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 over interpret data. It was always to pick the worst possibility, assume that it was correct and counter react
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.
But if he turned in that direction and put his own glass upon it, then he'd clearly get the reflection and the bullet.
Therefore, he had to move to the north or south to get a deflection shot into them.
Slowly, he began to move.
'No, goddammit,' said Bob.
'No, what?'
'No, he ain't biting. Not at them two birds. Shit!'
He paused, considering.
'Should we pull back?'
'Don't you get it, goddammit? We ain't hunting him no more. He's hunting us!'
The information settled on Donny uncomfortably. He began to feel the ooze and trickle of sweat down his sides from his pits. He glanced about. The world, which had seemed so benign just a second ago, now seemed to seethe with menace. They were alone in a sea of grass.
The sniper, if Bob no longer believed him to be in Area 1, could therefore be anywhere, closing in on them even now.
No, not yet. Because if he read the fake sniper team moving too fast, he would not have had enough time to react and get out of there. He would still be an hour by low crawl away.
'Shit,' said Bob.
'Which way would he go?'
'Hmmmm,' bluffed Donny, with no real idea of an answer.
'If he figures them guys is fake, and he looks around, about the only place we could be to shoot at his ass would be here, on this little ridge.'
'Yeah?'
'Yeah, so to git a shot at our asses, how's he going to move? He going to try and flank us to the left or the right? What do you think?'
Donny had no idea. But then he did.
'If the treeline equals safety, then he'd go that way, wouldn't he? To his right. He'd put himself closer to it, not closer to Dodge City.'
'But maybe that's how he'd figure we'd think, so he'd figure it the other way?'
'Shit,' said Donny.
'No,' said Bob.
'No, you're right. Because he's on his belly, remember? This whole thing's gonna play out on bellies. And what he's looking at is an hour of crawling in the hot sun versus two hours. And being a half hour from the treeline is a hell of a lot better than being three hours from it. He'd have to go to the west, right?' He sounded as if he had to convince himself.
'It would take a lot of goddamn professional discipline,' he continued, arguing with himself.
'He'd have to make up his mind and cut free of his commitment to the only targets he's got. Man, he's got a set of nuts on him if he can make that decision.'
He seemed to fight the obvious for a bit. Then he said, 'Okay, Area One ain't it no more. Designate Area Two on your map, being the coordinates of a five hundred by five hundred grid square one thousand yards left. His left.
Make it north-northeast. Give me them coordinates.'
Donny struggled to get the map out, then struggled with the arithmetic. He worked it out, coming up with a new fire mission, hoping the dancing numbers his eyes were conjuring up were correct, scrawling them in the margins of the map. He had the sinking sensation of failing a math test he'd never studied for.
'Call it in. Call it in now, so we don't have to fuck with it later.'
'Yeah.'
Donny unleashed the aerial to vertical, then took the handset from its cradle, snapped on power, checking quickly to see that the PRC was still set on the right frequency.
'Foxtrot-Sandman-Six, this is Sierra-Bravo-Four, over.
