A Northern Thunder (19 page)

Punaros had Will fire the DPRK’s best pistols and rifles. Most were Korean remakes of other weapons from around the world, like the Type64, a 7.62-mm pistol and a Korean remake of the old Browning 1900;and the Korean TT-33, another 7.62 pistol. Punaros wanted Will to be comfortable with anything he found en route.

Then Gunny would have Will perform the same exercise at each session. Giving him a Makarov 9-mm pistol, with a fully loaded clip of eight rounds, he would tell Will to lock and load the first round. Then he’d turn Will around, grab eight dimes, and yell, “Turn!”

He’d toss the dimes high into the air, and in the brief flash of time during which they fell, Will fired eight times. First, he hit four of eight, then six. Now, he would hit all eight with regularity.

“Okay, Colonel, come on,” said Punaros.

The gunnery sergeant’s utilities, or field uniforms, were from the next generation—a green and black camouflage pattern, the product of multiple dots ranging in color. It looked like a numeric computer pattern from
The Matrix
. Punaros’s uniform, without insignia, confirmed he was retired, but only as a matter of public record.

In his heavily starched Marine utilities, Punaros waited for Will. The sharp creases bespoke his professionalism. If Punaros had spent all night before in the pouring rain, soaked to the bone, he would be back in half an hour in glassy, spit-shined boots and creased utilities.

Punaros led Will into the woods. Will glanced over his shoulder as Mi and the two others got back into the Suburban. They would not leave unless instructed by Punaros.

In a small opening in the woods, a table had been set up with a DPRK Type-64 pistol. It had a long silencer attached—one of the few DPRK pistols machined to handle one. “The one problem with training,” said Punaros, “is that it can’t replace the experience of a bullet coming at you. We can spend all day long on a range, but what happens when those targets shoot back?”

Will knew Punaros was right. He might fire some of the best shots on the range, but miss the side of a barn when shot at.

“Here’s how this one works.” Punaros lifted up a clay target the size of a basketball. “Five of these are out there in red. There are twice as many orange targets. You’ll be heading toward the red ones, but the orange ones will be in your way. Some are high, some are low. There are five live snipers on this course. You’ll be traveling through the field of orange targets.” He paused. “And they don’t care if you get between them and the target. If you’re shot dead, the incident will be written up as a training accident.”

Will imagined the newspaper headline as it would appear on page ten of the local paper: “Marine killed by errant weapon discharge in training accident.” Few would read it.

“The course is one mile long,” Punaros continued. “Once you hit a sniper’s red target, he can no longer shoot at his orange ones.”

Punaros, clearly concerned, looked Will directly in the eyes. He wanted Will to have the best chance, both on this test and in-country. As the training advanced though the weeks, he had gotten less humorous. Lightheartedness would have been easier if the trainee had been an Army Ranger, Navy SEAL, or even better, one of those Ivy League/Agency types. Punaros made it tougher on Will, who recognized what was going on and appreciated it.

“Now, this is a layout of the area,” said Punaros. He pulled a board from the side of a small field table, featuring a large aerial photograph with a laminated cover. Taped on the lamination were yellow strips, forming a box. “Look at the terrain. You’ll have this much advantage when you’re in-country.”

The Virginia forest retained some of its summer vegetation, but the changing colors would give Will some protection during this dangerous exercise. He saw a rolling terrain that led down to a deep ravine at the end of the box. Two streams twisted through the base of two shallow ravines before reaching the last, deeper one.

“I get it. Essentially, hitting their red target is a kill.”

“Exactly, sir.”

“How much time?”

“Twenty minutes.”

“Okay,” said Will.

“And each orange is set up with the red in such a way that you can’t hit the red without being in the path of the orange,” said Punaros.

Will knew this came as close as possible to simulating combat. The bullets would be hot, low, and indiscriminate.

“Here’s an extra clip. Each holds eight.”

The 7.62-mm bullet was larger than most pistol rounds and made a deep, whomping noise when fired.

Punaros wouldn’t give two Marines in ten the chance of making it though this exercise without getting hurt, but Will had impressed him more and more over the weeks of training.

“The boundary of the course is marked by yellow tape. And, sir?”

“Yes?”

“They want you available, and they figure they got too much invested in your training.” He handed Will a black, sleeveless vest. “This is the newest generation.”

Will was astonished by the vest’s weight and size. It was as thin as a paper pad, and light—comparable to a sweater in size, weight, and weave.

“It’s woven from bugs raised on Kevlar,” said Punaros. “It’s beyond M-5, and what they call the next generation of Kevlar—virtually impregnable, but it protects only vital organs and doesn’t do anything for that beautiful face of yours.” The vest sweater, made by an experimental spider silk called Biosteel, was ten times lighter and tougher than prior Kevlar vests.

Only a Marine gunny could make Will feel so comfortable about getting his head blown off. But the risk of that newspaper story was still there. Will slipped the vest over his Polartek top. He was surprised at how unrestricted he felt. Other vests made movement awkward and slowed you down.

“And, sir,” said Punaros, “their weapons are a mix of North Korea’s. They’ve got their Type-58s, -68s, and a Dragunor. The sound, the shells, everything will make you feel like we’re doing this just north of the border.”

