The Master Sniper

30

Leets finally stopped being insane near dawn. He’d really gone nuts there for a while, yelling up at the mountain after Repp shot Tony. Leets even fired off a magazine, spraying tracers hopelessly up to disappear into the dark bank of the hillside. Roger had hit Leets with his shoulder behind both knees, and Leets screamed at the blow and went down; then Roger pinned him flat in the arch of the open gate and, using every fiber of strength he had, dragged him back into the protection of the wall.

“Jesus,” Roger yelled in outrage, “tryin’ to get yourself killed!”

Leets looked at him sullenly, but Roger saw a mad glint, the beam of secret insane conviction spark in his irises, werewolflike, and when Leets twisted savagely for the gun, Rog was ready and really hit him hard in the neck with his right forearm, his tennis arm, big as an oak limb, stunning him.

“Out there it’s death,” he bellowed, deeply offended.

Then Leets had insisted on recovering the body.

“We can’t leave him out there. We can’t leave him out there.”

“Forget it,” Roger said. “He doesn’t care. I don’t care. Those children don’t care. Repp doesn’t care. Listen, you need a vacation or something. Don’t you see? You won!”

No, Leets didn’t see. He looked across the courtyard to Outhwaithe. A hundred streams of blood ran out of him, across the stones of the yard, catching in cracks and hollows. His head and face were smashed, an eye blown out, entrails erupting with gas, spilling out. Repp, in uncharacteristic rage, had fired a whole magazine into him. Then he’d turned his weapon on inanimate things and in a spooky display of the power of Vampir he’d shredded the door through which some few of the children had disappeared, then methodically snapped out windows, sent a burst of automatic across a plaster saint in a niche in the church, and finally, in a moment of inspired symbolism, shot the crosses off the two domed steeples. A real screwball, thought Roger.

Now, hours later, a chilly edge of dawn had begun to show to the east. Leets had been still, resigned finally, Roger figured. He himself was quite pleased with his coolness under fire. His friend Ernest Hemingway would have been impressed. He’d even saved the captain’s life. You saved your CO, you got a medal or something, didn’t you? What’s a captain worth? A Silver Star? At least a Bronze Star. For sure a Bronze.

Roger was wondering which medal he’d get — which to ask for, actually — when Leets said, quite calmly, “Okay, Rog. Let’s take him.”

Repp would have to train himself to live with failure. It was another test of will, of commitment; and the way to win it was to close out, ruthlessly, the past. Put it all behind. Speculation as to how and why he had failed were clearly counterproductive.

He explained all this to himself in the dark sometime in the long hours of the night after the shooting. Still, he was bitter: it had been so close.

Repp had killed one, he knew. Now the question was, How many remained? And would they come after him? And other questions, nearly as intriguing. Who were they? Should he flee now?

He’d already rejected the last. His one advantage right now lay in Vampir. It had run out, but they didn’t know that. They only knew he could hit targets in the dark and they couldn’t. It would be foolish to surrender that advantage by racing off into the dark, up a steep incline, through rough forest with which he was unfamiliar. A misstep could be disastrous, even fatal.

They wouldn’t come, of course, in the dark. They’d come in the light, at dawn, when they could see him. They’d come when the odds were better.

If they came.

Would they? That was the real question. They’d won, after all, they’d stopped him, they’d saved the Jewish swineboy and the money and perhaps even the Jews, if there were any left. Sensible men, professionals, would most certainly not come. They’d be pleased in their victory and sit back against unnecessary risks. In their position, he’d make the same decision. Go up a strange mountain after a concealed marksman with one of the most sophisticated weapons in the world? Foolish. Ridiculous. Insane. Impractical.

And that’s when he knew they’d come.

Repp felt himself smile in the dark. He felt happy. He’d reached the last step in his long stalk through the mind of his enemies; and he’d realized just how much now, when it was all over, all finished, when as a species the SS man was about to disappear from the earth, he realized how much he wanted to kill the American.

Roger blinked twice. His mouth felt parched dry.

“Now just a sec,” he said.

