Target Deck - 02 (34 page)

Nikita used his night sights to peer into the shadows and crevices of the city, but a single enemy sniper could be hiding nearly anywhere, including inside a building and obscured from view.

Sweeping across the city, he finally found what he was looking for on top of the Hotel Fortin. The Hotel was down the street from Deckard's position but in the opposite direction from which they were heading. On the roof he could see a cartel gunman with a scoped rifle taking carefully aimed shots.

Nikita had to act fast before they suffered more casualties. He estimated the range to be about 700 meters, looked at his angle indicator and noted 70 degrees for a cosine of .34. 700 x .34 = 238 meters. The sniper adjusted his scope and settled behind the gun, his cheek pressed up against the stock in the exact same place every time he took a shot.

The enemy sniper fired from the top of the eight story hotel and racked the bolt on his rifle to load a fresh round.

Nikita had a difficult oblique shot, but it was the shot he had, not the one he wanted. Squeezing the trigger, he had no idea where his bullet went but he clearly missed. The target spun around as he heard something impact nearby. When he turned, he exposed his entire front side and chest to Nikita.

Even through the grainy green night vision, Nikita could make out some of his facial features. He could see he broad face, deep set eyes, and thick lips. As a sniper, you got to know your targets better than most other soldiers. That was what Nikita liked about his job.

He sent a second shot. The HK 417 bucked into his shoulder.

The enemy sniper dropped his rifle before pitching forward onto his face.

“Got him,” Deckard heard over the net.

“Pick it up! We're moving!”

The PKMs back on the roof of the aluminum shop were still roaring on advancing enemy but at least the enemy sniper had been put down. Moving one squad at a time, the mercenaries bounded forward from one roof to another with one squad in a static security position to cover the one that was advancing. The mercenaries were moving across the rooftops at a fast pace down to the end of the block where a large mechanics shop sat on the corner.

Looking through a window, Deckard saw that the shop was packed full of broken down cars in various states of repair. The front of the shop was locked up with barbwire fences. He could see gunmen running across the street, not to mention the front end of the tractor trailer that they needed to move.

Sergeant Zhenis brought up the rear as the second squad bounded up.

“It's going to get nasty once we get down onto the streets,” Deckard said. “I want to get our two PKM gunners and the Goose gunner up on the roof of this shop for an added overwatch.”

Zhenis looked up at the roof, it was about two man lengths higher than the roof they stood on. Giving some orders to his men, two of them formed stirrups with their hands with their backs braced against the wall. A third, with a long green metal tube slung over his back came forward and put his foot into their hands. The two soldiers boosted him up so that he could grab the edge of the roof and swing up.

Once on the roof, he removed the sling from the metal tube and connected the ends to create a big loop. The rest of the squad tossed up to him two packs containing four recoilless rifle rounds and several gunner's bags filled with linked PKM ammunition. Next, the mercenaries boosted the two PKM gunners up to the roof. The recoilless rifle gunner tossed them his sling so they could grab on to it and he pulled them the rest of the way to the top.

The recoilless rifle that the first mercenary carried was the
84mm Carl Gustav
, a shoulder fired Anti-Tank weapon that fired a variety of shells ranging from High Explosive Anti-Tank, High Explosive Dual Purpose, flare, and smoke rounds. Popping open a locking lever, he swung the venturi at the end of the “Goose” out of the way and loaded a black round that looked like it had the top of it cut off with its flat nose. This specific round was an anti-personnel Flechette round.

Moving to the edge of the roof, the Goose gunner looked down to see the cartel shooters who had surrounded the tractor trailer and were building improvised fighting positions at the end of the road. They were laying in wait for the Samruk mercenaries to attempt a breakout. If they did, they would be shot to ribbons. First they needed to clear the way of excess enemy.

Shouldering the Gustav, the gunner used his thumb to prime the spring loaded cocking mechanism, aimed the weapon down into the street at the mass of enemy, and flipped the selector from safe to fire.

The entire street corner was turned from night into day for a fraction of a second as the flechette round fired. The Area Defense Munition blasted over a thousand metal flechettes at the enemy, causing nearly all of them to drop the ground immediately. Screams of agony ripped through the night as those still living howled in pain. The two PKM gunners raked the dead and dying with automatic fire to finish off the job.

By now the two squads of mercenaries had scrambled down to the street and ran to the tractor trailer. One of them jumped up in the cab and found the key missing from the ignition so he put the truck into neutral. The squads surrounded the cab, each man finding a hand hold wherever they could. With each of them throwing their weight into it and grunting in exertion, the semi-truck finally budged and began rolling.

Sergeant Zhen saw the truck lurch forward, unblocking access to the road.

“Get off the roof,” he ordered the remaining two squads and two machine gunners still on top of the aluminum shop by calling over his radio. “Grab up the security element inside, mount the vehicles, and roll out. You are making a hard left on the way out and coming straight down the road towards us.”

