Maybe he could even get a shot off.
But at what?
And then he saw that the slope dropped off intensely and, worse, the rocks had run out.
This is it, he thought.
This is as far as I go.
What did I get out of it?
Nothing.
His ear stung.
They've moved,' Sally said.
'Now they're behind the house. You can hear the shots are over there.'
'Are we going to be all right?' asked Nikki.
'Yes, baby,' Julie said, holding her daughter close.
The three were in the cellar of the house, and Sally had spent the past few minutes jamming old chairs, trunks and boxes against the door at the head of the steps, just in case someone came looking for them with bad intentions.
The cellar smelled of mold and faded material, and spring floods that had soaked everything some years back.
It was dirty and dark, only meager light coming through snow-covered windows.
There was one other door, to the outside, one of those slanted wood things that led down three steps to them.
Sally had piled up more impediments to that passageway, but there was no way of really locking the doors. They could only forestall things.
'I wish we had a gun,' said Nikki.
'I wish we did too,' said Sally.
'I wish Daddy was here,' said Nikki.
Bob had a rare moment of visual freedom, a long, clean look into the stunted snow-covered trees at the base of the mountain. But he could see nothing, no movement, no hint of disturbance.
Then a bullet sang off the rock an inch beyond his face, kicking a puff of granite spray into his eye. He fell back, stifling a yell, and felt the telltale numbness that indicated some kind of trauma. But only for a second, then it lit into raw, harsh but meaningless pain, and he winced, driving more pain into the eye.
Goddamn him!
Solaratov had seen just the faintest portion of head exposed and he was on it that fast, putting a bullet an inch shy of the target. An inch at six hundred-odd meters.
Could that son of a bitch shoot or what?
Swagger felt his eye puff, his lid flare, and he closed it, sensing the throb of pain. He touched the wounded sector of his face: blood, lots of it, from the stone spray, but nothing quite serious. He blinked, opened the eye, and saw hazily out of it. Not blind. Trapped but not blind, not yet.
The guy was so good.
No ranging shots, he got the range right every single time, had Bob pinned and eyeballed.
No goddamn ranging shots.
Solaratov had an odd gift, a perfect gift for estimating distance. It made the package complete. Some men had it, some didn't. Some could learn it with experience, some couldn't. It was in fact the weakest part of Swagger's own game, his ability to estimate range. It had cost him a few shots over the years because he lacked the natural inclination to read distances while possessing in spades all the shooter's other natural gifts.
Donny had a gift for it, Donny could look and tell you automatically. But Bob was so lame at it, he'd once spent a fortune on an old Barr & Stroud naval gunfire range finder, a complex, ancient optical instrument that with its many lenses and calibration gizmos could eventually work the farthest unknown distance into a recognizable quantity.
'Some day they'll make 'em real small,' he remembered telling Donny at one lost moment or other.
'Then you won't need a gofer like me,' Donny had said with a laugh, 'and I can sit the next war out.'
'Yes, you can,' Bob had said.
'One war is enough.'
An idea flirted with him. From where? From Donny?
Well, from somewhere over the long years. But it wasn't solid yet: he just felt it beyond the screen of his consciousness, unformed, like a little bit of as-yet-unrecognizable melody.
This guy is so good. How can he be so good?
Donny had the answer. Donny wanted to tell him.
Donny knew up in heaven or wherever he was, and Donny yearned somehow to tell him.
Tell me! he demanded.
