Stephen Hunter - Time to Hunt

They had a picture of him from something called Leatherneck magazine, and what he saw was what he expected. He knew Americans from Paris and from his time in Saigon with the puppets. This one was a type, perhaps exaggerated, but familiar. Thin, hard, resilient, braver even than the French, brave as any Germans in the Legion. Cunning, with that specially devious quality of mind that let him instinctively understand weakness and move decisively against it. Disciplined in a way the Americans almost never were. He would have made a brilliant party official, so tight and focused was his mind.

The picture simply showed a slit-eyed young man with prominent cheekbones, his leathery face lit with a grin. He held some ludicrous trophy thing in his arms; next to him was an older version of the same man, same slit eyes, close-cropped hair but with more vanity on his chest. “Sergeant Swagger accepts the congratulations of the Commandant after winning at Camp Perry,” read the caption, translated into the Vietnamese. It was warrior’s glee, the colonel knew; and he saw in those slit eyes the deaths of so many, and the remorselessness that had driven their executioner.

“For this one,” he said, “the war is not a cause. It is merely an excuse.”

“Possibly,” said the Russian intelligence chief. “Perhaps even the war releases him to find his greatness. But do you not think he has a certain discipline? He is not profligate, he is not one of their criminals, like the Calleys and the Medinas. He has never raped or murdered in combat. He has no sexual weaknesses, a pathology associated with psychopathy.”

“He is not a psychopath,” Huu Co said. “He is a hero, though the line between them is thin, possibly fragile. He needs a cause to find his true self, that is what I mean. He is the sort who must have a cause to live. He needs something to humble himself in front of. Take that from him and you take everything.”

“Very good. Here, here is more, here is what we have.”

It was more on Swagger, culled from various American public resources. The package included, unbelievably, Marine records, obviously from a very sensitive source.

“Yes.”

“Study this man. Study him well. Learn him. He is your new responsibility.”

“Yes, of course. I accept. And what is the ultimate arrival of this project?”

“Why … his death, of course. His death and the death of the other one, too. They both must die.”

He slept Swagger, he dreamed Swagger, he read Swagger, he ate Swagger. Swagger engaged and caused the rebirth of the Western part of his mind: he struggled to grasp principles like pride and honor and courage and how their existence sustained a corrupt bourgeoisie state. For such a state could not exist without the pure fire of such centurions as Swagger standing watch, ready to die, on the Rhines of its empires.

“Why me?” he asked the Russian. “Why not one of your own analysts?”

“What can our analysts know? You have been fighting these people since 1964.”

“You have been fighting them since 1917.”

“But ours is a distant fight, a theoretical fight. Yours is up close, close enough to smell blood and shit and piss. That’s experience hard bought and much respected.”

Then another day brought another surprise: reconnaissance photos, taken from a high-flying vehicle of some sort, of what appeared to be a Marine post in the jungles of some province of his own country.

“I Corps,” said the Russian. “About forty kilometers from Kham Duc. One of the last American combat posts left in the zone. They call it Firebase Dodge City. A Marine installation. It is from here the American Swagger and his spotter mount their missions.”

“Yes?”

“Yes, well, if we’re to take him, it’ll be on his territory. He’ll always have the advantage, unless, of course, we can learn the terrain as well as he knows it.”

“Surely local cadre…”

“Well, now, isn’t that an interesting situation? Local cadre have been extremely inactive in that region for some months. This man Swagger terrifies them. They call him, in your language, quan toi.”

“The Nailer.”

“The Nailer. Like a carpenter. The nailer. He nails them. At any rate, at the local cadre level, most combat operations have ceased. That is why Firebase Dodge City still exists, when so many other Marines have been shipped home. Because the Nailer has nailed so many people that nobody likes to operate in his area. What is the point? The war will be over soon, he will be recalled, that will be that. But we cannot let that be that, can we?”

But try as he might, Huu Co could not hate the American. It seemed pointless. The man was no architect of war, no policy designer; he clearly had no sadistic side to him, no tendency toward atrocity: he was merely an excellent professional soldier, of the sort all armies have relied upon for thousands of years. He had some extra gene for aggression, some extra gene for shooting ability, and that was it. He was a believer — or maybe not. The colonel remembered, from his other life, the Frenchman Camus, who said, “When men of action cease to believe in a cause, they believe only in action.”

It didn’t matter. Nor did it matter that he wondered what the delay was. Why were they not moving now, if this was so important? Why were they waiting, what were they waiting for? He applied himself to the problem, and set out to master the terrain in and around Firebase Dodge City.

It was situated on a hill, and the Americans had deforested for a thousand yards all around it with their Agent Orange. The camp was typical: he’d seen hundreds in his long years of war. Its tactical problems were typical, too. In many respects it was similar to the unfallen A-Camp Arizona. The doctrine was primitive, but usually effective: approach at night, rally in the dark, send in sappers to blow the wire, attack in strength. But for the killing of one sniper team, that was a different tactical problem. The team would probably exit at night, that is, if they weren’t helicopter extracted. The trick would then be understanding from which point from the perimeter they would leave, and what would be their typical passage across the open zone. One could therefore hope to intercept them if one knew the terrain and the way Swagger’s mind worked.

Studying the photos, Huu Co saw three natural paths away from the camp, through gulches, enfilades, natural depressions in the land, where men would travel to avoid being spotted. One would set an ambush at such points, yes. It would be possibly effective, a long stalk, luck playing the most likely role. But if for some reason, the Americans could be induced to leaving during the day, right, say, at first dawn, a good shooter might have a chance to hit them from a hill not quite fifteen hundred yards out. Oh, it was a long shot, a desperately long shot, but the right man might bring it off, much more effectively, say, than an ambush team, who’s luck might be on or off.

But where would such a man be found? He knew the North Vietnamese certainly didn’t have such a man. In fact, such a man, such a specialist might not exist, at least not effectively. Huu Co said nothing about his conclusions; the Russians did not ask him. And then one night, he was awakened roughly by SPETSNAZ troopers and informed that they had a journey to make.

He climbed into a shiny black Zil limousine in his dress uniform, among four or five Russians, all talking and laughing boisterously among themselves. They ignored him.

They drove into Hanoi, through darkened streets, down the broad but now empty boulevards, and by the ceremonial plazas where the American Phantoms were displayed. Banners flapped mightily in the wind: ONWARD TO VICTORY, BROTHERS and LONG LIVE THE FATHERLAND and LET US EMBRACE THE REVOLUTIONARY FUTURE. The Russians paid them no mind, and laughed, and talked of women and alcohol and smoked American cigarettes; they were like Americans in many ways, not an observant or respectful people, but men who took their own destiny so much for granted that they could be annoying.