Chapter 220: A Window of Opportunity
Alex aimed down the holographic sight, aligning the reticle perfectly on the forehead of his target. He then squeezed the trigger, sending a 5.45×39 projectile down range and through the man’s skull. Splattering his brains out and dropping the body from below the cover, the man just looked over.
Amahle was surprised by the level of precision that Alex was capable of, the target was easily 400m away, and Alex was using a carbine with a 12.25 inch barrel, perhaps if he was using a Low Power Variable Optic, his level of accuracy could easily be explained. But to use a 3x magnifier and a red dot, and yet attain such a perfect kill? That was unusual for someone she considered being nothing more than a drug adled shock trooper.
Yet every time the enemy popped their heads up from behind cover Alex would fire a shot, and with a 75% hit rating, he killed three out of four of the target he fired at. So much so that Amahle was finding it hard herself to shoot the enemy, as Alex kept killing them with laserlike focus.
Luckily for the enemy there were quite a few of them, and they continued to lay down fire towards the foxhole, making Alex had to hit the dirt and keep his head low in order to avoid taking a shot to the dome.
The firefight however was a stalemate. The rival cartel’s hitmen kept dropping like flies, but they could call in reinforcements. Meanwhile, Alex and Amahle were slowly running out of ammunition. In the end, the two of them camped in the foxhole for the night, making sure to keep an eye out into the darkness for any potential spotting of a hostile who dared to make their way through the minefield.
And sure enough, in the middle of the night, while Amahle was drifting to sleep a loud explosion could be heard from not too far away from the foxhole. A man had just been blown up by a landmine, but it had not killed him outright.
Instead, the explosive blast took out the man’s legs, among other things, causing him to cry out in agony as he bled out in the dirt, trapped in a minefield away from the nearest medic. Alex had taken this time to light up a smoke and gaze out into the moonlight. His ballistic face mask and balaclava were waiting at the wayside, while Amahle slowly climbed out of her resting position and asked what was happening.
“Is the enemy making a move?”
“They tried… It didn’t work out too well for them… That idiot got himself blown up.”
Amahle then looked out into the distance, but it was too dark for her to reasonably see anything, and thus she was quick to ask Alex about their situation.
“How many do you think are left?”
Alex’s response was cold, almost as if the words were spoken by a dead man, as he gave the woman an exact figure of how many men were left.
“Reinforcements aren’t coming anymore… At least not until morning. So there are seventeen of them left. Unfortunately, I’m down to the dregs…. So… I think it’s about time I go do some hunting…”
Amahle was just about to ask what Alex was talking about when the man grabbed hold of his two masks and exited the foxhole. She gazed in horror as the man slipped into the darkness while effortlessly making his way through the minefield as if he were nothing more than a shadow in the light of the moon.
—
Alex did not say a word as he walked past the landmines, and towards the clearing where the rival cartel hitmen were resting. One of them was keeping an eye on the foxhole, or so he was supposed to, but by the time Alex found him in his makeshift sniper’s nest the man was completely asleep. Thus, Alex reached into his gun belt and pulled out a knife, which he used to silently cut the man’s throat.
The knife went deep into the flesh, severing the spinal cord, leaving the head attached to the neck solely from a small segment of skin. The look of horror on the man’s face as he awoke to a see a skull masked man cutting his throat was a dreadful sight, or it would have been if Alex remotely cared about the life of the man he had just killed.
But this man was a sicario, a hitman of the cartel. His life was meaningless in Alex’s eyes, and not worthy of any emotional attachment. Thus, Alex slowly slipped into the small encampment of the other hitmen, all of which were resting beneath the moonlit sky.
During those hours where the night was darkest, Alex cut the throats of all seventeen men, and while they were sleeping, no less. He went so far as to decapitate them, and leave their severed heads in a nice stack at the edge of their camp, where he rigged some c’4 to blow the moment their friends found them in the morning, and remove the pile of heads.
After doing this, Alex stalked back through the shadows to the foxhole, where Amahle was quick to chastise him for his reckless actions.
“Where the fuck did you go just now?”
Although Amahle could only see the eyes of Alex, as his entire face was covered by two masks, and his eyelids were painted black to blend in with the masks. She could tell they were gazing on her with contempt as the man spoke in an emotionless tone towards her.
“I went hunting, just like I said I did… anyway, those assholes won’t be bothering us anytime soon. So how about we get the fuck out of here while we have a window of opportunity to do so?”
Amahle looked at Alex as if he were an idiot, but when she noticed the cold glint in his blue eyes, she did not know why, but she felt a slight tingle down her spine. Thus, she recovered her rifle, which was resting on its bipod, before asking the man to help her get to safety.
“Lead the way…”
Alex nodded his head silently before climbing out of the foxhole, where he led Amahle down the path where he had hidden his pickup truck. Coincidentally, as Amahle was getting inside the passenger seat of the pickup truck, she could see in the right side mirror the stack of severed heads Alex had left in the rival cartel’s encampment.
But in the next moment, the vehicle’s engine had started and Alex had driven Amahle off, leaving her in a state of disbelief.