“Christ, Gunny. You’re going to set yourself up for this motherfucker, aren’t you? You’re going to gull him into taking the shot and pray that he misses, and then you’ll shoot back. With that scope on top, he isn’t going to miss. You think you can get a killing shot off from seven hundred yards with 168 grains of lead in your chest, while you’re bleeding out? It doesn’t have to happen. You don’t have to be the last man to die in a long-ago lost war. You call me up and invite me on this little war party and now I have to leave before the end and I don’t get to cover the hero but have to just let him sit out there on his lonesome? That ain’t no bargain, Gunny.”
“For me it’s the best bargain. I lost my spotter, Chuck. I couldn’t bring him back from the war. So you have to get out of here now, and fast. Only two things count. Getting the film to the FBI and getting Chuck home in time for his daughter’s graduation. Go, Chuck. DEROS, Chuck. Now.”
“You goddamned Marine Corps bad-ass gunnery sergeant retired. Jesus, you are all old-fashioned man, that’s all I can say. I thought you guys had all died off, but dammit, you’re too salty to die.”
“Go on, get out of here, Lance Corporal.”
Chuck clapped Swagger on the shoulder and gunned up his ATV and headed west.
50
Texas Red celebrated his success with a very fine buffalo steak—low in fats, low in sodium, low in calories—and a 2001 Château Sociando-Mallet, served in his motor home by Chin, his chef. It was still midafternoon: he hadn’t breakfasted because he hated to shoot on a full stomach, and so his first order of business after finishing his four events—four more tomorrow and four on Sunday—was to eat. His second order of business was business: calls to stockbrokers, vice presidents, PR folks, and so forth, pleased to note he was recovering from the meltdown well enough. He noted with pleasure no incoming from either Bill Fedders in DC or by satellite from the Irishmen at his main ranch.
That done, he summoned the ever-plain Ms. Jantz and had her take dictation for an hour, then got his daily blow job, surprisingly intense for a non-Viagrafied event. The shooting had gotten juices all astir in a way that was unusual. Then he dismissed her, with the admonition, “Get me Clell.”
Clell appeared shortly thereafter, all rangy gun pro, with the big hands, the smoothness of encoded neural pathways, the data bank beyond measure.
“So,” he said, “no bullshit. Critique. Forget I’m paying you three times what you charge. Give me the truth, as if I’m a little punk trying to hang out with the great Clell Rush.”
“Yes sir.”
“Yes, Tom.”
“Yes, Tom. First thing is, congrats. You shot well today. Dynamite. I think you’ve beaten the grip slippage that seems to screw you up sometimes. You were hard and tight and the gun stayed set. Even on the exchange, when you holstered the righthand piece and cross-drew from the left holster, even that was tight. It was a good chance to screw up, and happily, you evaded it.”
“I’m liking what I’m hearing. Sure you’re not just trying to pick up a bonus?”
“It ain’t just suck-up, Tom. Look at the standings. You’re number four. You’ve never been that high in the standings at this point before. Last year, as I recall, you’s about number fifteen. There’s no way of coming back from fifteen. You’re still in the hunt.”
“How about rifle and shotgun?”
“You plan to save handgun mistakes on rifle and shotgun, and that’s fine, but I thought you ran too hard on the rifle. That’s a sophisticated motion, throwing the lever but not so hard you pull the muzzle out of control, keeping that left hand in good command, closing up and touching off, then throwing even while you’re moving to the next target. You done well, I’m not saying that, but I thought you’s a little overexcited. It was the first event, you had adrenaline, so you brought it off. Don’t know how tomorrow will be, or the next day, if you don’t drop back into second gear, particularly on the last few rounds.”
“Good advice,” said Tom.
“As for the shotgun, maybe the same thing, but since there’s only four reloads, it’s not likely you’ll turn to fumblethumbs that quickly. Though by the time you get to shotgun, your hands are tired from all the shooting you’ve just completed. But your fingers are so happy when they’re on the shotguns, even a trumpet gun like the ninety-seven, I don’t think that’s going to be your problem.”
