Part 2His name was John Reese, and he was going to die.
The first portion should have bothered him and didn’t. Four months had passed since Kara Stanton had chosen his new name for him. It had provided a poor start to their partnership because Kara’s take on the process had been annoying, as if she were naming a pet instead of a human being who was supposed to work with her as an equal. In spite of that, he had eventually settled into the new name the same way he adjusted to a new pair of boots that chafed when he first put them on. With time and usage, it had begun to fit more comfortably. Truth be told, he was relieved that she had settled on Reese. Her first suggestion had been Wilson, which was reminiscent of a movie character portrayed by a volleyball. Not the sort of name he wanted to carry around for the rest of his career. The name originally assigned by NCS had been worse. Whatever his gripe with Kara’s way of going about it, Reese had turned out to be an acceptable choice, to the degree that he had begun to like it better than his real name.
The part about dying should not have bothered him and it did. Not the dying aspect. That was what he had signed up for, both when he joined the army and when he had accepted his current position. What annoyed him was that his death was going to be the result of nothing more than bad luck. Getting shot in the middle of a fierce fire fight with ordnance flying in all directions he could have accepted. Catching one of only two bullets fired, and a ricochet at that, seemed like a pointless way to die.
He had been one of four people on a team assigned to a mission in Afghanistan. In addition to him, the team had consisted of Kara Stanton and two Special Forces operators who were there to help share the work load and, if necessary, provide fire support. The brief involved a drop off by helicopter, three days of hard travel to where they expected to find their target, execute the mission—with an emphasis on ‘execute’—then haul ass out of the area before the enraged supporters of the recently deceased could catch up with the team and cut them into little pieces.
The first two days had gone according to plan. There had not been any surprises, they had not stumbled over unexpected patrols or blundered into any villagers who might have reported their presence, the intelligence provided concerning route and terrain had been accurate. They were breaking camp before dawn on the third day when things went to shit. The two SF’s were ready to go, packs on their backs and weapons in their hands, when everyone heard the quiet gritty whisper of footsteps on sand-covered stone, and an Afghan tribesman strolled into their camp.
Kara had barked out, “Kill him!” Both specialists had snapped their rifles to their shoulders and pulled the triggers. One round struck the intruder in the center of his forehead and his body collapsed to the ground. The second bullet—one foot and a fraction of a second behind the first—had passed through empty air where the man’s head had been, hit a rock, whanged off a second chunk of stone, and hit Reese squarely in the midsection.
He remembered staring dumbly down at his own stomach where the soggy red patch on his shirt had been expanding outward in a rush, Kara letting out a string of profanity, and the man who had fired second saying, “Oh, shit!” His memory of the following hour was less clear. Kara and the larger of the two specialists had dragged the body away to be hidden while the other guy attempted to stop the bleeding and bandaged the wound. There was no discussion concerning who the strange man had been, why he was in the middle of nowhere, or how he had managed to walk into their camp before any of the four team members heard him coming. Attempting to answer those questions was pointless. All that mattered was that he had appeared, Kara had jumped to her standard solution for most problems, and the two operators had responded as they had been trained. After that, a quirk of fate had taken over. Lousy luck and a trajectory that no one could have predicted had put Reese and the bullet in the same spot at the same time.
Kara’s commentary on the debacle had been limited to, “Sorry, John. You know how it is. The mission comes first.” She had seemed more upset at having to switch to one of the contingency plans than she had been at losing her new partner. The other two members of the team had been more sympathetic. They had left him with as much food and water as they could spare, worked together with him to plot out the easiest route to friendly territory in case he could walk out on his own, and departed reluctantly.
If the second shooter had been a hair faster or the bullet had hit the first rock an inch to either side, he would still be part of the mission, undoubtedly hot-footing it toward their extraction point by this time. Instead, he was on his own, miles from a friendly installation, with a bullet lodged in a spot that was indescribably painful, a slow seepage of blood that refused to quit, and no way to extricate himself other than on his own two feet. The team would not be coming back this way. Their planned exfiltration route would take them in a different direction.
After two days of slow travel, he had covered less than half the distance to the nearest forward outpost where he could expect to find help, and he had resigned himself to the fact that unless he crossed paths with a patrol or convoy of some sort, he was not going to make it. The bleeding was slow but inexorable, the wound was showing signs that it had become infected, and the pain made it difficult to walk. Every time he moved his right leg, it felt like someone was thrusting an acid coated red hot metal rod through his gut from front to back. Subjecting his nervous system to the repetitive waves of pain kept him teetering on the brink of shock. He began spending too much time in a semi-conscious daze, stumbling along chilled and nauseous, unaware of his surroundings. After slipping into that state for the sixth time, he set up a twenty minute timer on his watch. Each time it went off, he stopped, allowed the physical symptoms to abate, waited for his brain to resume normal functioning, and checked his navigation. While the solution was effective, it slowed him down. The number of miles he was able to cover each day continued to drop.
