Stephen Hunter - Time to Hunt

CCR was banging out something from last year on somebody’s tape deck. It sounded familiar. Donny listened.

Long as I remember, the rain been coming down,

Clouds of mystery falling, confusion on the ground,

Good men through the ages, trying to track the sun,

And I wonder, still I wonder, who’ll stop the rain?

It had some kind of anti-war meaning, he knew. The rain was war, or had become war. Some of these kids had known nothing but the war; it had started when they were fourteen and now they were twenty and over here and it was still going on. It was coming for them, they’d get caught in the rain, that’s why the song was so popular to them. Kids had picked it up in DC last year and it was everywhere. He knew Commander Bonson had heard it.

He thought of Bonson now.

Bonson came back to him. Navy guy, starchy, duty-haunted, rigid, black-and-white Bonson. In his khakis. His beard dark, his flesh taut and white, his eyes glaring, set in rectitude.

He remembered the look on Bonson’s face when he told him he wasn’t going to testify against Crowe. Man, that may have been worth it, that one moment, let Solaratov grease my ass, it was worth it, the way his jaw fell, the way confusion — no, clouds of mystery, confusion on the ground — came into his eyes. He could not process it. He could not accept that someone would turn his little plan over. Someone would actually tell him to go fuck off, derail his little train.

Donny had a nice dream of it all, the moment of soaring triumph he’d felt.

Oh, that’s just the beginning, he thought. I will get back to the world and we will see what became of Commander Bonson, what his crusade got him. What goes round, comes round. You put shit out in this world, somehow you get it back. Donny believed that.

Now, sleep was impossible. He rose, restless, bathed in sweat. He had another three hours to kill before they mounted out.

He rose, left the bunker and wandered for a bit, not sure where he was going, but then realizing he did in fact have a destination. He was in grunt city, among the line Marines, the proles of 2-5-Hotel, who really were Firebase Dodge City.

He saw a shadow.

“You know where Featherstone would be?”

“Two hootches back. Oh. You. The hero. Yeah, he’s back there, getting ready to get his ass wasted in the grass.”

The anger Donny felt surprised him. What the hell was this all about? Why was everybody so pissed at him? What had he done?

Donny walked back, dipped into the hootch. Four bunks, the fraternity squalor of young men living together, the stink of rotting burlap, the shine of various Playmates of the Month pinned to whatever surface would absorb a tack and, of course, the smell, sweet and dense, of marijuana.

Featherstone sat amid a dark circle of fellow martyrs, all stoned. He was so still and depressed he seemed almost dead. But it was clear he wasn’t the ringleader here; another Marine was doing all the talking, a bitter rant about “We don’t mean shit,” “It’s all a game,” “Fucking lifers just getting their tickets punched,” that sort of thing.

Donny butted in.

“Hey, Featherstone, you wanna go light on that stuff. You may have to move fast tomorrow; you don’t want that shit still in your head.”

Featherstone didn’t seem to hear him. He didn’t look up.

“He’s gonna be dead tomorrow. What difference does it make?” the smart guy said. “Who invited you here, anyhow?”

“I just came by to check on Featherstone,” said Donny. “He ought to pull himself out of this funk or he’s gonna get wasted, and if you guys claim to be his buds, you ought to help him.”

“He’s gonna get zapped tomorrow, no matter what. We who are not about to die salute him.”

“Nothing’s going to happen to him. He’s going to go for a walk, then hide in the bush. A plane will come and shoot the fuck out of a zone 250 yards ahead of him. He’ll probably get a Bronze Star out of it and go back to the world a hero.”

“Nobody cares about heroes back in the world.”

“Well, he just has to keep his head. That’s—”

“Do you even know what this is all about?”

“Yes.”

“What is it?”

“I can’t tell you. Classified.”

“No, not the shit about the Russian sniper. That’s just shit. You know what this is really about?”

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s about the championship.”

“The what?”

“The championship,” said the man, fixing Donny in a bitter, dark gaze.

“Of what?”

“Of snipers.”

“What?”

“In 1967, a gunny named Carl Hitchcock went home with ninety-three kills. The most so far. Now along comes this guy Swagger. He’s in the fifties till that stunt you pulled off in the valley. They gave him credit for thirty-odd kills. I hear he’s up to eighty-seven in one whack. Now, he gets six more, he ties. He gets seven more, he’s the champ. It doesn’t mean shit to me and it doesn’t mean shit in the world, but for these lifers, let me tell you, something like that gets you noticed and you end up the fucking command sergeant major of the whole United States Marine Corps. So what if a couple of grunts get wasted to get you your last few kills? Who the fuck cares about that?”

“That’s shit,” said Donny. He looked at his antagonist’s name, saw that it was one Mahoney, and then recalled, yes, another college guy, Mahoney, always riding the line, dozens of Article 15s, angry and pissed off and just desperate to get out of there.

“It’s not shit. It’s how military cultures operate if you knew anything about it at all.”

“I’ve been with Swagger in the bush for six months. I’ve never, ever seen him claim credit for a kill. I record the kills in a book, as per regs. I have to do that; it’s the rule. The sniper employment officer writes up the kills. I just write down what I see. Swagger’s never asked me to claim kills for him. He doesn’t give a shit about that. On top of that, the number thirty-seven or whatever is completely made up; he had eighty rounds, he probably hit seventy-five of those, if he missed at all. The record doesn’t mean a thing. That’s a load of crap.”

“He just likes the killing. Man, he must like to squeeze that little trigger and watch some gook dot go still. It’s as close to being God as you can get. There’s something so psychotic about it, you—”

Donny hit him, left side of the face, hard. It was stupid. In seconds, he was down, pinned, and somebody kicked him in the head, and his eyes filled with stars. He squirmed and yelped, but more body blows came, and he felt the pressure of many hands pressing him down, and still more punches driving through. At last someone pulled his antagonists off him. Of course it was the pacifist Mahoney.

“Settle down, settle down,” Mahoney screamed. “Man, you’ll get lifers in here, and we are cooked!”

Donny’s head flared. Someone had really nailed him.

“You assholes,” he said. “You fucking crybaby assholes, you’re going to get your buddy wasted for nothing except your own sense of victimization. You have nothing to be sorry about. You made it. You’re golden.”

“All right, all right,” said Mahoney, holding the swelling that distended his face, “you hit me, they hit you, let’s call it even. No one on staff has to hear about this.”

“Man, my fucking head aches,” said Donny, climbing to his feet.

“You’re not going to tell on anyone, are you, Fenn? It was just tempers. We all get fucked if you tell.”

“Shit,” said Donny. “My goddamn head hurts.”

“Get him an aspirin. You want a beer? We have some Vietnamese shit, but I think there’s a couple of Buds left. Get him a Bud. Good, cold Bud.”