North Africa, Fezzan region, Libya.
25.5°N 13.7°E, Murzuq, 2028.
Daytime temperature averaged 32 °C, humidity 17–19 percent, moderate visibility.
The land was flat and bone-dry, the low-blowing sand carrying every whisper of wind.
"Fifteen miles per hour, west."
The voice on the channel sounded half-machine, most of its character stripped away by static and grit, leaving only the clipped essentials. Even so, the man was clearly fighting back a cough. Silence was always the right call in the desert; even with your mouth shut you still swallowed sand that scraped the back of your throat raw.
White glare bounced off the horizon and flooded the shallow pits, turning an already blinding landscape into something worse.
"Up thirteen-point-five mils. Wind shifting—ten to eleven."
On the reverse slope north of Rock Reference Point A, behind a pale-yellow dune, two small mounds of sand blurred in the crosswind until one of them shed its camouflage. A khaki frayed edge lifted, revealing the long, slender barrel of a rifle. Then came the two half-buried human shapes and the coarse, low-IR netting that broke up their outlines.
They stayed perfectly still inside the slow-moving carpet of blowing sand, waiting for the dust to settle.
The lens cap flicked open. The objective flashed for a split second.
—Thwip—thwip.
Two supersonic cracks ripped across the desert. The forward edges of both shapes jerked once, then sank heavily. Two wet, dark-red patches soaked into the sand, spread, and faded as the moisture evaporated. A shattered ballistic visor let in more light and exposed one empty black eye socket.
"Enemy sniper team down. Stand by."
East-southeast of Rock Reference Point A, on the flat crown of a large bedrock outcrop. The lieutenant racked the bolt, ejecting the spent brass. The casing tumbled away trailing white smoke and twisted heat shimmer, clinking against the ones already on the stone. His spotter pulled down the brown-and-black shemagh; he was still chewing coffee-flavored gum. Both men were clipped to a black safety rope anchored deep in the rock.
"Nice shooting, Lieutenant. Two for two."
The man they called Lieutenant wore a wide-brimmed boonie for sun protection. He spat out the toothpick he'd been chewing, winced at the numb right side of his face. Both men lay prone. The lieutenant's rifle was a Barrett Mk22 Mod 0 in desert tan-and-brown camouflage, fitted with a 7-35×56 F1 scope and a sunshade. The spotter used the standard M7 rifle paired with the XM157 fire-control optic. Both weapons rested on soft pads to cut down on visual and thermal signature.
"Check the perimeter, Murphy."
Murphy raised the binoculars again, lifting just enough to sweep the sand sea below the low rock shelf.
"Still clear."
Once the echo of the two shots had finally died, they lifted their rifles in unison, turned, and slid down the bedrock face. They used the broken "stairs" of fractured stone to brake, stopping neatly inside a long crevice just wide enough for both of them. They sat with their backs to the rock and took a breath.
"Where'd you serve before this, Johnny?"
Murphy spoke first. He cradled his rifle in both arms, fished a pack of Marlboro Reds from under his plate carrier, and offered one.
"22 SAS."
Lieutenant John pushed the cigarette back. His voice was hoarse from the sand. He unclipped the water bladder at his hip and took a small sip to wet his throat.
"Jesus. You're not actually a Price, are you?"
Murphy lit up behind his hand, drawing the smoke deep. He figured you could probably light one just by holding it in the sun, but the ritual made it taste better. People called that romanticism.
"Coincidence."
John's English accent was thick.
"Sure. But your file never mentioned you shoot like that."
Murphy watched the lieutenant drop the magazine from the Barrett, pull three fresh .338 Norma Magnum rounds from his ammo belt, and thumb them into the half-empty mag. They had already zeroed with a test shot and neutralized two more sniper teams on the northwest flank of the reference point.
"Training makes perfect," John said.
"Christ, even the way you talk." Murphy grumbled, then saw the lieutenant's impatient hand signal.
"Kill the cigarette. Smoke drifts."
Even though he hated it, Murphy flicked the half-smoked Red into the crevice, ground it out, and scuffed dirt over it so nothing would roll downhill and leave a trace.
"I thought you cared about team health," he joked.
"Most of the blokes who work for me don't live long enough for it to matter."
John delivered the line deadpan. Murphy gave a short laugh, then let the black humor settle.
"Seriously?"
He stared at John, eyes wide. At a time like this, attitude mattered more than the answer.
A sudden burst of .50-cal machine-gun fire ripped the air. The heavy rounds hammered the sunlit face of the bedrock, spraying rock chips and dust in sheets. The low, aggressive concussion slammed into their backs. Murphy startled, lost his balance, and started to slide out of the crevice. John's hand shot out and caught him before he could tumble. A few loose stones rattled down the near-sixty-degree slope and shattered on the ground below.
The slope made climbing and exfil easy, but right now it felt a lot higher than it had last night in the dark. Daylight made the wind-scoured cracks look like the ridged back of a leaping crocodile.
"Fuck!"
Murphy spat, face pale.
"If you want to live another minute, keep your head in the game, eh?" John barked.
He had already noticed the fire shifting. The initial burst lasted only one long rake, then walked lower and drifted off their original threat sector.
