The Fall of America: Winter Ops Read Free Page B

 No one else moved.  I pulled my Russian binoculars from my case and brought them to my eyes.
    The medic looked like he'd taken most of the shotgun shell blast in his thigh and he was bleeding heavily.  I watched as he pulled his kit near and began to work on his injury.  Of the other five that were down, only one was still moving and he was screaming almost nonstop.  Adjusting the focus on my glasses, I saw long strands of gray purple intestines clutched tightly in his hands.  He was dead, only he didn't realize it yet, and was moving on adrenaline.  I expected him to go into shock shortly and then death.  One man had his head completely missing, and of the other three, they all looked dead, but that meant little to me.
    I pulled Joyce, my sniper, in close and whispered, “Take out the furthest man first, and when you fire, so will we.”  I looked around and everyone nodded.
    Joyce was a short woman with blond hair and blue eyes and about five feet and five inches tall.  She loved to joke, until she picked up her sniper rifle; then she turned deadly serious. I watched her Russian sniper rifle come up and she began sighting in on her first target. She made some minor adjustments to her scope and took a deep breath.  As she slowly exhaled the air trapped in her lungs, I saw her finger slowly tighten on the trigger.
    Her shot was more of a muffled pop than the blast of a high powered rifle, and I saw the man at the rear collapse into a heap. Other weapons opened fire and one by one the Russians began to fall.  Seeing all the enemy were either dead or gone to ground, I called out, “Cease fire, cease fire, and now we wait.  Keep your eyes open in case one makes a move. Joyce, put a killing round into each body you can see.”
    Her shots began to ring out.  
    Finally, a man on the right screamed something, stood and began running back toward the trees.  Joyce fired once and the man's head exploded sending blood and gore high into the air.  He collapsed as if he'd hit a brick wall.
    We continued to wait.
    Finally, an hour after her last shot and ending of all cries and moans, I said, “Okay, I want most of you to remain here as Scott and I check them out.”
    I heard the twenty year old gulp and then he stood as I did.  Scott was one of the few in the field that spoke fluent Russian.  At a young age he'd been adopted by a Russian couple and raised as their own son.  To avoid suspicion and problems, he'd not used his Russian name when he joined us and so far he was proving to be a loyal American.  I liked the lad, as did Sandra, but some distrusted him because he spoke the language of our enemies.  Both of his Russian parents were killed when they were hanged in retaliation of our attack on the air base at Edwards earlier this year and I feared the man was on a vengeance trail, because he was hard on any Russian taken alive. While only twenty, he had the eyes of a sixty year old man and by that I mean sad eyes, very sad.
    “If one moves,” I said as we moved forward, “put a bullet in him.”
    “Oh, trust me, I will.”
    In the main group by the exploded mine, the five were dead and the medic was fatally injured.  Joyce had put a bullet in his head, a large chunk of skull was missing, and his breathing was jagged and uneven.  Scott leaned over, pulled his skinning knife and cut the man's throat. We moved on.
    Of the others, all were dead, and the one who'd ran for the trees had most of his head missing from the killing shot fired by my sniper.
    “Gather up anything we can use, as I pull all the papers and maps from these men.  Hurry now, because I want to be gone as soon as we can.  Sooner or later the base these men came from will try to contact them by radio.”
    Twenty minutes later we were moving north and it was still sleeting with a mixture of ice, but I suspected by morning we'd be facing an ice storm.  I stopped by the trail and watched my men and women walk by. They looked good, but tired,