Time to Hunt Part 35

He saw it now: this was a cla.s.sic phony hide. This hide was built to suggest the possibility that a screwball did the shooting. But our boy didn't shoot from here. He shot from somewhere else, a lot farther out.

Bob looked at the sky. It looked like rain.

He rode the ridgeline for what seemed like hours, the wind increasing, the clouds screaming in from the west, taking the mountains away. It felt like fog, damp to the skin. Up here, the weather could change just like that. It could kill you just like that.

But death wasn't on his mind. Rather, his own depression was. The chances of finding the real hide were remote, if traces remained at all. When the rain came, they would be gone forever. Again he thought: nicely thought out. Not only does the phony hide send the investigation off in the wrong direction, it also prevents anyone from seeing the real hide until it is obliterated by the changing weather. So if he does miss something, the weather takes it out.

Bob was beginning to feel the other's mind. Extremely thorough. A man who thinks of everything, will have rehea.r.s.ed it in his mind a hundred times, has been through this time and time again. He knows how to do it, knows the arcane logic of the process. It isn't just pure autistic shooting skill, it's also a sense of tactical craft, a sense of the numbers that underlie everything and the confidence to crunch them fast under great pressure, then rely on the crunching and make it happen in the real world. Also: stamina, courage, the guts of a burglar, the patience of a great hunter.

He knew we came this way. But some mornings we did not. He may have had to wait. He was calm and confident and able to flatten his brain out, and wait for the exact morning. That was the hardest skill, the skill that so few men really had. But you have it, don't you, brother?

A sprinkle of rain fell against his face. It would start pounding soon and the evidence would be gone forever.

Why didn't I think this through yesterday? I'd have had him, or some part of him. But now, no, it would be gone. He's won again. I'd have had him, or some part of him. But now, no, it would be gone. He's won again.

He searched for hides, looking down from the trail into the rough rocks beneath. Every so often there'd be a spot flat enough to conceal a p.r.o.ne man, but upon investigation, each spot was empty of sign. And as he rode, of course, he got farther out. And from not everywhere on the ridge was the shelf of land visible where both Dade and Julie could be hit in the same sweep.

So on he went, feeling the dampness rise and his sense of futility rise with it. He must have missed it, he thought, or it's already gone. d.a.m.n, he was a long way out. He was a long way out long way out. He was getting beyond the probable into the realm of the merely possible. Yet still no sign, and Junior drifted along the ridge, over the small trail, tense at the coming rain, Bob himself chilled to the bone and close to giving up.

He couldn't be out this far!

He rode on even farther. No sign yet. He stopped, turned back. The target zone was miniature. It was far distant. It was- Bob dismounted, let Junior cook in his own nervousness. He'd thought he'd seen a little point under the edge of the ridge, nothing much, just a possibility. He eased down, peeking this way and that, convinced that, no, he was too far out, he had to go back and look for something he had missed.

But then he saw something just the slightest bit odd. It was a tuft of dried brush, caught halfway down the ridge. Wind damage? But no other tufts lay about. What had dislodged it? Probably some freak accident of nature ... but on the other hand, a man wiping away marks of his presence in the dust, he might just have used a piece of brush to do it, then tossed the brush down into the gap. But it caught, and as it dried out over the two days, it turned brown enough so a man looking for the tiniest of anomalies might notice it.

Bob figured the wind always ran north to northwest through this little channel in the mountains. If the wind carried it, it would have come off the cliff just a bit farther back. He turned and began to pick his way back in that direction and had already missed it when, looking back to orient himself to the tuft of bush, he noticed a crevice and, peering into it, he looked down to see just the tiniest, coffin-sized flatness in the earth, where a man could lie un.o.bserved and have a good view of the target zone.

He eased down, oriented himself to where Dade had died and Julie fell. He was careful not to disturb the earth, in case any scuff marks remained, but he could see none. At last he turned to get his best and first look at the killing zone from the shooting site.

Jesus Christ!

He was eight hundred, maybe a thousand meters out.

