Стивен Хантер - Game of Snipers

“Okay,” said Swagger. “Just hear me out. If it matters, my eyesight has degraded: from twenty/ten to twenty/twenty. I spend three hours a day on horseback. Ever see any fat cowboys? No, because the horse works your muscles like an exercise machine, keeps you limber and strong. As for the guns, that’s pretty much all I do. I can shoot with or against anyone in the world and either win or tie, and if I tie, I’m dead, but so is he. Raiding? I did an extended tour in Vietnam with CIA Studies and Observation Group—‘commandos’—and that’s all we did was plan raids, raid, look for new raids. I come from raiders. My father raided five Japanese islands. My grandfather raided the Huns for eighteen months in the first big war. Ask the Germans about him, they still remember. He also had a spell raiding motorized bank gangs for the FBI in the ’30s. Note the lack of a motorized bank gang problem now? Too bad you don’t have either of them, I agree, but you’re stuck with me. As for diplomacy — really, I’ve signed a contract, and to the world I’ll just be another hard-ass contractor trying to get his kicks. Happens every day all over the world.”

The Director looked at him impassively. Not a guy to go “Gee, wow!” easily.

“But all of that is irrelevant,” Swagger continued. “I can stay here with you Mossad rabbis under the presumption that everything is going to happen exactly as it’s planned. Has there ever been a mission like that? Even at Entebbe, the best special op in the history of the world, your commander got plugged. So if things go bad — say, there’s more resistance; say, militia units from nearby get on-site faster than we expect — you need someone to eyeball that place. Maybe you get Juba, maybe not. And if you don’t, you nevertheless have to learn what he’s planning. You need a sniper, a gun guy, to read Juba’s setup. If I see his equipment, his targets, his ammo, his scopes, I can do that, and we can draw conclusions. And from conclusions, we can move on to intercepts or preparations, whatever. And if we do that, we can save lives. So the priorities here have to be these: nail the big guy first, or, failing that, get hard intel on upcoming activity. Anything less than that is failure and not worth the effort. I’m not the afterthought; I’m the thought. I’m the whole goddamned dog and pony show. Do you understand?” he added for the Director.

“I suspect he does,” said Gershon. “He went to Harvard.”

The Director looked at Swagger.

Finally, he said, “It’s Lieutenant Commander Motter’s mission. We’ll let him make the call.”

“You’ll be fine,” said Cohen, smiling at Swagger. “Motter went to Harvard too.”

That this fellow Motter was a lieutenant commander, not a major, meant that Unit 13 was, like the SEALs, a navy thing. You couldn’t tell from the man himself, all geared up in mushroom-cap helmet, his Kevlar strapped with frags and flares and fighting knives and various kits and packs that might come in handy, a Glock Kydexed to his chest, his face smeared black to match the night. He looked like any special ops jock, from SEAL to Delta to Pointe du Hoc Ranger to Spartan at the Hot Gates — same war, different day — to the horse raiders under Sergeant Major Odysseus outside Troy that fateful evening. He smoked a cigarette, listened impassively, as the Director spoke to him. His eyes were dead, his emotional engagement somewhere between calm preparedness and existential meaninglessness.

“Sergeant Swagger,” he said. “I read the accounts of Sniper Team Romeo-Two-Bravo against the North Vietnamese Second Battalion, Third Shock Army, in the highlands outside Nha Trans in 1974. That was a hell of a fight. But you were twenty-six then. Now you’re seventy-two.”

“The only thing I can’t do now that I did then is win at hopscotch. A weapon will equalize me out just fine.”

“To be frank, I’d much rather go drinking with you, hear your stories and learn your lessons, than lead you into combat. But let me ask the fellows. We’re tight in battle, but I like democracy in the unit.”

The young man turned, wandered off to where a dozen or so other guys were arrayed on the tarmac, all identical helmeted dogs of war. They gathered and talked, quietly and briefly, and finally Motter waved Bob over.

“Welcome to the team, brother.”

Men crowded, slapped him on the back. One guy kissed him. Names came at him, and he kept nodding as if able to remember them while answering “Bob, Bob.” Like the SEALs, 13 was clearly a first-name-only kind of outfit.

“Too late for gear,” said Motter. “We’re airborne in three.” He turned. “You, sentry, over here please.”

Swagger hadn’t even noticed air force security guards at the perimeter of the loading area. The fellow loped over.

“Last-minute addition. Don’t have time to check an M4 out of the armory. Sergeant”—he looked closely at the name tag on the sentry’s Kevlar vest—“Sergeant Mappa, he needs your vest, your Uzi, and your ammo.”

Such was the charisma of Motter that no resistance was offered. The sentry seemed pleased to play with the cool kids. Smiling, he stripped off his Kevlar and handed it over to Bob, who tossed his sport coat on the tarmac, pulled the vest tight over his polo shirt — helpfully, black — and clicked the links closed, feeling it tighten and solidify. Where the helmet came from, he never knew, but it more or less fit; strapped, it was reasonably secure. Someone handed him a piece of charcoal, and he rubbed it over his pale features, feeling the grit. Soon he was of the night. Finally, he took up the ancient submachine gun, and even though he’d never touched one, it felt so familiar, like he’d known it all his life, so iconic was it. Short, with an open bolt, its weight centralized in the grip, which housed the twenty-five-round 9mm magazine in an elbow joint, with another twenty-five-rounder hitched on, all under the density of a telescoping bolt, it felt solid and useful in his hands as he looped the sling around his neck. He seized the nearly perpendicular grip, conspicuously pronging his finger upward, far from the trigger, noting that the grip safety had been clearly taped flat, so there’d be no problem if he had to shoot fast and didn’t come up square on the grip.

The sergeant pointed to a horizontal slide lever, labeled in Hebrew, over the trigger guard of the blocky little thing. He said, “First position, safety on. Second, single shot. Forward, bap-bap-bap! ”

Bob nodded. He knew their doctrine was chamber empty, and the guns didn’t go hot until they were safely on the ground, advancing toward the objective. Then, and only then, would the boys pull the bolt to get ready for the man dance. As policy, the Israel Defense Force didn’t want anyone jumping out of a chopper with a hot gun.

The three choppers began to whine. Slowly at first, gathering momentum, quickly speeding to a blurred fury, their rotors sucked at the air, and the boys self-divided into squads to file aboard, six to a ship, Swagger being the seventh on the Command ship.

“You’re on me,” said Motter, pulling him along.

“Got it,” he said. He turned to the three Mossad wise men — stolid, two smoking, one not — but they simply witnessed the ritual in silence.

“Let’s go to war, brother,” said Motter.

Three dark birds hurtling over the dark landscape. Running hot, running low to avoid radar. The raiders were silent, knowing that when they hit the landing zone, it could turn tragic in a split second, and would definitely turn complex in two. That was the nature of the raid, and if you couldn’t handle it, you were in the wrong business. So each man smoked, prayed, dreamed of sex, wondered if the Tel Aviv Guardians would beat the Jerusalem Bobcats, then wished they’d told their dad how much they loved him or hated him, and told Sally Sue either to wait or to move on with her life. Each guy had his little thing.