Sniper Elite: One-Way Trip

CHAPTER 1

The horse was a four-year-old gray Appaloosa mare named Tico Chiz, but Navy Master Chief Gil Shannon simply called her Tico. He spent time with his wife, Marie, and his mother-in-law on their horse ranch in Bozeman, Montana, but his true home was the Navy. Most of his life was spent either at the Naval Training Center Hampton Roads in Virginia Beach, Virginia, or off in faraway corners of the globe doing what Marie, a bit too often for his taste, derisively referred to as serving his corporate masters.

The life of any camp follower was difficult, but being the wife of a US Navy SEAL was just plain grueling at times, and there was a bitterness within his wife that Gil could see growing slowly stronger with each passing year. The hard truth was that he and his wife shared only a few things in common. They both loved Montana like their next breath, had horse blood in their veins, and they shared a chemical attraction for each other strong enough to rival the force of gravity.

He put his boot into the stirrup and hauled himself up into the saddle as Marie came into the stable dressed in jeans and boots and a maroon Carhartt jacket. He looked at her approvingly, touching the brim of his hat. “Ma’am,” he said, his blue eyes smiling.

She smiled back in the same shy way she always did after they’d made love, her brown eyes twinkling, long brown hair loosely braided. She was thirty-six, one year older than her husband, and at the very least his intellectual equal. Crossing her arms, she leaned against a support post cluttered with tack. “You know that horse likely forgot your name last time you were away.”

Gil grinned, sidling Tico over to the wall where he took down a Browning .300 Winchester Magnum with a 3 to 24 Nightforce scope. “I ain’t all that convinced she ever knew it.” He shucked the rifle backward into the saddle scabbard. “Self-centered beast that she is.”

“You know there ain’t nothing out there gonna hurt you.”

“Well, all the same, I like to have it along,” he said quietly, never liking to disagree with her, their time together always being too short.

She arched an eyebrow in warning. “You’d better leave my elk alone, Gil Shannon.”

He laughed, knowing he was caught, removing a pouch of tobacco from his tan Carhartt and rolling himself a cigarette. There was a Zen to the process that helped keep him anchored whenever he felt the waves of anxiety slapping at his hull. The sad reality was that life on the ranch was too slow for him, too tidy and safe, and he sometimes began to feel as though he might crawl out of his skin. He understood why this was, of course. He’d been raised the son of the warrior, and as a result carried much of the emotional baggage that often came along with being the son of a Green Beret who had served multiple tours during the Vietnam War. He was extremely proud of his heritage, however, having consciously chosen a form of service that meant he would spend most of his adult life far away from the Montana of his youth. Montana would always be there, he told himself. And when he finally grew too old to run, jump, and swim for the Navy, he would retire there and finally settle down with Marie, secure in the knowledge that he had done all that he could to defend this great land.

He smiled at his wife, poking the cigarette between his lips. “Don’t worry. Old man Spencer said I could hunt his place anytime I want.”

Marie understood that her husband had demons he kept deep inside. She could see them in the shadows that crossed his brow in those painful moments when he thought she wasn’t looking.

“I see,” she said thoughtfully. “So you’re letting out for the high country.”

He drew from the cigarette and exhaled through his nose. “I’ll stay below the snow line. Don’t worry.”

“I never worry when you’re home,” she said, stepping from the post to touch his leg. “I already told you there’s nothing out there gonna hurt you. Montana’s where you draw your strength.”

He leaned to kiss her and straightened up in the saddle. “Have you seen Oso this morning?”

“Out back watching the colts, as usual. He thinks they’re his.”

Gil gave her a wink and pressed his heels into the flanks of the horse to set her walking out the door. As he rounded the corner, he saw the Chesapeake Bay retriever sitting over near the paddock where two painted colts were kept with their mothers.

