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 glint 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-

“Boyo,” Anto said over the radio.

“I don’t see you.”

“Maybe you’re looking in the wrong direction, Sniper.”

He stood up, began to scan the far horizon.

“See me yet? Maybe look behind you.”

He did. Anto stood, fully dressed at some indeterminate spot in the slope of the featureless plain. He held his rifle cocked against his hip, supported in one hand, the radio earphones and microphone obscuring his face, his shades tight to eyes, his boonie cap low on his brow. He looked like war or death.

“Surprised, mate? Thought you’d see a naked man on a bike putt-putting his way to you and hoping that you showed mercy and knowing you wouldn’t, Sniper?”

Bob was silent.

“Cat’s got his tongue, does it now? We’re in a new game, mate. Here it is. I’m walking at you. You can sit there or not. I was you, I’d walk to me; lessens the range. When you think you got the shot, my advice is, take it. But on that move I take mine. Seeing as how my tech is better than yours, Sniper, I’ve a funny feeling I’m going to be faster and better. This is the beachball game we once played, only we’re the beachballs.”

“You’re a sick motherfucker,” said Bob.

Anto laughed.

“You could surrender. You could toss rifle one way, bolt the second, and handgun still another. Then I’ll have you strip naked and assume the position. Who knows, once I get in there and get the film, I may let you live. I’ll shoot both kneecaps to pulp so I’ll know you’ll never track me, and maybe I’ll blind you so you won’t be scoping me, but you’ll have some kind of life. How’s that for an offer, Sniper?”

Bob threw his radio headphones and mike away.

Anto held all the cards and knew it. His ego thrilled at the sheer theater of the moment he had so shrewdly engineered. He was the best. He’d outthought Swagger, he’d nailed the Nailer, and he’d leave the sniper sniped and the jackals would tussle over his bones. He walked toward his target. It was like High Noon at six hundred yards, snipers in a face-off, approaching each other on the emptiness of prairie until they knew they couldn’t miss, and then it just came down to who was faster on his gear, and Anto knew he was faster.

The wind pressed against his face, and the uppers had him radiating concentration and sense of self, even if, absentmindedly, he felt the sun on his exposed back of neck.

Swagger was oddly quiet. He didn’t move a step. He was just waiting. The fool. The closer he got, the less chance of missing he’d have. It was as if he’d given up already and was just waiting for the dispatch.

Anto guessed, 550? No, maybe closer, maybe 530. I am so close, I am, to my 500, oh, this is the pinnacle, the highest, the best.

And then an odd thing. He noted it first on his face, a difference, and then on his bare arms, another difference. What was it?

The wind. For some damned reason it had dropped to zero.

That was a present from God. That was also a message. God was saying, Anto, dear boy-for some reason God had always been English to Anto-here’s a gift. A still moment. It will only last a bit, but take it, old chap, as my endorsement of you and my thanks for all the mullahs and their camel buggers you’ve sent over.

Now, he thought.

With a fluidity that seemed odd given his bulk but was in fact greased by countless thousands of repetitions until burned into muscle memory, Anto dropped to one knee, the other leg bent stoutly in support underneath him, simultaneously bringing the rifle to his shoulder, feeling the adjusted sling put exactly the right pressure to tighten the whole construction into a perfect support structure, while his finger flew to the iSniper unit, hit the button, and the little genius inside worked the numbers, solved distance and humidity and atmospheric density and what little whiffs of wind might remain, and came back almost instantly with the information 534, 5 down, 1 right, and as his hand closed around the grip and he tugged it back solid as an anvil into the pocket of his shoulder, even as his trigger finger found and began to press the soft curve of that lever, his elbow solid on his planted leg two inches behind the knee in a bone-to-bone lockup, he tracked the hashmarks on the vertical axis properly down, then right and-