Time to Hunt

by Stephen Hunter

  He tried to calculate the differences between his .308 168-grain round and the Russian’s 7mm Remington Magnum. The Magnum flew four hundred feet per second faster with almost a thousand pounds more muzzle energy; it shot so much flatter. The Russian, if he were under five hundred yards, could hold just a bit over him and pull the trigger, not worrying about drop. So he’d have to stay at least five hundred yards ahead, because the slight drop, plus the windage, would be his best defense.

  He turned back, squirmed to the lip of the ridge, but could see nothing except the quiet house far below and the ridgeline running around the base of the mountain.

  But he was coming. The Russian was coming. The Russian was hunting him.

  Solaratov studied the situation. He looked across the horseshoe through his Leica binoculars at the ridge where he’d spotted the other shooter and understood the man couldn’t go up or down, for both would expose him and he’d be dead in a second. He could only crawl desperately away, round the flank of the mountain, and try and set up in the mountain’s next cove, waiting for a shot.

  He shot a laser over and the readout told him the range was about 987 meters. He calculated the drop to be about forty-two inches from his five hundred-yard zero, which was four dots high on the mil-dot reticle. Now that he’d solved the distance, he felt confident. But there was one other thing left to do.

  He pulled the rifle down, and quickly unscrewed the BOSS nozzle, which controlled barrel vibrations. He reached inside his jacket and removed an AWC suppressor. It was a long black tube of anodized aluminum packed with “baffles,” sound-absorbent material, like steel wool, and washers called “wipes;” it would reduce the 460-dB level of the gas exploding out of his muzzle by trapping it and bleeding it off, down to under a hundred db’s, approximately the sound of a BB gun. From long distance, in the cone of the suppressor’s pattern, that sound would be not merely significantly quieter but also more diffuse. There’d be no signature to reveal his position. Anyone on the receiving end would hear only the crack of the bullet as it broke the sound barrier, but nothing from the rifle’s muzzle that could pinpoint a location. That meant he could shoot at his antagonist but his antagonist could not locate him by sound to shoot back. The downside: it changed his zero somewhat. How much? He’d have to reckon visually and make adjustments as he fired. He still felt that with the range finder, the suppressor gave him significant tactical advantage. He carefully screwed the suppressor tight to the muzzle.

  He knew one other thing, because he had studied the topographical maps: that once his antagonist got around the mountain, he would be in for a surprise. The elevation was much steeper. There were no ridges as there were here fronting the valley. He’d have no place to hide. He’d be in the open.

  Solaratov knew the wise move would be to scamper upward to gain further advantage of height. As he had the initiative at this point, he probably had a good four- or five-minute window of time where he could ascend, slide over one of the lesser hills of Mount McCaleb, and then shoot down upon his antagonist.

  But he also knew that is exactly how the man’s mind would work; that’s how he’d figure it and he himself, once under shelter, would ascend quickly to try and prevent the Russian from gaining the height advantage.

  But none of this mattered. The objective was the woman. The higher Solaratov got, the farther from the woman he got. It wasn’t about some man-on-man thing, some sniper duel, some engagement of vanity. That was his advantage. The other man—it had to be Swagger—meant nothing to him. Solaratov’s ego was uninvested; what had happened all those years back in Vietnam was totally disconnected from today, and that itself was a significant advantage.

  Thus Solaratov made his plan: he would drop back a few yards behind the shield of an enfilade and then descend in freedom to the valley floor. He’d have a dangerous period of vulnerability as he went across the valley floor, but with his snow skills and his understanding of the other man’s fear, he knew the other man would be busy setting up a hide in the next fold for a man he thought would ascend to fight.

  Instead, the Russian would work from the ground and shoot uphill. He’d find cover in a treeline or behind rocks, he’d scope the distance, and he’d put his silent shots onto the antagonist, precise and perfect.

  Swagger would not even know where the shots came from. He’d hear nothing. He’d be driven back until he was out of cover, and then he’d die.

  Then, thought Solaratov, I’ll backtrack, get into the house and do the women. Witnesses. I’ll have to kill them all.

  Bob squirmed in a last desperate burst of energy and came around the mountain. There is no lower or more degrading mode of transportation than the low crawl, and he had crawled enough in his time. His elbows and knees ached from the endless banging against the rock. Snow had gotten into his mouth and down his neck. Now at last: some kind of safety.

  He paused, breathing hard, feeling wet with sweat. At least Solaratov had not gotten above him to fire down on him as he crawled.

  His mouth was dry, his body heaved for oxygen that he could not replenish fast enough. His heart hammered like a drum beaten by a madman. His focus rolled in and out. But with a surge of will, he settled down. He pulled himself up the mountain and peeked back over some rocks at the valley he’d left behind.

  Nothing.

  No sign of Solaratov. The house lay undisturbed far below, in a huge field of undisturbed snow. The rock along the ridgeline where the Russian had set up now appeared deserted.

  Bob picked up the rifle and used its scope to scan the mountain above. If he were Solaratov, that’s what he would have done: climbed, worked around, always trying to get the elevation.

