Afghan Storm (Nick Woods Book 3) (14 page)

Chapter 39

They headed
off for the village, Nick instructing Truck to approach at a moderate pace.
Partly, this would prevent alarm. Nothing like a roaring truck in the early
morning hours to bring everyone running out with their weapons.

But the
other reason was Nick didn’t want them driving into a well-constructed ambush,
on the off-chance the residents had heard about the raid. So at eight hundred
yards, he asked Truck to stop while the four men scanned the town with scopes
and binoculars. It still looked clear.

But as they
loaded up to drive further forward, moving several hundred yards closer, two
boys stepped into the road from behind a compound wall. The boys were laughing
and smiling but stopped when they glanced down the road and saw the stopped
Toyota truck.

“Gun it or
hold up?” Truck asked.

Before Nick
could answer, the boys turned and raced back into the compound.

“Don’t sweat
it,” Nick said. “We couldn’t make it up there and through the town before their
fighters came shooting at us. Personally, I’d rather take our chances at long
range than a close firefight.”

“That’s what
they make scopes for,” Marcus said, leaning across the top of the cab with his
scoped AK-47.

Truck
backed the
Toyota down the road until they had re-established some safe distance. Ahead,
men stepped into the road and looked toward them. They were roughly eight
hundred yards away, barely visible at such a distance.

Marcus said,
“Some of them are coming out with weapons.”

Nick saw the
same thing through his binoculars. He stepped from the truck and checked their
six o’clock. No other vehicles were approaching them from the rear. Nick
returned his attention to their direct front. Ten or twelve men had moved into
the road, blocking their path. Weapons could just be made out among them. One
struggled to hold a medium machine gun against his hip.

“Before
things get any crazier,” Truck said, “can I interject that this has just been
the damned mission from hell?”

“Yeah. Nick
sure knows how to plan them,” Red said with a laugh. “You should really start
your own travel agency, boss.”

Nick stepped
from the truck and spit in the dirt. “Red,” he said.

The little
man seized mid laugh. “Uhh. Yes, sir?”

“Get me my
sniper rifle.”

Red left the
RPK sitting on its bipod legs on the cab and moved back by Ahmud al-Habshi, who
was still out cold. He picked up the Dragunov and handed it to Nick, who set
aside the binoculars and accepted it.

“Red,” Nick
said, “let’s give them a warning. Fire a burst well over their heads. We’ll let
them know it doesn’t have to go down like this, but they’re going to have to
let us through.”

Red climbed
back behind the RPK, clicked the weapon off safe, and aimed more than twenty
feet over their heads. Bada, bada, bada. The sound ripped apart the peace of
the quiet morning.

The
villagers dove to the ground, spreading out into a skirmish line. A few flashes
could be seen across the way, and Nick heard a round snap by. The rest fell
short.

“Fair
enough,” Nick said. “They want to play. We’ll play.”

Nick jogged
over with his Dragunov to a piece of soft ground that would make a good prone
position. Nick worked the Russian-issued PSL scope along the line of men. They
had stopped firing, having realized the distance was too great. Nick figured it
to be seven hundred and seventy yards if he had to bet.

The 7.62 mm
bullet would drop 129 inches over that distance, or nearly eleven feet. At this
kind of distance, he would have preferred his American rifle and scope. Both
were better. But he had practiced at this range with this rifle prior to the
mission, and now it was time to see if he could make it work under real field
conditions. Not to mention after days of intense exhaustion and fatigue.

Nick used
the bottom left part of the PSL scope to confirm the range. The scope had a
line that allowed you to measure the height of a standing man and better
determine the range. The scope confirmed eight hundred yards. Nick raised the
scope to aim with the lower “v” crosshair, which should strike relatively on
target at eight hundred yards.

Nick checked
the wind, noting only the smallest crosswind moving from left to right. He
fixed the necessary adjustment in his mind and aimed in on a bearded,
turban-wearing fighter who was kneeling and staring their direction.

“Watch for
an impact,” Nick said. “I have no damn idea how I’m going to do using this.”

Nick didn't
have to explain that “this” referred to his weapon. His men knew. All of them
missed their American-made weapons. And while the Russian-made weapons were
more durable and reliable, their ruggedness sacrificed the accuracy possible
from American-designed rifles.