“Hmm, I’ve got a problem? I thought you were telling me how damn good I was.”
“Well, it’s a problem most men have. Called pride. It goeth before a tumble, or so the book says.”
“I’m listening.”
“I feel you pushing too hard. It almost means too much to you. I’m worried that late, tired, your hands all beat to hell, you’ll face a challenge where you need your best. And you won’t be able to find it, Texas Red. Because you are a man of accomplishment, you cannot conceive of failure. Yet even the Kid hisself failed; he went out unarmed, and along come Pat Garrett and put a jujube of lead into his gut. The Kid was proud; in his pride he got away from his greatness, and his greatness was doing all them little things right, like always sitting with his back to the wall and forswearing that fourth drink, because it was the fourth one that slowed him, and always carrying a gun. That night in Fort Sumner, he’s feeling so Kid, so invulnerable, he gets cocky, he gets sloppy, and he can’t conceive of a man coming into his own space and facing him. He’s unarmed, except for a butcher knife. He steps into his bedroom, quien está? he asks, who’s there, he knows someone’s there, he’s holding that knife, and it’s still in him to make it through the night, all he has to do is be the Kid and lunge, and he lives till two and twenty. But his mind freezes, and old Pat, slower, grumpier, used up, old Pat gets big iron whipped out fast and puts a forty-four into him. And down goes the Kid.”
“You see that in me?”
“You ain’t no Kid, Mr. Constable, not by a long shot. But I’m worried there’ll come a time when you think you is. And as the Kid found out, thinking you’re the Kid can get a man killed.”
51
There wasn’t much point in stealth, not at this point. No reason to wear the ghillie. He even poured some water from his bottle and washed the paint off, so that he’d get through this last on his own face, not the jungle’s.
He steered a wide circle on his ATV and came into Lone Tree Valley from the west, wondering if Anto was already there. Anto, driven by anger and fear and vengeance, had to take a more direct route, which was in length about four miles; this more circuitous journey was almost seven. Coming over the crest, he saw the lone tree itself, surprisingly dense for fall, its leaves vibrating in the low wind and, as they did, seeming to shimmer as first the dull and then the bright side showed itself to the sun.
He rumbled down the slope, acknowledging the featurelessness of the place. It was all epic space in a shallow bowl of undulating grass, capped by the frosty marble of the western clouds against the bluest blue of all. No animal life was visible, and the push of wind filled the air with the sound of air and the stalks of grass leaning against each other.
He drove to the tree but left the ATV well short of it. He got off, feeling the Sig bang under his left arm, holding the 7-mil Ultra Mag in his right. It was Chuck’s, a hunting rifle for knocking down big animals at long ranges with a cartridge case the size of a cigar, something new cooked up more by the marketing department than the true ballisticians. The industry needed new products. This one was a lulu: kicked like a mule, but it shot fast and flat as anything on the planet, and when it arrived, it had excess power. Chuck said he’d hit an antelope at over five hundred yards, and the poor thing had cartwheeled, it was slapped with such energy.
He squatted, going into a sniper’s stillness, flat out in the open, though in shade, maybe a little to the east of the tree. He presented his back to Anto. He pulled his khaki hat down over his sunglassed eyes.
What would happen next would all come down to character: Anto’s. A true sniper would creep close, take and m
ake the shot. That was duty, that was mission, that was job, even to a merc. He thought of that merc poem: “followed their mercenary calling, took their wages, and are dead.” Which war? Oh, yeah, the first big one. The boys who stopped the Germans for pay. And for professionalism: no vanity, no wasted motion, no ceremony, no self-celebration, no self-pity.
But Anto? Anto had that manic streak in him, that desperate need for approval and attention. His personality might be too big for standard military and then even for a genius outfit like 22 SAS. Maybe it was a death wish. Take the fall from grace in Basra: he’d had to have seen it coming, read the signs, and had plenty of time to back down or readjust—that’s the way the military worked, after all—but he insisted on his way with the aggressive interrogations and the ever-climbing kill count. So the Brits ultimately destroyed him, and you could blame them for their unwillingness to sustain the man who was, ever so distastefully, winning the war, but that was the way of the modern world, and of general staffs and politicians with the guts of puppies. Still, you had to blame Anto too, since a more modest professional, committed to his cause, would have found a way to keep operating, only under a lower profile. Not Anto. He wanted somehow to burn at the stake and give interviews from the flames.