  But he saw nothing; there was no snow in the air, no sign of disturbance. Putting the scope down, he tried to will himself into a kind of blankness, by which his subconscious, peripheral vision might note something his front-on, focused eyes might not, and send him a signal of warning. But he saw nothing; no movement registered on the slopes before him or the flatness beneath. He drew back.

  Had Solaratov gone low, tried to get to the house and finish the job? Doubtful; he’d be exposed too long, and at any moment a shot could take him. He rethought it: yes, he has to come after me. His first priority is to eliminate the threat, because he is not on a kamikaze mission, he’s no zealot. He’s a professional. It only makes sense for him if he can escape; that means he’s got an escape route, a fallback route, everything.

  He will come.

  He will hunt me.

  Bob looked up. The slope of the mountain increased until it disappeared into fog, which was really cloud. Solaratov would get up there, come down by some magic and shoot down upon him.

  He backed around, looking for a place to set up a hide.

  The news was not good.

  The ridge on which he perched, like a shelf that traced the jagged contours of the mountain, gave out 250 yards ahead; or, rather, it ran into a ravine, where a gash had been cut in the mountain, a long, ragged scar left by some ancient natural cataclysm. Now it was full of vegetation and rocks, all pristine with snow. But beyond the gap, there was nothing. The mountain slope was smooth and bare, offering no protection at all.

  He looked up. It was too steep to climb at this point, though maybe beyond the gap he could engineer some elevation.

  He looked down into a sector of valley. The floor was covered with snow-humped trees and brush, all bent into extravagant postures and made smooth under the weight of their white burden. It was a sculpture garden, a winter wonderland, a theme park, beautiful and grotesque and delicate at once, the frail tracery of the lesser branches all bearing their inch of white stuff. It looked quite poetic from six hundred yards up, but if you got caught down there, you’d never be able to move out.

  There was really no choice. He had to get to the gash and take up a position in the rocks. He’d get one good shot at Solaratov, who would probably work his way down from above. Solaratov would have the advantage of elevation, but he
wouldn’t know where to look. He’d have to scout and he’d have to expose himself when he looked.

  That’s when I get him, Bob thought, wishing he believed it.

  Then he noticed: it had begun to snow. Flakes cascaded down again, fluting and canting in the wind, a screen of them, dense and unyielding.

  Visibility closed in.

  Bob didn’t like this a bit.

  It was snowing. Solaratov, breathing hard, found a trail inside the scruffy vegetation that edged the mountain, where the overhanging leaves had cut down on snow accumulation. He almost ran, skirting the flat of the valley, staying off its exposure, staying away from the house for now. He knew that Bob could not see him from any elevation, through the snow-bearing branches. He probably wouldn’t even look in the right direction.

  Solaratov came around a curve of the valley, edged to the treeline and went hunched behind a fallen log that was somehow suspended by its branches. The snow fell gently around him out of the gray light. There was no sound at all in the world.

  He read the land, looking for natural hides where an experienced man would go to ground. It was not a difficult problem, for the mountainside was largely featureless there, with only sparse vegetation to distract the eye. In fact the whole little war between them had been distilled to its most nearly abstract: two men in white in a white, cold world in white mountains of extreme elevation, hunting each other, going for whatever little edge of experience and luck they could find. Whoever read the problem better would win: it had nothing to do with courage or, really, even marksmanship. It would come down to this one thing: who was the better practitioner of the sniper’s skills?

  He could see a kind of gash in the mountainside ahead of him and realized that his quarry, coming around the edge, would have no choice but to seek refuge at its top.

  He picked up his binoculars and scanned. He could see nothing but the rocks under their packing of snow. Visibility was not bad, though blurred by the falling snow.

  He’s up there. He’s got to be.

  He triggered a laser to the top of the gash, bounced it off a rock, and read the range in the readout: 654 meters. Known distance. Upward. He did the math quickly and knew where to hold, computing in the uphill angle. He’d shoot from the center of the third mil-dot; that would put him there, crudely but close enough. And he felt his nearness to the mountain would shield the bullet from the predations of the wind; it wouldn’t drift laterally.

  He hunted patiently, looking for target indicators, for some implication that his prey was alive and hiding, and had not circled behind him. The rocks were everywhere, a kind of garden of stone humped in snow. He looked for disturbances in the snow, for sign of a man who’d crawled, upending the crust of white. But he could not see that for the angle.

  What is his sign?

  What is the sign?

  Then he knew: the man’s breath. It will rise like fog, maybe just a vapor, but it will show. It has to show. He has to breathe.

  It was the slightest thing. Was it really there, or an optical illusion? But no, there it was: a slight curl through the snow, the suggestion of atmospheric density. It could be a man’s breath leaking out as he huddled motionlessly in the rocks, awaiting his prey as he scanned upward.

  Yes, my friend. There you are, he thought, slowly picking out the pattern of the arctic warfare camouflage, snow dappled with a little dead brown vegetation.

  The man was on his belly, nestled behind rocks, in a little collection of them at the very top of the gash. He lay with the sniper’s professional patience, totally engaged, totally calm. Solaratov could not see the rifle, but he saw the man.

  There you are, he thought. There you are.

