СНАЙПЕРСКАЯ ДУЭЛЬ В ПАНДЖШЕРЕ СХВАТКА СОВЕТСКОГО МАСТЕРА И ЕВРОПЕЙСКОГО НАЕМНИКА ИНСТРУКТОРА

The third officer in a week fell without hearing a shot. One moment he was standing by the wing of the lead armored personnel carrier, unfolding a map tablet—and now he was lying face down in the gray dust, a dark cloud slowly seeping from under his temple. There was no sound. There was no whistle, no bang, no clatter against the armor. The bullet came from a place no Dragunov sniper rifle could hit—from a distant ridge, more than a mile away in blinding, hot rock. Demyan Kostretsov didn't flinch. He lay in the shadows under a rock, three steps from the dead man, and didn't raise his head. If you flinch, you'll show someone else's sights that you've understood. And that someone else's sights are now wandering along the column, searching for the next one—the one standing too straight, the one holding the map, the one giving orders. "Demyan Ivanovich," Leshka Pshenichny whispered nearby. The boy's voice broke. "Demyan Ivanovich, this is Captain Vetlugin. He's the signalman. He's the..." "Quiet." Kostretsov looked at the ridge from under his sunhat. The haze above the rock trembled, smearing the cliffs like liquid glass. Noon in Panjshir, mid-July, thirty-five degrees in the shade, a frying pan in the sun. From there, from that ridge, the gunner could see them all as if they were in the palm of his hand. But they couldn't see him. The soldiers lay down. Someone dragged Vetlugin by the legs under a wheel, leaving a double furrow in the dust. Below, in the greenery, single shots crackled lazily—the Dukhs were firing for form's sake, blindly, just to make their presence known. But it wasn't the one in the greenery who killed the captain. The one up there. Silently. The young soldier near the second vehicle couldn't take it anymore. He jumped up and rushed toward the body—to drag it away, to help it—standing tall, his face exposed to the ridge. "Get down!" Demyan didn't shout, but growled through his teeth, short and terrifying. "Down, you fool!" The soldier collapsed as if his legs had been cut off, and crawled back, whimpering. Demyan waited. One, two, three. No shots were fired. The alien had already served his purpose and wasn't wasting his time on a common soldier. He was waiting for the next commander. Demyan touched the nearest sergeant with the toe of his boot. "Pass it along the chain. Officers don't dismount from the armor. Those with maps, those with binoculars—in the shadows, behind the wheel. He's targeting the commanders. Anyone sticking around will be picked off." The sergeant nodded and crawled along the column, hissing under his breath. Ahead, the commanders disappeared one after another over the sides of the vehicles. The column hunched over, huddled in its own shadow. Demyan crawled toward the body, belly-down, pressing his belly into the hot rubble. Not for a shell casing—there couldn't be one here; the shooter had fired a mile away, and the spent material was flying out there, above, near his lair. Demyan looked at the wound. It had entered from above, from that ridge, diagonally—a small entry hole and a twisted, terrifying exit hole, as if struck not by a bullet but by a crutch. Neither an SVD nor a trophy Dukhovsky rifle hit like that. It hit like a heavy bullet, coming from far away and from above—from that distant ridge from which it had been fired. For twelve years in the taiga, he had read the bloody trail, following who had passed and where. Here the trail led upward, onto the bare, baked rock. Like the tracks of an animal you've never encountered, but you already know from the depth of the hole—big, heavy, moving confidently, fearing no one. "What's there?" Lyoshka glanced sideways at the dead man. "Someone's work." Demyan glanced at the wound one last time. "Not our work. And he didn't shoot from below, from the greenery. He shot from above." He lay there for another minute, listening to the mountain. That same emptiness descended, when the gunfire below suddenly vanishes into nothingness, and all that's left is the blood pounding in your ears. The gunner above was in no hurry. He'd chosen, dealt with one, and then gone to reload or change positions. He was shooting at the commanders. At those who give the orders. This is more terrible than a squall hitting a column: you can wait out a squall in a ditch, but this one will knock out your whole head, everyone who gives orders, and the column will stand like a blind herd.