Stephen Hunter - Time to Hunt

Bob pivoted the rifle just a bit, found a new target, and felt the jolt as the rifle fired. Two hundred yards out and two tenths of a second later, the 173-grain bullet arrived at 2,300 odd feet per second. The tables say that at that range and velocity, it will pack close to two thousand foot-pounds of energy, and it hit this man, a machine gun team leader standing near his now dead commanding officer, low in his stomach, literally turning him inside out. That was what such a big bullet did: it operated on him, opening his intimate biological secrets to those around him, not a killing shot, but one that would bleed him out in minutes.

Quickly Bob found another and within the time it takes to blink an eyelash, fired for the third time and set that one down, too.

The North Vietnamese did not panic, though they could not hope to pick out Bob in the fog, and the muzzle blast was diffused; they only knew he was on the right somewhere. Someone calmly issued orders; the men dropped and began to look for a target. A squad formed to flank off to the right and come around. It was standard operating procedure for a unit with much experience and professionalism.

But Bob slithered away quickly, and when he felt the fog overwhelm him, he stood and ran ahead, knowing he had but a few seconds to relocate. Would they take the casualties and continue to march? Would they send out flanking parties; would they take the time to set up mortars? What will they do? he wondered.

He ran one hundred yards fast, slipping three new cartridges into the breech as he jounced along, because he didn’t want to waste time loading when he had targets. That was shooting time, precious. He slipped down off the incline onto the valley floor and crouched as he moved through the elephant grass, an odd nowhere place sealed off by vapors. He came at last to the center of the track, and got a good visual without the grass: he was now three hundred yards away and saw only the dimmest of shapes in the fog. Sinking to a quick, rice-paddy squat, he put the glass to them, put the crosshairs on one, quartering them high to account for a little drop at that distance, and squeezed the trigger. Maybe he was shooting at a stump. But the blob fell, and when he quartered another, it fell too. He did that twice more, and then the blobs disappeared; they’d dropped into the grass or had withdrawn, he couldn’t tell.

Now what?

Now back.

The flankers will come, but slowly, thinking possibly they’re up against a larger force .

Not even bothering to crouch, he ran again, full force through the mist. Suddenly the NVA opened up and he dropped. But the sleet of firepower did not come his way and seemed more of a probing effort, a theoretical thing meant to hit him where, by calculation, he should be. He watched as tracers hunted him a good hundred yards back, liquid splashes of neon through the fog, so quick and gossamer they seemed like optical illusions. When they struck the earth, they ripped it up, a blizzard of splashy commotion. Then the firing stopped.

He dropped, squirmed ahead and came to a crook in a tree. Quickly he slipped four more rounds into the M40’s breech, throwing the last one home and locking the bolt downward with the sensation of a vault door closing.

The rifle came up to him, and he seemed to have lucked into a thinner spot in the veil of fog, where suddenly they were quite visible. An officer was talking on the radio phone as around him men fanned out. Bob killed the officer, killed two of the men. Then he got a good shot at a man with four RPGs on his back squirming for cover, put the crosshairs onto a warhead and fired once. Force multiplier: the quadruple detonation ripped a huge gout in the earth, possibly driving others back, possibly killing some of them.

He didn’t wait to count casualties, or even take a quick look at his results. He crawled again through the high elephant grass, the sweat pouring off him. He crawled for what seemed like the longest time. Tracer rounds floated aimlessly overhead, clipping the grass, making the odd whup sound a bullet fighting wind will make. Once, when the firing stopped, he thought he sensed men around him and froze, but nothing happened. When at last he found some trees so that he could go back to work, he discovered he was much farther back in the column. Before him, as the vapors drifted and seethed, were some men who seemed less soldiers than beasts of burden, so laden were they with their equipment. This was simple murder; he took no pleasure in it, but neither did he consider it deeply. Targets? Take them down, eliminate them, take them out. Numbly he did the necessary.

Huu Co, senior colonel, had a problem. It wasn’t the firepower; there wasn’t much firepower. It was the accuracy.

“When he shoots, brother Colonel,” his officer told him, “he hits us. He is like a phantom. The men are losing their spirit.”

Huu Co fumed silently, but he understood. In a frontal attack his men would stand and fight or charge into guns: that was battle. This was something else: the terrible fog, the mysterious bullets singing out of it with unerring accuracy, seeking officers and leaders, killing them, then … silence.

“Maybe there are more than one,” someone said.

“I believe there are at least ten,” someone else said.

“No,” said Huu Co. “There is only one and he has only one rifle. It is a bolt-action rifle, so therefore he is an American Marine, because their army no longer uses bolt actions. One can tell from the time between the rounds, the lack of double shots or bursts. You must be calm. He preys on your fear. That is how he works.”

“He can see through the fog.”

“No, he cannot see through the fog. He is in the hills to the right, clearly, and as he moves, he encounters disparities in the density of the mist. When it is thin, he can see to shoot. Get the men down into the grass; if they stand they will be killed.”

“Brother Colonel, should we continue to march? How many can he kill? Our duty lies at the end of the valley, not here.”

It was a legitimate point, raised by Commissar Tien Phuc Bo, the political officer. Indeed, under certain circumstances, duty demanded that officers and men simply accept a high rate of casualty in payment for the importance of the mission. Rule No. 1: Defend the Fatherland; fight and sacrifice myself for the People’s Revolution.

“But this is different,” said Huu Co. “The fog makes it different, and his accuracy. Indiscriminate fire may be sustained as fair battle loss. The sniper presents a different proposition, both philosophically and tactically. If the individual soldier feels himself being targeted, that has disproportionate meaning to him and erodes his confidence. In the West they call it ‘paranoia,’ a very useful term, meaning overimaginative fear for the self. He will give himself up to a cause or a mission, in the abstract, but he will not give himself up to a man. It’s too personal, too intimate.”

“Huu Co is right,” argued his executive officer, Nhoung. “We may not simply accept losses as we travel, for the weight becomes immense and when we reach our goal, the men are too dispirited. What then have we accomplished?”

“As you decide,” said Phuc Bo. “But you may be criticized later and it will sting for many, many years.”

Huu Co accepted the rebuke; he had been criticized in a reeducation camp in 1963 for nine long months, and to be criticized, in the Vietnamese meaning of the term, was excruciating.

Bravely, he thrust ahead.

“A man like this can inflict a surprisingly high number of casualties, particularly upon officers and noncommissioned officers, the heart of the Army. Without leadership, the men are lost. He can attrit our officer staff if we do not deal with him now and immediately. I want Second Platoon on the right, supported by a machine gun team on each end for suppressive fire. They are to maneuver on a sweeping movement, while the rest of the unit holds up in the high grass. I want radio contact with Company Number Two sappers, and recall them and assign them in the blocking role. They must move quickly. Latest reports say the weather will not break. We have some time and I prefer by far to maintain unit integrity than to push on at this time. We will take him in good time. Patience in all things; that is our way. Communicate with your leaders and the fighters. Now is not the time for rash action; this is a test of discipline and spirit.”