David Healey - Red Sniper

“I am thinking that they do not sit down and have tea, Comrade Bunin, but you tell me.”

“The dog, he shakes that sable until he breaks its neck.”

“A man is much bigger than a sable,” Barkov pointed out.

“Then maybe the dog grabs a leg and does not let go until we arrive. What I want to know is—”

Bunin never finished his sentence.

Cole settled his crosshairs on the man to the right. At this distance, it was impossible to see their faces. Both men looked tall and heavy in their winter coats. The group of soldiers paused; some lit cigarettes or drank from flasks of vodka. Maybe the booze kept them going. It was possible that they were listening to the dogs; the two tall men and the shorter one seemed to be conferring about something.

He adjusted the crosshairs about a foot above the distant target to account for the drop that the bullet would make. Some officer had called it the bullet’s trajectory, but Cole knew it was simple gravity. When you threw a rock, it fell to earth, and a bullet was no different. A bullet traveled a whole lot farther, but it was falling just like that rock the moment it left the barrel. The air, though heavy with the promise of snow, was barely stirred by the wind, so that much, at least, was in Cole’s favor as he took aim.

He held the crosshairs steady, unwavering, and slowly squeezed the trigger, gently applying pressure with the pad of his right index finger.

Through the scope he could see all three men talking, oblivious.

Cole felt a familiar rush. This was the part of being a sniper that no one ever spoke about. Most people saw how a sniper would be satisfied in the ability to hit a distant target. Cole almost took that part for granted anymore—hitting targets was like pulling on his boots in the morning. He just did it. Without thinking much about it. However, that sense of holding a life in your hands—well, it was an almost god-like power. That part of being a sniper never faded or got old. It was what thrilled him about putting his finger on the trigger.

Focus , he warned himself.

By now, his body was operating on autopilot. He had done this so many times that it was like sleepwalking. Thinking too hard at this point only spoiled the shot Better to let training and instinct take over.

His finger applied the last fraction of the nine-point-eight pounds of pressure needed to release the trigger.

What happened next was a complex chain reaction that had changed little from the days when a twelfth century Chinese warrior fired a stone projectile from what was essentially a pipe. Thanks to modern technology, however, it was now a chain reaction that took place instantaneously.

Within the mechanism of the rifle, the firing pin shot forward and struck the center of the round in the chamber. That firing pin caused the primer in the base of the brass cartridge to explode, which in turn cased the gunpowder in the cartridge itself to ignite. The cyclone of hot gases drove the bullet down the barrel, in which the rifling gripped and spun the bullet until it emerged at a speed of more than two thousand feet per second. The spinning bullet honed in on its target like a supersonic hornet.

It all happened faster than Cole could think it.

Bullseye .

Bunin was still asking Barkov and the Mink his question when a neat round hole appeared in his chest. Barkov watched Bunin open his mouth in surprise once, then twice, before he sank to his knees.

Traveling at just a little under muzzle velocity now, the impact of the bullet released more than eighteen-hundred foot pounds of energy into Bunin’s chest. His lungs exploded and his heart shattered, killing him instantly.

“ Sniper! ” Barkov bellowed, mostly for the benefit of the soldiers who lolled nearby. He was diving for cover behind a clump of bushes before Bunin’s dead body hit the ground. Right about then, the noise of the rifle shot finally reached their ears.

The Mink had found a boulder to shelter behind and had gone to one knee, his rifle to his shoulder, scoping the vast open taiga for a target.

The soldiers were still busy putting away their vodka. Two or three, including young Dmitri, gawked at Bunin’s body. They were too shocked and surprised to move.

“Get your heads down, you fools,” Barkov shouted at them.

They finally stirred themselves to action and scrambled behind what shelter they could find. If the sniper had fired again, he could have killed at least one more.

But he did not fire.

Sniper. The word ran through Barkov’s mind again. Only a sniper would fire once, and then keep his finger off the trigger.

“That shot was from a long way off,” the Mink announced from his hiding place, several feet away. “Whoever it was knew his business.”

“See anything?”

“Bushes, rocks, grass. That is not what you meant, is it?”

“The prisoners had no weapons.”

“Maybe Inna took Dmitri’s rifle,” the Mink suggested.

“No, she did not. Besides, what could anyone hit with that piece of shit? You saw what happened. One shot, and Bunin is dead.”

“Maybe not such a good shot,” the Mink said. “Whoever it was, was trying to shoot you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Think about it. Who looked like you from a distance?”

Barkov nodded. As usual, the Mink made sense. But that still did not answer the question of who had shot at them. “Let’s go see if we can find this sniper,” Barkov said.

He didn’t care about Bunin, beyond the fact that someone else would now have to take care of those dogs. What he did care about was that somehow, his quarry had turned the tables on him.

Cole and Vaccaro watched the Russians in the distance. “How long do we wait?”

“Long as we need to.”

“Do you think you got Barkov?” Vaccaro asked.

“I would say that’s a fifty-fifty chance,” Cole said. “I shot a big man. Was it Barkov? Flip a coin.”

“If he’s half the sniper he’s supposed to be, he’s already on his belly down there, trying to worm his way toward us.”

“Let him come on,” Cole said. “If someone shoots at us, then we know it ain’t Barkov that I shot down there.”

“The dogs are getting closer. You hear them?”

Cole nodded. “Them dogs are gonna be a problem.”

Down below, some of the soldiers had not hidden themselves well. Cole picked out a fellow who was lighting a cigarette.

Shot him.

Barkov gave orders for the men to stay put. There were no arguments after a second bullet killed one them. Nobody did anything as stupid as light a cigarette after that. Barkov kept forgetting that these men had not experienced war, until today.

He and the Mink began to work their way forward, using the terrain for cover. It was likely that the sniper had fired from the high ground just ahead. By working around to the left, they could follow a depression—not quite a gully—that brought them closer to the hill without exposing themselves to the sniper.

Barkov was beginning to have the nagging thought that perhaps, just perhaps, there was more to this escape than he had perceived. He thought about the fact that their quarry had somehow managed to cross miles and miles of taiga at a punishing pace. How was that possible? One of the trio had just picked off Bunin. With what weapon? None of it made sense.

He pushed aside his doubts and followed the Mink through the brush. True to his name, the Mink moved almost soundlessly. When people thought of a mink, they thought of fur coats. However, a mink was not cuddly. By nature, a mink was in fact a predator, and ruthless.