“Oso!” he called, and the dog came trotting. His full name was Oso Cazador — bear hunter — named by Gil’s late friend Miguel, the dog’s original owner who had raised him to go grizzly hunting with him in the high country outside of Yellowstone. Miguel had died the year before of cancer, and his daughter, Carmen, had shown up with Oso at the funeral, asking Gil if he would let the dog come to live on the ranch, claiming that her apartment back in LA was just too small for a 120-pound animal. Before Gil even had a chance to think it over, Marie had taken the leash and welcomed Oso into the family. The arrangement had worked out well, too. Oso kept the coyotes away from the colts, looked after Marie and his mother-in-law whenever Gil was away, and had a keen eye for the movement of game at long distances.

In truth, Oso was something of a devil dog, overly protective of Marie whenever Gil was not at the house, and he had this way of showing his teeth when he was happy, a kind of menacing canine smile that could be hard to interpret. In a way, he reminded Gil of the young SEALs he worked with: fiercely loyal, intelligent, athletic, and fearless, though hardheaded at times. And like those young men, Oso was known on occasion to challenge Gil for his position in the hierarchy. It was through sheer force of will, however, that Gil was able to impress his alpha status upon man as well as beast. It was the iron will he had inherited from his father, and he was more grateful for that than any other trait. He was not the strongest in the DEVGRU teams, or the largest or the fastest, or even the best shot, but during numerous trials in the field, his will alone had enabled him to succeed where men of apparent superior physical prowess had failed.

This was the reason he was so often considered the go-to man.

He reined the horse around and headed off toward the high country at the trot. Oso tended to travel inside the horse’s shadow even when the weather was cool, and though Gil wasn’t entirely sure, he thought it must be to keep the sun out of his eyes.

Within twenty minutes, they passed through the gate on the western border of the ranch, and Gil stopped to roll another cigarette. As he sat in the saddle smoking, he took a Milk-Bone from his pocket and tossed it down to Oso, who immediately dug a shallow hole with his forepaws and dropped the bone in, using his nose to cover it over. Then the dog sat down and barked, wanting another.

Gil smiled, drawing deeply from the cigarette and tossing down another bone. Oso ate it immediately.

Two hours later, they made the crest of a high ridge where Gil dismounted and stood holding the reins as he overlooked the Spencer Valley below. He knew there were elk down there, moving carefully among the brush. Rut would be starting soon, and they would grow careless, but for now, they were still lying low, and this was when Gil preferred to hunt them. For him, there wasn’t much of a trick to shooting an animal hopped up on hormones, bugling its ass off, almost daring you to squeeze the trigger.

A large bull elk stepped from the trees to his left, roughly a hundred yards off down the slope, and Oso lowered himself to the ground to signal that he had spotted their prey.

Gil took the rifle from its scabbard, popping the lens caps and shouldering the weapon for a closer look. The bull was mature and well racked with ten points, chewing a mouthful of grass without a care in the world. He capped the lenses and returned the rifle to the scabbard. At a hundred yards, he could almost take it out with a stone. He never wasted a bullet on game at less than five hundred yards, valuing the challenge far more than the kill itself.

He tied Tico’s reins off to a dead tree standing nearby and removed her saddle. Then he poured water into a canteen cup for Oso and cleared a spot on the ground for himself to settle in behind the saddle. When the firing position was prepared, he retrieved the rifle and settled in to wait. He spent his time gauging the slight breeze, unconsciously doing the math in his head for different target areas within the valley. He almost never dealt in actual numbers anymore, the calculations as automatic in his brain as 2 + 2 equaling 4.

After forty minutes, Oso stood up and stared straight down into the valley.

Gil took up the rifle and searched far below their position, spotting the young, four-by-four-point bull standing broadside at the edge of the tree line a thousand yards off down the 30-degree slope. The scope on the rifle was set to compensate for the drop of the bullet over flat terrain, so Gil knew without even thinking that he would need to aim slightly lower than he normally would, in effect compensating for the preset compensation of the drop. This concept was often one of the toughest for raw SEAL Team recruits to wrap their brains around.

