Dead Shot, page 25
“Somewhere along the way, the hajjis came into possession of an M120 heavy mortar. Normally this 120 mm weapon is carried on an M1100 trailer attached to a Humvee, or by truck or tracked vehicle, but the insurgents have developed a suitable alternative method of transport.”
Darren Rawls spoke up, in his Mississippi drawl. “You mean the ragheads stuff it in the trunk of a car.”
The officer cleared his throat. “Yes. Anyway, once it is mobile, the mortar can be moved into position to provide high-angle organic indirect fire support across a wide area with high-explosive, illumination, or smoke rounds. It requires a crew of four men.”
Swanson knew the M120 weapon well and respected its ability to lay down good fire support. It was not only able to be put into a car but also could be broken down and man-humped by the four guys on the crew. One would carry the tube, another the base plate, the third took the bipod, and the fourth would have the lightweight sight and the ammo. Even assembled, the thing only weighed a little over three hundred pounds. Once in place, it could fire up to four rounds a minute, then be torn down and moved to a new location before counterbattery fire could find them.
From Swanson’s viewpoint on this job, it would be almost ideal because that four-man crew would train and fight together, which meant they would be together during the down time, too. He wanted them all. It was important that he have more than one target in order to get the message to Juba.
Middleton and the Trident team had guessed right that Juba had fled to Iraq; then the net was narrowed even tighter, to the Tikrit area, through a diplomatic communication from Syria. Somebody in Damascus had dropped a dime on Juba, and now Kyle had to draw him out.
“And you have this one located? A solid ID?”
The briefer was back on stride. “We have a high confidence in the location.” He clicked on a narrow laser pointer and a red dot ran across the photo on the wall. “There’s the car, and there’s the house that the crew is in. Humint confirms the photo reconnaissance.”
“Humint” was military-speak for human intelligence, which meant somebody actually saw it. The best kind of intelligence there is. He looked over at Sybelle, who glanced his way and nodded.
“How fresh is this?” she asked the briefer.
“The photograph was taken this morning,” he said. “We consider it to be actionable intelligence.”
Sure you do, Kyle thought. You aren’t the one that has to get out there and kill them. “I’m go with it, then,” he said. “We need to move fast.”
The area was the hotbed of Iraqi opposition during the opening battles of the war and the violent aftermath, and enemy eyes were still always watching what was happening in and around Combat Operating Base Speicher, only three kilometers outside of Tikrit. Swanson felt that he was always being watched from the other side of the wire, although Task Force Hammer of the U.S. 1st Armored Division kept security tight.
Swanson knew that security and secrecy were two different things, and loyalty to Saddam Hussein ran deep in the dictator’s hometown on the Tigris River. Saddam built his biggest presidential palace there, drew the members of his inner circle from his home tribe, and was now buried near there. Tikrit, a hundred miles northwest of Baghdad, was an anchor point of the hostile Sunni Triangle.
Even at one o’clock in the morning, as Swanson led the Trident assault team aboard the helicopter, he felt as if some Iraqi diehard were counting noses and radioing an alert. They all wore loose local clothing and face paint. As a precaution, the helicopter took off in a direction ninety degrees different from the true target area. It would circle back to the attack path only when it was well clear of the base.
They were dropped in an empty area four kilometers from the town that contained the suspect house and automobile, and Travis Hughes took point as they trotted forward in silence. No talking, no metal jangling, no hard breathing, just a half-dozen shadows moving steadily in the dark of a moonless night. A steady wind helped mask their approach, keeping their scent away from the animals.
Few lights flickered in the windows during this dead time of night, and the group steered clear of them, carefully threading through the outlying streets and clinging to the shelter of walls and alleyways. They seldom paused and entered the tangled neighborhood where the suspects were without detection. Joe Tipp snaked forward on his belly, elbows, and knees to scout the house. No one was on guard, and the old white Ford sedan with a rusting roof sat just where it had been shown in the intel photo, right outside the gate of a small wall around the house.
Hughes fell in beside Kyle to be his spotter, and the two of them scurried away to set up a stable firing position while Captain Rick Newman fanned out the others in a protective arc and messaged Sybelle that they were in place.
“You sure you want to do it this way, Shake?” asked Hughes. “I don’t like being so exposed.” They were in prone position in the middle of a street.
“We want to be seen, Travis. This time, I want people to know that a sniper was at work here.”
“Still. Just saying.”
“I know. Come on. Let’s build the range card.”
At four o’clock, Kyle clicked his microphone twice, and Newman and Rawls set off at a lope around the front of the house. Swanson nestled his cheek into the custom-made stock of his personal sniper rifle, the Excalibur, and brought the scope to rest on the engine of the car. His world began to slow down as the moment of action neared.
Rawls started kicking at the front door, hard and noisily, and Newman smashed his rifle into the glass of a window, shattering it. Voices were heard yelling inside. Newman popped in a red smoke grenade. Neither man had said a word while causing the occupants of the house to head for the back door.
