Time to Hunt bls-1

by Stephen Hunter

  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 that shielded his head. The round had struck from downslope. If Solaratov were above him, it would be all over. The Russian had out thought 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?

  Call in artillery.

  Call in smoke.

  No artillery.

  No smoke.

  Throw a grenade.

  No grenade.

  Fire the Claymore.

  No Claymore. The Claymore was in the case three thousand feet up the mountain. He wished he had it now.

  Call in a chopper.

  No chopper.

  Call in tactical air.

  No tactical air.

  But a word caught somewhere in his mind.

  Smoke.

  No smoke.

  It would not go away.

  Smoke.

  You move under smoke. Under smoke he cannot see you.

  There is no smoke.

  Why would the word not leave his head? Why would it not go away? Smoke.

  What is smoke: gaseous chemicals producing a blur of atmospheric disturbance.

  There is no smoke.

  Smoke.

  There is no-But there was snow.

  Snow, agitated, could hang in the air like smoke.

  Plenty of snow. Snow all around.

  He turned to his right to face a wall of snow. Above him, on a precipice, more snow. The snow that had fallen silently through the night and even now glided down from the heavens.

  Solaratov loves snow. He knows snow.

  But Bob saw now that above him, several hundred pounds of the stuff rested on the branches of a pine, whi
ch had turned it into some kind of upside-down vanilla cone. In fact, several of the trees were above him. The snow fell and caught on them in the gray mountain light.

  He could almost feel them groaning, yearning for some kind of freedom.

  He reached out with his rifle barrel but could touch none of it.

  But then the plan formed in his mind.

  He edged to his side, making certain to keep his body profile low behind the rocks, so that Solaratov would not get the last shot free. His right hand crept across the parka, unzipped it, and he reached inside and removed the Beretta.

  He steeled himself.

  It was instinct shooting, unaimed fire, but his reflexes at this arcane pistol skill had always been quite good. He threaded his other wrist through the sling of the Remington M40, to secure it for his move.

  He thumbed back the hammer. He looked at each of his targets.

  He took a deep breath.

  So do it, he thought. So do it!

  Something was happening.

  A series of dry popping cracks reached Solaratov's ears, far away, but definitely coming off the mountain.

  What?

  He looked hard through the scope, not daring to take it from the trapped man. He thought he saw a flash, the flight of something small through the air, a disturbance in the snow, and quickly came up with the idea of an automatic pistol, but what was he doing, trying to signal men in the area? Who could be in the area?

  But in the next second his question was answered. He was shooting into the snow-laden pines above him, striking their trunks and driving the impact vibrations out their limbs, shooting fast so that the vibrations accumulated in their effect, and almost astonishingly, the snow loads of four pines yielded and slid down the mountain toward the supine man, where they hit and exploded into a fine blast of powder, a sheet of density that momentarily took his sight picture away from him.

  Where is he?

  He put the scope down because he could never find the man in the narrow width of vision, and saw him, rolling down the mountain a good fifty feet from the commotion he'd stirred.

  Solaratov brought the rifle up fast, but couldn't find the man, he was moving so quickly. At last he located him and saw that he had gotten a full fifty meters down the hill.

  He picked up the good moving sight picture, fired quickly, remembering to lead on the moving target, but the bullet impacted behind the target, kicking up a huge geyser of snow.

  Of course! The range had changed subtly, he was still holding for 654 meters, and the range was probably down to six hundred or so.

  By the time he figured this out, the man had come to rest in the rocks below, and was now much better situated behind them, having picked up some maneuverability and the position to shoot back.

  Goddamn him! he thought.

  With a thud he caught on something, taking his breath away. He had come to rest in a new nest of rocks fifty meters downslope. The snow still hung in the air, and in his desperate fall-run, it had gotten into his parka and down his neck. But in the complete un coordination of the moment, he made certain he was behind cover. He breathed hard. He hurt everywhere, but felt warmth pouring down the side of his face, and reached up to touch blood.

  Had he been hit?

  No: the fucking night-vision goggles, totally worthless but forgotten in the crisis, had slipped down his head crookedly, and one strap cut a wicked gash in his ear. The cut stung. He grabbed the things and had an impulse to toss them away. What was the point now?

  But maybe Solaratov wasn't sure where he was now, nestled behind a slightly wider screen of rocks. He looked and saw he had a little more room to move from rock to rock.

  Maybe he could even get a shot off.

  But at what?

  And then he saw that the slope dropped off intensely and, worse, the rocks had run out.

  This is it, he thought.

  This is as far as I go.

  What did I get out of it?

  Nothing.

  His ear stung.

  They've moved," Sally said.

  "Now they're behind the house. You can hear the shots are over there."

  "Are we going to be all right?" asked Nikki.

  "Yes, baby," Julie said, holding her daughter close.

  The three were in the cellar of the house, and Sally had spent the past few minutes jamming old chairs, trunks and boxes against the door at the head of the steps, just in case someone came looking for them with bad intentions.

  The cellar smelled of mold and faded material, and spring floods that had soaked everything some years back.