“We’ll never have a better chance. We can do it. I guarantee it.”

“Money back?” was all Roger could think to say.

“Money back.” Leets was dead serious.

“H-h-h-h-he’s long gone.” Damn the stutter.

“No. Not Repp. In the night he thinks he’s king.”

“I’m no hero,” Roger confessed. He felt a tremor flap through him.

“Who is?” Leets wanted to know. “Listen close, okay?”

Roger was silent.

“He can see in the dark, right?”

“Man, it’s daytime out there for him.”

“No. Wrong. Eichmann said they thought they were trying to work out a way to make this Vampire gadget lighter. So Repp could carry it.”

“Yeah.”

“He said it was some kind of solar-assist unit. The thing would take some of its power from the sun.”

“Yeah.”

“You see any sun around here?”

“No.”

“It’s run-down. It’s out of juice. It’s empty. He’s blind.”

Oh, Christ, thought Roger. “You want us to go out there and—”

“No.” Leets was very close, though Rog could not see him. But he could feel the heat. “I want you to go out there.”

Repp was blind now. These were rough hours; lesser men, alone in the night and silence, might have yielded to the temptations of flight.

He was thinking, marvelously alive, taking sustenance from the intricacies of the problem that now faced him.

The chief dilemma was Vampir itself. Now that it was dead, it was forty kilos of uselessness. In a fire fight, things happened fast. You needed to be able to move and shoot in fractions of seconds. Should he remove the device?

On the other hand, it was unique. It might be worth millions to the proper parties — perhaps even the Americans. It also might make a certain kind of future more feasible than others.

A running gunfight, if such a thing were to occur in the next few hours, might push him all over the face of this mountain. If he dismounted Vampir and hid it, he might never find it again, or he might be hit and unable to get back to it.

The decision then came down to his confidence.

He decided for Vampir.

“No, Roger,” the captain repeated. “You. You’re going out there.”

“I, uh—”

“Here’s how I’ve got it doped out. He doesn’t know how many we are. But mainly he doesn’t know we know Vampire’s out of juice. So he’s got to figure that if we come, we come at first light. So this is how I figure it. A two-step operation. Step one: Rog goes fast and hard for the mountain. You’ve got nearly an hour till light. Work your way up, keeping out of gullies, moving quietly. Nothing fancy. Just go up. His range at Anlage Elf was four hundred meters. So to get in range with your Thompson you’ve got to get at least two hundred, two hundred fifty meters up the slope. You got it?”

Roger couldn’t think of a thing to say.

“Step two: at seven-thirty A.M. on the fucking dot, I’m coming up the stairs. Wide open, flat out.”

Roger, for one second, stopped thinking about himself.

“You’re dead,” he said. “You’re flat cold dead. He’ll drill you after the first step.”

“Then you kill him, Rog. You’re close enough so when that subsonic round goes off you can get a fix on it. He doesn’t know you’re there. Now the key point in all this is wait. Wait! As long as you’re still, you’re fine. You start moving around and he’ll take you. It’s how these guys work, patience. After he fires, there’ll be at least half an hour, maybe an hour. It’ll be rough. But just wait him out. He’ll get up, Roger. You may be surprised at how close he is. He’ll probably be wearing one of those camouflage suits, spotted brown and green. Now, aim low, let the rise of the gun carry the rounds into him. Five-, six-round bursts, don’t risk a jam. Even when he’s down, keep shooting. When you use up that first magazine, put another in. Shoot him some more. Don’t fuck around. Try and get some slugs into the brains. Really blow them all over the place.”

Roger made a small noise.

Leets had taken the boy’s weapon and was checking it over. “You’ve fired a Thompson, I suppose? Okay, that’s a thirty-round mag in there. I’ve set it on full auto, but no round in the chamber. Now this is the M-one, the Army model. The bolt’s on the side, not on the top like the ones you see in the gangster movies. Just draw it back, it locks; you don’t have to let it go forward again, it fires off the open bolt.”

He handed the weapon back.

