Sniper's Honor

CHAPTER 47

You talk, I’ll load.”

They were in a glade off the northern trail up to the cave, just north of the scree field. Swagger had before him ten seventy-year-old Sten magazines which he was busy loading with thirty seventy-year-old His Majesty’s 9mm ammunition. Mili’s sniper rifle lay to one side, as did ten No. 36 Mills bombs, pineapples full of TNT.

“How do you know it will work?” she asked.

“It should. It was in waterproof containment in a cave that by all indications was dry. No rust, no corrosion anywhere on the guns or on the container. No corrosion on the ammo. It should be okay.”

“Swagger, I’m scared.”

“To be expected. Get your mind off it. Make phone calls. Check your e-mail. Give me your latest. Do you have any long shots? You only scare yourself into ineffectiveness if your mind goes empty or numb. So just fill it with little shit, and you’ll be all right.”

Threading the cartridges through the lips — rather sharp, actually — so that they nested against the follower or the round against a spring pressure that grew only as the amount of rounds pushing it down grew, too, increasing the compression rate, was not fun. It put a hurt in the fingers and wrists. But it was also easy to fuck up, as in putting a round in backward or at the wrong angle, and he didn’t want to take a chance on that happening, so he pushed on.

“Okay, I’m done here. I’m giving you one Sten gun and three magazines. I want you to stay here. I will run the ambush. I will throw the grenades. I will do the killing. You stay here and shoot anything that doesn’t look like a Swagger, got that?”

“I got it,” she said. “Except I’m not doing it. I will fight and shoot and do what’s necessary.”

“Reilly, this ain’t your kind of work.”

“That premise is no longer operative. You’re fighting for your reasons. You’re in love with Mili, you old coot, don’t say you’re not, and it’s the best fight you ever had. Well, I’m fighting for mine, which is that no asshole comes along and says, ‘Sweetie, do us a favor and don’t write the story.’ I will write the story, if I have to be Mili Petrova to do it. Nobody tells me to go away like a good little girl. I was never a good little girl. Good little girls don’t become reporters. Besides, the story’s already on the budget.”