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He found the training hard to begin with, being 20lbs
overweight when he joined. But he soon lost this at boot camp and
regained the speed for which he had been known on the Rugby
pitch. He enjoyed using the standard issue M16 rifle, so different to
the outdated Lee Enfield 303 that he had been issued as an Army cadet
at school back in England. When it came to the final qualifying round
in training he dropped 34 out of 35 targets in less than ninety
seconds. It later turned out that the hinges on the ‘missed’ mannequin
were so rusted that it wouldn’t have dropped for anyone. As a result
of this exceptional score and previous ones he had been the only one
in his Company to receive specialist sniper training.
“You boys are one in a hundred” his Drill instructor would yell “now
get into position and kill me some doperunners.”
The relatively dryer air at Fort Benning had been a relief compared to
the steamy jungle-like atmosphere of Missouri. He particularly enjoyed
the parachute training, it was so much better to be flying through the
air than sailing on the waves of the Solent where he would so
frequently become sea-sick as a child. The other thing he excelled at
was scuba diving, so the combination of jumping from a great height
into water suited him well.
Today the ops room at The Presidio was buzzing with anticipation.
Twenty men had been told to assemble at 06:00hrs. Michael was excited,
something big was stirring and this would be his third mission. His
first two had been relatively uneventful but he had been ‘blooded’
thus proving his metal and was now respected by his men.
“Ok gentlemen, listen up.” The commanding officer, Major Rick Watson
bellowed: “We leave in three hours, destination undisclosed as usual.
The target is a heroin farm with more poppies than Texas has corn. Our
mission simple; burn the fields and take out the slime-balls who sell
that shit to our children. We’re flying out of Oakland so I’ll see you
on the coach in two hours; any questions?”
“Yes sir, how long is the flight time sir?” A voice from the back of
the room
“You’ll find out soon enough, soldier. Let’s just say you’ll get two
meals on the plane. Right, that’s it. Officers stay behind.”
To some of the more experienced of these elite Special Forces soldiers
it was obviously going to be Colombia, again. But they’d never know
for certain and it didn’t matter. They would normally be in and out
within sixty minutes; job done. They never failed, seldom took
casualties and never killed civilians. It was a golden rule,
sacrosanct amongst men whose only honour in killing was to know that
it was truly justified.
The Major had left them in no doubt. “This situation is 'Scale A. Find
- Fix - Flank – Finish”. Find being to locate the enemy; fix - pin
them down with suppressing fire; flank - send soldiers to the enemy's
sides or rear; finish - eliminate all enemy combatants.
The flight took ten hours and twenty two minutes
before they were parachuted onto a beach. It was a dark night with
only a sliver of moon. The plane then did a second circuit to drop the
munitions and escape craft once they knew the area was secure.
Unusually, there seemed to be enough firepower to take
on a Battalion. They had previously assumed they’d be going up against
a few dozen poorly trained but trigger happy drug runners, as per
normal. What they hadn’t known, until the Major made it clear on the
plane was that this was a second mission to the same place in less
than three months. This time the enemy would be much better prepared.
“Gentlemen, I won’t kid you; this is a tough one” he said. “We know
they have at least thirty well trained combatants and, believe me,
they will be in a shit mood. Our last visit cost them several million.
Our mission this time is to put them out of action for good. Assume no
civilians; all targets are legit; no questions asked. I want to
see every one of you on the Sub in exactly two hours. Your officers
have been briefed; follow their orders to the letter.”
As a junior officer Michael had stayed behind at the briefing. Watson
hadn’t minced his words. “Gentlemen, expect casualties. We had two men
on recce three days ago and their report includes pigs covering the
four main fields. If I could bomb the bastards and their weeds I
would. That’s too visible, it has to be incendiaries as usual and the
only way to plant them is to take out the pigs first. How the hell
they got hold of them I don’t know but we can be damn sure they’ll be
using them.”
A pig is a slang name for the M60 light machine gun. Michael had fired
it during training several times; seen it in action twice and didn’t
much like the idea of being at the wrong end of it.
Normally, as a First Lieutenant, Michael would be leading a full
platoon. This operation was broken into five squads of just four men.
He was to lead the one designated solely to take out the pigs. Major
Watson knew that his speed and agility would be vital. So would his
accuracy as a sniper. Even so, he was still relatively green and so
the Major had assigned him the most experienced Sergeant, a tough
black guy from Alabama who had seen so much action that his men
nicknamed him ‘Fubar’: Fucked up beyond all repair. He was also a
sniper, as were the other two men, both Corporals.
Michael’s squad was the first to leave the beach. It was three miles
to their final destination and the Intel charts showed that the four
pigs were located together in one tower at the central junction of the
four fields, thus providing the harvest with 360 degree coverage. They
would need to get through the tall corn rows that surrounded and
disguised the real crop and take out the pig operators as soon as they
had a clear shot.
The objective for the second squad was to deal with the combatants who
would mostly be asleep in their barracks with the exception of a few
guards whilst the other two squads planted sets of incendiaries in
fields one and two. When the tower and barracks had been taken out
those squads would plant fields three and four. Mission completed in
ninety minutes.
It didn’t happen that way.
No one could have anticipated the trip-flares and mines planted that morning.
Michael’s squad covered the three miles in less than thirty minutes;
good going considering the weight of munitions. They were catching
their breath at the edge of the corn rows, waiting until the second
squad was in position near the barracks when the first flare went up.
The second squad was immediately in trouble. They hadn’t got close
enough to simply dispatch their grenades through the windows and now
had a full scale battle on their hands. Twenty armed combatants
emerged to join the two guards who had opened fire as soon as the
flare went up.
Michael reacted quickly. “Leave the bags here, bring only the frags
and scopes” he ordered. The four men left the bags of incendiaries and
moved forward carrying only their M40A1 sniper rifles and
fragmentation grenades. It was lucky the doperunners in the tower had
been distracted and were looking toward the barracks. They didn’t
notice the swaying of the corn rows and they never felt the bullets.
Four clean shots to the head.
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