Gray Matter Splatter (A Deckard Novel Book 4) (4 page)

The delay had provided the sniper element with extra time, which
they spent building a proper sniper hide. At this point they were
willing to do anything to keep moving and keep warm. The snowmobiles
were stashed a few hundred meters back under white camouflage nets.
From there, the four snipers split up into two teams to cover
different angles of the objective.

Nikita shivered next to his sniper partner as he tried to pull
his watch cap down farther on his head. Finding a small ridge at the
outskirts of the village, Nikita and his Kazakh sniper partner had
tunneled through the top layer of snow, hollowing out a small belly
hide. Then they had carefully poked two small holes through the layer
of snow facing the village, giving them a loophole to shoot through.

Nikita's radio crackled in the earpiece he wore.

“GPS says we are a few minutes out,” Deckard reported.

“Minimal movement here. One guard on the roof of building three
and a few people passing between buildings three and two.” During
the planning sessions, each building in the village had been
designated with a number. Like everyone else on this mission, Nikita
wore a clear plastic sleeve on his wrist showing an overhead map of
the village with the corresponding numbers over each structure.
“Correction,” Nikita transmitted back to Deckard as he watched
through the 10-power Nightforce scope on his HK417 rifle. “Another
guard just came up on the roof.”

“Standby.”

The two guards stood on top of the only three-story building in
the village, which had once been used to house oil workers during the
Soviet era. In the barren no-man's land that was the Russian Arctic,
the structures had been occupied by the mafia. They ran a refueling
station a half kilometer away at the coast where passing ships would
fill up. They also charged exuberant “taxes,” which had only
become more costly as the oil industry began drilling in the Arctic.
It was a typical extortion racket, one backed up by coercion, and on
a few occasions, physical violence. The Russians lit up their
cigarettes but said few words to each other. Like the mercenaries,
the Russian gangsters were primarily concerned with staying warm.

Nikita ranged them at 300 meters away and checked the
windage and elevation settings on his scope again. The harsh
environmental conditions even impacted the trajectory of a sniper's
bullet. Nikita was lucky to have been able to re-zero his HK417 out
behind their compound once they had arrived in the Arctic. In warmer
climates, a bullet would travel faster, but the freezing cold air in
the Arctic was denser, meaning that his rounds would travel slower
and drop faster.

At 300 meters, the conditions would only throw his shot
off about an inch, but the effect would only become more exaggerated
when he had to fire at targets farther out.

“We're in position,” Deckard announced over the radio.
“Shooter-One, do you see that dead guy standing up on the roof,
puffing on a cigarette?”

“Roger.”

“Kill him and the other dead guy standing next to him. We'll
initiate on you.”

“Copy,” Nikita said as he settled into position. “Ready?”

“Da,” Aslan, his sniper partner, responded.

Nikita lined the crosshairs of his reticle on the guard as he
stubbed out his cigarette. Slowly exhaling, the sniper squeezed the
trigger. The suppressed shot still let out an audible
crack
.
Aslan was a fraction of a second behind him, their shots almost
sounding as one.

Nikita watched through his scope and saw the guard crumple and
fall as the shot impacted his chest. The second guard also
disappeared from view.

It was on.

* * *

Nikita's team dropping the guards on the roof signaled the
assault.

Sixty-four Samruk mercenaries advanced across the snow, their
PenCott camouflage almost unnecessary due to the pitch-black night
sky. The snow slowed the advance somewhat, but each team member wore
assault snowshoes. They were small plastic snowshoes that allowed
greater mobility and gave them some much-needed extra traction where
the snow grew deep. The attack angle had been chosen deliberately so
that they were assaulting down a slight decline in the terrain,
speeding up their movement as the mercs closed on the pirate enclave.

Hearing the muffled crack of gunshots, several more
Russian mobsters emerged from building three. Through the PVS-14
night vision goggles he wore, Deckard could see that they were
wearing thick winter parkas and carrying AK-47 rifles.

