Kill Zone: A Sniper Novel (7 page)

Buchanan nodded. “I will brief the President and endorse the act. That crap in the Middle East has tortured him enough, the media is always bitching about it, and he’s anxious to get out of there. There are a lot of fronts in the war on terror, and something decisive hitting in the American heartland will give him the political cover to readjust his sights and bring our troops home.”

“You’re sure that he will sign the privatization bill?”

“Absolutely.” Buchanan lifted his own eyes and looked at his comrade’s. “If we wrap up the one remaining loose end.”

Gates laughed out loud. “You mean with General Middleton?”

“Middleton cannot be allowed to testify before my committee!” Senator Reed said firmly, putting down her glass and crossing her arms. “He’s only a one-star, but he is influential as hell with his books and lectures about the value of a professional military that answers to elected civilian officials. Together, he and Miller would have stopped us cold. They were planning a public relations offensive on this, including getting television networks to cover the hearings. Open hearings!”

“Which is exactly why they are not in Washington today,” said Gates. “We have gotten rid of Miller with the heart attack, and the general has been kidnapped and will not survive the adventure. Neither can be traced to us.”

Buchanan shuffled a toe of his tasseled loafer into the thick carpet. “I have been riding the Pentagon and the intel services hard. When your people reveal the location, the Marines will launch a rescue operation, just as you predicted, Gordon. I will let them do it, of course, reporting the plans directly to me.”

Gates nodded. “The Sharks and some of the Rebel Sheikh’s militia boys will be ready when Force Recon guys arrive in Syria. Cameras will record the destruction of most of the assault force, but a few Marines will be allowed to fight their way into the house where Middleton is being held.”

“And they will all be killed together in the shootout, on video,” Reed said. “Another military debacle.”

Gordon Gates smiled. “I want to add one last piece to the scenario, Gerald. Just imagine that in the middle of the shootout, a U.S. Marine is actually shown to be the one who kills General Middleton.”

“How could we possibly arrange that?”

“Simple. You, my friend, take one of the best snipers on the CIA roster and order it done. Remove him from the chain of command. When the rescue fails, the sniper is to make certain that the general’s vast knowledge of homeland security information does not fall into enemy hands.”

“How does he survive that initial ambush?” Buchanan scratched his ear.

Gates knew the capabilities of a good operator and waved away the question. “The firing will not be very heavy, and if he is any good at his job, he won’t have much trouble being among those getting to the right house.”

“Would he actually do it? Shoot the general?” asked Senator Reed.

“Only if it was a direct order from his commander-in-chief in the White House,” said Buchanan. “When the last members of the rescue team are being wiped out, the sniper becomes both our insurance policy and a fall guy for any blame. Then he is also taken out. End of a tragic fiasco.”

“You boys can take care of that, Gordon. All I care about is that Middleton not show up before my committee.” The senator brought the conversation back to center point. “He could wreck everything.”

“Excellent. Excellent,” said Gates. “So that brings us to decision time on Operation Premier. Senator?”

“It has to be done,” said Reed.

“Don’t go vague on us, Ruth Hazel. Say exactly what you mean, not some political bullshit. You agree that we will prepare the Shark Teams for the theater attacks. We must be absolutely plain with each other. After all, the three of us essentially are staging a coup.”

“Yes,” she replied.

“Gerald?”

“Yes. Do it.”

“Me, too. Yes. It’s unanimous.” He flashed that enigmatic smile again. “Now let’s have a nice dinner and a good bottle of wine to salute this historic creation of New America.”

KYLE SWANSON WATCHED
the television report silently, his arms crossed. Bradley Fucking Middleton! The general’s picture came on the screen, a stock photo of him in full dress uniform and an American flag in the background. It was not a face that Kyle ever enjoyed seeing. Every time they met, something bad seemed to happen, until finally Middleton had tried to cashier Swanson out of the Marines. As the news reader droned on, Kyle’s mind rolled back to his first clash with Middleton years ago during Desert Shield, in the abandoned town of Khafji, on the border between Saudi Arabia and Iraq.

It had been two days into the new year of 1991, and there was something happening in the black desert night. The growl of engines and the clank of tank treads, out where there was supposed to be nothing but sand. “Multiple heat signatures, Sergeant. More than ten vehicles. Hard to say with this piece-of-shit night vision gear,” the spotter said quietly after looking hard and long through his thermal imaging glasses. “Lots of movement, though.”

Kyle Swanson pulled the ten-power Unertl scope of his M40A1 sniper rifle to his eye. Nothing but darkness across the border between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. “Call it in. Tell ‘em it sounds like more than just a recon.”

