But if he were on an incline with his head lower than his feet, sure he might see, but just as sure, with the blood collecting in his damaged skull, he might pass out or endure so much pain that he would begin to involuntarily twitch. Thinking it over, he decided on a compromise and would lie on his left side, facing the creek bed. He could push himself to knees off his left arm and get to firing almost instantly-full auto, safety off, his finger in the guard housing, resting on the curve of the trigger-yet watch the action as well, and best of all, his head wouldn’t be a collection point for all the bad blood that still cruised his veins.
He chose the middle, as near as he could find it, and slid himself down among the higher grass, the knots of brush and bristle, the gnarly little twisted stems of the strange things that grew upon the plains. He settled in possibly twenty-five yards out, with a good view of a hundred yards either way. He felt for comfort and finally achieved what little he could arrange. That done, he threw the camo tarp over himself, like a blanket, so that he only peeped out from the smallest of cracks at the edge, which itself was concealed largely from view by two knots of brush. The matting of fabric strips and leaf clusters stitched to the outside of the tarp vibrated slightly in a soft, predawn wind. His diaper secure, his water source a lick away, his fingers on grip and forearm, the rifle cinched by combat sling close, twenty-eight Corbon 5.56s in the PMAG, and another PMAG so loaded secured to it by a Magpul link for the fastest reload in the game, he allowed himself to settle in and try to relax. As the sun began to paint the limits of his vision, it caught on the tips of trees and the upper reaches of the valley slope across the way.
Ninety hard minutes had passed, and Anto’s balls were now turning blue and his hands no longer belonged to him. An uncontrollable chill wracked his body. The amphetamines seemed to have worn off as well. He felt pain everywhere, the numbness of the cold, the bite of the wind, the sting of all the particles and branches that had pelted and whipped him.
Jaysus, he hated this evil bastard Swagger like the devil hisself. Him a fine strong man, the sniper’s sniper, an NCO in 22, the finest of all units on earth, reduced to nude messenger boy in forty-degree morning, cold and shot through with pain. Aghhhhh, such pleasure ahead, in seeing the man take Raymond’s 168er and ride it hard to ground, not believing it had finally happened to him. Anto hoped for a bit of eye contact there at the extreme moment, so Swagger would know who’d nailed him. But he’d pass that up for a simple sure death, and if this ordeal, by Jaysus, were the price, he’d pay it in hard, cold cash.
At last he rolled into a grove of trees in a narrow valley that announced the presence of a creek; it had to be Big Bend. He pulled up, turned the motor off, and watched as the sun began to light up the higher bits of elevation, turning the tips of the trees bright with warmth and hope. His machine ticked as it cooled; he sat, immobile, waiting, enjoying the cessation of the vibration against his bollocks, the cut of the wind and the branches against his shoulders and arms. Only his feet were warm, and he put his hands down and opened and shut them against the numbness in the soothing radiation from the engine.
“Potato!”
He responded into the microphone held on a strut just beyond his frozen lips.
“You bastard, Swagger, this being one hairy fooking bitch of a tumble. Man, I’d wring your goddamned neck if I had the chance.”
“Not-day,” Swagger said, the transmission just a little clearer. “Set your GPS on a radial two-sixty-five an-distance indicator for one-point-seven miles. When the b-ings for one-point-seven, turn to.109. Go. Fast. Now.” Then of course the radio went to nothing but static.
Anto struggled to get his GPS out of the bag with the money- actually, old magazines and TV dinner packaging-and with his clumsy fingers found the proper buttons and set the heading, then switched modes and set the distance. It was the Garmin trail-marking model, set to ring when he went the 1.7. Looking at the route, it looked as if he was going straight over the foothills, not around them, and that would be a lot of jostling, a lot of barefoot shifting, a lot of diddling with the throttle and the brake for leverage and control.
Fooking bastard.
He set the GPS onto its neat little bracket affixed to the handlebars for that purpose exactly, gunned the engine to life, and set out, cursing all the way.
Nothing. It was nearly ten now, and the sun was bright and hot. Under the tarpaulin the sniper team did what ninety-nine percent of sniping is: they waited. In the flashy books and movies, the waiting part is always skipped. Alas, for Jimmy and Raymond it could not be. They just felt the numbness spread through their bodies, the warmth of the morning meeting the chill from the ground beneath, and were soon enough miserable, too cold from below, too hot from above. They knew: best not to think of time or check watches, best not to anticipate action, contemplate the future, make plans, hope it would end soon. Best to concentrate on the now, confront the suck in its pristine suckiness, attempt to engage it without letting it destroy the mind, not fret, whine, think of what could have been, refight old fights, discuss anything with meaning, comment on the situation in their adult diapers, profess either hunger to kill or fear of death. Just endure, as snipers had since the first Chinaman threw charcoal, saltpeter, and stinky sulfur together in a bowl and mashed them up.
“Think I’ll light a nice cigar, have a piss, open a bottle of stout, and go for a little stretch-it-out walk,” said Jimmy, the joker.
“You will not,” said Raymond, who was cursed with an earnest, literal mind, “that would completely blow our-” and then he saw it was Jimmy’s joking and pulled up.
“Had you, boyo,” said Jimmy.
“That you did,” said Raymond.
“You poor sod, believing everything that’s said. That’s why you shouldn’t buy nothing till you run it by me, ’cause you’re such a gentle, trusting fool, you’ll be taken ad of every time.”
“I wasn’t raised to no fast ways in a city like,” said Raymond. “Out in the country, all was what was said, and all you city lads, you play these damned games on me.”
“If yis wasn’t the best shot in Ireland, what woulda become of ya, I’ll never know.”
They settled down again, for their spurts of conversation came about every twenty minutes and lasted but a few seconds.
Each rode the optics before him. On the spotting scope, Jimmy’s was by far the wider view, and he patrolled the valley floor, then up and down the opposing slope in calm, orderly fashion, as he had been trained, never rushing, never tiring, never blinking, apprehending each and every detail, hunting for some kind of change-the straight line, the shadow falling in the wrong direction, a quick movement, a puff of dust where there was no wind, a dead branch amid bright green sprigs. But there was no change at all, only the lapping of the grass under the pressure of the steady, slight wind and, above the horizon of the valley, the slow, magnificent rush of the clouds, boiling cumulus that looked like frozen explosions with utterly detailed fretwork in their tumbles.
“Look,” said Raymond, who’d seen them first.
A flock of strange beasts had moseyed in, with white tails and throats, the size of goats, their horns like the arms of a lyre for a Greek god to pluck a melody on.