Donald Hamilton: The Ambushers

The place was full of men. They had several fires going. There were women among them. There were a great many weapons in evidence. That wasn't my concern, either. At least it wasn't supposed to be. The military aspects of the situation were the colonel's worry. What did concern me was the fact that the nearest hut was at least a quarter of a mile away. I spoke softly without looking at the little man lying beside me.

"Which one?"

"It is the third hut along the road, on the left. The third from this end. Of course, when he emerges, he may come this way."

"And he may go the other, too," I said. "It depends where the damn visitors decide to stop. I was told the range would be approximately three hundred and fifty meters. Three hundred and eighty yards." He did not speak. Still looking down the valley at the distant huts, I collected some saliva in my mouth and expelled it on the ground in front of me. "To use a phrase from your language, Colonel, I spit on your lousy three hundred and fifty meters, sir. Give me that pack."

"Senor Helm-"

"Just give me the damn pack. Let's see what we've actually got here. There's no chance of getting closer, I suppose? What about that point of woods down to the right?"

"There is an outpost right below it. There are patrols. It was determined that the thing would have to be done from here."

"Sure. Three hundred and fifty meters away. You grow damn long meters in this country, Colonel Jiminez."

I pulled the pack in front of me for a rest and laid the rifle across it. I had to hunt a bit to pick up my target- those big target scopes have a narrow field-then the third hut was clear and sharp in the glass, but it still wasn't exactly at arm's length. It was going to be one hell of a shot, if I made it.

I LAY THERE TELLING MYSELF hopefully that at least the wind wasn't blowing. As I watched through the scope, a man walked into the field of the instrument from the right and entered the hut, walking right through the scale and crosshairs. A moment later he reappeared, leaving, but stopped in the doorway, apparently addressed by someone inside. He answered respectfully, saluted clumsily, and walked out of the scope.

"Five hundred and fifty yards," I said. "Approximately. That, Colonel, is over five hundred of your meters. Your informant was damn near fifty per cent off."

"You can read the distance?" He sounded more interested than apologetic.

"There is a scale inside the telescope," I said. "You take a man like that one, approximately five and a half feet tall-at least I hope he wasn't a pygmy or a giant-and you place the lowest division of the scale at his feet and read the range opposite the top of his head, making allowance for the sombrero. Then you take this figure and enter the table I have attached to the stock of the rifle, here. You learn that to hit a target five hundred and fifty yards away, the way this particular rifle is sighted at this particular time, you must hold over eighteen inches. In other words, I will have to shoot for the top of the head to hit the chest."

Actually, of course, I hadn't ever believed their story of three hundred and fifty meters. I'd sighted in the rifle at four hundred and fifty yards, and run my compensation table from three to six hundred, just in case. There has seldom been a spy yet, or a hunting guide for that matter, who wouldn't underestimate a range badly. You always hope the day will come when somebody will hand you the straight dope, but a fifty per cent error wasn't much more than par for the course.

"That is truly scientific," Jiminez said. I couldn't tell whether he was being ironic or not.

"Sure," I said. "It assumes I can find a man the right size to take the range from, and that he's standing up straight, and that I'm not looking at him from too great an angle up or down. It assumes the gun is shooting where it was when I made up the table, a few thousand miles away in a different climate. And at five hundred meters, Colonel, it takes this bullet the better part of a second to reach its target. A running man can cover thirty feet in one second. You'd better pray the guy stands still for us. What do you want me to do afterward?"

"Afterward?"

"Do we pick up and run for it, or do we try to give your boys a hand in stopping the first rush?"

"That is for you to say, Senor Helm. I cannot ask you.-"

"If you don't ask," I said, "who will? I'm sure as hell not volunteering; I gave that up when I got old enough to vote, or a little before. But El Fuerte's men have got an open valley to cross, and I've got sixty rounds of ammunition nobody told me I had to bring home. Once we're back in the woods, this gun is useless. With a twenty-power scope, it's got to be shot from a rest; it's no good for jungle fighting. But right here I might do some good, if I'm so ordered by my commanding officer, in this case you."

He hesitated and looked at me for a moment. He laughed softly. "Very well. It is an order. Senor Helm?"

"Yes, Colonel."

"It is sometimes hard for men of different languages to understand each other. I may owe you an apology. I-"

He stopped abruptly, and picked up my binoculars, hanging from their strap around his neck. He crawled forward to focus them on the road where it came into sight below and to the left of our position on the ridge. I heard it now, the sound of a motorized vehicle approaching from up the valley. Well, that wasn't anything I needed to look at.

I took off my hat quickly, and dumped the contents of the open box of cartridges into it, and set it where I could reach it easily. I took the other two boxes out of the pack and set them beside it. I closed up the pack again and replaced it to support the gun, and settled myself comfortably behind it. Then I made sure, by counting huts – one, two, three-that I was looking at the right one through the telescopic sight. With high magnifications at long ranges, it's very easy to find yourself watching the wrong door or window, or even, if they're all similar, the wrong house.

I shoved off the safety and double-checked, by looking, that it was really all the way off. That's another mistake that's been made by people who should have known better, including me.

"Colonel."

"Yes, senor."

"The hell with the jeep or whatever it is. Watch the doorway. Confirm the identification fast when he shows. And you'd better slide back a bit if you value your eardrums. This thing is loud."

Then it was just a matter of waiting. I'm not an iron man; I had the usual quota of palpitation and perspiration. I resisted the temptation to turn my head to watch the progress of the jeep down the valley. One glance had told me it was a jeep, with a native driver and a man in sun helmet and khakis, who looked too tall and blond to be indigenous. That was all the glances I had to spare. I lay there forcing my body to relax along the ground. I was just an eye at the ocular, a finger on the trigger. A man went into the hut to announce the impending arrival and emerged. A moment later another man came into sight in the doorway.

He didn't come all the way out right away. He had to tease us. He stopped in the shadow of the door to put on his uniform cap. The sunlight was bright on his thick body from the waist down, but the rest was in shade. I couldn't be sure of my crosshairs and I hadn't got an identification from Jiminez, anyway. I resisted the urge to ask a silly question. He'd speak when he was sure.

The man took a step forward, and another-and kept walking. My mind went through the calculation rapidly. At two miles per hour, he would move a couple of feet in the time it took the bullet to reach him. If I allowed for his motion, he could stop and it would strike ahead of him. He could speed up and it would strike behind.

"Shoot," said Jiminez softly. "That is El Fuerte. Shoot!"