We pulled out of the hide at three minutes past six. It had snowed since my meeting with Cruze and Dawn-Marie, not enough to get us stuck in a drift, but more than enough to leave tire tracks all over the place. But we were going to be on the highway in a few minutes and that meant we’d have a smooth ride for the first time in three days.
We kept a watchful eye on the west side of Highway 27 as it cut a path across the seemingly unending flat land, stretching as far as the eye could see. In the distance we spotted thin black smudges of smoke on the horizon – probably coming from what used to be the city of Red Deer. I wondered for a moment how many other refugees had left their hiding places, and were now making their own journeys to unknown destinations. Winter was officially five weeks away, but anyone who lives on the prairie knows that we’re lucky if we make it to the end of November before the biting cold arrives like an unwanted guest. The wind chill can freeze your exposed skin in less than five minutes, and that’s after the cold has stolen the breath from your lungs as you bundle up and try like hell not to freeze to death.
But then again, winter coming meant the creeps would freeze solid and I shivered as I considered the possibilities of facing a fully armed military unit. The last thing I wanted was for us to face off against Sunray. We needed to remain vigilant and use our heads if we were going to stay under his radar, but for that we needed more information. Unfortunately, Dawn-Marie wasn’t going to be of use there. Her knowledge was limited to Dinsmore and a few scattered farms on land gone fallow. No, what we needed was good, old fashioned intelligence, and that meant only one thing: patrolling. Stealth, the cover of darkness and boots on the ground were the best way for our group to learn about what we were up against.
Our carrier crawled into a deep gully alongside the highway, and then edged up the shoulder until the nose was level with the pavement. Sid’s guns were in the rear position, and he quickly moved his turret into his arc of fire as I watched Cruze’s carrier follow our tracks on the snow-covered pavement. A sharp wind blew in from the south, creating miniature snow drifts no more than a few centimeters deep. Our tires ploughed through them, kicking up a blinding cloud of powder to our rear which I’m sure pissed off Kenny Howard no end. I watched as he increased his distance between us to three vehicle lengths and gave Cruze a thumbs-up.
Kate Dawson had covered her head and face with a combat scarf – she looked like was wearing a Niqab. She scanned the area north of us for movement. Ahead lay at least 30 km of highway before the flat dry prairie disappeared into a deep coulee. I hoped the bridge over the river was still there.
Sunray wouldn’t destroy a bridge, would he?
I hailed Cruze on the radio. “Ark Two, how’s your team?”
“We’re good,” she answered. “The thermometer on my watch says that it’s about minus five outside.”
“Feels more like minus fifteen with the wind,” I replied. “We’re going to have to alter our plans before we head into our destination.”
“Say again?”
“I’ll fill you in when we get closer – I don’t want to talk about this over the radio.”
“Roger that,” said Cruze.
We pressed on, the APC’s rumbling across the snow-covered highway. Dawn-Marie stood opposite Kate Dawson, using the turret as a wind break. She was shrouded in Jo’s poncho liner, but I could have sworn that her lips were turning blue. It wasn’t even seriously that cold yet.
I hailed Dawson on the intercom. “Your partner in crime looks to be freezing to death. Have her go hatches down if she needs to warm up.”
“There’s lots of good heat blowing back from the engine cover,” she answered back. “I might have to throw on a bikini or something.”
Doug Manybears voice filled my headset. “Are bikinis allowed after the end of the world? I need to keep my mind on something else – where we are right now feels like a desert. But that’s got me thinking about sand, which got me thinking about the beach and bikinis again. Now I’m thinking about naked ladies. Thanks, Dawson. I’m now thinking about smut at the end of the world.”
“You think too much,” Sid cut in. His voice was as hard as granite. “Think less, drive more.”
I could see Doug’s helmet-covered head shaking back and forth in the driver’s hatch so I leaned across the hull and shouted in his ear.
“I think about bikinis every single day when I’m not thinking about getting eaten alive! If your brain is coming up with visions of half-naked ladies, that’s a healthy sign.”
“All Sid thinks about is bashing creeps with The Eradicator!” he shouted back. “Half the time I wonder if he even likes girls. He sure as hell doesn’t like the new chick.”
I patted Doug on the shoulder and glanced back. Dawn-Marie had moved to the other side of the carrier and was now enjoying the warmth from the engine blowing onto her face. She threw me a small wave and for the first time since Dinsmore, she looked more relaxed.
I would have waved back, but I could feel Sid glaring at me. Instead, I just offered a small nod, and then turned my attention back to the road ahead. We pushed on for another forty minutes and I was struck by how little the land changed. It was as if we were in a cartoon where the animators keep using the same backgrounds, over and over again. Not a house or a barn to be seen in any direction, though we did pass a number of oil pumps, dotting the land like giant metallic insects.
