Work Done for Hire

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A friend called me this morning and asked whether I could go shooting, and I said no, I couldn’t. I made up something about work, but the fact is, I couldn’t.

I was a sniper in the desert, in this war that it seems no one can really stop. I didn’t volunteer for the job, not initially, but I wasn’t smart enough to miss the targets in Basic Training. And “sniper” sounded cool, so I signed up for the school when they offered it.

I count back on all my fingers and it’s been nine years. Sometimes it feels like yesterday, literally. I wake up in grainy grime and shit smell, the slimy cold of the damned plastic suit. Cold until the sun comes up and tries to kill you. That sounds too dramatic, but I’ll leave it. The sun bakes you and broils you and disorients you, and it makes you a target. They have rifles, too. Not so many snipers.

In sixteen months I killed maybe twenty people, sixteen confirmed. What kind of a prick keeps track? Besides, as often as not, you can’t tell. The recoil usually knocks you off the sight picture, and with the scope at maximum power, it takes a second or two to get back. Your spotter will say, “Good shot,” but what’s he going to say? You’re usually shooting at someone who’s peeking out of a window or from behind the edge of a wall, and if an ounce and a half of lead buzzes by his ear at the speed of sound, he’s not about to stand up and shout, “You missed!”

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