GWOT I - A Short Walk
Dec. 18th, 2021 02:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkittyI begin in media res, as every good epic should.
It is raining. Not a nice gentle sprinkle. The kind where an angry Goddess is sick of your shit and has you on the wrong side of her water sports. Cold. The velocity is like a cow pissing on a flat rock. The temperature is like the mercy of a general. Cold.
I am out in it. The one slight mercy is that someone has lent me a wide broad-brimmed patrol cap, so that I can actually see. Otherwise, I am in a cheap polyester shirt with only two positive attributes - can't absorb water and is colored a dark blue difficult to distinguish from black. The pants, roughly the same except that a repurposed sleeping bag strap is serving me as a belt. My socks and underwear, however, can absorb water and are totally soaked.
I have a folded knife in my pocket and a holstered semi-automatic pistol. It's not worth the risk of having it in my hand. Although my entire purpose of being out here with it in this rat drizzle is to kill someone with it. Preferably by pressing the barrel against their skull before I pull the trigger.
I don't have a flashlight. That would be suicidal.
There is heavy cloud cover and no moon. So it is not quite as dark as a yard up a well-digger's ass. Call it as dark as his taint.
We have a problem. The problem is that someone doesn't like this Site, and has decided to express their dislike through the medium of casual sniping.
"So send a patrol to go kill them!"
We did, sir, they didn't come back.
Police? Surely you jest.
The rain coming down all around me is radioactive. Mostly it is rain. But some of it is fallout, the remnants of incinerated San Francisco, falling down around me and soaking my underwear and - if I am not very careful - getting in my mouth.
I shouldn't be out here except in a hazmat suit.
I shouldn't even be out here _IN_ a hazmat suit. And even then, I should be on air.
That's not an option. The mask I am wearing is to reduce face shine, not to try to breathe through. The borrowed makeup on my forehead, neck and the backs of my hands is not an affectation. It is a desperate attempt to ward off being seen.
What a sniper can see, a sniper can shoot.
My admittedly simple task, adapted to the meanest understanding, is to go sneak around behind the sniper and murder them.
Just about the only fact we had - courtesy of a classified imaging system hastily jury rigged to the site cameras - is that I had one adversary to deal with. Just one.
That system didn't work in rain.
So now the only sensors I had were my own. My eyes, my ears, my nose. Mark One Eyeball, as the joke goes.
Unless sudden hydrostatic shock from a bullet to the brainpan pops them out of my skull from behind. As had already happened to two guards and a supervisor.
There was no one else who could do it. There were only two others who even knew enough to think about trying. Arturo and Brooke. The former is on the wrong side of twenty years and fifty pounds. The other couldn't walk a hundred yards in this shit in sandals, let alone boots, thanks to a bad back acquired under Uncle Sam's tutelage in urban warfare.
I have no such training. I've read books, gone hiking, and crawled around in bushes before. I am now head to head with a trained military sniper.
My only protections are 1) the sheer implausibility of what I'm attempting and 2) that beloved, beloved cold rain which so shrivels my testicles while coating them lovingly with radioactive particles.
I'd had the chance to study the maps and talk to Arturo and Brooke. They knew the site, they knew the situation. I thought like a bad guy.
I'd left my badge and wallet behind. I wouldn't need them unless I returned.
To effectively monitor traffic out the South Gate and snipe the south east parking lot, there were a total of three good and seven awful hide sites a sniper could use.
As any good sniper does, the sniper would move from one to another as needed. But in the cold and wet with little to nothing going on, they would be tempted to slack off. To rest. To snivel, in the sense of 'snivel gear' like a poncho or if I were really lucky, a sleeping bag. Probably not to light a fire, because not suicidal.
Perhaps that is what happened to the three person patrol we sent out two hours ago. They found a spot to hide out and hid.
More likely the sniper got them. Silently as we'd heard no gunfire. That meant silenced weapons or skill in close combat.
I had neither.
