Time to Hunt

by Stephen Hunter

  “Maybe we’ll get prints off the thermos,” Benteen said.

  Bob bent and looked at the marks in the earth.

  “See that,” he said, pointing to two circular indentations in the dust right at the edge of the patch. “Those are marks of a Harris bipod. The rifle rested on a Harris bipod.”

  “Yeah,” said the cop.

  Bob turned and looked back across the gulf to where Dade’s body still rested under a coroner’s sheet. He gauged the distance to be close to two hundred meters dead on, maybe a little downward elevation but nothing challenging.

  “A hard shot, Mr. Swagger?”

  “No, I would say not,” he said. “Any half-practiced fool could make that shot prone off the bipod with a zeroed rifle.”

  “So you would look at this and not necessarily conclude that it’s a professional sniper’s work.”

  “No. In the war we did most of our shooting at four hundred to eight hundred meters, on moving targets. This is much simpler: the distance is close, his angle to the target was dead on, the target was still. Then he misses the other two shots he takes at my wife, or at least he didn’t hit her squarely. Then he comes back and hits the old man in the head as he lays dead in the dirt. No, as I look at this, I can’t say I see anything that speaks of a trained man to me. It could have been some random psycho, someone who had a rifle and the itch to see something die and suddenly he sees this chance and his darker self gets a hold of him.”

  “It’s been known to happen.”

  “Yes, it has.”

  “Still, it would be a mighty big coincidence, wouldn’t it? That such a monster just happens to nail your wife? I mean, given who and what you were?”

  “As you say, such things have been known to happen. Let’s take a look at the shell.”

  “Can’t pick it up till we photo it,” said the younger man.

  “He’s right. That’s procedure.” “Okay, you mind if I squat down and get a look at the head stamp?”

  “Go ahead.”

  Bob bent down, brought his eyes close to the shell’s rear end.

  “What is it?” asked Benteen.

  “Seven-millimeter Remington Mag.”

  “Is that a good bullet?”

  “Yes, sir, it is. Very flat shooting, very powerful. They use them mainly in hunting over long distances. Rams, ’lopes, elk, the like. Lot of ’em in these parts.”

  “A hunter’s round, then. Not a professional sniper’s round.”

  “It is a hunter’s round: I’ve heard the Secret Service snipers use it, but nobody else.”

  He stood, looked back across the gap. Bipod marks, circular, where the bipod sat in the dust, supporting the rifle. Two 7mm Remington Mag shells. Range less than two hundred meters, a good, easy shot. Nearly anyone could have made it with a reasonable outfit. Now what was bothering him?

  He didn’t know.

  But there was some oddness here, too subtle for his conscious mind to track. Maybe his unconscious brain, the smarter part of him, would figure it out.

  He shook his head, to himself, mainly.

  What is wrong with this picture?

  “I wonder why there’s only two shells,” said Benteen, “if he fired four times. That would be two missing.”

  “Only one,” said Bob. “He may not have ejected the last shell. As for the third shell, maybe it caught on his clothes or something, or he kicked it when he got up. Or it was right by him and he picked it up. That’s not surprising. The shells are light; they get moved about easily. You can never find all your shells. I wouldn’t pay too much attention to that.”

  Was that it?

  “Good point,” said the elderly officer.

  But then the radio crackled again. Old Benteen picked it off his belt, listened to the stew of syllables, then turned to Bob.

  “They found your wife.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  She would live. She lay encased in bandages. The broken ribs, five of them, were difficult; time alone would heal them. The shattered collarbone, where a bullet had driven through, missing arteries and blood-bearing organs by bare millimeters, would heal with more difficulty, and orthopedic surgery lay ahead. The abraded skin from her long roll down the mountainside, the dislocated hip, the contusions, bruises, muscle aches and pains, all would heal eventually.