The killing zone was a tiny shelf far off at the oblique.

There were no features by which he could get an accurate distance-by-size estimation, and even on horseback, the targets would have been tiny. The scope wouldn't have blown them up too much, either: too big a scope would have amplified the wobble effect until a sight picture was simply un.o.btainable and, worse, it would have had too small a breadth of vision at this range. If he lost contact with his targets, he might never have gotten them back in time. He had to be shooting a 10X, nothing bigger than a 12X, but probably a 10.

That's some shooting. That's beyond good; that's in some other sphere. Careful, precise, deliberate, mathematical long-range shooting is very good shooting. Knowing instinctively how far to lead a moving target in the crux of the fraction of the second you've got, knowing it automatically, subconsciously ... that is great great shooting. Man, that is so far out there, it's almost beyond belief. He knew of one man who could hit that shot, but he was dead, a bullet having exploded his head in the Ouachitas. There might be two or three others but- shooting. Man, that is so far out there, it's almost beyond belief. He knew of one man who could hit that shot, but he was dead, a bullet having exploded his head in the Ouachitas. There might be two or three others but- He now saw too why the shooter had missed the kill on Julie.

He didn't make a mistake: he had the shot perfectly. He was just betrayed by the physics of the issue, the bullet's time in flight. When he fired, he had her dead to rights. But it takes a second for the bullet to travel that long arc, to float down on her; and there's plenty of time, even in that limited period, for her to alter her body movement or direction enough to cause the miss. That's why Dade is at least an easier shot. He's not moving, to say nothing of at the oblique, on horseback galloping away as Julie was.

Bob sat back. His head ached; he felt dizzy; his heart beat wildly.

He thought of another man who might have done this. He'd buried the name and the memory so far it didn't usually intrude, though sometimes, in the night, it would come from nowhere, or even in the daylight it would flash back upon him, that which he had tried to forget.

But he had to find out. There had to be a sign. Somehow, some way, the shooter would have left something that only another shooter could read.

Oh, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Come on, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Show me yourself. Let me see your face, this once.

He forced himself to concentrate on the hardscrabble dirt before him. He felt a raindrop, cold and absolute, against his face. Then another. The wind rose, howling. Junior, made restive, whinnied uncomfortably. The rain was moments away. He looked and he could see it, a gray blur hurtling down from the mountains. It would come and destroy. The sniper had planned for it. He was brilliant, well schooled in stratagems.

But who was he?

Bob leaned forward; he saw only dust. Then, no, no, yes, yes, he leaned forward even farther, and up front, where the dust had clearly been swept clean, he saw very small particulate residue. Tiny beads of it, tiny grains. White sand. White sand from a sandbag, because a great shooter will go off the bag, p.r.o.ne.

The rain began to slash. He pulled his jacket tight. If the sandbag was here-it had to be, to index the rifle to the killing zone-then the legs were splayed this way. He bent to where they'd have been, hoping for the indent of a knee, anything to leave a human mark of some sort. But it was all scratched out, and gone, and now the rain would take it forever.

The rain was cold and bitter. It was like the rain of Kham Duc. It would come and wipe anything away.

But then he went down farther, and amid the small and meaningless dunes, he at last found what he had yearned for. It was about two inches of a sharp cut in the dust, with notches for the thread holding sole to boot. Yes. It was an imprint of the shooter's boot, the edge of the sole, the tiny strands of thread, the smoothness of the contour of the boot itself, all perfectly preserved in the dust. The shooter had splayed his foot sideways, to give him just the hint of muscular tension that would tighten his muscles up through his body. It was an adductor muscle, Adductor magnus Adductor magnus. That was the core of the system, as isolated by a coach who'd gotten so far into it he'd worked out the precise muscles involved.

That was Russian. A shooting position developed by the coach A. Lozgachev prior to the fifty-two Olympics, where the Eastern Bloc shooters simply ran the field. In sixty, someone else had been coached by A. Lozgachev and his system of the magic Adductor magnus Adductor magnus to win the gold in p.r.o.ne rifle. to win the gold in p.r.o.ne rifle.

