Sniper

They keep talking about me as 'the sniper'. More than once they do so with a male pronoun - I wonder how surprised they'll be when they learn I don't have a Y-chromosome. The rumor mill doesn't work very efficiently when they've split everyone up into small groups, and even those that spoke with me in earlier stages of the training probably have no clue that it's me.

That, however, is not what amuses me. The amusement comes from the fact that they think I'm a sniper. Yes, I'm stealthy - I was trained in a specialty course based off old sentry-removal and removal-defense courses from before the war, and I've spent enough time sneaking around in the desert and watching little dots moving about. Little escapes me. These things are requirements in order to be a scout - or at least a scout in the Desert Rangers. Yes, I have a long-barreled black rifle. I wouldn't be caught dead with a carbine-length barrel, no matter what you tell me about how handy they are. Yes, I've made a few long-distance shots in my career so far, and I have a reputation as frightfully accurate.

None of that makes me a sniper.

I've never hit someone further away than 400 yards, which is a paltry distance for any proper sniper. I never touch my sights or adjust them for wind - I never learned how. Never had time, and the idea of spending even more time on my ass listening to the click of a fragile high-power scope as I frantically try to adjust for wind speed does not appeal to me all that much. All I'd end up doing is ruining my zero half the time, and something in my brain itches when I do that. My rifle fires standard 5.56, not .338 Whisper or .408 CheyTac or whatever other colorfully named prewar caliber you can dig up and make match-grade ammo for. The tiny bullets I fire tumble in the wind and, outside 200 yards, barely do anything for lack of muzzle velocity.

Oh, and snipers definitely never, ever try to get as close to the enemy as I am right now.

The two of them are murmuring about me, trying to keep their heads low as they perch on the crest of this rocky hill. Both scan, one with his eyes and one with a pair of cheap binoculars he has been issued. A two man recon team. As part of this exercise, they are to cover this valley so that a friendly unit can advance. I gathered this from simply listening, I was not told. Yet from how often these two murmur about me, I think they know I am in the area. I wouldn't be surprised if this patrol was intended for me. I crouch behind them for as long as I dare, watching out over their shoulders as if I were a third person on watch.

The one on the right reaches for his 'rifle' - or rather, the stand-ins we have been issued, crude steel facsimiles of M16s, with a targeting laser on the side for you to mark someone as 'dead' for the instructors. He thinks he's seen something - I can tell. It's forgotten about when he realizes his rifle isn't there, and his hand is groping through air. He turns to find it and locks eyes with me.

I hold it up. "Looking for this?"

The second one turns his rifle on me, but I paint him with the laser, and he knows better than to cheat. He freezes. The first one lunges for me, hands slipping off my shoulders as I shrug out of his grip. He's about to grapple with me more when he realizes my knife - itself a black rubber training substitute - is at his throat. I make a show of drawing it along his neck and then tapping it against the side of his skull in two rapid motions.

"Man out." They both grumble in unison. With a sigh, they go along with me pushing them to the floor.

"How the hell did you do that, s-uh, ma'am?" One of them asks me a moment later as I sight in on the last man in the column. He is polite to not mention that I am using his 'corpse' as concealment, bracing my rifle along his back so it looks as though he is still alive and watching them from the top of this hill.

"One, I'm not a ma'am, I'm a sergeant. Two, the title before that rank of 'sergeant' is 'scoutmaster'. Three, if that doesn't answer your question, never take your eyes off your rifle."

The fourth man in the column is waving at me, apparently believing that I am one of the men I have just 'killed', horsing about. I keep the laser dead center on his torso as an instructor walks over, and I hear another trudge up behind us. "You two dead?" He asks of the men, facedown at either side of me.

"Yes, sir. She got us good."

"Get on up and get out of here." The instructor waves his hand dismissively. "Back to the RP." As the two casualties get up and dust themselves off, moving away, he gets the attention of the other instructor who's with the team I am sighting on. The man underneath me getting up disturbed my aim, but I quickly reacquire it on the last man. "How far away would you say that they are, sergeant?" The instructor asks me.

"Less than 200 yards. 140? 150?" I guess.

"Good. And you can bullseye them all from here."

I show him. One, two, three, four. From the back to the front. Always take the back man first in an ambush. I 'kill' them all in under four seconds. Granted, they're not moving - 'frozen' by the instructor - and this is a laser, not a bullet I must aim with, but it's the demonstration that counts. I am not showing him, I am showing them.

The instructor makes two more hand signals. 'All' and 'dead'. I can see, rather than hear, all of them groan in frustration as the instructor tells them to pack it in.

