Vulcan's Fire

“You know if he’s smart he won’t shoot again. Not for a while, anyway.”

“Hey, dude, just ‘cause he’s accurate don’t mean he’s smart.”

* * *

Ebrahim Larijani allowed his adrenaline to peak, then remembered to control his breathing. He turned to his spotter, Fahed. “Well?”

“I saw dirt from the bullet strike. It was short of the camouflaged form.”

Larijani frowned, visibly unsettled. “Surely it was a hit. I had a steady rest.”

“The first shot was low. I could not observe the second.”

“Well then, it must be a hit.”

Fahed had been warned about Larijani’s ego. Esmaili had confided that Larijani was eager to redeem himself after the Beirut episode. “It could have gone high, Ebrahim. Now come, we must displace.”

Larijani shook his head, returning to his Dragunov’s scope. “No. This is a good position. If we displace we will lose sight of them.” He thought for a moment. “Besides, the Chechen said if we locate them we should stay to keep them pinned down.”

They will certainly move by now! Fahed laid a hand on his partner’s arm. “Brother, remember what the teacher always says. Once you have taken a shot, you must move.”

Larijani shot a glance at the spotter. “Enough! I command here, and we will stay!”

Suit yourself, Fahed said to himself. He began inching away from the sniper, conceding that survival had just trumped teamwork. As he rolled onto his back, he was unaware that his binoculars caught the slanting sun.

* * *

“Target! Left front, eleven o’clock, maybe four hundred.” Furr’s voice carried an edge of excitement.

“What’ve you got?”

“Reflection under those trees. Stand by.” Furr raised the Swarovsky rangefinder and lased the suspicious area. He checked the digital readout. “Three sixty, Rick.”

“Yards or meters, damn it!”

“Yards of course!”

“Just checking.” Barrkman thought about the situation. “Okay, get on your rifle. I’m going to try the hat and glasses trick. You shoot whatever shows.”

Furr slid the Robar Snout Rifle into position, resting it on his drag bag laid across a rock. He cycled the bolt, adjusted the elevation dial, placed his eye to the scope, and nodded. “Sniper on.”

* * *

“There! Farther back,” Larijani exulted. He looked to his right, expecting to see his spotter close by. Instead the wretch had moved two or three meters away. “You cannot see anything from there!”

“I can see what I need to, brother.”

Disgusted, Larijani returned to his scope. If he was low before, he needed to hold a little higher this time, and settled the aiming point on top of the hat.

He took up the slack in the trigger, held his breath, and pressed.

When he came down out of recoil he regained the target’s position in time to feel a sledgehammer blow at the base of his neck.

Fahed heard the unmistakable sound of a nearby bullet strike, then realized that the report of the shot followed it. Larijani was on his back, gurgling loudly and holding his throat with both hands. Bright arterial blood pulsed between clasped fingers. The shooter’s mouth gaped wide, trying to suck in air but the esophagus was clogged with a hot, thick liquid.

Fahed was tempted to say, “I warned you,” but there was no point. He edged around the dying man’s feet, retrieved the valuable rifle, and made his way to safety.

* * *

Before the sound of Furr’s shot had died away, an inbound round overwhelmed it. The ballistic shock of the 7.62 bullet was enough to tell the Americans all they needed to know; the impact on the rock merely confirmed it.

Furr and Barrkman dropped to the earth, their heads nearly colliding. They performed an unintended chorus: “Holy shit!”

Barrkman looked at his partner, both men wide-eyed. “We were set up!”

“No shit, Charlie!” Furr wiped some dirt off his face. “Damn, that guy’s fast on the trigger.”

“Yeah. That must be Hazim!”

* * *

Hazim lowered his binoculars and turned to Akhmed. “It was very close.”

The shooter returned to his scope and scanned the area. “The crosshairs were steady and the trigger released cleanly. It should have been a hit.”

The spotter knew that other variables affected the end result but recognized this was neither the time nor the place to argue the niceties. “Well, we must assume they know we are here. We should displace.”

“Yes,” Akhmed replied. “Unlike young Larijani, I fear.” Pulling his rifle off the improvised rest he said, “But at least he served his purpose.”

AMASHA

“Okay,” Leopole said. “Now give it to me again, without the poetry.”

Furr took another pull from his water bottle and wiped his balding head. Barrkman sipped from something that was not water and smacked his lips.

“Like we said,” Furr began. “We staked out a good place east of town. Not too obvious but it had a decent field of view and we were in shadow most of the morning. We heard the harassing fire from time to time but couldn’t spot the shooter or shooters.” He squinted in concentration.

“I was on the scope and Rick was on the trigger at that time because we’d been trading off every half hour. We’d just pulled back into more shade when they sent one our way.”

“How’d they spot you?” Leopole asked.

Barrkman owned up. “I was crayfishing backward and caught a foot between two rocks. I reared up to pull free and they saw me. The first round was just short. The second went high.”

“How much wind?”

“What?”

Leopole inhaled, then expelled his breath. “How much wind was there?”

Barrkman fidgeted again, a sign of agitation. “Hell, I don’t know, Frank. What’s it matter?”

“My point is, gentlemen, if there was a decent wind, that was a good shooter to get the deflection right and the range so close.”

The two snipers looked at each other. Finally Furr said, “I was checking for mirage. There was hardly any. The trees were barely moving. Maybe five miles per hour.”

“Okay, go on.”

Barrkman took up the tale. “We got settled farther back in the shadows and let things settle down. Then we thought about the sonic crack and figured the shooter was inside five hundred yards. Then Rob caught a glint. So I edged off to one side and did the old hat and binoculars trick.”

Leopole smiled despite himself. “The statue of liberty play!”

“Well, obviously these guys don’t watch much football because Rob nailed him.”

The SSI leader turned to Furr. “Tell me.”

“I pegged the range at 360 and got on the gun.” Furr raised his right hand alongside his cheek, left hand extended in front of his chin. “When Rick raised his hat and glasses, the gomer fired. I had a good sight picture and lit him up.”

“You know you hit him?”

“Well, Rick couldn’t actually spot for me, but believe me, Boss. That’s a mort.” He took another swig. “But before I could run the bolt another round hit the rock I was resting on. Scared the hell out of me. We both hit the dirt.”

“Where’d that round come from?”

Barrkman thought about the geometry. “I think it was about 2:00 or 2:30 from us. Obviously they’d been