What is his sign?
What is the sign?
Then he knew: the man's breath. It will rise like fog, maybe just a vapor, but it will show. It has to show. He has to breathe.
It was the slightest thing. Was it really there, or an optical illusion? But no, there it was: a slight curl through the snow, the suggestion of atmospheric density. It could be a man's breath leaking out as he huddled motionlessly in the rocks, awaiting his prey as he scanned upward.
Yes, my friend. There you are, he thought, slowly picking out the pattern of the arctic warfare camouflage, snow dappled with a little dead brown vegetation.
The man was on his belly, nestled behind rocks, in a little collection of them at the very top of the gash. He lay with the sniper's professional patience, totally engaged, totally calm. Solaratov could not see the rifle, but he saw the man.
There you are, he thought. There you are.
He again fired a laser at him: exactly 658 meters. He had the target.
He fixed markers in his mind's eye--a stand of snow laden pines--put the binoculars down, raised the rifle and went to the scope. Of course it was not nearly so powerful as the binocs, and its field of vision was much smaller. But he found the pines, tracked down, waited, and yes, found the little trail of vapor that marked his prey.
He settled in, looking for the target. He could see just a half an inch of camouflaged parka above the rock, probably the upper surface of the prone back. He settled on this target, centering it on the third dot.
Should I fire?
I may not quite have enough of him visible to drive into the blood-bearing inner organs. I might just wound him.
My zero might be way off.
But then: so what? I have a suppressor.
He will not know where I am shooting from.
He will have to move as I bring him under fire.
He won't know if I'm above him or below him.
He'll have to move, I can chase him across the ravine.
He'll run out of rocks. I'll have him.
He exhaled his breath, commanded his senses, felt the slow tick and twitch of his body as he made minute corrections, waited until the total rightness of it all fell across him.
The trigger broke, and with its odd, tiny sound, the rifle fired.
Bob lay quietly in the rocks. Above him a screen of snowy pines shielded him somewhat but left him with a good view of the direction he'd come. With the most discipline his body could invent, he scanned three zones: the first was the ridge, right where it came around the mountain, the next was a crop of rocks perhaps sixty meters above that, and the next was a notch in the mountain, perhaps two hundred meters up, that swam into and out of visibility as the cloud permitted. Solaratov would appear at one of those places as he came high around the mountain, with the idea of shooting downward.
Methodically he moved his eyes between them, the first, the second, the third, waiting.
Well, I did it, he tried to tell himself. I got him away from my wife. In a little while they'll be here. He'll come, I'll get my shot, it'll be over then.
But he did not feel particularly good about it all.
There was no sense of anything except unfinished business and that now, all these years later, it was his time.
I die today, came the message, insistent and powerful.
This is the day I die.
He'd finally run up against a man who was smarter, a better shot, had more guts. Couldn't be many in the world, but by God, this was one.
The snow was falling more heavily now. It pirouetted downward from the low gray sky, and as he looked back to the house, still barely visible, he could hardly see it. It looked like it would snow for hours. That was not good.
The longer it snowed, the longer it would take for help to arrive. He was on his own. He, and his ancient enemy.
Where is he?
It was making him nuts.
Where is-A tremendous pain came across his back, as though someone had stood over him and whacked him, hard, with a fireplace poker.
Bob curled in the pain and knew instantly that he'd been hit. But no shock poured through him and took him out of his brain as it had when he'd been hit before. Instead a powerful spasm of fury kicked through him, and he knew in a second that he wasn't hit seriously.
He drew his legs up and at that moment the odd BEOWWWWWW!
of a bullet singing off a rock exploded just to his right, an inch above his skull.