Bob sat and sat and then, finally, Anto spoke through the radio.
“You bastard, you killed me mates!” said the Irishman, and the connect was loud and clear.
Anto cursed and ranted and vented a bit. When he stopped to catch his breath, Bob said, “You left out the part about them set up to kill me. We only shot men about to shoot us. You decided to put them in place; it’s on you, Colour Sergeant, not me.”
“You’re a bastard,” Anto said.
“But Anto still wants the film. Anto has to get the film.”
Anto said nothing for a while.
Finally he asked, “You didn’t send it out with that other fellow?”
“Nope,” said Bob. “Because Bob still wants the money. Bob has to get the money.”
“You’re as mercenary as himself,” said Anto. “When all the flags been put away, and all the speeches done, and all the warriors locked up in mental homes, the only thing left is the money, no?”
“The only thing left is the money.”
“Ha,” said Anto, enjoying his little jest.
“Where are you?” asked Swagger.
“I’m still at the goddamned site of the atrocity. I had to bury me boys proper. You think I’d leave ’em for the jackals?”
Bob knew he had left them for the jackals.
“Where are you? I’ll bring you the money, now I’m confident shooter number two ain’t lurking.”
“Then you know he’s long gone.”
“He broke a crest and I got glass on him. He didn’t have the film, did he?”
“No. He’s an old friend. He did his job. I didn’t want you picking him off, I wanted him out of here. And I wanted it as it should be, you and me.”
“Right and proper,” said Anto.
“You set a course on your GPS roughly radial one-thirty-four east, for four miles. That will put you on the rim of another valley, called Lone Tree. When you look over the rim, you’ll see the tree. There’s only one. I’ll be under it, rifle ready. You radio me, notify me of your position. You’re still naked, by the way?”
“I am not,” said Anto. “Have some bloody decency.”
“When you get to the rim, you’re naked. You’re naked and unarmed all the way in and I’m watching you all the way in. You get here, you pull up fifty yards out, and this time you’re not ten feet from your bike, you’re a hundred feet.”
“You’re so smart; that was a big mistake, Sniper. I got to it in a second, and off in another.”
“Easier with the late Ginger there to cover for you. But yeah, sure, I made a stupid mistake. I’m old, do it all the time. This time, you go flat spread-eagled in the grass. I’ll take the money.”
“And leave the film.”
“No.”
“Bastard.”
“I’ll take the film and I’ll go out to the east. You’ll see a tree on the horizon at roughly one-twenty-two from the lone tree. I’ll leave the film there. By the time you get there, I’m long gone.”
“And suppose there’s no film?”
“You think I want you dogging me? I’m as sick of this shit as you. I want my dough and I want a vacation. I’ll disappear and be in contact in two or three months while I set up the big exchange. Take it or leave it.”
Anto paused.
Then he said, “Okay, I’ll be taking it.”
“Buzz me then when you’re on the rim, though I’ll probably see you first.”
The radio went silent.
Now it was waiting time. How long? Maybe an hour. No, it couldn’t be an hour. Swagger knew Anto was close. Now was the question of character: shoot or chatter? Smart or stupid? Professional or self-indulgent?
Can I make the shot from here? Anto wondered.
He was at the rim, in a good prone, almost directly behind the position Swagger had taken. He could see the man crouched down, working his binocs in the wrong direction but not too intensely. The poor sod thought he had at least an hour before the play resumed. He had no idea he was sitting on the bloody bull’s-eye.
Anto was in a good shooting position. He was relaxed, the Accuracy International .308, on its bipod, solid into the earth. As a kind of prelim, he drew it to him, took up almost exactly the position from which he’d fire, though keeping his finger indexed along its green plastic stock, put the complex iSniper reticle on Bob’s blue-shirted back, and fired—fired the range-finding function, that is.