The second sniper team made short work of them. The first
shot took one of the Russians down immediately. The second shot left
the sniper's target limping, but then he keeled over and expired on
the frozen ground.

Deckard could now see the steam from his breath fogging up the
PVS-14 night-vision tube.
He wiped it off with a finger as
they closed within 25 meters of the nearest structure. Most of them
were just old wooden shanties, and not expected to be occupied. It
was only building three that had any electricity, as proven by the
lights in the windows.

As they reached the first wooden building, a five-man assault
element entered the open door and cleared it. Now they could hear
shouts from Russian voices in the distance. The enemy knew that
something was going down.

When the first of the Russian pirates stepped out of
building three, the base of fire opened up. PKM machine guns roared
with a cyclic rate of fire that slung angry hornets through their
front door. Belts of 7.62x54 ammunition were eaten up by the guns,
which had been dismounted from the assault trucks and laid down where
they could overwatch the objective area. Green tracers streaked
through the night like something out of a
Star Wars
movie,
keeping the enemy fixed inside the building while the assaulters
cleared their way through the village.

Flashbangs were tossed into the other wooden buildings as
the Samruk mercenaries entered and cleared the structures. Deckard
jumped into the stack and gave the last man lined up outside the door
a squeeze on the shoulder, letting him know they were ready. The six
men flowed inside the building, their AK muzzles sweeping for
targets. Empty.

Back outside, muzzle flashes were coming from inside building
three, the automatic fire sending shards of glass glittering to the
ground, captured in the green tint of Samruk's night vision goggles.

A two-man team from the anti-tank section loaded up an 84mm
high-explosive dual-purpose round into their Carl Gustav recoilless
rifle.
The blast interrupted the flow of the entire firefight,
shaking the ground under Deckard’s feet. The shot rocketed into a
window where muzzle flashes had been spotted and detonated inside
with enough force to shake the foundation of the building.

The sniper teams were engaging targets of opportunity, but by now
the sounds of their gunshots were drowned out by all of the other
shooting in the village.

“Hit building three,” Fedorchenko ordered his men over
the radio. “Get in there!”

Deckard reached down and clicked his mic. As commander, it was
his job to hold his guys back when they got too aggressive. He had to
make sure he set the conditions for success before his men blindly
charged into something they didn't know how to get out of.

“Negative,” he said, stopping their assault. “Wait a
second. Have AT prep the target for another minute.”

The Gustav gunner went to work, hosing down the building
with five more rounds, the blasts echoing through the night. Yellow
explosions flashed from inside the building when the rounds made it
through a window.

“Winchester on rounds, boss,” the AT section leader
reported. He was a 1st Ranger Battalion veteran named Marty and had
trained his Kazakh Goose gunner damn well.

“Hit it,” Deckard ordered.

The assaulters sprinted from building five over to
building three and immediately charged through the door. Within
seconds, over 30 assaulters had made it through the breach.
They
had been trained to conduct free-flow close-quarter battle, a method
of room clearing that emphasized speed without fixating on team
integrity as they moved from room to room.

“Objectives secured,” Fedorchenko radioed in over the
assault net. “Back-clearing now.”

“Shooter-One,” Deckard called to Nikita, “collapse down to
our position.”

“Roger.”

Deckard walked into building three, finding expended shell
casings all over the floor. As he walked from room to room he counted
20 bodies. They had been living in makeshift conditions, sleeping on
cots with space heaters and lots of blankets. These guys were just
the Russian mob's foot soldiers. Petty enforcers who pulled Sheriff
of Nottingham shit on passing commercial vessels.

The job was done.

There was no need to search through pockets and look for
documents that could provide intelligence value. They had been
assigned to wipe this target off the Sputnik map, and that is exactly
what they did. Russian law enforcement would move in once morning
rolled around and take credit for the operation. Yet, he saw that one
member of the team couldn’t help himself.