In better times they’d have been pumping raw crude out of the ground to be shipped to the refinery at Bowden. That was the extent of my knowledge about the oil industry, though I did wonder whether Sunray had seized the refinery when he moved in from Wainwright. There would be plenty of oil in its giant storage tanks.
I was dead tired, and hadn’t slept more than two hours in the last day. The cold wind numbed my skin, to the point where I thought my entire head had been filled with Novocain. I was actually daydreaming – when I realized that I’d dropped my guard, I gave my face a good hard slap. It rattled me back into the present just in time to see a small rise on the horizon in front of us. I tapped Doug on the shoulder and motioned for him to slow the carrier down to a crawl, and then I dropped back into my hatch and grabbed my binoculars.
I stood up high in my crew commander’s hatch as the APC dropped to a walking speed, and peered out at the tiny ridge. I could make out the tops of poplar trees on either side of the highway and a few thin tendrils of smoke rising into the flat, grey sky.
“Ark Two, contact … wait out,” I said, trying to contain the knot of fear that had been growing ever since we crossed over into Eden. I pulled out my map and followed the contour lines showing the ridge to where I thought our position was on the highway. We were no more than 5km away, and if there were any of Sunray’s assets in that ridge, they’d have seen us coming for miles. I quickly glanced to both sides of the road for a place we could conceal our carriers if they decided to start shooting. Outside of the cattle fencing that had been following us ever since we left our hide, there were no man-made structures. What’s worse, there was no low ground either. We were positioned on a stretch of road in an endless sea of flat, open country. It was an armored commander’s dream for a battle run with tanks going full throttle, but it was a nightmare waiting to happen for a pair of APC’s manned by people who weren’t even of legal drinking age.
I tapped Doug on the shoulder and pointed to the ditch on the side of the road, and we crawled down off the snow-covered pavement. Glancing over the rear of the hull, I saw Cruze’s carrier following closely behind, then looked up at Sid in the turret and pointed to my eyes. He nodded once, understanding I wanted him to keep his guns aimed at wherever the smoke was coming from. I dropped down into the back of the carrier and crawled over to the rear doors. Kate Dawson gave me a worried look.
“Is everything okay?” she asked.
“Probably not,” I replied, as I flipped the combat lock and then tugged on Dawn-Marie’s pant leg. “Scan the area for any vehicles or people out there.”
“Roger that,” she said, as she stood up in her hatch, her carbine resting against her shoulder.
Dawn-Marie dropped back down inside the carrier as I opened one of the rear doors. “What is it?” she asked. “How come we’re stopping?”
I gestured for her to come to the rear of the carrier as Cruze jumped off the nose of Ark Two, landing a few feet away.
“Did you see the smoke up ahead?” I asked.
Cruze nodded. “Yeah … I spotted it just after you gave your contact report on the radio.”
“What do you think?”
Cruze pulled out her map and unfolded it across the jump seat. She pointed to the ridge and then to where she guessed our position to be. “I think we’re about three clicks from the ridge. Out of range for pretty much all small arms ammunition or even an eighty-four millimeter round.”
“But not too far away for a TOW missile,” I said grimly.
“If they had a TOW, they’d have used it by now. We’re well within the 4000m range.”
Dawn-Marie blinked. “Um … what’s a TOW missile?”
“Tube launched, optically-tracked, wire-guided missile system,” said Cruze and I said in unison.
Her jaw dropped. “
Seriously?
They might have missiles?”
I shrugged. “I don’t see why not. If Sunray came from Wainwright he’d have access to anti-armor weapons systems. Whether or not any of his people could hit the broad side of a barn with one is another story. But it’s possible he could have them.”
“Jesus.”
“Have you been down this highway before?” asked Cruze.
“Yeah, lots of times,” Dawn-Marie replied. “That ridge ahead is the starting point for a big freaking hill that curves down into the coulee. The bridge over the Red Deer River is maybe 3km down from the top of the hill. It’s all badlands down there – you have to stay on the road, because the ground eats anything with wheels.”
I moved to the left side of the carrier and peered out with my binoculars again. “Two fires are burning in there somewhere … I can’t tell if it’s on the forward side of the river or the opposite bank. It all looks the same from here.”
I handed the binoculars to Dawn-Marie and gazed out on the horizon. Through the corner of my eye I could see Sid Toomey glaring at me from the turret.
“Fuck, Dave, you’re freaking whipped and you haven’t even seen her boobs up close yet!’