Nick could
shoot at minute of angle, even with the Dragunov. This meant at one hundred
yards he could keep each of his bullets within one inch of the bullseye. But at
each additional hundred yards, the circle gets an inch wider. Thus, at eight
hundred yards, his bullets would strike within eight inches off the mark. And
that didn’t take into account the crosswind he was estimating (perhaps
wrongly).

Nick focused
hard on the scope and the target. He had to push out the thoughts of discomfort
and weariness, as well as the feeling of a sharp rock cutting into his quad. He
stifled the pain and focused, focused, focused on the job at hand. And as he
did, and as he took control of his breathing, he felt himself slip into the
zone.

There was no
mission. There was no Ahmud al-Habshi or Rasool Deraz. There was just Nick, the
rifle, and a target that felt like it was about a mile away. But as Nick
further controlled his breathing, the scope moved less and Nick regained that
extra confidence he needed before making such a long shot.

Finally,
Nick knew the target was a dead man. That he lay in the sights of one of the
world’s greatest snipers. And with that thought, Nick eased the trigger on back,
as softly as one might run his finger down a particularly delicate feather.

Chapter 40

KRAK. The
rifle seemed to go off by itself, the kind of surprise Nick loved to achieve.
Anticipating the shot was a mistake far too many shooters made, which usually
caused them to miss. Despite the kickback of the rifle, Nick managed to see
that the man went down.

“Bullet hit
him in his left shoulder,” Red said, his eyes straining through a pair of
binoculars

As Nick
moved the rifle toward the next target, he tried to remember exactly where the
scope had been aimed before the rifle fired. The scope had been properly on
target and not drifted, so Nick would adjust his next shot so that it’d strike
five inches to the right. And while on a range you’d shoot multiple rounds to
confirm your grouping before making such an adjustment, Nick didn’t have that
luxury. He also felt confident he had made a quality shot on the previous
round, so he’d adjust a bit to improve the next attempt.

The
Pakistani villagers had heard the whack of the bullet hitting their neighbor
before hearing what sounded like a crash of thunder echoing across the valley.
The man howled in pain as he dropped to the ground. Then the tribesman began to
react. Some ran for cover, others ducked lower, some just screamed in righteous
anger.

One ran to
aid the fallen man, and others fired back in force. After a few rounds, they
realized the distance was too great and corrected their aim, firing higher and
bringing their rounds into range by watching the dust-ups of their impacts.

As the
villager’s rounds snapped past or kicked up dust mere yards short, Red popped
his weapon off safe and leaned into the light machine gun. Bada. Bada. Bada.
Shell casings bounced and clattered into the truck bed as he caught sight of a
burning tracer bullet -- they’d loaded a tracer every fifth round -- hit about
five yards short of the man he was engaging.

Red aimed
higher and fired again. These rounds smacked the dirt in front of the villager,
several of them skipping up from the ground and driving into the man who had
been firing an AK at them from the kneeling position. Three bullets twisted and
tumbled through the fighter, giving him a sucking chest wound, a shattered
knee, and a ripped bicep (which was the least of his problems).

While Red
was putting his man down, Nick dispatched a man who had been working the bolt on
a scoped weapon that looked like it dated back to World War II. Or earlier.

Nick
traversed the scope to find the next target when the air split like a dozen
firecrackers over his head.

“Machine
gun!” he heard Marcus yell.

“Ahh, hell
no!” Truck said as he kicked open his door and rolled away from the Toyota.

Machine
guns, even handled by poorly trained villagers, were no joke. They had a high
rate of fire and a stability and accuracy not found in AKs. Between the bipod
and weight of the weapon, they were easy to fire with noticeable impacts,
allowing the shooter to walk the rounds into a target. Throw in the standard
tracer every fifth round to assist in aiming, and you were dealing with a
weapon that a twelve year old could wield with deadly precision. Given just a
little practice.

The first
burst from the machine gun had been high -- a classic mistake. Much better to
aim low and let the rounds and debris fly up into the faces of your targets.
Unfortunately for him, the inexperienced machine gunner was about to learn an
ugly second lesson, too.

Machine
gunners draw a lot of attention in a firefight and are usually quickly
silenced. Marcus and Truck were firing well-aimed, single shots at the machine
gunner, arcing bullets to fall into the man. They guessed on how high to hold
their weapons and watched for impacts, trying to walk their own effective fire
onto the threat. They both knew the chance of a hit was nil, but the goal was
to suppress the machine gunner before he hit the truck or one of them. Force
whoever was behind the gun to duck and cover, unable to effectively wield it.

