He will move, he thought. He was looking for me, I was not there, he will move.
Blackness.
Somewhere in his peripheral, a flash of black.
Solaratov did not turn to stare. No, he kept his eyes where they were, fighting the temptation to crank them around and refocus. Let his unconscious mind, far more effective in these matters, scan for them.
Blackness again.
He had it.
To the right, almost three hundred yards away. Of course. He's flanking me to my right.
Slowly, he turned his head, slowly, he brought up the binoculars.
Nothing. Movement. Nothing. Movement.
He struggled with the focus.
The unnatural blackness was a face. The Marine sniper had blackened it at night, for his long crawl into position, he'd shed his black clothes, and now wore combat dapple camouflage, but he had made a mistake. He had forgotten to take off his face paint. Now, black against the dun and yellow of the elephant grass, it stood out just the slightest bit.
Solaratov watched, fascinated. The man low-crawled two strokes, then froze. He waited a second or two, then low-crawled another two. His face, its features masked by the paint, was a study in warrior's concentration: tense, drawn, almost cracked with intensity. His rifle was on his back, wearing a tangle of strips for its own camouflage.
He tried to deny it, but Solaratov felt a flare of pleasure as intense as anything in his life.
He laid the binoculars down, and raised the rifle to his shoulder, finding the right position, rifle to bone to earth, finding the grip, finding the trigger, finding the eyepiece.
Swagger crawled through his scope. The crosshairs quartered his head. The Russian's thumb took the safety off and he expelled half a breath. His finger began its slow squeeze of the trigger.
Goddamn," Bob said.
"What is it?" Donny said behind him.
"It's thinned out here. Goddamn. Less cover."
Donny could see nothing. He was lost in elephant grass, it was in his ears, his nose, in the folds of his flesh.
The ants were feasting on him. He heard the dry buzz of flies drawn to the delicious odor of his sweat and blood he'd been cut a hundred or so times by the blades of the grass.
Ahead of him were the two soles of Bob's jungle boots.
"Shit," Bob said.
"I don't like this one goddamn bit."
"We could just call in the Night Hag. She'd chew the shit out of all this. We'd pop smoke so she wouldn't whack us up."
"And if he ain't here, he knows we got him, and he's double careful or he don't come back at all and we never know why he came and we don't git us a Dragunov. Nah."
He paused.
"You still got that Model Seventy?"
"I do."
"All right. I want you to reorient yourself to the right.
You squirt on ahead, see that little hummock or something?"
"Yeah."
"You set up on that, you scope it out for me. If you say it's okay, I'm going to shimmy on over there, to where it's thick again. I'll set up over there and cover for you. Fair enough?"
"Fair enough," said Donny. He squirmed around, took a deep breath and wiggled ahead.
"Damn, boy, I hope he ain't in earshot. You're grunting louder than a goddamn pig."
"This is hard work," Donny said, and it was.
He got up to the hummock, peered over it. He saw nothing.
"Go to the M49?"
"Nah. Don't got time. Just check it with your Unertl."
Donny slipped his eye behind the scope, which was a long, thin piece of metal tubing suspended in an odd frame. When you zeroed this old thing, it had external controls, which meant the whole scope moved, propelled this way and that by screws for windage and elevation. It had been assembled sometime back in the early forties, but rumor said it had killed more than its share of Japs, North Koreans and VC. It wasn't even a 7.62mm NATO but the old Springfield cartridge, the long .3006.
The optics were great. He scanned the grass as far as he could see, and saw no sign of human presence. But the blur had not gone away. He was aware he was missing fine detail. He squeezed the bridge of his nose with his fingers, and nothing improved. No, nothing out there, nothing that he could see.
"It looks clear."
"I didn't ask how it looked. I asked how it was."
"Clear, clear."
"Okay," said Bob.
"You keep eyeballing."
The sergeant began to creep outward, this time at an even slower rate than before. He crawled slowly, ever so slowly, halting each two pulls forward, going still.