I ground my teeth and was just about to climb back into the carrier when Dawson hopped up on the hull and drove her boot into Sid’s shoulder.
“Shut the hell up and keep your head in the game, Sid!”
she barked.
“She’s a liability, Kate!”
he snapped. “Who the hell does this chick think she is, helping Dave and Cruze figure out what’s best for the rest of us?”
Dawson leaned into the turret and grabbed Sid by the collar.
“We live or fucking die as a team, asshole!”
she barked, shaking the giant Newfoundlander with no shortage of effort.
“Now do your job and-“
A whip-cracking sound filled the air, and I looked up in time to see the top of Kate Dawson’s head explode in a mist of blood and brain matter. The force of the sniper’s round sent her tumbling over the right side of the carrier, to land in the snow with a hard thump.
“NO!”
I screamed as I raced around the rear door, but I knew she was dead before she hit the ground. I dropped to my knees and started pounding the earth with my fists.
“NO! NO! NO! NO!”
Through a stinging film of tears I gazed down at Kate’s eyes, staring up at the cold empty sky as the snow underneath her head turned from white to crimson.
Kate was gone.
Somewhere between our carriers and the ridge, a sniper lay in wait. Another bullet whizzed over my head and I dove into the snow beside Kate’s body.
Jo. She was hatches up in Cruze’s APC. I quickly looked over my right shoulder and spotted her alongside Mel Dixon, staring in wide-eyed horror at Dawson’s body. I stuck out my right arm and motioned for them both to drop back down inside their carrier. Jo threw me a jittery nod and together they disappeared beneath the hull.
“Did anyone see a muzzle flash!”
I roared.
”He’ll pick us off one by one if we can’t find him!”
“Negative! Dawn-Marie and I are crouched behind Ark One,” Cruze called out. “Are you okay?”
I wasn’t okay. Someone had just blown away my second in command. A mix if rage and ice cold terror gripped me as I hugged the ground. I was furious with Sid Toomey, whose outburst had forced Kate to silhouette herself on the top of our carrier.
“Ask Sid he can see anything!”
I bellowed. Slowly, I turned my head and lifted it slightly, so that I could peer over Dawson’s body at the ridge ahead.
Snipers can render themselves invisible to the naked eye just by using what’s available to them – leaves, grass, tree branches, a ground sheet, a shadow inside of a blown-out building.
And this sniper was
very
good. He could have picked off Sid, but the giant Newfoundlander would have died in his turret. Dawson had fallen off the carrier when she was hit. The sniper knew it would draw someone stupid – like me – over to her body.
Hello target number two.
One shot, one kill. That’s what happened to Dawson, and that’s what was going to happen to me – whoever was out there had me pinned down.
“He can’t see anything!” Cruze shouted. “We need to draw his fire, Dave! It’s the only way we’ll be able to see the muzzle flash. Even that’s going to be tough if this guy is good.”
I shouted back. “Options?”
“We could set out a smoke screen and give you a chance to hustle back to the carrier?”
“No – it’s windy enough that the breeze will just blow the smoke back in our faces.”
Another crack whizzed over my head, and this time I heard the distinctive thump of the round hitting the ground behind me. It was time for me to use my limited field craft if I was going to have a hope of getting back to the safety of the APC.
“Are you okay, Dave?” Dawn-Marie shouted.
“What the fuck do you think?” I snapped. “Get inside the carrier until this is over! Cruze, did you hear that shot – any idea where it came from?”
“Not a clue!” she answered back. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking that my second in command has been shot dead and I don’t want to join her.” I answered. “Tell that asshole Sid to use his sights and keep scanning the area for any movement. I need to draw this guy’s fire! Stay put … got it?”
“Got it, Dave. Don’t worry, Sid will spot him!”
Given that Sid had been on me for more than twelve hours about getting rid of Dawn Marie, I wouldn’t have expected him to lose any sleep if I became the next person from our team to wind up dead. Where the hell was that sniper? I shut my eyes tight and visualized the pages from
Infantry Section and Platoon in Battle
.
“Target indication … target indication … fuck! What did it say?”
Another whip snapping crack split the air over my head followed by a thump, and then it hit me: A crack and then a thump – that was the answer! The tactics manual had a partial section on using the crack and thump of a bullet to determine likely firing positions.
This is the idea: the gap between the sound of the bullet passing by faster than the speed of sound – the crack, and the report from a rifle a fraction of a second later – the thump – will tell you the distance. If the crack and thump are close together the sniper is 300m away or less. If there is a slight delay, the sniper is from 300m to 600m away. If there is a noticeable delay, the sniper is out past 600m.
