To Crown a Caesar (The Praetorian Series: Book II) (31 page)

That’s not to say I hadn’t fired it on a mission before.  I was a fine shot, one of the best, despite how mysterious my affinity for it was.  Helena’s skill at shooting came from experience, honing her skill for as long as she’s been able hold a rifle, and is the finest marksman I know because of it.  As for me, I’d shot an old .22 rifle to get my shooting merit badge in the Scouts, but other than that, I had never even picked up a firearm until I joined the Navy.

Patience and math were two of the most important things for a successful sniper.  Patience I had, but math was never my best subject.  Sniper school taught me how to read the fluttering of a flag, the billowing of dust or the subtle shift of a mirage to determine wind speed, direction and range, but it was too bad it still took mathematical formulas to calculate them, and I’d been forced to grudgingly learn them.  I could calculate them with little trouble now, but as I progressed through sniper school, I quickly found that I rarely needed the math, and found myself able to determine what I needed naturally and by instinct alone.  As long as I knew the ranges, which could lazily and accurately be done with a laser designator, I could dial in my scope and nail exactly what I was targeting, and even then, I generally found the ranges easy to guestimate.

Helena still did it better though, and
she was quicker too.

Natural shooting ability aside,
Penelope
wasn’t up for the kind of work I needed to do tonight.  She was sitting next to me, of course, but what was currently resting against my shoulder could best be described as her much older and more badass brother.  The United States Navy SR-25 Mk 11 Mod 0 Sniper Weapon System looked and felt like a bigger version of a M4, which made it instantly comfortable in my grip.  Whoever planted the cache of weaponry that traveled back in time with us must have done his homework, because the weapon was the same model I had used with the SEALs.

Created specifically for Navy SEALs, and constructed to our own specifications, the Mk 11 version was considered one of the most accurate semi-automatic sniper rifles on the market.  Combined with a twenty round magazine and an effective range of around one thousand meters, the rifle was an effective killing machine.

I’ve only used it on a few specialized occasions before, times when I’d been called to participate in specific sniper support roles for other branches of the military.  During those missions, I’d command four to six other snipers from the platoons in my SEAL Team.  The most memorable mission of that kind occurred two years before I activated the orb and traveled to ancient Rome and three years after World War III began, when America was sick of defending its expansive southern border with Mexico, doing what any self-respecting superpower would do after spending years on the defensive.

We invaded.

175 years after the original Mexican War, America slowly, but surely, progressed its border south.  After massive bombing campaigns by the Air Force, a Navy blockade, Special Forces missions, and the steady progress of Army and Marine divisions, America’s primary target was in sight.  Mexico City.  It was for the invasion of the country’s capital that I received a special call from SOCOM, requesting myself and five of my finest snipers to gear up, head south and expect to be gone for at least two months.

We arrived off the AC-130 to no fanfare or jubilation, and were quietly given two Humvees, two drivers, and two gunners from the Army.  We had been amongst the most low tech mechanized infantry on the battlefield, but
easily one of the most effective.  The ten of us were tasked with performing sniper support for the advancing invasion force and to cause as much trouble as possible.  There were other sniper teams there, of course, but I never encountered them.  We received our orders directly from the Army’s commanding officer in the field, a full bird colonel whose name I never learned.

The use of SEALs in this manner was nothing new, at least not relatively.  Taking small task forces from Special Forces outfits and plopping them in the middle of a war with units from other branches of the military had grown popular during the war in Iraq.  SEAL Teams weren’t big enough to hold any territory on their own, so we didn’t try.  Instead, we’d be integrated into a conventional military unit, but were mostly left as an autonomous fighting force.  The tactic wasn’t popular at first, at least by the conventional units we’d
join, but it turned out spectacularly.  It gave my SEALs free reign to do whatever it was we needed doing without constricting anyone else’s operational parameters, giving them benefit of our expertise as well.

The siege
of Mexico City had been long, hard and bloody.  We were there two months longer than expected, lost one of our gunners, a driver, and one of my snipers in the process.  Mike had been a good man.  He’d been a SEAL for ten years, but still respected my command decisions while I respected his experience.  He’d been a victim of bad luck, a simple case of the wrong place at the wrong time.  A mortar had hit two feet from his perch, and broadsided him with its devastating arsenal.  Mortars were some of the most inaccurate weapons out there, at least the shoddy ones used by the poorly trained militias we’d been fighting were, but if you were unlucky enough to find yourself in its blast range, you were as good as dead.  We’d packed up his body, conforming to the code that we never leave a man behind, and pushed on. 

We used our Humvees as mobile sniper platforms and raced around the battlefield, providing cover as the main body of the invasion force slowly made its way through the densely constructed city.  Snipers had been around since World War I, but
the fast reaction force we acted as hadn’t been something we were normally used for.  It wasn’t until a Marine sniper developed the process during Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2004 that it had found its place on a battlefield.

It was efficient and effective.  The Humvees themselves provided a certain amount of elevation that we’d occasionally take advantage of, but were mostly used to get us from A to Z.  We’d make our way into parts of the city, ditch our rides, find some high ground, and with our gunners and drivers as a security force, take up shop in a local hide and get to work.  I’d accumulated
one hundred and two confirmed kills with the SR-25 Mk 11 during those four months, but my final tally was probably closer to two hundred.

I sighed as I continued to peer through my scope.  Those were memories full of pride in my performance and that of my SEALS, but also ones filled with pain and terror at the hellish environments we’d found ourselves in.  Four months spent operating mostly at night, the days too dangerous to traverse, surrounded by smoke and fire and the fear of poisonous gas.  All that time spent catching maybe a few hours of sleep every few
days, constantly on the run, hunting, being hunted, killing, but never, not once, had I let fear hinder me

But I felt fear now, and I didn’t understand it.  I suppose it couldn’t help that while I felt deep bonds with my SEALs, I actually loved one of th
e women at risk on
this
mission.  I simply could not let anything happen to Helena again.  Wang wasn’t here to play medic this time.  We might not get so lucky again.