Donny returned to his scope. Back and forth, he swept the likely shooting spots, seeing nothing. It was clear. This was beginning to seem ridiculous. Maybe they were out here in the middle of nothing, acting like complete idiots.
The bees buzzed, the flies ate, the dragonflies skittered.
He couldn't keep his eye behind the scope for very long because it fell completely out of focus. He had to blink, look away. When would the call come from Bob that he was all right?
The trigger rocked back, stacked up and was on the very cusp of firing.
Where is the other one?
His finger came off the trigger.
There were two. He had to kill them both. If he fired, the other might take him or, seeing his partner with his head blown open, simply slide back farther into the grass and disappear. He'd call in air, possibly, and Solaratov would have to get out of the area.
Where was the other one?
He looked up from the scope. He realized he could see the sniper because for some odd reason, the grass was thinner there. The other one would be nearby, covering, as he was vulnerable. He would be vulnerable for only a few more seconds.
A plan formed in Solaratov's mind: Find the spotter.
Kill the spotter. Come back and kill the sniper. It was possible because of the semiautomatic nature of the weapon and the fact that the distance was under three hundred meters.
He returned to the scope and very carefully began to crank backward, looking for another black face against the dun and the tan of the vertical thickets of stalks. He came back a bit more, no, nothing, nothing .. . and there! An arm! The arm led to a body, which led to the form of another prone man hunched over a rifle--he took a gasp of air, a little spurt of pleasure--and then continued up the trunk to the torso to discover that it was indeed a man but he was not a spotter, he was another sniper, and his rifle was pointing exactly at him. At Solaratov.
The man fired.
Donny looked up from his scope. His head ached. When would the call come from Bob? God, he needed an aspirin.
He glanced about, seeing nothing, only the endless grass.
A dragonfly flashed close by. It was odd how their wings somehow caught the sunlight and threw a reflection just like-Donny went back to the scope.
He was so close!
The sniper was less than three hundred yards away-or rather, the snipers, for there was a smear of enemy, blurry in the haze of Donny's concussion, well sunk in the grass. The man was bent into his rifle, moving slowly, tracking, and with a start, Donny realized he had located Swagger.
Kill him! he ordered himself. Shoot! Do it now!
The crosshairs seemed to quarter the head. He squeezed the trigger.
He lost his sight picture as the pressure increased. He squeezed harder. Nothing happened.
The safety, the safety. He reached for where it should have been, that nub in front of the trigger, but it wasn't there. That's where it was on an M14. On an M70, it was up on the bolt housing. He took his eye off the scope, looked for the flange that was the safety, and snapped it forward. He ducked to the scope, saw the man had turned and the rifle's muzzle was coming .. . right at him.
He jerked at the trigger and the rifle fired.
Bob crawled forward. Only a few more yards and then he was into the higher grass and-The shot, so unexpected, sounded like a drumbeat against
his own ears. He froze--lost it, the great Bob Lee Swagger--and had a moment of twisted panic.
What? Huh? Oh, Christ!
Then he picked himself up, ran like a son of a bitch for the higher grass, waiting to get nailed and trying to sort it out.
"He's there! I saw him!" Donny screamed, and instantly from three hundred yards out, an answering shot sounded. It struck near Donny, blowing a big puff of dirt into the air.
Donny fired back almost instantly and Bob looked, saw the puff of dust where his shot hit.
"Get down!" he screamed, now terrified that Donny would take a shot in the head. He dove into the brush, righted himself, squirmed until he could see the dusty bank.
He threw the rifle to his shoulder, put his eye to the glass and saw ..
nothing.
"He's there!" Donny screamed again, but Bob could see nothing. Then a shot cracked out, seeming to come from the left, and he swung his rifle just a bit, saw some dust in the air from the disturbance of muzzle blast, and fired. He cycled, fired again, fast as he was able to, not seeing a target but hoping one was there.
"Get down!" he screamed again.
"Get down and call Foxtrot for air!"
