“Think I’ll light a nice cigar, have a piss, open a bottle of stout, and go for a little stretch-it-out walk,” said Jimmy, the joker.
“You will not,” said Raymond, who was cursed with an earnest, literal mind, “that would completely blow our—” and then he saw it was Jimmy’s joking and pulled up.
“Had you, boyo,” said Jimmy.
“That you did,” said Raymond.
“You poor sod, believing everything that’s said. That’s why you shouldn’t buy nothing till you run it by me, ’cause you’re such a gentle, trusting fool, you’ll be taken ad of every time.”
“I wasn’t raised to no fast ways in a city like,” said Raymond. “Out in the country, all was what was said, and all you city lads, you play these damned games on me.”
“If yis wasn’t the best shot in Ireland, what woulda become of ya, I’ll never know.”
They settled down again, for their spurts of conversation came about every twenty minutes and lasted but a few seconds.
Each rode the optics before him. On the spotting scope, Jimmy’s was by far the wider view, and he patrolled the valley floor, then up and down the opposing slope in calm, orderly fashion, as he had been trained, never rushing, never tiring, never blinking, apprehending each and every detail, hunting for some kind of change—the straight line, the shadow falling in the wrong direction, a quick movement, a puff of dust where there was no wind, a dead branch amid bright green sprigs. But there was no change at all, only the lapping of the grass under the pressure of the steady, slight wind and, above the horizon of the valley, the slow, magnificent rush of the clouds, boiling cumulus that looked like frozen explosions with utterly detailed fretwork in their tumbles.
“Look,” said Raymond, who’d seen them first.
A flock of strange beasts had moseyed in, with white tails and throats, the size of goats, their horns like the arms of a lyre for a Greek god to pluck a melody on.
“Jaysus, what craytures them be?” wondered Jimmy.
“Did we take a wrong turn and go to Africa, I’m wondering, Jimmy,” said Raymond.
“We did, sure of it. No, we did not. Them’s antelopes of the American type. Good eating, so I’m told. Hunted hard, the more you kill, the more they breed.”
“Who could kill a beauty thing like that?” wondered Raymond.
Agh. How much longer? And how had it gotten so hot so fast? And where did the left half of me butt go?
Ginger lay, like any sniper, hard and calm in the hide. But this was no ordinary hide. In all the fighting he’d been in—considerable, what with Gulf I, Gulf II, the odd secret tiff in times of alleged peace, the long hard pull at Basra during the insurrection, all the security jobs for Graywolf after the fall—the hides offered a bit more comfort and movement. An apartment, an arroyo, a station on an outpost sandbag wall looking across a valley of heathen for movement. He’d never been asked before to pretend to be the earth itself, silent, abiding, unmoving.
Not an easy role to play. Thank God for the water, he could not stop drinking it, and what happened if it went too soon, by midafternoon say? He was out here till well after dark if nothing happened.
And of course his head. The Yank had battered him good. Hit him hard; you could understand it, the fellow paying him back for the water procedure. But still. A doctor would have put stitches in and given him light duty for a week, as well as the best painkillers Irish medicine could produce. But no such niceties existed here in wild America. No stitches, so under the bandages, he could feel the wet of blood seepage. The painkillers were over-the-counter, and any more Advil and he’d be a walking Advil himself, all brown and bluntlike, a six-three, 240-pound pill of ache medicine.
Worse, at least Jimmy and Raymond had visuals to amuse them. His vision was locked on to a spread of a few dozen yards about the creek, and even when the strange craytures came down to drink, he hadn’t a good look at them because they never quite came into his zone of vision. Ach, what was they? Some kind of—
He heard something.
Low and far off at first, then it rose. He waited for it to clarify, and presently it did. His heart leapt in actual joy, a rare thing for a man so stoic and duty-bred as he. He knew it to be the sound of the ATV Anto was driving.
His hands tightened on the pistol grip of his M4, he said a quick Hail Mary; he wished he had time to pop another upper for a jolt of energy and concentration; he flexed what he could flex and got ready for the action.
