Stephen Hunter - Time to Hunt

At that moment he heard a bang, which could have been a shot, but it wasn’t. He turned and saw through the trees the house and a little puff of flung snow. That helped identify the sound. It had been the sound of a heavy cellar door closing, and when it had slammed shut, it had vibrated free a cloud of snow.

He’s in there with my family , Bob thought.

He had a rooted moment of terror. It felt like ice sliding down through his body, smooth and unbearably cold, numbing all the organs it brushed as it rushed through him.

But some part of his brain refused to panic, and he saw what he must do.

He raced to pick up the 7mm Remington Magnum, for the three hundred extra feet of velocity and the five hundred extra pounds of energy and, throwing aside his parka, ran, ran like a fool on fire or in love, not toward the house, which was too far, but for a good, straight-in angle on the door.

They heard the door creak as someone tried to pull on it.

“Oh, God,” said Sally.

“Over here,” instructed Julie.

She grabbed her daughter, and with the younger woman they fled to the back of the cellar, but only as far as the brick wall. There was no escape, for the stairwell up was jammed with junk to keep the same man out.

They fell back and cowered when the door cracked open, then was yanked wide, filling the dark space with light, destroying their adjusted vision.

He lumbered wheezily down the steps, kicking the junk aside like an enraged, drunken father home late from a night with the boys, come home to beat his wife. It stirred something deep in Julie, a memory of dread long buried, never examined. The cellar door slammed behind him, and he kicked more stuff aside until he came into the center of the room.

He blinked, waiting for his eyes to adjust, but he was everything they could possibly fear: a muscular gray savage dressed in white, except that a profuse smear of blood had irrigated a raggedy delta from a source on his chest, leaking down to his trousers and his boots.

He had a gray, blunt face, a crew cut and wintry little eyes. He smiled madly, and blood showed on his teeth. He coughed, and it erupted from his mouth. He seemed barely conscious, seemed almost to fall, but he stopped, caught himself and looked at them fiercely. He was insane with pain, his eyes lit weirdly, his whole body trembling.

The gun muzzle played across them all.

She stepped out.

The killer laughed for some strange reason, and another spurt of blood came from his mouth down to splash on his chest. His lungs were full of blood. He was drowning in it. Why wouldn’t he fall?

He lifted the pistol until it pointed into her face.

Julie heard her baby crying, heard the intake of Sally’s breath and thought of her husband and the man she’d loved before, the only two men she could ever love. She closed her eyes.

But he did not fire.

She opened them.

He had fallen halfway, but then he pulled himself up, and thrust the gun at her, his eyes filling with mad determination.

Bob ran until he had a good angle into the door.

He’ll stop. He has to wait for his eyes to adjust .

He saw it. The man would step into the darkness and pause as his eyes adjusted. He’d be there, just beyond the door, for the length of time it took his pupils to adjust. With Solaratov, that interval would be a second or so.

He dropped to one knee, braced the rifle on his leg, found the good shooting position. It was five hundred yards if it was an inch, but that had to be the zero on the rifle, for Solaratov had come so close to him so often.

Without thinking, he wrapped the sling tight about his left, supporting arm as he slipped into a good Marine Corps position, feeling a bite of pain from the opened wound, but leaning through it. He took three breaths, building up his oxygen, and looked for his natural point of aim as something in him screamed Faster! Faster! and another part cooed Slower, slower . He laid the crosshairs dead-center on the door, just a patch of gray wood smeared with snow, and prayed for the extra oomph of the 7mm to do its thing.

He had one moment of clarity, and at the subliminal level willed all he knew of shooting into the effort: the relaxation of the finger, trained over the hard years; the discipline of the respiratory cycle, and the rhythm of deeper and shallower exhalation; the cooperation of rods and cones in the back wall of the eye, the orchestration of pupil, eye and lens, and the overall guidance and wisdom of the retina; but most of all, that deep, willed plunge into stillness, where the world is gray and almost gone, yet at the same time sharp and clear.

Nothing matters , the man coached himself when things mattered most.

And then it was gone as the rifle fired, kicked against him, blowing the sight picture to nothing but blur, and when he came back on target he saw a mushroom of snow mist floating from the vibes where the bullet had blasted through the wood.

The pistol settled down; she saw the hugeness of its bore just feet away from her and then felt—

Splatter in her face, a sense of mist or fog suddenly filling the air, a meaty vapor.

Mixed into this sensation was a sound which was that of wood splitting.

In it too was a grunt, almost involuntary, as if lungs gurgled, somehow human.

She found herself wet with droplets that proved to be warm and heavy: blood.

The sniper transfigured before her. What had been the upper quadrant of his face had somehow been pulped, ripped open, revealing a terrible wound of splintered bone and spurting blood. One eye looked dead as a nickle; the other was gone in the mess. Even as these details were fixing themselves in her memory, he fell sideways with a thump, his head banging on the cement floor, exposing the ragged entry wound in the corresponding rear quadrant of the skull, where the bones now seemed broken and frail.

A single light beam came through the cellar door where the bullet had passed.

She looked down, saw the stumpy little man fallen like a white angel into a red pool, as his satiny blood spread ever wider from his ruined face.

She turned to her daughter and her friend, who regarded her with mouths agape, and horror, more than relief, registering in both their eyes.

Then she spoke with perfect deliberation:

“Daddy’s home.”

He had not fired a second time because he had no more ammunition. But in another second, the cellar door had been flung open and he recognized Sally, leaping to signal him that it was over.

By the time Bob got to the house, three Air Force Hueys and a state police helicopter had landed and more were on their way. Then another Air Force job, a big Blackhawk, arrived and disgorged still more staff. It almost looked like an advanced firebase when the war was at its hottest, the way the choppers kept ferrying people in.

He got the news immediately: everybody was all right, though medics were attending them. The sniper was dead.

His own wounds were tended: an emergency technician resewed, with anesthetic, the gash in his thigh that had opened up under the pressure of all the moving and jumping, and then picked stone and bullet fragments out of his face and eye for half an hour, before disinfecting, then covering the raw cuts with gauze. Nothing appeared to have hit the eye proper; more shooter’s luck.

There was little to be done about the back wound. It had penetrated his camouflage and grazed the flesh of his back, scoring both burn and bruise. But other than disinfectant, only time and painkillers would make it go away.

A cop wanted to take a statement, but Bonson pulled rank and declared the ranch a federal crime site, until corroborating FBI agents could chopper in within the hour from Boise. In the cellar, a state police crime team worked the body of the dead sniper, hit twice, once through the left lung, once in the back of the head.