He placed the reticle on the ridge of the bull’s spinal column just behind the shoulder blades where he wanted the 7.62 mm round to strike. Then he lowered his aim slightly, as if he were about to engage a target at just over 800 yards instead of 1,000. There was no real way to teach this kind of shooting. This was the kind of precision developed over thousands of rounds fired downrange. Had there been any concern at all in Gil’s mind the round would maim the animal or cause it any pain, he would simply have aimed for the much easier-to-hit heart.

As he drew a shallow breath, preparing to squeeze the trigger, it happened again — the memory of his first kill in combat coming back in living color…

The Second Iraq War was only a month old. Gil and his partner Tony had been called into a small town outside of Baghdad to relieve the pressure on two companies of Marines who were being decimated by enemy sniper fire. One of the Marine snipers was already dead, and their morale had begun to flag in a way that only enemy sniper fire can cause. So their CO had called for tactical support, and half an hour later a Cayuse helicopter dropped Gil and Tony in the Marines’ rear. It was during their march forward over five blocks of hell that the two SEALs were able to collect real-time intel from the grunts on the ground.

By the time they reached the Marines’ forward positions, Tony had marked the locations of all thirteen wounded and dead Marines on his map. He grabbed Gil by the elbow and pulled him into a concrete garage with good cover.

“Okay, look,” Tony said, dropping to his knee and laying out the map. “See the kill pattern here? This isn’t random. That means one guy, Gil. And he’s falling back in a kind of zigzag. See—?” He ran his finger back and forth along the grid to clarify his point. “He’s moving corner to corner to maintain a clear field of fire — and all our head-shot Marines are inside this same diminishing kill zone. The fucker’s bleeding them out, and by the time these boys work their way to the far side of town, they’ll lose ten more. And then this haji prick is just gonna fade the fuck away — only we ain’t gonna let that the fuck happen!” He quickly folded the map away inside his body armor. “So now we gotta find that jarhead CO and get him to halt this fucking advance before the sun starts to set — or better yet — get these guys to fucking pull back a block or two. That’ll lure this haji motherfucker right back to us. Then you’ll step on his dick, and I’ll hack it off at the balls!”

As they were stepping out of the garage, a Navy corpsman and pair of stretcher-bearers rounded the corner carrying a young Marine with his face shot completely off.

“Put ’im down!” the corpsman shouted. “I gotta restore his fucking airway!”

Gil stood over the dying Marine, gaping at the shapeless mass of flesh where the boy’s face had once been, unable to believe that a man without a face could even still be alive.

The corpsman hurriedly performed a tracheotomy to restore the Marine’s airway, then the bearers hefted the stretcher back up between them, and they took off down the street in the direction of the incoming medevac.

“Ruck up!” Tony said, busting Gil on the shoulder, and the two of them took off to find the Marine major in charge of taking the town.

It took some hard convincing on Tony’s part before the major would agree to give up two blocks of hard-earned real estate. “Look, major, with respect—sir. You called us. Now, I’m telling you how we can kill this haji bastard. If you’ll withdraw just two blocks, sir, those motherfuckers will think they’re winning this goddamn battle. And that fucking sniper of theirs won’t be able to resist moving to retake this prime position.” Tony indicated the position on the aerial photograph posted on the wall of the command post. “Sir, I’m fucking positive that’s where he was when he took out six of your Marines in under ten minutes.”

“Where do you intend to lay for him?” the major wanted to know.

Tony indicated a tall building in the center of the block south of the suspected sniper position. “We’ll take up an elevated position here, sir, with an excellent view overlooking his nest.”

The major looked to his captain. “What do you think, Steve?”

The captain looked at Tony. “You do realize that building will go back over to the enemy after we withdraw. You’ll be cut off and surrounded.”

Tony smiled. “Only for a little while, Captain.”

