LT. VON ACKERMAN.VIR DAY -27. LUFTENNANT VON ACKERMAN FOUND HIMSELF WITH A HELL OF A SHOT TO MAKE. The wooden platform that was supposed to represent the firing position across the river from the target was not the most stable thing he’d ever shot from either. Von Ackerman found himself with a two mile shot and the wind was starting to get choppy down range. Shit. But it was not impossible. Hard… maybe, but that was a far cry from impossible. And he was a very patient man when something depended on such an attribute as patience. He breathed nice and slow and easy, getting his heart rate down. He kept on adjusting the optics gear on the side of the rifle that acted like a scope, though he didn’t care for the thing; he preferred an actual scope to the large optics “box.” “One-minute left,” said Miller. There was a five minute cap on the amount of time you were allotted, Miller had figured that Chekov would take only that time and not a second more, and he had been particularly careful to stress that subject over and over again. Von Ackerman judged the wind at about five miles per hour down range and set the optics for that. “Thirty-seconds,” said Miller. The weapon boomed loudly, the concussion of the blast pushing von Ackerman back even though the barrel was on its own sliding rail. It took two seconds for the 20x102mm NATO round to travel the two miles, but it hit the mannequin that represented Chekov right in the chest, blowing it apart. The trolley that had been moving the mannequin stopped and shot a red flare up into the sky. Hit. “Good shot,” said Miller. “Bullshit,” said von Ackerman,” I’m still taking too damned long, Miller. He could have left by the time I fired.” He removed the seventy pound weapon from his shoulder and stood up, his body hurt from three hours of firing the weapon over and over and over and over again. His internal clock told him that it was just after ten in the morning and that meant lunch to a guy who woke up at four on a regular routine. “I’m going to the D-FAC,” he said,” why don’t you have someone else shoot for a while? We need to keep the illusion up.” “Yeah,” said Miller,” send Private Wentz up here. He’s the number two shooter, after you.” Von Ackerman didn’t reply and climbed down the two-hundred foot ladder to the ground below. He found Private Wentz, who saluted him and went to the tower as instructed. Then von Ackerman began to walk to the main complex of the sniper school. The Steinherring Sniper School as it was simply called was the most elite in all of Germany, training over eighty percent of the Bundeswher’s dedicated snipers. The building itself was something from World War II, when it manufactured Messerschmitt fighters and not trained snipers who were quiet, polite, and ready to kill everyone they met. The government had refurbished the building in the late fifties to be a reserve base and then Miller was given the old thing in early 1973. Housed in the three barracks were only one-hundred-seventy-five men and women, and a fourth barracks had been turned into the guest living quarters, with ten rooms in it for visiting Colonels, Generals, and the occasional Second in Command. The main building was three stories tall, half a mile wide and almost two miles long, with a neat white gravel drive, and several hundred acres of green, well-manicured grass. Two flag poles stood out in front, one flying the black, red, and yellow flag of Germany, and the other flying the 425th Gideon with their mascot Rudolph the Red Nosed Rifle across the front of it. The whole place reeked of the military. Inside of this building were offices, classrooms, and the dining facility on the first level. The armory, gym, and the weight room were on the second floor, each taking up a full third of the building’s length. The third level is where Miller’s office was, along with all the 425th memorabilia from missions in the past, which had recently gotten a lot bigger since the war started. But he wasn’t concerned about anything but food right now, food that if not entirely great with taste, was at least somewhat filling and had the daily allotment of calories. It was all he wanted and thought about even as he smartly saluted a Luftennant Colonel. He walked through a long hallway with a door that said “COMPLACENCY KILLS” in blood red print, but bypassed that door entirely and walked through one that led to an adjacent one. He took the hallway all the way to his own living quarters and stepped through the door. He took off his ghillie suit and hung it neatly next to another one in his closet and walked back out the door. He was in the kitchen in two minutes. He was greeted by a short girl named Luna. “Johan!!” She shouted, dropping the plastic crate of trays she was carrying on the ground and sprinting over to wrap her arms around his waist. He knelt down and caught the little girl in his huge arms. She was about ten years old and about four feet tall, she was some sort of feline for certain, but what kind was beyond even his wildest dreams. She slammed herself into him at Mach three which threw him backwards against his braced leg. “Aw my big, strong starshine snuggle fox,” she said. Wolf. “How are you today?” he asked her. “I’m great!” she exclaimed, and she began telling him about her day so far and all the like that kids usually reserved for their parents or relatives… or good friends of the family. Kids. Before she could finish telling him about why she thought nobody had ever seen a real unicorn and how she would be the first to do so, a woman walked into the kitchen and snuck up on her, scaring her half to death. “Gosh darn it mommy!!” She yelled at the woman and stormed out of the kitchen. “I thought that Captain Miller said that you weren’t allowed to bring her here anymore,” said von Ackerman. “He did,” said the woman,” but then he changed his mind when he saw how fast she was at making trays for his soldiers.” “How are