metalzerofour

Jackal planted his boot on the corpse's shoulder and gave it a hard shove with his heel. "Definitely not a native. Probably Chechen." "We found two of his mates in the kitchen," explained the Marine who'd led them to the house. "Well, one and a half. Same deal as this guy. Caucasian. Red hair and beards." Dice wasn't interested in the colour of the man's skin or hair. Her gaze was magnetised to the chest rig he was wearing. It wasn't the kind of cheap Russian one you saw most insurgents swanning about in, but a modular tactical rig like Jackal's, with a Kevlar bib to carry a small arms protective insert (SAPI) plate and a Pouch Attachment Lad

"Fan out. Three-metre spread. You catch any of these bastards twitching, put one in their fucking head." From anyone else that might have sounded like macho bullshit, but the way Jackal delivered the order was anything but. His voice was as cold and sharp as a knife in an ice bucket, and completely devoid of emotion. It didn't sound vicious or derisive - it was almost businesslike, which was actually kind of unnerving. Everything about Jackal seemed to be an anachronism, from his presence here to the way he acted. When she'd first met him he'd seemed stiff, almost robotic, but the way he'd calmly instructed on her on how to snipe with the Ba

"Bloody hell." Hearing Jackal's disembodied voice from below the edge of the rock face, Dice glanced up from her belt rig, which she'd been securing a rappelling line to. He sounded incredulous, the word bloody stretching out to a full three seconds. "You all right, mate?" "Yeah. Come and have a look at this." "Give us a minute." Dice tugged the line secure, steeled herself, and stepped backwards onto nothing. It was a weird sensation, and as she dropped she felt her stomach lurch as the line went taut; her knuckles were white beneath her gloves, palms sweaty. It wasn't that she was afraid of heights, or even afraid that she might fall - she

“Looks like they found some more mortars,” Jackal observed. Dice's lips were shaping the words No shit when she heard another shell whistling towards them. She counted three full seconds before it hit, landing behind them this time, and felt the ground shudder beneath her and a barrage of tiny rocks bouncing off the back of her helmet. “We need to get the Spectre on those fuckers before they dial in on us,” Dice said, feeling more angry than scared – they'd shot two of her fucking mates, and now they were dropping bombs on her and Jackal. Bastards. “Tell you what,” Jackal said, “You can do the h

"Christ, it's turning into a sodding convention down there," Jackal's zeroing shots had sent the enemy apoplectic, and from the looks of things they'd also been alerted to the presence of the Royal Marines, who had been told to go firm, or hold their positions, by the company commander. There certainly were a lot of the fuckers. There were blokes in robes and pyjamas flooding out of houses, from behind rocks and trees, so many and so fast that it seemed they were almost materialising out of the darkness. That old chestnut about moths to a flame wasn't very appropriate in this instance, Dice found herself thinking. It seemed Alpha One Zero

"Alpha One Zero, this is Zero. Be advised, AC-130 is entering your airspace at this time." So much for professionalism, Dice thought as her features creased into an enormous, shit-eating grin. "Spectre" is about bloody right. Those rag-head wankers are in for the fright of their fucking lives. She'd done an admirable job of containing her excitement at getting to work with an AC-130 thus far, not wanting to appear unprofessional in front of Jackal, but the prospect of seeing the flying tank in action coupled with the onset of adrenaline all soldiers got before a contact meant that in the end she was just another smiling idiot like the rest

It was a typical night in Afghanistan – and by Afghanistan's standards, typical meant hotter than two rats fucking inside a wool sock and drier than an Arab's bath-mat. It was also eerily quiet. The silence was broken only by the faint crunch of booted feet on sun-baked ground as a company of Royal Marine Commandos consisting of three twelve-man teams picked their way cautiously towards their target – which, in this case, was a small village on the outskirts of Helmand Province. Truthfully, "village" was something of a generous overstatement. It was really little more than a collection of mud huts, surrounded by a low stone wall