  It was dirty and dark, only meager light coming through snow-covered windows.

  There was one other door, to the outside, one of those slanted wood things that led down three steps to them.

  Sally had piled up more impediments to that passageway, but there was no way of really locking the doors. They could only forestall things.

  "I wish we had a gun," said Nikki.

  "I wish we did too," said Sally.

  "I wish Daddy was here," said Nikki.

  Bob had a rare moment of visual freedom, a long, clean look into the stunted snow-covered trees at the base of the mountain. But he could see nothing, no movement, no hint of disturbance.

  Then a bullet sang off the rock an inch beyond his face, kicking a puff of granite spray into his eye. He fell back, stifling a yell, and felt the telltale numbness that indicated some kind of trauma. But only for a second, then it lit into raw, harsh but meaningless pain, and he winced, driving more pain into the eye.

  Goddamn him!

  Solaratov had seen just the faintest portion of head exposed and he was on it that fast, putting a bullet an inch shy of the target. An inch at six hundred-odd meters.

  Could that son of a bitch shoot or what?

  Swagger felt his eye puff, his lid flare, and he closed it, sensing the throb of pain. He touched the wounded sector of his face: blood, lots of it, from the stone spray, but nothing quite serious. He blinked, opened the eye, and saw hazily out of it. Not blind. Trapped but not blind, not yet.

  The guy was so good.

  No ranging shots, he got the range right every single time, had Bob pinned and eyeballed.

  No goddamn ranging shots.

  Solaratov had an odd gift, a perfect gift for estimating distance. It made the package complete. Some men had it, some didn't. Some could learn it with experience, some couldn't. It was in fact the weakest part of Swagger's own game, his ability to estimate range. It had cost him a few shots over the years because he lacked the natural inclination to read distances while possessing in spades all the shooter's other natural gifts.

  Donny had a gift for it, Donny could look and tell you automatically. But Bob was so lame at it, he'd once spent a fortune on an old Barr & Stroud naval gunfire range finder, a complex, ancient optical instrument that with its many lenses and calibration gizmos could eventually work the farthest unknown distance into a recognizable quantity.

  "Some day they'll make 'em real small," he remembered telling Donny at one lost moment or other.

  "Then you won't need a gofer like me," Donny had said with a laugh, "and I can sit the next war out."

  "Yes, you can," Bob had said.

  "One war is enough."

  An idea flirted with him. From where? From Donny?

  Well, from somewhere over the long years. But it wasn't solid yet: he just felt it beyond the screen of his consciousness, unformed, like a little bit of as-yet-unrecognizable melody.

  This guy is so good. How can he be so good?

  Donny had the answer. Donny wanted to tell him.

  Donny knew up in heaven or wherever he was, and Donny yearned somehow to tell him.

  Tell me! he demanded.

  But Donny was silent.

  And down below Solaratov waited, scoping the rocks, waiting for just a bit of a sliver of a body part to show so he could nail it, and then get on with business.

  He is so good.
<
br />   He made great shots.

  He hit Dade Fellows dead on, he hit Julie riding at an oblique angle flat out at over eight hundred meters, he was just the-That scene replayed in his mind.

  What was odd about it, he now saw, was how featureless it had been. A ridge on a mountain, with a wall of rock behind it, very little vegetation. It had been almost plain, almost abstract.

  So?

  So how did he range it?

  There were no guidelines, no visual data, no known objects visible to make a range estimate, only the woman on the horse getting smaller as she got farther away on the oblique.

  How did he know where to hold, when her range changed so radically after the first shot?

  He must be a genius. He must just have the gift, the ability to somehow, by the freakish mechanics of the brain, to just know. Donny had that. Maybe it's not so rare.

  But then he knew. Or rather Donny told him, reaching across the years.

  "You idiot," Donny whispered hoarsely in his ear, "don't you see it yet? Why he's so good? It's so obvious."

  Bob knew then why the man had shot at him as he fell but missed. The range had changed, he estimated the lead and got it slightly wrong and just missed. But once his target was still, he knew exactly the range. And that's how he could hit Julie. He knew exactly. He solved the distance equation, and knew how far she was and where to hold to take her down.

  He has a range finder, Bob thought. The son of a bitch has a range finder.

  Solaratov looked at his watch. It was just past 0700. The light was now gray approaching white, a kind of sealed-off pewter kind of weather. The snow was falling harder and a little breeze had kicked up, tossing and twisting the flakes, pummeling as they rotated down. The wind got under the crack of his hood, where his flesh was sweaty, and cut him like a scythe. A little chill ran up his spine.

  How long can I wait? he wondered.

  Nobody was flying in for yet another few hours, but maybe they could get in with snowmobiles or plow the highway and get in that way.

  A sudden, uncharacteristic uneasiness settled over him.

  He made a list:

  1.) Kill the sniper.

  2.) Kill the woman.

  3.) Kill the witnesses.

  4.) Escape into the mountains.

  5.) Contact the helo.

  6.) Rendezvous.

  An hour's worth of work, he thought, possibly two.