  So now she lay heavily sedated and immobile in the intensive care unit of the Boise General Hospital, linked to an EKG whose solid beeping testified to the sturdiness of her heart despite all the fractures and the pain. Her daughter sat on her bed, flowers filled the room, two Boise cops guarded the door, the doctor’s prognostication was optimistic and her husband was there for her.

  “What happened?” she finally said.

  “Do you remember?”

  “Not much. The police have talked to me. Poor Mr. Fellows.”

  “He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I am very sorry about that.”

  “Who did this?”

  “The police seem to think it was some random psycho in the hills. Maybe a militia boy, full of foolish ideas, or someone who just couldn’t handle the temptation of the rifle.”

  “Have they caught anybody?”

  “No. And there were no distinguishable prints on a cheap thermos they recovered. They really don’t have much. A couple of shells, some scuffs in the dust.”

  She looked off. Nikki was coloring steadily, a big Disney book. The scent of flowers and disinfectant filled the room.

  “I hate seeing you here,” Bob said. “You don’t belong here.”

  “But I am here,” she said.

  “I’ve asked Sally Memphis to come up and stay with you. She’s a couple of months pregnant but she was eager to help. I called Dade Fellows’s daughter, and she said her father has a ranching property over in Custer County, remote and safe in a valley. When you get better, I want Sally to move you up there. I want you and Nikki protected.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Nikki, honey, why don’t you go get a Coke?”

  “Daddy, I don’t want a Coke. I just had a Coke.”

  “Well, sweetie, why don’t you get another Coke. Or get Daddy a Coke, all right?”

  Nikki knew when she was being kicked out. She got up reluctantly, kissed her mother and left the room.

  “I haven’t told the cops,” he said, “because they wouldn’t get it and they couldn’t do anything about it. But I don’t think this is a wandering Johnny with a rifle. I think we got us a big-time serious professional killer and I think I’m the boy he’s after.”

  “Why on earth?”

  “There could be many reasons. As you know, I have been in some scrapes. I don’t know which of ’em would produce this. But what that means is until I get this figured out, I believe you are in more danger around me than less. And I need freedom. I need to get about, to look at things, to get some items sorted out. This guy’s got a game going on me; but now I have the advantage because for a few days more he won’t know he missed me. I have to operate fast and learn what I can in the opening.”

  “Bob, you should talk to the FBI if you don’t think these Idaho people are sophisticated enough.”

  “I don’t have anything they’d recognize yet. I have to develop some evidence. I’d just get myself locked in the loony bin.”

  “Oh, Lord,” she said. “This is going to be one of your things, isn’t it?”

  There was a long moment of quiet. He let the anger in him rise, then top off, then fall; then he began to hurt a little.

  “What do you mean, ‘things’?”

  “Oh, you have these crusades. You go off and you get involved in some ruckus. You don’t talk about it but you come back spent and happy. You get to be alive again and do what you do the best. You get to be a sniper again. The war never ended for you. You never wanted it to end. You loved it too deeply. You loved it more than you ever loved any of us, I see that now.”

  “Julie, honey, you don’t know what you’re saying. Y
ou’re on painkillers. I want you to be comfortable. I’m just going to look into some things for a while.”

  She shook her head sadly.

  “I can’t have it. Now it’s come to my daughter. The war. It killed my first husband and now it’s come into my life and you want to go off and fight it all over again, and my daughter, who is eight, had to see a man die. Do you have any idea how traumatizing that is? No child should have to see that. Ever.”

  “I agree, but what we have is what we have and it has to be dealt with. It can’t be ignored. It won’t go away.”

  He could see that she was crying.

  “Get some help,” she finally said. “Call Nick; he’s with the FBI. Call some Marine general; he’ll have connections. Call one of those writers who’s always wanting to do a book with you. Get some help. Take some money from my family’s account and hire some private guards. Don’t be Bob the Nailer anymore. Be Bob the husband and Bob the father, Bob the man at home. I can’t stand that this is in our life again. I thought it was over, but it’s never over.”

