Dante Nolan. Humble name for a humble man. His personality however, belied his stunning and deadly ability to put a bullet through anything he could see through a telescopic lens. His one true calling. Some men were born to be doctors, and live their lives in clean operating rooms and lush golf courses.

Men who could shoot the way Dante could shoot lived their lives in a state of disciplined readiness, hidden and watching, waiting for their opportunity. As it turns out, Dante sat on rocky crag high in the Hindukush mountains. He had spent two days crawling through the rocks and watching, slowly getting to this very spot, with the commanding view of the valley below, and the tiny mud brick village in it.

He had gotten there ahead of schedule, but it had given him time to double check his secondary firing points, and egress routes. By the time he triple checked his ranges to this draw or that shed, he began to hear the explosions. It won't be long now.

The Paks were letting the Taliban have it. Had been for a couple of days. Pressure from Washington, the new President had promised action in A-stan only to come into office to find out that the enemy had long since fled to the safety of these mountains, where no government tried to exert itself. Until that new president laid down the law to the Paks, and now the zealots were heading back North, to where it was safe. North right up this valley, right into his telescopic sight.

The .50 caliber sniper rifle that scope was mounted on was the apex of man portable weaponry. The 29 ½ “ barrel spun the half inch bullet at an amazing muzzle velocity of 2,800 feet every second. The manufacturer claimed the maximum range was around a mile and a quarter, but even using the stock Leupold 4.5x14 Vary X scope he could hit much further than that. He had drug it's nearly 32 pound weight in its sealed travel case and dragging bag up the mountains. Now it rested on its bipods, attached at the front of the barrel, the wide butt of the padded stock tucked firmly against his shoulder, his right hand turned the knob that changed the elevation of his shot.

He worked the math quickly in his head, simple trigonometry, and geometry, as he looked through the scope, placing the red dot reticle dead center of another man's chest, an invisible mark of death. His finger rested gently against the trigger, and he practiced breathing in a slow rhythm. It was about 1,600 meters to his target. At that range even being in a different place during breathing could cause a shot to miss high-low. Pulling the trigger was a no go as well, tht caused a left to right miss. You had to squeeze a trigger, to care--

KLA-PoWWW! KLA-Poww! Kla-powwww....

The shot had surprised him, they always did when they hit. No sub-conscious premature flinch to throw off his bullets trajectory. He didn't need the scope to settle back on his target to know the man was dead. It took the bullet well over a full second to travel to his target, time enough for Dante to watch him shoot a smile at a friend. The kind of smile a soldier gives a comrade when they have gotten out of a scrape. Then the 660 grain bullet hit him square in the center of his sternum.

The force of the impact was considerable, but knock down power was a myth. There was only the amount of damage your projectile caused on its target. The M107 was designed for use against vehicles. Parked aircraft, helicopters, armored personnel carriers, big metal things. It was barely legal to use against a man. Only certain types of ammunition were allowed. Even still, the 107 was king of damage.

The man's ribcage turned to wet powder before the bullet had passed through the halfway point of his chest, and begun to tumble. Red-hot, deformed, and spinning unbelievably fast, the back half of the man's torso blew outwards, in a red spray. He was beyond dead. It wasn't even fair. The blood was arcing into the air as the sound of his shot echoed to the friends of the dead man. Coming at them from so many angles, they couldn't guess the murdering bastard's location. But it was too late, anyway.

The recoil had hammered into Dantes shoulder, and before the sound of the first shot reached his targets, a fresh cartridge had been slammed home by the action of the bolt and he had panned left, to the man's friend, who stood there with a look of confusion on his face.

Jesus Chri-

KLA-PoWWW! KLA-Poww! Kla-powwww....

More echoing thunder, and Dante watched another man die. The bullet hitting him in his right arm, blowing it off his body, then tumbling right to left through his ribcage. He was torn in half. The living dead men on the valley floor so far below him had begun to scramble for cover, realizing that this was the valley of death, and death's arm was long.

Dante scanned right, and saw a man in a brown robe with a short black scruff beard, taking cover on the wrong side of a rock. He thought the shots had come from behind him. He was too new at this to survive long.

KLA-PoWWW! KLA-Poww! Kla-powwww....

That bullet hit the sandstone boulder the zealot was cowering against so hard, it shattered,, and slid into chunks down slope. The man's fate, was far uglier. Three shots, seven more in his magazine. He scanned and saw that no more easy kills were available, the rats had gone to ground. Some were straight cowering, but one or two seemed to be peering in his general direction, peeking from behind a rock to try an spot hi--

KLA-PoWWW! KLA-Poww! Kla-powwww.... KLA-PoWWW! KLA-Poww! Kla-powwww....

The first shot turned the rock outcropping the first man was hiding behind into shrapnel, the second round turned the man into mist. Five left. He panned right to find one of the others who had been searching for him, but he had hidden well, and wasn't peeking anymore. Occaisionlly he would see the mans hand, but it was never enough to draw a bead. He was gesturing to the others, probably trying to rally them, or clue them in... time to flush the pheasant.

He scanned upslope and found the loose rock hillside he'd seen from the satellite imagery when he selected this spot. KLA-PoWWW! KLA-Poww! Kla-powwww.... the huge bullet disrupted the bottom of the free rock, and everything above it shifted downward, paused, then careened downslope, pushing the zealot out from behind the rock, on his ass.

KLA-PoWWW! KLA-Poww! Kla-powwww.... KLA-PoWWW! KLA-Poww! Kla-powwww.... KLA-PoWWW! KLA-Poww! Kla-powwww....

Three shots, to get him... moving targets were tough, especially when flying out of control down a hill. One shot left.... they ll seemed to have a pretty good bead on him now. Rifle shots were hitting the hillside in his general area, if nowhere near him. He would see a turban pop up here and there, and the puff of smoke and muzzle flash of the ak-47 as it barked impotently back at the big dog. The dead men would need to be much much closer to even think of getting a bullet to reach him.

They knew it, it seemed... one decided it was better to go back and face the Pak artillery. Dante's tenth shot ended him. Hit him at the base of his spine. Very very ugly. Dante scanned for targets, as he popped the empty box magazine out of his weapon, and slammed home a fresh ten rounder. He reached up and pulled the bolt back, till it caught the first cartridge, then released it letting the powerful recoil spring slam it home in the firing chamber.

Five dead zealots. A fine start. When he had blinked the sweat from his eye, an resettled behind the scope, he found his opponents on the move. Through the tight focus of his scope he couldnt count them, but he could see them, sprinting like madmen right at him.

KLA-PoWWW! KLA-Poww! Kla-powwww....KLA-PoWWW! KLA-Poww! Kla-powwww....

KLA-PoWWW! KLA-Poww! Kla-powwww....

Three men turned to meat before the rest had the sense to dive for cover. One tried to slither into a shallow draw, but he underestimated the size of his ass. Dante aimed for it, then a little lower, letting the bullet plow through the rocky ground into the man, and kill him.

On and on it went that way. Those men spent six hours in hell, under the arm of death. 17 died and spent their lives on the grey sandstone of nameless valley in a lawless land. Well, formerly lawless. The law now, was Dante's law.

Six months later, at a parade ground in Kabul, Dante stood in the bright sun in his class A uniform, ramrod straight like good soldier while Brigadier General Jim Baldridge pinned a shiny medal of valor on his chest, for his actions that day. There had been a surveillance drone watching him murder those men, and someone thought it was valorous. He would have laughed, but it wasn't funny.