Cold Blooded Killer
Copyright© 2026 by Megumi Kashuahara
Chapter 5
Jazirah Desert, Anbar Province, Iraq, July 2010
The heat was a physical thing.
Not the dry manageable heat of Colorado Springs or even the furnace weight of Ramadi — this was Afghan summer in the hills, midday sun hammering down on rock and dust with the malice of altitude combined with latitude, the kind of heat that made the air above the compound walls shimmer and turned every surface into something that burned to touch.
She’d been in position since 0600. It was now just past noon and the rock shelf she’d chosen for its sight line over the compound had absorbed six hours of direct sun and was radiating it back up through her gear.
She didn’t move. Movement was the enemy of the shot and the shot was the only thing that mattered.
The compound below sat in a rough oblong maybe 800 meters out, mud brick walls the color of the hillside they’d been built from, the rooflines visible from her elevation in a way they weren’t from the valley floor where the ground element was about to walk into something that had been waiting for them since before dawn. She’d counted the figures on the rooftops during her first sweep. Counted them again. Confirmed the technical — a Toyota Hilux with a DShK mount in the bed — parked just inside the main approach, nose pointed out, waiting for the signal to roll.
Twelve armed figures on the rooftops.
The technical crew.
She keyed her radio.
“Sand Viper. Compound rooftops, twelve armed males. Technical inside the main approach, DShK mounted. They’re set up for an ambush. Ground element do not advance.”
“Copy Sand Viper.” The ground element commander — Staff Sergeant Holloway, she’d worked with him twice before — didn’t hesitate. “Can you clear it?”
She looked at the rooftops. The figures spread across three connected structures, most of them watching the valley approach, a few scanning the hillsides without knowing what elevation to look for.
“Affirm. Give me the word.”
“Sand Viper you are clear to engage. Clear that roof.”
She settled behind the Mk 22.
The dam crested.
The technical came first.
She heard it before she saw it — the engine note changing as the driver got the signal and dropped it into gear — and then the front bumper swung around the corner of the approach wall and entered her glass and she put the first round through the gunner before the vehicle had fully committed to the turn. He dropped across the DShK without firing it. The driver had just enough time to understand something had gone wrong before the second round ended his understanding.
The Hilux rolled two meters and stopped, dead in the turn, blocking the approach.
Two shots. Maybe five seconds.
She moved to the rooftops.
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