  “Sweetie, I didn’t invent this. It’s not something I thought up. Please, you’re upset, you had a terrible experience, you’re in what we call post-traumatic stress syndrome, where it keeps flashing before your eyes and you’re angry all the time. I’ve been there. Time is going to heal you up, your mind as well as your body.”

  She said nothing. She looked at Bob, but wasn’t seeing him any longer.

  “But I have to deal with this. Okay? Just let me deal with this.”

  “Oh, Bob—”

  She started to cry again.

  “I can’t lose you, too. I can’t lose both you and Donny to the same war. I can’t. I can’t bear it.”

  “I just have to look into this. I’ll be careful. I know this stuff; I can work a lot faster alone and you’ll be safer without me there at all. Okay?”

  She shook her head disconsolately.

  “You have to answer me a question or two, please. All right?”

  After a bit, she nodded.

  “You went over this with the cops, only they won’t let me see the report. But they don’t have a clue. He’s already got them outfoxed. Now, I’m assuming no two shots followed upon each other closely. Is that right?”

  She paused again, thinking, and then at last yielded.

  “Yes.”

  “There must have been at least two seconds between shots?”

  “It felt like less than that.”

  “But if he hits Dade in the chest, then he hits you in the collarbone, and you’re forty, fifty yards away, it took him some time to track and fire. So it had to be at least two, maybe three seconds.”

  “You won’t put Nikki through this?”

  “No. Now—he hits you moving. I’m guessing you were really galloping, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s a pretty good shot.”

  He sat back, his respect slightly increased. An oblique fast-mover, at two hundred yards.

  “Why does he hit you in the collarbone and not in the full body?”

  “It’s my right collarbone, not my left one,” she said. “That means he was aiming at my back, dead center. What I remember is the horse seemed to stumble forward just a bit, and the next second it was like somebody hit me in the shoulder with a baseball bat. The second after that I was down; there was dust everywhere. Nikki came back to me. Somehow I got up. I was afraid he’d shoot at her, so I yelled at her. Then I ran away from her so that he’d shoot me instead.”

  “It still makes no sense. If he’s two hundred yards out, then the time in flight is so minimal he hits the sight picture he sees, and he don’t shoot if he don’t see the right sight picture. You’re sure the horse stumbled?”

  “I felt it. Then, whack, and I was down, there was dust everywhere, the horse was crying.”

  “Okay. Next, I heard four shots fired. One into Dade, the knock-down shot, the third shot, then the fourth into Dade’s head.”

  “Thank God I never saw that.”

  “But there was a third shot?”

  “I think so. But I went off the edge.”

  “You jumped off the edge? You weren’t knocked down?”

  “I jumped.”

  “God. Great move. Right move, great move, smart move. Guts move. Guts move. That gets you a medal in the Marine Corps.”

  “It was all I could think to do.”

  “So he did take a third shot. He was shooting at you. Man, I cannot figure why he is missing. Why is he missing? You jump, but at two hundred meters or less, with a seven-millimeter Remington Mag, what he sees is what he gets. He can’t miss from that range. Maybe he’s not so good.”

  “Maybe he’s not.”

  “Maybe the cops are right. It’s some psycho.”

  “Maybe it is. But that would cheat you out of your crusade, wouldn’t it? So it can’t be a psycho. It’s got to be a master sniper.”

  He let her hostility pass.

  “Another thing I can’t figure is how come he’s shooting at you at all? You’d think once he did me, it’s over. That’s it. Time to—”

  But then something came into his mind.

  “No. No, I see. He has to hit you, because he knows exactly how quickly you could get back to the ranch and a phone and that’s cutting it too close. Nikki’s not a problem, she’s probably not together enough to think of that. But he has to do you to give himself the right amount of time to make his getaway. He’s figured out the angles. I can see how his mind works. Very methodical, very savvy.”

  “Maybe you’re dreaming all this up.”

  “Maybe I am.”

  “But you want the man-to-man thing. I can tell. You against him, just like Vietnam. Just like all the other places. God, I hate that war. It killed Donny, it stole your mind. It was so evil.”

