Chapter 76: One Down

Word had come over the wire the next morning. The operation had begun… Zach and his men were no longer simply tracking the movements of the raiders.

They were actively intercepting their war bands and were given carte blanche to deal with them as they saw fit.

By now, after a month of observing the Raider patrols going in and out of the foundry, they had more or less discovered the routes that the Raiders were taking.

Until now they hadn’t followed the routes through to the end. And Zach now understood that they were likely headed on collection routes. To collect supplies and hostages from the communities pressed beneath their heels.

But to Zach this never truly mattered, not at the tactical level. Strategy was Dean’s wheelhouse, whereas Zach and his men were simply a surgical instrument. He went where he was ordered and operated within his own discretion.

He and the others had resupplied at their cache located beneath their camp and buried what remained before heading out. In precisely one hour, one of the warbands would be crossing an intersection nearby.

The neighborhood was a ruin, crushed by the weight of the snow and the violence that had engulfed it in the weeks following the start of the long winter.

But that ruin was the perfect staging point for Zach and his men. They hid their snowmobiles far enough away that they couldn’t be spotted, but close enough to allow a swift extraction after the violence had been concluded.

One of the men grabbed a tripod from a sled, whereas Zach grabbed a machine gun, while a third carried the ammo.

They set up the weapon on its tripod within the ruins of an old abandoned house that sat at the exact intersection the raiders would be coming .

And when the weapon was up and running Zach loaded the metallic belt containing 12.7 × 108 mm high-explosive incendiary/armor-piercing ammunition, ensuring that the weapon was properly fed as it waited for its prey to arrive.

Zach mounted the weapon, aiming down its optics towards the alleyway where he knew the enemy would soon be arriving.

Next to him one of his men had the spare ammo on standby. Gazing up at the heavy machine gun and its tripod that had been painted completely white and was now concealed beneath winter camouflage netting, the young man’s voice slightly took Zach’s focus away from the road.

“I’ve been meaning to ask, but isn’t this a bit overkill? I mean… I’m pretty sure shooting men with explosive ammo is a war crime isn’t it?”

Zach looked over at the young man with cold indifference in his eyes, not that they could be seen beneath his ballistic visor. His voice was as chilling as the frost they now knelt in.

“There is no such thing anymore….”

Zach then aimed his sight further, he could hear the voice in his headset long before he spotted the snow being kicked up in the distance.

“The bird in the sky has eyes on fourteen mounted infantry coming in fast. Over…”

Zach used his free hand to press the push to talk button mounted to the side of his chest rig’s shoulder straps.

“Roger that… You know what to do….”

Zach rested his index finger gently on the metallic trigger while the rest of his digits curled tightly around the pistol grip. He braced the stock in his shoulder with his spare hand as he pivoted the weapon slightly to align with the trajectory of the targets in his optic’s view.

Yup… they were closing in fast… by now he had more than enough distance to engage, but he remained still. As did the boy next to him who was laying prone on the ground, his PKM resting on its bipod.

The other three boys were hiding in other spots, creating a triple intersecting layer of fire. They simply needed to wait until the signal was given.

Zach watched in the distance. There were fourteen snowmobiles, but it became clear that there were two men seated on each. The information was partially incorrect. But it didn’t matter.

The enemy was quickly closing in on the trap that had been laid for them. Even when Zach could see the lines on the men’s faces beneath the hoods of their parkas, and the tight wraps of their scarves. He did not pull the trigger.

They were closing in: 500 meters, 400 meters, 300 meters, 200 meters, and boom…. The IEDs laying buried beneath the snow triggered, causing a massive explosion to rock the area.

Immediately half of the snowmobiles were engulfed in flame, the men killed so suddenly by the blast, its shockwave, and the shrapnel which spat in all directions that they couldn’t even scream.

And that was the signal. For about three seconds all hell broke loose as Zach opened fire with the KORD, absolutely shredding the snowmobiles and the men on them.

The gunfire lasted less than a single breath. And then it suddenly ceased. When the smoke cleared, Zach could see that they had obliterated 28 men in three seconds flat. Not a single one of them was in any state where they could physically breathe.

He quickly got on the comms his voice as steady as the surrounding snowfall.

“Can anybody spot any movement? Over…”

The answer was a resounding negative. And with this in mind, Zach sighed and began to unload and strip the weapon down, but not before giving further orders.

“Alright, proceed with caution. Scavenge whatever remains, if anything, and then bug out. You know the drill, over and out.”

The boys spent a total of thirty seconds picking through the corpses, finding that nothing had remained remotely intact from the devastation they had wrought upon their foes.

But laying among the scraps of flesh, bone, sinew, and metal. Was an unusual find.

One of the boys approached Zach with a severed head in his hands, still mostly intact. His voice almost a bit too giddy despite the gruesome act.

“Hey, Perseus, isn’t this one of the captains we have identified?”

Zach took a good look at the head, squinting beneath his visor, trying to identify the head that while burned and covered in gore, was still intact enough to get a positive ID. And when he confirmed it, a smirk curved itself upon the lines of his balaclava.

“One down!”

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