Stephen Hunter - I, Sniper

“I’m liking what I’m hearing. Sure you’re not just trying to pick up a bonus?”

“It ain’t just suck-up, Tom. Look at the standings. You’re number four. You’ve never been that high in the standings at this point before. Last year, as I recall, you’s about number fifteen. There’s no way of coming back from fifteen. You’re still in the hunt.”

“How about rifle and shotgun?”

“You plan to save handgun mistakes on rifle and shotgun, and that’s fine, but I thought you ran too hard on the rifle. That’s a sophisticated motion, throwing the lever but not so hard you pull the muzzle out of control, keeping that left hand in good command, closing up and touching off, then throwing even while you’re moving to the next target. You done well, I’m not saying that, but I thought you’s a little overexcited. It was the first event, you had adrenaline, so you brought it off. Don’t know how tomorrow will be, or the next day, if you don’t drop back into second gear, particularly on the last few rounds.”

“Good advice,” said Tom.

“As for the shotgun, maybe the same thing, but since there’s only four reloads, it’s not likely you’ll turn to fumblethumbs that quickly. Though by the time you get to shotgun, your hands are tired from all the shooting you’ve just completed. But your fingers are so happy when they’re on the shotguns, even a trumpet gun like the ninety-seven, I don’t think that’s going to be your problem.”

“Hmm, I’ve got a problem? I thought you were telling me how damn good I was.”

“Well, it’s a problem most men have. Called pride. It goeth before a tumble, or so the book says.”

“I’m listening.”

“I feel you pushing too hard. It almost means too much to you. I’m worried that late, tired, your hands all beat to hell, you’ll face a challenge where you need your best. And you won’t be able to find it, Texas Red. Because you are a man of accomplishment, you cannot conceive of failure. Yet even the Kid hisself failed; he went out unarmed, and along come Pat Garrett and put a jujube of lead into his gut. The Kid was proud; in his pride he got away from his greatness, and his greatness was doing all them little things right, like always sitting with his back to the wall and forswearing that fourth drink, because it was the fourth one that slowed him, and always carrying a gun. That night in Fort Sumner, he’s feeling so Kid, so invulnerable, he gets cocky, he gets sloppy, and he can’t conceive of a man coming into his own space and facing him. He’s unarmed, except for a butcher knife. He steps into his bedroom, quien está? he asks, who’s there, he knows someone’s there, he’s holding that knife, and it’s still in him to make it through the night, all he has to do is be the Kid and lunge, and he lives till two and twenty. But his mind freezes, and old Pat, slower, grumpier, used up, old Pat gets big iron whipped out fast and puts a forty-four into him. And down goes the Kid.”

“You see that in me?”

“You ain’t no Kid, Mr. Constable, not by a long shot. But I’m worried there’ll come a time when you think you is. And as the Kid found out, thinking you’re the Kid can get a man killed.”

There wasn’t much point in stealth, not at this point. No reason to wear the ghillie. He even poured some water from his bottle and washed the paint off, so that he’d get through this last on his own face, not the jungle’s.

He steered a wide circle on his ATV and came into Lone Tree Valley from the west, wondering if Anto was already there. Anto, driven by anger and fear and vengeance, had to take a more direct route, which was in length about four miles; this more circuitous journey was almost seven. Coming over the crest, he saw the lone tree itself, surprisingly dense for fall, its leaves vibrating in the low wind and, as they did, seeming to shimmer as first the dull and then the bright side showed itself to the sun.

He rumbled down the slope, acknowledging the featurelessness of the place. It was all epic space in a shallow bowl of undulating grass, capped by the frosty marble of the western clouds against the bluest blue of all. No animal life was visible, and the push of wind filled the air with the sound of air and the stalks of grass leaning against each other.

He drove to the tree but left the ATV well short of it. He got off, feeling the Sig bang under his left arm, holding the 7-mil Ultra Mag in his right. It was Chuck’s, a hunting rifle for knocking down big animals at long ranges with a cartridge case the size of a cigar, something new cooked up more by the marketing department than the true ballisticians. The industry needed new products. This one was a lulu: kicked like a mule, but it shot fast and flat as anything on the planet, and when it arrived, it had excess power. Chuck said he’d hit an antelope at over five hundred yards, and the poor thing had cartwheeled, it was slapped with such energy.

He squatted, going into a sniper’s stillness, flat out in the open, though in shade, maybe a little to the east of the tree. He presented his back to Anto. He pulled his khaki hat down over his sunglassed eyes.

What would happen next would all come down to character: Anto’s. A true sniper would creep close, take and make the shot. That was duty, that was mission, that was job, even to a merc. He thought of that merc poem: “followed their mercenary calling, took their wages, and are dead.” Which war? Oh, yeah, the first big one. The boys who stopped the Germans for pay. And for professionalism: no vanity, no wasted motion, no ceremony, no self-celebration, no self-pity.

But Anto? Anto had that manic streak in him, that desperate need for approval and attention. His personality might be too big for standard military and then even for a genius outfit like 22 SAS. Maybe it was a death wish. Take the fall from grace in Basra: he’d had to have seen it coming, read the signs, and had plenty of time to back down or readjust-that’s the way the military worked, after all-but he insisted on his way with the aggressive interrogations and the ever-climbing kill count. So the Brits ultimately destroyed him, and you could blame them for their unwillingness to sustain the man who was, ever so distastefully, winning the war, but that was the way of the modern world, and of general staffs and politicians with the guts of puppies. Still, you had to blame Anto too, since a more modest professional, committed to his cause, would have found a way to keep operating, only under a lower profile. Not Anto. He wanted somehow to burn at the stake and give interviews from the flames.

Bob sat and sat and then, finally, Anto spoke through the radio.

“You bastard, you killed me mates!” said the Irishman, and the connect was loud and clear.

Anto cursed and ranted and vented a bit. When he stopped to catch his breath, Bob said, “You left out the part about them set up to kill me. We only shot men about to shoot us. You decided to put them in place; it’s on you, Colour Sergeant, not me.”

“You’re a bastard,” Anto said.

“But Anto still wants the film. Anto has to get the film.”

Anto said nothing for a while.

Finally he asked, “You didn’t send it out with that other fellow?”

“Nope,” said Bob. “Because Bob still wants the money. Bob has to get the money.”

“You’re as mercenary as himself,” said Anto. “When all the flags been put away, and all the speeches done, and all the warriors locked up in mental homes, the only thing left is the money, no?”

“The only thing left is the money.”

“Ha,” said Anto, enjoying his little jest.

“Where are you?” asked Swagger.

“I’m still at the goddamned site of the atrocity. I had to bury me boys proper. You think I’d leave ’em for the jackals?”