I decided the sniper had to be directly in front of us somewhere, because I’d be dead already if he was to our right flank. He was probably staring straight through a high-resolution scope, his crosshairs trained on Dawson’s body. If I moved my head up even an inch, he’d remove it for me, no questions asked. I needed a distraction that would divert the shooter’s attention – something that would buy me enough time to get back to the carrier.
“Cruze!” I shouted. “Get a frag grenade out, pull the pin and lob it across the road to your left.”
“Stand by, Dave!” she answered, her voice was strained.
I lowered my head and tried desperately to control my breathing. My heart was racing a mile a minute. If my plan didn’t work, I was as good as dead.
“Got it primed and ready, Dave!” Cruze called out.
“Do it!” I shouted.
I could hear Cruze’s boots crunching around in the snow to the left side of the carrier. There was silence for a second or two, and then a loud explosion thundered across the barren land. With a jolt of adrenaline, I immediately pushed myself up and dashed back to the safety of the carrier’s rear. A shot rang out and I heard the thump – there was a noticeable delay. The sniper was out past 600m.
Cruze threw her arms around me the moment I reappeared at the rear door. She gave me a quick bear hug, and then let me go as I slid down the back of the carrier into a squatting position. My heart was still pounding at the walls of my chest like a jackhammer, but least I was alive. I only wished I could say the same for Dawson. I exhaled heavily a few times to catch my breath and then Cruze helped me back to my feet.
“What do you want to do, Dave? – He’s still out there.” Her voice was shaking.
“Fuck knows – the shooter could be anywhere.”
I could have sworn I saw Cruze’s face flush for a moment. It was rare for her to panic, but seeing Dawson get her head blown off, combined with the prospect of my getting killed, had rattled her nerves.
“Sorry, Dave,” she said, her voice still shaking. “Kate and I were …
close
.”
“I had no idea, Cruze. Listen … we can mourn later. Right now we have to take down that sniper because we’re sitting ducks.”
“I have an idea,” she said quickly. “We can do a combat run. We’ll go hatches down and leave Ark Two here. That sniper might have a spotter or they could be one of those security patrols that Dawn-Marie mentioned. If they’re mobile, they’ll high tail it back to their vehicle the moment they see us barreling toward them. And I’m coming with you because I’ll expose myself if I go back to Ark Two.”
“That sounds good to me,” I replied. “Let’s go.”
I gave Cruze a quick pat on the shoulder as she climbed into the carrier, taking a seat in the spot where, moments earlier, Kate Dawson had been standing. I climbed over Dawn-Marie and onto my seat and then slipped on my headset.
“Ark Two, this is Ark One … orders. Remain static and hatches down. Cruze is coming with me. All eyes on the ridge and report any movement. You will provide supporting fire on my command. Over.”
There was silence for a few seconds and then Melanie Dixon answered. “Copy that.”
I grabbed the handle for the crew commander hatch door and pulled it down over my head, slipping on the combat lock as the remaining hatches slammed shut in a series of clangs. I peered into my periscope and surveyed the way ahead. Dozens of tiny snow squalls drifted across the highway. I could still see the pair of thin smoke-tendrils in the distance, and wondered if the sniper was acting as a sentry for a larger force, and whether we’d be driving into ambush once we took him down. If he was smart, he’d stay put until our carrier passed his position. If not, then he’d be cut off, and still be facing imminent death at the hands of a vengeful Dixon, or worse, Cruze.
If Cruze had it bad for Dawson, she’d kept it a secret. I couldn’t even begin to wonder what was going through her head right now. I could only hope she would concentrate long enough for us to locate and capture the sniper. He’d be of no use to us if we killed him.
“Ease this pig onto the highway and floor it, Doug,” I shouted into the intercom. “Sid, this is your chance to do something frigging positive for the first time today. You have the best chance of spotting this asshole, so if you see his firing position, don’t fill the guy with an entire belt of ammo. I need him still breathing so I can question him.”
The intercom hissed and a very subdued-sounding Sid answered, “Roger that.”
The engine groaned as we crawled up the shoulder and back onto the roadway. We quickly leveled off and I scanned my periscope left and right. There had to be vehicle tracks somewhere that could lead us to the sniper’s rig, but my hunch was that he’d done as we’d just done before heading out; moved into a copse of trees and used it as a hide.
But if that were the case, he would have had a long walk to his firing position. He’d probably be wearing white camouflage to cover his olive drab combat fatigues, and he’d likely have strips of white linen wrapped around the fore stock and scope of his weapon.
“We’re going sixty,” Doug shouted into his intercom. “Do you want me to bury the needle?”
“Keep it steady,” I answered. “If we start getting hit, take evasive action into the ditch.”
