Open Season by Cameron Curtis (great novels TXT) 📕

night sights. I would rather be cautious and rely on passive photomultipliers in Night Optical Devices—NODs.

There is a long silence.

“Do we agree?” General Anthony says. “We infil tomorrow morning before first light. The following morning, Breed and Takigawa will silence the sentries and conduct the assault. Captain Koenig and Lopez will provide cover. Hubble and Ballard will man the blocking position.”

There is no disagreement.

“Alright, gentlemen.” The general gets to his feet. “Let’s arm up.”

Koenig looks at me. “Looks like you have time to get some sleep.”

“I slept on the plane,” I tell him. Turn to Takigawa. “Let’s collect our weapons. I need to zero my rifle.”

“I’ll show you the range,” Takigawa says.

I will never go on a mission with weapons I have not tested myself.

5 Infil

Shafkat

Tuesday, 0300

Our Black Hawk helicopter makes less noise than an office fan.

Few people realize it, but each blade on a helicopter’s rotor assembly is a wing. The loud clatter of a helicopter is caused by each blade passing through the turbulence of the one in front of it. This gives helicopters their characteristic “egg-beater” or “chopper” sound.

Extensive work in wind tunnels and materials technology created streamlined, swept rotors. The turbulence of each blade was halved. More innovation reduced the exposure of each blade to the vortex of the one before it. The result was a virtuous circle. Twenty-first-century rotors that operated in whisper mode with no reduction in lift.

The technology is top secret. Only two such helicopters have been assigned to the theatre. If one of them goes down, nano-thermite explosives built into the airframe will melt the machine to a puddle.

Back in the day, we would infil after a series of phony drops. Our helo would go to one place and hover, move to another place and hover, and repeat the process half a dozen times to confuse the enemy. On one of those head-fakes, we would either land, or fast-rope to earth.

Operating in whisper mode, we fly directly to our insertion point.

The pilots fly blacked out, scanning the instruments and terrain through their NODs. In the back, we sit with two door gunners and a crew chief. Each of us carries his personal weapon and sidearm. Load-bearing gear includes a plate carrier, chest rig with spare magazines, and grenades in the side pockets. A short-range squad radio is carried in an upper left chest pocket. Two or three spare magazines sit in our rucks, with stripper clips of extra ammunition to reload empty magazines. Top it off with two quarts of water each, MREs, spare batteries, and Claymore mines. Each man’s total load, including half-shell helmet and NODs, is about sixty pounds.

Takigawa and I carry less ammunition than the others. We are armed with M110 semi-automatic sniper rifles in 7.62 mm, the NATO equivalent of the venerable .308 Winchester cartridge. This ammunition is bigger and heavier than the 5.56 mm ammunition of the HK416s carried by the others. Each M110 magazine holds twenty rounds, while each HK416 magazine holds thirty. My chest rig carries six mags, while the others carry eight. It’s the price Takigawa and I pay for our specialist sniper roles.

Takigawa and I each carry an extra ten-round magazine. These mags hold special subsonic loads for use with the M110 suppressors. A suppressed subsonic bullet will be virtually flash-free and silent. The only noise will be the sound of the rifle’s action cycling.

The crew chief raises his right hand, fingers spread. “Five minutes.”

I look to the front, past the pilots. The black bulk of Shafkat is rushing toward us. I drop my NODs and switch on. Tug my gloves tighter on my hands.

“Two minutes.”

Takigawa and I will fast-rope from the left hand side of the Black Hawk. Koenig and Lopez will exit from the right. Hubble and Ballard will stay aboard and infil on the far side of Kagur-Ghar, where they will move to their blocking position.

My earpiece crackles. “Thirty seconds out.”

The windscreen of the helicopter is black, filled by the side of the mountain. Our insertion point is nothing more than a rocky ledge on the western slope of Shafkat. The pilot hovers, swings the tail boom around to adjust the alignment of the fuselage. The crew chief kicks the ropes over the side. One rope left, one right. The cables snake twenty feet to the ground, whipping in the rotor blast.

“Go,” the crew chief says.

I grab the rope with both gloved hands. Swing my weight out over the void, brace my feet against the edge of the compartment floor. I take a deep breath, kick, and lock my ankles around the rope. I slide down like a fireman on a pole. I hit the ground and step aside. Drop to one knee and unlimber my rifle.

The rotor blast envelopes me in a maelstrom of dust, twigs, and pine needles. Anything that is not embedded in earth, or anchored to rock, takes flight and whirls around me in the dark.

A quick look back. Koenig is down. Kneeling, he provides security on the other flank. Takigawa and Lopez fast-rope onto the shelf. We turn and watch the crew chief haul up the ropes.

The Black Hawk turns in place, pitches nose-low, and flies away.

Four men, alone on the mountain.

We kneel, motionless, facing the four points of the compass. We hold our rifles ready, scan the terrain with our NODs. The dust settles on the rock shelf. Koenig faces the mountainside, stares at a wall of rocks and trees. Takigawa and Lopez each face a curve of the mountain, one south, one north.

I stare out at magnificent blackness. Before me is a shallow valley, a mile and a half beneath our ledge. Beyond, a range of mountains stretches south-by-west, leading to the distant Koh-i-Baba, seventeen thousand feet high. Kabul lies out there, somewhere in the dark. Cradled by the inverted V formed by the Koh-i-Baba and our own Hindu Kush.

The sky is clear. An infinity of stars, dazzling under night vision. I’m hypnotized by the horizon. I raise my NODs