He double-checked his weapon under the camo tarpaulin, ran his thumb up to the safety to see it was indeed swung all the way around to full-auto, then broke contact with the grip to crawl his fingers up the receiver to test the cocking handle, pulling it back toward the butt to find it loose, which signified the weapon was cocked fully with a round in the chamber. He slid his hand up higher on the receiver to the face of the Eotech holographic sight, a clever tactical enhancement that looked like a small TV set mounted in a smooth plastic streamline bolted tight on the receiver’s Picatinny rail. Activated-Ginger did that, pushing a button first for power-up, then pushing it a dozen more times to elevate the brightness-it beamed a holographic circle on its screen of glass, a powerful icon glowing red against the clear, so perfect for close-quarter battle because you didn’t even have to look for it, it was just there to your eye, and you put it on target and squeezed and sent a fleet of 5.56s off to do the job right and proper. Now he was ready and sure that what might happen to need his assistance in settling would be occurring soon enough, and he said a brief prayer to Jesus to grant him the favor of putting a mag into the Yank, to pay him back for the fooking cracked skull he took and the embarrassment of being the fella to let the team down.
That done, he screwed up his focus, his concentration, his war persona, and watched as poor naked Anto just stood there, his bollocks all loose, his shoulders red, waiting for whatever.
Surely soon the American would appear, coming on down the far hill, approaching for the exchange, and it would all-
What the-?
Jaysus, will you look at that?
Who’d have guessed? Not a man among them.
The earth moved.
It did, it did. Twenty yards behind naked Anto, a smallish knot of brush and grass quivered and gave and transmogrified itself as beneath it rose, like a prehistoric beast coming out of a millennium or more’s sleep, a shape that soon enough took on the damned image of a man in ghillie, black pistol in hand, face a green-black- brown silent killer’s mask. He rose to both legs and extended the pistol toward Anto, as if to shoot.
Ginger had a moment of panic: should he rise himself now and fire the killing burst? But before he could commit, it appeared that the enemy sniper was not about to fire. He too, it appeared, wanted a little chat.
Anto seemed to wait forever and almost put his arms down out of sheer fatigue, ready to throw them up again at any sign of the approach, but then he heard a voice from too close to be real but real indeed say, “All right, Potatohead, you stay frozen,” and felt himself jump in surprise.
What in God’s name?
He turned halfway and saw in his peripheral the man himself, or rather a man disguised as planet, all fronds and frills and floppy hat, as ghillied up to perfection as any sniper could be, a Sig pistol in his grip, the camo smock falling away. He wasn’t a mile away, he wasn’t a half, a quarter, a hundred yards, a hundred feet. He was right there, almost in spit’s distance.
“Move another inch, Irishman, you’re dead as shit.”
Anto froze. The fellow was there, unseen by Jimmy and Raymond and even close-in Ginger. He’d been there all along. He had to have gotten there ahead of them. He’d planted himself in the earth and outwaited the stillest, best men in the business!
Anto’s mind hurried then to another ramification; who’d been on the radio, who’d been guiding him in?
“Is it Ginger?” asked Raymond.
“No, no, get on the damned gun, man, put the bastard down. It’s him, it’s him, can’t you goddamn see how dif his camo is from ours? Do it, do it now.”
Raymond didn’t panic, professional that he was, but reacquainted the rifle butt with his shoulder, settled microscopically, tried to quell a heart rush, took a breath or so. Then he reshot the iSniper911 laser ranger to initiate the target acquisition sequence, committed to screen, and saw that it was 281 yards off, and the angle had risen to 16 degrees, still too little for a cosine correction, and the new shooting determination was still three down, but now without the.5 left adjustment, so he found stock-weld, acquired reticle, acquired new target-large man in grassy ghillie suit-tracked downward on the central vertical axis of the reticle to the same third hashmark but this time didn’t need to make the same.5 to left, let the rifle settle, let his breathing settle, and began to take slack out of the trigger.
“How much did you get, Anto?” asked Bob mildly.
“’Tis over two hundred thousand for the sniper’s pleasure,” said Anto with a merry, comic lilt to his voice. “Oh, sure yis be having some wicked pleasures on that swag. It’s yours, Sniper. Want me to bring her to ye, or will yis grab it yourself?” him thinking, now, prang the boyo, finish him with Mr..308, blow lungs and heart out, Raymond, don’t let your old sarge here down.
“Won’t that be fun?” said Bob.
“It’s good craic you’ll be having with that-”
The shot sounded from above and away and far out, not an eardrum-snapping whack, but more a soft report as if muted by distance.
