Tasmanian SFG: Welcome to Hell Read online

  Patten was right. Through my scope I could make out two men carrying cylinders, six with large packs I’d wager contained explosive material, two with smaller packs which could be wires, tools, and detonators, and a ten-man escort with assault rifles and two with sniper rifles. I wondered who I should target first. The snipers would be safer for the four of us, but the explosives for everyone down below. I centered the crosshairs on one man carrying a cylinder and shot. His head exploded, but before anyone realized what was happening, I had the other man with a cylinder in my scope and fired. The impact from the 10.36-millimeter bullets spun both men off the trail with the cylinder they had strapped to them. They bounced ten to twenty meters down the slope. The soldiers had raced for cover while the pack bearers seemed frozen in place. I sighted center mass on the first one I had in my scope and squeezed off a shot, then found the next one who was turning around not sure where to go, and shot him. By then, everyone had found cover. The escort had my approximate location and were firing on full automatic but at this range none of the bullets were anywhere near me. That wasn’t going to last as I had seen two snipers who were by now looking for me.

  “The escort is on the move,” I said to Patten, who relayed the information to Harold and Benny. “Why don’t you keep track of them for our scouts while I try to neutralize the snipers?” Ironically, if they were any good they would be waiting for me to fire again.

  Another five minutes passed and the soldiers closed another seventy-five meters and were now moving with less and less concern for the sniper. Several minutes later one of the snipers stood then ducked down. An inviting target I ignored, thinking the two thought me gone and the brief exposure a test. Sure enough, three minutes later both men rose and cautiously began following the soldiers. One of the men had slung his rifle over his shoulder while the other kept his at the ready. I chose him, sighted center mass, and fired. His partner dove for cover but it wasn’t good as one of his legs was exposed. I sighted and fired. I would rather have made a clean shot, but the impact from a 13.36-millimeter round would shatter his leg and he would bleed out in minutes.

  The soldiers were now within twenty meters and heavy automatic fire could be heard from both sides. I adjusted my scope to the lowest magnification and scanned the area. The scout had moved some ten meters toward the soldiers to protect Patten and me. I could see Benny and the four soldiers but not Harold. The four were trying to encircle Benny. Working in teams of two, one would shoot to keep Benny down while the other sprinted to the next closest cover. As the next one fired and his partner began his sprint I shot him in his side. He was dead before he hit the ground and rolled down into a boulder. The other man jumped out and began firing in my direction. Benny cut him down. I then looked for the other team. Nothing. They were trapped, unable to advance or retreat without getting killed.

  “We surrender,” shouted a high-pitched voice.

  “Throw your weapons out and come out with your hands in the air,” Benny said. A minute later two middle-aged men appeared. One looked wounded judging by the blood on his jacket.

  “Patten, you help Benny and I’ll look for Harold.” He nodded and we stood.

  “Benny, where did you last see Harold?” I asked. Benny didn’t turn his head, just pointed to his left. I slowly negotiated my way down in that direction and saw Harold lying face down. I bent down and felt his neck and found a weak pulse. I managed to roll him over and found three areas where his clothes were red with blood—left arm, left side, and right leg. I removed my knife and cut the cloth open at each spot and decided the leg was bleeding the most. I quickly used some rope and my knife to twist the rope tight enough to stop the bleeding. Then using gauze from my knapsack, I stuffed both wounds and found a heavy rock to keep pressure on both until I could get help. I hurried over to Benny, who had also been shot in his side. The bullet had exited his back, and I couldn’t do much except pack the wound. When I finished I took off my shirt and tied it around him to keep pressure on the wound.

  “Patten, call for medics. Harold will definitely need blood and neither man will be able to walk down.”

  While we waited I spent my time loosening the tourniquet on Harold’s leg and monitoring the wounds. Help arrived an hour later. A helicopter dropped off two medics and four Tasmanians on the south side of the mountain, which shielded it from snipers and required only a fifteen-minute hike for the medics.

  The medics spent an hour with Harold and Benny. I watched and received a running commentary as they worked on each wound. Finally, the older of the two medics stood and looked at me.

