Stephen Hunter - The Master Sniper

The incline had steepened considerably. He drove himself forward, pawing at the trees with his free hand. Loose glass clattered in his stomach and he could feel the sweat washing off him in torrents. Dust seemed to have been pasted over his lips and his leg hurt a lot. Several times he dropped to peer up under the canopy of the forest, hoping to see the sniper, but nothing moved before him except the undulating green of the trees.

Vampir was impossibly heavy. If he’d had the time, Repp would have peeled the thing off his back and flung it away. But it would take minutes to get the scope unhitched from the rifle, minutes he didn’t have.

He paused in his climb, looked back.

Nothing.

Where was the man?

Who’d have thought he could come on like that? Must be an athlete to press ahead like that.

Repp looked up. It was quite steep here. He wished he had some water. He was breathing hard and the straps pinched the feeling out of the upper part of his body.

He and this other fellow, alone on a mountain in Switzerland.

It occurred to him for the first time that he might die.

Goddamn it, goddamn it, why hadn’t he ditched Vampir? To hell with Vampir. To hell with them all, the Reichsführer , the Führer himself, the little Jew babies, all the Jews he’d killed, all the Russians, the Americans, the English, the Poles. To hell with them all. He pushed himself on, breathing hard.

A stone outcrop loomed ahead. Leets paused as he came to it. It looked dangerous. He peeped over it, upward. Nothing. Go on, go on.

He was almost over, slithering, straining his right leg to purchase another few inches.

Here I am, a fat man perched on a rock in a neutral country, so scared I can hardly see.

He had the inches and then he didn’t; for the leg, pushed to its limit, finally went, as Leets all along knew it must. One of the last pieces of German steel that neither doctors nor leakage had been able to dislodge ticked a nerve. The fat man fell, as pain spasmed through him. He thought of it as blue, like electricity, and he corkscrewed out of balance, biting the scream, but then he felt himself clawing at the air as he tumbled backward.

He twisted as he fell and hit on his shoulder, mind filling with a spray of light and confusion. His mouth tasted dust. He rolled frantically, groping for his weapon, which was somewhere else, flung far in the panic of his fall.

He saw it and he saw Repp.

The sniper was 200 meters up, calm as a statue.

He’d never make the gun.

Leets pulled his feet under him, to dive for the Thompson.

Repp shot him and then had no curiosity. He didn’t care about the American. He knew he was dead and that made him uninteresting.

He set the rifle down, peeled the pack off his back.

His shoulder ached like hell, but seemed to sing in the freedom of release. He was surprised to notice that he was shaking. He wanted to laugh or cry. It had seemed seconds between first shot and last; clearly it had been minutes.

It had been extremely close. Big fellow, coming on like a bull. You and I, we spun the draydel , friend. I won. You lost. But so close, so close. That bullet that spattered on the rock near his head, what, an inch or so away? He shivered at the thought. He touched the wound. The blood had dried into a scab. He rubbed it gently.

He wished he had a cigarette, but he didn’t so that was that.

The chocolate.

The driver had given him a piece of chocolate.

Suddenly his whole survival seemed a question of finding it. His fingers prowled through pouches and pockets and at last closed on something small and hard. He removed it: the green foil blinked in the sun. Funny, you could go through all kinds of things, running, climbing, shooting, and here would be a perfect little square of green foil, oblivious, unaffected. He unwrapped it.

Delicious.

Repp at once began to feel better. He had settled down and was again under control. He did not feel good that Nibelungen had failed but some things simply weren’t to be. He hadn’t failed; his skills hadn’t fumbled at a crucial moment.

And pleasures were available: he’d been magnificent in the fight, considering how hard he’d pressed to make the shooting position, the long sleepless night that followed. For a short action, it had been enormously intense.

Repp noticed for the first time where he was. Around him, the Alps rose in tribute to him. Solemn, awesome, like old men, their faces aged with snow, they seemed especially grave in their silence. Far below, the valley looked soft and green.

He realized suddenly he had a future to face. It frightened him a little. And yet he had a Swiss passport, he had money, he had Vampir. There were things one could do with all three.

Smiling, Repp stood. His last duty was now to return. He pulled the pack again onto his back. It did not hurt nearly so much now. Thank God for Hans the Kike and his last ten kilos. He swung the rifle over his shoulder.

He pushed on for several minutes through the forest, not unaware of the beauty and serenity around him. After a time he came out of the trees into a high Alpine meadow, several dozen acres of grassland. The grass rolled shadowless in the sun.

Above, clouds lapped and burled against diamond blue, hard and pure. The sun was a cleansing flare. A cool wind pressed against his face.

Repp walked across the meadow. He took off his scrunched feldgrau cap and rubbed a sleeve absently across his forehead, where it felt a prickle of heat.

He walked on, coming at last to the end of the meadow. Here the grass bulked up into a ridge before yielding again to the trees. The ridge stood like a low wall before him, unruly with thistle and bracken and even a few yellow wild flowers.

He turned back to the field. It was empty and clean. It was so clean. It had been scoured clean and pure. It looked wonderful to him. A vision of paradise. Its grass stirred in the breeze.

This is where the war ends for me, he thought.

He knew he had a few more kilometers of virgin pine; then he’d be up top for a long, flat walk; then finally, that last plunge through the gloomy newer trees.

It was only a matter of hours.

Repp turned back to his route and started to trudge up the ridge. More yellow buds—dozens, hundreds—opened their faces to him. He paused again, dazzled. They seemed to pick the light out of the air and throw it back at him in a burst of burning energy. The day stalled, calm and private. Each mote of dust, each fleck of pollen, each particle of life seemed to freeze in the bright air. The sky screamed blue, its mounting cumulus fat and oily white. Repp felt giddy in the beauty of it. He seemed to hear a musical chord, lustrous, rich, held, held, ever so long.

Strange energies had been released; they bobbed and sprang and coiled about him, invisible. He felt transfigured. He felt connected with the order of the cosmos. He turned to the sun which lay above the ridge and from its pulsing glare he sought confirmation, and when two figures rose above him, on the crest line, drenched in light, he took it at first for the benediction he’d demanded.

He could not see them clearly.

He blocked the sun with one hand.

The big one looked at him gravely and the boy had no expression on his pretty face at all. Their machine pistols were level.

Repp opened his mouth to speak, but the big one cut him off.

“Herr Repp,” he explained in a mild voice, “du hast das Ziel nicht getroffen,” using the familiar du form as though addressing an old and dear friend, “you missed.”

Repp saw that he was in the pit at last.

They shot him down.

Roger edged down the ridge, changing magazines as he went. The German lay face up, eyes black. He’d been opened up badly in the crossfire. Blood everywhere. He was an anatomy lesson. Still, Roger crouched and touched the muzzle of his tommy gun gently as a kiss against the skull and jackhammered a five-round burst into it, blowing it apart.