Red, as
well, was firing at the rocks from which the machine gun bursts had come. At
the same time, Nick scanned the outcropping to locate the gunner with his
scope. Their target had indeed flinched under all the fire, and he naturally
fired a return burst to gain a short reprieve. Sadly for him, the rounds soared
far less accurately than his first deluge. Sadder still, it gave away his
position with its sound, bright muzzle flash, and dust it kicked up.

Nick saw
through the scope rounds landing or passing all about the machine gunner. The
man lay in the prone behind the machine gun, and it was indeed being fired from
its bipod. Nick worked the scope’s crosshairs from the weapon up to the man’s
face. His turban had apparently fallen off in all the close calls and ducking
he had done, and Nick aimed in on his nose with the lower aiming mark in the
scope set for eight hundred yards.

Nick knew
from his prior shot -- it had only been his second -- that his adjustment five
inches to the right had improved his shot placement. He pulled the trigger
back, and the rifle fired again. He lost the man’s face in the scope from the
recoil. If only he had a spotter working with him. As he searched for the man
in the scope again, he noticed the machine gun had stopped firing.

Marcus, Red,
and Truck didn’t know if the machine gunner had been hit or merely suppressed,
and for the moment, they didn’t care. They continued to fire at the man’s position.

But it was
an unnecessary effort. Nick and his Dragunov had struck the man in the lower
jaw and practically ripped it off.

Chapter 41

There’s a
common slip-up in war known as tunnel vision. It occurs most often in the heat
of a firefight when a unit’s focus gets locked exclusively on the direct threat
they see. Nick had used this earlier to take out the men outside the compound.

And it’s the
natural thing to do, of course. Who wouldn’t, when under fire, completely focus
on the men firing at them? The direct, known threat.

Despite all
their experience, Nick and his team fell prey to tunnel vision. Perhaps it was
fatigue -- so many never-ending days behind enemy lines with interrupted sleep
and bone-tiring nights of transporting crushing loads. Perhaps it was because
this small village was the final obstacle to their return home and was thus
their entire focus. It hadn’t exactly been planned either.

Whatever it
was, they were off their “A” game. Nick normally avoided shooting too much in any
encounter, since a leader needs to maintain situational awareness during a
firefight. But at this distance, his sniper rifle was the most effective weapon
the team had, and they were counting on him.

Furthermore,
the machine gun had drawn his full attention on taking it out immediately,
versus methodically settling in to pick off targets one at a time. Nick didn’t
want to get this close to the border only to have some untrained dimwit with a
potent weapon put an easy bullet through the engine block or one of his men.
Self-preservation had overridden the trained discipline of battlefield
awareness.

Thus,
between the fatigue and checking for anyone to pick up the machine gun, the
four men of Shield, Safeguard, and Shelter never heard or saw the convoy of trucks
flying toward them from behind.

Mushahid
Zubaida couldn’t believe his eyes, as he lowered a pair of powerful binoculars.
There, just a couple of miles in front of him, was the four-man team they had
been pursuing. The four men were firing at villagers, who were far off in the
distance, but still clearly blocking their way.

Mushahid
smiled. Even men who were too old or too young to leave their village and join
the Taliban do not fear these elite troops, he thought. He really hoped they
were American, so their bodies could be displayed far and wide in propaganda
videos. Even better, he hoped one or two were taken alive.

“Get ready!”
Mushahid yelled, rapping the top of the cab to alert those riding in the back.

Mushahid sat
in the passenger seat of the lead truck. Behind him trailed the other two
trucks. He glanced back and saw they needed no warning. The fighters could hear
the firing, and they stood with their weapons ready, eager to punish these dogs
who had come into Pakistan and killed so many.

Mushahid had
learned these men they were chasing had proven themselves to be murderously
good with their accuracy. He wanted to limit the number of men who died in the
looming battle, so there’d be no dismounting and attacking. Even at twenty-four
against four, he’d lose a lot of men.

Yes, the
best course of action would be to rush them. Drive in as fast as possible
across the mostly flat, open ground. Get in close. Literally run them over
(where possible), dismount everyone, and gun them down like sheep from so close
they’d be in pistol range. A range where his men’s rugged Soviet-bloc weapons
would not be at a disadvantage.

Mushahid
passed his orders to his men by radio, instructing them to hold off on firing
or screaming.

“Now, spread
out and let’s go as fast as we can.”