Sniper Elite: One-Way Trip

CHAPTER 19

Gil had some tough choices to make, tough choices to go along with the tough choice that had been forced upon him. Navy SEALs were not murderers, they were warriors, and they did not enter into combat with the intention of making war on women or children who did not make war on them. Collateral damage happened, and it was always unfortunate, but it was never a SEAL’s intention to end the life of a noncombatant. Most did not allow it to bother them when it happened — at least not on the surface. They told themselves that it was war, that they were fighting for their country, and that God would sort it all out. How else could they live with the things they saw?

Gil could never entirely buy into that perspective, though at times he was left no other choice but to run with it. Regardless, he hadn’t joined DEVGRU to shoot pregnant women. He was not an automatonic killer for men like Lerher to set loose in the wild backwaters of the planet to do his dirty work. He would take the Sherkat woman back with him, or he would die trying. He had a wife he wanted to look in the face when he finally retired from this man’s Navy, and if he couldn’t do that, then there wasn’t much point in getting back anyhow. Dishonor scared him a hell of a lot more than death.

Most of his DEVGRU counterparts, when faced with the same repugnant decision of having to shoot a pregnant woman point-blank in the road would have done so, regrettably, and then attempted to shrug it off as part of the mission — much as Gil had shot the dying gunmen in the midst of their prayers. And still there were others, like Crosswhite and Steelyard, who probably would have shot her and then raised holy hell about it when they got back. Gil wasn’t exactly sure why he couldn’t be more like them. He wished he were. Maybe he wasn’t strong enough, or maybe he was just too much of a goddamn idealist when it came to certain things. All he knew for sure was that SEALs didn’t treat women like those Taliban pricks were treating Sandra Brux, and the only way he knew to lead was by example. So this was the example he was going to set, come hell or high water, and fuck anybody who didn’t like it.

“Like I said,” he muttered, “I’m on my own time.” He put the woman into the backseat where she would be more comfortable, then went to find himself a good AK-47 and all the spare magazines he could carry. During the hurried search, he found a worn-looking grenade in the coat pocket of one of the dead men, an old Russian RGD-5, packing four ounces of TNT. It wasn’t likely to be of much use to Gil, considering the open terrain and his close itinerary, but there were other ways to employ a grenade besides throwing it at the enemy. Leaving it behind for them to find often worked as well. He pulled the pin and hid the grenade inside the man’s jacket, resting it on the safety lever. Any disturbance of the body, and the grenade would roll over beneath the jacket, releasing the safety lever and igniting the internal fuse. Four seconds later… pop goes the weasel!

He found a first aid kit in one of the trucks and packed the woman’s wounds with wadding front and back, strapping her arm to her chest to immobilize the broken clavicle.

“You should be running,” she told him, sweat pouring from her face.

He checked his watch. “We ain’t goin’ all that far, lady. And unless you want your father shot, you’d better describe him for me.”

“So you can shoot him first!”

He shrugged. “Have it your own way.” He took hold of her hands to help her step out onto the road. “Now listen up. If you slow me down or pull any shit—any shit at all—I’ll shoot you. Understand?”

She glared at him, nodding once with great reluctance.

With his shemagh wrapped around his head like a Bedouin and the AK-47 slung over his back, he set off overland leading her by the arm. They walked approximately a thousand meters out from the road where he made her sit down. Then he took the spade and began to dig.

“Your father’s an opium smuggler, right?”

She gathered the coat he’d found for her about her shoulders and stared off back the way they’d come as if she hadn’t heard him.

“Well, he has to be,” Gil remarked, hacking at the hardened earth. “Otherwise, the guards from that radiation bomb factory would have been here by now. How many of his men is he bringing with him?”

She looked at him. “All of them.”

He laughed. “You’re never gonna warm up to me, are you?”

She looked away again. “You’re a murderer.”

“I suppose from a certain point of view that’s true enough.” He dug for a while, being careful to scatter the dirt to prevent there being any sign of a fresh dig should his enemy scan the terrain through a scope or a pair of binoculars.

“Do you remember Neda?” he asked a few minutes later, shaping the trench he was digging for her to take cover in. Neda Agha-Soltan was a twenty-six-year-old woman shot and killed during the Iranian freedom protests of 2009. Her graphic death was broadcast within minutes to the entire world via the internet.

She turned to look at him again, her dark eyes full of suspicion. “What do you know of Neda?”

“I know she was murdered by Pasdaran thugs in the streets of Tehran.” He took a drink from his CamelBak. The Pasdaran were special Iranian police charged with protecting the nation’s Islamic system of government. “I also know she was protesting for Iranian rights when it happened.”

She shrugged him off. “No one knows who killed Neda.”

“Yes, you do.” He took up the spade again. “There are good people in your country, lady. You’re not all drug smugglers and murderers.”

