On Deadly Ground

Justice at 300 meters

February, 1986, somewhere in South America. I enter my hotel room with three members of the national police. We check the room out carefully before we relax - foreign visitors are ripe for armed robbery here, because criminals know aliens can't bring guns into this country, and are therefore easy prey.

The police team has come to discuss the ground rules of what I can and cannot talk about. They recognize my right to say what I want in print; I recognize their right to talk with me or not.

Most importantly, their agency cannot be named. It has come under heavy criticism from human rights groups in the United States, one of which has called them the Gestapo of their nation. Their commandantes are exceedingly leery of any American journalists, and the demand of anonimity is non-negotiable. The title of their organization translates loosely in English as "Internal Security Police," so I'll use that term here.

The terms agreed, they begin to speak. They have come to tell me of a recent incident in which three men died and, more importantly, one man lived, and the part that was played in this encounter by a precision rifleman with an exquisite sense of timing. The sniper is sitting across from me telling his story.

Crossing the Line

The prisons in this land make the most rigid penal insitutions in America seem like country clubs. On the day in question, three inmates at one of the worst decide they would rather be dead than live like this. They plan very carefully, two secreting their shanks - makeshift knives - in their loose clothing, while the third is armed with a wicked butcher knife spirited from the mess hall.

All are dangerous. All have been sentenced to life without parole. At least two have committed murder in the past, including the ringleader, the one with the butcher knife. The translator is unclear on the pretext they have used to get into an administrator's office, but suffice it to say they are there. Some of the prison staff are hurt, some escape, and one, a senior assistant warden, is taken hostage.

The prison goes on full-scale alert. FN-FAL assault rifles are distributed to the guards, and the entire prison population goes into swift and decisive lockdown. Fearing the worst, the warden calls ISP.

And the ISP sends in the SWAT team. Negotiations break down swiftly. The rebel prisoners know they have crossed the line. They expect to be dealt with not just ruthlessly, but horibly if they surrender, and the negotiators cannot convice them otherwise. The hostage-takers see no turning back.

They issue a flat and non-negotiable demand: A vehicle, not booby-trapped, with a full tank of gasoline. No armed men in sight. If they see the glint of a metal weapon, they will slash the hostage's throat so deep, so wide, and so quickly that he will not be able to be saved.

They have demanded guns, been flatly refused, and strangely enough hae accepted that refusal. Perhaps they knew in their hearts it would never be granted anyway. But it is the car, or death to the hostage.

The negotiators agree and the three hostage takers appear to have been appeased by this. Preparing to make their escape, the desperate trio surrounds the deputy warden, hoping rescuers will know that a bullet through them will kill the hostage, yet only the hostage seems terrified of what is to come. It is not the knife he fears, even though he is certain that they will murder him as soon as they no longer need him. Indeed, they will butcher him in a way that would make strong men pray for death.

He doesn't fear that, however, because he knows it will never go that far. He fears the rescue. This is because he knows what his captors do not. He knows "the plan."

Elite Tactical Team

The SWAT team sets up outside. Each of them is cross-trained with every weapon in their arsenal. An American SWAT team would have a single submachine gun on its weapons list - these men have a menu of five to choose from.

They generally prefer their standard HK MP5's in urban operations, and they utilize their MP5SDs with integral suppressors when they must be discreet. They also have rugged standard Uzis for jungle treks after the private armies of dope smugglers, Mini-Uzis for cramped operations in close quarters, and the concealable CZ Skorpion for the occasional time they have to surreptitiously enter a scene undercover instead of in their battle fatigues and armor.

For this mission two men break out Mini-Uzis, loading them with special ammunition.

Similarly, they have a rack of precision rifles issued to each man, the better to fit the tool to the task, The .223 is used when an over-penetrating bullet absolutely cannot be allowed. Many of these men prefer the 6mm for all-around use, having found the .243 devastating in human flesh. There is the ubiquitous .308, and, finally, the rifle for such tasks as these.

The designated sniper carefully removes the deluxe Remington Model 700 from it's cradle, a hardshell case so softly cushioned it could carry eggs. He opens the bipod, goes prone in his prepared position, and dry fired a few times before he bolts the first live cartridge into the chamber.

It is a 7mm Remington Magnum. When he caresses the trigger with 3 1/2 lbs. of pressure, it will launch a 175 grain bullet at more than 2,800 fps.

He has chosen this instrument for two reasons. First it boasts a remarkably flat trajectory and the distance will be significant. Second, and prehaps more important, he will have to shoot through heavy glass that can deflect the bullet. He needs weight and mass more than he needs velocity.

When the sniper is in place he nods to his commander, who speaks into a radio microphone.

