Stephen Hunter - Time to Hunt

Using one eye resolved the double-image problem, but not the blur. It didn’t matter that he looked only with his best eye; there was still only a smear of visual information, like a television set without an aerial, getting mostly fuzz.

The right thing to do: say, Sarge, I have blurred vision. Sorry, I’m not worth shit out here. Let’s call an abort before they get into range and—

“Shit!” said Bob. “They are moving too fast, they have panicked, they gonna be here in ten seconds.”

Donny looked back and saw four — actually two — camo boonie hats just above the fold in the earth that took them out of sight. Something was wrong. They were moving too fast, almost running. The pressure of living a few seconds in a sniper’s scope had gotten to them. They were headed in a beeline like half-milers for the hill and the comfort it supposedly provided.

“He’ll know that ain’t me. Goddammit!”

“What do we do?” said Donny, sickly aware that the situation had passed beyond his meager ability to influence, and full of images of that scared Featherstone, called to be a hero by nothing more than freak physical similarity, running to stop the shit from dribbling out his ass and the poor lieutenant, unable to yell, stuck with him, trailing behind, knowing that if he let him get away, Solaratov would take him down in a second.

“Fuck,” said Bob, bitterly. “Get back on the scope. Maybe he’ll bite anyhow.”

Hmmmm The sniper considered.

Why are they moving so fast? They have a long journey ahead of them, and they know there is much less chance of being observed if they move slowly than if they run.

He watched them, now about five hundred yards out, rushing pell-mell along the gully, almost out of sight.

Possibly they want to get into the shelter of the trees before full daylight?

No, no, not possible: they’ve never operated like that before. Therefore there are two possibilities: A) they know a man is out here and they are scared or B) they are bait, they are pretenders, and the real sniper is already out here, looking in my direction for some kind of movement, at which point he sends a bullet crashing my way.

Of the two possibilities, he had no favorites. His preference was not to overinterpret data. It was always to pick the worst possibility, assume that it was correct and counterreact.

Therefore: I am being hunted.

Therefore: where would a man be to get a good shot at me?

He turned and to the east, about three hundred yards away, made out a low undulation in the shine of the rising sun, not much, really, but just enough elevation to give a shooter a peek into this sea of grass here in the defoliated zone.

He looked at the sun: he’d be behind the sun, because he’d not want its reflection on his lens. Therefore, yes, the ridge.

But if he turned in that direction and put his own glass upon it, then he’d clearly get the reflection and the bullet. Therefore, he had to move to the north or south to get a deflection shot into them.

Slowly, he began to move.

“No, goddammit,” said Bob.

“No, what?”

“No, he ain’t biting. Not at them two birds. Shit!”

He paused, considering. “Should we pull back?”

“Don’t you get it, goddammit? We ain’t hunting him no more. He’s hunting us!”

The information settled on Donny uncomfortably. He began to feel the ooze and trickle of sweat down his sides from his pits. He glanced about. The world, which had seemed so benign just a second ago, now seemed to seethe with menace. They were alone in a sea of grass. The sniper, if Bob no longer believed him to be in Area 1, could therefore be anywhere, closing in on them even now.

No, not yet. Because if he read the fake sniper team moving too fast, he would not have had enough time to react and get out of there. He would still be an hour by low crawl away.

“Shit,” said Bob. “Which way would he go?”

“Hmmmm,” bluffed Donny, with no real idea of an answer.

“If he figures them guys is fake, and he looks around, about the only place we could be to shoot at his ass would be here, on this little ridge.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, so to git a shot at our asses, how’s he going to move? He going to try and flank us to the left or the right? What do you think?”

Donny had no idea. But then he did.

“If the treeline equals safety, then he’d go that way, wouldn’t he? To his right. He’d put himself closer to it, not closer to Dodge City.”

“But maybe that’s how he’d figure we’d think, so he’d figure it the other way?”

“Shit,” said Donny.

“No,” said Bob. “No, you’re right. Because he’s on his belly, remember? This whole thing’s gonna play out on bellies. And what he’s looking at is an hour of crawling in the hot sun versus two hours. And being a half hour from the treeline is a hell of a lot better than being three hours from it. He’d have to go to the west, right?” He sounded as if he had to convince himself.

“It would take a lot of goddamn professional discipline,” he continued, arguing with himself. “He’d have to make up his mind and cut free of his commitment to the only targets he’s got. Man, he’s got a set of nuts on him if he can make that decision.”

He seemed to fight the obvious for a bit. Then he said, “Okay, Area One ain’t it no more. Designate Area Two on your map, being the coordinates of a five hundred by five hundred grid square one thousand yards left. His left. Make it north-northeast. Give me them coordinates.”

Donny struggled to get the map out, then struggled with the arithmetic. He worked it out, coming up with a new fire mission, hoping the dancing numbers his eyes were conjuring up were correct, scrawling them in the margins of the map. He had the sinking sensation of failing a math test he’d never studied for.

“Call it in. Call it in now, so we don’t have to fuck with it later.”

“Yeah.”

Donny unleashed the aerial to vertical, then took the handset from its cradle, snapped on power, checking quickly to see that the PRC was still set on the right frequency.

“Foxtrot-Sandman-Six, this is Sierra-Bravo-Four, over.”

“Sierra-Bravo-Four, this is Foxtrot-Sandman-Six, send your immediate, over.”

“Ah, Foxtrot, we’re going to go from Area One to new target, designated Area Two, over.”

“Sierra, what the hell, say again, over.”

“Ah, Foxtrot, I say again, we think our bird has flown to another pea patch, which we are designating Area Two, over.”

“Sierra, you have new coordinates, all after? Over.”

“Correct, Foxtrot. New coordinates Bravo-November-two-two-three-two-two-seven at zero-one-three-five-Zulu-July-eight-five. Break over.”

“Wilco, Romeo. I mark it,” and Foxtrot read the numbers back to him.

“Roger, Foxtrot, on our fire mission request. Out.”

“Copy here, and out, Sierra,” said the radio.

Donny clicked it off.

“Good,” said Bob, who’d been diddling with a compass. “I make a route about five hundred yards over there to a small bump. That’s where we’ll go. We should be on his flank then. Assuming he goes the way I figure he’s going.”

“Got you.”

“Get your weapon.”

Donny grabbed his rifle, which was not an M14 or even an M16 or a grease gun. Instead, because of the short order in which the job was planned, it was the only scoped rifle that could be gotten quickly, an old fat-barreled M70 Winchester target rifle, with a rattly old Unertl Scope, in .30-06, left in the Da Nang armory since the mid-sixties.

“Let’s go,” Bob said.

Only bright blue sky above, and swaying stalks of the grass. The Russian crawled by dead reckoning, trusting skills it had taken him years to develop. He moved steadily, the rifle pulling ever so gently on his back. It was 0730 according to the Cosmos watch on his wrist. He wasn’t thirsty, he wasn’t angry, he wasn’t scared. The only thing in his mind was this thing, right now, here. Get to elevation five hundred yards to the right. Look to the left for targets that in turn will be looking for targets to their front. Two of them: two men like himself, men used to living on their bellies, men who could crawl, who could wait through shit and piss and thirst and hunger and cold and wet. Snipers. Kill the snipers.