Mmmm, no. No, it was a hard shot, because he was wandering back and forth between the trees, visible for only fractions of a second between them.
What the hell was he doing?
Now that he’d fired, he’d know Preece would be on him, but he couldn’t know Preece was already here. Had he gone mad? Had he flipped out?
Then it occurred to him that he was hoping his fire would draw Preece and that maybe he could lure him into the field and gun him down there, where he was marginally visible.
Sorry, Bob: I’m already here. I have plenty of battery time, hours more. I can just watch you and when you get impatient and step out from the trees, I can take you down. It was that easy.
He watched now as the glowing man settled behind a tree. He kept peering nervously out. He was waiting for Preece.
I can wait longer than you, Bob. I’m not going anywhere at all.
Peck heard the first three shots from far away, a dry sound, almost like a tapping. He gauged that they came from his right. Slowly, he began to move in that direction, scuttling between trees, taking up a good observation position before moving on.
He moved across the night terrain steadily, growing in confidence. That was Bob shooting, but not at him. Had he hit Preece? He didn’t think so. The shots had more the sense of panic in them than anything.
He moved through the trees from ridgeline to ridgeline, taking cover at the top of each crest and scanning beneath him for signs of movement. But he saw nothing.
He was halfway up another ridge when he heard krak krak, two fast shots, maybe a quarter mile off and over to his left still farther. He climbed the ridge and could see nothing. But instead of descending, he decided to traverse the ridge and moved along it for a bit, until at last he saw, what, light? No, not light: openness. There seemed to be a clearing or something ahead. He scurried along the ridgeline and at last came to rest overlooking the field. This should be where the shots came from. He had a feeling that if something were going to happen, this is where it would happen.
Bob peeked around the tree. He had no indication that any human eyes or ears were within a hundred miles of him. He felt alone on the face of the planet.
No, he told himself. He’s there. He’s tracked me by the shots, he’s seen me move among the trees, he’s there. He’s all set up. Right now he’s in a good, solid prone a hundred-odd yards out, he’s got this tree zeroed, he knows he’s got me.
But there was no snake to announce the sniper this time. That’s because there aren’t snakes everywhere in the forest. He had gotten a snake in the draw. He wasn’t getting one here. He’d used up his snake luck. It didn’t matter. Preece was there. He had to be. There was no other place for him to be.
He looked at his watch. It was close to ten. That’s when my father died, didn’t he? At ten, after a running fight. Some guy in the trees a hundred yards out puts the scope on him, pulls the trigger and goes home to cold beer and rare steaks.
Well, let’s see what happens this time.
He pulled himself out, darted quickly between the trees, back and forth, drawing the sniper’s scope to him, until he felt the crosshairs. But he was relatively confident the man wouldn’t fire, because the trees interfered with his sight picture. Why should he shoot between them, when in seconds his target would step out into the open?
How long would it take? How quick would he shoot? Would he shoot fast? Yes, he’d shoot fast. He’d be on him like a flash, put the crosshair center mass and with a champion’s long-honed trigger control, fire in a second.
One second.
No, two seconds.
He won’t rush. There’s no need to rush. He has it all, right there before him, there’s no need to rush.
Two seconds.
You have two seconds, he told himself.
Bob leaned the rifle against the tree and picked up the gallon can of Coleman fluid. With his fingers he explored the can until at last he found the bottom. He took out his Case XX pocketknife, pried open the blade. Quickly, holding the can upside down, he punctured its metal skin right at the bottom three times on each side. The sound of the blade plunging into the sheet metal had an odd thrum of vibration to it.
He tossed the can out beyond the tree, where it hit, tipped, but gurgled as the volatile liquid inside poured out of the holes and soaked into the brush. He seized the rifle, listening as the fuel chugged out. It formed a pool and its vapor began to rise in a palpable mist, its stench washing over him. It would linger for a second or two, a balloon of gas without a skin.
Time to go, he thought, and stepped out.
It felt so familiar.
It was so like the first time. He’s waiting, a hundred yards away, for a man to emerge. Except not from the trees but from the corn.
The weather was almost identical, and so was the time. It had the ache of déjà vu to it.
He knew it was close to time. Bob couldn’t wait any longer. He had to move.
In the scope, against the green of the infrared, Preece saw him behind the tree, fiddling with something, possibly checking his rifle. An odd banging came, metal on metal, signifying what? He watched as something was launched from the tree and landed with a thud beyond.
Now, what the hell was that?
He grew impatient.
Come on, marine, he thought. Let’s do this. Let’s finish it. It has to be done.
At last Bob stepped out into the black light, which was green in Preece’s scope, faced him frontally and appeared to step toward him.
Got you, thought Preece.
He placed the crosshair dead center of the chest and felt the trigger begin to slide back of its own volition, encountering just a whisper of resistance as it pressed against the internal mechanisms straining for release. It was a five-pound trigger; he had two pounds of weight against it, then three, then—
It was all gone.
The black light wiped white in harsh incandescence. What the hell?
He blinked hard, involuntarily drew his eye from the scope and looked into the heart of fireball that vaporized his night vision, detonating his optic nerves, filling the eyes in his brain with pinwheels, skyrockets, illumination rounds of sheer wild color.
Bob stepped out, his rifle in his left hand, his .45 held behind him in his right.
Hold it, he told himself, smelling the vapors.
One.
Hold it again, he told himself, as the vapors rose around him.
He felt crucified. He was on the cross. There was no help.
He fired the pistol.
It bucked in his hand: its muzzle flash ignited the column of vapor behind him as he dropped it. He felt the whooosh as the darkness ruptured with a blade of light so fierce and radiant that it bleached the colors from the forest and the field even as it briefly exposed them. Starburst, nova, supernova, the universe ending in fire.
The heat rolled across him and he felt his back pucker and blister as he fell forward.
Across the clearing, like a dog’s eyes caught in the full light, two lenses captured the radiation from the fireball and reflected it back at him. They were stacked circles: the lens of a light-amplifying scope and the lens of an IF search-light. But still they were the eyes of a beast.
Bob fired over his sights, not through them, aiming out of instinct, following the illuminated trajectory of his first round. The tracer flicked fast and a little low, kicking up some dirt. In a nanosecond he corrected, fired again, the tracer skipping across the distance so fast, a whipsong of illumination, and it went to the eyes and struck between them.
Fire for effect, he thought. That’s in the book of counter-sniper operations: locate, then overwhelm with superior firepower.
He jacked ten fast rounds into the eyes, the tracers snaking over the clearing and plunging into the position across the way, a sleet of light. He threw darts of light, bolts of light, missiles of light, as he burned through the rest of the magazine, a controlled burst, three shots a second, walking the rounds across the position where the now vanished eyes had proclaimed themselves. The tracers struck and sunk, or they bounced crazily away, like flecks of an exploding star.