The Master Sniper by Stephen Hunter
It didn’t matter. Repp tracked him lazily—such an easy shot—holding the sight blade just a touch up, leading him, drawing the slack out of the trigger. A big, healthy specimen, unruly hair, out of uniform: was this the chap that had been hunting him these months? He wobbled when he ran, bad leg or something.
Repp felt the trigger strain against his finger.
He let the fat American live.
He did not like it. Too easy. He felt he could down this fat huffing fellow anytime. He owned him. The man still had 400 meters of rough forest climb ahead of him, and Repp knew he’d come like a buffalo, bulky and desperate, crashing noisily through the brush. At any moment in the process, Repp could have him.
But as the American perched at his mercy on the sight blade, it occurred to him that he’d been blind for hours. Suppose in that time another American had moved into the trees? It turned on their knowledge of the flaw in Vampir. But they had consistently turned out to know just a touch more than he expected them to. Thus: another man.
A theoretical enemy such as that could be anywhere down the slope, well within machine-pistol range, grenade range, waiting for him to fire. Once he fired, he was vulnerable. So he recommitted himself to patience. He had the fat one off on his left, coming laboriously up the hill. He could wait.
Now, as for another fellow. Where would he be? It seemed to him that if such a fellow in fact existed, then he and the fat one would certainly make arrangements between themselves, so as not to fall into each other’s fire. So if the big one was to his left, then wouldn’t this theoretical other chap be on the right? He knew he had four or five minutes before the big man got dangerously close.
He began methodically to search his right front.
* * *
What now? wondered Roger.
Guy must be gone. He would have plugged the captain for sure.
From where he was, he’d had a good view of Leets’s slow, lumbering run. He’d seen him go and turned back quickly but couldn’t see much, the dense trees fighting their way up the slope, stone outcroppings, thick brush.
Leets had been so positive the German would fire. But nothing. Roger scanned the abstractions before him. Sweat ran down his arms. A bug whined in his ears. Looking into a forest was like trying to count the stars. You’d go nuts pretty soon. The patterns seemed to whisper and dazzle and flicker before his eyes. Shapes lost their edges and melted into other shapes. Fantastic forms leapt out of Roger’s imagination and took substance in the woods. Stones poked him, filling him with restlessness.
Should he move or stay put? Leets hadn’t said. He’d said wait, wait, but he hadn’t said anything about if there was no shot. He probably ought to still wait. But Leets hadn’t said a thing. Repp was probably gone. What the hell would he be hanging around for? He was no dope. He was a tough, shrewd guy.
On the other hand, why would he have taken off when he held all the aces in the dark?
Roger didn’t have any idea what to do.
Leets had gotten well into the trees, deep into the gloom. He rested for a moment, crouching behind a trunk. The slope here was gentle, but he could see that ahead it reared up. The footing would be treacherous.
Squatting, he tried to peer through the trees. His vision seemed to end a few dozen feet up: just trees woven together, trees and slope, a few rocks.
He hoped Roger had the sense to stay put. Surely he’d see that the game hadn’t changed, that it was still up to Leets to draw fire.
Don’t blow it, Roger.
He’ll kill you.
Leets gathered his strength again. He wasn’t sure there’d be any left, but he did locate some somewhere. He began to move up the slope, tree to tree, rock to rock, dashing, duck-walking, slithering, making more noise than he ought to.
Roger looked around. A few shafts of sunlight cut through the overhanging canopy. He felt like he was in an old church or something, and light was slipping in the chinks in the roof. He still couldn’t see anything. He imagined Repp sitting in a café in Buenos Aires.
Meanwhile, here I sit, breaking a sweat.
If only I could see!
If only someone would tell me what to do!
Cautiously, he began to edge his way up.
The other American was perhaps 150 meters down-slope, rising from behind a swell in the ground, half obscured in shadow. But the movement had caught Repp’s experienced eye.