T. Solaratov, the Sniper.

CHAPTER T THIRTY-TWO.

It was late at night. Outside, the wind still howled, and the rain still fell. It was going to be a three-day blow. The man was alone in a house that was not his own, halfway up a mountain in a state he hardly knew at all. His daughter was in town, close to her injured mother, in the care of a hired nurse until an FBI agent's wife would arrive.

In the house, there was no sound. A fire burned in the fireplace, but it was not crackly or inviting. It was merely a fire and one that hadn't been tended in a while.

The man sat in the living room, in somebody else's chair, staring at something he had placed on the table before him. Everything in the room was somebody else's; at fifty-two, he owned nothing, really; some property in Arizona that was now fallow, some property in Arkansas that was all but abandoned. He had a pension and his wife's family had some money, but it wasn't much to show for fifty-two years.

In fact, what he had to show for those fifty-two years was one thing, and it was before him on the table.

It was a quart bottle of bourbon: Jim Beam, white label, the very best. He had not tasted whiskey in many years. He knew that if he ever did, it might kill him: he could wash away on it so easily, because in its stupefying numbness there was some kind of relief from the things that he could not make go away in any other way.

Well, sir, he thought, tonight we drink the whiskey.

He had bought it in 1982 in Beaufort, South Carolina, just outside Parris Island. He had no idea why he was there: it seemed some drunken journey back to his roots, the basic training installation of the United States Marine Corps, as if nothing existed before or after. It was the end of an epic, seven-week drunk, the second week of which his first wife had fled for good. Not many memories of the time or place could be recalled, but he did remember staggering into a liquor store and putting down his ten-spot, getting the change and the bottle and going out, in the heat, to his car, where what remained of his belongings were dumped.

He sat there in the parking lot, hearing the cicadas sing and getting set to crack the seal and drown out his headache, his shakes, his flashbacks, his anger in a smooth brown tide. But that day, for some reason, he thought to himself: maybe I could wait just a bit before I open it up. Just a bit. See how far I can get.

He had gotten over twelve years out of it.

Well, yes, sir, tonight is the night I open it up.

Bob cracked the seal on the bottle. It fought him for just a second, then yielded with a dry snap, slid open with the feeling of cheap metal gliding on gla.s.s. He unscrewed the cap, put it on the table, then poured a couple of fingers' worth into a gla.s.s. It settled, brown and stable, not creamy at all but thin, like water. He stared at it as if in staring at it he could recognize some meaning. But he saw the futility, and after a bit raised it to his lips.

The smell hit him first, like the sound of a lost brother calling his name, something he knew so well but had missed so long. It was infinitely familiar and beckoning, and it overpowered, for that was the way of whiskey: it took everything and made everything whiskey. That was its brilliance and its d.a.m.nation too.

The sip exploded on his tongue, hot with smooth fire, raspy with pouring smoke, with the totality that made him wince. His eyes burned, his nose filled, he blinked and felt it in his mouth, slos.h.i.+ng around his teeth. Even at this last moment it was not too late, but he swallowed it, and it burned its way down, like a swig of napalm, unpleasant as it descended, and then it hit and its first wave detonated, and there was fire everywhere.

He remembered. He forced himself to.

Last mission. Donny was DEROS. He should have been outprocessing. No, the little b.a.s.t.a.r.d, he couldn't let anything alone. He had to be so perfect. He had to be the perfect Marine. He had to go along.

Why did you let him?

Did you hate him? Was there something in you that wanted to see him get hit? Was it Julie? Was it that you hated him so fiercely because he was going back to Julie and you knew you'd never have her if he made it?

Donny hadn't made it. Bob did have Julie. He was married to her, though it took some doing. So in a terrible sense he had gotten exactly what he desired. He had benefited. Hadn't seemed so at the time, but the one Johnny who came out of the fracas with more than he went into it was he, himself, Gy.Sgt. Bob Lee Swagger, USMC (Ret.).

