''Sierra-Bravo-Four, this is Foxtrot-Sandman-Six, send your immediate, over.'
'Ah, Foxtrot, we're going to go from Area One to new target, designated Area Two, over.'
'Sierra, what the hell, say again, over.'
'Ah, Foxtrot, I say again, we think our bird has flown to another pea patch, which we are designating Area Two, over.'
'Sierra, you have new coordinates, all after? Over.'
'Correct, Foxtrot. New coordinates Bravo-November-two-two-three-two-two-seven at zero-one-three-five- Zulu-July-eight-five.
Break over.'
'Wilco, Romeo. I mark it,' and Foxtrot read the numbers back to him.
'Roger, Foxtrot, on our fire mission request. Out.'
'Copy here, and out, Sierra,' said the radio.
Donny clicked it off.
'Good,' said Bob, who'd been diddling with a compass.
'I make a route about five hundred yards over there to a small bump. That's where we'll go. We should be on his flank then. Assuming he goes the way I figure he's going.'
'Got you.'
'Get your weapon.'
Donny grabbed his rifle, which was not an M14 or even an M16 or a grease gun. Instead, because of the short order in which the job was planned, it was the only scoped rifle that could be gotten quickly, an old fat-barreled M70 Winchester target rifle, with a rattly old Unerti Scope, in .30-06, left in the Da Nang armory since the mid- sixties.
'Let's go,' Bob said.
CHAPTER twenty-two.
Only bright blue sky above, and swaying stalks of the grass. The Russian crawled by dead reckoning, trusting skills it had taken him years to develop. He moved steadily, the rifle pulling ever so gently on his back. It was 0730 according to the Cosmos watch on his wrist. He wasn't thirsty, he wasn't angry, he wasn't scared. The only thing in his mind was this thing, right now, here. Get to elevation five hundred yards to the right. Look to the left for targets that in turn will be looking for targets to their front. Two of them: two men like himself, men used to living on their bellies, men who could crawl, who could wait through shit and piss and thirst and hunger and cold and wet. Snipers. Kill the snipers.
He came after a time to a small knoll. He had been counting as he moved: two thousand strokes. That is, two thousand half-yard pulls across the grass. His head hurt, his hands hurt, his belly hurt. He didn't notice, he didn't care. Two thousand strokes meant one thousand yards.
He was there.
He shimmied up the knoll, really more of a knob, not four feet high. He set himself up, very carefully, flat on the crest, well shielded in a tuft of grass. He checked the sun, saw that it was no longer directly in front of him and would not bounce off his lens. He brought the Dragunov up, slipped it through the grass close to his shoulder and his hand, a smooth second's easy capture and grasp. Then he opened his binocular case and pulled out a pair of excellent West German 25X's. He eased himself behind their eyepieces and began to examine a world twenty-five times as large as the one he left behind.
The day was bright and, owing to the peculiarity of the vegetation in the defoliated zone and the oddities in the rise and fall of the land, he saw nothing but an ocean of yellow elephant grass, some high, some low and threadbare, marked here and there by a rill of earth. He felt as if he were alone on a raft in the Pacific: endless undulation and ripple, endless dapple of shadow, endless subtle play of color, endless, endless.
He hunted methodically, never leaping ahead, never listening to hunches or obeying impulses. His instinct and brain told him the Marines would be five hundred yards ahead of him, on an oblique. They would seek elevation, their rifle barrels would be hard and flat and perfect against the vertical organization of the world. He found the low ridge where by all rights they should have been sited, and began to explore it slowly. The 25X lenses resolved the world beautifully, he could see every twig, every buried stone, every stunted tree, every stump that had survived the chemical agent all those years ago, every small hill. Everything except Marines.
He put the glasses down. A little flicker of panic licked through him.
Not there. They are not there. Where are they, then? Why aren't they there?
He considered falling back, trying another day. It was becoming an uncontrollable situation.
No, he told himself. No, just stay still, stay patient.
They think you are over there, and you are over here.
After a bit their curiosity will get the best of them. They are Americans: hardy, active people with active minds, attracted to sensations, actions, that sort of thing. They haven't the long-term commitment to a cause.
He will move, he thought. He was looking for me, I was not there, he will move.
Blackness.
Somewhere in his peripheral, a flash of black.
Solaratov did not turn to stare. No, he kept his eyes where they were, fighting the temptation to crank them around and refocus. Let his unconscious mind, far more effective in these matters, scan for them.
Blackness again.
