The Complete Delta Force Shooters

Chapter 3

3

By the end of the row, she began to get a feel for how to counteract her balance problems.

Tomas yanked her down to the soil, scanning the terrain ahead. He might be a hardcore pain in the ass, but she couldn’t ask for a better soldier to be at her side. There was no better man to be in a tight situation with in Delta. She’d tried to talk to him in camp, but he always gave her the cold shoulder, with a voice that could be used to chill a meat locker. However, on assignment, he guarded her like a mother hen or big brother. He was the best soldier, and she’d always been drawn to the best, but for some reason he wouldn’t even give her the time of day once they were back in a green zone.

That green zone felt awfully far away at the moment.

They lay together at the edge of the lush vineyard. Looking back she could see that it swooped down into a valley and up the next hill in neat and orderly rows. She’d never had a Moldovan wine and wondered if they were any good. Simply by the size of the field, they were successful. She plucked a grape. Blue-purple. Thick skin that resisted her bite before it popped, flooding her mouth with a high sugar content. Merlot probably. Or maybe a Zinfandel, they tasted a lot alike while still in the grape. She could be lying in the hills of Oregon’s Willamette Valley…if it weren’t for someone firing a mortar at them. Very few mortars being fired in the Willamette Valley in her experience.

Right! Time to start thinking like a soldier again.

Ahead lay a five-meter strip of rough dirt thick with tractor tire tracks. Beyond it lay a field of thin brown stalks she didn’t quite recognize chopped off at one meter high. It was a no-man’s land in which they’d be completely exposed. Past several hundred meters of stalks, a line of trees.

Tomas tapped her arm and pointed to the right.

Katrina had to scoot forward to see around him. A large red combine was parked in the middle of the field, at the edge of the tall stubble. Beyond it stood sunflowers—acres of sunflowers. Their heads were dried to a gray-brown and the combine would soon be harvesting them. Except the cab was empty and the door hung open. The machine still vibrated and smoke swirled up out of its exhaust stack. The farmer had abandoned his vehicle when the shelling had started.

“I hate working with foreign military.”

Tomas nodded his agreement.

That’s what must have happened. Moldova was way down the list on the international index of governmental corruption—their score was in the bottom third and falling fast. You could buy the entire parliament for the price of a Super Bowl commercial. Throw in a signed football and you could probably buy the military as well, though she couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to.

The US must have dutifully informed someone of their planned operation on Moldovan soil, who had then reported it directly to the Russians who coveted Moldovan territory. Or perhaps she and Tomas were still alive because some faction of the local military had decided to take care of the problem themselves—it wasn’t like the Russians to miss quite so many times.

Well, killing a pair of Delta Force operators wasn’t all that easy either.

“Where are they?” she asked Tomas quietly. There were two scenarios: the people firing the mortar could see their position, or the mortar crew were hunkered down, out of sight, but had a spotter who could. Either way she and Tomas had to find them.

Tomas pulled out a small radio scanner. In moments he had a lock on the enemy’s frequency. She could see by the indicator light that they were real talkers, either locals or overconfident Russians. He hooked up a small DF loop and began rotating it to get their direction.

She tried to remember how she’d been lying on the ground when she’d seen the incoming round. It had come from…the line of trees to the west.

Tomas pointed in two places: one toward the trees, one…in the direction of the combine.

Katrina slid the caps off the ends of her rifle’s scope. She tapped Tomas’ shoulder. He turned to her and she made as if to press her hand flat against the ground, then repeated the motion on his shoulder.

He lay flat, braced his elbows wide so that he was steadier than the Rock of Gibraltar. Then he rested his head on his folded hands, but turned toward her rather than the combine. Dark eyes. She could feel his dark eyes watching her despite the lenses he wore. They have always watched her, the sole woman on their squad. Every time she turned, Tomas’ eyes were tracking her.

Ignoring that, she unfolded the bipod on the front of her weapon and rested it against the small of his back. The combine was parked a thousand meters away and upslope from them so she needed the extra height to brace her weapon. She lined up with a break in the vines and began inspecting the combine at high magnification.

The main harvester bar was set a meter high and she could see its cutters still working. The high cab was indeed empty. The unloading pipe was swung back out of the way. The…

She swung back to inspect the cab. It was empty. But through the double layer of glass, windshield and side window, she could just make out a man standing behind the cab. It was an almost impossible shot, especially for a single shooter. She would have to break the windshield, then the side window, and then might have a chance of hitting the target if he hadn’t already moved. Two shots minimum, probably three.

Tracking upward, seeking any way in, she spotted just what she needed. Between the top of the cab and some other piece of gear, a pair of binoculars inspected the vineyard. She flipped off the safety, glanced at the grapevines to estimate the wind—it was so strange not to hear it rustling the leaves—and compensated for the bullet’s fall and a thousand meters of windage.

The MK21 had a silencer, but there was always some noise. Now, for her, it was truly silent as it kicked her in the shoulder. A half second later, the binoculars were gone. Between the combine’s tires she could see a body plummet onto the field. She worked the bolt and fed another round into the downed spotter just to be sure, not that a .338 Lapua Magnum round would have left much of his head. Even at over a half-mile out, the body twitched from the massive kinetic impact of the bullet. No question that the spotter for the mortar team was permanently out of commission.

There was a whiff of burnt gunpowder as she chambered another round.

She glanced at Tomas and nodded that it was done, but froze halfway through.

He was smiling at her. It was gone the moment she’d caught him at it, but she knew she’d seen it. Tomas didn’t smile at anybody for any reason.

No. That wasn’t right. She’d seen his smile before—never directed at her, of course—but she’d seen it. But his face, when he smiled, made it possible to imagine Tomas speaking to her in a warm and gentle tone. That was too strange for words so she kept her silence.