  “I’m Dr. Duarte, you did a damn good job, Luan,” he said. “And your assessment was right. Harold need bloods immediately and Benny has a broken rib and trying to walk back down could have resulted in a punctured lung. He was lucky you were here.”

  “No, I was lucky Harold and Benny were here. Our brothers saved our lives. We couldn’t have survived the group of Hihari soldiers we encountered.”

  Duarte shook his head. “We all talk about our comrades as our brothers-in-arms, but you Tasmanians treat each other as blood relations.” He rose as the two men were loaded onto stretchers. “Are you coming back with us?”

  I looked at Patten, who shrugged. “Lacy didn’t say.”

  “Mind if we stay?” I asked him.

  Patten shook his head. “No. I want to see if you can make the shot.”

  “Me too,” I said. We spent the next hour finding a new position, setting up the camera, eating some rations, and relieving ourselves before settling down. We were both quiet as the hours passed. Toward evening, we reviewed the tapes.

  “They aren’t changing positions. They have teams who are making it look like they are but they are carefully staggering who takes the next shot,” Patten said. “Clever, it lures the Rangers into vulnerable positions.” Patten called down to Lacy and relayed our findings.

  “Time for us to go to work, Gary. Pick out a team,” I said as I began making a tentative adjustment to my scope. Gary leaned over and tapped on the screen in three different places. I nodded. A minute later I had the area in my scope.

  “Thirteen hundred fifty meters, wind out of the north at fifteen kph,” Patten said, grinning like a shark who just found a school of its favorite fish. Several minutes later the third man fired. I brought my scope up to the spot the top man was using for cover and saw a rifle barrel inch out between two boulders and then a head. I fired. His head exploded a heartbeat before the sound of the discharge—dead before he knew a rifle had been fired. I adjusted my scope for the area where the second shooter lay and saw movement, probably heard or saw his team member’s body falling. I fired center mass and saw the body flung backward. I adjusted my scope to the third position where the shooter was attempting to crawl to a new position. I could see his body as it moved from one large boulder to another. I fired, hitting him in the hip. If he wasn’t dead, he would be within minutes.

  That night we killed four Hihari sniper teams. In the morning, we trekked down the mountain.

  “Good job, you two. Harold’s going to live and Benny should be functional in a week,” Lacy said when we found him. “The four of you stopped what could have been a major disaster, and the Rangers now have control of the next two mountains. That was good shooting. Go get something to eat and rest. Nothing is happening right now.”

  The makeshift mess hall was mostly empty when we arrived. We loaded our plates as it was the first hot food for two days, and I needed to eat whenever I could. We had just sat when Naylor and Salmon joined us, and two minutes later the four snipers from Sadler’s squad.

  “All right, let’s hear it,” Naylor said. “We’ve all heard bits and pieces, but we want in on the action.”

  “Working with Luan is an emotional rollercoaster,” Patten began when he had finished chewing a mouthful of stew. “We start out following the army and she decides she wants to watch the action. Lacy doesn’t argue but doesn’t like the idea. We’re a good eight hundr
ed meters back from the mountain. She tells me to make a video of the action. I do, thinking it’s a waste of time and I want us in on the action. After what feels like a full day, she looks at the tape and says pick one. I point to one of the muzzle flashes, tell her the distance and windage, and she shoots. Bing bang and our side of the mountain is clear of snipers and we start on the other side. Not one shot in our direction.” He laughed. “Then she wants to see the top of the mountain. No one knows why but they agree. We get there in time to be told the Rangers found a bomb. A very large bomb which could bring down part of the mountain on the troops below. Lacy informs us it has to be dismantled in seven minutes.”

  Patten paused for effect as everyone was silent and leaning toward him. “What does she do? Walks over to the dish that is obviously the trigger and sits. I’m screaming at her to do something as the minutes tick by. With three minutes left, she stands, picks up the dish, and takes it into the cave. The minutes go by and no explosion. We come back down, and she wants to go up again when the Rangers were having troubles on the next mountain. We run into twenty Hihari trying to plant another bomb. Good thing Harold and Benny were dumb enough to accompany us. We survive but Luan decides to stay. We use the camera again and we pick off the Hihari snipers. She shot one team at fourteen hundred meters.”

