Stephen Hunter - Time to Hunt

There were two. He had to kill them both. If he fired, the other might take him or, seeing his partner with his head blown open, simply slide back farther into the grass and disappear. He’d call in air, possibly, and Solaratov would have to get out of the area.

Where was the other one?

He looked up from the scope. He realized he could see the sniper because for some odd reason, the grass was thinner there. The other one would be nearby, covering, as he was vulnerable. He would be vulnerable for only a few more seconds.

A plan formed in Solaratov’s mind: Find the spotter. Kill the spotter. Come back and kill the sniper. It was possible because of the semiautomatic nature of the weapon and the fact that the distance was under three hundred meters.

He returned to the scope and very carefully began to crank backward, looking for another black face against the dun and the tan of the vertical thickets of stalks. He came back a bit more, no, nothing, nothing … and there! An arm! The arm led to a body, which led to the form of another prone man hunched over a rifle — he took a gasp of air, a little spurt of pleasure — and then continued up the trunk to the torso to discover that it was indeed a man but he was not a spotter, he was another sniper, and his rifle was pointing exactly at him. At Solaratov.

The man fired.

Donny looked up from his scope. His head ached. When would the call come from Bob? God, he needed an aspirin. He glanced about, seeing nothing, only the endless grass.

A dragonfly flashed close by. It was odd how their wings somehow caught the sunlight and threw a reflection just like—

Donny went back to the scope.

He was so close!

The sniper was less than three hundred yards away — or rather, the snipers, for there was a smear of enemy, blurry in the haze of Donny’s concussion, well sunk in the grass. The man was bent into his rifle, moving slowly, tracking, and with a start, Donny realized he had located Swagger.

Kill him! he ordered himself. Shoot! Do it now!

The crosshairs seemed to quarter the head. He squeezed the trigger.

He lost his sight picture as the pressure increased. He squeezed harder. Nothing happened.

The safety, the safety. He reached for where it should have been, that nub in front of the trigger, but it wasn’t there. That’s where it was on an M14. On an M70, it was up on the bolt housing. He took his eye off the scope, looked for the flange that was the safety, and snapped it forward. He ducked to the scope, saw the man had turned and the rifle’s muzzle was coming … right at him.

He jerked at the trigger and the rifle fired.

Bob crawled forward. Only a few more yards and then he was into the higher grass and—

The shot, so unexpected, sounded like a drumbeat against his own ears. He froze — lost it, the great Bob Lee Swagger — and had a moment of twisted panic.

What? Huh? Oh, Christ!

Then he picked himself up, ran like a son of a bitch for the higher grass, waiting to get nailed and trying to sort it out.

“He’s there! I saw him!” Donny screamed, and instantly from three hundred yards out, an answering shot sounded. It struck near Donny, blowing a big puff of dirt into the air.

Donny fired back almost instantly and Bob looked, saw the puff of dust where his shot hit.

“Get down!” he screamed, now terrified that Donny would take a shot in the head. He dove into the brush, righted himself, squirmed until he could see the dusty bank.

He threw the rifle to his shoulder, put his eye to the glass and saw … nothing.

“He’s there!” Donny screamed again, but Bob could see nothing. Then a shot cracked out, seeming to come from the left, and he swung his rifle just a bit, saw some dust in the air from the disturbance of muzzle blast, and fired. He cycled, fired again, fast as he was able to, not seeing a target but hoping one was there.

“Get down!” he screamed again. “Get down and call Foxtrot for air!”

He worked the bolt, but could not see the sniper in the dust that floated in the grass in the area Donny had identified. Where was he? Where was he?

Donny edged back a bit and the second shot blasted the earth just a few inches from his face. Ow! The dirt blossomed as if a cherry bomb had detonated, and a hundred tiny flecks of grit bit him; he blinked, slid back even farther. He could hear Bob screaming but he couldn’t make the words out. He thought: the radio. Call air. Get air.

But then Bob fired, fired again, and it filled Donny with courage. He squirmed up over the other side of the hummock, going to a left-handed shooting position. He couldn’t throw the bolt from here, not easily, but a lot less of him stuck out, and that pleased him.

Where is he? Where are you, motherfucker?

Through the scope, he saw nothing, just dust hanging in the air, the slow wobble of grass signifying recent commotion but nothing to shoot at all.

He scanned left and right a few yards, didn’t see a damned thing. He had this idea that he, not Bob, would be the one who brought the Russian down. Images from a forgotten boyhood book played suddenly through his mind: that would be like Lieutenant May getting the Red Baron instead of salty old pro Roy Brown. A gush of excitement came to him and a spurt of intense pleasure.

Where was he?

We can take him under fire from two sources, he realized. We can take this motherfucker.

“Air!” he heard Bob scream.

Yes, air. Get the Night Hag in here, smoke this fucker, blow him to—

On a wide scan, he saw him, much farther back, crawling away desperately.

Got you!

He put the crosshairs on the bobbing head, not a shape so much as a suggestion in the blur of his vision. He tried to find the center, quartered it with the scope, felt in supreme control, felt the trigger rock against his finger, stack up just a tiny bit and then surprise the hell out of him when the shot occurred.

The man’s rifle leaped, his hat popped off and he rolled over into the grass, still.

“I got him!” he screamed. “ I hit him!”

“Air,” Bob screamed. “Get us air!”

Donny let the rifle slide away, drew the PRC off his back and hit the on switch.

“Foxtrot, this is Sierra-Bravo, flash, I say again, flash, flash. We have contact, over.”

“Sierra-Bravo, what are your needs? Are you calling air, Sierra-Bravo?”

Suddenly Bob was next to him, snatching the handset from him.

“Foxtrot, get us Night Hag superfast. I’m designating Area Two for the strike, bring in Night Hag, I say again, immediate, Area Two, Area Two.”

“She is coming in, Sierra-Bravo; watch your butt, over.”

“I got him!” Donny said.

“I am popping smoke to designate my position for Night Hag, over,” said Bob. He grabbed a smoker off his belt, yanked the pin and tossed it. It spun and hissed and torrents of green smoke began to pour out of it.

“Sierra-Bravo-Four, this is Night Hag, I eyeball green smoke, over,” a new voice on the net declared, even as they heard the roar of engines rising.

“That is correct, Night Hag, we are buttoning up, out.”

Bob pulled Donny down and close to the hummock.

A shadow passed over them and Donny looked up and saw the great plane as it flashed overhead, began to bank. It seemed huge and predatory, its engines beating at the air. It was pitch black, an angel of death, and it banked to the right, raising a wing, presenting the side of its fuselage to the earth it was about to devastate.

The eight mini-guns fired simultaneously, tongues of gobbling flame streaking from the black flank, the sound not of guns firing quickly, but just a steady, screaming roar.