By midmorning on the third day, he was down to walking in ten minute intervals and resting three times that long before moving on. He was low on water, he had developed a fever that was adding to his disorientation, and the pain in his gut was constant whether he was moving or not. That was the moment he reconciled himself to the fact that he was going to die. Reese picked out a spot on a chair-sized boulder that would make it easier to get back to his feet, set his pack and his weapon on a nearby rock so he would not have to bend over to pick them up, and eased down onto the perch he had chosen. It was time to make a decision about how he wanted to use the time he had left.
The only options remaining were whether he wanted to keep walking in what he considered a vain attempt to find some help, or find some quiet spot, possibly with a nice view, and spend his final hours sitting peacefully. The second choice called to him. He would have preferred that his final moments were not spent subjecting his body to thought-shattering levels of pain. The core nature of his personality wanted to choose Door Number One. The pig-headed portion of his psyche was insisting that he not give up, that he should continue fighting to live no matter how futile the struggle.
Reese drifted for a while, slipping back and forth between useful thought and the uncontrolled semi-conscious mixture of dream images and reality. The word ‘Why’ kept rising to the surface while he was in that state. Why go on struggling when the outcome had already been determined? Why was he compelled to be so stubborn about clinging to life? Why had this happened? Why was he here, in this place at this time? Why not let go?
He was sinking deeper into insensibly, giving in to his injuries without intending to take that path, when a tiny physical sensation drew him back from the mental abyss. A vibration shivered through the rock underneath his body. He felt it in his ass and in the soles of his feet. If that had been all there was too it, he might have slipped back into the dark and never resurfaced. But he felt it again. It was like coming home at the end of a long day’s travel, seeing the first of a series of familiar landmarks that said, “This is where you belong; this is the place where you live.” His head came up, his mind cleared, and he knew what was generating the vibrations.
Explosions. Possibly artillery or shoulder-fired rockets, more likely mortars. And now that he was more alert, he could hear the crackling of sustained gunfire. That meant humans were nearby. The ratio of good guys to bad guys remained to be seen.
Reese made the agonizing transition from sitting down to standing up, stood motionless and breathing shallowly until the chills and sweating died down, and then gathered up his pack and rifle. He would go uphill, he decided. There was a rocky outcropping on the crest of the ridgeline ahead. The mound of rocks would provide some cover while he figured out what was going on.
It took longer than he liked to reach his destination. He arrived clear-headed though, which was good since twenty feet from his goal he realized it was not a good spot for a sniper. No matter how he positioned himself, he would be clearly visible at the top of the ridge. He shifted to the right, climbing slightly, and found a gap in the rocks that promised adequate concealment. Reese let his ruck drop to the ground, went down on one knee long enough to dig through the contents for the pouches of ammunition and the spotter’s scope, and began a slow squirm forward into position.
He had been struggling with the decision whether to leave his rifle and all of its ammunition behind ever since he began his slow retreat. Each time he opened his rucksack to dump out the ordnance he could not bring himself to do it. He should have. It would have been the right thing to do. The rifle itself, a MacMillan TAC-338, weighed over fifteen pounds with the legs and sights attached. Add on the range finder, wind meter, and shells for it, and he was lugging around twenty pounds that he did not need, doubly so since he was injured. By all rights, he shouldn’t have needed it. On the other hand, neither did Kara. She was one of the best he had ever seen up close. At hand gun range, she could put Annie Oakley to shame. At a distance, she was self-admittedly pathetic, which probably had something to do with why they had been put together as partners. Place a long range rifle in her hands, and as she had once put it, she couldn’t hit Afghanistan if she was standing on it. The contingency plan in the event that Reese got knocked out had nothing to do with using the TAC-338, which meant that it could remain with him, if he wanted it.
Reese had chosen to hang on to it. The prospect of traipsing around Afghanistan with no rifle felt suicidal. He reasoned that he could always decide to get rid of it later … and never did. He had hauled the useless weight for three days, allowing it to sap his energy and slow him down. Now he knew why. This moment had been waiting for him.