Iraq had overrun Kuwait, and the Iraqis were not sitting still while an American and international coalition of forces was building up to take it back. Kyle had been a scout-sniper sergeant at the time, heading a two-man observation team hidden between the floorboards of a building at the edge of town. Several other OPs were scattered throughout other buildings, but until now, Saddam Hussein had kept his people out of the area. Boredom had been the biggest enemy.

A chill crawled up the back of his neck that had nothing to do with the cold temperature. All that noise meant armor. Saddam was about to expand the playing field, and the OPs were right in the path, with the closest friendlies about thirty minutes away, a very long time in a firefight.

They remained motionless as the mumble of impending battle moved closer, and the first light of dawn brought the startling truth. The sun outlined Iraqi T-62 tanks and a herd of other alphabet armor—MBLTs, tracked personnel carriers on the main chassis of a battle tank; BDRM recon scout vehicles; and the BMPs with anti-armor cannon. A bit of everything. This was no probe, but the advance guard for an entire armored division, and they were already on the outskirts of town, moving closer by the minute. Dismounted Iraqi troops hustled around the vehicles, darting like a swarm of ants going after a picnic basket as they cleared the abandoned houses. The spotter called in radio reports while Swanson ran a final check of his rifle, ammo clips, the clackers for the Claymore mines, and grenades.

To try to leave would be suicide; a tank and the supporting infantry would make quick work of anyone they saw. Swanson glassed potential targets with his scope, and his mouth watered with anticipation. Behind the troops coming into the town there were guys riding atop the vehicles, talking in groups and moving in the open, lacking discipline as they pressed forward, for they expected no opposition. Careless ants. He put the crosshairs on an officer wearing a red beret and standing in the turret of a tank, gripping a handle so he could get a better view of Khafji. He had a big thick mustache, a pressed uniform, and a pistol on a polished belt of brown leather. Kyle thought:
He’s mine.

“Mike Tango three niner, this is Hunter One. Fire mission. Over.” The spotter had headquarters on the net and was quietly lining up an artillery strike. He pinned his finger on an exact spot on the plastic-covered map folded before him. “Grid. Six two niner four. Niner eight seven six. Direction: five niner one one. Twenty to thirty Iraqi tanks and APCs in the open. Fire for effect.”

Swanson tracked the officer, waiting for a sound louder than that of his rifle. The first 155 mm artillery rounds came in like loud zippers in the sky, and when they exploded, throwing dirt and debris into big mushrooms of destruction, he finished squeezing the trigger. His bullet took the Iraqi officer in the throat and knocked him from the tank. Soldiers were scrambling for cover and paid no attention to the fallen officer, thinking he had been hit by the artillery. Kyle fed a fresh round into his rifle and looked for a new target, found one, and waited for another big round to explode and mask his shot.

The Iraqis opened up with everything they had, shooting wild. There was no enemy visible, but the artillery salvo had been so precise, it was obvious that someone was watching them. Their entire line surged forward, firing as they came, and violent explosions blew walls apart. The soldiers rushed to find shelter from the artillery, and Swanson and his spotter shrank back into the shadowy hide. A squad of Iraqi infantrymen ran into the main floor of the small building for cover. One came up to the second floor but could not see them between the floorboards, and stomped back downstairs to the rest of the squad, which moved on to clear another building. “Sloppy,” Kyle whispered.

The Iraqi tanks and armored personnel carriers prowled the streets, unleashing cannon and machine-gun fire on anything suspicious, and small-arms fire rattled on both sides and to the rear of the observation team. The bad guys had the town, and Kyle, his spotter, and the other Marines were trapped inside it.

The situation was beyond serious, and Swanson made the decision without conscious thought. If they were going to survive, they needed help in a hurry, because those enemy soldiers soon would be prowling about in a more thorough search for the observation teams. He grabbed his spotter by the shoulder. “Call Broken Arrow!”

The emergency signal meant that U.S. forces were being overrun. Every warplane in the sky that morning diverted immediately from its mission and accelerated toward Khafji, afterburners thundering to pour on more speed. The spotter started guiding them in, while other OP lookouts adjusted the artillery strikes. Nearby buildings vaporized with concussion blasts that shook them like a couple of gerbils in a cage.

Swanson cleared away debris that fell in the front of their hide and got back to work, taking targets of opportunity whenever an artillery round came in or a plane made a bombing run.

It was all now in slow motion. The chaotic sounds and sights passed through his mind only as parts of the mathematical equations he needed to figure out the next shot. He was an emotionally empty vessel, without fear, mentally shutting out any personal feelings for the targets—not men, but targets—and became an extension of the rifle. He wasn’t counting, he was killing, and hoping to avoid getting killed in turn.

The morning grew brighter and the allied planes circled like fast vultures to pounce on the exposed Iraqis. Kyle’s world shook and burned as bombs rocked the city, and the artillery punished the Iraqi infantry troops who had taken cover in some of the same buildings in which the Marine observers were hidden.

