Stephen Hunter - Time to Hunt

“Jesus,” said Donny, “you really pissed them off.”

“Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke,” Bob replied. “And here’s the new joke. I’m going to kill this guy. I’m going to nail him between the eyes and we’ll send the word back to them very simply: do not fuck with the United States Marine Corps.”

Donny suddenly said, “It’s a trap! It’s a trap!”

“That’s right. I’m going to play cat-and-mouse with him; only, he thinks he’s the cat, when he’s the mouse. We want this bird swollen with confidence, thinking he’s the cock of the walk. It’s all a big phony show so we can get him to hit me in a certain way, only, I ain’t gonna be there, I’m gonna be behind his sorry ass and I will drill him clean, and if I can’t drill him, I will call in gunships with so much smoke there won’t be nothing left but cinders. Now, that is dangerous work and it don’t seem to me it has one thing to do with being a grunt in Vietnam. That is why I want your young ass out of here. You ain’t getting killed in anything this personal. This is between me and this Solitary Man. That’s it.”

“No. I want in.”

“No way. You’re out of here. This ain’t your show. This is about me.”

“No, this is about the Kham Duc. I was at Kham Duc. He wants to take us for Kham Duc. Swell, then he wants to take me. I’ll go against him. I’m not afraid of him.”

“You are an idiot. I’m scared shitless.”

“No, we have the advantage.”

“Yeah, and what if he zeros me out in the bush, and you’re left alone? You against him, out in the bad, bad bush. The fact that you’re married, got a great future, had a great war, done your duty, won some medals, all that don’t mean shit. He don’t care. He just wants to ice you.”

“No, I will be there. Forget me. You need another man. Who are you taking, Brophy? Brophy isn’t good enough, no one here is good enough. I’m the best you got, and I’ll go with you and we’ll fight this goddamn thing to the end, and nobody can say about me, oh, he had connections, he got off easy, his sergeant got wasted but he got a cush job in the air-conditioning.”

“You are one screwed-up kid. What do I say to Julie if I get you wasted?”

“It doesn’t matter. You’re a sergeant. You can’t think like that. You only think of the mission, okay? That’s your job. Mine is to back you up. I’ll run the radio, back you up. We’ll get this asshole, then we’ll go home. It’s time to hunt.”

“You asshole kid. You think you want to meet this guy? Okay, you come with me. Come on, I’ll introduce you two boys.”

Swagger pulled him out of the S-2 bunker and out toward the perimeter.

“Come on, scream a little at me!”

“Huh?”

“Scream! So he notices us and gets an eyeful. I want him to know we’re back and tomorrow we’re going out again.”

“I don’t—”

“He’s out there. I guarantee you, he’s out there, in the grass, a hundred meters or so away, but don’t look at him.”

“He can—”

“He can’t do shit. If he shoots from this close, we’ll call in artillery and napalm. The squids’ll soak his ass in burning gas. And he knows it. He’s a sniper, not a kamikaze. The challenge ain’t just gunning me, no sir. It’s gunning me and going back to Hanoi to eat grilled pork, fuck a nice gal, and going home on the seven o’clock bus to Moscow. But he’s there, setting up, planning. He’s reading the land, getting ready for us, figuring how to do us, the motherfucker. But we’re going to bust his ass. Now, come on, yell.”

Donny got with the program.

The Russian finally opened his case, quickly assembled the parts with an oily clacking sound, until he had built what appeared to be a rifle.

“The Dragon,” he said.

Huu Co thought: does he think I’m a peasant from the South, soaked in buffalo shit and rice water?

He of course recognized the weapon as a Dragunov, the new Soviet-bloc sniper weapon as yet unknown to Vietnam. It was a semiauto, in the old Mosin-Nagant 7.62 × 54 caliber, a ten-round magazine, a mechanism based on the AK47’s, though it had a long, elegant barrel. It wore a skeletal stock that extended from a pistol grip. A short, electrically illuminated four-power scope squatted atop the receiver.

The sniper inserted the match rounds into the magazine, then inserted the magazine into the rifle. With a snap, he threw the bolt, chambering a round, flicked the safety on, then set the rifle down. Then he set to wrap the rifle in a thick tape to obscure the glint of its steel and the precision of its outline. As he wound, Huu Co talked to him.

“You do not need to zero?”

“The scope never left the receiver, so no, I don’t. In any event, it won’t be a long shot, as I have planned it. Possibly two hundred meters at the longest. The rifle holds to four inches at two hundred meters and I always shoot for the chest, never the head. The head shot is too difficult for a combat situation.”

He was fully dressed. He wore a ghillie suit of his own construction, and was well tufted with a matting of beige strips identical in color to the elephant grass. His hat was tufted too, and under it, he’d painted his face in combat colors, a smear of ochre and black and beige.

“Sundown,” came a cry from above.

“It’s time,” said Huu Co.

The sniper rose and threw a large pack over his back, the rifle strap diagonally over his shoulder, and with a soft swaying as of many different feathers, like some exotic bird, he walked to the ladder and climbed out of the tunnel.

He rose in the dusk, and Huu Co followed him. It was but a few hundred feet to the treeline and the long crawl down the valley toward the American firebase.

“You have this planned?” Huu Co asked. “I need to know for my report.”

“Well planned,” said the Russian. “They’ll go out just before sunrise, over their berm and through their wire. I can tell you exactly where, because it’s the one place where they’re higher; there aren’t any subtle rises in the ground. They’ll continue in the rising light on a north-northwest axis, then turn to the west. When the sun is full, they’ll have a last few hundred meters to go through the grass toward the north. I’ve examined their own after-action reports. Swagger runs his missions the same each time, but what varies is where he’ll operate. If he’s headed south, toward Kontum, he’ll go toward the Than Quit River. If he heads north, toward the Hai Van Peninsula, then he’ll go toward Hoi An. And so forth. In any event, that small rise out there, that’s his intersection. Which way will he turn from there? I’m betting tonight it’s toward the north, because he worked the west when he headed out toward Kham Duc. It’s the north’s turn. I’ll set up behind him; that is, between himself and the firebase. He’ll never expect shots from that direction. I’ll take them both when they come out from behind the hill. It’ll be over quickly; two quick rounds to the body, two more when they’re down. Nobody from the base camp can reach me by the time I’m back here, and I’ve got a good, clean escape route with two fallbacks, if need be.”

“Well thought out.”

“And so it is. That’s what I do.”

There was little left to say. The sappers gathered around the banty little Russian, clapped him on the back, embarrassing him. Night was coming quickly, all was silent, and in the far distance the firebase stood like a sore on the flank of a woman.

“For the Fatherland,” Huu Co said.

“For the Fatherland,” chimed the tough sappers.

“For survival,” said the sniper, who knew better.