The spotter’s scope answered the question of good guys versus bad guys. He took one good, long look, studying the situation, set it aside, and picked up the rifle. He glanced at his shadow to check the position of the sun, lay down on his stomach, and inched forward. He checked the position of the sun one more time, to be certain he was not about to inadvertently sent out bright flashes of code saying, “There’s a lens up here on the hill, please come shoot me,” settled into position behind the scope, and took a closer look at the situation below.
He was perched on one end of a series of hills that formed a half ring around flat open ground. The hills curved off to his right and extended away from his position in an arc, slowly climbing higher as they progressed. Flat plains stretched out for miles to his left with snowcapped mountains in the far distance. That view was incidental. Everything he was interested in was contained in the area surrounded by the hills.
On the left was an immobilized column of vehicles. Some were on fire, putting out impressive amounts of smoke. All of them were either disabled or completely destroyed. To the right of that was a dry river bed with sheer vertical walls. Troops in camouflage uniforms were pinned down there. Short of sticking their heads up like targets in a carnival shooting gallery, they had no way to establish a line of fire on the people doing most of the shooting, and considering the depth of the gulch, possibly no communications in order to call for support. Reese expended three precious seconds studying the uniforms. They were part of the allied force fighting the Taliban. That was not difficult to figure out. He was able to rule out the Americans and the British. There was too much green in the camouflage pattern and the helmets were wrong. He pushed that unknown aside. There would be time to find out who they were if he and they lived through the next couple of hours.
He shifted his sightline to the right. The bad guys were spread out behind cover that had been built up in advance, putting a steady stream of small arms fire onto the tops of the river bed to keep the troops trapped in the gulch. Farther back were several mortars. They had begun firing, adjusting their aim after each round, walking the explosions toward the force trapped in the river bed. Personnel were gathered around each mortar. They were taking their time; they had no reason to hurry. The force in the river bed was pinned down.
All of the why’s he had been contemplating earlier were answered. The events of the last three days—lousy luck, ricochets with a mind of their own, the nonsensical decision to continue carrying the TAC-338, his stubborn insistence that he keep walking when he knew it was futile—had worked together to bring him to this place at this moment, where he could do a final bit of good before ending his time on the planet. He could do something no one else could. With skill and a light sprinkling of luck, he could upset the plans of the Taliban troops down below.
It would have been easy to hurry. The force trapped in the river bed was intact; they remained a potentially effective fighting force. A single well-aimed mortar shell could change that. He also did not want them to break out early. He could see them moving around, getting ready for an assault. He wanted time to create some disorder before that happened. It would increase their chances of success. The need to start shooting began to build. Take your time, he reminded himself. Get it right on the first try. The extra seconds spent preparing will pay off. Firing in haste without the correct preparation could undermine what he hoped to accomplish.
He studied the forces on the right, choosing targets, mapping out the best way to inflict confusion and mayhem. The first few rounds would be freebies. He would be able to get off between two and six rounds, possibly as many as eight if he could create enough confusion, before the men down there realized what was happening and began looking for the source of the shooting. Every round after that would increase the likelihood that his position would come under attack.
The mortars were his primary target. It was critical that he disable them, preferably with the first three shots. After that, the goal would be to inflict fear. Reese watched for patterns in how the men interacted with each other, deciding who might be the coolest under fire, picking out the leaders who could restore order. Those individuals would be his second priority. After that, he would look for targets of opportunity, which meant identifying anyone who looked as though he was capable of picking up a weapon and shooting straight while a sniper was operating in the area.
The optics slid across a symmetrical arrangement several yards behind the mortar tubes. He stopped the slow left-to-right travel and reversed direction. The Taliban had a made a mistake, one stemming from over confidence and the overwhelmingly successful start to their ambush. Several dozen mortar shells were arranged on the ground, out in the open. Setting one off would not be easy. If he could, the payoff would be worth the effort. He might be able to blow up the entire collection. Reese smiled. This was going to be fun.
He arranged his rounds where his hand would fall on them naturally, slid the first one into the chamber, and eased the bolt home. He let his body settle onto the ground in a loose, relaxed sprawl, and snugged the stock of the rifle into place. He was where he belonged. Happenstance had brought him here for a reason. His body faded away. He no longer hurt, no longer felt light headed or weak. There was no fever, aching muscles, headache, or thirst. He was exactly where he was supposed to be, ready to engage in an activity that he had spent his entire adult life training to perform with expert capability. The planet shifted on its axis a few degrees, and he felt the rightness of the new alignment. Call it karma, call it fate, call it destiny. The terminology did not matter. He was in harmony with the universe. Reese settled his sights on the spot where the tube and the legs of the nearest mortar all came together, let out his breath, waited for his pulse rate to drop, timed his shot so it fell between heartbeats, and squeezed the trigger.
