No one who fought guerillas for a living would mess with such a tempting find before checking it out very carefully, but maybe guys whose job was shooting civilians would.
He turned and scrambled low over the ridge, taking care not to silhouette himself on the crest.
The little valley was down a steep grade, with about 25 yards to the line of bushes and shrubs. He went straight downward and found a tree whose branches swayed slightly in the dry breeze. Using his hundred mile an hour tape, he attached the tracker to a branch. It would not sway much, maybe a foot or so, but on their tracker it might look like it was moving around a little, like it was on a person shifting around in a hiding place.
He then went north about 25 meters to get off the centerline and started looking for a position with good concealment to keep out of sight. Ideally, it would have cover too – that is, protection from small arms fire, but the rocks were too small and the bush trunks too thin. His best protection was going to have to be remaining hidden.
He moved through the brush as quickly as he could, favoring the broken rib and his sore hip. He considered several spots, finally choosing one about a yard back from the brush line under a shrub with a nicely shaped “V” in its trunk that would provide support for his M4 as he covered the crest of the ridge. Turnbull dumped his backpack there, along with his water bottle.
Next, he went farther east and broke off several branches with small leaves, then brought them back, using them to obscure the position a little more. Another branch he put down flat on the ground in front of the “V” – it might help keep down the dust when he fired.
Going out and around, careful not to trample any of the vegetation, he viewed his hide site from the perspective of the hilltop, where they would be coming from. Merely okay – not particularly good, but his time was limited.
Next, he looked to the right and left of the position. There was a dry wash running generally parallel to the ridgeline, and it would provide a high speed avenue of approach for an enemy right into his sides. This was why being alone sucked – there was no one to cover his three and nine o’clock. He figured he had about ten minutes to create a field expedient solution to defend his flanks.
Finishing that, he moved another 25 yards north and slowly crept up the eastern face of the hill, pausing to pat dust into his face to at least try to help subdue any shine from his skin – it was already scorching and he was sweating.
He found a small pile of rocks near the top, probably the best he would be able to do, and carefully peered around them toward where he had come from.
The enemy was closing in, though they were moving slower than he had estimated. They were out about 200 yards, still in clusterfuck formation. They were fixing on the clump of trees where he and his group had rested, and on the tracking device that was taped to a bough directly to the east over the hill. Turnbull was off center to the north. They were not looking at him.
He hoped.
He counted twelve guys in black tactical rig, with about eight of them spread across an uneven 100-150 yard wide frontage about 225 meters or so from the ridge. All carried M4s with optics, and they were scanning and panning with their weapons as they advanced. Behind them another 25 yards were four more PBI guys. Two had carbines up. Another was looking at a screen – that had to be the tracker operator. And then another was stumbling along without a long weapon. Rios-Parkinson? Turnbull figured the Director had to be in a helluva a lot of trouble if he was coming out personally to fix it.
To fix him.
Turnbull observed them as they came forward. He noted who was giving hand signals and verbal cues, and who was listening and obeying. It looked like the eight guys in the skirmish line were divided into two fire teams – it was easy to peg the team leaders. The closest one was second in on the right from his perspective.
The school book maximum effective range of an M4 is 500 meters, but this was not a school, nor was it a maintained Army rifle range. It was hot and there was dust. His broken rib hurt like hell. He was using a close quarter battle sight, plus he would have to move fast – no loitering in order to set up the perfect shot. And he was not merely shooting center mass. He knew right where he wanted to hit the team leader.
All this meant that the guy had to be closer than Turnbull would have liked. He waited until his target was at just over 150 meters.
At that point, Turnbull carefully swung the M4 around the rocks and took aim through his optic. A dot danced on the black of the team leader’s body armor. The team leader was waving his men forward as Turnbull dropped the dot to the lower abdomen, mentally adjusting for the round’s downward flight trajectory, and exhaled. At the bottom of the exhale, he squeezed the trigger, gentle and steady.
The carbine cycled smoothly, and the weapon barely flinched from the recoil. The sound of the action clacking was louder to him than that of the round itself – the suppressor dissipated the hot gasses, leaving only a thwack. The enemy was too far away to hear anything at all.
The impact was only a couple inches off from his aim point; the round came from the side as much as the front, so it entered into his target’s belly below the protection of his vest and proceeded to tear across his gut. Turnbull watched the target fall as if his legs had been swept out from under him. He was pulling the weapon around when the man began screaming, then yelling obscenities. Turnbull had pulled completely back off the crest by the time the remaining team members opened fire for what seemed like a full minute.
He ran back to his hide position as best he could – lying on his stomach had been agonizing thanks to his broken rib – and took up his position with the M4 in the “V” of the trunk, sighted to the crest of the ridge. He figured he had a few minutes at least until they sorted out the mess and evacuated the wounded man. That would take at least a two-man carry.
So now, he was only facing odds of nine to one.
He remained sighted along the ridgeline. From his position, he could see and cover about the 100 yards straddling the centerline of the enemy’s avenue of approach to the tracker he had taped to the tree. He waited, breathing slowly and steadily. The pain in his left side morphed from a knife sticking into him and twisting to something more like a mace pounding on him every time he was forced to breathe.
The shade kept some of the sunlight off of him, but the air was already wicking away the moisture in his nose and mouth. He took his water bottle and had a swig.
The grenades went off – he saw the explosion’s cloud of dust and debris rise right in the middle of his field of fire. “Sorry about your pack, Amanda,” he muttered. He could not believe these guys were so dumb.
If he was lucky, he got three, maybe four.
Which meant, best case, the odds were now five to one.
Rios-Parkinson cajoled and threatened the remaining five PBI tactical team members in a low voice, which only made it more threatening. He had briefed them on their task, and warned them to be careful not to kill his deputy as he crossed their axis of advance. He then put them in a line, about three meters apart, just under the crest and ordered them to wait for his command to go over the top. He ordered each to set his selector switch to “Auto.”
All of them silently calculated whether his personal chance of survival would be better fighting against whoever was on the other side of that hill, or defying the Director of the People’s Bureau of Investigation. Each chose to go with having a fighting chance of surviving this ungodly misadventure. Each chose to charge over the top when the call from Larsen came.