He felt no elation, merely lifted the rifle and replanted it on its bipod and drew it quickly to him.
The American was just a boy—even from this distance, Repp could make out the callow, unformed features, the face tawny with youth. He rose like a nervous young lizard, eyes flicking about, motions tentative, deeply frightened.
Repp knew the big man would be up the slope in seconds. He even thought he could hear him battering through the brush. Too bad they hadn’t climbed closer together, so that he could take them in the same arc of the bipod, not having to move it at all.
Repp pressed the blade of the front sight, on the young man’s chest. The boy bobbed down.
Damn!
Only seconds till the big one was in range.
Come on, boy, come on, damn you.
Should he move the gun for the big one?
Come on, boy. Come on!
Helpfully the boy appeared again, cupping his hands to shade his eyes, his face a stupid scowl of concentration. He rose right into the already planted blade of the sight, his chest seeming to disappear behind the blurred wedge of metal.
Repp fired.
A split second may have passed between the sound of the shot and Leets’s identification of it: he rose then, hauling the Thompson to his shoulder, and had an image of Roger—Roger hit—and fired.
Fire again, you idiot, he told himself.
He burned through the clip. The weapon pumped and he held the rounds into that sector of the forest his ears told him Repp’s shot had come from. He could see the burst kicking up the dust where it hit.
Gun empty, he dropped back fast to the forest floor, hands shaking, heart thumping, still hearing the gun’s roar, and fumbled through a magazine change. Dust or smoke—something heavy and seething—seemed to fill the air, drifting in clouds. But he could see nothing human in the confusion.
Leets knew he had to attack, press on under the cover of his own fire. He scrambled upward, pausing only to waste a five-round burst up the slope on stupid instinct, and twice he slipped in the loose ground cover, dried pine needles woven with sprigs of dead fern, but he stayed low and kept moving.
A burst of automatic fire broke through the limbs over his head, and he flattened as the bullets tore through, spraying him with chips and splinters. Again bringing his submachine gun up, he fired a short burst at the sound, then rolled daintily to the right, fast for a big man, as the German, firing also at sound and flash, sent a spurt of fire pecking through the dust. Leets thought he saw flash and threw the gun back to his shoulder but before he could fire it vanished.
Then seconds later, to the left and above, his eyes caught just the barest flicker of human motion behind a tangle of interfering pines, and he brought the gun to bear, but it too vanished and he found himself staring over his barrel at nothing but space and green light and dust in the air.
But he’d seen him. At last, he’d seen the sniper.
Repp changed magazines quickly. He was breathing hard and had fallen in his dash. Blood ran down the side of his face; one of the machine-pistol slugs had fragmented on a stone near him and something—a tiny piece of lead, a pebble, a stone chip—had stung him badly above the eye.
Now he knew safety lay in distance. The machine pistol had an effective range of 100 meters, his STG 400. It would be ridiculous to blaze away at close range like a gangster. Too many things could happen, too many twists of luck, freaks of chance, a bullet careening off a rock. Repp thought for just a second of the Jewish toy he’d played with back at Anlage Elf: you set it spinning and when finally it stopped a certain let
He’d get higher and take the man from afar.
The sniper climbed.
Leets too knew the importance of distance. He pushed his way through the trees, forcing himself on. In close he had a chance. He knew the Vampire outfit had to be heavy and Repp would have no easy time of it going uphill fast. He’d stay as close as he could to the sniper, hoping for a clear shot. If he hung back, he knew Repp would execute him at leisure.
The incline had steepened considerably. He drove himself forward, pawing at the trees with his free hand. Loose glass clattered in his stomach and he could feel the sweat washing off him in torrents. Dust seemed to have been pasted over his lips and his leg hurt a lot. Several times he dropped to peer up under the canopy of the forest, hoping to see the sniper, but nothing moved before him except the undulating green of the trees.
* * *
Vampir was impossibly heavy. If he’d had the time, Repp would have peeled the thing off his back and flung it away. But it would take minutes to get the scope unhitched from the rifle, minutes he didn’t have.
