Stephen Hunter - Sniper's Honor

But: it would also put him into contact with people who were drawn to the killer. He knew, he understood. Certain folks, though they might never admit it, dreamed of killing and in some unsavory way were powerfully attracted to an artist of the craft, which Swagger certainly was. Not for sex, not for wisdom, not for fantasy or even, really, friendship; just in some soft-vampire way to feed on his aura. Maybe Jimmy himself was such a man; maybe if so, he hid it better. Swagger always felt a little debased by such transactions, not that there was any ill spirit in them, but they just felt wrong. They made too much of the killing, as if the killing itself were the point, when the truth was nobody could last in the profession for the killing alone. You had to believe in something bigger, and in service to that—duty, honor, country, the kid in the next foxhole, the will to survive, to win, something never clearly understood called the Big Picture, something never talked of called honor—you could persevere, even occasionally flourish. Whatever it was, it was not shared easily, particularly since he had made the big mistake of reading way too much on the subject and understood he possessed a dangerous amount of data that opened him up to the horror of self-knowledge.

He made his typical decision on Jimmy’s invite: I’ll think about it.

Oh, hello, another e-mail, a nice long one from his daughter Miko at riding camp in the Berkshires, where she’d gone because everyone said she was so smart it was wrong not to send her to an eastern school and open a new life for her, and it followed from that that if she had eastern-style riding in her background, it would make entrance easier and give her a culture to belong to.

He took pleasure in the long answer he sent her, but when it was gone, he was still on his porch, his hip still ached (it always did), the wind still blew across the prairie, and it was time for another cup of coffee.

He fetched it, returned, tried to imagine where he’d ride this afternoon, contemplated maybe getting up earlier tomorrow for breakfast at Rick’s in Cascade, a ritual he always enjoyed, listening to the boys talk about Boise State football or the Mariners. Otherwise, not much seemed to be going on. And then there was.

That’s how it happens sometimes, just that fast. A new message from Kathy Reilly, off in Moscow, where she was the correspondent for The Washington Post. They’d had a Moscow adventure some years back, and found themselves simpatico, and stayed in touch. She had that dry humor, a needler and subtle provocateur like he was, and smart, and they liked to prod each other.

Swagger, what would a Mosin-Nagant 91 be? I know it’s some gun thing but I just get confused every time I Google it.

What the hell? Never in hundreds of e-mails had the subject of firearms come up, and maybe that’s why he liked her so much. The possibilities more or less tantalized him, and for a time he thought it was a kind of joke. But no, she wasn’t joking about the Mosin.

He played it straight, or as straight as he could with Reilly.

It’s the rifle used by Russian troops from 1891 until, roughly, 19AK-47. Long, ungainly thing, looked like something the guards would carry in “Wizard of Oz,” but solid and accurate. Bolt action. Does Reilly get bolt action? “Handle” which has to be lifted, pulled back, pushed forward, then down again to fire. I could tell you why but you’d forget in three minutes. Trust me. It’s 7.62mm in diameter, shooting a cartridge that’s confusingly called “Mosin-Nagant 7.62,” though sometimes they add a “54,” which is the cartridge length in mm. Roughly a .30-caliber military round, the equivalent of our .30–06, not that Reilly knows what a .30–06 is. It was OUR WWI and II cartridge. What on earth does Reilly need with this information? Is she going on a reindeer hunt? Good eating I hear, especially the ones with the red noses.

He waited, but the clarification was not forthcoming. Soon it was time to ride, and he got his lanky frame up, went to the barn, saddled up a new roan called Horse—he called all his horses Horse—and rode south, then west, then north again, three hours’ worth. It felt good to have Horse under him and the rolling meadows around him and the purple mountains on three sides blurring the horizon. You couldn’t feel sorry for yourself on a horse or you’d fall off. It was hot and sunny and that always improved his mood, and it helped that his imagination locked itself on the Mosin-Nagant and reviewed what he knew about it, what he thought he knew about it, what he assumed he knew about it. He knew, for example, that he had been shot at with it. First tour, platoon sergeant, Vietnam, 1964–’65, the later flood of Chinese AKs hadn’t begun so the VC were using anything they could get their hands on, and the Mosin from the Chinese was prominent. But they learned their lesson fast, realizing that the old warhorse, with its five-round mag and its slow bolt, was no match for the M1 carbines the southerners used, nor his own M14. Slowly the AKs and the SVDs began coming in, and you could feel the guerrillas learning the new tactical possibilities of the modern weapons. Good news for them, bad for us.