The captain nodded, turning to the major. “If I was in command, sir, I’d take his advice. He seems to know what he’s talking about.”

“Okay,” the major said. “How much time do you need to get in position?”

“Shouldn’t take us more than fifteen minutes to get set, sir,” Tony replied. “After that, you can begin your withdrawal. The enemy sniper should approach from one of these two alleys to reoccupy the position. And when he does, sir, we will bag his ass.”

Twenty minutes later, Gil and Tony were in place with a perfect overview of the enemy sniper nest in a corner meat market. They watched from their well-concealed hide on the roof of a three-story apartment building as the Marines were falling back through the position. Within ten minutes, they were isolated and soon to be cut off by encroaching enemy troops now moving to retake the ground they had lost during the first half of the day.

“We could hit a bunch of these guys right now,” Gil said, watching the enemy moving toward them along empty streets through the scope of the M-21 sniper rifle he still carried in those days.

“Which is exactly what that haji sniper is waiting for,” Tony said bitterly, watching through the scope of his own M-21. “He’s waiting to see if one of our snipers takes advantage of this fucking duck shoot. Give him time. Keep your fucking eyes peeled for a haji carrying a Dragunov. That’ll be your guy.”

“My guy?” Gil said, taking his eye briefly away from the scope.

Tony grinned. “I can’t think of a better prick for you to bust your fucking cherry on, Gilligan.”

Feeling his palms suddenly begin to sweat, Gil put his eye to the scope and carefully scanned each new man who came into view, their weapons, their beards and faces, multicolored shemaghs blowing with the breeze as they marched boldly forward. Many of them were laughing and gesturing excitedly, believing they were succeeding in forcing the Marines from the town.

A man dressed in green and carrying a longer weapon than the standard AK-47 darted from a laundry service to disappear beneath an awning.

“Did you see that?” Gil said. “Looked like a guy carrying a Dragunov just ducked under that awning.”

The Dragunov was a semiautomatic, 7.62 mm rifle that had been in Soviet service since 1963. Though it had not been developed originally as a sniper rifle, the rugged weapon had since become the preferred choice of snipers in the Middle East, boasting a range of 1,300 meters when fixed with a scope.

“See a scope?”

“No, it didn’t have a scope, but the stock was wrapped in cloth.”

“Probably just an RPK,” Tony said. “Our guy isn’t making these shots over open sights.”

An RPK-74 was a light machine gun that looked like an overgrown AK-47.

A couple of minutes later, a blur of dark green darted from beneath the awning, and this time there was a scope attached to his rifle. “I got him!” Gil said. He was unable to draw a good enough bead as the sniper darted carefully from shop to shop coming down the alley.

“See what the fuck I told you!” Tony said. “He’s moving to reoccupy that fucking position. Just be patient and let him come right into your kill zone. He’ll give you his back when he turns to mount that fucking staircase — that’s when you take him.”

The enemy sniper checked one last time up and down the alley, desperately scanning the rooftops without a prayer of spotting Gil or Tony ensconced among the scattered rubble of the cityscape. With the speed of a lizard, he darted across the street toward the staircase leading up the side of the building he intended to reoccupy.

He mounted the stairs and gave Gil his back at 200 yards.

“Take him,” Tony said calmly, watching the sniper through his own crosshairs in case Gil should miss.

Gil centered on the sniper’s spine at the base of the neck and squeezed off the round. The enemy sniper was dead instantly, crashing to his knees and falling backward down the stairs.

“Reap the whirlwind, motherfucker.” Tony bashed Gil on the shoulder. “When the battle’s over we’ll find that fucker and get you your boar’s tooth.”

Now Gil lay in his position behind the saddle, watching the elk move gracefully through the grass. The animal paused to test the air. Gil drew a shallow breath and squeezed the trigger. The round severed the beast’s spinal cord at the base of the neck just forward of the shoulders, and the elk dropped dead to the ground, never knowing what hit it.