Gray moved west through the trees into the bowl, then took a dogleg route, south a few paces, then west again. He walked with exceeding care, slowly and with patience, following Trusov's westerly route but by a parallel course a hundred feet from Trusov's trail. He watched the ground, avoiding dried foliage that might crackle underfoot. He moved so silently he could not hear his own footfalls. The Winchester was across his chest.
He approached a dell, a hundred-yard expanse spotted by only a few trees. The spring and pool were to Gray's left. The odor of tarweed carried to Gray. The dell was also filled with sow thistle and yarrow and knapweed. Gray lowered himself to his knees and elbows and crawled forward to survey the dell. He shimmied along the ground around a pine tree to two rotted logs. One tree had fallen over the other several years after the first came down. Gray crawled into the vee formed by the logs. The fallen trees were so old that dandelions were growing from their decomposed bark. Gray flinched when a goldfinch flashed by. The bird trilled as it flew, the notes sounding like "potato chips, potato chips."
Gray checked over his shoulder. From behind he was protected by an upright pine. His hide was almost fully enclosed. He was satisfied he was in a position a bullet could not reach. Gray rose to kneeling, brought his backpack around, and reached for his binoculars. Moving half an inch at a time, he rose to peer over the log.
Sound and the pain rushed over him at the same instant. An explosion from above lanced his back from shoulder to the base of his spine. Ferocious jets of pain. Gray toppled sideways onto dry cheat grass. His back felt as if a surgeon had opened it with a scalpel. He gasped with pain, then scrambled closer to a log, trying to tuck himself under it. He didn't know where the danger lay. Blood was left on the ground. He squeezed his eyes against the racking pain, then opened them to stare skyward.
Around the tree above him, about fifteen feet off the ground, was a circle of baling wire. Something had been attached to the tree. Gray's hand found several fragments of pottery, portions of a plate. Then he saw a littering of nails.
Gray knew then the trap he had fallen for. The Russian had placed an impact mine above a likely hide. Trusov had somehow glimpsed Gray but had been unable to get Gray in his scope. Trusov had set off the explosive with a bullet fired from a long distance, causing the nails to blast down at Gray. In effect the mine allowed Trusov to reach around corners. The Russian would have more mines in the bowl. The mine had not been meant to kill him. Trusov would want the purity of a bullet for that task.
Gray slowly brought a hand around to his buttocks. Teeth clamped together, he pulled out a protruding nail, then another. He ran his hand along his shirt and found several more nails in his back, gingerly pulling them out. His back was damp but there was less blood on the ground than he had feared. Gray decided he wasn't badly hurt. Nothing vital had been cut. Several nails were still embedded in his flesh where he couldn't reach, and when he crawled away from the logs the skin and muscles of his back shrieked. But this wasn't going to kill him. Trusov had failed with his first attempt. Gray was almost cheered by the thought.
Then he realized he had been entirely surprised. Not once, not in months and months in the Vietnam bush, had Gray been caught utterly unaware. Now it had happened.
He stilled those thoughts. He checked his canteen. No leaks. His binoculars were scratched, but the lenses were intact. His pack had holes in it but would carry his equipment. The Russian's mine had failed.
Gray concentrated on the best way to make it back to the thicket of trees near the bowl's mouth. He could not cross the glade, not with Trusov out in front of him — at least, that's where Gray thought the bullet had come from, although the blast from the plate mine had masked the sound of Trusov's rifle.
Trusov had been in the bowl at least three hours. Time to prepare many other surprises.
Gray returned east the way he had come, this time even more slowly, his head moving left and right. Moments later he had returned to the mouth of the bowl.
He wanted to circle around Trusov, who Gray presumed was somewhere in the middle of the bowl in the dense trees. Because the north slope was mostly barren, Gray would have to do his circling on the south slope. But between him and that incline were tracts of grass, open killing ground, an artilleryman's dream and an infantryman's nightmare, almost impossible to cross without being observed. The grass began under the trees where Gray stood, and ran toward the south slope.
Gray slid his backpack around so that it hung on his left side, hugged the rifle to his stomach with his left hand, then lowered himself to the ground. His back and buttocks yelped with pain.
Because lying on his belly would flatten more grass Gray stretched out on his right side. A nail in his back ripped his flesh as he stretched out. Leaving the cover of the trees, he began a side crawl into the thick grass. He used his right hand to part the grass in front of him, pushing the grass stems to either side, careful not to snap the stalks. He moved slowly, nothing like the pace of an infantryman crawling under barbed wire but more like a worm where every part of his body was in contact with the earth and was used to push himself along. His motion resembled a swimmer's sidestroke but more constricted and much slower. He traveled only a few inches a minute through the grass and by the occasional blue-blooming larkspur and yellow paintbrush. With his toes he righted stems that did not spring back on their own. This would prevent shining, which occurs when the sun bounces off vegetation that has been pushed down, leaving a bright trail. And the grass was dry from the day's heat, so Gray knew he was not leaving a trail of dulling, a highly visible path where rain or dew has been knocked away.
His passage through the field of grass would have been invisible to anyone standing ten feet away. In Vietnam, Gray had used grass fields many times, not only to move unseen but also as a hide. Grass is a sniper's safest shooting position because there is nothing — no rocks or trees — that an enemy can use to sight or range his gun.
The crest of the grass was a foot above Gray's head. His nose was in the dirt. Had he allowed himself the luxury, he would have reeled from the sensations. The raw scent of the earth, the hot puffs of an idle wind that pushed through the grass, the insistent drone of yellow jackets and bees, and the taste of his own sweat as it slid from his cheek into his mouth were all magnified by his tiny horizon. Twenty feet away, also hidden in the grass, several chukars let loose with their strident chuk-karr, chuk-karr, unaware of Gray's presence. But he had not gone entirely unnoticed. The sunlight flickered, and Gray moved his eyes skyward to see a vulture passing between him and the sun. The bird wheeled over Gray, its oddly tipsy flight distinguishing it from its raptor cousins, then it soared away, apparently deciding Gray was too far from death to be of interest. A tick hopped onto Gray's leading wrist. Gray could not risk the extra motion of swatting it away. The insect burrowed into the skin and its spotted body swelled with Gray's blood. Gray inched along.
There had been no choice between the M-40A1 sniper rifle and his old Winchester 70 that had been delivered by Nikolai Trusov. After he had tended to Adrian and the ambulance had carried her away, Gray approached both weapons, both on the porch leaning upright against the log wall. The Winchester had seemed to leap into Gray's hands like a lost dog. And the instant the Winchester found Gray's hands it seemed to vanish. Over the past several days he had become accustomed to the M-40A1 and was confident with it. But that rifle was still a stranger. Even after all these years the Winchester felt like an extension of Gray's body. His arteries and nerves and sinews continued into the wood and all the way up to the bore. And now, rather than being inert wood and metal, the rifle helped Gray worm his way through the grass, bending and pushing. Gray had not had the chance to zero the weapon, but he trusted it to be accurate. His old friend the Winchester would not allow itself to fall out of zero. And Trusov would want Gray's old rifle to be accurate. It would fit the Russian's notion of fairness.