Stephen Hunter - Time to Hunt

“That is understood, sir.”

“Then let’s do our duties, brothers. I anticipate success within the hour and I know you will not let me down.”

Donny lay in the high grass, working the spotting scope. But the range was too far, a good four hundred meters, and in the valley he just saw the drifting mist, and heard the gunfire.

He took his right eye away from the scope and looked out with both of them. Again, nothing. The shooting rose and fell, rose and fell, punctuated now and then by two or three heavy rifle cracks, Bob’s shots. At one point some kind of multiple blast came. Had Bob fired a Claymore? He didn’t know but he didn’t think the sniper would have time, as he’d been moving this way and that through the hills.

He was well situated, half buried in a clump of vegetation, halfway up a hill, a little above the fog. He could see far to the right and far to the left, but he didn’t think anybody could get the drop on him. He had a good compass heading to the Special Forces camp at Kham Duc and knew if he had to he could make it in two or three hard hours. He drank a little water from his one remaining canteen. He was all right. All he had to do was sit there, wait for air, direct the air, then get the hell out of there. If no air came, then he was to move under cover of nightfall. He was not to go into the valley.

He thought of a familiar remark scrawled in Magic Marker on Marine helmets and flak jackets: “Yea, though I walk in the Valley of Death, I shall fear no harm, because I am the meanest motherfucker in the valley!” Bravado, sheer, thumping bravado, chanted like an incantation, to keep the Reaper away.

I’m not going into the Valley of Death, he thought. Those aren’t my orders. I followed my orders, I did everything I was told, I was specifically ordered not to go into the Valley of Death.

He accepted that as both a moral and a tactical proposition as ordered by a senior staff NCO. No man could challenge that, nor would one want to or try to.

I am fine, he told himself. I am short, I am fine, I am three and days till DEROS. I have my whole goddamned life in front of me and no man can say I shirked or ducked or dodged. No one can ever wonder if my beliefs were founded on moral logic or my own cowardice. I have to prove nothing.

Then why do I feel so shitty?

It was true. He felt truly sick, angry at himself, almost to the point of revulsion. Down there Swagger was probably giving away his life and Donny had somehow missed the show. Everybody cared about him . Trig, too, had cared about him . What was so special about him that he had to survive? He had no writer’s gift, he was not conversational or charismatic — no one could listen to him, he could be no witness.

Why me?

What’s so special about my ass?

He heard them before he saw them. It was the thup-thup-thup of men running, coming at the oblique. He didn’t jerk or move quickly and in an instant was glad he hadn’t, for sudden moves like that get you spotted.

They passed about twenty-five meters ahead of him, in single file, fastmovers, stripped of helmets and packs and canteens, racing toward duty and combat. It was the twelve-man flanking patrol, recalled by radio to move on the sniper from behind.

He could see how it would work. They’d form a line and flankers would drive Bob into them, or they’d come upon him from the rear. In either event, Bob was finished.

If Donny’d had the grease gun he might have gotten all twelve in a single burst. But probably not; that was very tricky shooting. If he had a Claymore set up, he might have gotten them too. But he didn’t. He had nothing but his M14.

He watched them go and they pounded along with grace, economy and authority. They disappeared into the fog.

I have my orders, he thought.

My job is the air, he thought.

Then he thought, Fuck it!, and got up to take them from behind.

They came as he thought they would, good, trained men, willing to take casualties, a platoon strength unit fanning through the high grass. Bob could make them out in the mist, dark shapes filing through the weaving fronds; he thought of a deer he’d once seen in a foggy cornfield back in Arkansas, and Old Sam Vincent, who’d tried to be a father to him after his own had passed, telling him to fight the buck fever, to be calm, to be cool.

He heard Sam now.

“Be cool, boy. Don’t rush it. You rush it, it’s over and you can’t never get it back.”

And so he was calm, he was death, he was the kind hunter who shot for clean kills and no blood trails, who was a part of nature himself.

But he wasn’t.

He was war, at its cruelest.

He had never had this feeling before. It scared him, but it excited him also.

I am war, he thought. I take them all. I make their mothers cry. I have no mercy. I am war.

It was an odd thought, just fluttering through a mind far gone into battle intensity, but it could not be denied.

The platoon leader will be to the left, not in the lead, he’ll be talking to his men, holding them together .

He hunted for a talking man and when he found him, he shot him through the mouth and ceased his talking forever.

I am war, he thought.

He shifted quickly to the man who’d run to the fallen officer and almost took him, but instead held a second, and waited for another to join him, grab him, take command, and turn himself to issue orders. Senior NCO.

I am war .

He took the NCO.

The men looked at each other, dead targets in his eyes, and in a moment of utter panic did exactly the right thing.

They charged at him.

He couldn’t possibly take them all or even half of them; he couldn’t escape or evade. There was only one thing to do.

He stood, war-crazed, face green-black with paint, eyes bulged in rage, and screamed, “Come on you fuckers, I want to fight some more! Come on and fight me!”

They saw him standing atop the rise, and almost en masse pivoted toward him. They froze, confronting him, a mad scarecrow with a dangerous rifle atop a hill of grass, unafraid of them. For some insane reason, they did not think to fire.

The moment lingered, all craziness loose in the air, a moment of exquisite insanity.

Then they ran at him.

He dropped and slithered the one way they would not expect.

Right at them.

He slithered ahead desperately, snaking through the grass, until they began to fire.

They paused a few feet from him, fired their weapons from the hip as if in some terrified human ceremony aimed at slaying the devil. The rounds scorched out, ripping the stalks above his head to land somewhere behind. It was a ritual of destruction. They fired and fired, reloading new mags, sending their bullets out to kill him, literally obliterating the crest of the hill.

He crawled ahead, until he could see feet and spent brass landing in heaps.

The firing stopped.

He heard in Vietnamese the shouts:

“Brothers, the American is dead. Go find his body, comrades.”

“You go find his body.”

“He is dead, I tell you. No man could live through that. If he were alive, he would be firing at us even now.”

“Fine, go and cut his head off and bring it to us.”

“Father Ho wants me to stay here. Somebody must direct.”

“I’ll stay, brother. Allow me to give you the privilege of examining the body.”

“You fools, we’ll all go. Reload, make ready, shoot at anything that moves. Kill the American demon.”

“Kill the demon, my brothers!”

He watched as the feet began to move toward him.

Get small , he told himself. Be very, very small!

He went into a fetal position, willing himself into a stillness so total it was almost a replication of genuine animal death. It was a gift he had, the hunter’s gift, to make his body of the earth, not upon it. He worried only about the smell of his sweat, rich with American fats, that could alert the wisest of them.