Time to Hunt

by Stephen Hunter

  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.”

  “No, I’m all right.”

  He looked at them, saw only dark faces and glaring eyeballs.

  “Look, let’s forget all about this shit, but just get him”—Featherstone, who still sat, zombielike, on the cot—“straight for tomorrow. Okay? He can’t be fucked up out there; he’ll get killed.”

  “Yeah, sure, Fenn, no problem.”

  “And let me tell you guys something, okay? You kicked the shit out of me, now you listen.”

  Some eyes greeted his angrily in the low light, but most looked away. It was hot and rank with sweat and the odor of beer and marijuana.

  “You guys may say Swagger is a psycho and he likes to kill and all that shit. Fine. But have you noticed how come we never get hit and our patrols don’t get ambushed? Have you noticed we haven’t had a KIA in months? Have you noticed our only wounded are booby traps, and they’re almost never fatal, and there’s almost no ambushes? Hasn’t been an ambush in months, maybe years. You know why that is? Is it because they love you? Is it because they know you’re all peaceniks and dope smokers and you flash the peace sign and all you are saying is give peace a chance? Is that why?”

  No voices answered his. His head really hurt. He had been whacked good. His vis
ion was blurry as shit.

  “No. It has nothing to do with you. Nobody gives a fuck about you. No, it’s because of him. Of Swagger. Because the NVA and Victor Charles, they fear him. They are scared shitless of him. You say he’s psycho, but every time he drops one of them, you benefit. You live. You survive. You’re living on the goddamn time he buys for you by putting his ass in the grass. He’s your guardian angel. And he’ll always wear the curse of being the killer, the man with the gun, while you guys have the luxury of not getting your pretty little hands dirty. He’ll always be on the outside because of his kills. He takes the responsibility, he lives with it, and you guys, you worthless assholes, you’ll go back to the world on account of it, and all you can do is call him psycho. Man, have you ever heard of shame? You all ought to be ashamed.”

  He turned and slipped out into the night.

  The Russian lay motionless in the high grass, on a little crest maybe twelve hundred yards out from the firebase. In the dark, he could see nothing except the steady illumination of guard post flares, one fired every three or four minutes, and the occasional movement of the Marines from hootch to hootch in the night, as sentries changed. There was no sense whatsoever of anything wrong.

  He was still tired from the nearly five hours of crawling, but felt himself beginning to rally as the energy flooded back into him. He looked at his watch. It was 0430. The Dragunov was before him in the grass; it was time.

  Deftly, he rolled over a bit, unstrapped the pack, pulled it off his back and opened it. He took out a large cylindrical object, an optical device, mounted to an electronics housing. It was Soviet issue, PPV-5, a night-vision telescope, too clumsy to be mounted on a rifle but fine for stable observation. He set it into the earth before him, and his fingers found the switch. As a rule, he didn’t trust these things: too fragile, too awkward, too heavy; worse, one grew wedded to them, until they destroyed initiative and talent; worse still, one lost one’s night vision to them.

  But this time, the device was the perfect solution to the tactical problem. He was concealed, but at great range; he had to know exactly when and if the sniper team left in the hour before dawn, so that he could move to his shooting position and take them as they emerged from behind the hill. If they didn’t come, he’d simply spend the day there, waiting patiently. He had enough water and food in the pack to last nearly a week, though of course each day he’d be weaker. But today, it felt good.

  Through the green haze of the device, which crudely amplified the ambient light of the night, he saw the camp in surprising detail. He saw the lit cigarettes of smoking sentries, he saw them sneak out into the night for marijuana or to defecate in the latrine, or to drink something—beer, he guessed. But he knew where to look. At the sandbag berm nearest to the intelligence bunker, there was a crease at the base of the hill that led this way directly. He’d even been able to spot the zigzag in the concertina there, and the gap in the preset Claymore mines, and the prongs of the other anti-personal mines buried in the approach zone. It was a path, where men could move and get out of the camp. This is where it would come, if it would come at all.

  The first signal was just a flick of bright light, as the flap on a bunker was momentarily pushed aside, letting the illumination inside escape to register on Solaratov’s lens. Solaratov took a deep breath, and in another second, another brief flash came. As he watched, two men, heavily laden, moved to the sandbag berm and paused.

  He watched. He waited. If only he had a rifle capable of hitting at fifteen hundred yards! He could do it and be done. But no such weapon existed in his own or his host country’s inventory. Finally a man rose, peered over the edge of the berm, then pulled himself over it and fell the three-odd feet to the ground. He snaked down the dirt slope to a gully at the base. In time, another Marine duplicated the efforts, though he was a larger, more ponderous man. He too fell to the ground, but gracelessly; then he rolled down the dirt embankment and joined his leader.

  The two hesitated in their next move, watching, waiting. The leader lifted his rifle—yes, it had a scope—and searched the horizon for sign of an ambush. Making none out, he lowered the weapon and spoke to the assistant. The assistant rose unsteadily from cover, and began to move ever so slowly through the mines and the Claymores, finding gaps in the wire exactly where they should be and slipping through them. His leader followed him, and when both were free of the approach zone, the leader stepped forward and, moving at a slow, steady, hunched pace, began to work his way down the draw. Solaratov watched them until they disappeared.

  They come, he thought.

  He flicked off the scope, and began to slither through the grass toward his shooting position.

  Around 0630 the suns began to rise. There were two of them, both orange, both shimmery, both peering over the edges of the earths, just beyond the far trees. Donny blinked hard, blinked again. His head ached.

  “You okay?” Swagger hissed, lying next to him.

  “I’m fine,” he lied.

  “You keep blinking. What the hell is going on?”

  “I’m fine,” Donny insisted, but Swagger looked back into that patch of yellow grass and undulating earth he had designated Area 1.

  Of course Donny wasn’t fine. He thought of a book he once read about bomber pilots in World War II and a soldier who saw everything twice. He was seeing everything twice. But he didn’t scream “I see everything twice” like that guy did.

  He had a simple concussion, that was all, not enough to sickbay him or bellyache him out of any job in the Corps—except, of course, this one. The spotter was eyes, that was all he was.

  “What the hell happened to you?”

  “Huh?”

  “What the hell happened to you. You’re swole up like a grapefruit. Someone bang you?”

  “I fell. It’s nothing.”

  “Goddamn you, Fenn, this is the one fucking day in your life when you cannot have goddamn fallen. Oh, Christ, you got double vision, you got pain, you got dead spots in your vision?”

  “I am fine. I am roger to go.”

  “Bullshit. Goddammit.”

  Swagger turned back, furiously. He lay in blazing concentration on the ridge, his sniper rifle before him, gazing through a pair of binoculars, sweeping Area 1. Donny blinked, wished he had a goddamn aspirin and put his eye to the M49 spotting scope planted in the earth before him.

  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 watche
d 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.