“Won’t that be fun?” said Bob.
“It’s good craic you’ll be having with that-”
The shot sounded from above and away and far out, not an eardrum-snapping whack, but more a soft report as if muted by distance.
Anto flinched and turned, thinking to hell with the position, and was surprised to see Swagger standing, unhit. He saw then why the radio was decreed instead of the mobile: it distorted voice and made recognition impossible. He’d been talking to another fellow while Swagger lay in his ghillie still as death in this valley.
There was another damned sniper.
Goddamn him!
“My boy just tagged yours,” Swagger said.
A second shot followed, Anto flinching.
“And now he’s done the spotter.”
Raymond felt the slack giving, he was on the cusp of the shot, his finger’s steady press against trigger, the crossed lines of the reticle steady upon the ghillie-suited man who held the pistol and
Lightning lightning lightning.
A storm suddenly blowing in, the sky full of jagged illumination.
The green glow of the countryside.
Over a hundred kills.
The taste of Guinness.
And that was all.
Nine hundred and thirty-four yards away, Chuck McKenzie watched as his first shot splashed the shooter hard in a jet of crimson at the left quadrant of what, before destruction, had been skull, and the ruined fellow went limp in supertime, giving it all up as he became instant meat, the upper half of his body falling hard at gravity’s insistence, but then Chuck was so quick into his throw and correction he lost his first target, knowing he’d killed it, and came across to the second. Number two had dumped the binocs and was tugging the rifle from his dead pal’s hands, driven even now to finish the mission, even though his face wore splatter everywhere, as did his shirtsleeve and hand. Brave guy: it never occurred to him to chuck the rifle and go to hands up, which might have saved his life, as Chuck wouldn’t shoot a surrendering man. But number two was all warrior and actually had the rifle half in play and was setting up, albeit in panic time, for his shot, when Chuck snuffed him with another head shot, even as he heard a spray of gunshots and automatic weapon fire from down in the valley.
Anto’s speed surprised even Bob and the speed was more efficient for the decisiveness driving it, but even if Bob had the shot, he let it go, because even before Anto was yelling, “Kill him, Ginger,” Ginger was rising from the dead. Bob was surprised Ginger was so close, though he knew him to be about from the noise the fellow’d made just before dawn as he put himself into the earth.
Still, it was long for a pistol shot, and Bob went to a knee to take up the two-hand supported and put two fast ones into the rising man close to fifty yards away, and missed once, seeing a puff flick off the earth next to Ginger, who, though shuddering upon the strike of the second round, evidently a low lung shot, still got his M4 up. He fired at Bob but Bob was not there, having rolled like a crazy man to the right. Ginger’s nine-round burst tore up a smoky stitch of dust and grassy fragments and cactus shrapnel in the space where Bob had been.
Ginger, bleeding badly, tracked the gun right through the glowworm incandescence of the Eotech sight and brought the gun right to bear on what of Bob he could see or sense, even while rising to his feet. A normal man would have yielded to collapse by this time, but Ginger was all bristly, insane beast, a charging boar, a crazed wildebeest, a here-comes-death buffalo, and would not check out without vengeance, and he willed himself to fire again.
Bob had by this time gone further to prone for the calming influence of the ground in support of his arms, though he was so deep in the loam, he could only see Ginger’s upper third. A fleet of 5.56s rocketed overhead, inches from ending it forever, but he didn’t flinch as most will do but instead fired twice again, the front sight bold and sharp as death in the notch of the rear, and was sure the bullets had gone home. But Ginger didn’t show any ill health and fired another burst, which tore up the ground in ragged spurts as it vectored toward Bob, seeking him.
And then Ginger was down.
Clearly Chuck had finished what Bob couldn’t, putting a.308 home from his perch on the hill, not a head shot but the heartbreaker, and the big Irishman slid sideways, face slack as a misbegotten moon, and toppled, though as he fell his finger tightened on his trigger and he emptied the 5.56s into the turf just before him, setting off spasms of geysering dust. Then it was quiet.
Except for the sound of Anto’s departing ATV.
Bob came around, saw the nude man at full throttle, bent as low as he could get, more than two hundred yards out, and he fired from prone, aiming high, dumping what remained of his own mag, but the distance was too far for a handgun, Anto was too deft in zigzagging the little bike, and when he achieved slide lock-back, Bob knew he hadn’t hit him.
He jumped up madly, gesturing to Chuck, pointing with one wild arm while he screamed-probably the sound didn’t reach Chuck-“Kill him, kill him!”
Chuck took his time setting up the shot, but as far as he was from Bob, he was even further from Anto, who was almost to the crest and had the bold man’s luck with him, for he veered just as Chuck fired, and Bob saw the bullet punch up a gout of shredded vegetation just as Anto disappeared.
Fuck, he thought. That bastard made it out alive.
It’s not over. I didn’t get him.
He turned, shedding himself finally of the heavy ghillie, dropped the spent clip and thrust in a new one, released the slide to jab forward with a clack!, dropped the hammer, and replaced the Sig in its shoulder holster. Then he picked up his as-yet-unfired rifle and headed up the crest to meet up with Chuck, only to see that Chuck was roaring down to him on his own ATV.
They met in another two hundred yards.
“Great shooting, Sniper,” Bob said, clapping the other man on the arm. “Jesus, you got three of them and all I did was put bullets in the ground.”
“Sorry I couldn’t take that fourth guy. Do we go after him?”
“No, he’s picking up a rifle and some pants just now. Nothing he’d like more than to see us crossing a field. Take me to my own ATV.”
He jumped on behind Chuck and they headed back up the slope, followed a creek down the gap in the ridge, down into an arroyo, and finally to a little glade where Bob had left his vehicle.
Anto had been hit by one of Bob’s long pistol shots but not badly. It was a burning groove in his left arm above elbow, below biceps, and it oozed the red stuff and hurt like bloody hell. He looked at it without interest. He’d been hit enough times to know this was nothing.
Then he concentrated on the fact that he was alone. That fooking bastard had done them all, the great boys of Basra and SAS sniper element blue, with over three hundred kills among them, to say nothing of all the other jobs for king and country in places that still couldn’t be divulged.
Black Irish grief collapsed upon him, a nude man with serious sun poisoning in bright light in the middle of the savage, featureless high plains. He went to the bag and reached through the crap that filled it out until he found his amphetamines, and he gulped six of them. Get me concentration back, me energy, numb me out from the pain, that’s what I’ve got to do.
Then he climbed aboard the bike, oriented himself, and began a big curl around the eastern rim of the valley to a certain designated tree, where the boys had left him kit and rifle.
He knew exactly where Swagger was going next, and he’d play his own self’s little trick on the fellow and be the one getting there first this time.
Swagger reached into his cargo pocket.
“Here it is,” he said to Chuck. “I want you out of here fast, before Anto gets geared up. You go hard west for an hour; don’t stop for anything. Then you call your buddy with the chopper and bring him in to you. Have him fly you to the Indian Rapids airfield-there should be some kind of airline terminal there-go to the American Eagle desk, and tell whoever’s there you have something for Mr. Memphis. Either he will take the package, or he’ll get someone to take the package.”