you?” “I’m fine,” she said,” Derrick has the flu.” “I hope he’ll be alright.” She shrugged, and walked over to a warmer, a huge metal box the size of a refrigerator with several racks in it. She opened its door and pulled out a tray with something that smelled good on it. She passed it over to him and closed the door. “I always try to make you feel special,” she said somewhat whimsically. “It’s working,” he said, giving her a polite peck on the cheek,” What is it?” “It’s a mish-mash of all the stuff we had on hand that’s about to go bad. We had to get rid of it before our shipment arrives with new supplies. We had too much stuff still sitting on the shelves.” He took a bite of the stuff on the tray; it looked like goulash but with chunks of… chicken? It wasn’t all that bad in actuality. “Thank you Ma’ Sarrrnt.” He took another bite and left the kitchen to find a place to sit out in the D-FAC where he would enjoy the next two hours being alone until the first men would show up for their own lunch. But he was startled to find a woman sitting at his usual table. She had short and spunky blonde hair and brown eyes. She was a medium sized grey fox who had a hole through her right ear. She stood up as he approached and stuck out her hand. “Hi, I was told that you were the man to talk to about snipers.” He stood still for a moment, almost in shock. Uh, you’re in a sniper school. “Alright,” he said, sitting down,” shoot.” ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Minna was four miles from the temporary airfield; Lemon was running low on fuel. She kept her nose up and her hand on the throttle with her thumb on the afterburner switch in case she had to abort the landing and swing back around to try again. She usually only used her fingers to maneuver Lemon, but when coming in to land she kept her whole hand on the stick. “Gear down,” said Gunns. Minna felt, not heard, the landing gear rotate out from their bays and the locks thump into place. “Confirm lock,” she said. There were some sounds from the back seat. “Lock confirmed,” said Gunns. Minna took Lemon lower to about five-hundred feet and kept her wings as level to the ground as she could in the turbulent air near the deck. They were two miles away right now, too close to turn Lemon all the way around at this height and distance. Contrary to what people believed to be a universal truth, Lemon could not turn as well as she could at speed, and it led to some problems when dogfighting. As a result Fox-12 pilots were taught that if engaged to run, or keep their airspeed above six-hundred knots and fight, running passes on the attacker from multiple directions until he was killed or bugged-out. Minna pulled the throttle back to minimum power and her landing gear thumped down on the tarmac with the gentle precision that came with loving the open sky. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Just as it had two hours ago, the mannequin exploded into a million tiny pieces when the massive round smashed into it. Von Ackerman was pissed off. His lunch time was for him to be alone, that’s how Miller had arranged it. But this time he was greeted by… what? Nosey fucking journalist. But his attitude helped his shooting. Inside a minute he had killed the target with his first shot, with his second shot he took only thirty seconds, fifteen seconds with his third, and his most recent shot took him all of ten seconds. Miller couldn’t help but be proud. “Jesus, Luftennant,” Miller said,” You’re a natural born killing machine.” Von Ackerman huffed and blasted the new target that had popped up. “Fucking reporter bastards,” he said. He lifted the weapon off of his shoulder and removed its now empty magazine. The barrel was locked back waiting for a fresh charge. “So you’ve met her too?” asked Miller,” The reporter/journalist, I mean?” “Right in the middle of my fucking lunch,” von Ackerman shot back, angrily slotting a five round magazine into the weapons receiver. “’Hi, my name’s Lisa. I just came from St. Petersburg, Russia where I wrote a story about a bunch of Russians who fought some other Russians and I vicariously watched them all die just so the German’s could establish an airbase to support people on the front lines.’” “Wow,” said Miller,” that’s a little harsh.” “That’s how I feel when someone reports a story about soldiers in battle.” said von Ackerman,” I mean for god’s sake she hadn’t even worked off any of the weight that she put on while on a diet of those awful Russian rations.” “To each his own, Luftennant,” said Miller,” why don’t you go out on the town tonight? You haven’t taken leave in over a year… you need it.” “Then you had better make that an order, sir,” said von Ackerman, lining up to take another shot. “Alright, Luftennant von Ackerman, I am ordering you to take a break tonight.” “Very well, sir, when does my leave begin?” ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It began at nine o’ clock that night. Von Ackerman went to his room and hung up his ghillie suit and BDUs and changed into a black shirt that he tucked into a pair of blue jeans and secured with a belt. He was not scheduled to be back for two days, which he thought was too long considering the importance of the mission at hand, but Miller had insisted on letting a few other men try out the shot. So von Ackerman walked out of the building and to the parking lot where his old work truck had laid derelict for the better part of a year and got in. He wasn’t too fond of the vehicle and often enjoyed thinking about it getting stolen or just driving as fast as he could towards a cliff and jumping out at the last minute. But right now all he had to do was drive away from his soldier’s life and head somewhere to relax, and then he’d think about new ways to torture his faithful vehicle. He stuck the key in the ignition and gave it a twist and the little six-cylinder engine coughed once and began running. Poor thing.