Nelson Demille - The Panther

He passed his sniper rifle to me and pointed, like a bird dog. I followed his outstretched arm and scanned the hill. About halfway up, sitting on a rock, was a man in dark cammies with what looked like a rifle across his knees. As I focused in, the man raised the rifle and began scanning the ground below him. I caught a brief flash of his nightscope lens as it swept past us, and Zamo and I hit the ground and rolled behind a flat rock.

As I passed the rifle back to Zamo, Kate and Brenner inched forward, and I said, “Sniper.”

They both nodded and kept completely still.

Zamo was now refocused on the sniper, and Brenner inched closer to him.

Zamo said, “We can’t move without that guy seeing us.”

Meaning, permission to fire.

We all understand that if Zamo took that guy out, there’d be another dead sentry who was not reporting in. On the other hand, there seemed to be no way around that.

Brenner thought a moment, then said to Zamo, “Take him out.”

Zamo seemed pleased with the assignment.

Zamo knew, and we all knew, that he had literally one shot at this. The sound of his shot would be muffled by the silencer, but the bullet, if it missed the target, would hit rock and even the most clueless sniper would know that he’d been shot at and missed. And by the time Zamo chambered another round and re-aimed, the enemy sniper would be behind a rock and raising the alarm. Then he’d start shooting back.

It looked to me like the sniper was maybe five or six hundred meters up the side of the hill, still within the nine-hundred-meter effective range of Zamo’s scope and rifle. But it wasn’t an easy shot because it was a night shot, and because rising or falling terrain distorts your perception of the target’s distance.

We all sat as still as the rocks around us while Zamo steadied his aim from a kneeling position. There wasn’t a rock around that was high enough for him to use to steady his rifle, so he was aiming freehand, and I could see he was having a problem with his injured left arm, which couldn’t hold its position long. In fact, Zamo lowered the rifle, then sighted again, then lowered it again.

Jeez. Come on, guy. You can do it. And do it fast before that bastard starts scanning the terrain again.

Zamo took a deep breath, then actually stood, took another breath, held it, then fired.

He dropped to one knee and chambered another round.

Brenner was the one to ask, “Hit?”

Zamo glanced back at him as though he couldn’t understand the question. Finally, he said, “Yeah. Hit.” Like, why bother to fire if you’re going to miss?

Well, Zamo was feeling good about himself, and I was feeling that we were very lucky and that The Panther was not.

I suggested, “We really need to move it before The Panther hears all this silence.”

Everyone agreed and we dispensed with stealth and caution and double-timed it up the trail that curved around the base of the high hill with the sail on top. We kept an eye out for what could be a climbing path up the hill, and after about a hundred yards Zamo spotted a small pile of loose rock on the trail.

We all dropped to one knee and hugged the side of the hill as Zamo scanned straight up and confirmed, “This is the way.” He also said, “I don’t see an entrance to a cave… but I see, like, overhanging flat rocks…”

I peered through my scope at the high hill and I could see rock strata jutting out, casting moon shadows across the face of the hill. The entrance to the cave would be under one of those overhangs.

So what’s the plan? If Chet and Buck were with us, we’d sit here for a week with charts and diagrams, then call Howard and ask him to call Washington for clearance. But I had a better plan-go up the hill, find the cave, kill The Panther, go down the hill.

Brenner, however, had a few add-ons-Zamo was to stay here and cover our backs, then he, me, and Kate would go up and look for the entrance to the cave, but only one of us would go in. And who would that be? Well, whoever thought of this.

Brenner whispered, “Watch for tripwires-flares or booby-traps.”

Thanks for that.

I went first, Brenner was behind me, and Kate brought up the rear as we began our ascent. The climbing path was mostly rock ledges, like a steep staircase cleared of loose stone. But now and then a piece of stone would fall and make a very loud noise, which I knew wasn’t as loud as I heard it in my head.

I was happy with the small M4, which, as advertised, was light and compact, and I was sure it would be excellent in caves. The moonlight was bright enough to see the way, but not bright enough to see a tripwire, so I felt my way carefully, brushing my fingers around the stone ledges to feel for a wire.

This was slow going, but the idea was to surprise The Panther, without being surprised ourselves by tripping a wire and getting blown to pieces. Or at the very least, tripping an illumination flare that would light us up like deer in the headlights, followed by a long burst of AK-47 fire.

We had no way of knowing for sure if there were any such devices on the approach to the cave, but if I was living in a cave, I’d damn sure put something on the path to alert me to visitors.

And there it was. I felt it with my hand-a taut metal wire about six inches above the wide ledge I was about to crawl onto.

I turned and motioned to Brenner, who was about ten feet behind me, using the hand signal for tripwire, which if you’re interested is like pantomiming stretching a rubber band.

Brenner nodded, and I turned back and did a crab walk carefully over the wire. You can’t cut it because it could also be set to trip if the tension is released. So you leave it, mark it, and move on. I draped the wire with my white handkerchief and kept climbing.

Brenner got over the wire, followed by Kate, and we continued on.

We were about halfway up the hill, which was maybe fifteen hundred feet high, and the slope was becoming less steep, and this had the effect of making it more difficult to see ahead to what was over the next strata of rock.

Then something caught my eye to the right and I froze. It was a man about fifty feet away sitting on the same rock ledge that I was on. It took me a few seconds to realize that this was the sniper’s perch, and that the man, who was leaning back against the rock, was not moving because he was dead.

I signaled to Brenner, who passed the signal along to Kate. They climbed to the ledge below me where they could see the dead man.

I moved sideways to my right and got to the sitting man, whose head was tilted back as though he was moon gazing. I could see that Zamo had hit his target full in the chest, slightly right of the heart, but fatal nonetheless.

The man’s rifle, lying to his side, had the distinctive shape of the Soviet-made Dragunov sniper rifle, which it probably was. More importantly, the rifle had a nightscope whose lens was still illuminated, and I reached out to take it.

All of a sudden the silence was broken by a loud, piercing noise, like an alarm, which made me jump. Ringing phones always make me jump, and the phone rang again, then again. Well, it wasn’t my sat-phone, which was dead, so it was the guy’s phone and he was dead. If my Arabic was better, I’d have answered it and reported all was dead quiet here.

The phone finally stopped ringing, and I looked at Brenner and Kate below me. Obviously the sniper had missed his situation report, as had Nabeel, and whoever was calling-maybe The Panther himself-was getting a little worried. And with good reason. We, however, also had a problem now. But there was nothing we could do about it except continue on and get rid of the problem.

Brenner was signaling insistently that he would take the lead, and Kate was nodding in agreement and motioning me to come toward her. But I had come too far to drop back this close to the finish line, and I continued up the slope with my new sniper rifle. I got to the next ledge and used the nightscope to scan up the hill.