The Arctic Event Read Online Free PDF Page A

ridgeline.
    Objective achieved. He held the high ground, and the far side of the ridge opened out below him. More brush tangles, more storm-stripped logs, and another line of evergreens, deep sun shadows puddling beneath their low-set branches. Hugging the earth, Smith eased the SR-25 out ahead of him. Flipping the protecting lens caps off the telescopic sights, he wormed forward a final foot, clearing his firing arc.
    His weapon was something new since the last time he had served with the Teams. A creation of master gunsmith Eugene Stoner, the SR-25 was referred to as a tactical sniper’s rifle. Scope sighted and firing the 7.65mm NATO cartridge through a semiautomatic action, it fed from a twenty-round box magazine. Possessing considerably more range, accuracy, and stopping power than the conventional assault rifle, the SR was also light and handy enough to be carried as a primary weapon, at least for a man of Jon Smith’s size.
    Over the past couple of weeks Smith had become fond of the potent brute and had been willing to put up with the extra carrying weight and barrel length in the field, amiably arguing the SR’s finer points with his fellow trainees. Now he intended to put its qualities to use.
    Slowly Smith tracked the sighting reticle across the tree line at the bottom of the ridge. Any potential target would presumably be as concerned with concealment as he was.
    Once upon a time, in a more chivalrous day, stretcher bearers, medics, and military doctors had been classified as noncombatants. They were barred from carrying weapons and participating in active combat, yet they were also shielded by the theoretical Rules of Warfare, rendering them invalid targets on the battlefield.
    But with the coming of asymmetrical warfare there had also come a new breed of enemy, one who obeyed only the laws of savagery and who viewed a Red Cross brassard only as an excellent target. In such an environment the Marine motto of “Every man a rifleman” became a matter of necessity and common sense.
    Smith completed the first scope sweep without result. Swearing silently, he tracked back. Those bastards had to be down there somewhere.
    There! A minute movement at the base of that cedar. A head had tossed, maybe shaking off one of the endemic yellow jackets. Now Smith could just make out the outline of half a camoed face, peering around the tree trunk.
    A couple of meters away, the outline of a second well-camouflaged form snapped clear in Smith’s mind, stretched out beneath a brush tangle. There’d be more members of the fire team, but these two would have to do. He’d already stayed fixed for too long. They’d be hunting for him as he’d been hunting them. Time to hit and git!
    The man behind the cedar was the harder shot. Smith would drop him first. The sighting crosshairs jumped back to the doomed soldier’s forehead, and Smith’s finger tightened on the trigger.
    The Stoner crashed out a single shot, but the only thing that lanced downrange was an invisible pulse of light. Keyed by the noise and recoil of the blank cartridge, the beam from the laser tube clipped beneath the rifle’s slender barrel licked out, tagging the sensors on the targeted man’s MILES harness.
    MILES, the Multiple Integrated Laser Exercise System, was the U.S. Army’s means of keeping score in its grimly realistic war games. A dazzling blue strobe light began to flicker beneath the cedar tree, declaring to the world that someone had just “died.”
    There was a convulsive movement beneath the adjacent brush pile, and Smith shifted targets, firing a three-round raking burst. A second strobe light announced a second termination.
    Smith rolled back from the ridgeline. Good enough for government work. Now to get out...
    The forest line below him exploded in automatic weapons fire, and blue MILES strobes behind to blink in the tree shade.
    He had taken too long! Someone had circled in behind the rest of his patrol! Smith crouched up, trying to