Shooter_ The Autobiography of the Top-Ranked Marine Sniper - Jack Coughlin [3]
Worse, the sheets of rain degraded our night vision goggles and left us blind to what was going on around the warehouses, although we could hear people shouting and motors turning over. The Skinnies were making mischief.
Dawn, the demanded time for surrender, approached. Our missile-carrying Cobra helicopters were inbound, guided by the FAC, who was working the radios beside me. We had not slept at all, and as the rain tapered off, we threw aside the canvas covers and stood to our guns, while our goggles showed blurred images of an incredible scene. A bunch of gunmen were in positions of cover, and the Skinnies had rolled out a couple of T-52 tanks and a big radar-guided antiaircraft weapon, a ZSU-23/4, which had four 23 mm cannons and is known as a “Zeus.” If the choppers arrived on schedule, that thing could blow them out of the sky. “Abort! Abort!” the FAC screamed into his radio handset.
We had wanted a fight, and it looked like we would get one, but we still gave them a final chance to surrender. As the loudspeakers shouted the warning, I heard General Klimp speaking calmly into my headset. “Gabriel, can you take out that Zeus without hurting anybody else?”
“Yes,” I replied, forgetting to add “sir.” I was curt because I was busy, firmly locked into a rigid sitting-Indian position with my body square behind the rifle, and with my scope sighted on the ammunition feed tray of the ZSU. If ordered, I would disable the big gun. The Cobras had come to a halt and were hovering just behind our building, their rotor blades thudding like a mad drummer. The Zeus gunner heard them, too, and began cranking his weapon up to aim directly over our rooftop position in order to catch the arriving choppers when they popped into view.
As usual, just before combat, life slowed down for me. It is as if a viewer is fast-forwarding a movie and then suddenly clicks to slow motion. My eyesight sharpens; I can hear the slightest sound but can tune it out if it is not important. Even my sense of smell is heightened. I believe that a really good sniper not only has muscle memory developed by years of constant practice but also has some special unknown gene in his body chemistry, because I was operating more on instinct than on training.
I looked carefully past the feed tray and examined the magnified image of the gunner seated between the two pairs of mounted cannons. He wore a dirty T-shirt and some kind of cutoff trousers, with flip-flop sandals on his feet. I had a good line.
“Take the shot,” said the general, and I fired, taking the big kick of the recoil as my rifle thundered. The heavy round punched through the metal feed tray, then slammed into the gunner like a bowling ball going a hundred miles an hour. The last I saw of him, he was flipping upside down over the back of the seat, thin legs splayed in the air, and barefoot because he was blown right out of his sandals.
My shot started the battle and brought an answering blast from another Zeus. Its big rounds chewed at the concrete, green tracers laced the dawn sky, and we dove beneath the parapet for cover. That was only a momentary reaction. My spotter shouted, “You gotta engage or he’ll tear this building apart! Stop him, Jack!” Chunks of cement exploded around us as the quadruple cannon rattled nonstop. I had rolled over like a turtle, still in the cross-legged position, and my spotter grabbed my collar with his left hand to help yank me up straight again.
Fighting had erupted all around the perimeter of the warehouses, and the din was incredible, but all we were concerned with was that Zeus. I came over the parapet