He worked the bolt, but could not see the sniper in the dust that floated in the grass in the area Donny had identified.
Where was he? Where was he?
Donny edged back a bit and the second shot blasted the earth just a few inches from his face. Owl The dirt blossomed as if a cherry bomb had detonated, and a hundred tiny flecks of grit bit him, he blinked, slid back even farther.
He could hear Bob screaming but he couldn't make the words out. He thought: the radio. Call air. Get air.
But then Bob fired, fired again, and it filled Donny with courage. He squirmed up over the other side of the hummock, going to a left-handed shooting position. He couldn't throw the bolt from here, not easily, but a lot less of him stuck out, and that pleased him.
Where is he? Where are you, motherfucker?
Through the scope, he saw nothing, just dust hanging in the air, the slow wobble of grass signifying recent commotion but nothing to shoot at all.
He scanned left and right a few yards, didn't see a damned thing. He had this idea that he, not Bob, would be the one who brought the Russian down. Images from a forgotten boyhood book played suddenly through his mind: that would be like Lieutenant May getting the Red Baron instead of salty old pro Roy Brown. A gush of excitement came to him and a spurt of intense pleasure.
Where was he?
We can take him under fire from two sources, he realized.
We can take this motherfucker.
"Air!" he heard Bob scream.
Yes, air. Get the Night Hag in here, smoke this fucker, blow him to-On a wide scan, he saw him, much farther back, crawling away desperately.
Got you!
He put the crosshairs on the bobbing head, not a shape so much as a suggestion in the blur of his vision. He tried to find the center, quartered it with the scope, felt in supreme control, felt the trigger rock against his finger, stack up just a tiny bit and then surprise the hell out of him when the shot occurred.
The man's rifle leaped, his hat popped off and he rolled over into the grass, still.
"/ got him!" he screamed. "/ hit him!"
"Air," Bob screamed.
"Get us air!"
Donny let the rifle slide away, drew the PRC off his back and hit the on switch.
"Foxtrot, this is Sierra-Bravo, flash, I say again, flash, flash. We have contact, over."
"Sierra-Bravo, what are your needs? Are you calling air, Sierra-Bravo?"
Suddenly Bob was next to him, snatching the handset from him.
"Foxtrot, get us Night Hag super fast I'm designating Area Two for the strike, bring in Night Hag, I say again, immediate, Area Two, Area Two."
"She is coming in, Sierra-Bravo, watch your butt, over."
"I got him!" Donny said.
"I am popping smoke to designate my position for Night Hag, over," said Bob. He grabbed a smoker off his belt, yanked the pin and tossed it. It spun and hissed and torrents of green smoke began to pour out of it.
"Sierra-Bravo-Four, this is Night Hag, I eyeball green smoke, over," a new voice on the net declared, even as they heard the roar of engines rising.
"That is correct, Night Hag, we are buttoning up, out."
Bob pulled Donny down and close to the hummock.
A shadow passed over them and Donny looked up and saw the great plane as it flashed overhead, began to bank. It seemed huge and predatory, its engines beating at the air. It was pitch black, an angel of death, and it banked to the right, raising a wing, presenting the side of its fuselage to the earth it was about to devastate.
The eight mini-guns fired simultaneously, tongues of gobbling flame streaking from the black flank, the sound not of guns firing quickly, but just a steady, screaming roar.
"Jesus," said Donny. He thought of worlds ending, of the end of civilization, of Hiroshima. This sucker brought heat. He couldn't imagine it.
The thousands of rounds poured from the guns to the earth, each fifth one a tracer, and the guns fired so fast it seemed they fired nothing but tracers. The bullets didn't strike the earth so much as disintegrate it. They pulverized, raising clouds of destruction and debris. The air filled with darkness as if the weather itself had turned to gunfire. It was a locust plague of lead that devoured that upon which it settled. Earlier versions of this baby had been called Puff the Magic Dragon, but they only had one gun. With eight, Night Hag could put a mythological hurt on the world. She just ate up Area 2 for what seemed like years but was in reality just a few seconds. She had only thirty seconds worth of shooting time, she ate so fast.