So if I fired a round that hit anything but sniper, I would be revealing my position and thereby become the hunted. And shortly after, the eliminated.
So why was I doing this? Walking around quietly in the dark. Sneaking. Letting every sense stretch into the hostile night. Scared enough to piss and shit myself if I had any of either left, which I did not.
You know, I'm not sure.
###
"If we don't get this asshole, we're all dead," Mr. Murphy had briefed the patrol.
It was the truth. The sniper could interdict the gate. His buddies could then rush it, as soon as the sun came up and the rain slightly abated.
Then we were at their mercy. And spilled brains here and there were an excellent visual aid with respect to mercy, lack thereof.
###
I could easily run, hide, run away and hide, hide and run away. Hide and go fuck myself. Fuck myself running. You know, flee. Nothing to stop me. Plenty of work for someone like me in the shattered Bay Area. Dead site, I escaped its destruction. Only one person would know I had failed.
Me.
###
The key is not to move with purpose. The book _Dune_ talked about walking with rhythm. I didn't fear attracting a worm, I feared attracting just one bullet.
I moved like a coyote. Like a deer. Not from one patch of cover to another, but when the terrain required it, on my hands and knees. Other times, in a low painful crouch. Slow walk, slow move.
I could only pray that the sniper wasn't watching. Or if the sniper was watching, that I would be mistaken for an animal, or simply not sure enough to waste a bullet.
No weapon in my hands kept me from showing that distinctive profile. No slung rifle or submachine gun either.
Three hundred yards took me an hour.
###
I found a hide site. The sniper had urinated. A depression in the grass under the edge of the bushes showed where they had lain. Expended casings, not 'policed' or cleaned up, showed that they were a right handed shooter with a bolt action .308 rifle.
There were tiny traces of the direction the sniper had crawled in.
Again, every sense tingling, every sense expecting a bullet from any direction at any moment.
I followed. It was something to do.
###
I didn't have a watch - that would also be suicidal - but I could tell that we were getting the first signs of gray dawn soon.
That would give me about an hour to end this, one way or another.
I wouldn't be able to move as freely in any light.
A .308 rifle has an effective range of at least 600 yards. Double that in the hands of an expert, especially with formal training on how to read wind and range.
I flattered myself that I could consistently hit a pistol target at 25 yards.
I had to put a 25 yard circle over their dot.
###
It was time to take risks. I stood.
My muscles screamed again from the crouching and crawling and low walking.
I had checked three of the good and two of the not-so-good hide sites.
I had my opinion on which one would be a good hide site at first light.
So I kept my mind blank.
I slowly walked over there. Not thinking of anything. A smooth, clean walk. No tip-toeing, but making no sound either.
I saw the sniper under the bush, a person lying on the ground with a monocular optic on a tiny tripod, watching the site. A rifle case lying in front of them with a rifle resting on it.
So I kept walking closer at the same unhurried, unmeasured pace.
At ten yards I drew my pistol smoothly and emptied a magazine into them. I reloaded with the ease of long practice and emptied a second magazine into them, aimed fire at one shot per second until the pistol locked back. I saw an oval lose its shape and the body shudder to its final stillness.
I sat heavily and waited for daylight and for my patrol.
The smell of blood was thick and heavy despite the rain.
The rain running down my face could have been mistaken for tears. It wasn't.
###
Shortly after dawn, the reaction vehicle drove into the grass.
I stood, shivering from the cold with my hands raised.
I was soon spotlighted. They approached.
"Code!" I shouted.
The lead lowered her rifle slightly.
"Wins!" was Brooke's reply.
"Wars," I said quietly to finish the countersign as she approached.
She pointed her rifle at the corpse.
"Sir?" she asked. Implied question.
"I didn't run an approach," I warned. The what without the why.
The rifle light from Brooke's rifle helped the gray dawn to reveal the body my bullets had torn asunder.
Several wounds to arms and legs. A couple to the torso. At least three in the head, and spilled brains and a stray eyeball looking the wrong way.
