Saturday, April 16, 2022 Valparaiso, Chile

“I need to talk to Eleanor.” Xu smiled behind his desk.

“Oh. And why is that?” Charlie maintained her casual seating pose, one leg slung over an arm. Their relationship was one where she was ever so slightly insolent and casual, arrogant and playful. Just the right balance.

He looked at her leg and frowned. He was immune to the sexual provocation of the pose, but Charlie did it more to annoy him. If he ever realized she spent time calibrating her planned disrespect, he did not let on.

“Because Miss Harris, I want to know why her and those bugs are making inquiries in South America. If they are looking to awake the Amaruca, I will be very displeased.”

“What’s an Amaruca?”

“A mud dragon.” Xu dismissively said.

Typical dragon thought Charlie, only worried about its rivals. She smiled a bit, both at her extrapolation from a sample size of one and to set Xu on edge.

“Well, that is going to be a problem.”

Xu waited patiently.

Charlie decided to take a calculated risk and sent a mental apology to Ella. She sat up, leaned in and put a big smile on her face, “She is in South America right now.”

Saturday, April 16, 2022 - Santiago, Chile

Bahu had threatened to tie Ella up if she tried to go and Zaidu had backed her. The other three Aqrabuamelu, ones she hadn’t meant before, were equally humorless, like wannabe-Zaidu’s. Bahu had pulled them off of active duty at Fort Hamilton for this. Two of them spoke Spanish from their time with FARC and Colombian Security Forces in the 1990s.

Adra and Bahu spent time coming up with the plan. Eventually Ella reached a compromise with them, she would take a spotter position. Bahu, surprisingly, advocated for this due to Ella’s superior scores in their night time drills. But Ella still pushed, she didn’t want to be coddled. She went back into the store and bought some binoculars.

They went to a sporting goods store on the outskirts of Santiago first. Each of them grabbed a first aid kit, radio, a sheathed hunting knife and other basic supplies.

Then they split up - the thought being to let people use initiative on what else they could do to prep for the meet with the arms dealer.

Tauthe grabbed one of the two Spanish speakers and ran off. Ella had a thought and borrowed the other one and turned right back around into the sporting goods store to emerge with a variety of airsoft guns.

“For bluffing,” she explained.

Adra, Bahu, and two of the soldiers that came with Bahu would be the ones to do the deal. The Spanish speaker that Ella had borrowed would do all of the talking. There would be several roaming teams and Ella and Etana would act as lookouts.

Tauthe came back to the parking lot with two real handguns and also splattered in blood. She had gone and found a few gang members and killed them for their weapons. She had a lead on a few more guns but the quality was quite poor.

Two guns went with the exposed group and two to the support teams.

And then time was up. They quickly ate and drank water and got in their cars to go when a text came though informing them the meet point had changed: To the docks in Valparaiso, about a two hour drive.

They started the drive, and Ella was surprised to find herself napping in the car. As they got closer, Ella and Tauthe were dropped off to find vantage points.

Ella took the south and found an older building with a chain link fence. She climbed up and carefully cut the barbed wire before hopping down and then up the fire escape to the top floor. The flat industrial roof had plenty of cover and good vantage points to the exchange site.

She took out the binoculars and radio and began to scan the environs. Tauthe and her radioed their positions and spotted one another across the way.

She had about ten minutes before the start and she gently lit her eyes to enhance her vision and started looking for magic first. None except for the Aqrabuamelu in their teams. She left her vision going to keep track of them. And then, she saw something. On the rooftop below her, one building closer to the site, and about a floor lower, there was a flapping tarp. And as the breeze picked it up, she saw a hand from underneath reach around and pull it down.

She crept closer, slithering along the ground and she could see onto the rooftop that there was the long barrel of a rifle poking out from underneath the tarp.

She crawled to the back end and radioed it in.

“Bug One, this is Spotter Sierra, Spotter Sierra.”

“This is Bug One.” Ella could hear the distaste for the call sign in Bahus voice. Ella had named them and then said there wasn’t time for a debate — a cheap trick maybe but worth it.

“Priority. Enemy sniper tracked fifty yards south and two floors high of meeting poin t. I say again, enemy sniper fifty yards south, two floors high of meet point on red warehouse building. Over.”

“Copy Spotter Sierra. Spotter November, do you have a visual?” Bahu replied.

“I can’t see the damn thing.” Tauthe replied.

Ella could just envision Zaidu smacking his forehead in exasperation.

“Spotter Sierra, confirm one hostile.”

Shit… I don’t know, thought Ella. She looked down and waited for the breeze to settle and the tarp draped down over what looked like one figure.

“Confirmed.”

Ella waited.

“This is Bug One, Shooter One does not have approach. Break.” Ella could hear the frustration in Bahu’s voice. Their armed team couldn’t get there to engage. “We’re calling it.”

Damn. And then Ella had a terrible idea. A really awful one. She crawled over to the edge and looked down. It wasn’t that far, was it?

Ella ignored the retreat chatter as they plotted their route out, but once she psyched herself up, she broke in.

“Bug One. Hold. I have an idea.” And perhaps ‘I have an idea’ is the scariest thing you can hear from a subordinate in a tactical situation.

But it was too late. Ella slowly crawled back away from the edge. She stood up and pulled her knife, and, before she could think about it too much, she sprinted to the edge.

For a frozen moment, she was flying in the air wildly her legs forward and back, her arms wide, and then, sooner than she felt fair, she felt something crunch underfoot as she landed on the figure lying under the tarp. She didn’t know if it was her leg or the hostile. Ella didn’t hesitate, there was too much risk, she stabbed down with the hunting knife. Once, twice, a third time. Blood staining rhe edges of the cuts in the tarp.