"Probing fire. They haven't fixed our position… listen to the echo—over a thousand meters out."
John's voice stayed calm. He thumped Murphy twice on the left shoulder for reassurance.
"The convoy's the main event today, mate."
Murphy exhaled hard three times, resetting himself. The old cowboy grin came back; he shook off the death that had been sitting on his chest. He thumbed the safety off his rifle. The overexposed desert sharpened again, no longer pulsing with his heartbeat.
"Let's put some fucking rounds downrange, Lieutenant."
They tightened their safety ropes, scrambled back up the rock face, and dropped into prone again on the crest.
Murphy glassed the convoy and called the data while lasing the range.
"Convoy moving. Fourteen-twenty meters."
John locked onto the lead vehicle. The enemy machine guns raked the bedrock face, but the thick dust cloud they kicked up gave the snipers dynamic cover. Green tracer every second round also painted the gun positions for them.
"Up fourteen-point-eight mils. Full-value left-to-right wind at five miles per hour. Two-point-four mils left windage." Murphy had already added the extra 0.2 mil for the desert heat mirage that lifted the bullet.
John adjusted his wrist, settled the crosshairs on the lead vehicle churning through the dust cloud—eighteen-power magnification. He counted the mil dots with eye and muscle memory.
He exhaled.
The rifle bucked. The .338 Norma Magnum round flew for 2.1 seconds, punched through the front tire, and continued into the engine bay. The massive kinetic energy peeled the thin hood upward like a guillotine blade that sliced sideways into the windshield. The vehicle flipped instantly and slammed into the second truck. The rest of the convoy opened up toward the center of the echo, but the high angle and long range gave the two men on the rock effective immunity.
John didn't wait for Murphy's follow-up dope. He racked the bolt, made the instinctive adjustment for the drastically reduced lead caused by the collision, and fired again.
Another heavy recoil. The bullet traced a downward-whipping arc through the shimmering air.
Rack. In the trembling scope Murphy saw a pink mist bloom and scatter on the wind behind the second truck's gunner.
"Moving right!" John shouted.
Murphy grabbed his M7 and crab-walked sideways with the lieutenant, keeping low as the machine-gun fire walked closer. Stone splinters filled the air. They slid down into the protection of a thick, sudden bedrock bulge.
The suppression lasted a full forty seconds. Through a crack in the rock Murphy snapped off a few rounds from the M7. Over the deafening hammer of the guns he thought he heard John make a wet, pained sound.
"You all right, Lieutenant?"
On his right, John wiped at his stinging right eye. His fingertips came away bloody. He tried to force the eye open, praying it wasn't gone. It wasn't. When he touched the gash on his forehead he let out a relieved breath. He dropped the half-full Barrett mag, loaded two fresh rounds by feel, and gave the order.
"Main eye flooded with blood—swap! Swap!"
Murphy took the Barrett, handed over the binoculars. John clapped him on the right shoulder.
"I'm good, Murphy. Eyes on the target!"
In the extreme tension Murphy instinctively worked the bolt and ejected a live round he hadn't fired. He grimaced, reseated the bolt.
"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!"
He forced his breathing down, pressed the Barrett stock hard into his shoulder. Beside him John squinted through the binoculars with his good eye and called corrections as smoothly as ever.
"Watch the heat mirage—down zero-point-six mil, right zero-point-four!"
Murphy squeezed. The round sailed over the gunner and kicked up sand behind him.
"Miss!"
John stayed calm. "Lower. Center of the gun shield."
Murphy steadied himself and fired again.
The bullet curved slightly and punched straight through the light armor of the gun shield, slamming into the gunner's chest. The turbaned mercenary tumbled off the roof. The rest of the crew bailed from the truck and dropped prone, rifles up.
"Gunner down!"
Murphy violently racked the bolt and chambered a fresh round.
"Fuel truck—central tank on the cargo bed. Thirteen-ninety meters. Wind now four miles per hour, still left-to-right!"
John focused on the critical supply vehicle the mercenaries were swarming around. They were trying to wake the unconscious driver and move the fuel.
"Range closing. Slight drop. Wind two-point-one mils left!" he called.
Murphy dialed the scope to 22×, switched to destructive fire. He put the first round through an oil drum, watched the high-velocity impact spark fuel spray and friction fire, then prepared the follow-up to ignite it.
On the other side, John braced the rifle with his left arm, using only his weaker eye, and began picking off exposed mercenaries one by one with the XM157's ballistic computer. He fired twice, beating Murphy by a fraction of a second. The rounds struck the drums.
The explosion was biblical.
A greasy fireball swallowed half the convoy. Mercenaries engulfed in hellish flames rolled screaming across the sand. On the rock crest the two snipers eased off their triggers and watched the thick black smoke blot out the sun.
"Not bad, Murphy," John said.
"Almost had you that time, John," Murphy shot back.
"Still a long way off, cowboy." John picked up the live round Murphy had nervously ejected earlier and set it beside him.
Murphy looked at the lieutenant—right eye swollen shut under a mask of blood—and nodded as he took the brass.
"You're right, Lieutenant."
John watched him drop the smoking magazine and seat the round.
"But you're already a damn good sniper, Daniel Murphy."