Don't think, he warned himself. Don't interpret; list. List it all. Dredge it up. He had to concentrate only on the exactness of the event, the hard questions, the knowable, the palpable, the feelable.

What time was it?

0-dark-30, 0530, 06 May 72. Duty NCO nudges me awake, but I am already conscious and I have heard him come.

"Sarge?"

"Yeah, fine."

I rise before the sun. I decide not to wake Donny yet; let him sleep. He's DEROS tomorrow, on his way back to the world. I check my equipment. The M40 is clean, having been examined carefully the night before both by myself and the armorer. Eighty rounds of M118 7.62mm NATO Match ammunition have been wiped and packed into pouches on an 872 harness. I slip into my shoulder holster for my .380; over that I pull on my cammies, I lace and tighten my boots. I darken my face with the colors of the jungle. I find my boonie cap. I slip into the 782 gear, with the ammunition, the canteens, the .45, all checked last night. I take the rifle, which hangs by its sling, off the nail in the bunker wall, slide five M118s into it, closing the bolt to drive the top one into the chamber. I pull back to put on safe, just behind the bolt handle. I'm ready to go to the office.

It's going to be a hot one. The rainy season is finally over, and the heat has come out of the east, settling like a mean old lady on us poor grunts. But it's not hot yet. I stop by the mess tent, where somebody's already got coffee going, and though I don't like the caffeine to jimmy my nerves, it's been so quiet of late I don't see any harm in having a cup.

A PFC pours it for me into a big khaki USMC mug, and I feel the great smell, then take a long, hard hot pull on it. d.a.m.n, that tastes good. That's what a man needs in the morning.

Sitting in his living room, the fire burning away, Bob took another sip on the whiskey. It, too, burned on the way down, then seemed to whack him between the eyes, knock him to blur and gone. He felt the tears come.

06 May 1972. 0550.

I head to the S-2 bunker and duck in. Lieutenant Brophy is already up. He's a good man, and knows just when to be present and when not to be. He's here this morning, freshly shaved, in starched utilities. There seems to be some sort of ceremonial thing going on.

"Morning, Sergeant."

"Morning, sir."

"Overnight your orders came through on the promotion. I'm here to tell you you're officially a gunnery sergeant in the United States Marine Corps. Congratulations, Swagger."

"Thank you, sir."

"You've done a h.e.l.l of a job. And I know you'll be bang-up beaucoup number one at Aberdeen."

"Looking forward to it, sir."

Maybe the lieutenant feels the weight of history. Maybe he knows this is Bob the Nailer's last go-round. Three tours in the 'Nam with an extension for the last one, to give him nineteen straight months in country. He wants to observe it properly and that satisfies me. In some way, Brophy gets it, and that's good.

We go over the job. We work the maps. It's an easy one. I'll go straight out the north side, over the berm and out to the treeline. Then we work our way north toward Hoi An, through heavy bush and across a paddy dike. We go maybe four klicks to a hill that stands 840 meters high and is therefore called Hill 840. We'll go up it, set up observation and keep a good Marine Corps eyeball on Ban Son Road and the Thu Bon River. I'm done killing: it's straight scout work. I'm here for firebase security, nothing else. Along those lines, we plan to look for sign of large-body troop movements, to indicate enemy presence, on the way out and the way back.

The lieutenant himself types up the operational order and enters it in the logbook. I sign the order. It's official now.

I tell the clerk to go get Fenn. It's 0620. We're running a little late, because I've let Fenn sleep. Why did I do this? Well, it seemed kind. I didn't want to break his b.a.l.l.s on the last day. He really isn't needed until we leave the perimeter, as the mission has been well discussed and briefed the night before; he knows the specs better than I do.

He shows up ten minutes later, the sleep still in his eyes, but his face made-up green, like mine. Someone gets him some coffee. The lieutenant asks him how he's doing. He says he's fine, he just wants to get it over with and head back to the world.

"You don't have to go, Fenn," I say.

"I'm going," he says.

