He’d signed up a few months after his seventeenth birthday, although his new paperwork put his age at eighteen and a half. That was a necessary artifice, as was his selection of a name so that he could start anew, without any baggage from his past. The young man was now calling himself Raul Terenova, which was as good as any other, he supposed. Names were unimportant to him. They were disposable, as was most everything in his life.
Raul excelled in the brutal training conditions, which truth be told were kinder and more relaxed than the ones he’d imposed upon himself for years. But he learned a lot, especially on the explosives side. There was nothing like the military to proffer the kind of training you just couldn’t get in civilian life, no matter what you did. His goal was to be an expert in every aspect of combat the special forces could teach him, and with his tenacity and discipline, he’d quickly climbed to the top of his class and established records. He became the model for all men who would follow, demanding more from himself than anything his trainers could have mustered. Young Raul was far more motivated than any of his classmates to get all he could out of his service years. He viewed them as a stepping stone, whereas his peers would go on to be career soldiers.
Becoming a naval commando had been an idea he’d grown fixated with when he was sixteen, after reading about the service’s plans to create a specialized group of super soldiers. He didn’t have any burning desire to become a marine but if he was going to excel in the field he’d been contemplating, the more skills he had, the more valuable he would be. None of which he told his recruiting officer. To the navy, he’d presented himself as a fiercely patriotic young man who wanted to escape from a dull existence at home in rural Chiapas and don a uniform that would get him instant respect – and a life of adventure and action.
During basic training, he had stood out as far above the quality of the other green recruits. His scores on the written exams had floored the instructors. Here was a candidate who was blisteringly smart, who could swim like a fish, shoot like a marksman, and had the physical prowess of a professional athlete. There had been no question about moving him ahead of the queue and putting him into the specialized marine training – and from there it became obvious that he should be one of the new elite commandos.
Today, they were working on specialized sniping – long range, which was considered to be anything over a thousand meters, or almost thirty-three hundred feet. At such extreme distances, a variety of elements came into play, including wind strength and direction, humidity, temperature, elevation, and rate of movement if it wasn’t a stationary target. While there were recorded instances of snipers successfully killing from more than twenty-four hundred meters, those were considered anomalies. At sixteen hundred meters, the target was a mile away. To hit that distance with accuracy was considered virtually impossible, although advents like laser rangefinders and computer software that would calculate the various elements had improved the odds.
The day’s exercise was on targets at a confirmed distance of a thousand meters, or roughly three quarters of a mile. The rifle they were using for the exercise was an American-manufactured Barrett M82, a. 50 caliber rifle with an effective range of eighteen hundred meters, or considerably over a mile, although accuracy became iffy after nine hundred to a thousand meters. Sixteen hundred meters was considered acceptable if you were trying to hit a bomb or something larger than a human torso, but there were too many variables that could affect accuracy. Many snipers preferred the smaller. 338 rifles for precision, however, the official sniper rifle for the marines was the Heckler amp; Koch PSG1 firing a 7.65 millimeter round. The problem was that the weapon’s accuracy dropped off at eight hundred meters, so special forces had secured fifteen of the much larger payload Barrett rifles as a trial for standardization – to substitute the PSG1.
Each sniper cadet had been assigned a coach, who gave the firing order and then received a report from down-field. Accuracy had dropped off markedly once the seven hundred meter threshold had been crossed, and there were few who could deliver precise hits at over eight hundred.
“What does your nose tell you?” the coach asked Raul.
“Moderate humidity.”
“Guesstimate on wind speed and direction?”
“Seven to ten knots, out of the north-east,” Raul replied.
“Adjust your bearings accordingly. Good luck.”
Raul concentrated on controlling his breathing, and soon his entire awareness was synthesized into the tiny world within the scope. He made some minor adjustments for his wind-speed guesstimate then gently massaged the trigger until the weapon discharged. He’d long ago learned never to pull, as it could throw off accuracy. A deliberate squeeze was best.
The radio crackled and the report came back. A bull’s eye.
“Good shooting.”
They repeated the exercise for ten shots, all of which landed within a one inch grouping.
“I think we’re done here, young man.”
Raul looked up at the coach. He was emboldened by his success, and wanted to try for a personal best. He got along well with the man, so he floated his idea.
“Why don’t we try it at fifteen-hundred meters? Just to make it interesting?” Raul suggested.
The coach looked at him like he was crazy. “Pretty cocky, huh? That’s an impossible range with that weapon and that ammo, not to mention that scope. You want to put money on it?” the coach asked. Fifteen hundred meters was just under a mile away, and was the absolute maximum of the rifle’s range.
“Two hundred pesos says I nail it three out of five. Although I agree that this ammo is crap for that distance. I’d prefer to load it myself for better consistency, but hey…” Raul said.
“Fine. But three misses, we go home and I’m two hundred richer.”
The coach got on the radio and issued the instructions to the man downrange, who obligingly moved the target to the farthest point on the range before taking cover.
“It’s your funeral. Fire when ready,” the coach said.
Raul took his time, made further adjustments to the scope, then repeated his meditation process where he became one with the weapon. The discharge almost startled him, so focused was his concentration. There was no need to wait for the radio to report. He knew what it would say.
“Bull’s eye, eleven millimeters off center,” the radio crackled.
“To the right, or the left? Or low or high? Tell him to be specific, would you?” Raul groused.
Wide-eyed, the coach studied Raul like he was from another planet, then posed the question.
The response came back. “To the right.”
“That’s what I thought he’d say. Wind’s died down a hair in the last thirty seconds. Tell him to clear,” Raul said.
Once he got the go ahead, he repeated the impossible shot. Four more times. All shots grouped with under an inch of variance.
The coach gladly handed over the two hundred pesos for the single most astounding display of marksmanship he’d ever witnessed.
“You’re a fucking monster, you know that? That’s superhuman voodoo shit right there. I’ve really never seen anything like it and I’ve been teaching for over ten years. Before that, I was one of the top three marksmen in Mexico,” the coach acceded.
“Those that can, do…”
Both men laughed together, in spite of a twenty-five year age difference. Raul would never again shoot with that accuracy at that distance, preferring to limit his performance to more average expectations. It wouldn’t do to show off, or to develop too much of a reputation. Better to have had a one in a million day and then graduate in the top third of the class than at the top. He remembered Emilio’s sage counsel from when he was just a sprout. Never show too much of your hand. To give your enemies information is to make a gift. And friends can become enemies. So know how good you are and then take private pleasure in that accomplishment. Becoming celebrated makes you a target. Better to be in the middle of the herd when the hunters came, than at the head.