He expected to miss with his first several shots. His adjustments for range, wind, and elevation had been wild ass guesses instead of the careful calculations that accurate marksmanship required. His first shot was a real-world demonstration of ‘Better lucky than good’. He hit the spot he was aiming for dead center, no adjustments required.
He went three for three on the mortars. An attempt to put a second round into the middle tube, just to be sure it was disabled, worked out better than he could have hoped. A body stepped between him and his target after he had begun the trigger pull, and he wound up killing one of the leaders he had designated as a second priority target. Call it four for four even though the hit was unintentional. He was on a roll, and men were running in all directions, scrambling for cover as they figured out that they were dealing with a sniper. He found someone standing in one spot, gesturing and yelling out commands, trying to restore order, and removed him from the equation.
“First rule is move,” he said under his breath, and looked for another target.
The next man started to run at the last possible instant, but did not know where the bullets were coming from and foolishly ran in a straight line. He required two shots. Six out of seven wasn’t bad at this range. His next target was more experienced. It took three tries to bring him down. Seven for ten. Reese reloaded, slowly swept his sights back and forth across the chaos below, could not spot anything worth expending a round, and shifted his aim to the mortar shells.
The first round struck home without effect. He knew ahead of time it was not going to be easy. He tried two more times, changed targets long enough to keep the enemy from reestablishing order, then returned to the shells, taking his time, trying for a precise hit mid-shell where the explosive charge would be located. Bullets from return fire had begun to smack into the ground and buzz past him before he managed to hit something cataclysmic. He wished he could have been close enough to get a good view as the first shell exploded. It blew up with a satisfyingly loud blast, shrapnel flew in all directions, and something either in or near the collection caught fire. Men started to run toward the fire in order to salvage the ordnance, realized what was in the midst of the blaze, and frantically reversed direction.
On the far side of the open ground, three men were attempting to get an ancient armored vehicle moving. It looked like leftover Russian equipment from the 80’s. Normally the best choice was to shoot the driver, not the vehicle. He could not guarantee that what he was firing would pierce the old style Russian-made armor. Reese tracked back to the mortar rounds lying on the ground. Most were in the fire; some had begun to explode. On the right side of the array were three undamaged shells, butt ends facing toward him. He checked the alignment several times, and chose the one in the middle. It looked like it was pointed in the right direction.
“You’re dreaming,” he whispered to himself. The target was scarcely larger than his bullets, and he had serious doubts whether this would work. It rated a single attempt. No matter what the outcomes, after one try he would move on to other objectives. He took his time, believed he could make the shot, willed the bullet to fly straight, and caressed the trigger. His luck had shifted from ridiculously bad to insanely good. The bullet hit the fuse, the shell took off across the ground, skipped twice without hitting the nose, struck the armored vehicle on one of the front wheels, and detonated. The front end of the vehicle went up in a burst of flames, smoke, and fast moving metal shards, and the entire vehicle flipped over on its back.
Reese expended two precious seconds watching the devastation before getting back to work. By this time, they had figured out where he was located. Bullets were fizzing overhead, thumping into the dirt below his position, and smacking into the rocks. He ignored the incoming rounds, and began searching for targets of opportunity. Several men were attempting to save one of the mortar tubes. He shot one of them, the rest ran, and he put two more bullets into the abandoned mortar. A round whanged off a rock six inches to his right. Reese reloaded, searched for someone with a larger, more powerful rifle, and sent a bullet back in the direction of the man who had just fired at him. His aim was better. Another figure ran toward the rifle now lying on the ground. Reese waited until he bent to pick it up, and squeezed the trigger. No one seemed interested in retrieving the rifle after that.
He had begun to look for another target when the men in the distance shifted their attention from Reese’s position to a different direction. The amount of gunfire down below abruptly increased. The noise of weapons firing gained strength, and suddenly men were falling to the ground and getting knocked off their feet. Those still standing began to retreat, trying to fall back in a coordinated movement, but one side of the formation began to take fire, then the other, and the attempt at an orderly withdrawal turned into a confused melee.
Reese swung his scope to the left. The soldiers from the river bed had broken out. They were arranged in a three pronged attack, advancing one segment at a time, two units laying down heavy fire while the third moved forward a certain distance, established a firing line, and waited for another section to advance. The movements were well coordinated, fast, decisive, and devastatingly effective. Reese did what he could to assist by firing on the Taliban positions, sowing more panic and confusion. Even exceptionally well-trained forces would find it hard to hold their ground when a sniper had an unobstructed line of fire into their positions.