  But then Nikki came back with a Coke for her dad and a nurse came in with pills and their time alone was finished.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  The wind howled; it was cloudy today, and maybe rain would fall. Bob’s horse, Junior, nickered nervously at the possibility, stamped, then put his head down to some mountain vegetation and began to chew.

  Bob stood at the shooter’s site. It was a flat nest of dust across an arroyo, not more than two hundred meters from where Dade had been shot and maybe 280 from where Julie fell. If he had had a range finder, he would have known the range for sure, but those things—laser-driven these days, much more compact than the Barr and Stroud he’d once owned—cost a fortune, and only wealthy hunters and elite SWAT or sniper teams had them. It didn’t matter; the range was fairly easy to estimate from here because the body sizes were easy to read. If you know the power of your scope, as presumably this boy would, you could pretty much gauge the distance from how much of the body you got into your lens. That worked out to about three hundred yards, and then it was a different matter altogether: you entered a different universe when the distances were way out.

  Why did you miss her? he wondered. She’s running away, she’s on the horse, the angle is tough; the only answer is, you’re a crappy shot. You’re a moron. You’re some asshole who’s read too many books and dreamed of the kick you get looking through the scope when the gun fires, and you see something go slack. So you do the old man, then you swing onto the racing woman, her horse bounding up and down, and it’s too much shot for you. You misread the angle, you misread the distance, you just ain’t the boy for the job.

  Okay. You fire, you bring her down. There’s dust, and then she emerges from the dust, running toward the edge. She wants you to shoot her, so you concentrate on her, not the girl. You’ve really got plenty of time. There’s no rush, there’s no up-down plunge as there would be on a horse; it’s really a pretty elementary shot.

  But you miss again, this time totally.

  No, you ain’t the boy you think you are.

  That added up. That made sense. Some asshole who thought too much about guns and had no other life, no family, no sane c
onnection to the world. It was the sickening part of the Second Amendment computation, but there you had it: some people just could not say no to the godlike power of the gun.

  But how come there ain’t no tracks?

  Apparent contradiction: he’s not good enough to make the shot, but he is good enough to get out cold without any stupid mistakes, like the print of his boot in the dust, which would at least narrow it down a bit. Yet he leaves two shells and a thermos. Yet all three are clean of prints. How could that be? Is he a professional or not? Or is he just a lucky amateur?

  Bob looked at the bipod marks, still immaculate in the dust, undisturbed by the process of making plaster casts of them. They would last until the rain, and then be gone forever. They told him nothing; bipod, big deal. You could buy the Harris bipod in any gun store in America. Varmint shooters used them and so did police snipers. Some men used them when they took their rifles to the range for zeroing or load development, but not usually: because the bipod fit by an attachment to the screw hole in which the front swing swivel was set. That meant the screw could work lose under a long bench session and that it could change the point of impact much more readily than a good sandbag. Some hunters used them, but it was a rarity, because you almost never got a prone position in the field, so the extra weight was not worth it. Some men used them because they thought they looked cool. Would that be our guy?

  He stared at imprints of the legs, trying to divine a meaning from their two, neat square images. No meaning arrived. Nothing.

  But contemplating the bipod got him going in another direction: What’s he see? Bob wondered. What’s he see from up here?

  So he went to the prone and took up a position indexed to the marks in the dust. From there he had a good, straight-on view of Dade’s position, yes; and the shot—with the stable rifle, the sun behind you, the wind calm as it was at that point in the day—it was just a matter of concentrating on the crosshairs, trusting the rig, squeezing the trigger and presto, instant kill. You threw the bolt, and no more than a few seconds later you had the woman.

  He now saw how truly heroic Julie had been. Nine-hundred-ninety-nine out of a thousand inexperienced people just freeze on the spot. Sniper cocks, pivots a degree or so, and he has a second kill. But bless her brilliant soul, she reacted on the dime when Dade went down, and off she went with Nikki. He had to track her.