Stephen Hunter - I, Sniper

“They’s not going nowhere. Where would they go?”

“Tomorrow, oh-five-hundred. Tonight you better hope I don’t have nightmares of you guys holding me down while the water crushed my lungs, because I might decide to take it personally and put a bullet in the potatohead.” He clicked off.

The call finished, Bob knew he had to check kit while it was still light. Though it was probably an unnecessary precaution, he didn’t want to be throwing flashlight beams into the darkness.

Weapons: He wore Denny Washington’s Sig 229 in a Mitch Rosen horizontal leather holster under his left shoulder. It was loaded with twelve.40 Corbon +P hollow points, and he had two more twelve-round mags hanging vertically under his right shoulder, to balance the weight of the automatic on the other side of the harness. That gave him thirty-six; if he needed more, he should have had an M4 along.

The rifle was a stainless steel Remington 700 Sendero with a gray-green camo McMillan stock, more hunting rig than dedicated sniper, but accurate as hell way out there with its 7mm Remington Ultra Magnum 150-grain cartridges loading Swift Scirocco polycarbonate-tipped bullets, of which he had four boxes of twenty. The only tactical flourish was the Leupold Mark IV 4-15X scope with the old mil-dot range-finding system built into its reticle, secured in heavy Badger Ordnance tactical rings and bases. The barrel, which he had taped black to mute the dull silver gleam, was fluted, which theoretically meant it cooled faster and empirically made it lighter, and it wore a Blackhawk black canvas cheek pad lashed to the stock to provide the higher stockweld necessary from the prone.

He had an SOG black steel Bowie with seven inches of razor-sharp death taped to the ankle of his right 5.11 assault boot. He had a Colt.380 Pocket Automatic 1908 in his right cargo pocket, with eight Corbon 95-grainers aboard.

Wish I had an M4. Wish I had that Swedish K. Wish I had the best weapon of all, which is two thousand marines.

Food and drink: He had a hydro-pack on his back, a water bladder slung flat against his spine and sustained by shoulder straps, with a tube that curled around his neck, so he could hydrate anytime he needed to without the excess motion of unlimbering, then unscrewing a canteen, then reversing the motion. He also had a Depends on, for obvious reasons. He had six energy bars. He had insect repellent, lip balm, alcohol swabs, and a trauma kit strapped to his lower left calf, with scissors, bandages, a couple of packs of clotting agents, disinfectant, and morphine Syrettes.

Communications: He had the radio unit from the ranch, freshly empowered with new batteries. He had his Nokia folder, freshly charged.

Camouflage: He had his best ghillie, a cumbersome exoskin made largely of heavy gauze secured to a one-piece reinforced tactical unit and woven cleverly with six-by-one-inch strips of cloth in the green-brown-gray dispersal pattern of the natural world in autumn, an abstraction so dazzlingly authentic that it all but disappeared when inserted into nature and further camouflaged by its wearer’s willingness to endure the ordeal of complete stillness. He had a boonie hat, soft and floppy-brimmed, itself multihued but more importantly also woven with tufts of the nature-toned material. He had three sticks of face paint-green, tan, brown-that would fold the whiteness of his face into the blur of natural color. The only odd color visible would be the lenses of his Maui Jim prescription shades, tear-shaped, brown, sprayed with lacquer to counteract their tendency to reflect the light. All in all, he looked like a bush.

He geared up. An observer, though of course there was none, might have thought of a samurai preparing for a duel at a temple against a hated enemy, or a knight strapping on the armor for a joust to the death with the forces of darkness. Swagger, no romantic, thought of none of this, only the careful placement of gear, the protection of the film reel inside a nesting of bubble wrap inside a thickness of duct tape, in his left cargo pocket, the buttons well closed and checked; he thought of the ordeal of the night and the different ordeal of the day. He put on his war face, smearing alternating abstractions of the green, tan, and brown face paint this way and that, until all his pink flesh was hidden and only the absolutism of war camouflage showed. He thought of the long shot, of the short, quick encounter, all of it shooting for blood. He thought of his plan and how many ways it could fall apart and leave him alone surrounded by enemies; he thought of his age, which was way beyond the limit for this kind of mission; he thought of the soreness in his joints, particularly in his right hip from both a bullet and a sword cut, and six or so operations; he thought of his wife and two daughters and how he missed them; and finally he thought of Carl Hitchcock, head shot open, his legacy tarnished into crazed marine sniper, and all other thoughts, memories, dreams, hopes, and fears disappeared. Now the advantage was his. No more recon, no more recovery, no more negotiation. It was straight killing time, at last.

It was time to hunt.

The boys, heavily geared up, left at 2100, when the last smear of sun disappeared. Theirs was a hard thing: they had to cover the miles on foot, hung with weapons, ammo, ghillies, knives, water, and protein bars; night-navigate off their GPSs, shortcutting over foothills and down draws to achieve crow-flight directness; arrive in the dark still, low crawl a thousand yards, dig in, camo up, and settle into perfect stillness for four or so hours of perfect snipercraft awaiting the shot. It was more ordeal than job, just barely doable by war athletes at the peak of operational perfection with two hours in the gym and a five-mile run per day behind them for years. But then, this is what you trained for.

Anto was left alone in the house. He didn’t fancy his own agonies: he’d be naked to the elements in harsh weather for a barely survivable length of time, and riding the goddamned ATV fast over rough territory, his bollocks bouncing and squishing, the brutal cold-in the thirties, sure-turning fingers blue and bum white, and when he got there, there being the goal at the end, then a new game started and he’d be thrown this way and that on the radio or the mobile, all of which was getting him into a delicate shooting situation where he’d be so close to the target, a hair’s width of mistake in hold or press would dress him in a 7.62 forever, which might only last the eight seconds it took to bleed him out.

He’d smear his flesh, particularly his feet and hands, with thick grease to fight the cold; he’d wear gloves and socks, surely the bastard wouldn’t complain about that; and he’d stoke on amphetamines, the soldier’s little chemical buddy, that would keep aggression, alertness, and quick thinking at the highest pitch until the natural juices of combat took over.

He tried to sleep but couldn’t; he jacked off to a dirty book, but that didn’t calm him; he didn’t want to mix booze with the recipe of pills he’d take on leaving, so he just tried to sit there, soothing himself with memories of kills.

The best: a squaddie of fellas setting up an ambush in deepest slum Basra, the hide given away by waterboarding that Iraqi lieutenant colonel. So he sets up to the east with Ginger spotting, and Raymond’s shooting from the west with Jimmy on the tube. It’s pure sniper pleasure. He got nineteen in about two minutes, firing, finding a new target, firing again, throwing the bolt in a blur, watching them boys pivot when hit, then go slack as death sent them to paradise, them falling with the thud of jointless collections of bones and meat. The bastards had no place to run that day, because that was their plan, to blow a Coalition Humvee at a place where all the exits was blocked, and shoot down the survivors. Ha! Hoisted on their own petards, was they.