Turn about is fair play.
I walked the rest of Brooke's squad through approaching, cuffing and securing the corpse. Then sending back for a tarp to carry it to the bed of the reaction truck for a cursory forensics analysis, the best we could do under the conditions.
When we withdrew to the motor pool for debrief, the patrol had returned.
"They must have left," one was saying when we reversed and backed in with the corpse clearly visible.
I wordlessly walked up to the speaker, reached to his belt, and removed a loaded magazine from same. He flinched but froze, especially when his nose told him I was an apparition from his personal hell.
Only then did I drop the empty magazine, load my pistol, stoop and hand him the empty mag.
"Do your job or leave," I said next. "There may still be another sniper out there. Go check. And if you don't actually check every single hide, don't bother coming back."
Then I walked over to the hose and bibb in the decontamination area and matter of factly stripped naked, ran the hose and its cold water all over myself - with special attention to my underparts - and left almost all of the clothes in little sopping piles to be decontaminated.
Rinsed, the gun belt and reloaded pistol went in a separate pile.
I carefully washed the hat, and put it next to the corpse in the truck bed.
"Saved my life, thank you," I said to Brooke.
No one was saying anything. Until I gestured, an angry arm-sweep, and the patrol headed back out again to do their job. Then I strapped on the gun belt over, but not concealing, my nakedness, and went back to Control to get my wallet and badge. It took a moment, but they remoted the doors open for me.
Arturo stood as I entered Control.
He took off his uniform shirt. Then he took off his trousers. Then he handed them to me.
"Sir," he said, and saluted, and then resumed his post in his underwear.
I dressed with everyone not-watching. Then I went to brief Mr. Murphy.
###
"Interesting," he said when he had heard my report.
I nodded.
"E-mail the photos and prints to me. I'll reach out and see what we can find. Who did you send?"
I met his eyes.
"A field supervisor."
He started to say something, stopped himself, started to ask a question, stopped himself again.
Met my eyes in turn.
Flinched.
"Tell him he did a good job. Dismissed."
It is raining. Not a nice gentle sprinkle. The kind where an angry Goddess is sick of your shit and has you on the wrong side of her water sports. Cold. The velocity is like a cow pissing on a flat rock. The temperature is like the mercy of a general. Cold.
I am out in it. The one slight mercy is that someone has lent me a wide broad-brimmed patrol cap, so that I can actually see. Otherwise, I am in a cheap polyester shirt with only two positive attributes - can't absorb water and is colored a dark blue difficult to distinguish from black. The pants, roughly the same except that a repurposed sleeping bag strap is serving me as a belt. My socks and underwear, however, can absorb water and are totally soaked.
I have a folded knife in my pocket and a holstered semi-automatic pistol. It's not worth the risk of having it in my hand. Although my entire purpose of being out here with it in this rat drizzle is to kill someone with it. Preferably by pressing the barrel against their skull before I pull the trigger.
I don't have a flashlight. That would be suicidal.
There is heavy cloud cover and no moon. So it is not quite as dark as a yard up a well-digger's ass. Call it as dark as his taint.
We have a problem. The problem is that someone doesn't like this Site, and has decided to express their dislike through the medium of casual sniping.
"So send a patrol to go kill them!"
We did, sir, they didn't come back.
Police? Surely you jest.
The rain coming down all around me is radioactive. Mostly it is rain. But some of it is fallout, the remnants of incinerated San Francisco, falling down around me and soaking my underwear and - if I am not very careful - getting in my mouth.
I shouldn't be out here except in a hazmat suit.
I shouldn't even be out here _IN_ a hazmat suit. And even then, I should be on air.
That's not an option. The mask I am wearing is to reduce face shine, not to try to breathe through. The borrowed makeup on my forehead, neck and the backs of my hands is not an affectation. It is a desperate attempt to ward off being seen.
What a sniper can see, a sniper can shoot.
My admittedly simple task, adapted to the meanest understanding, is to go sneak around behind the sniper and murder them.
