Stephen Hunter - Time to Hunt

But in the end, it would kill him, Donny thought. The war would eat him up in the end. He would try one more brave and desperate thing, eager somehow to keep it going, to press himself even further, and it would, in the end, kill his heroic ass. He’d never hit his DEROS. For boys like this, there was no such thing as DEROS. Vietnam was forever.

He reminded Donny of someone but Donny hadn’t figured it out. There was something about him, however, oddly familiar, oddly resonant. This had struck him before but he could never quite nail it down. Was it a teacher somewhere? Was it a relative, a Marine from his earlier tour or his time at Eighth and I? For a time, he’d thought it was Ray Case, his furious platoon sergeant there, but as he got to know Bob, that connection vaporized. Case was a good, tough, professional Marine, but Bob was a great Marine. They didn’t make many of them like Bob Lee Swagger.

But who was he like? Why did he seem so familiar?

Donny shook the confusion out of his head.

Swagger sat under the poncho, the water dripping off his boonie hat, his eyes almost blank as he listened to the crackly tapestry of radio. He was as equally laden as Donny: the taped bull barrel of his M40 sniper rifle — really just a Remington 700 .308 Varmint with a Redfield 9X scope aboard — poked out from the neck of his poncho as he did what he could to keep the action and the wood, which would swell with moisture, dry. He also carried four M26 grenades, two Claymore bandoleers, an M57 electrical firing device, a .45 automatic, two canteens and a 782-pack full of C-rats (preferred poison: ham and powdered eggs), and seventy-two rounds of M118 Lake City Arsenal Match ammo, the 173-grain load used by Army and Marine high-powered shooters at Camp Perry. But he was a man who traveled well prepared; he had a Randall Survivor knife with a sawtooth blade, a Colt .380 baby hammerless in an aviator’s shoulder holster under his camo utilities and, strapped to his back, an M3 grease gun and five thirty-round magazines.

“There,” he said. “You hear it? Swear to Christ I heard something.”

Donny had heard nothing in the murk of chatter; still, he slowed his diddling and redialed, watching the little numbers on the face crackle through the gap as he shifted them. Finally he lit on something so soft you could miss it entirely, and he only received it because it seemed to be right on the cusp of the megahertz click to another freak; if he took the tension off the knob, the signal disappeared.

But, raspy and distant, they did hear it, and the words seemed to define themselves out of the murk until they became distinct.

“Anyone on this net? Anyone on this net? How you read me? Over? Urgent, goddammit, over!”

There was no answer.

“This is Arizona-Six-Zulu. I have beaucoup bad guys all over the goddamn place. Anyone on this net? Charlie-Charlie-November, you there, over?”

“He’s way out of our range,” Donny said. “And who the hell is Arizona-Six-Zulu?” Donny wondered.

“He’s got to be one of the Special Forces camps to the west. They use states as call signs. They call ’em FOBs, forward operating bases. He’s trying to reach Charlie-Charlie-November, which is SOG Command and Control North at Da Nang.”

But Arizona-Six-Zulu got a callback.

“Arizona-Six-Zulu, this is Lima-Niner-Mike at Outpost Hickory. Is that you, Puller? Can hardly read your signal, over.”

“Lima-Niner-Mike, my big rig took a hit and I’m on the Prick-77. I have big trouble. I have bad guys all over the place hitting me frontally and I hear from scouts a main force unit is moving in to take my base camp out. I need air or arty, over.”

“Arizona-Six-Zulu, neg on the air. We are souped in and everything has been grounded. Let me check on arty, over.”

“I am Team Arizona base camp, grid square Whiskey Delta 5120-1802. I need Hotel Echo in the worst possible way, over.”

“Shit, neg to that, Arizona-Six-Zulu. I have no, repeat no, fire support bases close enough to get shells to your area. They closed down Mary Jane and Suzie Q last week, and the Marines at Dodge are too far, over.”

“Over, Lima-Niner-Mike, I am out here on my lonesome with eleven Americans and four hundred indigs and we are in heavy shit and I am running down on ammo, food, and water. I need support ASAP, over.”

“I have your coordinates, Arizona-Six-Zulu, but I have no artillery fire bases operational within range. I will go to Navy to see if we can get naval gunfire in range and I will call up tac air ASAP when weather clears. You must hang on until weather breaks, Arizona-Six-Zulu, over.”

“Lima-Niner-Mike, if that main force unit gets here before the weather breaks, I am dog food, over.”

“Hang tight, Arizona-Six-Zulu, the weather is supposed to break by noon tomorrow. I will get through to Charlie-Charlie-November and we will get Phantoms airborne fastest then, over.”

“Roger, Lima-Niner-Mike,” said Arizona-Six-Zulu, “and out.”

“God bless and good luck, Arizona-Six-Zulu, out,” said Lima, and the freak crackled into nothingness.

“Man, those guys are going to get roasted,” said Donny. “This weather ain’t lifting for days.”

“You got that map case?” said Swagger. “Let me see that thing. What were those coordinates?”

“Shit, I don’t remember,” said Donny.

“Well, then,” said Bob, “it’s a good thing I do.”

He opened the case that Donny shoved over, went through the plastic-wrapped sheaves of operational territory 1:50,000s, and at last came to the one he wanted. He studied hard, then looked over.

“You know, goddamn, if I ain’t a fool at map reading, I do believe you and I are the closest unit to them Special Forces fellows. They are west of us, at Kham Duc, ten klicks out of Laos. We are in grid square Whiskey Charlie 155-005; they are up in Whiskey Delta 5120-1802. As I make it, that’s about twenty klicks to the west.”

Donny squinted. His sergeant indeed had located the proper square, and the Special Forces camp would therefore have been, yes, about twenty klicks. But — there were foothills, a wide brown snake of river and a mountain range between here and there, all of it Indian Territory.

“I’m figuring,” Bob said, “one man, moving fast, he might just make it before the main force unit. And those boys would have to move up through this here An Loc valley. You got into those hills, you’d have a hell of a lot of targets.”

“Christ,” said Donny.

“You just might slow ’em up enough so that air could make it in when the weather broke.”

A cold drop of rain deposited itself on Donny’s neck and plummeted down his back. A shiver rose from his bones.

“Raise Dodge again, Pork. Tell ’em I’m going on a little trip.”

“I’m going too,” said Donny.

Bob paused. Then he said, “My ass you are. I won’t have no short-timer with me. You hunker here, call in extraction when the weather clears. Don’t you worry none about me. I’ll get into that camp and extract with Arizona.”

“Bob, I—”

“No! You’re too short. You’d be too worried about getting whacked with three and days till DEROS. And if you weren’t, I would be. Plus, I can move a lot faster on my own. This is a one-man job or it’s no job at all. That’s an order.”

“Sergeant, I—”

“No, goddammit. I told you. This ain’t no goddamned game. I can’t be worrying about you.”

“Goddammit, I’m not sitting here in the fucking rain waiting for extract. You made us a team. You shoot, I spot targets, I handle security. Suppose you have to work at night? Who throws flares? Suppose it’s hot and somebody has to call in air? Who works the map for the coordinates and the radio? Suppose you’re bounced from behind? Who takes out the fast movers? Who rigs the Claymores?”