With the truck rolling down a slight incline, it smashed into several parked cars and came to a stop. Deckard wiped sweat from his face, turning around just in time to catch a vehicle screaming around the corner. It was a technical, a pickup truck with a .50 caliber M2 machine gun mounted on a pivot in the back. The gunner standing in the bed of the truck racked the charging handle.

“Technical!” he yelled.

The machine gunner let loose a fusillade of auto fire that cut through the night, red tracers pointing the way. The mercenaries ducked out of the street and took refuge behind parked cars as the hot metal screamed towards them.

The Goose gunner up on the roof lit up the night one more time, the blast nearly deafening the assaulters below. An HEDP round slammed into the pickup truck, the detonation lifting it clear off the pavement for half a second before it slammed back down and continued forward, now consumed by flames. The pickup shot past Deckard. As he turned to look he could see someone thrashing in the passenger seat, being burned alive.

“Get the fuck down here,” he screamed up to their overwatch element. “Nice shooting!”

A muzzle flashed somewhere down the street. Fifteen AK-103's converged on it and that was the last they heard from him.

Four Iveco assault vehicles turned out of the aluminum shop, the PKM gunners in the front and rear turrets firing in multiple directions. Speeding up, they rounded around the corner to finally escape the kill zone and stopped to pick up the mercenaries. The fifth vehicle had been effectively killed. The mercenaries had tossed a thermite grenade into the cab before peeling out. Down the street, Deckard could already see smoke pouring out of the open garage door.

The three-man element that had been up on the roof of the mechanics shop loaded up. The rest of the mercenaries found their seats, everyone trying to avoid the body bag loaded in the back of one of the trucks.

Deckard jumped onto the back of the last assault truck and sat down in one of the bullet proof ceramic seats that faced outward.

“Shooter-One this is Six.”

“Six this is Shooter-One.”

“Thanks for the help, we are clear of the kill zone and heading home. So should you.”

“Roger.”

“Six out.”

Tapping on the cab's rear window, the passenger slid the bullet proof glass out of the way.

“Give me the hand mic.”

The mercenary handed it to Deckard. He needed to get on the satellite radio to establish comms with the OPCEN.

“This is Six, we are clear of the killzone. How long until the QRF gets out here?” he asked Cody.

Nothing came over the airwaves but static.

29

Pat surged up the steps with a wooden crate over each shoulder. On the high walls, the Kazakhs from Fedorchenko's platoon were waging a pitched battle. Behind him, a 60mm mortar round slammed through the roof of what had been Ortega's garage and blasted the sheet metal sky high.

The Samruk men had been fortifying their compound for the last several days when they were not out on missions, and the sandbags and concertina wire helped keep the enemy at bay, but couldn't stop the barrage of gunfire and indirect mortar fire that had been slamming them for the better part of an hour. It seemed that Jimenez had called in about one hundred shooters to assault the mercenary base. They had approached from a defilade, in the low ground of an arroyo where they could not be observed until they were within range of small arms fire.

The former Delta Force operator suspected that Jimenez had the plan in place to assault Ortega's base at some point and when the mercenaries had disposed of him, the drug lord simply recycled the plan for his new enemy.

Sucking in as much oxygen as he could, Pat reached the top of the stairs and dumped the two crates of 7.62x39 ammunition. Using a multi-tool he cracked them open and pulled out two tins of ammo from each crate. Meanwhile, he could hear Sergeant Major Korgan policing the lines. He was up top with the men coordinating their fires. Below, Sergeant Fedorchenko was also carrying up more ammunition and had stopped to put a boot in the ass of their own 60mm mortar crew.

They only had one tube in the compound, the others had been given to Kurt Jager to use as commando mortars with the Zapatistas since they would be conducting more rural operations. That did not seem like such a good idea at the moment.

One of the mercenaries looked over his shoulder and yelled in Russian. He was clearing his back blast area before triggering an RPG rocket that exploded somewhere near the enemy position. PKM gunners braced their weapons against the edge of the wall and walked their tracers across the front lines each time the enemy tried to advance.

Using his multi-tool, Pat cut through the tops of the tins and began walking down the line, handing out boxes of ammunition to each soldier. Most of them had blown through five or six magazines a piece. One of the PKMs chewed through a belt and the gunner popped the feed tray cover, slapped another belt of ammo in place, and slammed it shut.

The enemy was coming right at them, like some crazed lunatic wave of suicide commandos. It didn't strike Pat as being consistent with the hit and run tactics that the sicarios used. Where was Jimenez finding these people? The Mexicans didn't have anything like a martyr culture as could be found in the Middle East.

Pat rushed down the lines, shoving the boxes of bullets in the cargo pockets of the men who were too busy firing to grab the re-supply.