It wasn’t an M24 SWS. It wasn’t the Barrett Light Fifty he’d used to take down armored troop carriers at long range in Mogadishu. It wasn’t the slightly lighter Haskins of the sort favored by Green Beret spec-op shooters. It was a VVRS rifle, the original full-sized version, a little over a yard long, a little under ten pounds loaded, about the same size and weight as a standard M16A2 combat gun. Built for pouring out heavy fire with some resultant sacrifice in accuracy.

It was what Mark Rice had available to him, and he would have to make it work for him.

He knelt in position behind the slid-open starboard door panel of the Bell, wind screaming into the passenger/cargo compartment around him, his goggles off so he could keep his eye against the aperture of his scope mount.

The men below him on the ridge-back had opened up on the bird with their Sturmgewehr assault weapons as Smith wove evasively in the air above the notch, trying to avoid their fire and lower his skids. Rice rocked and swayed on one knee. He estimated there were five, possibly six opponents. They had traded their white winter cammo garb for something closer to desert dun. Some of them were sheltered behind boulders and rock projections. Others were in full view. All were firing at the unarmored bottom of the UpLink chopper’s fuselage—the ding of metal on metal audible over the roar of wind and props as some of the rounds made contact.

Rice knew he had to take them out fast.

He inhaled, exhaled, squinting down the barrel. Then he triggered a shot at the center of a parka the color of coppery sand.

A shower of red and the parka tumbled away down the steep hillside.

Rice shifted his gun barrel. With that first trigger pull he had grooved into instinctive action. Later he would think of torn flesh and spilled blood. Later his gorge would rise at the waste and death. But right now these were no longer men down there, no longer even living creatures. These were targets. Simply targets.

He sighted between the crosshairs again, but momentarily lost his alignment as the chopper swung sideways to avoid an upward stream of bullets. Then he regained the mark, and fired.

There was more spraying blood and his target folded backward. Rice shifted to yet another, this one moving, breaking for cover, looking up at the chopper, shooting up at the chopper, making a target of Rice himself as it dashed toward a protective shield of rock. Rice released a breath, released a round, and got the target in mid-run.

Then he felt a hand on his shoulder, heard a raised voice behind his ear. Nimec.

“Hang on, Rice!” he said. “We’re bringing her down!”