The Sniper

In a case of the pursuer becoming the pursued, he foolishly walked right into a trap even a rookie could have avoided. They had him cornered, and he was sure they had already trained their scopes on him. He cursed himself, closed his eyes, and awaited the bullet he was sure was already in flight towards him. Just then, his partner burst in and made him the happiest and the luckiest man on the planet.

His injuries, however, made it impossible for his partner to carry him out. They would have to set up and engage the shooters head on. His partner moved him to a location that put him out of sight, but able to return fire when the time came. They were certain there were two snipers, but they didn’t know their locations. They had two options: engage them and see where the bullets came from, or go out on a recon mission to locate them. The second option would be suicide, and they quickly agreed to dismiss it.

His partner took up a position in an area of the room that was exposed to fire and hoped his Kevlar vest would stop a bullet. Ditto for the Level III Ballistic helmet he wore. It appeared the shooters were more interested in dragging things out, though. His gamble worked, and they now had the general position of at least one of the two shooters. His partner motioned for him to fix his rifle on the location that was the probable position of the last shooter. Their efforts, unfortunately, proved ineffective.

Shel Raymond was one of the best snipers in the business. Having trained at an elite school in the Arizona Desert, he was called in when the shot absolutely needed to count. That he and a partner were playing footsie with a couple of yokels they had pinned down was out of character for him, but it was his call when to take the fatal shot and his handlers knew he’d come through.

“C’mon, Shel. I got stuff to do, man. Get it over with.”

Shel knew he was right. He had stuff to do, too. He reacquired the first target, fired, and then acquired the location of the second target and fired. The men packed up their gear and went to verify the kills via photos. Satisfied everything was okay, Shel uploaded the photos and verified it was safe to send in the cleaners.

⁂

The office was eerily dark. He felt weird being there at that hour. He knew what he sought could be anywhere in the room, and he was determined to find it. Dressed in all black, he covered his face as an extra precaution, a just-in-case type of thing. He knew the cameras had been malfunctioning, and that Ryan Skellin, the Director, had them disabled while waiting on replacements.

SenTel Industries was a multinational organization that supplied timely, verified intel to paramilitary field commanders. Commanders could establish secure communication links from the field to get various levels of intel on acquired targets.

Recently, someone had been interfering with communications. They were rerouting information requests to random servers, which were intentionally littered with bogus information. Ryan took steps to isolate the bogus redirects. As such, he was also at SenTel that evening. He did not know that he was not alone.

The intruder, having gained what he sought, regarded Ryan as a moron. But Ryan was actually not a moron, and the data the intruder had so easily stolen was worthless.

⁂

When Shel got home that evening, his lovely wife was waiting for him, as she always did when he was coming back from a mission. She knew what he did for a living, hated it, but never asked questions. She greeted him with a warm hug, a kiss, and had a shot of whiskey at the ready.

Josie Raymond was a down-to-earth gal. She taught 5th grade and decided before marrying Shel that he should know she had no desire to have kids. Having been a teacher for a few years, she had no misconceptions about how awful they could be. Besides, his career kept him away from home for extended periods. Even if one day she changed her mind, Shel Raymond was simply not daddy material.

Shel loved his wife. She completed him. He knew she wondered why he had chosen the profession he did. What she didn’t realize was that he had no choice. He didn’t choose the profession; it chose him. His skills were in high demand, and the pay was crazy good. He’d put a regular deposit into their shared account on time each month, and they lived well. She had no idea about his other account, the one that held the treasure trove. He wasn’t hiding it from her. She had access to it. She just didn’t know she did. He figured it best they put forth the appearance of a normal family living a normal life in a normal neighborhood.

Josie often watched Shel as he slept. She always wondered how he could return from a mission, knowing he had taken a life, yet sleep like a baby. He always looked so peaceful. She wondered what went through his mind right before he pulled the trigger. She wondered why she had devoted her life to sleeping next to a real-life killer. Sometimes it haunted her to know what he did and how he could be so calm and collected about it. It ate at her to know there was no one she could ever talk to to reconcile her feelings about it.

