Stephen Hunter - I, Sniper

Each rode the optics before him. On the spotting scope, Jimmy’s was by far the wider view, and he patrolled the valley floor, then up and down the opposing slope in calm, orderly fashion, as he had been trained, never rushing, never tiring, never blinking, apprehending each and every detail, hunting for some kind of change-the straight line, the shadow falling in the wrong direction, a quick movement, a puff of dust where there was no wind, a dead branch amid bright green sprigs. But there was no change at all, only the lapping of the grass under the pressure of the steady, slight wind and, above the horizon of the valley, the slow, magnificent rush of the clouds, boiling cumulus that looked like frozen explosions with utterly detailed fretwork in their tumbles.

“Look,” said Raymond, who’d seen them first.

A flock of strange beasts had moseyed in, with white tails and throats, the size of goats, their horns like the arms of a lyre for a Greek god to pluck a melody on.

“Jaysus, what craytures them be?” wondered Jimmy.

“Did we take a wrong turn and go to Africa, I’m wondering, Jimmy,” said Raymond.

“We did, sure of it. No, we did not. Them’s antelopes of the American type. Good eating, so I’m told. Hunted hard, the more you kill, the more they breed.”

“Who could kill a beauty thing like that?” wondered Raymond.

Agh. How much longer? And how had it gotten so hot so fast? And where did the left half of me butt go?

Ginger lay, like any sniper, hard and calm in the hide. But this was no ordinary hide. In all the fighting he’d been in-considerable, what with Gulf I, Gulf II, the odd secret tiff in times of alleged peace, the long hard pull at Basra during the insurrection, all the security jobs for Graywolf after the fall-the hides offered a bit more comfort and movement. An apartment, an arroyo, a station on an outpost sandbag wall looking across a valley of heathen for movement. He’d never been asked before to pretend to be the earth itself, silent, abiding, unmoving.

Not an easy role to play. Thank God for the water, he could not stop drinking it, and what happened if it went too soon, by midafternoon say? He was out here till well after dark if nothing happened.

And of course his head. The Yank had battered him good. Hit him hard; you could understand it, the fellow paying him back for the water procedure. But still. A doctor would have put stitches in and given him light duty for a week, as well as the best painkillers Irish medicine could produce. But no such niceties existed here in wild America. No stitches, so under the bandages, he could feel the wet of blood seepage. The painkillers were over-the-counter, and any more Advil and he’d be a walking Advil himself, all brown and bluntlike, a six-three, 240-pound pill of ache medicine.

Worse, at least Jimmy and Raymond had visuals to amuse them. His vision was locked on to a spread of a few dozen yards about the creek, and even when the strange craytures came down to drink, he hadn’t a good look at them because they never quite came into his zone of vision. Ach, what was they? Some kind of-

He heard something.

Low and far off at first, then it rose. He waited for it to clarify, and presently it did. His heart leapt in actual joy, a rare thing for a man so stoic and duty-bred as he. He knew it to be the sound of the ATV Anto was driving.

His hands tightened on the pistol grip of his M4, he said a quick Hail Mary; he wished he had time to pop another upper for a jolt of energy and concentration; he flexed what he could flex and got ready for the action.

The ATV climbed a ridge and a bell sounded and Anto was happy to see from the GPS that this was where, according to previous radioed instruction, he turned from radial 265 to 109, that is, along the rim of this ridge. He had been worried at first, with all the this-way and that-way until he was confused, but he had a general idea he was trending away from the valley he’d designated as the spot for the final play, toward which he’d bet Swagger would guide him, and where, obedient to his wishes, the Spartans Jimmy, Raymond, and Ginger now lay concealed in ambush.

That sense of despair increased as the game progressed and the clock wound its way onward, but now, finally, he was oriented correctly, or so he believed.

He felt like he was on the moon, as on each side of his ridge, a wide-to-forever stretch of undulating hills, dips, crescents of shadow, outcrops of rock yielded spectacle but little information. Beyond in a distance too far to be measured, he saw snaggled peaks arise, some even snowcapped. But here in the high grasslands, it was all dips and humps, a frozen sea of waves dappled in shadow.

He followed the heading and might have gone to eternity or at least dark when he heard the buzz of the radio signal. He dropped to idle, twisted, got the radio out. Of his clothes, now that he’d adjusted to nakedness, what he missed most was pockets.

“Potato?”

“I am here, goddamnit,” he said.

“Stop. Re-ent to heading zero-nine-six, go for one-iles and stop. It’ll be-”

“How many miles, goddamnit?”

“One-point-six. Stop. Stay on the scooter-isappear on me. Ro-r?”

“Roger that, ye slabber.”

As usual, the voice didn’t rise to any provocations but merely disappeared. Anto reset the GPS and followed its guidance, pleased to see that now indeed it seemed to be taking him where he thought his designated valley ought to be.

The 1.6 passed quickly over bare ground and slopes that weren’t quite hills until, at 1.5, he found himself on a steep upgrade, rising to a rim that, examined from a distance, seemed larger than the others. The machine chugged stubbornly against the incline, and in a few more minutes he halted.

The promised land. The valley was vast and he saw in it the same features that had been represented pictorially on the geodesic survey map. It took him a second to orient himself, then he realized he was at the south edge, which meant that of the slopes before him, the right hid his ambushers, and the left would in time present Swagger for the killing.

He was certain that at this moment he was under observation, and so he fought the impulse to show emotion at the success of his strategy, and he fought the instinct to double-check his placements by looking for signs of his hiding men. He kept his face impassive and registered no excitement, no recognition, nothing but the sullen war face of his breed.

He knew he’d wait a bit. Wherever he was, Swagger himself had just arrived, for just as certainly as Anto had been moved about, Swagger, monitoring him, had to be moving too, to get from place to place and watch for followers. But now Swagger would study the valley, for perhaps as much as an hour, examining every tuft, every rill, every knoll, every bush, every rise, every fall, looking for signs that Anto had somehow done exactly what Anto had indeed done-that is, guess the spot and place men there. So this was where the boys’ snipercraft had to be at its highest.

The day seemed to disconnect from time. The only noise was the persistence of the wind; otherwise the surface of the earth seemed devoid of life except for the naked, now red-shouldered man on the odd four-wheeled vehicle, which looked more like a toy than anything of serious purpose. A bird rode wind funnels in circles, hunting for prey-another sniper, in his way. Some kind of yowl rose briefly and disappeared as briefly, as something ate something else. The time passed, second by second. Anto sat alone on the bike seat, straddling the engine, buck nekkid as the day he was born but now used to it and not feeling shame at all.

Finally a voice crackled through the earphones.

“See the creek running through the valley?”