And then the pain hit. “Owwww,” she hissed under her breath and then rolled off and lifted up the tarp.

Her ankle was twisted maybe. It didn’t feel broken.

The sniper on the other hand was clearly dead. His eyes were open and blank, a bit of drool coming from his mouth over a scraggly beard. And the sickening smell of blood, feces, and urine.

Ella gagged a bit, she lay on her back and kicked with her good leg and pushed the body out of the way.

“This is Spotter One. Sniper is down. I have the firing position.”

There was silence for a moment.

And then Tauthe, “Ella, what the fuck was that?”

Tauthe kept ranting but Ella ignored it. She checked the rifle, a bolt action hunting rifle with scope. One of the optics on her binoculars had broken in the jump, and she used the other to keep scanning while keeping the rifle pointed at the meeting place. Her ankle throbbed from the abuse, but it was hardly the worst injury she had taken.

And soon enough it was time.

Adra, Bahu, and the two other soldiers approached the meeting point. Several armed people appeared from the dark waterfront side. Both groups stopped twenty meters apart.

Ella kept scanning. And then she heard Tauthe.

“Spotter Sierra, this is Spotter … fuck it this is Tauthe. Enemies coming from building to the east.”

Ella looked over and she saw nothing.

“Spotter November, no visual. Repeat. No visual. Over.”

“Spotter November. This is Shooter Two. I have them.” The radio clicked off. And Ella maybe saw a bit of shadows moving on that side.

“This is Shooter Two, enemies down. I repeat, enemies down.” He must have knifed them as the sound of gunfire would have been obvious.

Ella kept scanning. One of the Aqrabuamelu, one of the Spanish speakers, spoke, “Quiero ver la mercancía..”

“¿Donde esta el dinero, amigo?” called back the other side.

“No estoy tu amigo. El dinero esta cerca.”

They negotiated further although thus far the conversation had gone exactly as Bahu had said it would. Each side agreed to send over one person to verify the goods were there.

The radio was silent as the two walked towards one another and passed each other.

And then Ella saw another sniper, lit up from behind by a passing boat on a crane platform. She stood up calling out, “Shooter on the crane platform. 8 o’clock, Thirty meters high. Over.”

And then things went very fast. Ella lined up her sight, pulled the trigger, and the sniper, who had been kneeling on the crane platform, aiming at the meeting group, jerked back and spun around. She pulled back the action on her rifle, and sighted down the scope, quickly moving to cover. Her eyes glowed and she could make out the outline of the sniper, he was still moving and was looking for her through his scope.

A bullet struck the metal ducting she hid behind, punching right through. Ella saw the hole form inches from her face. She peeked out and took a shot and missed. Work the action, take another shot, action stuck, no bullet. Shit! Another sound of a bullet, and then another. The enemy sniper had a semiautomatic.

She rolled across the rooftop, ignoring the hard surfaces towards the ledge that provided some cover. She lay flat, working the stuck casing, and her hands trembled. She couldnb’t get it. It wouldn’t clear as she worked the bolt over and over. Her breath was ragged and her heart beat in her ears. Another bullet went overhead. She could hear gunfire on the ground as things became chaotic.

Tauthe’s voice sounded over the calm, “Ella, the sniper circled back to his original position.”

That was what she needed. She took a couple of deep breaths and felt her heart slow. She carefully opened the chamber, flared her eyes hard to see the issue and carefully applied a bit of a push to the bullet and it freed up.

She was out of bullets. Could she lance a tripwire at this range? Probably not. It was just a bit too far. So she decided to do something supremely stupid, she grabbed the jammed bullet and inserted it back in and crossed her fingers.

They hadn’t spent much time on long distance shooting. Zaidu had spent some time on theory around avoiding snipers. Ella could hear more gunfire from below. Yells of people in a mix of Spanish and Akkadian.

She focused and crawled slowly towards another set of ductwork. Once she was behind it, she got into a kneeling position and made sure her eyes were dark. She began scanning for the other sniper and waited. He was roughly where he had started. But behind a metal beam.

The other sniper eventually lost patience, perhaps he saw something she didn’t. She saw his muzzle light up as he took a shot at the fight below. She bracketed him and took a breath. And then gently squeezed the trigger. He jerked back and fell off his perch to lie on the boat deck below him.

Ella turned back to the fight and saw it was over. Bahu walked up to a hostile crawling on the ground and put a bullet in him.

She couldn’t move. Her ankle was still hurt, and she had ignored it during the fight. She sat with her back to another bit of duct work for a moment, took a deep breath, and then got back to scanning for additional hostiles.

The ground crew grabbed the weapons from the dead enemies and found a crate filled with the guns they had wanted and ammo. The truck the hostiles had brought was loaded up with the bodies and the Aqrabuamelu pushed it off the pier to sink. Bahu and Adra grabbed hoses to clean off the gravel and hide the traces of blood where they could, picking up a few casings where they could find them.

Over the comms, the teams reported in. One of the Aqrabuamelu had died. Adra had gotten shot in the shoulder, again. But the other one. “At least I’ll be even,” he grimaced a bit through the pain. Tauthe was mad she didn’t get to kill anyone.

And then it was time to go.

Adra and one of the soldiers, Namtar, the Spanish speaking one that had been part of the deal team, came up to the roof and lowered her down on a climbing rope.

They had weapons, they could take the next step. Ella let her adrenaline crash and she fell asleep on the way back to Santiago.