  Everyone began clapping, as Patten put a fork full of now cold stew in his mouth. He bowed.

  “So, you use the video recorder to find their locations before you start?” Naylor, a shooter from squad four, asked. “Clever and efficient. Our problem is that we feel like we have to rush because the longer we wait the more people will die. Welcome to the Tasmanians, sister.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Planet: Harari: Choke Point

  “The pass narrows ahead and army drone reconnaissance indicates armed forces numbering over four hundred are waiting,” Simon said when the five squads had assembled. “They will have snipers looking down the choke point to disrupt our movements and to alert their forces of our movements. General Dubois has left it to Howard to decide how the Tasmanians can help. For now, Howard has left it to the platoon leaders to decide. Any ideas?”

  All heads turned toward me. “If this map is accurate, then the west side of the Big Kobby Mountains looks down the throat of the Hilan Pass and is over a thousand meters higher,” I said and awaited comments. When none came, I continued. “Then we should be able to take out their snipers and spotters and be disruptive since the distance to their troops appears to be less than two thousand meters and half that to the snipers.”

  “And?” Simon’s lip twitched.

  “And the scouts could clear the way of any traps on the Hilan Pass mountains, giving us control of the Hilan Pass.”

  Simon looked to Lacy and Sadler, who nodded. “Send three sniper and three scout teams into the west Big Kobby Mountains and the other two scouts and one sniper team east into the Big Kobby.”

  * * *

  The Big Kobby Mountains had been cleared by the Ranger scouts, but it was comforting to have Tasmanian scouts leading the way. They were not only checking for traps but also choosing the easiest path up the mountain. It took almost five hours as these mountains were the highest, reaching five thousand meters at several places. We stopped around four thousand and had a good view of the Hilan Pass.

  “What now?” Broyles, Hays’s spotter, asked as he stood looking around.

  “Set up your camera and wait until you believe you’ve recorded all the activity in your area of responsibility.”

  “This goes against reason. Our troops are being killed down there while we sit around watching,” Hays said, clearly frustrated and looking like a man needing to piss but his zipper was stuck.

  “I know the feeling,” Patten said and gave a laugh. “We’re wolves chasing a couple of stray chickens, while the fox is figuring out how to get in the coop.”

  “Why don’t one of you take the west side and one the east side of the Hilan Pass Mountains while Patten and I take the army north of the pass,” I said, thinking that would avoid us shooting at the same targets.

  “What about us?” asked Rogers, one of the scouts from squad one.

  “If we can clear the snipers from the mountains overlooking the Hilan Pass, then you can make sure it’s clear of Hihari and traps so we can take new positions there.”

  The waiting wasn’t as bad as the others had anticipated. By the time they had picked a shooting position, donned their ghillie suits, and gotten everything set up the camera had over thirty minutes of recording.

  “Salmon, Broyles, rewind your tapes and start picking out your targets,” Patten said as he rewound his with me watching.

  “There.” I pointed to a couple of men with grenade launchers. “There’s our first targets.”

  “This one,” he said, pointing to one. “One thousand fifty meters but I can’t tell the wind speed on the ground. It’s ten kilometers per hours out of the west here.”

  An interesting problem, I mused, as the bullet would be affected by the wind on the mountain for only half the time and shielded by the mountains the other half. I made a slight adjustment and aimed center mass, estimating that even at this distance the impact force would be close to two thousand Newton meters—enough to bring down a rhino. I slowly tightened my finger on the trigger as I waited for him to fire, which was the time he was most stationary. I fired.

  “You’re twelve centimeters low and five centimeters to the left of center,” Patten said and I could hear the satisfaction in his voice, as the man was hit in his lower left hip and spun to the ground. The two others near him with grenade launchers were either too focused on their own tasks and hadn’t noticed the man being thrown backward or too rushed to take the time. I made a slight adjustment, waited, and fired.

