But this time, the device was the perfect solution to the tactical problem. He was concealed, but at great range; he had to know exactly when and if the sniper team left in the hour before dawn, so that he could move to his shooting position and take them as they emerged from behind the hill. If they didn’t come, he’d simply spend the day there, waiting patiently. He had enough water and food in the pack to last nearly a week, though of course each day he’d be weaker. But today, it felt good.
Through the green haze of the device, which crudely amplified the ambient light of the night, he saw the camp in surprising detail. He saw the lit cigarettes of smoking sentries, he saw them sneak out into the night for marijuana or to defecate in the latrine, or to drink something — beer, he guessed. But he knew where to look. At the sandbag berm nearest to the intelligence bunker, there was a crease at the base of the hill that led this way directly. He’d even been able to spot the zigzag in the concertina there, and the gap in the preset Claymore mines, and the prongs of the other anti-personal mines buried in the approach zone. It was a path, where men could move and get out of the camp. This is where it would come, if it would come at all.
The first signal was just a flick of bright light, as the flap on a bunker was momentarily pushed aside, letting the illumination inside escape to register on Solaratov’s lens. Solaratov took a deep breath, and in another second, another brief flash came. As he watched, two men, heavily laden, moved to the sandbag berm and paused.
He watched. He waited. If only he had a rifle capable of hitting at fifteen hundred yards! He could do it and be done. But no such weapon existed in his own or his host country’s inventory. Finally a man rose, peered over the edge of the berm, then pulled himself over it and fell the three-odd feet to the ground. He snaked down the dirt slope to a gully at the base. In time, another Marine duplicated the efforts, though he was a larger, more ponderous man. He too fell to the ground, but gracelessly; then he rolled down the dirt embankment and joined his leader.
The two hesitated in their next move, watching, waiting. The leader lifted his rifle — yes, it had a scope — and searched the horizon for sign of an ambush. Making none out, he lowered the weapon and spoke to the assistant. The assistant rose unsteadily from cover, and began to move ever so slowly through the mines and the Claymores, finding gaps in the wire exactly where they should be and slipping through them. His leader followed him, and when both were free of the approach zone, the leader stepped forward and, moving at a slow, steady, hunched pace, began to work his way down the draw. Solaratov watched them until they disappeared.
They come, he thought.
He flicked off the scope, and began to slither through the grass toward his shooting position.
round 0630 the suns began to rise. There were two of them, both orange, both shimmery, both peering over the edges of the earths, just beyond the far trees. Donny blinked hard, blinked again. His head ached.
“You okay?” Swagger hissed, lying next to him.
“I’m fine,” he lied.
“You keep blinking. What the hell is going on?”
“I’m fine,” Donny insisted, but Swagger looked back into that patch of yellow grass and undulating earth he had designated Area 1.
Of course Donny wasn’t fine. He thought of a book he once read about bomber pilots in World War II and a soldier who saw everything twice. He was seeing everything twice. But he didn’t scream “I see everything twice” like that guy did.
He had a simple concussion, that was all, not enough to sickbay him or bellyache him out of any job in the Corps — except, of course, this one. The spotter was eyes, that was all he was.
“What the hell happened to you?”
“Huh?”
“What the hell happened to you. You’re swole up like a grapefruit. Someone bang you?”
“I fell. It’s nothing.”
“Goddamn you, Fenn, this is the one fucking day in your life when you cannot have goddamn fallen. Oh, Christ, you got double vision, you got pain, you got dead spots in your vision?”
“I am fine. I am roger to go.”
“Bullshit. Goddammit.”
Swagger turned back, furiously. He lay in blazing concentration on the ridge, his sniper rifle before him, gazing through a pair of binoculars, sweeping Area 1. Donny blinked, wished he had a goddamn aspirin and put his eye to the M49 spotting scope planted in the earth before him.
Using one eye resolved the double-image problem, but not the blur. It didn’t matter that he looked only with his best eye; there was still only a smear of visual information, like a television set without an aerial, getting mostly fuzz.
The right thing to do: say, Sarge, I have blurred vision. Sorry, I’m not worth shit out here. Let’s call an abort before they get into range and—
“Shit!” said Bob. “They are moving too fast, they have panicked, they gonna be here in ten seconds.”
Donny looked back and saw four — actually two — camo boonie hats just above the fold in the earth that took them out of sight. Something was wrong. They were moving too fast, almost running. The pressure of living a few seconds in a sniper’s scope had gotten to them. They were headed in a beeline like half-milers for the hill and the comfort it supposedly provided.
“He’ll know that ain’t me. Goddammit!”
“What do we do?” said Donny, sickly aware that the situation had passed beyond his meager ability to influence, and full of images of that scared Featherstone, called to be a hero by nothing more than freak physical similarity, running to stop the shit from dribbling out his ass and the poor lieutenant, unable to yell, stuck with him, trailing behind, knowing that if he let him get away, Solaratov would take him down in a second.
“Fuck,” said Bob, bitterly. “Get back on the scope. Maybe he’ll bite anyhow.”
mmmm The sniper considered.
Why are they moving so fast? They have a long journey ahead of them, and they know there is much less chance of being observed if they move slowly than if they run.
He watched them, now about five hundred yards out, rushing pell-mell along the gully, almost out of sight.
Possibly they want to get into the shelter of the trees before full daylight?
No, no, not possible: they’ve never operated like that before. Therefore there are two possibilities: A) they know a man is out here and they are scared or B) they are bait, they are pretenders, and the real sniper is already out here, looking in my direction for some kind of movement, at which point he sends a bullet crashing my way.
Of the two possibilities, he had no favorites. His preference was not to overinterpret data. It was always to pick the worst possibility, assume that it was correct and counterreact.
Therefore: I am being hunted.
Therefore: where would a man be to get a good shot at me?
He turned and to the east, about three hundred yards away, made out a low undulation in the shine of the rising sun, not much, really, but just enough elevation to give a shooter a peek into this sea of grass here in the defoliated zone.
He looked at the sun: he’d be behind the sun, because he’d not want its reflection on his lens. Therefore, yes, the ridge.