The combination worked. Individuals began to break and run. Firing from the Taliban became more sporadic, the camouflaged troops continued to move forward, and increasing numbers of the men arrayed on the right side of the battlefield began to fall. Reese continued to fire into the clusters of men huddled behind what had become defensive positions, letting them know that they could not hold out indefinitely, and suddenly it was over. Rifles were being thrown to the ground and hands were in the air.
Reese kept his sight trained on the Taliban forces, watching for anything that might upset the rout, anything that the forces wearing camouflage might not be able to see. A man who had been doing something near the vehicles walked forward to join the small gathering of fighters who had surrendered. In a different country, under other circumstances, Reese would have categorized the event as ordinary. On one level it was unremarkable and not worthy of additional surveillance or consideration. Except they were in Afghanistan, this was the Taliban, and the man was walking awkwardly. Reese centered his sight on the man, poured all of his concentration into how the distant, miniscule figure was moving, and tried to determine what it was that made his movements appear awkward.
It was nine-tenths hunch, one-tenth observation. The man had something large and heavy hidden inside his robes.
There was no way of knowing whether he was about to produce a white flag of surrender, a suicide bomb, or something that he could use to inflict mass casualties on the advancing force from the river bed. Reese decided to err on the side of caution. The approaching troops were getting close. It made him anxious. He hurried the shot, snatched at the trigger with too much haste, and missed. The group of Taliban reacted. Their movements conveyed that they knew what he was trying to do and who he was attempting to kill, which made him want to hurry even more. Reese forced himself to relax, exhaled and held it there, calm and ready while he waited for the man with the mysterious object to come back into view. He saw a body start to shift out of the way to one side, and with infinite care, reminding himself that every movement should be conducted smoothly, squeezed the trigger.
The man exploded, taking all of his comrades with him. The dead were spread out in a ring around the blast mark where the man had been standing. It broke the will of the remaining Taliban forces. Anyone still able to move turned and ran. Within two minutes, the only people left were the men in the camouflage uniforms, the dead and the dying.
Reese checked on the force he had labelled as the Good Guys. Eight of the soldiers who had been at the front of the advance had been knocked flat on their backs by the final explosion. As he watched, they sat up, moving in a manner that suggested they were dazed, and their comrades helped them to their feet. Everyone was up and moving. They all had four limbs attached to their bodies and he could not see any red splotches or gestures that indicated they had been wounded. His choice had been the right one. He had saved lives.
The Good Guys had won. He let the stock of his rifle settle into the dirt, lowered his head onto his right forearm, took two slow breaths, and allowed all of his physiology to resume its normal function. Awareness of his body returned. He did not welcome the restoration of physical sensations. There was a slick feeling area under his stomach that meant blood had pooled between his body and the rock underneath, the intensity of the pain had increased to the point that the pulses were reverberating from throat to pelvis, he did not have the strength to get to his feet, and perhaps worst of all in light of that overwhelming weakness, he needed to piss. It would have to wait. His first priority was to lie there and let nature take its course. As he lost consciousness, it was with full awareness that if he let go—if he relaxed, stop struggling, stop fighting to live, and eased his grip on consciousness long enough to escape from the pain temporarily—he might never wake up. In light of how his recent excitement had worked out, he was content with that possibly.
He woke to the sound of hushed voices, footsteps, and the rattle of a dislodged rock. Whoever was approaching, it was not the Taliban. They were not speaking any of the languages of this region. The cadence and the intonation of syllables were wrong. Another quiet exchange between two people gave him more to work with. They were speaking French. The greenish camouflage design and the helmets he had seen earlier fit together with some memories of joint exercises conducted in Europe. The Good Guys were members of the Armée de Terre. The French Army.
He said, “Ici.”
Here.Four men appeared, moving cautiously, weapons at the ready. The moment they got a look at him, they relaxed and the muzzles of the rifles were turned away. The way he felt, it wasn’t surprising. It was unlikely that he presented much of a threat.
“Qui diable êtes-vous?” one of the men said.
Who the devil are you? “Un touriste américain.”
Someone let out a single laugh. The first voice was not as amused. “No jokes. Answer. Who the hell are you?” the man said in slow, heavily accented English.
Reese left his head where it was, resting on his forearm, and patted the stock of his rifle with his free hand. “I’m Davy Crockett and this here is Old Betsy. Who the hell are you?”
He knew they were French. What he wanted to know and what he would have asked if he’d had more energy was where they were based, what they were doing here, and how they had gotten into such a mess. The answer he received sent a tickling shiver of surprise down his spine, and answered none of his questions.
“Légion étrangère,” a different voice said. “Foreign Legion.”
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