Sergeant Peterson led her up alonside one of the MCVs, carrying a pair of binoculars. “There’s a truck about half a klick out there, in the field. Looks like they’re using that as their command vehicle.”
Veraa lay down in the dust and scanned the fields with her night scope. Sure enough, there was some kind of flatbed farm truck with several men standing in the back, a couple of them talking into radios. She pressed a button on the scope, and a laser rangefinder found the distance to the target, automatically adjusting the scope’s crosshairs for range. She zoomed the scope in as much as possible, scanning the men in the truck.
Peterson was stretched out beside her, balancing the binos on his fingertips, chin pressed down hard in the dirt. “Grey turban, pistol stuck in his belt; you see him?”
“I see him.”
“On my mark, take him out, then put two rounds through the engine block in case they try to run.”
Veraa’s heart rate quickened and her hands started shaking. A six hundred metre shot with a weapon like the DMR was well within her abilities, but it was different this time. This time, there were rounds coming back at her, and there were people in her sights instead of paper silhouettes. “Roger.”
She centred the swaying crosshairs over the man’s chest, trying not to watch him talking and pointing and being alive. A bullet smacked into the armoured hull by her ear and a fragment ricocheted into her face, cutting her cheek. As she wiped away a drop of blood she knew, with the sort of plain understanding of someone who studies ballistics, that the bullet had been aimed at her directly. All of a sudden, she was angry. Angry that there were people out there shooting at her fellow Marines. Angry about this whole stupid war. Angry that she was hesitating to do something that she had known she would have to do at some point. She had prepared herself, mentally, to face this task. Blowing out a long breath, she focussed her eye again on the crosshairs. Years of training flowed back through her mind, from her days in the volunteer militia to her most recent marksmanship training with the Marines.
“On target,” she muttered.
“Engage.”
Her finger smoothly dragged the trigger backwards, and the rifle bucked hard against her shoulder.
“Hit,” came Peterson’s mutter from the darkness.
When the scope settled again, the men in the back of the truck were scrambling around and ducking out of sight. She fired two rounds through the truck’s engine, bringing its hasty escape to a swift end.
Veraa and Peterson moved from spot to spot around the ring of vehicles, covering areas of hillside as the Lieutenant saw fit. The firefight dragged on for a total of ten minutes, but Veraa didn’t have to fire another shot that night.
Almost an hour later two helicopters arrived, one large and one small. The big CH-112 loaded the seven casualties aboard while the smaller AH-404U gunship circled warily overhead. Any enemy casualties had been whisked away as the insurgents melted back into the landscape. Veraa was one of the four Marines who picked up Corporal Vickers’ stretcher and ran up the stern ramp of the big helo. As they slid the stretcher into a rack, he glanced up at her.
“Sergeant Peterson says you did a good job with that DMR. Last thing I remember before I passed out was you dropping your coffee and diving under one of the Forty-Fours like a rat down a drain,” he chuckled.
The clasped hands over his chest and smiled at each other.
“I’m sorry about your arm,” she said, at a loss for anything better.
“Ah, don’t worry about me, I’ll live. Might even get some fancy cybernetic stuff packed in there, who knows. Hell, I’m going home! Lucky bastard, I am. You take care, Trooper.”
“Roger that, Corporal.”
Veraa trooped back down the ramp and watched the helo lifting off to join its smaller companion as they winged away to the northeast, heading back to the Forward Operating Base. She unbuckled her helmet and set it on top of one of the cargo tubs at the back of her LCRV, before leaning against the tub and pressing her face into her hands. L.Cpl. McCallum was already in the driver’s seat, and he looked over his shoulder at her.
“You okay, Veraa?”
She cleared her throat and thumped a fist on the cargo tub, grabbed her helmet, and jumped up into her seat. “Fine, thanks. Ready to go now.”
McCallum started the engine while she keyed the radio. “Xerxes Three-One, this is Xerxes Three-Seven Bravo, we’re moving, over.”
The radio bleeped back at her, signalling the reply. “Three-Seven Bravo, take point position, over.”
“Three-One, roger, out.”
The LCRV swung onto the road and charged on into the night, trailing six MCVs behind it as the second LCRV brought up the rear. Four more hours to Kajit City.
Life on the Fringes 