Time to Hunt Part 54

Of course! The range had changed subtly; he was still holding for 654 meters, and the range was probably down to six hundred or so.

By the time he figured this out, the man had come to rest in the rocks below, and was now much better situated behind them, having picked up some maneuverability and the position to shoot back.

G.o.dd.a.m.n him! he thought.

With a thud he caught on something, taking his breath away. He had come to rest in a new nest of rocks fifty meters downslope. The snow still hung in the air, and in his desperate fall-run, it had gotten into his parka and down his neck. But in the complete uncoordination of the moment, he made certain he was behind cover. He breathed hard. He hurt everywhere, but felt warmth pouring down the side of his face, and reached up to touch blood.

Had he been hit?

No: the f.u.c.king night-vision goggles, totally worthless but forgotten in the crisis, had slipped down his head crookedly, and one strap cut a wicked gash in his ear. The cut stung. He grabbed the things and had an impulse to toss them away. What was the point now?

But maybe Solaratov wasn't sure where he was now, nestled behind a slightly wider screen of rocks. He looked and saw he had a little more room to move from rock to rock.

Maybe he could even get a shot off.

But at what?

And then he saw that the slope dropped off intensely and, worse, the rocks had run out.

This is it, he thought.

This is as far as I go.

What did I get out of it?

Nothing.

His ear stung.

"They've moved," Sally said. "Now they're behind the house. You can hear the shots are over there."

"Are we going to be all right?" asked Nikki.

"Yes, baby," Julie said, holding her daughter close.

The three were in the cellar of the house, and Sally had spent the past few minutes jamming old chairs, trunks and boxes against the door at the head of the steps, just in case someone came looking for them with bad intentions.

The cellar smelled of mold and faded material, and spring floods that had soaked everything some years back. It was dirty and dark, only meager light coming through snow-covered windows.

There was one other door, to the outside, one of those slanted wood things that led down three steps to them. Sally had piled up more impediments to that pa.s.sageway, but there was no way of really locking the doors. They could only forestall things.

"I wish we had a gun," said Nikki.

"I wish we did too," said Sally.

"I wish Daddy was here," said Nikki.

Bob had a rare moment of visual freedom, a long, clean look into the stunted snow-covered trees at the base of the mountain. But he could see nothing, no movement, no hint of disturbance.

Then a bullet sang off the rock an inch beyond his face, kicking a puff of granite spray into his eye. He fell back, stifling a yell, and felt the telltale numbness that indicated some kind of trauma. But only for a second; then it lit into raw, harsh but meaningless pain, and he winced, driving more pain into the eye.

G.o.dd.a.m.n him!

Solaratov had seen just the faintest portion of head exposed and he was on it that fast, putting a bullet an inch shy of the target. An inch at six hundred-odd meters. Could that son of a b.i.t.c.h shoot or what?

Swagger felt his eye puff, his lid flare, and he closed it, sensing the throb of pain. He touched the wounded sector of his face: blood, lots of it, from the stone spray, but nothing quite serious. He blinked, opened the eye, and saw hazily out of it. Not blind. Trapped but not blind, not yet.

The guy was so good.

No ranging shots; he got the range right every single time, had Bob pinned and eyeballed.

No G.o.dd.a.m.n ranging shots.

Solaratov had an odd gift, a perfect gift for estimating distance. It made the package complete. Some men had it, some didn't. Some could learn it with experience, some couldn't. It was in fact the weakest part of Swagger's own game, his ability to estimate range. It had cost him a few shots over the years because he lacked the natural inclination to read distances while possessing in spades all the shooter's other natural gifts.

Donny had a gift for it; Donny could look and tell you automatically. But Bob was so lame at it, he'd once spent a fortune on an old Barr & Stroud naval gunfire range finder, a complex, ancient optical instrument that with its many lenses and calibration gizmos could eventually work the farthest unknown distance into a recognizable quant.i.ty.

"Some day they'll make 'em real small," he remembered telling Donny at one lost moment or other.

"Then you won't need a go-fer like me," Donny had said with a laugh, "and I can sit the next war out."

"Yes, you can," Bob had said. "One war is enough."

An idea flirted with him. From where? From Donny? Well, from somewhere over the long years. But it wasn't solid yet: he just felt it beyond the screen of his consciousness, unformed, like a little bit of as-yet-unrecognizable melody.

This guy is so good. How can he be so good?

Donny had the answer. Donny wanted to tell him. Donny knew up in heaven or wherever he was, and Donny yearned somehow to tell him.

Tell me! he demanded.

But Donny was silent.

And down below Solaratov waited, scoping the rocks, waiting for just a bit of a sliver of a body part to show so he could nail it, and then get on with business.

He is so good.

He made great shots.

He hit Dade Fellows dead on, he hit Julie riding at an oblique angle flat out at over eight hundred meters, he was just the- That scene replayed in his mind.

What was odd about it, he now saw, was how featureless it had been. A ridge on a mountain, with a wall of rock behind it, very little vegetation. It had been almost plain, almost abstract.

So?

So how did he range it?

There were no guidelines, no visual data, no known objects visible to make a range estimate, only the woman on the horse getting smaller as she got farther away on the oblique.

How did he know where to hold, when her range changed so radically after the first shot?

