Jimmy and Raymond, breathless and ragged and clotted with bits of grass, burrs, a slathering of dust stuck to sweat after the long crawl, set up about three hundred yards from the center of the valley flat, with a great overlook on the creek below, with no undulations or folds between them and the presumed target zone. It would be easy shooting, especially with the iSniper911 to solve the shot.
They got down in the prone, and rather than exactly digging in against the slight cant of the land, more or less insinuated their way into it, as if it were a crowd, not the planet Earth itself, squirming, adjusting, kicking now and then, trying to do all this without raising telltale signs like clots of thrown earth and dead weeds about themselves. Finally they had enough room to scootch down flat and not at the tilt, and Raymond took up the rifle, unfolded the bipod legs and had a time on the adjustments, getting the height just right, digging into the earth so that the legs of the support would be even, which would make the traverse easier, if indeed that’s what was called for. Meanwhile, Jimmy set up the spotter on its baby tripod, adjusting it for the same presumed target zone three hundred yards and fifteen degrees beneath horizontal out. It was still too dark for him to focus, though in fact a satiny glow had begun to light the eastern horizon across from them. After a bit of busyness, both were as set as they could get, and it was then that Jimmy unfurled a camo tarpaulin, a sheet of canvas threaded heavily with the strips of nature’s-coloring fabric as well as the odd twig or piece of thatch, so that it enveloped them, leaving only a peep slot at the farthest extreme, which left them barely enough room to observe and shoot. They settled in for the long, slow wait in abject stillness, a zen beyond death that was the sniper’s hardest discipline.
As Anto had predicted, it was much harder on Ginger. He was alone, and after breaking contact with his colleagues, he was really alone, seemingly on the face of the Earth. He continued his downward slither, swimming against the soil. It ate his energy and got him dirty, sweaty, and breathless in a hurry, exactly as he stayed throughout the downward progress. He persevered, reaching the valley floor, and before venturing out on the flat, tried to pick the best spot. Certainly dead center, right? But then his mind grew confused: he tried to imagine which way to orient himself; Anto hadn’t specified.
Did he want to be on his belly, looking forward to the action, able to haul himself up to his knees, throw the rifle to shoulder, and open up? Or was the best posture on his back, flat, his soles to the action, by which he could simply sit upright as he drew his legs in and fire from that situation? That would be faster by a second, involving less movement and adjustment on his part. On the other hand, he could only see straight up in that position, and he’d be bereft of visual keys. Suppose Raymond hit dirt, to clear the way for his fusillade, and he was just lying there watching the clouds roll by.
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.