Target Deck - 02 (33 page)

“Shooter-One, you see us?”

“Roger Six, let me get in position,” Nikita reported from somewhere off in the night.

PKM gunners were now up on the roof of the aluminum shop with the assaulters. They extended the bipod legs from the bottom of the Russian machine guns and one was posted at each corner of the building for maximum fields of fire.

The Samruk men were taking some heavy fire, the machine gunners flinching and ducking down behind the lip of the wall every so often as the enemy walked in some tracer fire. Every time they saw a head and shoulders pop up on the rooftops the mercenaries would take aim and fire but it was like the cartel shooters were playing a deadly game of hide and seek.

The rooftops were haphazard and showed little sense of organization, mostly low one story affairs with additional structures built onto the side of the building or on the roof, much of it cobbled together with whatever materials were readily available. Deckard knew that his men had enough fire power up on the roof at this point that the enemy could no longer dominate the high ground uncontested. Now, the gunmen were pushing at their defenses here and there, looking for gaps. They would be finding their way closer and closer as they found ways to navigate around and through the buildings at ground level.

Walking alongside Zhenis, Deckard looked for a way for them to skirt over the roofs all the way down the block to the tractor trailer that was blocking them in.

“I see a way,” the Kazakh said in Russian.

“Nikita is almost in place. Once he is set, we can take two squads forward.”

Splitting the platoon in half would be a tactical disaster but both elements would be close enough that they would be able to support each other. At this point they had to make something happen or the enemy would nickel and dime them until they ran out of ammunition. Machine gunners had already been instructed to conserve ammo and two mercenaries had already climbed back down inside the building to pull additional belts of 7.62 off the trucks.

Another RPG rocket soared through the air, screaming over their heads before shooting out over the city and airbursting.

Zhenis looked at his commander.

“I'm going to have them bring up the Carl Gustav.”

Nikita struggled to get into a stable firing position. One hundred and fifty feet up in the air on a giant communications tower was not exactly the best sniper hide. His Samruk sniper instructor had been a South African named Piet who taught him never to climb up into trees, water towers, or other such nonsense. When someone pulled the pin on a chaos frag you would be stuck up there. Nikita was obliged to agree but these were extenuating circumstances.

Digging around inside his assault pack he retrieved the climbing rope and carabiners that he had used at the Jimenez compound. Slinging the rifle, it was more than awkward to maneuver with one hand on the ladder. Running the rope back on itself and around the metal cross members of the tower, he used the carabiners to create a kind of improvised hammock that he could sit on. Carefully, he lowered himself onto the ropes and let himself sit down with his feet braced on the side of the tower. Finally, he got his HK 417 resting against the cross beam in front of him and popped open the scope caps.

Lowering his night vision goggles he could see the IR strobe lights flashing that marked the friendly platoon's position. Deckard was calling him over the radio so he responded, acknowledging that he spotted them. The tower provided Nikita with an amazing vantage point but it would be long distance, high angle shots that he would have to make to help thin out the opposition for his Samruk comrades.

Muzzle flashes lit up the night, a form of visible strobe lights that marked friendly and enemy positions alike.

The sniper took a deep breath and exhaled forcefully. Leaning forward, he powered up the Universal Night Sight, the night vision optics that complimented his long range scope for low visibility work.

Using a pocket sized laser range finder he ranged the distance to the warehouse his men were on at nine hundred and thirty two meters, a difficult shot to make on a good day and in a solid firing position. The external ballistics got more complicated however when Nikita began factoring in the high angle aspect of the shots he would have to make.

When judging range at a high angle up or down from the target, the distance to the target that the shooter would arrive at would be much longer than the actual flat range distance from his position to the enemy position. If the high angle distance to target, in this case nine hundred and thirty meters was dialed into his rifle scope, his bullets would impact much higher than the point of aim.

High angle, low angle, or no angle, bullet drop would be the same because the earth's gravity is constant, however the discrepancy between flat line distance and angled distance had to be compensated for.

