I sighed and tapped the trigger guard of my sniper rifle distractedly. I hadn’t needed to do something like this in over four years, and I was out of practice. It wasn’t the waiting that bothered me, or the impending death I was soon to dish out, but the thoughts of failure and the possibility I might get one of my friends killed. It was a foreign feeling for someone who, as a SEAL officer, had rarely ever used his sniper rifle while on mission. As a SEAL Team platoon leader, my role was to provide guidance and leadership for my men, not to go lone wolf with a sniper rifle and play Rambo.
That’s not to say I hadn’t fired it on a mission before. I was a fine shot, one of the best, despite how mysterious my affinity for it was. Helena’s skill at shooting came from experience, honing her skill for as long as she’s been able hold a rifle, and is the finest marksman I know because of it. As for me, I’d shot an old.22 rifle to get my shooting merit badge in the Scouts, but other than that, I had never even picked up a firearm until I joined the Navy.
Patience and math were two of the most important things for a successful sniper. Patience I had, but math was never my best subject. Sniper school taught me how to read the fluttering of a flag, the billowing of dust or the subtle shift of a mirage to determine wind speed, direction and range, but it was too bad it still took mathematical formulas to calculate them, and I’d been forced to grudgingly learn them. I could calculate them with little trouble now, but as I progressed through sniper school, I quickly found that I rarely needed the math, and found myself able to determine what I needed naturally and by instinct alone. As long as I knew the ranges, which could lazily and accurately be done with a laser designator, I could dial in my scope and nail exactly what I was targeting, and even then, I generally found the ranges easy to guestimate.
Helena still did it better though, and she was quicker too.
Natural shooting ability aside, Penelope wasn’t up for the kind of work I needed to do tonight. She was sitting next to me, of course, but what was currently resting against my shoulder could best be described as her much older and more badass brother. The United States Navy SR-25 Mk 11 Mod 0 Sniper Weapon System looked and felt like a bigger version of a M4, which made it instantly comfortable in my grip. Whoever planted the cache of weaponry that traveled back in time with us must have done his homework, because the weapon was the same model I had used with the SEALs.
Created specifically for Navy SEALs, and constructed to our own specifications, the Mk 11 version was considered one of the most accurate semi-automatic sniper rifles on the market. Combined with a twenty round magazine and an effective range of around one thousand meters, the rifle was an effective killing machine.
I’ve only used it on a few specialized occasions before, times when I’d been called to participate in specific sniper support roles for other branches of the military. During those missions, I’d command four to six other snipers from the platoons in my SEAL Team. The most memorable mission of that kind occurred two years before I activated the orb and traveled to ancient Rome and three years after World War III began, when America was sick of defending its expansive southern border with Mexico, doing what any self-respecting superpower would do after spending years on the defensive.
We invaded.
175 years after the original Mexican War, America slowly, but surely, progressed its border south. After massive bombing campaigns by the Air Force, a Navy blockade, Special Forces missions, and the steady progress of Army and Marine divisions, America’s primary target was in sight. Mexico City. It was for the invasion of the country’s capital that I received a special call from SOCOM, requesting myself and five of my finest snipers to gear up, head south and expect to be gone for at least two months.
We arrived off the AC-130 to no fanfare or jubilation, and were quietly given two Humvees, two drivers, and two gunners from the Army. We had been amongst the most low tech mechanized infantry on the battlefield, but easily one of the most effective. The ten of us were tasked with performing sniper support for the advancing invasion force and to cause as much trouble as possible. There were other sniper teams there, of course, but I never encountered them. We received our orders directly from the Army’s commanding officer in the field, a full bird colonel whose name I never learned.
The use of SEALs in this manner was nothing new, at least not relatively. Taking small task forces from Special Forces outfits and plopping them in the middle of a war with units from other branches of the military had grown popular during the war in Iraq. SEAL Teams weren’t big enough to hold any territory on their own, so we didn’t try. Instead, we’d be integrated into a conventional military unit, but were mostly left as an autonomous fighting force. The tactic wasn’t popular at first, at least by the conventional units we’d join, but it turned out spectacularly. It gave my SEALs free reign to do whatever it was we needed doing without constricting anyone else’s operational parameters, giving them benefit of our expertise as well.
The siege of Mexico City had been long, hard and bloody. We were there two months longer than expected, lost one of our gunners, a driver, and one of my snipers in the process. Mike had been a good man. He’d been a SEAL for ten years, but still respected my command decisions while I respected his experience. He’d been a victim of bad luck, a simple case of the wrong place at the wrong time. A mortar had hit two feet from his perch, and broadsided him with its devastating arsenal. Mortars were some of the most inaccurate weapons out there, at least the shoddy ones used by the poorly trained militias we’d been fighting were, but if you were unlucky enough to find yourself in its blast range, you were as good as dead. We’d packed up his body, conforming to the code that we never leave a man behind, and pushed on.
We used our Humvees as mobile sniper platforms and raced around the battlefield, providing cover as the main body of the invasion force slowly made its way through the densely constructed city. Snipers had been around since World War I, but the fast reaction force we acted as hadn’t been something we were normally used for. It wasn’t until a Marine sniper developed the process during Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2004 that it had found its place on a battlefield.
It was efficient and effective. The Humvees themselves provided a certain amount of elevation that we’d occasionally take advantage of, but were mostly used to get us from A to Z. We’d make our way into parts of the city, ditch our rides, find some high ground, and with our gunners and drivers as a security force, take up shop in a local hide and get to work. I’d accumulated one hundred and two confirmed kills with the SR-25 Mk 11 during those four months, but my final tally was probably closer to two hundred.
I sighed as I continued to peer through my scope. Those were memories full of pride in my performance and that of my SEALS, but also ones filled with pain and terror at the hellish environments we’d found ourselves in. Four months spent operating mostly at night, the days too dangerous to traverse, surrounded by smoke and fire and the fear of poisonous gas. All that time spent catching maybe a few hours of sleep every few days, constantly on the run, hunting, being hunted, killing, but never, not once, had I let fear hinder me
But I felt fear now, and I didn’t understand it. I suppose it couldn’t help that while I felt deep bonds with my SEALs, I actually loved one of the women at risk on this mission. I simply could not let anything happen to Helena again. Wang wasn’t here to play medic this time. We might not get so lucky again.
I took a deep breath, forcing every distracting thought from my mind, held it, let it out slowly, and repeated twice. I was no help to my friends with my emotions in turmoil, so I forced myself to calm down. Thinking, in of itself, wasn’t a bad thing. It helped my patience by letting the time pass interestingly, but it could also cloud the mind and obscure judgment. I needed to be sharp.