Out they came, some of them coughing and wiping at their eyes as the trails of red smoke followed them. Hughes had his binos on them. “One, two, another, four. That’s all of them. Nobody else coming out.” The mortar crew made straight for the car, and Swanson waited until they were all inside and the doors were slamming. “Fire. Fire. Fire.”
He let his finger pull back slowly on the trigger and Excalibur roared, snapping a.50 caliber round down the street. It burrowed into the engine block, and the car shook with the impact. Now it was a matter of reloading and shooting fast, but accurately, at men trapped in a ruined car only a hundred meters straight ahead of him. He took out the driver first, before the man released the steering wheel.
“Target down,” reported Hughes. The man seated behind the driver jumped out and filled the sight. Kyle shot him in the chest. “Target down!”
Swanson shifted to the other side of the vehicle and nailed the man scrambling from the passenger seat. He was part of his rifle, the world a black-and-white place of mechanical action and reaction, and he felt the new bullet reloading as the old brass ejected out. “Target down.”
There was one more, and he ran. Excalibur roared again and the bullet tore out the Iraqi fighter’s heart as the forward momentum propelled him into the courtyard. “Target down,” Hughes said. “Let’s get out of here, Kyle.”
“Follow the plan, Travis. Stay with the plan.” Swanson watched the Marines form up near him, in the shadows, and Hughes joined them. Rawls and Newman were back.
“Helo inbound,” said Newman.
Kyle Swanson stood up in the street, holding the ominously long Excalibur at his side with his left hand, and moved without hesitation toward the car. Lights were coming on, but no one was yet on the street. Fear and confusion were making them pause. He paced deliberately forward until he was standing beside the body of the man who had been behind the driver.
Swanson propped Excalibur against the car and used his knife to cut off part of the dead man’s shirt, which he twisted into a knot. Squatting beside the car, he dipped the shirt in his victim’s blood and slowly wrote a single word on the driver’s door: JUBA. Wherever he found Juba, the secrets to the poison gas would be nearby. The terrorist would never let that information be far from his side, and it was more dangerous than he was. A matched set, and Kyle had to get them both this time.
He picked up his rifle and strode away, a perfect target but also a fearsome figure in the darkness. The neighbors had heard some noise, but no talking, then a volley of five steady shots from a high-velocity rifle. That meant “sniper,” and while no one wanted to stick a head out the door, they did watch from the windows.
When he reached the Marines in the shadows, Darren Rawls grabbed him by the shirt and pushed him forward, making him run, and Kyle’s senses rolled back into normal time. “You a crazy mutha, you know that?” called Rawls into his ear, running right beside him. “Now haul your ass!”
26
HARGATT, IRAQ
T HE CITY OF T IKRIT is hemmed in tightly by a dirty necklace of small towns and villages, and in one of them, a tangled little place called Hargatt, a tense meeting was under way. Light razored sharply through the window of a bullet-pocked two-story building, illuminating a husky, bearded man who sat in a worn green chair in the main downstairs room. Guards were at every window and on the roof, and one stood directly behind him. The area commander of the Iraqi insurgency asked, “Why did you do this thing, Juba?”
“I told you. I did not do it. What reason would I have to kill four of your men, who are helping to protect me?” Juba had been staying at the man’s spacious and comfortable home since arriving in Tikrit. He had already secured a new laptop computer and filled it with the data from the disk that al-Shoum had provided in Syria, plus the vital material from the memory stick that he had carried for three days in his rectum. Juba was back in business.
“The townspeople have described in detail that a man wearing our style of garments and carrying a long rifle had the courage to walk down the middle of the street after the murders. He wrote your name in blood-Why?-and then walked away again. Walked, as if he owned the town! No Shiite dog would take that chance, and certainly no American.”
“One would. His name is Kyle Swanson, he is a Marine sniper, and he wants to personally kill me.”
The commander took a few breaths before speaking again. “You did noble things in London and the state of California, Juba, and for that, I have granted you sanctuary. But death follows you like a plague.”
Juba motioned toward the guards and the windows. “How long has this war been going on? You and the people of Tikrit are no strangers to death. I didn’t bring it. It was already here.”
“Why would this Swanson Marine do this thing last night? It was foolhardy. He would be aware of what we do to captured snipers, but his audacity stunned and delayed the fighters who might otherwise have swarmed outside and taken him. That was why many of them thought it was you out there.”
“Swanson was, ah, communicating with me. Telling me he was around here and looking.”
Finally a glimmer came into the man’s eyes. “So he will be back?”
“Yes. No doubt.”
“Are you afraid?”
Juba softly laughed. “No. Of course not. I want him to find me, because I am going to kill him.”
The commander’s mind was suddenly busy with ideas. “Then we shall lure him in close and hope that he brings many friends. You kill him, we kill them.”
“I like that,” said Juba. “Just be sure to leave him for me.” Once he cleared away the Swanson obstacle, he would find a safe haven and resume the auction process. General al-Shoum would not be pleased to learn that he had been swindled, but Juba planned to be a long way from Syria by then. Tahiti and Fiji both sounded good.
