ТАКТИКА СНАЙПЕРОВ "КУКУШЕК" 1944-ГО ГОДА СТАЛА СПАСЕНИЕМ ДЛЯ РАЗВЕДКИ В КАНДАГАРЕ

The morning in Kandahar smelled of dust and gunpowder. It was the third time in a few days—a bullet entered Mamedov's throat, and I could have sworn it hadn't even touched the garden. Not a cut branch, not a fluttering leaf. The soldier simply walked, adjusting his belt, and then sank into the ditch as if bones had been removed. I lay behind the clay wall and counted. I'm better at counting than shooting. Mamedov sank before the pop reached me—dry, short; a split second between the fall and the sound. The sound lagged behind the bullet. So, it was close. Three hundred meters, no more. And three hundred meters in this greenery is twenty trees, so densely packed with foliage that the sun barely penetrated. Dew still clung to the leaves. Late September, early morning, the weak, low sun lay flat on the gardens, stretching out long shadows. A windless calm. Complete, deafening, when the air stagnates like water in an old well. Ideal weather for someone hiding. And the worst weather for someone searching. "Nobody move," I said into the air in a low voice. Five of my men froze along the ditch. Yusup, on the left flank, huddled in a pomegranate bush, only his dark hand visible. A guide. Twenty years old, broken Russian, eyes that read this land the way I read an adjustment table. Mamedov was still wheezing. Then he stopped. The soldier on the far right couldn't take it anymore. Young, six months in the unit. He jerked his rifle to his shoulder and fired a long burst at the wall of foliage—a fan-shaped pattern, randomly, in the direction he thought it had come from. The butt hit him in the shoulder, the shell casings rained down into the clay, and the green stuff swallowed the lead without a single response. "Stop!" I barked, my voice so loud I stuttered. "Cease fire!" He froze, the barrel smoking. The foliage ahead didn't even stir—the bullets had vanished into thin air, into a thousand branches. We'd given ourselves away, wasted half a magazine, and left the enemy untouched. The shooter was probably watching the fireworks and grinning. I caught myself clenching the forend until my joints ached, and then forced my fingers to relax. Excessive tension is the enemy of accuracy. And a clear head, too. I peered through the binoculars at the wall of foliage and saw nothing. The garden stood level, green, motionless. Not a muzzle trail, not a ripple, not a glint from the optics. It was as if the shot had been born out of thin air. I decided to test his greed. I took off my Panama hat, tucked it over the end of the cleaning rod, and slowly raised it above the wall—a hand's breadth, maybe two. The red fabric swayed against the foliage, like the top of someone's head poking out to peek. I counted. One, two, three, five. If the shooter is hasty, he'll bite. Ten. Fifteen. Nothing. The Panama hat hung like a target, and the garden didn't respond, as if there was no one there to answer. I put the cleaning rod away. I wasn't greedy. And I wasn't stupid: I didn't fall for the crude setup—a rag on a stick. So he only hits what truly resembles life. He can tell a rag from a man at three hundred meters. That told me more about him than three dead men. Endurance. Calculation. Such things don't happen to some random bearded guy with a captured rifle. —Where did he get them from? — a whisper came through the earpiece. It was Chepel, from behind, from behind the second wall. — Yefim, where were you shooting from? — I don't know, — I replied. And that was worse than a bullet. I always know where it came from. That's my whole job—knowing, counting, sorting. And here—nothing. We combed this area yesterday. And the day before. We set up traps, drove a line, tapped each barrel with ramrods for hidden caches. The first, Akhmedov, was cut down right next to the irrigation ditch. The second was the radio operator. Now Mamedov. Three throats in these days, three identical holes, and not a single shell casing, not a single lying place, not a single crushed stem where a man should be sitting.