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The night was black. No moon, few stars. Specialist Wroth swiveled his head, checking his surroundings, fingers drumming on the receiver of his rifle. His partner crouched beside him, peering through binoculars at the target's villa. They lay in the bushes, silent and invisible in their black combat gear. Colonel Ackerson was due home any minute now, and when he returned….
When he returns, the bastard is gonna get it. Thought Wroth. The verdict was in: Ackerson was guilty. Guilty of a great many things, but giving away the location of earth was the one he was going to pay for in blood. He cared nothing for the survival of the species, it seemed; only the promotion of his special weapons programs. How it was possible that Ackerson stayed in the military as long as he did, Wroth had no idea. The man was responsible for terrible things. Crimes committed against those who trusted him, trusted the oath they all swore to live by. Funding was all the man seemed to care about. Funding for projects that were obviously outclassed. So he tried to eliminate the competition. Tried to kill off the Spartans, and then give his teams some extra practice on their home turf. Wroth failed to see any logic in the idea at all. Which is why he was here, rifle in hand, itching to put a steel jacket behind the good colonel's ear.
"We got some activity." Keller whispered, binoculars focused on the driveway. Two warthogs roared up the dirt road, kicking up dust in their wake. They pulled around to the front of the villa, two bodyguards hopping out to open the doors for the irritable colonel. Wroth sighted in on the windshield of the front warthog, ignoring the distance and windage information scrolling up the corner of his sight picture. This was barely a 400 meter shot, no problem at all for a professional. He adjusted his aim minutely, the round snout of the silencer attached to the barrel rustling the bush it poked over.
Easy, now. Easy. Wait for it. The specialist's breathing slowed, then stopped altogether as his brain shut down, completely focusing on the single point of its existence. Ackerson's head poked out from the passenger side of the big vehicle, and as he was stretching his legs to the ground to step out, time seemed to freeze for Wroth. His finger increased pressure on the trigger ever so slightly, finding the break perfectly. The heavy bullet spat silently out of the barrel, crossing the 400 meters in the blink of an eye.
The round caught Ackerson behind the jaw, tearing his head clean off the spine. His body fell forward, crashing into the red dust. His bodyguards didn't move. They knew they were dead if they so much as thought about going for their weapons. If someone was good enough to get past the motion sensors surrounding the house, they were good enough to put a bullet through your eye if you twitched in a way they didn't like.
"Clean hit." Keller said, voice devoid of emotion. "Let's get out of here." There was no room for error in the field, not if you wanted to make it out alive. Wroth snapped the covers back on his scope, picked up the spent casing, and slowly turned around, crawling behind his partner to exit the area. There would be patrols swarming all over the area in a few minutes, and they wanted to be long gone by then.
Sure enough, the bodyguards began to spread out with warthogs and on foot. They knew they couldn't be that far away. Even with technology these days, there are certain distances past which you simply cannot make a head shot. The all-terrain vehicles shot across the fields to a specified distance away, from the house, then began the switchback pattern that every marine learned in training.
Wroth and Keller worked as fast as they could, crawling to the main road, adjusting their path to avoid patrols as best they could. They couldn't hope to get through unnoticed. A warthog with two bodyguards were barreling blindly toward them. The two assassins spread to either side of the path of the oncoming vehicle. As it passed, Wroth took the driver's face off, while Keller put two short bursts into the man in the back. The hog coasted to a halt, its big engine growling. In a few short seconds, the specialists had dumped the bodies off and hopped in, accelerating towards the main road. The other patrols were slow to catch on, and were slow to pursue. By the time they reached the main road, the two assassins were gone, howling down the road at well over 100 kilometers per hour.
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