I took a deep breath, forcing every distracting thought from my mind, held it, let it out slowly, and repeated twice.  I was no help to my friends with my emotions in turmoil, so I forced myself to calm down.  Thinking, in of itself, wasn’t a bad thing.  It helped my patience by letting the time pass interestingly, but it could also cloud the mind and obscure judgment.  I needed to be sharp.

I shrugged my shoulders as I lay prone, trying to get comfortable.  I loosened my grip and relaxed the muscles in my biceps, neck, and my thighs, absorbing myself into the roof, becoming one with my surroundings, practically and realistically becoming in tune with everything going on around me.  I tried to visualize my place in a 3-D representation of the city of Byzantium, situating myself in a strategy video game like the ones I used to play as a kid.

Calm and comfortable, I looked through my scope again.  It was equipped with night vision capabilities and its zoom was fully adjustable between 10-25x powers, making objects at extreme ranges feel like they were
right at my fingertips.  I shifted my rifle west, and pinpointed Helena’s exact position, easy thanks to the infrared glowstick she had attached to her back.  It wouldn’t bother her, but it allowed me to check in on her quickly.  I had a similar glowstick on my back as well, in case she wanted to find me.

Satisfied she was fine, I
panned my scope at its widest setting, scanning a city that may soon become a war zone.  The night was quiet, warm, but not muggy.  Perfect.  I looked at a torch mounted on a wall.  The flames didn’t even flicker.  The wind was still, making shots a breeze, no pun intended.  The dryness of the air kept bullets on target as even the slightest amount of moisture could alter its trajectory. I couldn’t have asked for better conditions.

I glanced at my watch.

0130.

Showtime.

I shifted my perspective towards a street that ran southeast towards the Hippodrome, focusing on another brightly lit infrared glare through my night vision scope.  That would be Santino, approaching the target site, acting as our buyer.

He was the
obvious choice for the job, and not just because the other two choices were qualified snipers.  He was Delta, a clandestine outfit that specialized in societal infiltration and intelligence gathering, on top of the normal operational duties akin to what other Special Forces did.

After five years here in the Roman Empire, he had picked up Latin almost instantaneously, and was
already fairly proficient at Greek.  I had to admit, he was far more studious than I was on the subject, and had made good progress.  For some reason he had an innate skill with linguistics, languages and accents.  Helena and I, on the other hand, still spoke Latin with our native intonations behind it.  I had a distinctly Midwestern, American accent, whereas Helena still retained a hint of German.  Santino, however, could now successfully pull off Spanish, Gaulic, Greek, and Italian accents when speaking Latin perfectly.  I remember reading that there were hundreds, maybe thousands, of English dialects, just in America alone, and the case was the same in the Roman Empire.  Santino was so good at it, he could even make himself sound like he was from Southern Italy, Northern Italy, or Rome itself, the latter’s dialect possessing a very haughty emphasis at the end of some words.

Santino…

One of the most asinine, dimwitted, and sarcastic asshats I knew was also a world class linguist, on par with any number of geniuses back home.  Just thinking about his stupid grin and bad jokes pained my soul, but I couldn’t deny that he had a knack for it.  I guess it proves that people, like ogres and onions, have layers.

Even Santino.

But he wasn’t showing any of that cocky bravado tonight.

Tonight, he was a totally different person.

I shifted my aim, a process snipers refer to as “glassing,” and focused on the meeting area, a simple plaza near the entrance to the stadium, about the size of a basketball court.  There were ten columns in two rows, running away from the entrance at ten foot intervals and benches within the gaps.  Those columns may prove tricky to shoot around, but I’d deal with them when I had to.

There were torches along every wall that encased the plaza, walls that were the rear end
s of residential homes.  The entire city was so dense I could jump off my rooftop onto this building’s neighboring rooftop, and run all the way to the plaza if I had to.  Except for the main throughways, the streets were exceptionally narrow, a blessing and a curse as well.  If potential targets decided to remain at street level, we’d have a tough time targeting them.  Santino was well aware of this fact, so if he had to run, he knew to get to high ground fast.

As a final check, I pulled out my flashlight, equipped with a red lens, and gav
e my range card one last look.

Last night, Helena and I had done a little extra prep work that took the better part of the night.  We began by scouting the hippodrome, plotting
its most likely entry points and escape routes from it.  Once we completed that task, we then identified the arena’s surrounding landmarks: towers, temples and other high points.  We marked them with a series of infrared patches to identify which landmark was which and, more importantly, which landmark belonged at what distance from both my hide and Helena’s.  A simple glance at each landmark’s group of IR patches would correspond to a prearranged distance we had already measured.  Two patches meant three hundred yards, eight patches equated to six hundred and fifty yards, and so on.  Should an enemy pass by a set of these patches, I wouldn’t have to calculate my distance from him; my range card would tell me.

We were ready to go.

I focused on the entrance to the Hippodrome, where a man was already standing in a hooded robe that concealed his face.  It was dark, and I could see he was wearing very durable sandals beneath his feet.  He looked like he was ready to take off if need be, something I could appreciate, but also took note of.  He was exactly 625 yards away, so I twisted the appropriate dial on my scope to zero in my mark.

Santino was just rounding the corner, making his way between the rows of columns.  He was wearing a long dark robe as well, which pooled around his feet.  The worst thing that could happen
to him right now was that he tripped over his cloak, which concealed his boots and combat fatigues beneath.