Sohlberg and the White Death (50 page)

When the day ended he worried about the night. The visions and terrors of the night took him far away from North Carolina. He’s still in Iraq and Afghanistan in his dreams.

War and dreams are always the shortest distance between two points.

Dreams carried Billy Buchanan from the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina to the mountains of Afghanistan. More than 7,000 miles separate the little town of Spruce Pine in Mitchell County from the city of Gardez in eastern Afghanistan. It’s been more than 8 years since Billy Buchanan left his mark in Gardez. But war and dreams are the absolute shortest distance between two points in time and geography. And that’s why and how Billy Buchanan found himself south of Gardez in the enormous valley of Shah-i-Kot or “Place of the King”.

~ ~ ~

SHAH-I-KOT VALLEY,

AFGHANISTAN (2005)

Dust. Heat. Barren valleys and mountains.

At 28 years of age Billy Buchanan pretty much felt that he was the king of the dry alpine valley. At the very least he was The Sniper King of Shah-i-Kot.

“Buchanan . . . you served here during Operation Anaconda . . . didn’t you?”

“Yessir. Three years ago to the day.”

The CIA field officer looked over the skinny and modest hillbilly before him. Jake Van Rensselaer liked what he saw.

“I heard you did real good work here.”

“Just did my job. Sir.”

“I heard you shot a local Taliban chief who was more than twenty-six football fields away.”

“Sir. I had a good gun with me. The McMillan Tac-Fifty.”

“I see.”

“Sir . . . it’s a great gun . . . it has a range of two thousand one hundred-ninety yards . . . one point two miles . . . its fifty caliber ammo can take out a car that’s twenty football fields away.”

“Nice,” said Jake Van Rensselaer. “But you shot this man from
four
miles away. That’s three miles beyond the maximum range of the gun.”

“Sir. The McMillan is a
mighty
fine weapon. With that gun and a Leupold M-three-A scope and a mighty fine spotter like Tom Hedden . . . well . . . why even my kid brother could take out a little cat that’s sitting pretty on a tree limb more than twenty football fields away. Besides . . . we were up real high that day on a ridge. Over nine thousand feet. There’s much less air resistance when you’re that high in the mountains.”

“I understand that you also shot and killed the man who was walking next to him.”

“Yessir. He was carrying an R.P.K. on his shoulder.”

Van Rensselaer remembered. He had been there that day at a lower elevation getting shot at by the Taliban—probably by that particular 7.62-mm machine gun. By pure luck he had not been killed during the failed Operation Anaconda. Six of his CIA colleagues had not been so lucky. “You think those two shots at four miles were lucky shots?”

“Sir. Every shot that kills is a lucky shot. There’s so much that can go wrong. There’s a lot of variables for a sniper. Wind blowing one way at the mid-point and then another way near the target. Heck. We even have to account for the rotation of the earth since it takes about four seconds for a four-mile shot to arrive at the kill zone.”

“But you get the job done.”

“Yessir. But I’m not special. I’m no more special than any other sniper in the service. Like others I just know a lot of tricks to improve the odds.”

“Like what?” said Van Rensselaer. He was on a recruiting mission and he needed to get a good fix on whether the kid was up to snuff. “What tricks?”

“That day we left the ammo spread out on the rocks so the sun would heat them up. And we got us a lucky break.”

“What break?”

“My first shot was thirteen feet off target . . . I hit the soil to the left of the target. My spotter saw the dirt cloud kick up. We were really surprised when those Taliban just kept walking. Fearless. Absolutely fearless. They knew a bullet had landed nearby. They never took cover . . . they just kept walking right into the first killshot.”

“Do you know why I’m here?”

“No sir.”

“The Company needs to borrow a few good men. Your colonel has no objections to you helping us out with Operation Peppercorn. . . . Have you heard about it?”

“Sir. I think I have. Word gets around.”

“Let me make clear what it is and isn’t.”

“Yessir.”

“You and your spotter will get dropped into a valley that’s known for helping the Taliban and attacking our troops. You will be all alone . . . no support.”

“Yessir.”

“You will pick when and where you strike. You can go after men who are out on armed expeditions or . . . better yet . . . you can pin down an entire village for days or weeks and pick off whomever you think is a threat.”

“Yessir. That would be interesting.”

Jake Van Rensselaer smiled at the kid. He had witnessed first-hand how snipers had injected paralysis into the hearts of the most fanatical of America’s enemies in Iraq. He wanted the same terror brought to Afghanistan. He doubted if the fearless Taliban fighters would react like the cowards in Iraq. But the women and children of Afghanistan would surely react another way when snipers picked off their husbands and fathers. Death would be unpredictable and come out of the blue and slay their menfolk right in front of them—like the invisible hand of an angry god. “So . . . does this sound like something you want to do?”

“Yessir. Absolutely.”

The CIA case officer had a Ph.D. from Yale in Elizabethan Literature. He noticed the eager glint in the young man’s eyes and he remembered what Ernest Hemingway had once written:

"Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and like it, never really care for anything else thereafter."

~ ~ ~

RAMADI, IRAQ (2006)

He dreams.

Dust. Heat. Scattered palm trees. A maze of tan-colored concrete buildings in central Iraq.

Insurgents have been busy planting IEDs along the roads. The Arab killers have harvested plenty of American blood. It’s time to eradicate those who cultivate death on the dirty streets of Iraq. His avenger on this mission of annihilation is the standard M24 sniper rifle (7.62 caliber) with a Leupold M3A scope that has a built-in bullet drop compensator.

He sets up shop on the rooftop of the ruined O.P. Hotel also known as “Ramadi Inn”. A 10-man sniper team spreads out in the other floors. They use so many sandbags in the living areas and the shooting blinds that it’s a miracle that the hotel floors don’t collapse.