Anto flinched and turned, thinking to hell with the position, and was surprised to see Swagger standing, unhit. He saw then why the radio was decreed instead of the mobile: it distorted voice and made recognition impossible. He’d been talking to another fellow while Swagger lay in his ghillie still as death in this valley.
There was another damned sniper.
Goddamn him!
“My boy just tagged yours,” Swagger said.
A second shot followed, Anto flinching.
“And now he’s done the spotter.”
Raymond felt the slack giving, he was on the cusp of the shot, his finger’s steady press against trigger, the crossed lines of the reticle steady upon the ghillie-suited man who held the pistol and
Lightning lightning lightning.
A storm suddenly blowing in, the sky full of jagged illumination.
The green glow of the countryside.
Over a hundred kills.
The taste of Guinness.
And that was all.
Nine hundred and thirty-four yards away, Chuck McKenzie watched as his first shot splashed the shooter hard in a jet of crimson at the left quadrant of what, before destruction, had been skull, and the ruined fellow went limp in supertime, giving it all up as he became instant meat, the upper half of his body falling hard at gravity’s insistence, but then Chuck was so quick into his throw and correction he lost his first target, knowing he’d killed it, and came across to the second. Number two had dumped the binocs and was tugging the rifle from his dead pal’s hands, driven even now to finish the mission, even though his face wore splatter everywhere, as did his shirtsleeve and hand. Brave guy: it never occurred to him to chuck the rifle and go to hands up, which might have saved his life, as Chuck wouldn’t shoot a surrendering man. But number two was all warrior and actually had the rifle half in play and was setting up, albeit in panic time, for his shot, when Chuck snuffed him with another head shot, even as he heard a spray of gunshots and automatic weapon fire from down in the valley.
Anto’s speed surprised even Bob and the speed was more efficient for the decisiveness driving it, but even if Bob had the shot, he let it go, because even before Anto was yelling, “Kill him, Ginger,” Ginger was rising from the dead. Bob was surprised Ginger was so close, though he knew him to be about from the noise the fellow’d made just before dawn as he put himself into the earth.
Still, it was long for a pistol shot, and Bob went to a knee to take up the two-hand supported and put two fast ones into the rising man close to fifty yards away, and missed once, seeing a puff flick off the earth next to Ginger, who, though shuddering upon the strike of the second round, evidently a low lung shot, still got his M4 up. He fired at Bob but Bob was not there, having rolled like a crazy man to the right. Ginger’s nine-round burst tore up a smoky stitch of dust and grassy fragments and cactus shrapnel in the space where Bob had been.
Ginger, bleeding badly, tracked the gun right through the glowworm incandescence of the Eotech sight and brought the gun right to bear on what of Bob he could see or sense, even while rising to his feet. A normal man would have yielded to collapse by this time, but Ginger was all bristly, insane beast, a charging boar, a crazed wildebeest, a here-comes-death buffalo, and would not check out without vengeance, and he willed himself to fire again.
Bob had by this time gone further to prone for the calming influence of the ground in support of his arms, though he was so deep in the loam, he could only see Ginger’s upper third. A fleet of 5.56s rocketed overhead, inches from ending it forever, but he didn’t flinch as most will do but instead fired twice again, the front sight bold and sharp as death in the notch of the rear, and was sure the bullets had gone home. But Ginger didn’t show any ill health and fired another burst, which tore up the ground in ragged spurts as it vectored toward Bob, seeking him.
And then Ginger was down.
Clearly Chuck had finished what Bob couldn’t, putting a.308 home from his perch on the hill, not a head shot but the heartbreaker, and the big Irishman slid sideways, face slack as a misbegotten moon, and toppled, though as he fell his finger tightened on his trigger and he emptied the 5.56s into the turf just before him, setting off spasms of geysering dust. Then it was quiet.
Except for the sound of Anto’s departing ATV.
Bob came around, saw the nude man at full throttle, bent as low as he could get, more than two hundred yards out, and he fired from prone, aiming high, dumping what remained of his own mag, but the distance was too far for a handgun, Anto was too deft in zigzagging the little bike, and when he achieved slide lock-back, Bob knew he hadn’t hit him.
He jumped up madly, gesturing to Chuck, pointing with one wild arm while he screamed-probably the sound didn’t reach Chuck-“Kill him, kill him!”
Chuck took his time setting up the shot, but as far as he was from Bob, he was even further from Anto, who was almost to the crest and had the bold man’s luck with him, for he veered just as Chuck fired, and Bob saw the bullet punch up a gout of shredded vegetation just as Anto disappeared.
Fuck, he thought. That bastard made it out alive.
It’s not over. I didn’t get him.
He turned, shedding himself finally of the heavy ghillie, dropped the spent clip and thrust in a new one, released the slide to jab forward with a
