Chapter 6 - The Old Rifle Speaks
Sarah used the scope to search the eastern saddle.
Heat distortion shimmered above the rocks despite the cold. Wind moved differently along the cliff face, rising from the valley and curling beneath the upper ledge.
Then she saw movement.
A shoulder behind stone.
A rifle barrel.
Three figures shifting through the drainage.
The ambush team was already in place.
Sarah gave Miller the first coordinate.
“Two shooters above the split boulder. Do not enter the open section.”
“Copy.”
A second radio voice cut in.
Silas.
“Jensen, stay off command traffic.”
“Your western contact is a decoy.”
“You have no authority from that ledge.”
A burst of hostile fire struck near the platoon.
Men shouted.
Miller’s voice returned.
“Contact east!”
Sarah settled behind the Fence Post.
The angle was poor. Her leg throbbed against the rocks. She could not shift her lower body enough to build a normal firing position.
So she adapted.
She braced the wooden stock against her shoulder, anchored the sling around one arm, and used a notch in the granite as support.
The first shot cracked across the cliff.
An enemy firing position vanished behind cover.
The second forced another team away from the drainage opening.
Sarah was not trying to win the entire fight from the ledge.
She was opening a path.
“Miller, move your first squad thirty yards downslope. Use the gray shelf.”
“Copy.”
Silas broke into the net.
“Hold position!”
Nobody answered him.
A third shot struck the release point of a hanging supply chain the enemy had rigged above the trail. The chain snapped, dropping the suspended obstruction harmlessly before the platoon entered beneath it.
Miller looked up toward Sarah’s ledge.
Her old rifle had just exposed the trap.
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Her notebook was guiding every movement.
And Captain Silas’s command had become the greatest danger on the mountain.