“What do you got there?” Deckard asked Aghassi as he was
walking out with a black trash bag loaded down with something.

“Found a few laptops.”

“You need something to play Minecraft on?”

“You never know,” he said with a shrug.

Aghassi was one of the best in the business when it came to
tactical and targeting intelligence. He had previously served in
JSOC’s ultra-secretive Intelligence Support Activity, conducting
operations all over the world that would remain classified for the
rest of their lives.

“Have Cody look at it when we gets back to the ship and
let me know if there is anything interesting on the hard drives,”
Deckard said, referring to the hacker whom Samruk employed.

“I will,” Aghassi said before disappearing out into the
night.

The assault element began a controlled withdrawal from the
objective and started moving back to the assault trucks, leaving
nothing behind except dead bodies and expended brass.

Deckard followed closely behind. He cursed as his night
vision goggles blinked off. Despite turning the on/off switch back
and forth, the PVS-14 refused to fire back up. Its AA batteries had
frozen in the cold. He made a note for the after-action review; they
would have to keep spare sets of batteries inside pockets near their
skin to keep them warm so they would always be ready to swap out.

As he walked, Deckard realized he hadn't fired a single shot
during the entire mission. Maybe he was finally taking Pat’s advice
and becoming a leader instead of just another trigger-puller. It felt
like things were finally coming together, but in his experience, that
was usually when he got the rug pulled out from under his feet.

The special operations veteran let out a sigh as the trucks came
into view. It was going to be a long ride back to the Carrickfergus.

Chapter 3

“Deckard.”

“Huh?”

Deckard rubbed crust out of his eyes as he sat up on his cot.
After getting back on the Carrickfergus, he had slept like a rock,
the ship's purring engines putting him out for hours.

“We’ve got a problem,” Frank said. “Come up to the
bridge.”

“Shit, what is it now?” Deckard rolled off the cot and slid
into his Merrill combat boots.

“You're not going to believe this shit. C'mon.”

Deckard followed Frank out of the passenger compartment
where the rest of the mercenaries were sleeping. Only a few remained
awake, playing video games or watching movies on portable DVD
players. The post-mission hot wash had been just as ugly as the
actions on the objective. They were a soup sandwich out there and
they knew. The entire team was embarrassed by their vehicle issues
and now realized just how dramatically they would have to adapt to
the environment. Now they were sleeping it off. Tomorrow was another
day.

Climbing a few flights of metal stairs, they arrived at
the bridge. Otter looked at them with a worried expression Deckard
had never seen before.

“They burned it,” the captain said.

Deckard was about to ask what the hell he was talking about when
he looked out the window. Orange flames raged in the distance,
illuminating the ocean and sparkling off floating ice bobbing up and
down in the sea.

“Is that—”

“Yeah,” Otter replied. “That's our joint.”

Samruk's ad hoc operations center lent to them by the oil company
had been set on fire. Thankfully, most of their combat equipment and
supplies were on the Carrickfergus, as Deckard intended for the ship
to act as a floating forward operating base more or less independent
of any other logistical support structure.

“I think this is far enough,” Otter said as he eased down the
throttle.

“You're right,” Deckard said. “Whoever it was might have
mined the waters around the building.”

“What did we leave behind in there?” Frank asked.

“Four assault trucks that we brought with us as spares since
there wasn't room on the ship,” Deckard answered.

“Not that they are worth a fuck out here anyway,” someone
said.

Deckard turned toward the voice. Kurt Jager leaned against the
back wall with his arms crossed.

“I'm going to have to call our paymasters and find out what is
going on. This is a hell of a way to cancel our contract.”

The Iridium satellite phone Velcroed to the console started to
ring. Deckard saw that the number belonged to the head of security
for Xyphon Industries, the American oil company that had hired them
to protect their personnel and assets in the Russian Arctic.
Apparently, they had the same idea. He picked up on the third ring.

“Hey Eliot, this is Deckard.”

“Got a minute?” the security executive asked.