Shaking his head and looking at the star-filled sky, Douglas said, “This war is spoiling me. I don't think I'll ever be able to go back to outwitting peasants in backwater insurgencies after this war.” Looking back at me, he asked, “Are you going to go back to Merlin Printing after the war?”
I thought about it. “Yeah, I think so. If Taiwan wins, the 3D printing field is going to take off with all the reconstruction work that'll have to be done. And the U.S. is going to be the one making the stuff. If the new president does a halfway decent job, our economy is going to take off. I want to be there to see it. I took a lot of heat from investors for keeping plants in the U.S. after all the new regs and the employment voucher fiasco. It'll all be worth it to see people working again.”
Douglas arched an eyebrow and smiled. “Well, you're a bloody saint, Ding. Me and the wife will come visit you in the States and we'll talk about the good old days when we were motoring across the Taiwan Strait in a fucking dinghy.” He cuffed me on the shoulder and laughed. “Now cheer up, Ding. I'm the old man here, not you. We're heading for a hell of a fight!”
The engine cut off when we reached the predetermined point where we'd intercept the ammunition ship. Now it was simply a matter of letting the ship come to us.
As I waited, I grew increasingly nervous about the upcoming mission. I would have Dietrich to protect me, but what did I really know about Dietrich? At that moment, he was off in the back of the boat, stoically coping with his seasickness. I casually said to him, "Well, while we're waiting, why don't you tell me about your first combat mission?"
Dietrich took a moment to remember. "It was in Afghanistan, 2012. I was a new recruit in GSG-9, just arrived in country. President Merkel had placed strict limits on what we could and could not do in country. It took some cunning on my part to get us a real mission."
"What do you mean?"
"We could mainly act only in self-defense. So, I spread rumors through our least trustworthy local contacts that the CIA had sent us a shipment of three million dollars cash that we could use to bribe Afghan officials. I also made sure to complain that the base defenses were far too weak to hold such an important shipment, that there were only ten of us at our forward operating base to guard it all!"
"And the Taliban took the bait?"
"I believe the American expression is 'hook, line, and sinker.' The Taliban wanted to believe it so badly that they cobbled together a sixty-man strike force to get at us. I was just a lowly lieutenant at the time, but I made sure that our sentries and defenses were ready. The Taliban came in the middle of a dark, cloudy night, thinking they'd catch us all asleep. I had pre-positioned a three-man team to hit their flank right when the assault began, and the end result was the utter annihilation of an entire tribe's worth of Taliban fighters. It ended up being the German contingent's biggest single victory in the entire Afghan war."
I chuckled quietly. "Good for you. Why did you go to so much trouble to get at the Taliban anyway?"
Dietrich thought for a moment and answered, "I was a young soldier in the military of a country that no longer believed in war. I was curious about combat, yes, but I also wanted my service to mean something. Germany had sent soldiers to Afghanistan grudgingly, and mainly it seemed like our orders were aimed at having us be present but make as little impact on the war as possible. That idea was offensive to me."
"You wanted to help the Afghans?"
Dietrich snorted. "Of course not. I didn't care one way or another about them. They clearly didn't care whether they'd have a democracy, so why should I have cared? No, I wanted to win out of a sense of… aesthetics. My father was a banker. I could have done many things with my life. I chose to become a soldier because I liked the idea that war was the ultimate test of a nation and an individual. No pretenses, no popularity contests, the only thing that matters is winning. Where else in life can you find such tests, eh?"
I replied, "I can see why Colonel Douglas likes you. You two share an austere philosophy."
Dietrich parried, "And what would you prefer, a boring job, a fat wife and a bunch of insipid children? You did not choose such a fate, Mr. Cortez. Why should I?"
Having no good reply, I said nothing. Dietrich broke the silence. "I believe I should recheck our weapons once more. Please excuse me."
Dietrich moved off to the waterproof boxes and began rifling through the items we would need for the coming battle.
Through the clear night, and with the aid of nightvision binoculars, Taleb spotted the ship when it was still fifteen miles out. Priest, fiddled with the map display at the ship's digital helm, which was built into a compartment on the floor of the vessel to minimize the ship's profile. “Looks like it will pass about five miles north of us.”
“Excellent,” Douglas said. “They're in exactly the right place for us to approach silently from their right.”
“Starboard, sir,” said Jed.
Douglas gave him a withering glance. “None of that nautical bullshit, son. We've got enough problems to deal with.” He said to Priest, “Start taking us over slowly, we'll dash in when we're two miles out so they won't see our wake until the last minute.” Turning to Volodya, he said, “Man the Longbow, Ivanov.”
“Aye aye, colonel.” Volodya's sailor lingo drew scattered chuckles. I was amazed that anyone was loose enough to laugh now that the massive enemy ship was in sight.
Volodya reached into a waterproof container on the floor of the boat and withdrew a silenced American sniper rifle. The weapon's distinguishing feature was a small computer system bolted to the side of the weapon and a thicker than normal barrel.
As I watched, Volodya familiarized himself with the buttons and switches near the trigger of the Longbow which, as far as I knew, had never been used in combat before. A contact at Duan Industries had told me about the system and I figured it might be useful, so I requested one of the prototypes be sent to me along with the stealth boat. Now, Volodya crouched down to the deck of the boat and kept the Longbow prototype trained on the ammunition ship as we approached.
The minutes ticked by as we closed the distance. Our boat had as low a profile and as camouflaged an exterior as nautical science allowed, but on a clear night like that one, it was just a matter of time before someone saw us approaching.
And someone did. When were about a mile and a half out, Taleb said flatly, “There's a lookout three-quarters of the way up the deck, looking our way with binoculars.”
A moment later, Volodya said, “Roger, I've got him.”
Taleb continued his passionless narration. “He just brought the binoculars down and back up, as if he's confirming with his naked eye what he saw in the binoculars.”
Douglas growled, “Take the bloody shot, Volodya, what are you—”
His question was interrupted by the sound of the Longbow, the sniper rifle's action cycling back and forth. The flat phut of a silenced rifle, even quieter on the open water with nothing to reverberate against, quickly dissipated into the night.
A British corporal in Afghanistan in 2010 killed a Taliban enemy from a little over a mile and a half away, setting a record for longest recorded rifle kill in military history. Of course, that shot had been made from a prone position, but it was still unbelievably difficult. The bullet itself flew in the air for two and a half seconds before impacting the presumably shocked Taliban insurgent.