“Remember, wait him out. That’s the most important thing. And that shot of his, it won’t sound like a shot. It won’t be as loud, like a thud or something. But you’ll hear it. Then wait, goddamn it, how many times do I have to say this? Wait! Wait all day, if you’ve got to, okay?”

Roger stared at him, openmouthed.

“Your move, Rog. Match point coming up.”

He wants me to go out there? Roger thought in horror. The distance from the corner of the wall to the mountain seemed immense.

“Remember, Rog. It all starts happening at seven-thirty.”

Leets clapped the boy on his shoulder and whispered into his ear, “Now go!” and sent him on his way.

The light was growing. He could see the convent seem to solidify magically before and below him out of gray blur. Quiet down there, a body in the courtyard, otherwise empty.

Repp pressed the magazine release catch and a half-empty magazine slid out. He reached into his pouch, got out a full one, and eased it into the magazine housing.

He cocked the rifle and, leaning over it, peered down the slope through the trees. The light was rising now, increasing steadily; and birds were beginning to sing. Repp could smell the forest now, cool and moist.

The night was ending.

If there was a man, he would come soon.

Repp waited with great, calm patience.

Leets knew it was nearly his turn.

He crouched in the shadow of the wall of the convent, breathing uneasily, trying to conjure up new reasons for not going. It was quite light by now and the second hand of his Bulova persisted in its sweep, pulling the two larger hands along with it. Roger had made it but Leets couldn’t think about Roger. He was thinking about the long one hundred yards he had to cross before he reached the cover of the trees. A fast man could make it in twelve seconds. Leets was not fast. He’d be out there at least fifteen. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi … out there forever, fifteen Mississippis, which was nearly forever. He figured he’d catch it about the sixth or seventh Mississippi.

He’d peeled off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves, but he was still hot. He’d checked the laces and straps of his boots — tight — and tossed aside his cap and taken the bars off his collar. There wasn’t much else to do.

He checked his watch again. The seconds seemed to drain away. They seemed to fall off the Bulova and rattle to the grass. He tried to feel good about what would probably happen next. Instead he felt puke in the bottom of his throat. His breathing came hard and his legs were cold and stiff and his mouth was dry.

He glanced about and saw the day opening pleasantly, a pale sun beginning to show over the mountain, a pure sky. A few fleecy clouds unraveled overhead. He knew he could catalog natural phenomena until the year 1957 if he didn’t watch himself. Goddamn it, he was thirsty.

He looked at the Bulova again and it gave him the bad news: almost time to go. Seconds to go.

He eased his way up to a crouch, checking for the thousandth time the tommy gun: magazine locked, full auto, safety off, bolt back. The forest was a long way off.

Don’t blow it, Roger, goddamn you, he thought.

And he thought of Susan once again. “Everything you touch turns to death,” she’d said. Susan. Susan, I didn’t mean to hurt you. I didn’t mean it. He did not hate her. He wished she were here and he could talk to her.

And he thought of Repp, behind his rifle in the trees.

The Bulova said it was time and Leets ran.

Repp watched the American break from the wall. He’d picked him up minutes ago — the fool kept peering out, then withdrawing. He couldn’t make his mind up, or perhaps he was enchanted with the view.

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 letter turned up. Nothing could change the letter that showed. Nothing. That was the purest luck. He wanted no part of it.

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 addressing an old and dear friend, “you missed.”

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.

“Hey!” he said in sudden glee. “Uh, Captain. Sir?”

“Yeah?”

“Hey, uh, I did okay, huh?”

“You did swell. You were a hero.” But he had other heroes in his mind at that second, dead ones. Shmuel the Jew and Tony Outhwaithe, Oxonian. Here was a moment they might have enjoyed. No, not really. Shmuel hated the violence; no joy in this for him. And Tony. Who ever knew about Tony? Susan? No, not Susan either. Susan would see only two beasts with the blood of a third all over them.

“Well, now,” said Roger, grinning, “you think I’ll get a medal?” He was supremely confident. “I mean it was kind of brave what I did, wasn’t it? It would be for my folks mainly.”

Leets said he’d think it over.