olympic team, until the war had become such a drain on personnel that she had been transferred to a combat unit. For some reason, however, he couldn’t force himself to stop feeling protective of her, something she knew and resented.

Skull hesitated for a moment as he unscrewed the homemade suppressor from the barrel of his .303 Lee Enfield rifle. He’d taken the old bolt-action rifle from a mujahideen sniper he’d had a two-day-long duel with. It was more accurate than the Dragunov SVD rifle that most Soviet snipers carried. The previous owner had carved designs into the wooden furniture of the rifle, but they were obscured by the white pieces of fabric that Skull had tied to the weapon to camouflage it. The slight smile on the sniper’s thin lips was almost a grimace. It made him look more like a death’s head than ever.

“She did fine,” Skull told him.

“Soldier, I gave you an order!” Ivack shouted. Eyes turned their way, and Vadim saw the squad tense. Princess had shouldered her pack and taken her AKS-74 back from Farm Boy. Her eyes were boring into the back of Ivack’s head like a pair of blue lasers. The two snipers were very close, understandably. Skull ignored the KGB lieutenant.

“Find anything?” Vadim asked.

“He shot from about half a mile out, moved position each time. Whatever he used was big and heavy, much more than even big bore hunting rifles.” Skull removed a magazine of sub-sonic rounds from the .303 and replaced it with a magazine of normal rounds. The brigade armourer had to custom manufacture ammunition for Skull’s rifle, though the sniper took a lot from dead mujahideen as well.

“Soldier, that weapon is clearly not regulation!” Ivack had drool running down his chin now.

“Local footwear,” Skull continued, still ignoring the KGB officer. “But judging by the tracks, length and depth of stride: tall, heavy…”

“Well fed,” Vadim finished. Skull nodded. Their American mercenary.

“Why did you return before you had completed the task set to you!” Ivack was all but screaming now. Vadim felt like backing away from the lieutenant and into the lee of the transport helicopter; he was sure the American sniper would be able to hear the KGB officer no matter where he was.

“Because I told him to,” Vadim snapped, with command in his voice. Ivack’s mouth snapped shut, though he glared at the captain. “Anything else?”

“Present for you,” Skull said and produced a shell casing from one of the pouches on his webbing and handed it to Vadim. “He was careless.” Vadim examined the shell casing. He checked the figures stamped into the metal on the bottom of it. Ivack held out his hand.

“Give me that bullet, captain,” he said.

“It’s not a bullet, lieutenant,” Vadim said mildly, still studying it. “It’s a shell casing. The bullet probably blew a hole in that wall over there, or bounced off the gunship’s armour.” He looked up at Ivack. “Or blew my friend’s head off.” He held up the casing. “This is a fifty-calibre round. NATO use these in their heavy machine guns. Why is it being fired from a sniper rifle?” Ivack still had his hand out.

“I said—” Ivack started.