Stephen Hunter - Time to Hunt

Nothing could save you. Bob pressed on, sliding deeper into the fog. Odd how it clung, like clouds of wet wool; he’d never seen anything like it in the ’Nam, and this here was his third tour.

The fear began to eat at him, as it always did. Some fools said he had no fear, he was such a hero, but that only proved how little they knew. The fear was like a cold lump of bacon grease in his stomach, hard and wet and slick, that he could taste and feel at all times. You could not make it go away, you could not ignore it, and anybody who said you could was the worst damned kind of fool. Go on, be scared, he ordered himself. Let it rip. This may be it. But the one thing that scared him most of all wasn’t dying, not really; it was the idea of not doing the job. That was something to fear in the heart. He would do the job, by God; that he would.

Trees. He slid through them, tree to tree, his eyes working, testing, looking for possibilities. A hide? A fallback? A line of movement not under fire? A good field of fire? Damn this fog, could he even see them? Could he read ranges, gauge the drop on the long shots? Cover or just concealment? Where was the sun? Nope, didn’t matter, no sun.

A thin, cold rain had begun to fall. How would that affect the trajectory? What was the wind, the humidity? How wet was the stock of the rifle? Had it bloated and was now some little swollen knot rubbing secretly against the barrel, fucking up his point of impact? Had the scope sprung a leak, and was now a tube of fog, worthless, leaving him with nothing?

Or: were there NVA ahead? Had they heard him coming? Were they laughing as he bumbled closer? Were they drawing a bead even as he considered the possibility? He tried to exile the fear as he had exiled his own past and future, and concentrate on the mechanical, the aspect of craft that lay before him, how he would reload fast enough if it came to that, since the Remingtons didn’t have no stripper clips and the M118 had to be threaded in one round at a time. Should he set up his two Claymores to cover his flanks? He didn’t think he had time.

Help me, he prayed to a God he wasn’t sure existed, maybe some old gunny up there above the clouds, just watching out for bad boys like him on desperate jobs for people who didn’t even know his name.

He halted. He was in trees, had good tree cover, and good fog, a fallback to a hilltop, and then he could cut back the other direction. Professionally, he saw that this was it. A perfect choke point, with targets in the open, fog to cover him, a rare opportunity to get at the NVA in the open, lots of ammunition.

If this is it, by God, then this is it, he thought, settling in behind a fallen tree, literally slipping into a bush, as he squirmed to find a good position. He found his prone, and although he couldn’t get one leg flat on the ground for the gouge of a rock or a stump, he got most of his body down, drawing stability from the earth itself. The rifle was back and in, left grip lightly on the forearm, sling tight as it ran from the wood, lashed around that forearm and headed tautly to the stock. Right hand on the small of the stock, finger still off the trigger. Breathing easy, trying to stay cool. Another day at the office. He was situated so no light would reflect off his lens. The trees around him would muffle and defuse the sound of the shots. In the first minutes, anyhow, no one would be able to figure out where the shots were coming from.

He slid his eye behind the scope, finding the proper three inches of relief. Nothing. It was like peering into a bowl of cream. Drifting whiteness, the outline of two or three scrub trees, no sense of the hills forming the other side of the valley, a slight downward angle into vertigo. Nothing stood out from which to estimate range.

He checked his watch: 0700 hours. They would be along soon, not moving quite so quickly because of the fog, but confident that it hid them and that in hours they’d be in possession of Arizona.

So come on, you bastards.

What are you waiting for?

Then he saw one. It was the hunter’s thrill after the long stalk, that magical moment when the connection between hunter and hunted, fragile as a china horse, first establishes itself. Blood rushed through him: old buck fever. Everybody gets it when they see the beast they will kill and eat; that’s how primordial it is.

I will not eat you, he thought, but by God I will kill you.

More emerged. Jesus Christ … the first thin line of sappers in cloth hats with foliage attached, rifles at the high port, eyes strained, at maximum alertness; more tightly bunched, an infantry platoon, battle ready, caped and pith-helmeted, chest web gear, green Bata boots and AKs, Type 56, and no other identifying insignia; the platoon leaders at the front; behind them in a tight little knot the staff, their ranks unrecognizable in the muddy uniforms.

You never saw this. A North Vietnamese infantry battalion moving at the half-trot through a choke point in tight formation, not spread out for four thousand meters or broken down and moving in cells to reassemble under dark. The pilots never saw it, the photos never got it. The NVA, goddamn their cold, professional souls, were too quick, too subtle, too disciplined, too smart for such movement. They moved at night, in small units, then reassembled; or they moved through tunnels, or in bomb-free Cambo or Laos, always careful, risking nothing, knowing surely that the longer they bled the American beast, the better their chances became. Possibly no American had seen such a thing.

The CO was pushing them hard, gambling that he could beat the weather, whack out Arizona and be gone. Speed was his greatest ally, the bleak weather his next. The rain fell harder, pelting the ground, but it did not stop the North Vietnamese, who seemed not to notice. Onward they came.

He snicked off the safety, and through the scope hunted for an officer, a radio operator, an ammunition bearer with RPGs, an NCO, a machine-gun team leader. The targets drifted before him, floating through the crucifer of the crosshairs. That he was about to kill never occurred to him; the way his mind worked, he thought only that he was about to shoot.

Finally: you, little brother. An officer, youngish, with the three stars of a captain lieutenant, at the head of an infantry platoon. He would go first; then, back swiftly, to a radio operator; then, swing left as you run the bolt, and go for the guy with the Chicom RPD 56, put him down, then fall back. That was the plan, and any plan was better than no plan.

The reticle of the Redfield scope wobbled downward, bouncing ever so slightly, tracking the first mark, staying with him as the shooter took his long breath, hissed a half of it out, found bone to lock under the rifle, told himself again to keep the gun moving as he fired, prayed to God for mercy for all snipers, and felt the trigger break cleanly.

“Gooooooood morning, Vietnam,” said the guy on Captain Taney’s portable, “and hello to all you guys out there in the rain. Well, fellas, I’ve got some bad news. Looks like that old Mr. Sun is still AWOL. That’s UA, for you leathernecks. Nobody’s gonna stop the rain today . But it’ll be great for the flowers, and maybe Mr. Victor Charles will stay indoors himself today, because his mommy won’t let him outside to play.”

“What a moron,” said Captain Taney, Arizona’s XO.

“The weather should break tonight, as a high pressure zone over the Sea of Japan looks like it’s making a beeline for—”

“Shit,” said Puller.

Why did he put himself through this? It would break when it would break.

Standing in the parapet outside his command bunker, he glanced around in the low light, watching the floating mist as it seethed through the valley that lay beyond.