I do not join them at the training RP - my debriefing is separate. Command apparently enjoys keeping those that have not encountered me yet in the dark. They'll reveal me soon enough, when I've gotten enough of them, and I'll reveal my tactics and methodology.

They never faced a sniper. They'll be very sorry when they do, if they can't find some way to beat me.

--

The corpse is still warm by the time they summon me. It's two months before Project Argus's massive recruitment drive ever began and the Rangers are on high alert. The Army patrol that blundered into an ambush by a platoon-strength bandit force just four months ago still has everyone on edge, and every Ranger I've talked to still wishes that they had been there, including me.

And now this.

I am brought to the scene by a prewar ATV driven by one of Colonel Copperfield's own. This is a rare privilege, as gas these days has become as precious as gold. The ride is bumpy - few things can make me nauseous, but this ride does. The sun shines at an angle from the morning sun, illuminating the scrubland of New Mexico. When I arrive, the Army troopers surrounding the site gape at my driver and his pristine, four-wheeled, agile machine. They had never seen one interrupt its message-carrying to lift a common soldier. It roars off the moment I get my feet underneath me, undoubtedly to return to duty without so much as a moment's pause.

I told them not to move the body; I needed to see the wound. I'm pleased to see that they haven't. I'm not a mortician, but I need something to work with. I don't touch the body - I merely look. The round entered the side of his head, through his simple steel helmet, and it didn't leave. Hollowpoint. Below his vacant expression, his uniform bears his name; Sergeant F. Galloway. I closed my eyes for a moment and pictured where he must have been standing. Soon I hear the testimony of the soldier who was with him, but after that I return and picture it again. I need to get a picture. Play it out in my head.

He's standing there, surveying the terrain, a senior NCO with an engineering trooper next to him, pondering where they are to put one of the observation posts. It's routine. Their unit has created twelve such installations this week. Since the bandit horde struck, a great line of fortifications has started to come up behind us, of which this was supposed to be the leading line of camouflaged scout posts. The two of them are surveying, measuring the terrain and scribbling out a pictographical depiction of the site, discussing who to put on the important duty of making range cards for the surrounding landmarks. The NCO turns his head to look at something he saw in the distance, gestures to it, turns his head towards the engineer, and falls diagonally backwards, dead. Whatever he had been about to say died upon his lips. Two more shots ring out after the engineer as he flees for his life, both missing, the supersonic crack of the rounds whizzing by.

I place myself where he was standing, once the body is removed, and rehearse this, gesturing and looking as the survivor had told me his late sergeant had in the moments before his death. There's only one hill in that direction with a clear view. I set off without a word to anybody.

I circle around the back of the hill, glancing at the ground, stopping every so often to brush at it. No tracks - the wind obliterated them during the night. Or had it? The roots of the many scrubs kept some parts of it anchored even in the most severe of winds, and I find the very toe of a boot-print nestled in close to a scrub's stem. Leading towards the top I find another. I place the toe of my own boot next to it, and align myself the same way as it was going. He wasn't stupid enough to use the top of the hill after all. At the projected end of the trail-remnants I find a small dip near the crest of the hill, sheltered from sight by scrubs.

I brush at the dirt. The wind has abraded it - if he used a pit, then the traces of it were long gone. Yet still, the scrubs are in the same position. I make a cautious guess as to where he was laying, slipping my rifle off of my back. Laying on my stomach, I deploy the bipod, unload the magazine, and try to pretend that it's a full-length precision rifle. My own optic, of course, is only four-X, enough for my purposes but nothing compared to a good prewar Leupold. Still, it will work as a stand-in. I prod the barrel through the scrubs, brush away their little leaves to give me a clear view, but I can't get a perfect one. Their leaves are between my scope and the target.

Eventually I resort to twisting the scrubs to either side with one hand, uprooting them just enough to keep the tendrils out of my scope - and I see that someone has already done this, because the roots are already half out of the ground, and only need a slight adjustment to tilt out of the way as they were before. They patted the ground down hastily afterwards, but not enough to mend the broken earth.

My radio crackles. "Sergeant, is that you up there flashing at us?"

"Roger. Doing a reenactment."

"Copy. I'll tell the Army boys here to stand down. You had them all spooked." I hear a chuckle. I'm no longer listening. It's only been two hours, and the sun has not moved much. If I flashed from here, jostling my rifle about, he would have flashed too. This is the nest.

I put my scope right on where the victim was. I slowly mime the recoil of a shot fired, slowly tilt my rifle to the side a bit, slowly reach up and grab the charging handle and eject the round in the chamber. Where it falls on the ground, I dig. My fingers close around something metallic. A brass shell casing. He missed it - no shell bag - and it was covered up by the wind.