The Getaway

Peering suspiciously, the three desperate convicts assay the expensive sedan with its four open doors that idles outside the office where they hold their victim. They scan rooftops and the parapets of the walls. No armed men are in sight. It seems that the negotiators are keeping up their end.

The hustle the hostage quickly into the back seat, the leader on his left, a henchman on his right, their knives still to his throat as he sits upright, stoic, staring straight ahead. The third hostage-taker jumps behind the wheel and then sits there stiff, as if frozen. He is waiting for a bullet.

At length, he realizes he is not going to be shot. A smile crossed his face and he slowly, purposefully closes the door and slips the car into gear. He creeps the big sedan forward, slowly, desperately scanning in front him as he approaches something he has rarely seen: the great steel doors of the high and impenetrable inner wall standing open and unguarded.

In the back seat, unmindful of the cold, sharp steel at his throat, the deputy warden sits ramrod upright, staring straight ahead. He has accepted his fate. He's going to die with dignity.

He knows what the others do not. The unyielding policy of his government, feced by terrorism, has been copied from the Israeli model. Hijackers will not be allowed to escape. Hostage takers will not be allowed to escape. A nation in the grip of terrorism sees concession as an invitation to more terrorism.

The perpetrators will not leave here alive. If the hostage must die with them, so be it. The loss of the individual is accepted here, in the name of the security of the many. The deputy warden understands. It was part of his job description. He has agreed with it in principle, now his pride demands that he accept it for real.

He remains expressionless as the car inches forward. Only one thing surprises the deputy warden - he thought they would all have been killed by now.

No Escape

The prison complex squats on a broad, flat plane. Little has been spent to keep its denizens comfortable, but much architectural effort has gone into keeping them where they are. Rings of electrified razor wire with manned security gates fan outward concentrically at 100 meters intervals. The security shacks at the gates are abandoned now, the gates open. Nothing but flat, bulldozed dirt exists until the 300 meter line.

The inner perimeter is similarly stark. The huge, cold walls rise naked from the bare earth. Atop them fly national and provincial flags, giving the prison the look of a medieval castle.

At the edge of each portal stand twin bushes, 7 feet high. They look incongruous. They are. Some think they look like Christmas trees, the only vegetation in sight, a cruel mockery beside a gate whose legend should read, "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here."

But all this is in place for another reason.

The authorities have seen something like this coming.

The sniper is alone now, dug into a shallow pit at the 300 meter line in a dark brown ghille suit that makes him look like just another lump of earth. His rifle is set on its Harris bipod. He has tried and discarded a sandbag pouch under the toe of his rifle stock. If his target gets a premonition and takes sudden, evasive action, he needs mobility with his precision tool.

His Leupold scope has been dialed in for the 300 meter setting on the card taped to the Remington's stock. He trusts his equipment implicitly. When the moment comes, he will place the crosshairs where he wants the bullet to go. Point-of-aim, point-of-impact.

At the main gate, the bushes are serving their intended purpose for the first time. An ISP man crouches behind each thick shrub, on the outside of the gate, hidden effectively from view. Each holds a Mini-Uzi submachine gun loaded with the German Geco Action Safety rounds known in the U.S. as "BAT bullets" for Blitz Action Trauma.

They are cup-points of solid copper weighing less than 100 grains each, traveling at nearly 1,300 fps from a pistol, and capped with plastic tips that blow off in flight but which, while on the cartridge, give it a round-nose profile that feeds through open bolt 9mm submachine guns and milspec 9mm pistols. They will not penetrate deeply, but they will open with razor sharp fingers and create extremely traumatic wounds. The same rounds are in the Browning P-35 pistols at their hips.

They are using this ammo for a reason. They do not want bullets that will go through the bodies of the men they are going to have to shoot, and strike the hostage who sits between them.

The risk they are taking is terrible. They could have signaled their brother officers inside to rise up with their FALs and kill the hostage takers as soon as they moved to the escape car. But they are acutely aware of the value of the hostage, and they are prepared to risk their lives by crossfiring with one another to save him, and by steping into the field of fire of a man with an extremely high powered rifle 300 meters away.

They take pride on two things: their skill and their courage. They have volunteered for this.

The man behind the precision rifle knows his own life is safe, but he also knows the shame that will fall on him if the hostage dies. It's his reputation on the line, his pride, his self-image.

To him, that means more than his life.

The Shot

The driver noses the big car cautiously out. His leader has been smart enough to tell him to roll the windows down, the better to hear any tell-tale sign of ambush. As the front bumper and hood pass slowly through the ominous prison gate, the driver jerks his head rapidl left and right, but all he sees is broad, empty plain and the stupid bushes. It occurs to him that they're going to make it after all and he begins to smile.

At this moment, 300 meters to the driver's twelve o'clock, the rifleman watches that smile grow. He sees it clearly at 9x magnification.