The ATV climbed a ridge and a bell sounded and Anto was happy to see from the GPS that this was where, according to previous radioed instruction, he turned from radial 265 to 109, that is, along the rim of this ridge. He had been worried at first, with all the this-way and that-way until he was confused, but he had a general idea he was trending away from the valley he’d designated as the spot for the final play, toward which he’d bet Swagger would guide him, and where, obedient to his wishes, the Spartans Jimmy, Raymond, and Ginger now lay concealed in ambush.
That sense of despair increased as the game progressed and the clock wound its way onward, but now, finally, he was oriented correctly, or so he believed.
He felt like he was on the moon, as on each side of his ridge, a wide-to-forever stretch of undulating hills, dips, crescents of shadow, outcrops of rock yielded spectacle but little information. Beyond in a distance too far to be measured, he saw snaggled peaks arise, some even snowcapped. But here in the high grasslands, it was all dips and humps, a frozen sea of waves dappled in shadow.
He followed the heading and might have gone to eternity or at least dark when he heard the buzz of the radio signal. He dropped to idle, twisted, got the radio out. Of his clothes, now that he’d adjusted to nakedness, what he missed most was pockets.
“Potato?”
“I am here, goddamnit,” he said.
“Stop. Re——ent to heading zero-nine-six, go for one——iles and stop. It’ll be—”
“How many miles, goddamnit?”
“One-point-six. Stop. Stay on the scooter——isappear on me. Ro——r?”
“Roger that, ye slabber.”
As usual, the voice didn’t rise to any provocations but merely disappeared. Anto reset the GPS and followed its guidance, pleased to see that now indeed it seemed to be taking him where he thought his designated valley ought to be.
The 1.6 passed quickly over bare ground and slopes that weren’t quite hills until, at 1.5, he found himself on a steep upgrade, rising to a rim that, examined from a distance, seemed larger than the others. The machine chugged stubbornly against the incline, and in a few more minutes he halted.
The promised land. The valley was vast and he saw in it the same features that had been represented pictorially on the geodesic survey map. It took him a second to orient himself, then he realized he was at the south edge, which meant that of the slopes before him, the right hid his ambushers, and the left would in time present Swagger for the killing.
He was certain that at this moment he was under observation, and so he fought the impulse to show emotion at the success of his strategy, and he fought the instinct to double-check his placements by looking for signs of his hiding men. He kept his face impassive and registered no excitement, no recognition, nothing but the sullen war face of his breed.
He knew he’d wait a bit. Wherever he was, Swagger himself had just arrived, for just as certainly as Anto had been moved about, Swagger, monitoring him, had to be moving too, to get from place to place and watch for followers. But now Swagger would study the valley, for perhaps as much as an hour, examining every tuft, every rill, every knoll, every bush, every rise, every fall, looking for signs that Anto had somehow done exactly what Anto had indeed done—that is, guess the spot and place men there. So this was where the boys’ snipercraft had to be at its highest.
The day seemed to disconnect from time. The only noise was the persistence of the wind; otherwise the surface of the earth seemed devoid of life except for the naked, now red-shouldered man
on the odd four-wheeled vehicle, which looked more like a toy than anything of serious purpose. A bird rode wind funnels in circles, hunting for prey—another sniper, in his way. Some kind of yowl rose briefly and disappeared as briefly, as something ate something else. The time passed, second by second. Anto sat alone on the bike seat, straddling the engine, buck nekkid as the day he was born but now used to it and not feeling shame at all.
Finally a voice crackled through the earphones.
“See the creek running through the valley?”
“I do.”
“Aim for its center. Bisect it——fectly. Within fifty feet, halt. Climb off——ike on the right side. ——ands are up, you sidestep ten feet, and stop——n grass. Any sudden mo——ullet in the brain. Whe——dy, I come out of hide.”
“I read.”
“Now do it.”
Anto turned the ignition key.
As the vehicle jumped to life, he tried to fight the grin that split his face, but he was thinking, Dead bang center.