"Have a shell casing for you up here. Come in and bag it, send it off for analysis." With luck, they can tell what he's equipped with, if I can't find him. I don't bother to listen to the response. In my mind, I can see the target falling. Why did I shoot him?

Of course. He'd seen me. He'd pointed at me. Perhaps I had orders - anyone who sees me must die. Perhaps, alone, missing my spotter, I was spooked. In my mind, I see the private running for his life, seeking cover, and I take another shot, and another, and both miss. If they have artillery, or dogs, even at 600 yards away, I am in trouble. I snatch up the brass, missing one of the cases, spring up onto my hands and knees and start crawling behind the hill and down away out of sight.

Midway through this I stumble on another set of tracks, preserved by the hill's face against the wind. Hand and knee marks turning into deep, widely-spaced depressions. Soon I'm running for my life down the hill, aiming to keep the hill between me and the enemy the whole way.

I don't think to tell anybody where I am going. I can move faster on my own. The next hours are mercifully free of dust and storm. Had a sandstorm crept in, I never would have found the trail. The sun is hot - I am glad I brought my brimmed hat and canteen. I never had a chance to darken my knife, and so I throw it into the ground until the shine from it is gone, clean off the grit and resheathe it. I tug my coat about me to break up my silhouette, rub my face with the gritty sand, coat my gloves in it. I wish that I had brought a can of tan paint so my rifle, black and hard-edged, would not stick out so much. Instead I keep it under my camo-coat for the most part, secured by its sling but out of sight.

An hour after leaving, I come across a detailed print in a small dip in the terrain that he missed, no doubt in a desire to cover the flat ground here as soon as possible, heading for the hills to the west. The manuals we had from before the war say that in the times before the bombs fell, people often hunted for sustenance, some of whom spent their whole lives doing what I am doing now. People that could tell millions of details from a single print. I have tracked before, but something suffuses me now, a strange purpose that makes me sure of that statement. I stare at the print for a good ten minutes.

The weather was the same then as it is now.

The sole isn't made out of rubber, but rather wood. Grooved still, though. The grooves are not fresh or well defined. His boots are in poor condition, the sole worn. He may have been walking in them a while.

The pressure is slightly higher towards the rear of the print. He's moderately loaded. Still has his rifle and probably a backpack full of equipment. He's lighter than when I read his prints last. He must have dumped some equipment or extra food somewhere, or eaten it.

He's turning slightly to the left, probably without knowing it, thanks to a natural curve in his left foot. He's not checking his compass, but looking at the hills.

Ten feet away I find another print, and then another. Either due to fatigue or a desire to move quicker, he's not hiding his trail well. I can find no hint of him walking backwards, a standard tactic to confuse trackers. He's betting nobody's good enough to follow him. I don't always find his prints, but I find enough to tell where he is going. Lightly loaded as I am, I am faster than he is.

The sun winds its way overhead and into the afternoon sky, and I am soon out of water, but I keep my canteen. We are closer to the side of the valley and its now, and the trail's footsteps are slightly closer together. He has slowed down, perhaps started to relax after hours of jogging. He stops upon two hills and leaves nothing behind. I can find no trace of what must be missing from his pack. He has eaten and kept the containers. Smart.

In some ways he has not relaxed. At times he walks backwards, takes random turns, walks in circles. I am getting closer to him. Has he noticed me? I have been walking in plain view. I have been checking the tops of hills, taking frequent halts to look, circling around likely terrain features, but there's always the possibility that I have missed him. No. There is no reason for him to keep me alive. If he noticed me, I would either notice him too, or die. The thought is strangely comforting.

Yet even if he has not seen me, he must know that someone will pursue him, and I am getting closer. With this in mind, I slow down as he has slowed down, crawl from place to place, lie in the scrubs and dare something other than the occasional jackrabbit or coyote to reveal itself, leave the trail entirely to walk parallel to it. Ultimately there is only so much caution I can show, or I am wasting my advantage of being alone and moving quicker, but I feel the tension build in my muscles. The confrontation will be soon.

Judging by the position of the sun, it's four PM when I find that his footprints have changed in weight distribution and then disappear altogether in a sudden redoublement of his trail-hiding. When the trail returns, his footprints are lighter entirely. I wonder what he has left behind. I take a slow, deliberate, crawling detour to check a few hills in the area. The first two are barren, but behind the third, something glints in my eye. Crawling behind a stone to get closer and then laying down, the shine resolves itself into empty food tins, left carelessly in a pile and unburied. I don't approach. Instead I lay down and simply observe it for a few moments, taking in as much detail as I can from a distance. He was using an empty ammo can to store some of his gear, which he tossed out with the food tins. An empty canteen is there as well. He was a fool to leave this, such an obvious clue as to his presence.

