explained.
“All right, Swagger, here’s what we’ve been able to turn up on the guy. T. Solaratov, according to an Israeli team that went after the fucker and almost nailed him when he was instructing Fatah in sniper techniques in the camps of the Bekka Valley in the mid-seventies—our best source of information on him, I might add, and a damned shame for all of us that as close as they got, they weren’t able, quite, to get their man. When he was eighteen, in the Soviet Naval Marines, his shooting abilities were first discovered and cultivated. In the years 1954 to 1959, he absolutely ruled the Eastern Blocshooting matches. He was an extraordinary target marksman. We believe he got his first kills, however, in Hungary, in 1956; both Nicholas Humml and Pavel Upranye, Hungarian nationalists arguing for further resistance to the Soviet troops, were dispatched from long distance by Moisen-Nagant bullets at rallies. No trace was ever found of their killer.
“By 1960—after certain exploits in the Congo—he had obtained a commission and been selected out of the Soviet Naval Marines for an even higher elite, the Spetsnaz, the Soviet special forces. He more or less retired from competitive target shooting in 1962. Then, he disappeared, except for the occasional sightings and some other rumored guest appearances.
“And in 1972, when a gunnery sergeant named Bob Lee Swagger bounced Number Three Battalion of the Fifth People’s Shock Infantry in the An Loc Valley, killing thirty-six men over a heroic two-day encounter and thus saving the lives of twelve Green Berets and a hundred indig troops on an eavesdropping mission up near the Cambo border, the NVC freak and send to Moscow for a pro. So Comrade Solaratov arrives. He’s searching for one guy. You. It takes him a week to infiltrate in, but he can’t get closer than fourteen hundred yards. He studies you, living and pissing and shitting in that little hole, for a week. Then when everything’s perfect, he takes the shot you took today. Oh, but fourteen hundred yards is a long way.”
“He didn’t get the drop right,” said Bob.
“That’s right. So he takes you low, in the hip. But that gives him the range. And when Donny comes over, he hits it. Center chest. Then he’s history. Solaratov’s a big hero! He gets the fifty-thousand-piaster reward on your head, and two days later he’s in Moscow, having strawberry blintz and getting laid.”
Bob looked at the shooter’s face on the televisionscreen. Yeah he’d heard the rumors. Guys came back said a white guy had nailed him.
The colonel continued.
“We have him next in Angola in the seventies, we’ve got him in Nicaragua instructing Sandinista shooters, we’ve got him in and out of the Middle East, as I told you, where the Israelis laid on a napalm strike just for him, and missed him by less than an hour. He’s very big in the Middle East. Does a lot of work for some nasty boys over there. We’ve got him in Afghanistan for a long long time. He ran a unit of Spetsnaz snipers there, they dropped their targets in the hundreds. Make you and Donny look like Sunday school teachers.”
Bob’s hand went to his hip, to quell a little flare of pain down there.
Nick called a guy he knew in DEA who had a brother who worked for Defense Mapping in Washington but who had at one time worked for a certain outfit quartered in Langley, Virginia. It was a complicated exchange, involving a lot of billing and cooing, and finally begging on Nick’s part, but finally the brother said that, yes, he knew some people in the outfit still and he could make a certain, highly unofficial call to an old buddy and ask Nick’s one question. He would only ask the one. He would ask no others and he would deny till the day he died that he ever knew or heard of a Nick Memphis. He would call Nick back … well, he’d call Nick back when he was good and ready to.
“Why would a Russian be back in this country hunting somebody?” Bob
“All right, Swagger, here’s what we’ve been able to turn up on the guy. T. Solaratov, according to an Israeli team that went after the fucker and almost nailed him when he was instructing Fatah in sniper techniques in the camps of the Bekka Valley in the mid-seventies—our best source of information on him, I might add, and a damned shame for all of us that as close as they got, they weren’t able, quite, to get their man. When he was eighteen, in the Soviet Naval Marines, his shooting abilities were first discovered and cultivated. In the years 1954 to 1959, he absolutely ruled the Eastern Blocshooting matches. He was an extraordinary target marksman. We believe he got his first kills, however, in Hungary, in 1956; both Nicholas Humml and Pavel Upranye, Hungarian nationalists arguing for further resistance to the Soviet troops, were dispatched from long distance by Moisen-Nagant bullets at rallies. No trace was ever found of their killer.
“By 1960—after certain exploits in the Congo—he had obtained a commission and been selected out of the Soviet Naval Marines for an even higher elite, the Spetsnaz, the Soviet special forces. He more or less retired from competitive target shooting in 1962. Then, he disappeared, except for the occasional sightings and some other rumored guest appearances.
“And in 1972, when a gunnery sergeant named Bob Lee Swagger bounced Number Three Battalion of the Fifth People’s Shock Infantry in the An Loc Valley, killing thirty-six men over a heroic two-day encounter and thus saving the lives of twelve Green Berets and a hundred indig troops on an eavesdropping mission up near the Cambo border, the NVC freak and send to Moscow for a pro. So Comrade Solaratov arrives. He’s searching for one guy. You. It takes him a week to infiltrate in, but he can’t get closer than fourteen hundred yards. He studies you, living and pissing and shitting in that little hole, for a week. Then when everything’s perfect, he takes the shot you took today. Oh, but fourteen hundred yards is a long way.”
“He didn’t get the drop right,” said Bob.
“That’s right. So he takes you low, in the hip. But that gives him the range. And when Donny comes over, he hits it. Center chest. Then he’s history. Solaratov’s a big hero! He gets the fifty-thousand-piaster reward on your head, and two days later he’s in Moscow, having strawberry blintz and getting laid.”
Bob looked at the shooter’s face on the televisionscreen. Yeah he’d heard the rumors. Guys came back said a white guy had nailed him.
The colonel continued.
“We have him next in Angola in the seventies, we’ve got him in Nicaragua instructing Sandinista shooters, we’ve got him in and out of the Middle East, as I told you, where the Israelis laid on a napalm strike just for him, and missed him by less than an hour. He’s very big in the Middle East. Does a lot of work for some nasty boys over there. We’ve got him in Afghanistan for a long long time. He ran a unit of Spetsnaz snipers there, they dropped their targets in the hundreds. Make you and Donny look like Sunday school teachers.”
Bob’s hand went to his hip, to quell a little flare of pain down there.
Nick called a guy he knew in DEA who had a brother who worked for Defense Mapping in Washington but who had at one time worked for a certain outfit quartered in Langley, Virginia. It was a complicated exchange, involving a lot of billing and cooing, and finally begging on Nick’s part, but finally the brother said that, yes, he knew some people in the outfit still and he could make a certain, highly unofficial call to an old buddy and ask Nick’s one question. He would only ask the one. He would ask no others and he would deny till the day he died that he ever knew or heard of a Nick Memphis. He would call Nick back … well, he’d call Nick back when he was good and ready to.
“Why would a Russian be back in this country hunting somebody?” Bob
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