Stephen Hunter - Time to Hunt

He pushed it ever so slowly forward until it would go no farther, then pushed the bolt handle downward two inches, feeling the bolt lock in place.

Without assuming the position to shoot, he put his hand around the pistol grip of the rifle, threaded a finger through the trigger guard, felt the curvature of the trigger. His finger caressed it through the glove. Without consciously willing it, his trigger finger squeezed ever so slightly, feeling a dry twig of resistance for an instant, and then the trigger broke with the precision of a bone-china teacup handle snapping off. Perfect: four and a half pounds, not an ounce more, not an ounce less.

He pulled the rifle to him and examined the muzzle where the Browning Optimizing System was screwed to a precise setting to control barrel vibration. The setting was perfect and tight.

Next, he slipped his glove off, unzipped his parka, reached inside the many layers until he reached his shirt, where he’d stored twenty rounds in a plastic case. Close to his heart. Close to the warmest part of him. He opened the box and removed four. Then he carefully returned the box to the pocket, to preserve the warmer environment. He opened the bolt and slid the cartridges, one by one, into the magazine. This somehow always pleased him. It was the heart of the issue of the rifle: the careful fit of round to chamber, the slow orchestration of the bolt syncopating this union, then vouchsafing it with the final, camming lockdown that felt solid as a bank vault.

No safety. Never used safeties. Didn’t believe in them. If you used safeties, it meant you didn’t trust yourself. If you gave yourself up to the whim of mechanics, you begged trouble. You just kept your finger off the trigger until you were on target. That’s how it worked.

Solaratov blew on his hand, pulled the glove on, then shifted his vision downhill to the house.

In the slightly intensified light of the rising dawn, the house was more distinct. The upstairs light remained on, but now one downstairs had been added. Its orange glow suffused the night. Because of the angle he could see one of the windows but the others were shielded by the rake of the porch roof. Behind that visible window, now and then a figure moved. It would be the woman, would it not, preparing breakfast? Making coffee, scrambling eggs, pouring milk for cereal for the child.

But which woman? The FBI agent’s wife? Or the sniper’s wife? That’s why he couldn’t send a shot into the shadow and be gone. Suppose it was the wrong woman? He could not afford another failure and, worse, he would never, ever again come upon conditions so totally in his favor.

Do not rush, he told himself. Do not move until you are sure.

The light rose, eventually, though second by second one could detect no difference. Now the day had gone from black edging to pewter to pewter edging to gray. The clouds were still low, though no snow was falling; no sun today. It would be hours before anyone could helicopter in, hours beyond that before they could come overland, except by snowmobile, and what point was there to that? By that time he’d be far, far away from the scene of the crime.

Telephone!

Of course! That last detail, the one you forgot, the one that could get you killed .

He fires, kills the woman and retreats. But the other woman sees her dead in the snow, and quickly picks up the phone and calls the sheriffs office. Deputies nearby on snowmobiles are reached by radio. They could get here in minutes; they’d zoom up the slope and quickly find his tracks. They’d call in his location. Other deputies would be dispatched. He’d end up in some half-baked last stand in this godforsaken chunk of America, brought low by a hayseed with a deer rifle who was a part-time deputy sheriff or forest ranger.

His eyes went back to the house, explored it carefully until at last he found the junction of the phone wires where they left the pole that ran along the road and descended to the house. His eyes met an astonishment!

The line was already down! The snow had taken the line down!

Now there was an omen! It was as if the God he had been taught not to believe in had come to his aid, not merely by bringing in the storm to cover his tracks but by breaking the phone line! Was God a communist?

He smiled just the littlest bit.

He looked back. A sudden slash of orange light flicked across the snow, as the front door opened.

He watched as a little girl ran off the porch and dived into a pile of snow. He could hear her laughter all the way up here. There was no other sound.

Then, standing on the edge of the porch, he saw the woman.

He was in the soup now.

The cloud was everywhere, visibility sunk to nothing. He was in the cloud and felt its penetrating moisture. Wetness gathered on his parka, glazing the white arctic-warfare pattern. His eyelashes filled with dampness. It gleamed off the pewter-colored rifle barrel.

The night-vision goggles were worthless now: engaged, they simply produced green blankness.

Throw them, he thought. Dump them. Complete shit!

But instead he pushed them up on his head; what would happen if he came out of it and needed them to negotiate rocks or something?

Instead he groped onward, the rifle hanging on his shoulder, trying desperately to keep up speed. But now the ground was rockier and he couldn’t see far enough to choose the right paths through the descending gullies, the twisty snow-clogged passage between rocks, the increasing tufts of vegetation bent into nightmare forms by the thick, wet snow. His own breath blossomed before him, foamy and betraying.

He fell. The snow jammed into his throat, got down inside the parka. His leg hurt like hell. A shiver ran down his body.

Get up, goddammit!

He climbed back to his feet, remembering another dark day of fog and wet. That was so long ago; it seemed to have happened in some other lifetime. That day he’d been so electric, so animal, so tiger; his reflexes were alive, and in a secret way he now realized, he loved it all.

Now he felt old and slow. His limbs were working out of coordination. The cold and the wet fought him. His leg hurt, particularly his hip. A slow sting had begun inside his thigh and he realized that his impact had reopened the incision above his knee where Solaratov’s bullet had nestled all these years in its capsule of scar tissue.

The rage came again, a hot red tide, a frenzy of mutilating hatred.

God help me, he prayed.

God help the sniper .

He raced downward, coming across a clear spot, and thought for just a moment he might be out of it, but saw in the next second it was only an illusion.

Snow!

In the gray light of dawn the snow was like a giant mound of softness. She thought of ice cream, vanilla, in big white piles everywhere, thick enough to grab her body and support her when she threw herself into it. She tasted it and received only messages of coldness and texture, which in the next fraction of a second became cold water, amazingly.

She giggled in delight.

“Mommy! It’s fun!”

“Honey, don’t go far. I can’t get you yet. The sun will be up in a few minutes.”

“Wheeeeeeee! I want to sled.”

“No, baby, not yet. Wait till Aunt Sally is up. If you get hurt, I can’t reach you.”

She struggled through the snow, which reached her knees, not listening a bit. The sled was in the barn. She knew where, exactly. The barn was empty but the sled leaned against the wall, beyond the eight stalls, in a feeding pen. It was an old sled — she could see it exactly in her mind — with rusty red runners and a battered wooden flatbed. She should have gotten it last night when they said it would snow!

“Nikki!” her mother called.