Judgment at Alcatraz by Dave Edlund (carter reed .txt) 📕

not up to the standards of high-quality sniper rifles, the ubiquitous AK assault rifle was, nonetheless, deadly. All the more so at close range.

Seth studied the image in his scope as he traversed the target area.

“Roger that,” he said. “Three tangos. They’ve got no clue they’re walking dead men.”

“As it should be,” she replied.

The sniper team waited in silence for two minutes, until Omega Team radioed.

“In position. We have two tangos in sight. Ready to engage on your order.”

Peering through the scope, she studied the situation. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary for a hostage situation. And that nagged at her. What am I missing?

No fortification. No visible backup. No heavy weapons. Her deliberation was interrupted by the squelch of the radio.

“Alpha Team, I say again. Omega is in position. We have two tangos. Ready to drop them at your order.”

She stole one last, long look through the spotting scope, still unable to put her finger on what was troubling her about the scene only a couple hundred meters away.

She shook it off. Their order was clear. It was time.

Pressing the transmit button on her portable radio, she whispered, “This is Alpha Team. Clear to engage.”

Less than a meter away, Seth heard the order and gently squeezed the trigger.

Boom!

Danya was still recovering from the muzzle blast from Seth’s rifle when she heard the report, one and a half seconds later, from the first shot fired by Omega. With precision and confidence, Seth had nudged the crosshairs to the next target. He fired. Without waiting to ascertain where the bullet hit, he was on to the third target. All the team members knew that this had to be a coordinated, lightning strike so as to deny the terrorists the opportunity to open fire on the busload of children.

No sooner had the gunfire faded into silence, when a tinny voice came over the radio.

“Two tangos down. All clear.”

Danya surveyed the scene through the spotting scope, while Seth did likewise using the rifle scope. Three prone bodies near the front of the bus. Nothing moved.

“Clear,” she said into the radio.

Then she removed a portable loudspeaker from her backpack. She held it close to her lips and spoke slowly and clearly.

“Children. Leave the bus immediately. The Israeli Defense Force is here to take you home.”

After hearing the verbal message, Omega Team radioed for the helicopters and ground transports to come in. In the distance—muted at first, but growing more intense—she heard the helicopter rotors beating the air as they raced to the scene. She kept her eye to the scope just long enough to ensure her order was being acted upon. The first youth to the door, a young girl, gazed in her direction. For a fleeting moment, she looked into the teenager’s eyes, seeing fear mixed with hope.

Satisfied the bus was being evacuated, Danya rose, but only reached one knee before the distinct staccato of AK fire reached her ears.

“Shit.” She dropped back to the spotting scope. “We missed one!”

“Not possible,” Seth replied.

Through the precision optics, Danya saw the crisp image of children spanning a range of ages, exiting the bus and running into an empty landscape. Then she heard the report of rifle fire again, but she couldn’t locate any muzzle flashes, and concluded the suppressors on the AKs were masking the bright flash of burned gunpowder escaping the barrel.

“One of the terrorists is shooting.” She watched helplessly as six children fell.

One appeared to be clutching a stuffed animal.

“Kill him. Shoot!” she shouted.

All pretense of stealth forsaken, replaced with a sense of urgency she’d never before felt.

“Where?” Seth replied. “I don’t see any movement.”

More gunfire, and another four children fell as they continued to pour out of the bus.

“By the front of the bus.”

Seth hesitated. “There are three bodies there. No movement. Which one is the shooter?”

“Shoot all of them! I don’t care if they’re not moving. Just shoot them all again.”

While Seth was methodically sighting and shooting, Danya jumped to her feet and raced toward the school bus. The two-hundred-meters distance was nothing for a gunfight, and recklessly close for a sniper team. But now that she was sprinting to reach the children, the distance seemed immense.

She kept pumping her legs and gulping in air as she screamed into the loudspeaker.

“Get down! Get down and lay on the ground.”

She’d covered two-thirds of the distance and was close enough to see four or five kids standing together near the door of the bus. It appeared everyone had exited, and thankfully the AK fire had ceased. She took two more strides, when everything before her was engulfed in a brilliant flash of white light. A burst of searing heat hit her, followed by a blast wave a heartbeat later, knocking her on her back, and she was smothered in blackness and silence.

There was no accounting for how long she was out. Maybe only seconds, maybe a minute or two. The next thing she recalled was Seth with a firm hand on her shoulder, calling her name.

“Danya! Danya.”

Slowly, she rose, fighting nausea from both the explosive pressure wave and her head slamming onto the earth. Her gravest fears took form before her eyes. The school bus was engulfed in flame, its roof having been blasted away, and the sides peeled back like the yellow skin of a banana. In the flickering firelight, she saw many small bodies lying motionless on the ground, some twisted in unnatural shapes.

All of her training, all of her professionalism, evaporated in that instant.

She wept.

Only seven of the forty-two school children escaped alive. The survivors had all suffered injuries, many life-threatening, and all were evacuated in the military helicopters. The ground vehicles were used to transport the corpses, later to be delivered to grieving families.

The subsequent investigation revealed that one of the terrorists, presumably the leader, possessed a version of a dead man’s switch—a failsafe. Every two minutes, he was required to press a button on a remote detonator. If he failed to perform this simple task, fifty kilograms of