Shel was not without his demons, though. Sure, sometimes he felt horrible. The last thing he wanted to do, however, was to let Josie see him break down. And sometimes he did. He’d drive out to secluded locations and scream and cry and hit things and lash out, as would anyone still trying to hold on to their humanity. Of course, the job affected him, but he had no misconceptions about it. When on a mission, he focused on the assignment and allowed nothing outside the mission to affect him. His next assignment would really test his resolve in that regard.

⁂

When he realized the information he had stolen from SenTel Industries was fake, he had already sold it to a buyer in The Caribbean. That buyer then gave the info to a Russian field commander. His team was in position to advance and deployed as soon as he got the info from his Caribbean contact.

Their enemy slaughtered his men, who advanced based on the fake intel. The Russian commander was livid and vowed revenge on his Caribbean contact and SenTel Industries for not allowing Russia access to the real data. He knew his superiors would make him pay for his unauthorized use of foreign data. He figured he’d accidentally fall out of a high-rise window by sundown. Before that happened, though, he wanted to get the person responsible for obtaining the fake info, and he knew just who to call to handle that.

Shel’s next assignment took him to Saint Lucia. It was a secret assignment, so secret he wouldn’t be told who the target was until right before he was to deliver the shot. He would have coordinates showing where he was to be positioned and the building in which the target would be. But that was basically all the info he’d get until it was time for action.

When Ryan Skellin reported his office break-in, he had a pretty good idea of who did it, and he reported his suspicion the following day to authorities. An investigation found evidence of tampering with his computer, accessing a server, and downloading material. And while the office security cameras had been disabled, the camera on his computer was fully functional. It was set up to snap photos whenever someone accessed the server the intruder went to. Authorities had a crystal clear image of the intruder, along with very useful metadata from the photos.

The information stolen was dummy data designed to look real. Whoever stole the information would not have been able to determine its authenticity. The sensitive nature of the dummy data mimicked that of the real data, which contained coordinates of troop movements or of individuals identified by authorities as high profile, such as terrorists or rogue military operators.

It took the investigators no time at all to identify the intruder and give the name to Ryan Skellin. With Shel Raymond in place, they would send him the ID of his target as soon as they were within range for him to take his shot.

The target was on the move, and SenTel alerted Shel to stand by. As soon as the target was in range, they sent Shel the ID info and told him to eliminate the target. It shocked Shel to see the identity of his target. He hyperventilated at the thought of taking out that target. He flipped the cover on his scope and positioned himself to proceed when he froze. How on earth could he justify killing his own wife, Josie? Apparently, the baseball cap she wore that night made her look like a man, but it was undeniably she who broke into SenTel that night and stole the data.

Shel froze, didn’t know what to do, what to think. He was in territory he’d never been in before and wanted to ask SenTel if they were one hundred percent sure of the target, but he knew the answer. Shel had never botched a mission, nor developed a conscious or a moral objection. He always acted without thinking, without judgement, and more importantly, without second-guessing his target’s identification. They did not authenticate targets unless they were certain their data was accurate.

There were obviously some secrets between Shel and Josie, but never in a million years would he have envisioned having her in his line of sight with orders to shoot to kill. He cried while watching her through his scope as she spoke with a man she met in the building. She seemed so different from his loving wife. She looked just like any of the hundreds of bad people he’d taken out over the years.

Suddenly his earphone came alive. It was SenTel asking why he had not eliminated the target. He said nothing. They asked again, warning him she’d be gone within seconds, and instructed him to take the shot. Shel again didn’t answer. The SenTel representative screamed at Shel to take the shot.

“TAKE THE SHOT, SHEL, WHAT ARE YOU DOING? TAKE THE SHOT NOW,” he screamed.

Shel positioned Josie’s head within his crosshairs, closed his teary eyes, and gently squeezed the trigger. He sobbed uncontrollably as he watched her fall to the ground, dead. And then he completely broke down, vowing to never go on another mission. His career ended that day.

Shel never forgave himself for taking that shot, even knowing that what Josie did had put many innocent lives in danger. Life was never the same for him after that day.

K.R. Eaton - The Sniper

Short Stories by K.R Eaton