Just about the only fact we had - courtesy of a classified imaging system hastily jury rigged to the site cameras - is that I had one adversary to deal with. Just one.
That system didn't work in rain.
So now the only sensors I had were my own. My eyes, my ears, my nose. Mark One Eyeball, as the joke goes.
Unless sudden hydrostatic shock from a bullet to the brainpan pops them out of my skull from behind. As had already happened to two guards and a supervisor.
There was no one else who could do it. There were only two others who even knew enough to think about trying. Arturo and Brooke. The former is on the wrong side of twenty years and fifty pounds. The other couldn't walk a hundred yards in this shit in sandals, let alone boots, thanks to a bad back acquired under Uncle Sam's tutelage in urban warfare.
I have no such training. I've read books, gone hiking, and crawled around in bushes before. I am now head to head with a trained military sniper.
My only protections are 1) the sheer implausibility of what I'm attempting and 2) that beloved, beloved cold rain which so shrivels my testicles while coating them lovingly with radioactive particles.
I'd had the chance to study the maps and talk to Arturo and Brooke. They knew the site, they knew the situation. I thought like a bad guy.
I'd left my badge and wallet behind. I wouldn't need them unless I returned.
To effectively monitor traffic out the South Gate and snipe the south east parking lot, there were a total of three good and seven awful hide sites a sniper could use.
As any good sniper does, the sniper would move from one to another as needed. But in the cold and wet with little to nothing going on, they would be tempted to slack off. To rest. To snivel, in the sense of 'snivel gear' like a poncho or if I were really lucky, a sleeping bag. Probably not to light a fire, because not suicidal.
Perhaps that is what happened to the three person patrol we sent out two hours ago. They found a spot to hide out and hid.
More likely the sniper got them. Silently as we'd heard no gunfire. That meant silenced weapons or skill in close combat.
I had neither.
So if I fired a round that hit anything but sniper, I would be revealing my position and thereby become the hunted. And shortly after, the eliminated.
So why was I doing this? Walking around quietly in the dark. Sneaking. Letting every sense stretch into the hostile night. Scared enough to piss and shit myself if I had any of either left, which I did not.
You know, I'm not sure.
###
"If we don't get this asshole, we're all dead," Mr. Murphy had briefed the patrol.
It was the truth. The sniper could interdict the gate. His buddies could then rush it, as soon as the sun came up and the rain slightly abated.
Then we were at their mercy. And spilled brains here and there were an excellent visual aid with respect to mercy, lack thereof.
###
I could easily run, hide, run away and hide, hide and run away. Hide and go fuck myself. Fuck myself running. You know, flee. Nothing to stop me. Plenty of work for someone like me in the shattered Bay Area. Dead site, I escaped its destruction. Only one person would know I had failed.
Me.
###
The key is not to move with purpose. The book _Dune_ talked about walking with rhythm. I didn't fear attracting a worm, I feared attracting just one bullet.
I moved like a coyote. Like a deer. Not from one patch of cover to another, but when the terrain required it, on my hands and knees. Other times, in a low painful crouch. Slow walk, slow move.
I could only pray that the sniper wasn't watching. Or if the sniper was watching, that I would be mistaken for an animal, or simply not sure enough to waste a bullet.
No weapon in my hands kept me from showing that distinctive profile. No slung rifle or submachine gun either.
Three hundred yards took me an hour.
###
I found a hide site. The sniper had urinated. A depression in the grass under the edge of the bushes showed where they had lain. Expended casings, not 'policed' or cleaned up, showed that they were a right handed shooter with a bolt action .308 rifle.
There were tiny traces of the direction the sniper had crawled in.
Again, every sense tingling, every sense expecting a bullet from any direction at any moment.
I followed. It was something to do.
###
I didn't have a watch - that would also be suicidal - but I could tell that we were getting the first signs of gray dawn soon.
That would give me about an hour to end this, one way or another.