He must be a genius. He must just have the gift, the ability to somehow, by the freakish mechanics of the brain, to just know. Donny had that. Maybe it's not so rare.

But then he knew. Or rather Donny told him, reaching across the years.

"You idiot," Donny whispered hoa.r.s.ely in his ear, "don't you see it yet? Why he's so good? It's so obvious." obvious."

Bob knew then why the man had shot at him as he fell but missed. The range had changed; he estimated the lead and got it slightly wrong and just missed. But once his target was still, he knew exactly exactly the range. And that's how he could hit Julie. He knew the range. And that's how he could hit Julie. He knew exactly exactly. He solved the distance equation, and knew how far she was and where to hold to take her down.

He has a range finder, Bob thought. The son of a b.i.t.c.h has a range finder.

Solaratov looked at his watch. It was just past 0700. The light was now gray approaching white, a kind of sealed-off pewter kind of weather. The snow was falling harder and a little breeze had kicked up, tossing and twisting the flakes, pummeling as they rotated down. The wind got under the crack of his hood, where his flesh was sweaty, and cut him like a scythe. A little chill ran up his spine.

How long can I wait? he wondered.

n.o.body was flying in for yet another few hours, but maybe they could get in with snowmobiles or plow the highway and get in that way.

A sudden, uncharacteristic uneasiness settled over him.

He made a list: 1.) Kill the sniper.2.) Kill the woman.3.) Kill the witnesses.4.) Escape into the mountains.5.) Contact the helo.6.) Rendezvous.

An hour's worth of work, he thought, possibly two.

He kept on the scope, the rifle c.o.c.ked, his finger riding the curve of the trigger, his mind clear, his concentration intense.

How long can I stay at this level?

When do I have to blink, look away, yawn, p.i.s.s, think of warmth, food, a woman?

He pivoted on the fulcrum of the log, running the scope along the ridge of rocks, looking for target indicators. More breath? A shadow out of place? Some disturbed snow? A regular line? A trace of movement? It would happen, it had to, for Swagger wouldn't be content to wait. His nature would compel action and then compel doom.

He can't see me.

He doesn't know where I am.

It's just a matter of time.

He tried to figure out a range finder. How do the G.o.dd.a.m.n things work? His old Barr & Stroud was mechanical, like a surveyor's piece of equipment, with gears and lenses. That's why it was so heavy. It was a combination binocular and adding machine: completely impractical.

But no modern shooter would have such a device: too old, too heavy, too delicate.

Laser. It has to work off a laser. It has to shoot a laser to an object, measure the time and make a sure, swift calculation off of that.

Lasers were everywhere. They used them to guide bombs, aim guns, operate on the eye, remove tattoos, imitate fireworks. But what kind of laser was this one?

Off the visible spectrum, since it projected no beam, no red dot.

Ultraviolet?

Infrared?

How could it be brought into the visible spectrum?

It's a kind of light. How do I see it? How do I see it?

One idea: light being heat, if he could get Solaratov to project it through an ice mist, its heat would burn tracks in the snow. Then he could shoot back down the tracks and...

But that was absurd. Besides involving setting up some complex linkage of actions, any one of which could catch him a 7mm Magnum through the lungs, he didn't even know if it would work.

Idea two: get Solaratov to shoot the laser through a piece of ice. It would bend, and send back some faulty reading. He would over- or undercompensate, miss and...

Insane. Unworkable.

Think! Think, G.o.ddammit. How do I see it?

And then it occurred to him.

Would I see it on night vision? Would I see it in my goggles? Would they register it?

He picked them up where they lay, half in, half out of the snow, slid the harness over his skull, pulled the goggles down and snapped them on. They yielded a green dense landscape, as if the world had ended in water. The seas had risen. Green was everywhere. Nothing else was clear.

How can I get him to lase me again? He knew. He had to move one more time, change the range.

Solaratov would go to his laser range finder.

If it works, it'll be like a neon sign in the green, saying I AM THE SNIPER.

Now something was happening.

He saw puffs of breath rising above a certain acc.u.mulation of boulders, signifying some kind of physical exertion. He watched and one of the rocks seemed somehow to tremble.

Is he moving the rock?

Why would he move the rock?

But in the same second, as he steadied himself, as the rock wobbled truly erratically, seemed to pause, and then tumbled ever so majestically forward, pulling a score of smaller rocks with it, uncurling a shroud of snow as it fell, he knew.

He's trying to bury me, Solaratov thought.

He's trying to start an avalanche, to send tons of snow down the mountain and bury me.

But it wasn't going to work. Avalanche snow, Solaratov knew, was old snow, its structure eroded by melt, its moisture mostly evaporated, so that it was dry and treacherous, a network of unsafe stresses and fault lines. Then and only then could a single fracture cut out its underpinnings and send it cras.h.i.+ng down. This avalanche would never go anywhere. The snow was too wet and new; it might fly a bit, but it wouldn't build. It would peter out a few hundred yards down.

On top of that, clearly the man didn't even know where he was. Even now, as the rocks and their screen of snow tumbled abortively down the hill, not picking up energy but losing it, they were on no course toward himself, but more or less to the right about one hundred yards. The falling snow simply could not reach him.

He almost chuckled at the futility of it, remembering that his quarry was a jungle fighter, not a man of the mountains.