Stephen Hunter - The Master Sniper

“You been paid very very well. If you die, money goes to your families you got families, your girlfriends otherwise. You get caught, you get good lawyers. You do time, it’s good time, no hassle from screws or niggers or dirty white boys, depending on which color you are. Good time, smooth time.

“That’s ’cause you the best. Why do we need the best? ’Cause this fucking guy, he’s the best.”

He handed a photo around: It passed from shooter to shooter. It showed a thin man who might have been handsome if he hadn’t been so grim, leathery-faced, with thin eyes, squirrel shooter’s eyes.

“This guy was a big fucking hero in that little war they had over in fucking gook country.”

“Hey, Hor-hey, you not be talking about my country that way, man,” said the ponytailed Asian as he popped the bolt on a sixteen and it slammed shut.

“Hey, we can be friends, no? No bullshit. I’m telling you good, you listen. Nigger, spic, cowboy, motorcycle fuck, wops, slope, fucking southern whiteboy asskickers, we got to work together on this. We’re a fucking World War Two movie. We’re America, the melting pot. Nobody got no problem with nobody else, right, am I right? I know you guys have worked alone mainly or in small teams. If you want to go home in one piece, take it from Jorge, you do this my way.”

“I don’t like the gook shit.”

“Then take it out on this boy. He killed eighty-seven of you guys. That was back in ’72. They even got a nickname for him; they call him ‘Bob the Nailer,’ ’cause he nails you but good. You think he forget how? In 1992, bunch of fucking Salvadorian commandos, trained by Green Berets even, think they got his ass fried on the top of a little hill? He kills forty-four of ’em. He shoots down a fucking chopper. He sends them crying home to mamacito . This guy is good. They say he’s the best shot this great country ever produced. And when it gets all shitty brown in your underpants ’cause the lead is flying, they say this guy just gets cooler and cooler until he’s ice. Ain’t no brown in his pants. His heart don’t even beat fast. Part fucking Indian, maybe, only Indians are like that.”

“He’s a old man,” said the lanky cowboy. “His time has passed. He ain’t as fast or as smart as he once was. I heard about him in the Corps, where they thought he was a god. He wasn’t no god. He was a man.”

“Were you in ’Nam?” asked Jorge.

“Desert Storm, man. Same fucking thing.”

“Yeah, well,” said Jorge, “whatever. Anyhow, we tie the whole thing together on secure cellulars. We move south this afternoon, as I say, three cars, three men in a car, and me, I’ll be in a pickup, I’ll hold the goddamned thing together while I’m talking to the boss. We know where he lives, but I don’t want to do it there. We hunt him on the roads. We move in hunter-killer teams. You get a sighting, we work the maps, we plot his course, we pick him up. Very professional. Like we are the fucking FBI. We get him and his pal on a goddamned country road, and then it’s World War Three. We’ll show this cabrone something about shooting.”

Bob stopped talking.

A plane. That was it. The sound of an airplane engine, steady, not increasing in speed, just low enough and far enough away, almost a fly’s buzz.

“Go on,” said Russ.

“Just shut up,” Bob said.

“What is—”

“Don’t look around, don’t speed up, don’t slow down, you just stay very calm now,” Bob said.

He himself didn’t look around. Instead, he closed his eyes and listened, trying hard to isolate the airplane engine from the roar of his own truck, the buffeting of the wind, the vibrations of the road. In time, he had it.

Very slowly he turned his head, yawning languidly as he went along.

Off a mile on the right, a white twin-engine job, maybe a Cessna. Those babies went 240 miles per hour. Either there was a terrific head wind howling out of the east, or the pilot was hovering right at the stall speed to stay roughly parallel and in the same speed zone with the truck.

He glanced quickly out the window. The plane was turning lazily away.

“Everything okay? I mean, you tensed up there, now you’re relaxed. Everything’s okay, right?”

“Oh, every goddamn thing’s just super fine,” said Bob, yawning again, “except, of course, we are about to git ambushed.”

“Air to Alpha and Baker,” said Red, holding steady at 2,500 feet, running east, loafing again, dangerously near stall.

“Alpha here,” came a voice.

“What about Baker?”

“Oh, yeah, uh, I’m here too. I figured he said he was here, you’d know I was here.”

“Forget figuring. Tell me exactly what I ask you. Got that?”

“Yes sir,” said Baker contritely.

“Okay, I want you in pursuit. He’s about four miles ahead of you, traveling around fifty miles an hour. No Smokeys, no other traffic on the road. You go into maximum pursuit. But I am watching you and on my signal you drop down to fifty-five. I don’t want him seeing you move super fast, do you read?”

“Yes sir.”

“Then step on it, goddammit.”

“Yes sir.”

“You hang steady there, Mike and Charlie. No need you racing anywhere, they are coming to you. I see intercept in about four minutes. I’m going to let Alpha and Baker close in, then I’ll bring you and Baker into play, Mike? You read?”

“Yes sir.”

He looked back along the road and out of the distance watched as two large sedans roared along the highway at over one hundred miles an hour, trailing dust and closing fast with the much slower moving truck.

“Oh, I smell blood. I smell the kill. It’s looking very good. Alpha, I see you and your buddy closing. You just keep closing, you’re getting close, okay now, slow way down. Mike, you and Charlie now, okay, you start moving out, nice gentle pace, about fifty-five, we are two minutes away, I got you both in play.”

Someone inadvertently held a mike button down and Red heard strange things over the radio—some harsh, tense scraping and what sounded like someone systematically turning a television set on and off. Then he realized: That was the dry breathing of men about to go into a shooting war and they were cocking and locking their weapons for it.

Words poured out of Russ as if he’d lost control of them, and he could not control their tone: They sounded high, tinny, almost girlish.

“Should we stop?” he moaned. “Should we pull off and call the police? Is there a turnoff? Should we—”

“You just sit tight, don’t speed up, don’t slow down. We got two cars behind us. I bet we got some traffic ahead of us. And we got a plane off on the right coordinating it. We are about to get bounced and bounced hard.”

Russ saw Bob shimmy in the seat, but he could tell he was reaching to get something behind the seat without disturbing his upright profile. He looked into the rearview mirror and saw two cars appear from behind a bend in the road.

“Here’s the first and only rule,” said Bob steadily. “Cover, not concealment. I want you out of the truck with the front wheelwell and the engine block between you and them. Their rounds will tear right through the truck and get to you otherwise.”

Russ’s mind became a cascade of silvery bubbles; he fought to breathe. His heart weighed a ton and was banging out of control. There was no air.

“I can’t do it,” he said. “I’m so scared.”

“You’ll be all right,” Bob said calmly. “We’re in better shape than you think. They have men and they think they have surprise, but we’ve got the edge. The way out of this is the way out of any scrape: We hit ’em so hard so fast with so much stuff they wish they chose another line of work.”