She whipped her head around, hissing, “I am not a smuggler — and you’re the murderer!”

He sat back on his haunches. “Your father’s drugs kill more people in a month than I’ll kill in my entire career. But that’s okay, isn’t it? Because they’re just infidels.”

She smirked and turned away again. “Dig your grave, American. Dig your grave and leave me alone.”

He chuckled, muttering, “This grave here is yours.” He dug a bit more before asking, “He was your husband, Al-Nazari?”

“He was more than that,” she said proudly. “He was a hero. Now he is a martyr.”

“But he was Sunni — you’re a Shia.”

She laughed at him. “Is that what they told you? My family is not Shia.” She noted his wedding band. “What does your wife think of what you do?”

“She doesn’t really know what I do. But if it makes you feel any better, I’ll probably never get to see her again. Lookin’ out for you is likely gonna cost me the ball game.”

She turned to face him fully, her pride falling off suddenly. “I am in great pain.”

“You’re taking it like a champ, though.” He admired her. “I’m afraid if I give you morphine, you won’t be able to walk when the time comes.” He stopped to rest against the spade, taking the shemagh away from his face. “On the other hand, all that pain could put you into labor, so I don’t reckon I have much choice.”

He dug into his personal first aid kit. Then he injected a small dose of morphine into her wounded shoulder. At once, the tension went out of her face, and he could see the relief, the slight drift of her eyes. He made her lie down in the trench, which was only a few inches deeper than she was.

“When the shootin’ starts, you keep your head down unless you want it shot off. Now tell me what your father looks like, and I’ll try to avoid shooting him.”

The morphine had dropped her inhibitions enough to elicit some cooperation. “He wears glasses. A black mustache.”

Gil finished his own trench and settled in with the Dragunov SVD pulled into his shoulder. He’d brought twenty 10-round magazines, which had been more than enough for the mission as planned, but in view of these new developments, two hundred rounds was starting to feel a little bit light. He had twenty-five 30-round magazines for the AK-47, but the AK put him on equal terms with the enemy. He would need to make every SVD round count.

Her father’s men arrived a short time later in two trucks full of men, about twenty in all. A number of them spread into a defensive perimeter around the ambushed caravan while her father and his lieutenants walked the site. Gil studied the man’s movements for a moment, and then scanned the rest of the men, looking for a sniper.

He found him standing near the tail of the second truck, studying the countryside through a large, powerful pair of binoculars. The shooter carried a Dragunov with a synthetic stock slung across his front, and the optics were far better than Gil’s PSO sight. It was obvious from the way he carried himself that he was one confident son of a bitch. Probably, he’d been nailing rival drug smugglers at long range for quite some time, helping the Sherkat woman’s father to become the local big shot.

Gil couldn’t afford to let this character live, which meant he had to engage these people now. A sniper duel over open country was anybody’s game, and Gil was not at all inclined to fighting fairly. He placed the T of the reticule on the sniper’s heart and squeezed the trigger just as the grenade hidden in the dead man’s jacket detonated.

The sniper jerked around toward the sound of the explosion, and Gil’s round grazed his rib cage.

Shit! Someone had disturbed the body at exactly the worst possible instant.

He fired again, catching the sniper in the left shoulder to spin him back around. As he fired a third time, another man, running away from the explosion, slammed into the sniper and accidentally took the bullet for him, knocking him from his feet and out of sight behind the truck.

Gil knew he was in for some shit now. The sniper was not dead. He would be hurting like a bastard, but he was definitely still in the fight, and undoubtedly already moving to take up a firing position, looking to zero in on Gil’s location. He checked his fire, ignoring the other gunmen who scrambled about as he scanned for the sniper.

The man had disappeared.

Inside of a minute, fifteen gunmen — including the Sherkat woman’s father — were formed up in a wide skirmish line marching toward his location with their AK-47s shouldered and ready to fire. If Gil began to pick them off now, he probably wouldn’t kill more than two or three of them before the enemy sniper spotted the dust kicked up by the Dragunov and burned him down.

“Looks like a bad day at Black Rock,” he muttered, glad the woman was doped up, otherwise she would certainly give away their position now, regardless of any danger to herself. The thought occurred to him briefly to use her as a shield, but that was the act of a coward, and even a cornered rat could do better. He could see the enemy had his general position worked out.

“Typhoon main, do you read? Over?”

“Roger, actual.”

“Typhoon main, be advised…” He took a moment to choose his last words. “Typhoon main, be advised I am pinned down by ten-plus gunmen… up against a sniper of unknown talent. Will advise further if and when able to do so. Over.”

The reply sounded vaguely anxious. “Actual, are you declaring an emergency? Over.”

“Negative, main. This’ll be over one way or another long before the cavalry shows up. Typhoon actual, out.” He switched off the radio and studied the target area through the PSO. “Now where the fuck would I be if I were you, asshole?”