“First, let us show the Swanson Marine that what he did will not be tolerated.” The commander smiled. “Go and communicate with him.”
COB SPEICHER
Kyle Swanson was in a bunk, fast asleep after the night’s work. The rest of the Trident strike team was doing the same thing, while beyond their separate building, U.S. Army troops were going about their daily routines.
An armored patrol rumbled out through the front gate of the combat base, large warfighting machines clanking in the lead and helicopters zipping ahead to look for threats along the wide road. A short time later, several smaller patrols went out, spreading to different directions and different roads. Iraqi civilians were also on the move, wary when approaching American roadblocks. Unemployed young men and kids congregated on some corners in the towns as American troops moved through on foot. Shops were open. Business as usual.
Swanson snored peacefully. He had made his move, and now, while sleeping without dreams, he was still at work, a sniper lying in wait for his target. Army psychological operations teams were in high gear all around Tikrit, handing out paper flyers with Juba’s photograph and broadcasting over the radio and loudspeakers mounted on vehicles, promising a five-million-dollar reward to whoever turned him in.
Kyle had nothing to kill but time. It was Juba’s move.
HARGATT
The insurgent commander and Juba stood on the flat roof of the tallest building in town while guards listened for marauding American helicopters that might see them. The advantage of height increased the distance they could see, and they had a good view of the spot where a road crested a small ridge and then came down into a little valley and a bridge under which a canal flowed to the Tigris.
“The Americans always vary their routes of approach, but there are only so many routes they can take. Repetition is inevitable.” The commander pointed toward the ridgeline. “Before they approach our area, they usually stop at the top of that high ground, as you see, and take time to study what is going on before moving forward.”
Through his binoculars, Juba studied the site. A pair of gigantic M1A2 Abrams tanks were on each side of the road, with their 120 mm cannons and array of machine guns having total command of the area. Other armored vehicles, both tracked and wheeled, rolled arrogantly down the main road, occasionally stopping to let a patrol dismount.
The commander had it all figured out. “See? When they stop, you can shoot them.”
“All right,” said Juba, shifting his binoculars around the zone. “See that farmhouse about halfway down the slope? I want your people to clear it out tonight so I can use it tomorrow morning.”
“Of course,” said the commander. “We all look forward to seeing a display of your skill against the Crusaders.”
Juba gave a slight bow of appreciation but said nothing as they went back downstairs and into another building for some lunch. If he took a shot from that farmhouse, those big Abrams would be on him in a heartbeat with a hurricane of plunging fire, then the Humvees, armored personnel carriers, and troops would run over him, unless they decided to let an Apache helicopter gunship take care of the job. He had no intention of telling anyone, including the commander, where he would set up. Not with that five-million-dollar reward on his head.
During the afternoon, he borrowed a car and went out alone. As the commander said, there were only so many roads that the Americans could take into the area. Out of the bleak terrain and houses, an opportunity rose like a mirage at a little crossroads, and Juba stopped the vehicle beneath a few tall palm trees, got out, and walked around. His eyes studied the isolated area and the single Iraqi government traffic policeman on duty. The deep ruts made by the passing of numerous tracked vehicles spiderwebbed the crossing. The Americans came this way often.
Then he restarted the car and drove some more to find the second site he wanted. This was payback for Swanson’s daring raid, and the method in which the challenge would be answered had to be special. The scorecard would be kept in human lives not their own.
Back at the safe house before nightfall, he studied a map, ate only a bite of food, and went shopping for the few supplies he needed for the coming hours. He retired to his room about eight o’clock and spent a long time cleaning the weapon he had chosen from the insurgents’ stockpile, a beautiful HS.50 Steyr Mannlicher long-range, single-shot, bolt-action, precision-fire sniper rifle that could punch right through the body armor worn by the Americans.
A few hours after midnight, he left the house. He had a small backpack that contained some rations and his compact computer.
COB SPREICHER
“He’s out there tonight. I can feel it,” Kyle Swanson told Sybelle Summers as they sat atop a sandbagged bunker and watched a pair of bright flares drift down on small parachutes to the west. A moment later came the chatter of an automatic weapon and the loud booms of a big gun. “He will hit back soon.”
“I don’t know, Kyle. Task Force Hammer has things pretty well buttoned up. Patrols were rolling in and out of the gate all day, and the surrounding bases report nothing unusual.”
Swanson pulled his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms around them, rocking back and forth, feeling the muscles stretch. “Would all that stop you, if you were him?”
She picked at a rip in one of the bags, and the sand beneath was hard. Been there a long time. “No. Just slow down and take my time. Pick my spot.”
“Umm. That’s what he’s doing, too.”
A shadow appeared beside them and Travis Hughes flopped down. “Hey.”
“Hey,” said Sybelle.
“Let me pick your brains here,” said Swanson. “Juba is pissed off and wants to get even, right? But what is going to be his target, and can we stop him?”
“Hell, Shake, we can’t stop the bastard until we know where he is. As for the target, my bet would be that he is going to want to match your number of kills, if not surpass it.” Hughes spit over the side of the bunker.