A small level mounted to the side of his scope told him that with his rifle oriented down to the target building, gave him a reading that his gun was pointed down at 55 degrees. The cosine of a 55 degree angle was .57 according to a cheat sheet taped inside the scope cap. Next he applied the high angle formula to get his flat line distance. 930 meters multiplied by .57 equaled a flat line distance of 530 meters.

Nikita used his thumb and index finger to slowly rotate the top dial on his Schmidt and Bender scope, counting off the clicks on the Bullet Drop Compensator until he arrived at the right offset, raising his cross hairs so that his bullets would strike center mass by compensating for the bullet drop caused by gravity at a range of five hundred and thirty meters.

Bringing his breathing under control, he exhaled in short evenly spaced breaths. A few rooftops over from the aluminum warehouse he saw a human form creeping along looking for a firing position of his own, a place where he could shoot at the mercenaries from a concealed position. Shifting in his improvised rope seat, Nikita let his sights land square on the gunman's back and keyed up his radio.

“Six,” he whispered. “This is Shooter-One. I'm set, over.”

A fresh round of gunfire exploded down below in the city.

“Send it!”

Nikita squeezed the trigger. He watched the gunman jerk, his muscles going tense. Through the green glow of the night vision enhanced scope, the would-be killer fell and died.

Deckard couldn't discern Nikita's individual shots above all the automatic gunfire and sporadic rifle, pistol, and occasional RPG shots but one by one, he noticed enemy muzzle flashes blinking out. Suddenly, the amount of effective fire they were receiving seemed to drop by half. It gave them some much need breathing room. Cordite from the PKM and AK fire their men were laying down hung in the air with the humidity, the sickly sweet smell invading his nostrils.

“We are prepared to move,” Zhenis said as they crouched behind cover. “Two squads have been outfitted with extra ammunition and two PKM's will cover our movement for immediate fire support.”

“How about our street sweeper?”

“Bringing up the rear.”

“Let's do it.”

The mercenaries slipped over the edge of the roof one by one and down to the adjacent rooftop. Machine gunners suppressed known and suspected enemy positions while Nikita was somewhere in the night providing precision fire. Once both squads and two PKM gunners were down they moved across the roof, staying low to avoid the continued onslaught of bullets that whizzed through the air. With the amount of lead kicking back and forth it was only a matter of time before someone caught a round in the face.

There was a small gap between the house they were on top of and the next building over. Hearing someone arguing in Spanish, Deckard looked down to see several shadows scurrying through the alleyway as they attempted to find a concealed route to the aluminum shop where the remaining two squads and their trucks were holed up. Yanking a pin on a fragmentation grenade, Deckard dropped it through the gap and stepped away.

“Fire in the hole!”

In the confined space of the alley, the effects of the grenade were absolutely devastating. Both the shrapnel produced by the grenade and the overpressure created by a blast had nowhere to go but straight out at the cartel gunmen who were using the alley as an avenue of approach. The building buckled under the mercenaries' feet as the blast shook the neighborhood.

Adjusting his night vision goggles by turning the focus knob, Deckard looked back down into the alley and saw body parts spread around with debris and the various other trash and refuse to be found in third world cities.

“We're clear.”

Hopping the gap, the Samruk men continued across the rooftops. Gunfire from other rooftops came sporadically and was inaccurate until a single shot cracked out above the others. Orders and cries for help sounded in Russian, the Kazakhs throwing themselves down flat. Deckard followed suit, scrambling to a prone position. Another gunshot rang out as cement dust blew into Deckard's face.

Several Kazakh's pulled a downed team member behind a water basin, hoping for some cover from the gunfire but they had no idea where it was coming from.

“He is alive,” one of the mercenaries told Zhenis as he asked what the status was. They had patted down the casualty and found no traces of blood.

“The bullet hit his ballistic plate. It knocked the wind out of him but he is okay.”

Another shot punched through the water basin, a single stream of water spurting out and splashing next to Deckard.

“Shooter-One?” he called over the radio.

“I'm looking!”