He read the answer on the screen: 927.
He’d made 927-yard shots before, and many longer. But he’d missed a few too. He waited for the target acquisition solution to run through the chip-driven computer and got his instructions: nine down, three to the right.
He went back to scope, counting out the nine hashmarks notched on the central vertical axis, then the three to the right. There it was. A tiny reticle, about the size of the + on a word-processing program, lay athwart the prick of blue just barely recognizable as a man at this range, despite the 15X magnification.
He felt his muscles begin to tighten, his tremors to cease, his breathing to shallow out; he felt the soft curve of the trigger, and then it began to slide almost of its own desire.
B-R-A-S-S, the from-time-immemorial shooter’s mantra.
Breathe.
Relax.
Aim.
Slack.
Squeeze.
He didn’t fire.
Nine-twenty-seven was way too far out there. A puff of wind, even a twitch by Swagger after the bullet was launched—its time in flight at this range would be over a second—would compute to a miss, and then he’d be in a duel at over nine hundred yards with a man who was still maybe the best, or second-or third-best in the world. No percentage in that.
He’d shoot from five hundred.
Five hundred would minimize wind, minimize trajectory, minimize time in flight. From five hundred he could make the shot on iron sights; with the iSniper911 he could make it a hundred times out of a hundred, in one second if need be.
Next question: How long will it take to low-crawl over the 427 yards to his shooting position? The answer was close to an hour, and none of it much fun, unless you liked crawling, and almost no one did. He sure didn’t. Also, everything in him said, Get it done. Finish it. You have the advantage, press it.
He looked at Bob all that way off, steadily gazing at the wrong horizon.
I could walk up to him and shoot him behind the ear with me Browning.
Well, probably I could not. But I could walk five hundred yards and quite possibly he’d never see me, looking as he is to the east, convinced as he is that I’m still miles away, bouncing naked across the plains.
He rose. He felt liberated. He did a rifle check for about the thousandth time, opening the bolt to see the g
lint of the Black Hills 168-grain Sierra match HPBT cartridge nested snugly just where it should be, repressed the bolt to lock up, then touched the safety, making triple certain it was off so he could fire the fast one if needed. He looped his forearm through the cinch of the sling, tightened it so that it tugged against his arm and body and left just enough play so that, when he dropped to prone or sitting, it would be held firm against him and, by virtue of the position, against the solidity of earth itself. With his right hand, he performed a battery check on the iSniper911, reassuring himself he was all fired up with power to spare.
That done, he adjusted his boonie cap, his tear-shaped Wiley X shooting glasses, and began the big walk toward Bob Lee Swagger.
Swagger waited, still as a rock. Some living thing finally came, a white moth, flitting in this and that direction. Eventually it moved off.
He felt ticks of sweat running down his face from under his hat. His ears, encased in the radio pads, itched. His breathing came shallowly. He yearned to turn, to see if the Irishman was there, but the longer he waited, the closer Anto got, and the closer he got, the easier the shot that took him down would be. If he was stuck shooting it out at nine hundred yards, he’d lose. Anto’s technology trumped his more powerful rifle. He wouldn’t have time to lase the range, figure the clicks, crank the scope, assume the position. Anto would kill him. He’d have to guess at the range, and that wasn’t a talent he had, as some did. So if he guessed wrong, read the wind wrong, so easy to do at the extended ranges, Anto would kill him.
Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock, the big clock in his head spun its second hand, draining time from the world, while somewhere people laughed and drank and flirted and fucked and dug ditches or wrote poetry or flew planes. He was a sniper. He sat still, waiting to take or receive the shot. It was what he did. He’d snipered-up young and really lived his whole life that way, taking on the responsibility of doing the state’s dirtiest work and coming back tainted with the smell of murder about him. That was it, that was the way it went. You chose it, asshole. It—what was the goddamned word?—expressed you. Count yourself lucky, blankethead. You got to do what you was born to do. How many can—
A Bob Lee Swagger eBook Boxed Set: I, Sniper, Night of Thunder, 47th Samurai Page 100