He paused in his climb, looked back.
Nothing.
Where was the man?
Who’d have thought he could come on like that? Must be an athlete to press ahead like that.
Repp looked up. It was quite steep here. He wished he had some water. He was breathing hard and the straps pinched the feeling out of the upper part of his body.
He and this other fellow, alone on a mountain in Switzerland.
It occurred to him for the first time that he might die.
Goddamn it, goddamn it, why hadn’t he ditched Vampir? To hell with Vampir. To hell with them all, the Reichsführer, the Führer himself, the little Jew babies, all the Jews he’d killed, all the Russians, the Americans, the English, the Poles. To hell with them all. He pushed himself on, breathing hard.
A stone outcrop loomed ahead. Leets paused as he came to it. It looked dangerous. He peeped over it, upward. Nothing. Go on, go on.
He was almost over, slithering, straining his right leg to purchase another few inches.
Here I am, a fat man perched on a rock in a neutral country, so scared I can hardly see.
He had the inches and then he didn’t; for the leg, pushed to its limit, finally went, as Leets all along knew it must. One of the last pieces of German steel that neither doctors nor leakage had been able to dislodge ticked a nerve. The fat man fell, as pain spasmed through him. He thought of it as blue, like electricity, and he corkscrewed out of balance, biting the scream, but then he felt himself clawing at the air as he tumbled backward.
He twisted as he fell and hit on his shoulder, mind filling with a spray of light and confusion. His mouth tasted dust. He rolled frantically, groping for his weapon, which was somewhere else, flung far in the panic of his fall.
He saw it and he saw Repp.
The sniper was 200 meters up, calm as a statue.
He’d never make the gun.
Leets pulled his feet under him, to dive for the Thompson.
Repp shot him and then had no curiosity. He didn’t care about the American. He knew he was dead and that made him uninteresting.
He set the rifle down, peeled the pack off his back.
His shoulder ached like hell, but seemed to sing in the freedom of release. He was surprised to notice that he was shaking. He wanted to laugh or cry. It had seemed seconds between first shot and last; clearly it had been minutes.
It had been extremely close. Big fellow, coming on like a bull. You and I, we spun the draydel, friend. I won. You lost. But so close, so close. That bullet that spattered on the rock near his head, what, an inch or so away? He shivered at the thought. He touched the wound. The blood had dried into a scab. He rubbed it gently.
He wished he had a cigarette, but he didn’t so that was that.
The chocolate.
The driver had given him a piece of chocolate.
Suddenly his whole survival seemed a question of finding it. His fingers prowled through pouches and pockets and at last closed on something small and hard. He removed it: the green foil blinked in the sun. Funny, you could go through all kinds of things, running, climbing, shooting, and here would be a perfect little square of green foil, oblivious, unaffected. He unwrapped it.
Delicious.
Repp at once began to feel better. He had settled down and was again under control. He did not feel good that Nibelungen had failed but some things simply weren’t to be. He hadn’t failed; his skills hadn’t fumbled at a crucial moment.
And pleasures were available: he’d been magnificent in the fight, considering how hard he’d pressed to make the shooting position, the long sleepless night that followed. For a short action, it had been enormously intense.
Repp noticed for the first time where he was. Around him, the Alps rose in tribute to him. Solemn, awesome, like old men, their faces aged with snow, they seemed especially grave in their silence. Far below, the valley looked soft and green.
He realized suddenly he had a future to face. It frightened him a little. And yet he had a Swiss passport, he had money, he had Vampir. There were things one could do with all three.
Smiling, Repp stood. His last duty was now to return. He pulled the pack again onto his back. It did not hurt nearly so much now. Thank God for Hans the Kike and his last ten kilos. He swung the rifle over his shoulder.
He pushed on for several minutes through the forest, not unaware of the beauty and serenity around him. After a time he came out of the trees into a high Alpine meadow, several dozen acres of grassland. The grass rolled shadowless in the sun.
