Stephen Hunter - The Master Sniper

Another light flicked on, red. Three minutes. Time to hook up.

Shmuel was standing now in the aisle. It reminded him of a crowded Warsaw trolley, the one that traveled Glinka Street, near the jewelry shops. He even had a strap to hang onto in the closeness and he could feel other men’s breath washing over him. A moment of unexpected terror had just passed: the plane had yawed to the left; Shmuel, awkward in all the new gear, almost fell. He felt his balance and, with it, his control draining away. Nothing to grab for; he surrendered to the fall; then Leets had him.

“Easy,” he muttered. A breeze pummeled through the corridor of the airplane, fresh and savage. A glint of natural light, not much, illuminated the end of the darkness. Door opened.

Then, like a theater queue at last admitted to the big show, the line began to move. It moved with great swiftness, almost as if some reasonable destination lay ahead.

Shmuel faced sky. An American strapped by the doorway hit him in the shoulder without warning and, surprised at his own lack of respect, he snarled at the man, a stranger, and as if to insult him, stepped out.

Gravity sucked the dignity from his limbs and he flapped like a scrawny shtetl chicken. The face of the tailplane, rivets and all, sailed by a few inches beyond him. He fell, screaming, in the great cold dark silence, the engines now mercifully gone, the noise too, only himself, beginning to tumble until— Ah! Oh! something snapped him hard and he found himself floating under a great white parasol. He looked about and noticed first that the sky was full of apparitions—jellyfish, moving with underwater slowness, silky petticoats under a young girl’s skirts, pillowcases and sheets billowing on a wash line—and secondly that for all the majesty of the spectacle the ground was coming up fast. He’d expected a serene descent, thinking himself thousands of feet up. Of course they’d jump at minimum height, less time in the air, less time to scatter, and already Shmuel felt below the horizon. The ground, huge and black, smashed up at him. Wasn’t he supposed to be doing something? He didn’t care. He saw in the rushing wall of darkness, coming now like an express train, his fate. He reached to embrace it, expecting no pain, only release, and he hit with stunning impact, knocking a bolt of light through his head and all his sense out of him.

I’m dead , he thought with relief.

But then a sergeant stood over him, cursing hotly in English. “C’mon, Jack, off yer butt, move it,” and sprinted on.

Shmuel got up, feeling sore in a dozen places but broken in none. His legs wobbled under his weight, his brain still resonated with echoes of the landing. Gradually he realized the field was very busy. Men rushed about, seemingly without order. Shmuel tried to figure out what to do and it occurred to him that he was supposed to free himself from the chute harness. Suddenly a man materialized next to him.

“You okay? Nothing busted?”

“What? Ah. No. No. What a sensation.”

“Great.”

Shmuel tugged feebly with the harness, couldn’t get his fingers to work and wasn’t exactly sure what it was he was supposed to do , and then felt Leets grab the heavy clip that seemed to be the nexus of the network of straps that held him, and in the next second the straps unleashed him.

Shmuel took a quick look around. He made out men scattered across the dark field, and, beyond, a looming bank of pines. All was silence under the towers of stars. It was so different now. He looked for landmarks, for clues, for help. He felt suddenly useless.

“This way, c’mon,” hissed Leets, unlimbering his automatic gun, trotting off. Shmuel ran after.

Yes, yes, it really was the firing range. The shed bobbed up ahead, and he reached the concrete walkway. Then he saw the lamps in the trees; he remembered: they’d almost killed him.

Leets joined a crowd of whispering men, while Shmuel stood off to one side. Other shapes rushed by. Groups were forming up, leaders gesturing to unattached people. Shmuel could hear guns being checked and cocked, equipment adjusted.

Then Leets returned.

“You feel okay?”

“It’s so strange,” Shmuel said. A half-smile creased his face.

“You stick with me. Don’t get separated. Don’t wander off or anything.”

“Of course not.”

“Any shooting, down you go, flat. Got it?”

“Yes, Mr. Leets.”

“Okay, we’re moving out.”

The soldiers began to move down the road.

It looked familiar, like something luminous from childhood that, seen finally through an adult’s eyes, revealed itself tawdry, fraudulent. A spring camouflage pattern had been added to the buildings so that now they showed the shadowy patterns of the forest, but otherwise Anlage Elf looked unchanged.

He was amazed more at the stillness of the composition than the composition itself: hard to believe those dark trees that circled the place concealed hundreds of squirming men.

Leets, beside him, whispered, “Research? The big one in the middle?”

“Yes.”

“And SS to the left?”

“Yes.” Shmuel realized Leets knew all this, they’d gone over it a hundred times; Leets was talking out of his own nervous energy or excitement.

“Any second now,” Leets said, looking at his watch.

Shmuel guessed that meant any second till a circle was closed around the place, like a noose. All exits cut off, all guns in place.

Leets was rubbing his hands in excitement, peering into the dark. Shmuel could see the fellow fight hard to restrain himself.

The report of the first shot was so abrupt that it shocked Shmuel. He flinched at it. Or was it a shot? It sounded muffled and indistinct. Yes, shot, for Leets’s intake of breath was sudden and almost painful, pulled in, the air held. Then came a clatter of reports, more shots. They all seemed to come from inside Anlage and Shmuel did not see why. Glancing around at the others in the trees, he made out baffled faces, men searching each other’s eyes for answers. Curses rose, and someone whispered hoarsely, “Hold it, hold—!” cut by a loud krak! from nearby. “Goddamn it, hold your—” someone shouted, but the voice was lost in the tide of fire that rose.

All wrong. Even Shmuel, not by furthest reach of imagination a military man, could tell: volley all ragged and patchy, tentative. Bullets just streaking out into the dark, unaimed.

Yet it was beautiful. He was dazzled by the beauty in it. In the dark, the gunflashes unfolded like exotic orchids, more precious for their briefness at the moment of blossom. They danced and flickered in the trees and as they rose in intensity, pulling a roar from the ground itself, the air seemed to fill with a sleet of light, free-floating streaks of sheer color that wobbled and splashed through the night. He felt his mouth hang dumbly open in wonder.

Leets turned to him. “All fucked up,” he said darkly. “Some bastard let go too early.”

Nearby, an older man shouted into a telephone, “Crank ’em up, all sections, get those people in the assault teams in there!”

Shmuel understood that the battle had prematurely begun, and reached its moment of equipoise in the very first seconds.

Leets turned to him again.

“I’m going in there. Stay here. Wait for Tony.”

The American raced off, into the blizzard.

Leets rushed in, not out of courage so much as to escape the rage and frustration. He ran out of sheer physical need because in not running there was more pain, because the neat surgical operation that he had envisioned as the fitting end to this drama, to Anlage Elf, to Repp, to the Man of Oak, was now lost forever, dissolving into a pell-mell of indiscriminate fire. Susan had wished him dead; he’d risk it then, her curse echoing in his mind.