  He again fired a laser at him: exactly 658 meters. He had the target.

  He fixed markers in his mind’s eye—a stand of snow-laden pines—put the binoculars down, raised the rifle and went to the scope. Of course it was not nearly so powerful as the binocs, and its field of vision was much smaller. But he found the pines, tracked down, waited, and yes, found the little trail of vapor that marked his prey.

  He settled in, looking for the target. He could see just a half an inch of camouflaged parka above the rock, probably the upper surface of the prone back. He settled on this target, centering it on the third dot.

  Should I fire?

  I may not quite have enough of him visible to drive into the blood-bearing inner organs. I might just wound him.

  My zero might be way off.

  But then: so what? I have a suppressor.

  He will not know where I am shooting from.

  He will have to move as I bring him under fire.

  He won’t know if I’m above him or below him.

  He’ll have to move; I can chase him across the ravine. He’ll run out of rocks. I’ll have him.

  He exhaled his breath, commanded his senses, felt the slow tick and twitch of his body as he made minute corrections, waited until the total rightness of it all fell across him.

  The trigger broke, and with its odd, tiny sound, the rifle fired.

  Bob lay quietly in the rocks. Above him a screen of snowy pines shielded him somewhat but left him with a good view of the direction he’d come. With the most discipline his body could invent, he scanned three zones: the first was the ridge, right where it came around the mountain; the next was a crop of rocks perhaps sixty meters above that; and the next was a notch in the mountain, perhaps two hundred meters up, that swam into and out of visibility as the cloud permitted. Solaratov would appear at one of those places as he came high around the mountain, with the idea of shooting downward.

  Methodically he moved his eyes between them, the first, the second, the third, waiting.

  Well, I did it, he tried to tell himself. I got him away from my wife. In a little while they’ll be here. He’ll come, I’ll get my shot, it’ll be over then.

  But he did not feel particularly good about it all. There was no sense of anything except unfinished business and that now, all these years later, it was his time.

  I die today, came the message, insistent and powerful.

  This is the day I die.

  He’d finally run up against a man who was smarter, a better shot, had more guts. Couldn’t be many in the world, but by God, this was one.

  The snow was falling more heavily now. It pirouetted downward from the low gray sky, and as he looked back to the house, still barely visible, he could hardly see it. It looked like it would snow for hours. That was not good. The longer it snowed, the longer it would take for help to arrive. He was on his own. He, and his ancient enemy.

  Where is he?

  It was making him nuts.

  Where is—

  A tremendous pain came across his back, as though someone had stood over him and whacked him, hard, with a fireplace poker.

  Bob curled in the pain and knew instantly that he’d been hit. But no shock poured through him and took him out of his brain as it had when he’d been hit before. Instead a powerful spasm of fury kicked through him, and he knew in a second that he wasn’t hit seriously.

  He drew his legs up and at that moment the odd BEOWWWWWW! of a bullet singing off a rock exploded just to his right, an inch above his skull.

  He’s got me, he thought, listening as the crack of the bullet snapping the sound barrier arrived.

  But where was the muzzle blast?

  There was no muzzle blast.

  Suppressor, he thought. The motherfucker has a suppressor.

  The sniper could be anywhere. Bob lay behind his rack of stones, waiting. No other shot came. Clearly he was completely zeroed but not quite visible enough for a good body or head shot.

  Bob was almost paralyzed. No place to run, zeroed, completely outfoxed. Completely faked out.

  He tried to run through the possibilities. Clearly Solaratov was not at one of the three places that Bob had determined. He’d gotten around somehow, and Bob believed him to be below, given the one shot that had ricocheted off the stone t
hat shielded his head. The round had struck from downslope. If Solaratov were above him, it would be all over. The Russian had outthought him by descending into the valley and was now shooting upward. Bob tried to remember what was down there, and recalled a little patch of snow-packed forest. Somewhere the sniper was down there, but without a sound signature to locate him, he was effectively invisible.

  Do something.

  Sure: but what?

  Move, crawl.

  He has you.

  If you move he kills you.

  Checkmate. No moves possible. Caught in the rocks, trapped.

  Then he realized that the Russian was but a few hundred yards from the house where the undefended women hid. After he killed Bob, it would take him five minutes to finish the job. Since it would be close-range work, he could leave no witnesses.

  It was almost over now.

  The Russian could see the man cowering behind the rocks and could sense his fear and rage and the closing in of his possibilities.

  He filled with confidence. He had not fired twice but three times. The first shot landed about four feet above his target. That was the new zero. Swagger had not even noticed it. Quickly he dialed in the correction, fired again. He hit him! The next shot barely missed him. But he knew: he had him!

  It occurred to him to move ever so slightly, find a better shooting position and try and drive the killing shot home. But he had such an advantage now, why worry about it? Why move, not be able to shoot, just when the man is so helpless, has already been hit, is presumably leaking blood and in great pain.

  The rifle rested on the tree trunk; he was comfortable behind it, sure that he was invisible from the ridge. The reticle was steady; he knew the range. It was merely a matter of time, of so little time.

  What can he do?

  He can do nothing.

  Bob tried to clear the rattle from his head.

  In the field, what would I do?