He places the crosshairs at the absolute center of that rapidly turning head. He knows now radically even a 7mm Mag. bullet can alter its course after passing through slanted, curving safety glass. Hs rifle will shoot just under a minute of angle, about 2 3/4" groups at this range on a good day, but the shot is not as easy as it seems.

He wants to hit the mendulla oblongata to terminate all brain function without a reflex that will make the car under this man's control jerk with his last death spasm. The ISP sniper can see that the men in the back seat are huddled close to the hostage, their blades at his throat, and if the car jerks he could be killed by accident. The rifleman has centered the scope to allow for error, because the mendulla is already smaller than the best margin of grouping he could hope for an a perfect day at the range.

If the shot goes high, it will still take the brain. If it goes low, it will hopefully smash the cervical vertebrae and paralyze the driver. It is a tiny margin of error.

The raison d'etre of the precision rifle is to allow a good man to extend his will to a great distance. There is only on kind of will that can be extended with a high powered rifle, and it is seldom benevolent. This situation has reached a point where only deadly force will prevent the hideous murder of one innocent man - and the deaths of God knows how many more if there three predators are allowed to escape.

But none of these thoughts go through the mind of the sniper. Not even prayer, though all these thoughts including the prayers have gone before. Now there is only time to track the target, and to smoothly press the trigger back with a single-minded intensity of purpose.

The rifleman's last perception before the Remington's butt jolts his shoulder is that the crosshairs were centered when the shot broke.

Into Action

The men behind the bushes clutch their weapons and feel their hearts pound as the big car slowly, almost silently begins to glide past them, only a few feet away. They are coiled, like wire springs, waiting for the signal. The signal is not the shot.

It is a sound that a human being cannot replicate with his voice, and that men of different languages find hard to explain to one another. The sound of the tough, laminated safety glass being broken - a hard, decidely atonal crack that is nothing like the tinkle of broken china - almost concurrent with the hollow, fleshy sound of impact.

Neither man hears the gunshot. It takes almost a full second for that sound to travel 300 meters, and these men are already in motion, already past their razor sharp reaction times, moving forward, their Mini-Uzis coming up. One will not even hear his own gunfire over the blood rushing in his ears.

They have seen the driver's head explode into a bloody mist that filled the inside of the car, seen all three men in the back seat jerk violently, two of them shaking their heads as if in shock of disbelief.

The ISP SWAT officers lunge forward, each taking his target. The back windows are halfway down, as far as they'll go. The ISP men are leaning forward, telescoping stocks of their machine guns against their shoulders, as they place their front sights diaphragm high on the hostage takers in the back seat. Each man holds his trigger back and locks it there until the weapons run dry, moving in a crab-like waddle in pace with the still-crawling car.

As the guns fall silent they drop them. Like precision jet fighters flying in formation, each man is a mirror image of the other as each draws his Browning with his right hand and reaches for the door handle with his left.

The man on the right has the nearest reach, and he jerks a bloody bundle of rags out of the car, grabs the hand of the hostage, and pulls him out. They step away as the car goes past, nothing left alive inside. The one who grabbed the hostage steps forward reflexively to put himself between this man and the car, but it no longer matters. His partner, with his free hand, flashes a victory signal.

The hostage is soaked with blood and brains and other tissue. The rest of the ISP men who had been hidden around one corner of the main fence wall rush forward to help. They pull at his clothing, but they can find no wound. None of the gore that soaks the trembling body of the rescued warden is his own.

They've done it. It has taken place, from first shot to last, in approximately five seconds. On his belly far away, the police sniper takes a deep breath, and clears from the chamber of the Model 700 the fresh 7mm Magnum round he reflexively bolted in after firing his single shot.

Analysis

Before they leave my room that night, the men of the ISP will tell me of the aftermath. The judge who thought they were butchers for shooting two men some 30 times each, until they took him to the range and showed him that a Mini-Uzi empties its magazine in a second and a half.

The autopsy showed that the 7mm bullet did indeed go high after piercing the windshield, but not higher than the eyebrow of the man behind the wheel. The bullet that exited the head of the instantly-killed driver missed the killer behind him, crouching atop the hostage like a wolf atop a sheep. It was the 9mm bullets which tore his life away, as was that of his accomplice.

It is time to separate. Our class tomorrow will be long and demanding. When I am in the hotel room alone, I stand at the open window, where sometimes you can hear the gunfire at night in the hills that surround the city, and wonder if the predictions are ture, that it could be like this 10 years from now in my own country.

And I know that it is like that already sometimes, that as long as there are predators there will have to be good people with remote control scalpels that excise cancerous tissue with surgical precision from great distance, making swiftly and surely their own job's version of what the surgeons call "the benevolent wound."

"Why chose the lesser of two evils?" - Cthulhu