Savage Son (James Reece #3) - Jack Carr Page 0,126
force from the high ground and had moved from a prone to a sitting position that would allow him to find his new target in the cliffs above.
The night optic was good, but at a distance it was almost impossible to discern an unmoving camouflaged figure from the jagged mountainside.
There! Vasilievich saw a slight movement against a still backdrop.
“Five hundred meters. Halfway up the rocks!” he yelled at the sniper to make sure he knew where to shoot.
Vasilievich directed his M4 at his new target, lasers dancing in and around the location of the movement, and began to fire.
* * *
Reece’s heart sank as his final flare dropped out of sight, bouncing off the rock face and falling into the darkness below.
Shit! My teammates are counting on me. Think, Reece. Adapt!
He saw the muzzle flashes. With suppressors, they were not as prominent as they would have been without them, but they were enough for Reece to make them out in the darkness. He thought back to the early days in Afghanistan, the automatic-weapons gunners shooting unsuppressed at an entrenched enemy position. He remembered the al-Qaeda guns turning toward the bright flashes of light at the breaks of the 5.56 and 7.62 machine guns. The man’s head to his right exploding…
Reece knew he should change positions after his first shots, especially since he had now lost the element of surprise and the enemy had him zeroed, but he stayed where he was. What he suspected was that the enemy’s IR lasers had been sighted in for a range of twenty-five yards to a point of aim, point of impact, a cardinal sin. In simple terms, it meant that the lasers would hit what they were aiming at if that target was at twenty-five yards. He also knew they had a sniper with them. The single round that had impacted him in the body armor had not come from a 5.56 weapon system. If the sniper already had him in his sights, he was a dead man.
Observe, orient, decide, act.
Settling back in behind his rifle, Reece took a breath and exhaled. He saw the full-auto muzzle flash from the suppressed M4 and noted its ineffective hits to his left. He was looking for the sniper.
Reece knew he had an advantage. He’d already put targets down and was perfectly dialed for the distance, angle, and elevation, and he knew the wind hold. His antagonist would be taking all those factors into consideration but had yet to confirm it with a shot. If the Russian sniper missed, he’d make the correction and would not miss again.
A single flash three meters to the full-auto gun’s left registered in Reece’s brain. He estimated back from that flash where the shooter’s head would be on the stock of a long-range rifle and pressed the trigger.
* * *
Vasilievich heard the report of the large-caliber weapon reverberate off the canyon walls and saw the muzzle flash just as his sniper’s head snapped back and away from his Chukavin, his body collapsing in an unnatural heap.
Without looking back up at the cliff, Vasilievich pushed himself to his feet and retreated into the darkness.
CHAPTER 77
THE SNOW CRUNCHED BENEATH his feet, his NODs fogging up from the exertion. He stumbled, fell, got back up, and pressed onward. If only he could make it to the lodge. Vasilievich’s frantic radio calls went unanswered. Sergei never used radios; he despised all trappings of the modern world, and the director was on the hunt, focused on his newest acquisition—the American whose sister he’d killed days earlier.
What was that? The distinctive sound of Mikhail Kalashnikov’s revolutionary invention echoed through the forest. It was too far away to be directed at him. Was it possible one of his men had survived the encounter? His contractors carried M4s. Who on the island had an AK? Then he heard it again. And again. Then it hit him. The Americans were putting AK rounds into the dead bodies of his men.
Now Vasilievich knew what it was to be hunted. His force had been defeated by the Americans. He’d become too comfortable with the night vision and lasers, knowing their adversary wouldn’t have the advantage of technology after being hit with the EMP. He’d become overconfident, on home soil with the advantage of surprise and the technical superiority of owning the night.
The Americans had made them pay for their hubris.
He knew they had taken his force’s helmets and night vision, probably their snowshoes and weapons with IR lasers as well.