Every team had a different sector of the city, and the plan was to be out beyond the wire for three days. They had enough water and food for four, just in case.
Keeley and Hulce were Anvil-6, and had chosen their first hide well. They were set up in the second floor of a small office building on the northeast corner of a major intersection about six miles north-northwest of the military base. It had taken them all night to hike in, but being able to see in the dark made things much easier. They saw a number of people, unarmed locals, who never saw or heard them passing, and a surprising amount of wildlife, dogs and possums and a raccoon, all of which had no problem seeing the men in the dark.
Through the fractured windows they could see south along Meyers for a third of a mile, and through the ragged gap in the bricks of the west wall they could see west on McNichols for three-quarters of a mile. Hulce was prone atop a desk six feet back from the windows, positioned so his bullet would pass between two angular pieces of pane somehow still stuck in the frame. The men had actually pushed two desks together, and if he needed to Hulce could rotate behind the rifle and look west through the foot-wide hole in the bricks.
Both of the men were sniper trained, but this mission Keeley was tasked with support, and Hulce was the designated sniper. He was toting a suppressed bolt-action .300 WinMag, and Keeley had a sound-suppressed M5 to back him up and provide site security, as well as be the eye on the spotting scope. Hulce also had a suppressed PDW in his pack for close-range defense, if the need arose, but it would take him some time to get to it.
As the sun rose on the city they began to see movement, but no guerrilla activity. A few people walking here and there, but none of them were armed or wearing armor. Keeley diagrammed the site in his logbook and used the laser rangefinder to get the exact distance to several landmarks both south and west of their location. They worked out the drop of his rounds at that distance and Hulce made notes on the sheet of paper in front of himself. This way he’d be able to dial in the drop and get on target more quickly.
Keeley had both 8X binoculars and a 30X spotting scope set up on a tripod. The binoculars didn’t have nearly the same magnification, but they had a much greater field of view. He glassed the area with the binos, and if he saw something that warranted further investigation he went to the spotting scope. Hulce stayed on the variable power riflescope, and at 10X he had a good balance between magnification and field of view.
After they’d been in position close to an hour, switching vantage points a few times, they decided Keeley should take the southward eye, as there was a wide sixty-degree field of view out the front window, something better tackled with binos. Keeley would stay on the rifle pointed west down McNichols through the hole in the bricks. Three hours after dawn they still hadn’t seen any guerrilla activity, but there was much more movement on the street. At any one time Hulce could see a half a dozen people on foot. They weren’t guerrillas, just local residents, although they more closely resembled starving or crazy refugees.
Hulce’s eye was drawn to some activity on the left side of the street. It was on the far side of the service drive to the expressway which angled southeast toward downtown. Two men were arguing in front of a low brick building. There was a shopping cart between them laden with junk and that seemed to be the subject of debate, but the sniper had no idea which of the men the cart belonged to.
“Got something, maybe,” he said softly, trying not to jostle the image in his scope. “Couple hundred yards down, south side of the street. You want to get the spotting scope over here?”
“On it.”
Keeley moved around the desks and planted the spotting scope between his partner’s splayed legs and oriented it over his head and paralleling the long rifle barrel made even longer by the suppressor. The end of the suppressor was five feet back from the opening in the bricks. “Two hundred… okay, I see them,” he said as he got the spotting scope in focus. He quick-glanced down at the notebook in his hand. “Far side of that service drive lazed at two-forty, so they’re two-fifty or a hair more. You need me to laze it?” He got back on the spotting scope, but was ready to grab the laser rangefinder if necessary.
“Nah. Maybe if it was twelve fifty.”
Through the thirty times magnification of the spotting scope Keeley could see the two men clearly. Both were dark-skinned, one thicker, one rail skinny, both wearing baggy clothes that hung off them. And they were in a very heated argument, pulling back and forth on the shopping cart. The two men were too distant for their shouting to be heard. “They’re not Tangos,” Keeley said, stating the obvious. He could see the lettering on the side of the tan brick building behind them, just visible above wildly overgrown bushes. It was a branch of the city’s public library… or had been.
The tug of war with the shopping cart ended. The skinner of the two men reached into the cart and withdrew something wrapped in a rag. He looked around, then unwrapped the object and showed it to the other man. It appeared they were engaged in a business transaction.
“Confirm,” Hulce said softly, eye to the scope, which was still at ten power magnification.
Keeley was bent over the spotting scope. “Gun,” he said simply, confirming identification of the object. A revolver, actually, they were close enough for him to see that much detail.
There was a pause, less than one second, and then the rifle shoved the sniper back several inches. Even with the suppressor the gunshot sounded like a gunshot, it was simply quieter. Through the spotting scope Keeley saw the armed man’s head disintegrate in a chunky crimson spray, and he dropped lifelessly to the sidewalk. The other man froze for a second, then took off running. Unfortunately for him, he began running directly away from the sniper team. Hulce worked the bolt, and settled the reticle high on the running man’s back, held his breath, and squeezed the trigger.
“Down,” Keeley said flatly, to the sound of Hulce working the bolt again. “Good hit.” Keeley sighed, then said, shaking his head, “That’s just…”
“Hey, fuck those guys,” Hulce said quietly, back on the scope and scanning the street once again. “They’re playing the game, they know the rules.”
“I was going to say it was a waste of a good bullet,” his partner told him. “Two bullets. That shitty little revolver probably doesn’t even work, and those two dudes didn’t look like they had two spare brain cells to rub together.” Their rules of engagement were simple. They were weapons free to engage anyone with a firearm or wearing body armor, as both were expressly prohibited under martial law, and had been for years. Their commander had been very clear about their mission. It was time to bring some order back to this lawless shithole of a city, some fear back into the hearts of the shitty little civilians playing soldier.
“Play stupid games, win stupid prizes,” Hulce murmured, cheek against his rifle’s stock. “Only the police and military can have guns. Should have guns. You can’t get that through your head, you deserve whatever happens to you. Let’s see if anyone tries to pick it up. It’ll be like hunting over bait.”
Keeley entered the time and distance of the two kills and then went back to scanning with the binoculars.
They worked their way steadily west through the neighborhood, moving as quickly as they could remain quiet… which was not quick at all. Jumping fences, even low, waist-high chainlink ones, was easy for kids at play but not so much when you were men burdened with body armor and rifles trying to not make a sound or be seen, pausing for minutes at a time at every noise, hunkering down into waist-high grass and wildly overgrown bushes and ornamental trees that had once been landscaping for the trim houses. Twice they heard barking nearby but never saw the dogs. The houses were small one-story edifices, brick with siding, most of them with covered car ports instead of garages, which was unusual for the area.