48
Like all western boomtowns, Cold Water had a raw quality to it. Money brought in commerce, which required construction, and soon enough a Main Street sprang up—a bank, a general store, a saloon, a restaurant, a bathhouse, a hotel, all slatternly and crudely constructed of fresh wood, wearing coats of bright paint. The shoppers and watchers and townies, the pioneers, the travelers, the dance hall gals, the town sheriff, all trod back and forth along the dusty street, while above in bright sun the mythic clouds rose and tumbled, and much happiness was felt by all present, for all belonged, just as all adored. All, that is, except Texas Red.
Because Cold Water, for its acquisition of capital, its possible destiny as a railhead, its array of vices and pleasures, had also attracted scum, crude and violent men, for whom civilization meant only one thing: banquet.
Texas Red was one of them.
Wild gun boy, fine dancer, quick to shoot, quickest from the leather, holder of grudges, kisser of gals, he was the whirlwind. His reputation was made in blood and lead. He shed the former, he dealt in the latter. He was the devil to the good citizens of Cold Water, who had formed a posse to take him down. He faced fifteen men.
The first five were to be engaged by rifle, through the window of the hotel. His .44-40 1892, loaded, would be lying at a table to the right of the window. He’d seize it, throw the lever closed, and fire. Then, having put them down, he would set down the rifle and move fast to the window of the saloon, where seven more waited. Seven meant of course he’d have to use both his handguns, the down-loaded .44-40s from Colt, one at his hip, one on his other hip in the reversed and tilted holster. Done with that, he’d move to the next window in the hotel, to see where four more fellows awaited just down the street, and by that time, his smokepoles empty, he’d go to shotgun and slide two 12-gauge red boys into the loading gate of his supremely polished and finished Model 97 Winchester—by way of the Harbin Industrial Fabrication Plant No. 6, Hwang Province, China—and quickly pump and shoot and pump and shoot. Then a reload from the leather bandolier he wore across his red placket front, and two more blasts of justice, and he’d be finished with the first stage of this year’s Cold Water Cowboy Action Shoot. After that, until late tomorrow afternoon, eleven more stages would determine if Texas Red was indeed the best gun in the Senior Cowboy Black Powder Duelist category, and if all his work was worth it. He just had to be finished—to win!—in time to be airborne by six for his eight o’clock in Seattle.
Now, finally, it had begun.
He reached the loading area, and when the shooter ahead had finished and cleared, and the targets had reset, he was approached by the lead range officer.
“Load ’em up, Red.”
“Yes sir,” said Red. He walked to the lever gun, slipped ten .44-40s into the chute on the ’92 receiver, leaving the lever down to show empty chamber, and laid the rifle where designated. He returned, drew each Colt, threaded five robin’s-egg-heavy cartridges—“cah-ti-ges” the Duke had called them as Ethan Edwards in The Searchers—into each chamber as accessed by the popped-open loading gate of Sam’s marvelous, intricate machine, an orchestration of lines and symmetries and streamlines and densities like no other. One in, he spun the cylinder past the next, then sliding in four more, then cocking under control to rotate the cylinder one last time, then closing the gate and restoring the masterpiece to its leather. That ritual was to assure that no live cartridge nested under the firing pin’s pressure, a design weakness in the old gun so grave nobody noticed it for over 110 years. Then, finally, he took his shotgun from his guncart, its pump racked backward to expose empty chamber and empty magazine as well as all the spring-driven, leverage-turned ingenuity of its interior, and moved to set it on the table next to the far window.
He readied himself at the starting line, shivering a little, pianoing his fingers to get them loose and ready, tensing and relaxing his upper-body muscles. He put his earplugs in, then his hands came to his waist and he put on his grimace-tight gunman’s face.
“Shooter ready?” came the question, muffled by the ear protection.
He nodded.
He heard the three-beat timer ticking down, ding, ding, and dong, and on dong—more precisely on the d-so that he was halfway to the first station by the -ong—he raced forward, seized the ’92 in a liquid, practiced choreography, slid it to shoulder, keeping muzzle level and downrange even as he was closing the lever, and fired the first shot as the sight came into focus over the blurred image of the bad guy, in this case a black metal plate, and the trigger came back and the gun shuddered gently as it sent its hunk of lead on its way at a little over six hundred feet per second.