He got back, put up Horse, took a shower, and repaired to his shop. Current project: a round called 6.5 Creedmoor, from the Hornady shop, super-accurate. Possible future sniper round? That filled his mind, as it always did, saved him from the self, gave him something to plan and anticipate. He reloaded 150 cartridges, using five different weights of powder (varying by .1 grain); he’d shoot groups to find the best through a custom 6.5 a gunsmith in Redfield, Washington, had built for him. Then he showered, greeted Jen, who had arrived, and they had a light dinner. He didn’t get back to e-mail until the sun had fallen.

Reilly again.

Okay, that’s the rifle, but what about in conjunction with something called a PU 3.5? What would that be? What place is this, where are we now?

He got the ref to “Grass,” part of his World War I project from years back. Carl Sandburg: “I am the grass; I cover all. Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo…. Two years, ten years and people ask the conductor, ‘What place is this? Where are we now?’ ” She didn’t know how appropriate it was and how not a joke.

The place is sniperland, the place is Russia, and I can even tell you the time: 1939–1945. That’s the Soviet telescopic sight they mounted on their Mosin-Nagants, turning it into what I believe was a pretty good sniper rifle. The Russians really believed in the sniper as a strategic concept and sent thousands of them out against the Nazis. Much killing. The scope (3.5 means a magnification of 3.5) was solid, robust, primitive, nothing like the computer-driven things we have today. Range probably limited to under 500 meters and more usually way under that. Anyhow, if you see Mosin-Nagant 91 in conjunction with PU 3.5 in conjunction with any year between ’39 and ’45, you are most definitely in the sniper universe. I have to ask: What is Reilly doing in the sniper universe? It ain’t her usual neighborhood.

It didn’t take long for the reply. Five minutes.

That helps a lot. Thanks so much. It’s beginning to fit together. As to why, well, long story, work-related. I’m on deadline now, get back to you tomorrow with a long explainer.

So another full day passed, then at last came word from Reilly.

Let me apologize now. It’s really dull. Nothing to get excited about, just a feature. They’re always interested in feminist heroes, you know, the crooked lib press pro-feminist anti-male meme and all that stuff, so I pitched something to them and they bought it, and it gets me off the *&^%$))&! Siberian pipeline beat. I was in the Moscow flea market a few weeks back and I bought a pile of old magazines. I do that, looking for story ideas. I got one from 1943 called Red Star , a war thing, all agitprop as hell, all the pro-Joe stuff to make you throw up. Anyway there were four women on the cover, arms locked together, all in uniform tunics festooned with medals. Three looked like Pennsylvania Dutch lesbian cow milkers but the fourth was—you didn’t hear this from me—really a doll. As in knockout. She just blew the poor other three gals away. I read the story and the four were Russian snipers. Many kills, as you say, in Leningrad, two in Stalingrad, one in Odessa and all this stuff about the Mosin-Nagant and the PU 3.5. Anyhow got their names and the looker was called “Ludmilla Petrova” and she was the Stalingrad babe. Hmm, new to me. So I Googled “Russian women snipers” and got all kinds of dope and names—4,000 snipers, over 20,000 Germans killed, that sort of thing—but not a mention of Ludmilla Petrova. So I looked into it more and more, and though the other three survived the war and got fame and fortune, communism-style, out of the deal, there wasn’t a whisper about Petrova, whose nickname, from the ’43 mag article, was “Mili,” not “Luda,” as Ludmilla usually yields. So I dug deeper and deeper and indeed, sometime in mid-1944 it seems, Mili just disappeared. Not only as a person but as a personage. She ceased to exist. In fact, I found several other copies of the Red Star photo but she’d either been cropped or painted out. The Stalin people disappeared her. It happened back then. Orwell, remember: “He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”