Finally, U.S. and coalition ground troops and armor showed up. A Saudi National Guard unit was allowed to roll into the town first, for symbolic reasons, but the big chase was conducted by a Marine light recon battalion that roared through the broken town like it was Saturday afternoon at the Daytona Speedway. TOW missiles and 25 mm Bushmaster cannons obliterated any Iraqi vehicles that were too slow.

Kyle and his spotter climbed from their hide like filthy moles, covered with dirt and debris. Only then did he realize that a big splinter had punched into his left bicep. Blood stained his uniform. He had been too busy, and the adrenaline was pumping too hard, to notice when it happened.

A medic yanked out the splinter, cleaned the puncture, and tied on a quick bandage. “You’ll get another Purple Heart for that one, Sar’nt,” the medic said.

“Forget it,” Kyle responded, rubbing the sharp piece of wood, about three inches long, between his fingers, then tossing it away. “Ain’t worth nothing.”

As the other teams emerged, similarly battered and bruised, Kyle walked off to get some water and find a quiet place to be alone.

It was part of his routine that let his mind disengage from the combat mode and come back into the real world. He found a cool, dark room in one of the empty houses and sat down as his body began to quiver. He thought of that big gaping hole he had blown in the throat of the first officer. Of the infantryman who believed he was safe behind a wall until Kyle shot out his liver in splash of blood. Of the driver of the armored personnel carrier who popped out of his hatch and caught Kyle’s bullet through the left eye. Sights of inflicted death paraded before him, and he knew that in future months, those Iraqis would visit in his dreams. Kyle Swanson, exhausted, curled into a fetal position and grabbed his knees tightly while his mind dealt with the carnage of his trigger finger. Tears streaked the dirt on his cheeks.

A hand touched him on the back. “S’arnt Swanson? You hit?” A Marine major had found him, saw the bloody shirt, and thought he was wounded.

Kyle relaxed. His eyes were still unfocused. “No, sir. I’m okay.” He swiped a hand across his dirty face, the sweat and tears leaving muddy tracks. “Just catching my breath. It got kinda intense out there.”

It took a few moments for Kyle to recognize the face of Major Bradley Middleton, the executive officer of the Force Recon battalion. The major was a veteran but had little experience with snipers, and had never seen one personally deal with the aftermath of a day of battle. Ordinary soldiers shoot almost anonymously and seldom see what they hit. Pilots never view the bodies blown away by their bombs, and tankers have limited visibility. But with a powerful scope, a sniper sees every strand of hair in an enemy mustache, the color of an eye and the movement of a finger. They also see the gory holes they make in a man, and after the battle is over, that has to be dealt with. Every sniper has his own way of adjusting.

Kyle told his shooters when they were in training, “We have to be peculiar, or we wouldn’t be snipers in the first place. None of us do what we have to do simply because we enjoy killing people. That would be crazy.” Some, the lucky ones, would just get drunk and wash away the images with beer and whiskey. Nightmares and divorces were common. Others would be gripped by unreasoning anger and fight whoever came along and end up in the brig. Kyle’s own habit was to shake and bake a little bit and be done with it.

Middleton just squatted there beside him, mystified at the quaking Marine sniper. He had invaded Kyle Swanson’s private world uninvited, and after a minute he rose and walked back into the sunshine and left Swanson alone.

Neither of them forgot the incident. Then Middleton saw him do it again after a brawl in Somalia, by which time Swanson was a staff sergeant and Middleton had risen to light colonel. Middleton considered the continued strange behavior to be important and gave Kyle a negative evaluation report. “Shaky,” he wrote of Swanson in an evaluation report, by which he meant undependable, unworthy, and unreliable. He recommended that Swanson undergo psychiatric evaluation and be retired from the Marine Corps because he was a walking time bomb. Who in their right mind would want a shaky sniper around?

Kyle had come within an inch of being ruined until other officers and senior enlisted types jumped to his defense and forced the potentially career-ending piece of paper to be withdrawn. But the term “shaky” leaked out and his fellow snipers loved it, for they gave no quarter in busting balls. “Shake” stuck, an unwanted nickname.

As he watched the news report aboard the
Vagabond
that Brigadier General Middleton had been taken hostage, Kyle felt conflicting emotions. It made him angry because he hated that kidnapping shit. Terrorist assholes could not just go around snatching American generals or anyone else without consequences. That anger was on principle alone.

Personally, the moment also made him proud to be an American, because he knew the United States had a firm policy of never bargaining with terrorists. Well, almost never. So there would be no deals made to get the general back. Kyle believed that the unwritten rule book on international terrorism was very clear on that point.

Therefore, now that terrorists actually had taken Middleton, Kyle reasoned that they had to keep him. That was just fine with the sniper.