Why? Why does he have have to go? What is driving him? I never understood it then; I don't understand it now. There was no reason, not one that ever made no sense to me. It was the last, the tiniest, the least significant of all the things we did in the 'Nam. It was the one we could have skipped and oh, what a different world we'd live in now if we had. to go? What is driving him? I never understood it then; I don't understand it now. There was no reason, not one that ever made no sense to me. It was the last, the tiniest, the least significant of all the things we did in the 'Nam. It was the one we could have skipped and oh, what a different world we'd live in now if we had.

Bob threw down another choker of bourbon. Hot fire. Napalm splashes, the whack between the eyes. The brown glory of it.

"Check your weapons," I tell Fenn, "and then do commo."

Donny makes certain the M14 is charged, safety on. He takes out his .45, drops the mag, sees that the chamber is empty. That's the way I've told him to carry it. Then he checks out the PRC-77, which of course reads loud and clear since the receiving station is about four feet away. But we do it by the numbers, just like always.

"You all set, Fenn?" I ask.

"Gung ho, Semper Fi and all that good s.h.i.+t," says Donny, at last strapping the radio on, getting it set just right, then picks up the weapon, just as I pick mine up.

We leave the bunker. The light is beginning to seep over the horizon; it's still cool and characteristically calm. The air smells sweet.

But then I say, "I don't want to go out the north. Just in case. I want to break our pattern. We go out the east this time, just like we did before. We ain't never repeated ourself; anybody tracking us couldn't antic.i.p.ate that."

Why did I say that? What feeling did I have? I did have a feeling. I know I had one. Why didn't I listen to it? You've got to pay attention, because those little things, they're some part of you you don't know nothing about, trying to reach you with information.

But now there was no reaching back all these years; he had made a snap decision because it felt so right, and it was so wrong. Bob finished the gla.s.s with a last hot swig, then quickly poured another one, two fingers, neat, as on so many lost nights over so many lost years. He held it before his eyes as the blur hit him, and almost laughed. He didn't feel so bad now. It was easy. You could just dig it out that simply, and it was there, before him, as if recorded on videotape or as if, after all these years, the memory somehow wanted wanted to come out at last. to come out at last.

"He's gone, he's dead, you got him," says Brophy, meaning, The white sniper is gone, there's n.o.body out there, don't worry about it. He should have been dead, too. We cooked his a.s.s in 20mm and 7.62. The Night Hag sprayed him with lead. The flamethrower teams barbecued him to melted fat and bone ash. Who could live through that? We recovered his rifle. It was a great coup, waiting to be studied back at Aberdeen by none other than yours truly.

But-why did we believe he was dead? We didn't find no body, we only found the rifle. But how could he have survived all that fire, and the follow-up with the flamethrowers and then the sweep with grunts? No one could have survived that. Then again, this was a terrifically efficient professional. He didn't panic, he'd been under a lot of fire, he'd taken lots of people down. He kept his cool, he had great stamina.

"Yeah, well," I tell the lieutenant.

We reach the eastern parapet wall. A sentry comes over from the guard post down the way.

"All clear?" I ask.

"Sarge, I been working the night vision scope the past few hours. Ain't nothing out there."

But how would he know? The night vision is only good for a few hundred yards. The night vision tells you nothing. It simply means there's n.o.body up close, like a sapper platoon. Why didn't I realize that?

He took another dark, long swallow. It was as if something hit him upside the head with a two-by-four, and his consciousness slipped a little; he felt his bourbon-powered mellowness battling the melancholy of his memory as it presented itself to him after all these years.

I slip my head over the sandbags, look out into the defoliated zone, which is lightening in the rising sun. I can't see much. The sun is directly in my eyes. I can only see flatness, a slight undulation in the terrain, low vegetation, blackened stumps from the defoliant. No details, just a landscape of emptiness.

"Okay," I say. "Last day: time to hunt." I always say this. Why do I think it's so cool? It's stupid, really.

I set my rifle on the sandbag berm, pull myself over, gather the rifle and roll off.