Punaros was listing the DPRK’s assault rifles. The 58 was another North Korean knock-off of the AK-47, and the 68 was a reproduction of the Russian AKM assault rifle. But it was the Dragunor that caught Will’s attention. The Dragunor was a SVD sniper rifle that could knock the nose off a squirrel at eight hundred meters. In all his months of training, during which he’d shot every weapon, the Dragunor had most impressed him.

“Let’s go,” said Will.

“The clock starts now,” Gunny said.

W
ill took off like a flash, heading into the woods. His only advantage was a brief element of surprise—the snipers had been sitting in their positions for some time. Perhaps he could use his speed to get through the first few of them.

He ran straight for a large boulder, slamming to the ground just as the loud
whack
of a bullet flew past him. One orange target was only a few feet from his head.

Will paused, judged the angle of the shot, sprang up, and fired as the sniper sighted him again. As if piercing a heart, the bullet from Will’s pistol split the red target.

He didn’t stop or hesitate. Spotting the small stream below, he ran and jumped across it. Heading up the other hillside, he spied a flash of red at the base of a tree atop the next ridgeline. One shot popped the target before the sniper even sensed his movement.

“Come on,” he whispered to himself as he moved across the slope.

Again, he heard the
whack
of a bullet above his head. It was an AK-47-type round. Will never stopped, knowing from combat that a fixed target meant instant death. He dropped to one knee, looked up, saw a flash of red, and squeezed the trigger. He had sixteen rounds in the two clips, but through three targets, he had fired only three rounds.

Now the forest crackled with arms fire. He could hear the 58, but not the Dragunor. The sniper had not been able to sense his pace, and was firing at any hint of movement. Often, it didn’t belong to Will, but to a breeze or a squirrel. And this gave Will the upper hand. From the shots, he sensed where the shooter was—near another red target.

After half a mile, the terrain fell off to a large, sandy stream a car’s length or more in width. The area was open, giving the snipers more opportunity. But movement remained Will’s best defense. Spotting a tree that had fallen across the stream, he immediately knew the target would be set, prompting him to ford the stream by the tree.

He ran at full speed, jumping the stream at a forty-five degree angle, allowing his boots to hit two steps on the tree, as support, in the middle of the stream. As a bullet seared the Polartek, he felt the heat, but adrenaline was pumping now.

Will hit the other bank, rolled, and fired, hitting the fourth red target before the sniper’s second shell was chambered in the weapon.

One left
, he thought.
The Dragunor.

He climbed over the next rise, moving slowly as he approached the top. It was always movement that caught one’s eye in the woods. A deer hunter would never see the deer but for its movement. With its natural camouflage, a deer was virtually undetectable until it moved.

Will moved very slowly as he pulled up behind an outcropping of rocks and trees. He peered over the ravine and saw an open field beyond the stream. The sniper would have an open space advantage to detect Will’s movement.

“That son of a bitch.” Only Punaros, he thought, would set up the last target in a way that made it impossible for him. Given plenty of time, Will could slowly cross the field like a good Marine sniper, an inch at a time. But the limited clock set stress at boiler-like levels.

Will saw movement in the treeline across the field. He stayed very still, holding his breath.

The sniper moved again, very slightly, and when he did, Will saw a flash of red for less than a second. He smiled, sensing what was happening.

Punaros made this last one as tough as he could
, Will thought,
and then that damn Marine decided to make it even tougher
.

The sniper, his body directly in front of the red target, supported the Dragunor rifle with the trunk of a fallen pine tree. For Will, the trunk blocked all view of the sniper except for the scope of his rifle and a small portion of his camouflaged head.

Will pulled back. He looked at his watch—five minutes remaining. As he looked up, he saw the yellow tape flutter in the breeze to his right.

The sergeant was Punaros’s best sniper. A hardened combat veteran and skilled shot, he had trained with Punaros before, serving on two CIA missions in Colombia and one in Iraq.

Will moved very slowly, olooking down at his watch only once. This was a timed exercise, and he knew the sniper had the advantage of time. This was not exactly like combat.

Though the sniper didn’t know who the target in this exercise was, Punaros gave him the authority to do whatever he thought helpful to make it tough on the target. As the sniper best judged it, there were only two minutes left when he heard the first shot. He had walked the ground and knew exactly where the target would cross. The stream had only one point at which there was a true shot at a successful crossing.

He also knew the only tactic that would work would be a run—perhaps a zigzag—across the open field. With the sniper set up in front of the red target, it would be a hopeless exercise. The target would never get the chance to fix on him, while the sniper would have at least three shots at Will. He only needed one. He would chamber a round in the Dragunor and wait for the target to try crossing the sniper’s field of vision.

The brush near the crossover moved, and the sniper raised his rifle slightly, placing the butt of the stock into his shoulder. He had sanded down his trigger finger to raw flesh so he could feel the slightest squeeze on his finger. He braced for movement, expecting to sight, squeeze, and reload if necessary.

Whap
. He heard the clay target break apart just behind his head. Out of reflex, he started to turn, but felt the cold steel barrel of a silencer against his neck.

“Oh, shit.”

Will had cracked the target with the butt of the pistol, then turned the pistol on the sniper.

“Marine, you can assume you’re dead.”

“Yes, sir.”