Stephen Hunter - I, Sniper

Now that was a goddamn day a sniper lives for. He doubted even Swagger at his finest hit so many so fast. Maybe Swagger did more in a day, but ’twas over time and involved moving about, staying ahead of his hunters, a different game altogether. But he’d never had the intensity of taking that many that fast. A machine gunner might get it, but again, different: blurred, rushed, the working of the gun, the spray of empties flying, the muzzle blast and noise. His was pop , pop, pop , the suppressed AI taking them down, but each image against the reticle was memorable.

Was they all insurgents? He was shooting so fast and Ginger was changing magazines so fast, Anto couldn’t tell if indeed each had a giveaway AK on his back; did it matter? Not really, and what dif could it make if the Rockies howled “atrocity” or “massacre” or “murder” or whatever? The point was to give ’em a taste of obliteration in the boldest of ways, so it would haunt them, and maybe that was the beginning of the turnaround in Basra, even though his teams never got no credit, and soon enough the Clara Bartons had turned on them.

He glanced at his watch. He’d eaten enough time. It was 0430, time to grease up.

Nobody was blown, but Ginger, still fighting the concussion, wasn’t in the best of shape. He breathed raggedly, held his guts in, crouched low. A bit groggy, he swore he was fine, but Jimmy didn’t quite believe it. Eighteen miles is a long haul on the double time with all the stuff aboard, as well as the extra load of Anto’s rifle and pack with clothes, even though they were at acme shape. They’d made the crest, hidden Anto’s stuff where he’d designated, and now crouched just under the ridgeline, looking down on the broad, dark valley. Because he was cautious, Jimmy checked the GPS again and confirmed for himself that this was indeed the valley Anto had selected, the more southern of the two goggle lenses on the map.

Ginger gulped some water from the tube running out from his backpack.

“Easy, mate,” said Raymond. “You may be needing that around noon.”

“I’m fine,” said Ginger. “It’s me goddamned head, hurts so much. That fucker done a fine job on me.”

“He’s a grand one, he is,” said Raymond.

“We’ll see his corpse lying still in the grass tomorrow.”

“For sure we will.”

“Okay, lads, time for a last piss, then to camo up.”

They turned for modesty to hasten a last urination, pulled their own Depends adult diapers tight afterwards, and zipped and buckled up. Then came the squishing of the face paint, easy enough, for all had experience in this theatrical craft. Their features gone gray-green-brown, the next thing on the list was the wretched crawl-squirm-tug-wrestle into their ghillie suits and the button-up that followed as the heavy garment closed, heated, and tightened about them. This was followed by the labor of arising and pulling on packs and hats, and finally seizing rifles.

Each, of course, looked like an animated fluff of greenery, some cartoon-factory creation. It got worse when, three large beasts of war, caparisoned in the texture of the natural world itself, with packs of gear and mean implements of death strapped on, they began the long crawl down. At the halfway point they separated, partners Jimmy and Raymond heading for a shooting site and Ginger veering directly downward, to place himself and his M4 close to the creek and therefore, by design, close to the action.

A chill wind bit. He wore slippers at least to the bike. Above, moonglow but no moon lit a sector of sky, and in others the stars lay out in their millions. He could barely make out landforms, though some of the drugs he’d taken were said to enhance night vision. He felt revved, twitchy, intense. His ears were closed off by the headset leading to the radio, which was affixed to his one garment, a Wilderness belt about his gut.

“Potatohead?”

“Go ahead, bastard,” he said.

A scrambled crackle of mixed syllables responded.

“What?”

“I said, ta-socks off.”

“You bastard. Me feet’ll freeze.”

“An-gloves.”

“What again? I can hardly hear you, this radio transmission sucks. Can we switch to me mobile? It’ll be so much clearer and-”

“No. Gloves. Take off- loves .”

“Ach,” complained the Irishman, and complied. “See, nothing.”

“Ho-ight leg up.”

Anto did. “See, nothing.”

“Ok-going.”

The radio went dead.

“Bastard,” said Anto.

Anto threw his leg over the Honda Foreman, turned the key. At least he didn’t have to kick-start it, as in the old days. The little engine turned over, and with his bare right foot, he threw the gears, slipping once, tearing some skin, but he was so drugged up and so charged with uppers he barely felt it. He settled it, throttled up, and the four-wheeler’s tires, roughly nubbed for backcountry treks, bit into the earth and the thing lurched ahead.

It was easy going, though the wind bit at him, even through the drugged haze, and now and then a pebble or twig flew up and took off a chunk of skin. His bollocks were undisturbed as long as the road was more or less smooth, and in no time he’d gotten it up to forty, which was top speed on the Honda. He roared through the starglow, through the dark forms of mountains, following the directions he’d been given.

The water hole came up, and he circled it, looking for another track that was the High Ridge Trace, found it, and headed along. Here the going was rougher, as this wasn’t a road shared with pickups and Jeeps, but more of a bouncer, and it also took him so close to trees and brush that the limbs and leaves whipped him hard, sometimes very hard, as he rushed along. By now his hands were all but numb and controlling the brake and the throttle was getting harder. His feet, being close to the motor’s warmth, were surprisingly comfortable still and hadn’t begun to edge toward nothingness. He bent at another lash, saw some fine open road, ginned the throttle, and leapt ahead. As he flew, he checked his watch. It was only 0545 and he knew he’d make his destination in plenty of time.

Jimmy and Raymond, breathless and ragged and clotted with bits of grass, burrs, a slathering of dust stuck to sweat after the long crawl, set up about three hundred yards from the center of the valley flat, with a great overlook on the creek below, with no undulations or folds between them and the presumed target zone. It would be easy shooting, especially with the iSniper911 to solve the shot.

They got down in the prone, and rather than exactly digging in against the slight cant of the land, more or less insinuated their way into it, as if it were a crowd, not the planet Earth itself, squirming, adjusting, kicking now and then, trying to do all this without raising telltale signs like clots of thrown earth and dead weeds about themselves. Finally they had enough room to scootch down flat and not at the tilt, and Raymond took up the rifle, unfolded the bipod legs and had a time on the adjustments, getting the height just right, digging into the earth so that the legs of the support would be even, which would make the traverse easier, if indeed that’s what was called for. Meanwhile, Jimmy set up the spotter on its baby tripod, adjusting it for the same presumed target zone three hundred yards and fifteen degrees beneath horizontal out. It was still too dark for him to focus, though in fact a satiny glow had begun to light the eastern horizon across from them. After a bit of busyness, both were as set as they could get, and it was then that Jimmy unfurled a camo tarpaulin, a sheet of canvas threaded heavily with the strips of nature’s-coloring fabric as well as the odd twig or piece of thatch, so that it enveloped them, leaving only a peep slot at the farthest extreme, which left them barely enough room to observe and shoot. They settled in for the long, slow wait in abject stillness, a zen beyond death that was the sniper’s hardest discipline.