The plane pivoted as if tethered, the roar of its engines huge as it curled above them, then again its eight guns fired and again the ground shook and a blizzard of debris flew from the earth. Then it straightened out, climbed slightly and began to describe a holding pattern.
"Sierra-Bravo-Four, that's my best trick, over."
"Night Hag, should be sufficient, good work. Foxtrot, you there, over?"
"Sierra, this is Foxtrot."
"Foxtrot, let's move the teams out. I think we got him.
I think we nailed him."
"Sierra-Bravo-Four, Wilco and good job. Out."
Huu Co, senior colonel, and the sappers watched the airplane hunt the sniper from the relative safety of the treeline. It was quite a spectacle: the huge plane wheeling, the thunderous streams of fire it brought to the defoliated zone, the rending of the earth where the bullets struck.
"Oh, the Human Noodle will be turned to the human sieve by that thing," one of the men said.
"Only the Americans would hunt a single man with an airplane," said another.
"They would send an airplane to fix a toilet," someone else shouted, to the laughter of some others.
But Huu Co understood that the sniper was dead, that the outlaw Swagger had once again prevailed. No man could withstand the barrage, and what came later, when, in the immediate aftermath of the airplane, when its dust still hung in the air, five jeeps suddenly burst from the fort and came crashing across the field, stopping right where two American snipers suddenly emerged from hiding a little to the east of the devastated area.
The men began to work methodically with flamethrowers.
The squirts of flame spurted out, and where they touched, they lit the grass. The flames rose and spread, and burned furiously, as black, oily smoke rolled upward.
"The Human Noodle has now been roasted," someone said.
The flames burned for hours, out of control, rolling across the prairie of the defoliated zone, blazing vividly, as more and more men from the post came out in patrols, set up a line, and began to follow the flames. Soon enough, a flight of helicopters flew in from the east and began to hover over the field. They were hunting for a body.
"They will probably eat him if they can find him."
"Ther
e won't be enough left. They could put him in soup."
Though the Russian was a chilly little number, Huu Co still had a moment's melancholy over his fate. The airplane made war so totally, it was the most feared weapon in the American arsenal of super weapons How horrible to be hunted by such a flying beast and to feel the world disintegrating around you as the shells exploded. He shivered a bit.
The Americans picked through the blasted field for some time, until nearly nightfall, at one time finding something that excited them very much--Huu Co watched through his binoculars, but could not make it out--until finally retreating.
"Brother Colonel, shall we retreat?" his sergeant wished to know.
"There is clearly nothing left for us here."
"No," said the colonel.
"We wait. I don't know for how long, but we wait."
It was a lance corporal from First Squad who found the Dragunov.
"Whooie!" he shouted.
"Lookie here. Gook sniper rifle."
"Corporal, bring that over here," called Brophy.
"Good work."
The man, pleased to be singled out, came over with his trophy and turned it over to Brophy.
"There's your rifle," Bob said to the CIA man, Nichols.
The command team crowded around the new weapon, something no one had seen before. Like a kid unwrapping a Christmas present, Nichols wrapped the camouflage tape off the weapon.
"The legendary SVD. That's the first one we've recovered," said Nichols.
"Congratulations, Swagger. That's not a small thing."
Donny just looked at it, feeling nothing, his head pounding from the stench of the gasoline and the oily smoke. It was a crude-looking thing, not at all sleek and well machined.
"Looks like an AK got stuck in a tractor pull," Bob said. He handled the weapon, looked it over, worked the action a few times, looked through the scope, then became bored with it and passed it on to other, more eager hands.
He moved away from the crowd, and watched with narrowed eyes and utter stillness as the Marines probed the burn zone while others set up flank security, under the CO's direction. Meanwhile Hueys and Cobra gunships hovered about the perimeter.
"Do you think he got away?" Donny finally asked him.
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