  “Dead center,” Patten said as I took aim on the third man. But as I tightened on the trigger, he dropped the launcher and ran.

  “Who’s next?” I asked, knowing I’d be pleased if they all ran. We weren’t killing each other because we hated the other person—well, at least I wasn’t—it was because in the current situation it was self-defense. Well, in my case, Tasmanian-defense since no one was shooting at me. Patten broke into my musing.

  “This team of four.” He pointed to the camera’s screen. “Distance one thousand four hundred meters and the wind is now fifteen kilometers per hour out of the northwest.”

  As I made a few minor corrections to my scope and found my targets, I heard the pop…pop…pop of the other snipers. These four stood some five to ten meters behind an armored vehicle with a large-caliber machine gun mounted in a turret on top. I began firing, starting at the individual furthest to the rear, assuming that he would be the least noticeable since it would be impossible to determine where the shot came from. When all four were dead, I sighted on the head of the man in the turret and waited for him to stand still. A minute later, he stopped to talk to someone and I fired.

  “Got him,” Patten half shouted. “Who do you want next?”

  “Look for the men in command,” I said and watched as Patten moved the camera around the area. “There, the three men at the table.”

  Patten was quiet for a moment before he spoke. “That’s eighteen hundred fifty meters, wind here at ten kilometers per hour.”

  I slowed my heart and breathing as I made some minor adjustments based more on intuition than available information—I didn’t know the wind speed or direction once the bullet dropped between the mountains. I aimed for his stomach, thinking I’d be off high not low, and began adding pressure to the trigger. Several seconds later, the rifle bucked as the 10.36 mm bullet exploded from the muzzle.

  “You got him! Right shoulder,” Patten shouted. The other two men were scrambling for their armored vehicle before I could acquire either. I idly wondered if the man I shot would be replaced by a better or a worse general. I smiled mentally. He may have been a fool and his replacement a military genius. “Naylor and Hays have declared the Hilan Mo
untains clear of snipers and the scouts are moving.”

  I slowly picked up my gear, secured it, and joined the other snipers and spotter at the end of the line.

  “That was exhilarating and terrifying at the same time,” Naylor said. He was the most experienced sniper based on what I heard on the transport ship. “Exhilarating in how fast Salmon and I could identify the next target. It was almost like being at a firing range. Terrifying in that someone like the Fox could easily do that to us.”

  Naylor was right and it was a very sobering thought. A man like my father would be a very difficult opponent since he thought before he acted: Ready, aim, fire. In a way, the Tasmanian training and tactics were structured to counter men like my father—a tsunami that doesn’t give you a chance to get ready or aim, just to fire wildly in response.

  Patten interrupted my thoughts. “The scouts are reporting traps ahead.” He gave me a wry smile. He was monitoring the scouts’ channel. “They know the key to stopping any army is their snipers and controlling the high ground.”

  “Cole, the lead scout on the east side, is reporting a large detail of Hihari troops entering the Hilan Pass Mountains. He said fifty or more,” said Rogers, the lead scout, on the open channel we were using. “I’m going to stop dismantling the traps. We don’t have time as it’s now a race for high ground. Each Ranger who encounters one will wait at the trap to show the person behind them before moving on.” It was now a contest for control of the high ground and ultimately the Hilan Pass.

  “Rogers has told Simon we are going to need Tasmanian reinforcements to hold the mountain,” Patten said, then added, “Well, Luan, we’re now Tasmanian soldiers again.” He removed my Tavor machine gun from the bag he was carrying and handed it to me along with five STANAG magazines. The Tavor was light, less than three point six kilograms, but the damn five magazines weighed as much, which when combined with my CheyTac sniper rifles plus ammo that I was carrying meant over thirty-two kilograms of dead weight—sixty percent of my body weight. This was going to be a very long day. I took out two of my stash of energy bars and began eating along with periodic gulps of water. We encountered eight traps as we climbed toward the upper reaches of the Hilan Pass Mountains. Patten kept me informed of the Hihari troop progress. I needed all my focus on climbing because of the weight I was carrying.