Thumbing the manual safety to the firing position, Reilly aimed the iron sights toward the kill zone 250 meters away.
This process only took him a moment’s effort—he’d already propped the buttstock’s lower edge atop a sandbag and etched the bipod into the dirt in a near-perfect alignment with the stretch of trail ahead, and now needed only to rock the huge weapon forward slightly, bracing it with his arms to ensure maximum accuracy.
By then the motorcycle convoy was rounding the last turn they’d ever make, angling their bikes directly toward Reilly as they entered the kill zone.
The sight was a dream come true: the Boko Haram fighters maneuvering ducks-in-a-row on the narrow trail. Reilly held his fire until the blue jumpsuit was centered in the kill zone, then depressed the trigger as the machinegun jolted to life in his grasp with the first long burst of fire.
A streak of green tracer rounds indicated the bullets’ path over the ravine. Reilly’s view of the terrorist leader vanished along with almost everything else—men and motorcycles were concealed by long clouds of sand as the opening salvo found its mark with deadly accuracy.
Releasing the trigger, Reilly let the weapon momentarily settle before resuming his point of aim with the knowledge that his target was unquestionably dead. Then, he unleashed a second and third burst to seed the casualties with new armadas of 7.62mm rounds.
Only when there was no hope of survival within the kill zone did he divert his attention to the periphery, where fighters were ditching their motorcycles to take cover and assume firing positions in a response to the ambush that was far too late to save their leader.
They’d barely managed a few opening potshots before Reilly stitched them with the machinegun, launching burst after burst of automatic gunfire from left to right. At this point, he was merely thinning their ranks—the primary mission was accomplished, and the men wouldn’t be able to give effective pursuit given the enormous ravine between victim and attacker.
Nor, he thought with a grim sense of resolve, would Reilly need to conserve his remaining machinegun ammo. He’d be leaving the weapon where it rested, along with some ISWAP propaganda that had been selectively emplaced, before fleeing on foot along with Ian.
Before that occurred, however, Reilly was going to kill as many of these fuckers as he possibly could.
Ending his current burst of fire at the far reaches of the Boko Haram line, Reilly swung his barrel left to begin the process anew. As he did so, the medic caught a glimpse of the kill zone, now visible as a rolling dust cloud lifted away. In the dead center of the trail stretch, lying askew atop his felled motorbike, was a motionless body in a blue jumpsuit.
Reilly aligned his sights with the body, dead beyond all measure of doubt, and loosed another long burst just to be sure as a tremendous explosion erupted to his south.
I heard the sound of approaching dirt bikes through the trees to my left, then took a final glance at the trail ahead.
The path was only partially visible twenty meters ahead, my view blocked by a swath of trees that allowed select lines of sight. Fixating on a thick trunk with three interconnected knots in the bark, I oriented myself to the center of my kill zone for a final time before cutting my eyes left to the shred of trail that would mark Boko Haram’s return path into the mountains.
A dirt bike slid into view, the rider rising to a half-crouch as he throttled his motorcycle over a tangle of tree roots in his path. The second bike was just behind him, topped by two fighters. The passenger was scanning the woods around him, looking for any threat to the leader now being escorted uphill by the convoy—though which leader that was, I couldn’t yet tell. I was confident the lead passenger wouldn’t be able to see me in my ghillie suit, and if he did it would be too late: he was entering the far reach of my kill zone now, trailed by a third bike with one fighter atop it.
As the fourth motorcycle crossed my view, I wondered how the rest of my team was faring. There was no need for radio communications, as the first element to identify Usman would clack off their ambush with plenty of auditory fanfare to alert the others.
And in the next few seconds, I saw that initial ambush now belonged to me.
Usman was the sole rider on a motorcycle at the end of the convoy, his bearded face unmistakable over a blue prison jumpsuit. I considered notifying my team of the positive identification just to be safe, but there was no time—at the convoy’s current rate of speed, he’d be in the center of my kill zone within mere moments, and once that occurred, I would deal him the last surprise of his misspent and exceedingly violent life.
But then I heard a sound that made my heart seize up—machinegun fire from the north. Reilly had initiated his ambush for no reason I could discern, the echo of his opening burst unmistakable even over the growl of dirt bike engines.
The Boko Haram fighters heard it too, though their reactions differed greatly.
Their lead rider stopped his bike in place three-quarters of the way through my kill zone before he looked rearward for guidance. A second driver had no such intentions; instead he swerved around the stationary dirt bike in an attempt to race toward the high ground. The convoy lurched forward behind him, gunning their throttles to speed past the section of trail to my front.
Usman, however, brought his bike to an abrupt halt. He reappraised the path ahead with a look of wild-eyed terror, and rather than proceed, he began turning his motorcycle back the way he’d come. Despite his position just outside my kill zone, I knew he’d be gone before I reached for my rifle, so I did the only thing I could to stop him.
Ducking my head, I squeezed the firing device in my hand three times in quick succession.
I winced with the thunderclap of a tremendous detonation as over two hundred pounds of explosives from the dozen suicide vests buried along the trail decimated the convoy with a wall of fire and smoke. The ground convulsed beneath me, a shockwave of overpressure rattling both earpieces as scorching air whipped overhead along with thousands of steel ball bearings slicing through the trees. Once the initial concussion passed, I grabbed the rifle at my side and brought it into a firing position.
The kill zone was a hazy blur of smoke and flame, the echo fading to cries of agony from those who had somehow survived the blast, unintelligible screams mixed with groaning death rattles. I ignored the casualties, some of whom were visible in the form of bloody and partially dismembered bodies blackened by the explosion, and swept my gaze left to search for Usman.