I wouldn't be able to move as freely in any light.
A .308 rifle has an effective range of at least 600 yards. Double that in the hands of an expert, especially with formal training on how to read wind and range.
I flattered myself that I could consistently hit a pistol target at 25 yards.
I had to put a 25 yard circle over their dot.
###
It was time to take risks. I stood.
My muscles screamed again from the crouching and crawling and low walking.
I had checked three of the good and two of the not-so-good hide sites.
I had my opinion on which one would be a good hide site at first light.
So I kept my mind blank.
I slowly walked over there. Not thinking of anything. A smooth, clean walk. No tip-toeing, but making no sound either.
I saw the sniper under the bush, a person lying on the ground with a monocular optic on a tiny tripod, watching the site. A rifle case lying in front of them with a rifle resting on it.
So I kept walking closer at the same unhurried, unmeasured pace.
At ten yards I drew my pistol smoothly and emptied a magazine into them. I reloaded with the ease of long practice and emptied a second magazine into them, aimed fire at one shot per second until the pistol locked back. I saw an oval lose its shape and the body shudder to its final stillness.
I sat heavily and waited for daylight and for my patrol.
The smell of blood was thick and heavy despite the rain.
The rain running down my face could have been mistaken for tears. It wasn't.
###
Shortly after dawn, the reaction vehicle drove into the grass.
I stood, shivering from the cold with my hands raised.
I was soon spotlighted. They approached.
"Code!" I shouted.
The lead lowered her rifle slightly.
"Wins!" was Brooke's reply.
"Wars," I said quietly to finish the countersign as she approached.
She pointed her rifle at the corpse.
"Sir?" she asked. Implied question.
"I didn't run an approach," I warned. The what without the why.
The rifle light from Brooke's rifle helped the gray dawn to reveal the body my bullets had torn asunder.
Several wounds to arms and legs. A couple to the torso. At least three in the head, and spilled brains and a stray eyeball looking the wrong way.
Turn about is fair play.
I walked the rest of Brooke's squad through approaching, cuffing and securing the corpse. Then sending back for a tarp to carry it to the bed of the reaction truck for a cursory forensics analysis, the best we could do under the conditions.
When we withdrew to the motor pool for debrief, the patrol had returned.
"They must have left," one was saying when we reversed and backed in with the corpse clearly visible.
I wordlessly walked up to the speaker, reached to his belt, and removed a loaded magazine from same. He flinched but froze, especially when his nose told him I was an apparition from his personal hell.
Only then did I drop the empty magazine, load my pistol, stoop and hand him the empty mag.
"Do your job or leave," I said next. "There may still be another sniper out there. Go check. And if you don't actually check every single hide, don't bother coming back."
Then I walked over to the hose and bibb in the decontamination area and matter of factly stripped naked, ran the hose and its cold water all over myself - with special attention to my underparts - and left almost all of the clothes in little sopping piles to be decontaminated.
Rinsed, the gun belt and reloaded pistol went in a separate pile.
I carefully washed the hat, and put it next to the corpse in the truck bed.
"Saved my life, thank you," I said to Brooke.
No one was saying anything. Until I gestured, an angry arm-sweep, and the patrol headed back out again to do their job. Then I strapped on the gun belt over, but not concealing, my nakedness, and went back to Control to get my wallet and badge. It took a moment, but they remoted the doors open for me.
Arturo stood as I entered Control.
He took off his uniform shirt. Then he took off his trousers. Then he handed them to me.
"Sir," he said, and saluted, and then resumed his post in his underwear.
I dressed with everyone not-watching. Then I went to brief Mr. Murphy.
###
"Interesting," he said when he had heard my report.
I nodded.
"E-mail the photos and prints to me. I'll reach out and see what we can find. Who did you send?"
I met his eyes.
"A field supervisor."
He started to say something, stopped himself, started to ask a question, stopped himself again.
Met my eyes in turn.
Flinched.
"Tell him he did a good job. Dismissed."
