The Reaper: Autobiography of One of the Deadliest Special Ops Snipers by Gary Brozek, Nicholas Irving Read Free Book Online Page B

over that wall. We wouldn’t be able to see into that doorway from ground level. Tony ran me a bunch of other numbers and brought up several different views on screen.
    He pointed at the screen, careful not to touch it, and said, “This building gives you the optimal sight picture of that doorway. If your focus is that objective in that part of the compound, then that’s your spot.”
    I nodded and bumped fists with him. “Thanks so much.”
    I felt goose bumps prickling my skin as I made my way into the briefing room. I shook my head. I knew I wasn’t fully dressed, but damn, that room was always so cold. Somebody kept the AC blasting in there, maybe because they figured once the room was filled with, say, forty guys, the body heat would build up. True to its name, the briefing was brief, just the squad leaders telling each of their guys, and the larger group, what their roles were going to be and what they’d be carrying. Just as important, we gave our call signs, the identifying names we’d use during our radio transmissions.
    Weapons squad was going to be carrying the Carl Gustav recoilless rifle, basically a bazooka normally used to fire antitank missiles. I thought they were cool because they could fire nearly anything. Hell, you could shove a Crock-Pot in there and turn it into a deadly projectile.
    I quickly filled the guys in on my call sign, where we were going to position ourselves, and when I was likely to break off from their element. Timing was critical but things seldom went exactly as planned. Still, it was important to keep that time factor in mind.
    I love the sound of Velcro. I don’t know what the military did before it was invented. Hearing thirty-five or so guys strapping stuff on with that simple hook and loop mechanism, the sound of tape being unrolled as guys secure things to keep as silent as possible, was like the music we’d play in the locker room before a game to get pumped up. That collective sound signaled that we all had each other’s back. It wasn’t the same strapping on your kit when you were alone; somehow that song came out tinny and uninspired.
    The last little ritual was the burn barrel—a literal metal barrel where we destroyed any sensitive documents. No way we were going to risk letting any intel or operational directives fall into enemy hands. After the comms check was complete and the tech squared away anybody who was having trouble, it was go time. Pardon the pun, but radio failures happened with alarming frequency. You could use a radio one day set to a specific frequency and have no problems, and in the next operation, using the same frequency settings, it was like that radio forgot how to be a radio. The techs did the best they could, but as advanced as our technology was, what seemed a simple device often created problems and frustrations.
    That night, maintaining radio discipline was almost impossible. Almost as soon as we were inserted, we started taking gunfire.
    We’d been inserted via helicopter about two clicks from our objective. We walked along what I came to think of as waffle roads—narrow strips of packed dirt with ditches on each side, some of them intersecting at right angles. But instead of butter and maple syrup in those low-lying zones, raw sewage trickled and pooled. I clenched my teeth and hoped that I could control my gag reflex.
    After what seemed like just a couple of minutes into the march toward the objective, we took enemy fire coming at us from eleven o’clock. They were laying down what should have been suppressive fire, but it was too scattered to really call it that. They’d fire a few bursts, we’d drop down into those divots and ditches, and then move on. We repeated that pattern four more times, each time dealing with slightly more intense fire, but in my mind it was like hiking through the woods and being swarmed by no-see-ums, those little bugs that irritated but didn’t do any real damage.
    The point guy was doing his thing,