Von Neumann’s War

Nelms calmly but hurriedly scanned in the direction of the sound of the AK fire; there they were. Seven insurgents had dug in on the third floor of the building, or what was left of it, and were zeroing in on Top and the stack as they tried to move from the interior hallway to the exterior rooms where the other insurgents were taking cover.

Breathe in… out one, two, three, squeeze. The trigger on the Barrett depressed, and Specialist Nelms tracked the round. The rifle used the venerable .50 caliber Browning Machine Gun round or “50 BMG.” Developed during the First World War, the round was extremely powerful with massive overkill on “soft” targets like Iraqi insurgents. When the target was hit, the bullet, quite literally, blew the tango apart. The upper torso of the Iraqi insurgent blew upwards and to the left, trailing unidentifiable pieces, while the severed legs and pelvis dropped out of sight.

The Barrett had pushed Nelms back at least three inches, despite the fact that he was stretched out on the ground, but he brought it back into battery automatically and retargeted. Breathe… squeeze!

This time he’d hit high and the round punched through the terrorist’s upper chest, spreading a red stain across the wall behind the muj and covering his buddies with blood. The impact tore away the connective tissue and bone on the right side of the Arab’s throat and upper chest and when he fell backwards his head flopped off to the side.

Nelms contemplated the sight for about an eighth of a second with dispassion. It was an interesting example of ballistics and he wanted to make sure he’d seen it correctly. With the exception of casual professional interest, he had no other feelings about the shot. He sometimes wondered if that was because of all the hunting he’d done or because of the nature of the enemy. He, like most of his fellow soldiers, really did not like the Iraqi insurgents. They had no particular honor in their fighting methods, most of them weren’t even from Iraq and, in general, they were incompetent at anything but setting roadside bombs. To Nelms the man that he had just shot was less than a human, and killing him felt more like stepping on a cockroach than murder.

Nelms pulled the sniper rifle in and up and rolled to the right and then bear crawled to the window at the far end of the room; the signature from a Barrett could sometimes be very noticeable so the experienced snipers had called for no more than two shots from a single position. Quickly he dropped the bipod of the rifle on the windowsill, targeted, and fired twice.

He held still to see what the remaining insurgents were doing. Through the BORS he could see the last two of them scanning for him and covering at the same time. They were preparing an RPG. Nelms didn’t pause this time to breathe, he just opened fire on them with the rifle, forcing them to cover. The commotion drew attention to the insurgent terrorists’ location and two bursts of SAW fire from first squad took care of them. Nelms ceased fire and continued to scan for targets.

* * *

“Top, this is Bravo Six,” Gries said, glancing at the building. He had been able to track the first sergeant’s movements pretty closely by the carnage apparent from the windows. “I’m sending a squad from second in through the bottom floor. Be advised, there’s no more fire coming from the building; the tangos have done a runner.”

* * *

“Roger,” First Sergeant Cady said over the tac-net. “We’ll just tag and bag, then.” He looked down the corridor and thought for a second. “Gregory, we’ve got this floor, Second’s got the bottom. Tag and bag!”

* * *

Shane was checking his e-mail when the Third Battalion CO, Lieutenant Colonel Mark M. Markum entered his office.

“Nice job on that ambush,” the colonel said, sitting down in a rickety Iraqi chair one of Shane’s troops had “liberated” and installed in his office. “The news media is making it look like definitive word we’re unable to ‘ensure the security of Iraq during the upcoming election’ since we couldn’t even guard these scientists. But that’s par for the course.”

“We had three wounded and one dead,” Shane said, shaking his head and taking a sip of pop. “I’d like some way to figure out when we’re going to be ambushed.”

“Science fiction isn’t reality,” Markum replied. “All we can do is keep killing the insurgents and hope they get the picture. When the Iraqis take over for good and all… well, we’ll see what they can do.”

“I’d like another citation for Cady,” Gries said, changing the subject.

“He do another Terminator?” the colonel asked, chuckling. “I remember when he was just a sergeant in Second Brigade. Look how little Thomas has grow’d.”

“Well, he deserves it,” Shane said, sighing.

“You don’t look happy,” Markum replied. “You didn’t take that many casualties this time for how hard you got hammered. So what’s up? Oh, your majority?”