They were leaving me to die.
The thrum of the convoy’s engines faded, replaced by the relentless, crushing thwack of the enemy machine gun. Prada, in his infinite arrogance, had driven them straight into the gorge, and now they were trapped like cattle in a chute. My right leg was useless, a screaming mess of muscle and bone, but I hadn’t lost my mind.
I was Zara Ravendal. My uncle, a retired Marine Scout Sniper who taught me to shoot as a kid in the Dakotas, used to tell me, “Panic is the first bullet that kills you. Calm is the only armor you have.”
I had to be calm.
I began to crawl. Every inch was an agony that made the world go white. I had to get to higher ground. Not for rescue, but for a view.
Fifty yards up the slope, I remembered, there was an emergency cache. Our unit had stashed gear there weeks ago during a different op. I prayed Prada hadn’t moved it.
It took twenty minutes. Twenty minutes of sliding, crying out, and forcing my body through the rock. My hands were shredded. When I finally reached the cache, I saw it—a large, dust-covered olive-drab box.
I pried it open with a bayonet.
Inside was a Barrett M82, the semi-automatic .50 BMG rifle, known affectionately by American snipers as “the light fifty.” It wasn’t my standard issue, but it was beautiful. Also inside was an AN/PVS-27 night vision scope (though it was dawn now, the scope was calibrated for distance) and a brick of Raufoss Mk 211 rounds—high explosive incendiary armor-piercing ammunition. These were antimateriel rounds, designed to rip through engines, not people.
Perfect.
I dragged the fifty-pound rifle to a stable rock ledge, using my broken leg as a brace against a smaller boulder, swallowing a scream as I did so. I set up the bipod.
From my angle, looking down the valley, the enemy position was an impossible distance away. They were set up in a cave mouth high on the opposite ridge, 4,800 meters from me. More than three miles. The longest confirmed sniper shot in history was just under 3,800 meters. What I was about to attempt was statistically absurd.
But the alternative was watching 40 of my fellow soldiers, even the ones who abandoned me, die.
I pulled out my PDA, which I’d salvaged. I had no spotter to feed me data. I was the shooter, the spotter, and the wind meter. The canyon wind was vicious—variable gusts from the west. The air density at this altitude (roughly 9,000 feet) would affect the bullet’s flight, making it hit higher. Then, I had to account for the Coriolis effect—the Earth’s rotation during the 12 seconds the bullet would be in the air. At this range, that rotation would shift the bullet nearly eight feet to the right.
“Okay, Uncle Silas. Make your numbers work,” I whispered.
My vision blurred from blood loss. I had to hurry. I focused through the scope. I could see the flash of the DShK gunner’s muzzle. He was tearing up the lead Stryker. Prada’s voice was screeching over a command frequency I could still monitor, panic evident in every syllable.
“We are trapped! Target is in the cave! We can’t elevate the turret guns high enough! Suppressive fire… God help us…”
Prada was broken. His incompetence had come full circle.
I pulled the bolt back on the Barrett. I set my elevation and windage knobs to their maximum limits and adjusted my holdover. I wasn’t aiming at the gunner; I was aiming for the rock face 50 feet above and 20 feet to the left of the cave, betting my calculations would correct the shot.
I took one final, shallow breath, feeling the tourniquet on my thigh pulsing. I squeezed.
The rifle recoiled with enough force to shake my entire body. A massive plume of dust erupted from the barrel brake. I held my breath, listening to the silence that followed. I knew the flight time would be a full dozen seconds.
I watched through the scope. Nothing.
Damn it. I re-adjusted, trying to guess where I’d missed. I held further left, further up. The enemy gunner was still firing.
Then I realized I hadn’t missed. The first round had struck the rock outside the cave, and I had been watching the wrong spot. I needed to move my target point into the cave mouth.
I adjusted again. This time, I heard a sound from below, in the convoy cut. Prada’s voice, a bizarre mix of terror and confusion. “Where did that shot come from? That was artillery! It hit the ridge near the gunner! What unit is firing?!”
Prada, in his panic, hadn’t even realized a .50 cal was firing for them.
The enemy DShK gunner paused, spooked by the near miss. I used that fraction of a second to recalculate. I wasn’t just guessing now. I was bracketing.
I took the second shot.
Another massive recoil. Twelve seconds later, the round struck. This time, it hit the DShK itself. Raufoss rounds did not play. The gunner and his weapon were obliterated in a flash of incendiary fuel and metal.
The enemy machine gun fell silent.
For a moment, in the entire Registan Canyon, nothing moved.
But the battle wasn’t over. I had killed the main gunner, but more men would take his place. And as I looked up from my scope, I saw something that made my stomach drop.
A section of the rock, not far from where my second shot had hit, was moving. It wasn’t the enemy. It was a secondary cache—one that had been hit by the rockfall from my near-miss on the first shot. A large, green military trunk was sliding down the rock face, spilling its contents.
Inside that trunk, clearly visible in the morning light, were several US military M777 howitzer shell casings… and a very large, brightly colored US flag.
Prada hadn’t left me because he was a coward. He’d left me because I’d discovered his secret. He was stealing American military equipment—heavy artillery casings and supplies—and storing them in the very caves he was supposedly protecting the canyon from. I hadn’t found an L-shaped ambush; I had walked right into his black market depot. And the ambush? It was a decoy, meant to cover his tracks and ensure I never told a soul.
I had just saved the life of the man who had set me up to die.
If you’ve read this far, don’t hesitate to leave a like and comment before reading part 3. It makes us as happy as reading a complete story! Thank you. 👍❤️
