A Time to Hunt by Stephen Hunter
But all of this action is only a prelude to Donny's subsequent relationship with Swagger in Vietnam. Hunter fleshes out the mythology that he began to create in Point of Impact as readers watch Swagger add to his famed body count and confront his nemesis, Solaratov.
Hunter moves deftly from the mind of Solaratov to Donny and back to Swagger, and in each character finds the core of the Vietnam experience--fear, coldness, sadness, horror, elation.
The last two sections cut to contemporary events and find Swagger married to Donny's former love, Julie. Slowly, the events of the first half of the book begin to merge with Swagger's present history and stories that readers will recognize from Hunter's earlier novels. Swagger uncovers a deep connection between the Vietnam demonstrations of the 1970s, the predatory work of the CIA, and the killer who is after him and his family now. Nothing is as it first seems, and readers of Point of Impact and Black Light will have to revise all their expectations.
'STEPHEN HUNTER IS SIMPLY THE BEST WRITER OF ACTION FICTION IN THE WORLD and Time to Hunt proves it. The action scenes are topnotch, the mystery kept me guessing until the last page and Bob the Nailer is a great character. I doubt that I will read another action thriller as good as this until Hunter writes another book.'
--Phillip Margolin, author of The Undertaker's Widow
'If he's not there already, [Hunter's] fast approaching the rarefied air at the top of the genre with the likes of Nelson DeMille, Frederick Forsyth and Ken Follett. Time to Hunt tugs at your heartstrings, then slaps you around. The intensity is so palpable you nearly break out in a sweat.'
--The Denver Post
'TIME TO HUNT IS MORE THAN A THRILLER .. .
it's a sweeping novel that ranges from the era of the Vietnam War and the anti-war movement to the present.'
--Houston Chronicle
'SURPRISING .. . SATISFYING .. . Swagger is a near-mythic character without peer in mystery fiction. As we revel in his adventures and triumphs, we also experience his pain. It's that pain, simmering below the surface, that keeps Bob Lee on the edge of our consciousness long past the end of this fine novel.'
--Booklist
ALSO BY STEPHEN HUNTER
FICTION
Black Light Dirty White Boys Point of Impact The Day Before Midnight Tapestry of Spies The Second Saladin The Master Sniper
NONFICTION
Violent Screen: A Critic's 13 Years on the Front Lines of Movie Mayhem
Published by Dell Publishing a division of Random House, Inc. 1540 Broadway New York, New York 10036
If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as 'unsold and destroyed' to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this 'stripped book.'
Copyright 1998 by Stephen Hunter All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. For information address: Doubleday, New York, New York.
The trademark Dell is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
ISBN: 0440226457
Reprinted by arrangement with Doubleday Printed in the United States of America Published simultaneously in Canada April 1999
---------- CPL John Burke, USMC KIA, I Corps, RSVN, 1967 If any question why we died, Tell them, because our fathers lied.
--rudyard kipling writing in the voice of his son John, KIA, the Somme, at the age of sixteen
prologue
We are in the presence of a master sniper.
He lies, almost preternaturally still, on hard stone. The air is thin, still cold, he doesn't shake or tremble.
The sun is soon to rise, pushing the chill from the mountains. As its light spreads, it reveals fabulous beauty.
High peaks, shrouded in snow, a pristine sky that will be the color of a pure blue diamond, far mountain pastures of a green so intense it rarely exists in nature, brooks snaking down through pines that carpet the mountainsides.
The sniper notices none of this. If you pointed it out to him, he wouldn't respond. Beauty, in nature or women or even rifles, isn't a concept he would recognize, not after where he's been and what he's done. He simply doesn't care, his mind doesn't work that way.
Instead, he sees nothingness. He feels a great cool numbness. No idea has any meaning to him at this point.
His mind is almost empty, as though he's in a trance.
He's a short-necked man, as so many great shooters are, his blue eyes, though gifted with an almost freakish