“Will do,” he said, leaning into his driver’s periscope.
Ahead lay nothing but snow-covered farmland, with empty sloughs scattered here and there. I spotted the bloated bodies of dozens of dead cattle, their legs sticking out straight like the branches on some rotting tree.
A rotting cow carcass would make a hell of a good place to hide when the land is flat and empty and covered with freshly fallen snow. I pressed the PTT button as I swung my periscope hard to the left.
“Doug, slow her down to about twenty,” I said into the intercom.
“Copy,” he replied. The engine retarder brake screeched like an animal in a snare. The APC slowed right down, pushing my face into the cushion on my periscope as we crawled up the highway. On both sides of the road were cattle corpses – the sniper could be hidden behind any one of them. Then I maneuvered my periscope hard to the right, and spotted a pair of dead cows about two hundred yards in front of me. Both bodies appeared to have fallen on a small pimple of land jutting out of the flat ground. I ordered the carrier to stop, and gave Sid Toomey a firing mission.
“Two Hundred … four fingers right of the center of axis … dead cattle on small rise. One controlled burst … watch and shoot!”
“Roger,” said Sid, sounding slightly more determined this time.
The turret whined sharply as Sid lined up his guns with my target indication. I heard a metallic clunk as he cocked both guns, and then Sid’s voice filled my headset.
“Do you want a burst from both guns?”
“Just the GPMG – not the fifty cal,” I answered, my eyes fixed firmly on the two dead cows. “A small burst, Sid … maybe five to ten rounds.”
“Will do.”
The turret whined a final time, and the carrier was filled with the deafening
braaap
of machine gun fire, followed by the clangs of the metal links falling down from the turret and landing on the floor. The first few rounds tore into the carcasses in a straight line, ripping up flesh and sending it spraying back behind them. The remainder flew into the ground, kicking up snow mixed with dirt and grass.
A flash of movement appeared from between two dead animals – a quick blur of white and then darkness as the sniper adjusted his position. I wondered what I’d do if I were in the same boat, and decided I’d probably try to crawl slowly away from the corpses, into anything that even remotely resembled low ground.
“Contact!”
I said, nearly spitting the word. “Weapons hold. Doug … get this carrier up and across that Texas gate to our right. I’ll ground guide you after that. Sid – did you see him?”
The intercom hissed. “Negative.”
“Keep your guns trained on those dead cattle as we move up. Do not fire until you receive word from me.”
The carrier pitched to the left. I dug my hands into the handle on my periscope and pressed my head hard against the cushion. We made another sharp right turn over the edge of the highway and onto a thin snow-covered gravel road. In seconds we were bouncing across the Texas gate – then we drove down a small shoulder and straight into the farmer’s field.
“Left!” I shouted, as the carrier narrowly missed plowing over a dead cow. “Now straight for a hundred meters.”
“I got movement!”
Sid shouted into the intercom. “There’s two of them – they’re crawling into an empty slough.”
“Copy that,” I answered. “How far?”
“No more than two hundred yards, Dave. I can whack them easily from here.”
“Take down the spotter,” I said venomously. “Leave the shooter alive.”
There was a quick burst of fire and I saw propellant gases drifting across the hull of the carrier.
“Target neutralized,” Sid shouted. “The other guy is making a run for it!”
And then I spotted him – a male dressed in white camouflage pants and a thick wool sweater bolted upright, a few yards behind the dead cattle. He threw his rifle onto the ground and sprinted.
“Cut that man off, Doug!”
I shouted into the intercom.
The carrier snapped into gear as we tore across the field, the engines screaming the entire time. In less than a minute we’d caught up to the sniper. Doug drove in a wide circle around him as the turret moved to the left, Sid keeping both barrels fixed firmly on him. Cruze threw open her hatch, her carbine at the shoulder, and fired a single shot that hit him in the leg. He toppled over, landing face first in the snow, and then he tried to leopard-crawl away.
“Everyone hatches up!” I shouted as I threw off my headset and dropped back down into the carrier. “We’ve got our shooter. Dawn-Marie, you’ll stay inside the carrier until I send for you.”
Doug brought our APC to a screeching halt as the brakes hissed, letting out surplus air through the reservoir underneath the engine. I climbed up to the top of the carrier and then scrambled down the nose, nearly tripping myself up in the process.
A small trail of blood stained the snow as I raced up to the man. I dropped to one knee and lowered my weapon as he continued clawing his way across the snow. Blood from the wound in his right leg had saturated his white camouflage pants, but he kept on going, trying desperately to put some distance between the two of us. I raised my rifle to my shoulder and fired off another pair of rounds.