The 4-story hotel is the perfect place to hunt down rebels because it’s the tallest building in the urban wasteland and it overlooks a major roadway which has the ridiculous nickname “Route Michigan”. Billy Buchanan and his fellow snipers look forward to establishing control over an enormous area.

The tent of camouflaged fabric on the roof reminds him of hunting for deer and turkey. It’s not that much different. He starts out by observing what is actually visible from all sorts of angles through his scope and field glasses. He takes his time to learn how and where his targets usually operate. It’s not that hard to find the enemy. They almost always wear masks.

Billy Buchanan scans around and finds a store with a Coca-Cola sign on the wall above the door. He carefully calculates the number of yards to the sign and to other landmarks. He writes these down in a range card which he will memorize.

He takes a deep breath and focuses.

He exhales.

He aims at the “o” in “Coca”. The sign is 1,560 yards away—the endpoint of his gun’s range.

The first shot is off by six inches.

He re-calibrates and aims 12 feet above target. He also considers the Kentucky Windage which he learned from his father when hunting game. Billy Buchanan makes an horizontal adjustment for the wind without the use of any mechanical adjustments to the weapon.

A deep breath.

He exhales.

He squeezes the trigger and keeps his right eye focused on the sign.

The shot is slightly off—not as accurate as he desires. He likes to hit within 0.5 inches of his target.

He adjusts for the wind and the spin drift of his bullet and aims 8 feet to the left.

Another deep breath.

He exhales.

He squeezes the trigger.

The red “o” in the white sign becomes a black hole.

At 1:11 in the afternoon Billy Buchanan spots three masked men who are moving items from a house into the trunk of a car—the telltale signs of an improvised explosive device in the making. Another man steps out of the doorway and he has a rocket propelled grenade launcher slung across his shoulder. A belt of grenades crisscrosses his chest. Two more men step out and one of them is the obvious leader. The man gesticulates and points out instructions to the other men on how to set up the IED. A teenaged boy comes out of the door. He’s not masked but he’s carrying an AK-47.

Billy Buchanan avoids looking at the kid’s angelic face. He can’t afford a case of “buck fever” which happens when the hunter sees a living object in his scope instead of a dead target. He can’t afford to think about a human being whose family will be shattered by grief.

It’s time. Billy Buchanan could be a show-off but he never does so with a fancy and fatal headshot at a distance. He goes for the sure thing—the center mass just under the breastplate and ribcage.

The soldier from North Carolina takes a deep breath and aims for the leader.

The six men are more than 13.5 football fields away—a distance of 2,074 yards. This means that his targets are more than 500 yards beyond range. But the sniper from Spruce Pine knows that war is always the shortest distance between two points. Billy Buchanan goes for the leader who’s standing proud over the fatal contraption that will murder and maim American soldiers.

The bullet kisses the man’s chest. The leader drops. By this time a second bullet is already flying at the man with the RPG launcher and grenades. The bullet strikes one of the grenades which explodes. It’s a Fourth of July fireworks show. Another grenade explodes. The lucky shot takes down all the men thanks to the chain reaction of the exploding grenades.

Billy Buchanan does not think about his six dead enemies but about the dozens and dozens of American soldiers who will be saved by his killshot.

~ ~ ~

LUTAYFIYAH, IRAQ (2004)

He dreams.

Dust. Mud. Heat. A smattering of palm trees. Irrigation canals. Adobe walls. Another miserable town south of Baghdad. Clusters of mud buildings on the road to Karbala.

This time his instrument of destruction is a Barrett semi-automatic M82-A3 special application scoped rifle with a 10-round detachable box magazine of .50 caliber bullets. The barrel periscope has a 2,000 yard range. He prefers bolt-action guns because semi-automatics always jam. That’s one thing he can count on. But the war on mud villages has been good for the profits of arms manufacturers who need to push their semi-automatic junk on the battlefield.

A crackling voice on the radio warns him that seven men with AK-47s have arrived in motorcycles. They have parked behind a wall of 9-inch-thick cinderblocks to ambush an army patrol that is going to walk right past them in ten minutes or less. Billy Buchanan can’t see the men but his spotter can because he is hidden up on the rooftop of a two-floor house to his left.

It’s time to thread the needle. This means that he can easily put a bullet inside a 10-inch target that is 680 yards away—a distance of 5 football fields.

“Is it the wall that has a wrecked car out in front?”

“No,” says his spotter. “It’s the wall next to the three palms.”

There’s a problem. Billy Buchanan has been looking at the wrong wall. The men behind the wall are one mile or 1,760 yards away from him. That’s 2.5 times further away than his preferred kill range with the Barrett semi-automatic. But today it’s 124 degrees in the shade. Bullets travel faster and longer when it’s hot.

To kill or not to kill.

He aims the weapon and breathes in slowly.

Inhale.

The first rule of killing is proper breathing. Without it you can’t concentrate on the target.

Hold your breath for two or three heartbeats.

Then exhale.

Two heartbeats.

Inhale.

The second rule of killing is to shoot after exhaling. The killshot is most precise when your body is completely still.

Hold your breath for two or three heartbeats.

Then exhale.

Two heartbeats.

Inhale.

The third rule of killing is to use the right ammunition. He loves the MK-211 Raufoss .50 caliber rounds that he has loaded into the gun’s magazine. The Norwegian company Nammo Raufoss makes the world’s greatest bullet. Under international treaties the Raufoss MK-211 is a legal anti-matériel weapon designed to stop armored helicopters and armored vehicles with the power of a small 20mm cannon. Other than the hypocritical Norwegians everyone knows that the bullet is mostly used for its devastating anti-personnel impact.