The trick here was not to wait for the clang of the hit and the sight of the plate toppling on its hinge but to be already into the leverwork and already moving the gun by that time, and he fired again and again and again and againagainagain, only aware at the unfocused edge of the drama of the ejected shell casings flipping through the air but most attuned to the great spurt of white, a billow at each report that rivaled the clouds above. And when the last plate fell, he left the action open, set the rifle down, and moved his ass fast to the next window.
This was the killer. The subtlety of cowboy action was that it wasn’t an athletic contest of speed of foot and dexterity, but of course it was, and that it wasn’t a fast-draw contest, but of course it was. You had to calibrate effort versus grace, for to seem to hurry could be called “against the spirit,” a ten-second time penalty; at the same time if you loafed, you lost.
Red had it today; the gods had been kind, and in his last practice, he had suddenly felt the gun rock solid all the way through the string. He’d hit plate after plate yesterday, watched them prang and fall, and felt oddly accomplished. All that practice. He’d done it. He’d mastered the goddamned thing. He was a gunfighter.
He came to the window, turned, drew, and in the same fluidity the gun was in his hand, thumbing back as it rode up, and he saw the sights against the black blur, and axiomatically the gun discharged, and again he thumbed a new cartridge home, rotating up from the next-in-line position in the cylinder, perfectly sustained and perfectly timed by Sam’s engineering genius all those frosty years ago, and each time the gun popped, and he was moving it and thumbing back the hammer and restoring the grip just as Clell had taught him before the just-hit plate fell. Five and he was done with gun number one, holstered smooth as butter. He rotated to the left for the next snatch and brought that beauty in line, cocking as he got it there. Five soft pops, five spurts of glorious white fume; they stood for America, for liberty, for the West, for patriotism, for old movies and TV, for growing old with grace and still winning every goddamn thing. He was done, slipped number two back into its leather den, and was halfway to shotgunland before the last plate fell.
This was pretty easy for Red because in another life, as a southern billionaire playboy, pheasant and dove hunts with $14,000 Perazzis had been a Sunday necessity in the fall, if the Fa
lcons weren’t playing at home, and he had no problem with the four inserts, the four pumps, and the four shots, each of which delivered a handful of spattering birdshot to the larger, heavier plates, and down they went ker-plunk.
“Good shooting, Red,” said the range officer, reading off the time—29.2—to the scorekeeper, adding, “all targets down, no penalties.”
Red sat back, smelling the gunsmoke, watching the white gas drift and seethe until a light breeze took it and it dissipated.
Soon enough Clell would be there to tell him how well he’d done, urge him to stay cool and collected—no rush, no sweat, no nerves, no expectations, just there, in the zone—and a nice round of applause rose to congratulate his efforts, some of it from people who surely recognized him and were sucking up as if he’d give a clapper a mil just for kicks, but much of it genuine, from those who didn’t know.
But he knew it best of all: Texas Red has it.
49
Anto slowly revved the ATV, then slipped into gear and took it down the gentle slope of the valley toward the center. He had a black-comic thought of accidentally running over the heads of his own sniper team as he progressed, and had to fight a grin in case Swagger, from his own hide, was eyeballing him.
He switched back, left then right, eating up the distance, came in out of the high grass onto shorter, where ugly prairie things—they looked like turds but were some kind of cancerous vegetation—littered the ground, along with the odd low scrub of bush, the scraggily but unspectacular cacti, stones, smallish boulders, what have you. He was a man who’d spent many days in action and had taken more fire than even the many professional soldiers of his culture, with the scars to prove it, and he wore that time in hell well. In fact it was not even hell to him, as it is to most men. The truth is, high-level professionals like Anto and his mates from 22 SAS and most commandos in the forces and Seals and various foreign alphabet-soup high-contact teams don’t fear battle at all; they relish it. To them it’s an exhilaration like a drug high, and they truly savor the act of taking life, at close range or by rifle through optics; it’s like scoring baskets or goals in the sports-driven youths that most had.
A Bob Lee Swagger eBook Boxed Set: I, Sniper, Night of Thunder, 47th Samurai Page 98