Above, clouds lapped and burled against diamond blue, hard and pure. The sun was a cleansing flare. A cool wind pressed against his face.
Repp walked across the meadow. He took off his scrunched feldgrau cap and rubbed a sleeve absently across his forehead, where it felt a prickle of heat.
He walked on, coming at last to the end of the meadow. Here the grass bulked up into a ridge before yielding again to the trees. The ridge stood like a low wall before him, unruly with thistle and bracken and even a few yellow wild flowers.
He turned back to the field. It was empty and clean. It was so clean. It had been scoured clean and pure. It looked wonderful to him. A vision of paradise. Its grass stirred in the breeze.
This is where the war ends for me, he thought.
He knew he had a few more kilometers of virgin pine; then he’d be up top for a long, flat walk; then finally, that last plunge through the gloomy newer trees.
It was only a matter of hours.
Repp turned back to his route and started to trudge up the ridge. More yellow buds—dozens, hundreds—opened their faces to him. He paused again, dazzled. They seemed to pick the light out of the air and throw it back at him in a burst of burning energy. The day stalled, calm and private. Each mote of dust, each fleck of pollen, each particle of life seemed to freeze in the bright air. The sky screamed blue, its mounting cumulus fat and oily white. Repp felt giddy in the beauty of it. He seemed to hear a musical chord, lustrous, rich, held, held, ever so long.
Strange energies had been released; they bobbed and sprang and coiled about him, invisible. He felt transfigured. He felt connected with the order of the cosmos. He turned to the sun which lay above the ridge and from its pulsing glare he sought confirmation, and when two figures rose above him, on the crest line, drenched in light, he took it at first for the benediction he’d demanded.
He could not see them clearly.
He blocked the sun with one hand.
The big one looked at him gravely and the boy had no expression on his pretty face at all. Their machine pistols were level.
Repp opened his mouth to speak, but the big one cut him off.
“Herr Repp,” he explained in a mild voice, “du hast das Ziel nicht getroffen,” using the familiar du form as though a
Repp saw that he was in the pit at last.
They shot him down.
* * *
Roger edged down the ridge, changing magazines as he went. The German lay face up, eyes black. He’d been opened up badly in the crossfire. Blood everywhere. He was an anatomy lesson. Still, Roger crouched and touched the muzzle of his tommy gun gently as a kiss against the skull and jackhammered a five-round burst into it, blowing it apart.
“That’s enough, for Christ’s sake,” Leets called from the ridge.
Roger rose, spattered with blood and tissue.
Leets came tiredly down the slope and over to the body.
“Congratulations,” said Roger. “You get both ears and the tail.”
Leets bent and heaved the body to its belly. He pried the rifle off the shoulder, working the sling down the arm, at the same time being careful not to break the cord to the power pack.
“Here it is,” he said.
“Bravo,” said Roger.
Leets pulled out the receiver lockpin and the trigger housing pin. Taking the butt off and holding the action open, he held the barrel up to the sun and looked through it.
“See any naked girls?” Roger asked.
“All I see is dirt. It’s a mess. All those rounds he ran through it. All that pure, greasy lead. Each one left its residue. The grooves jammed. It’s smooth as the inside of a shot glass in there.”
“Yeah, well, he nearly threaded my needle.”
“Must have been your imagination,” Leets said. “At the end the rounds were veering off crazily as they came out the muzzle. No, the Vampire rifle was useless in the end. It amounted to nothing. A man with a flintlock would have had a better chance this morning.”
Roger was silent.
But something still nagged Leets. “One thing I can’t figure out. Why didn’t Vollmerhausen tell him? They were so good at the small stuff. The details. Why didn’t Vollmerhausen tell him?”
Roger knitted his features into what he imagined was an expression of puzzlement the equal of Leets’s. But he really didn’t give a damn and a more rewarding thought presently occurred to him.