A fool. A fool to run so carelessly, a fool not to conceal his trail properly, a fool to leave all of this behind in plain view, a fool who managed to hit a target the size of a watermelon at 800 yards on the first shot.

Yeah, right.

I don't have a helmet or body armor - I find them too hot and restrictive for the work I do. Lightly loaded, as I said. A scout should never be shot at if he can help it. However, I'm able to improvise something by matting down a scrub and placing it atop my canteen. With the addition of strips from my camouflaged coat, it looks almost vaguely like a concealed helmet. I polish one tiny, exposed corner of the canteen so it glints in the light ever so faintly, and then slowly reach out and poke it over the rock I am hiding behind.

There is a CRACK-PLINK and I feel the decoy rip out of my hands. I'm not paying attention. You see, bullets are supersonic. It's true that you never hear the shot that kills you - the round and its supersonic crack arrives before the muzzle report hits your ears. At long range, it extends to fractions of a second between the crack and the pow.

Fractions of a second can be counted. One-two-three-four-pow. There's the muzzle report, rolling distantly through the hills. Counted and multiplied. Four hundred yards.

I let him think I am dead. For the next minute, I am completely still, laying on the sandy ground behind the rock, rehearsing my plan mentally, thinking. He cannot see me - I hope - but patience is rewarded by a lack of death. I call up a mental picture of the area. This is the base of the mountain valley. There are hills all around, growing rockier as they go in. Plenty of cover. I glance upwards at the sun - I cannot use my scope. It's moved into the western sky. I'll glint, and he won't. A pity. This close, I might just have been able to use it. Moving slowly, I detach it from my rifle and stow it in a cushioned pouch of my vest, flipping up the backup iron sight.

He must have doubled back on his trail, set the trap, and watched. He's not as good as some of ours that I've known - too careless - but he's had countertracking training. I could somehow feel the desperation behind that shot. He knew who I was and what I was after. That's the only reason he would have risked shooting this close.

Slowly, I start crawling backwards by my fingers and toes. When I am further back under the cover of the hill my rock was adjacent to, I get up, checking the hilltops. He will have moved by now, seeking another angle to confirm his kill. Given his skilled but hasty approach so far, though, I can't rule out the possibility he is green enough to try moving directly towards my rock to pilfer my corpse, no matter how remote. I am careful as I slowly work my way through the hills, staying low, checking each hilltop for movement.

It's a slow, patient game. I try to keep my mind blank as I wait, but despite myself, what I had been holding back up until now breaks through the dam like a floodgate, lit by a low undercurrent of adrenaline. My mind fills with questions, disrupting my concentration. How long has he been out here? Why was he watching us? What do we mean to him? Is he from outside this valley, from the radiation-scorched world beyond? Who trained him? Where is his spotter? Did they die? Succumb to a hazard? How long has he been alone?

Just how desperate is he?

I take a path midway up the junction between two hills, that gives me the barest glimpse of where my decoy lies. It is undisturbed. By now he has no doubt relocated, gotten a look at it, realized that he has been fooled and given his position away. Will he run? Try to change positions entirely, spend hours crawling to another hill, redouble about to watch his own path again?

I find myself suddenly upwind of him. I know this because stink of sweat that reaches my nose is not my own. He has not left. In fact, he is close. I round the hill, lay low in a bundle of scrubs, and slowly look, moving my head as much as I dare.

There. That faint discoloration... Now that I know what to look for, the figure of a man laying upon his belly resolves itself. A worn ghille suit covers him, the ragged strips of camouflage fabric and local foliage having small, minute holes in them from where the outer liner has decayed. The suit itself has clearly seen better days, ragged and tattered. I have gotten completely behind him, by luck and patience. I slowly reach for my rifle. I can see the side of what should be his ribcage. My finger switches the selector to semiautomatic, off of safe. I've oiled it well; it doesn't click.

I breathe out as I take aim, bringing my finger inside the trigger guard... and then I release it. I need answers.

The approach, they told me as I studied, is always the most crucial time. Anyone can remain unobserved at a distance. Approaching is always a risk, and can go bad at any time. Creeping up on someone deprives you of cover and of the safety of the shadows. A moving person is easily seen. Your allies must always cover you should the target turn. I have no allies, and so my front sight never leaves his backside. I force my muscles to relax, force myself to step easily. Each step is measured, tested, in order to avoid knocking loose tinkling sand grains or rustling scrubs. In a slow, awkward crouch, I climb the gentle curve of the hill, closer, closer... I am within ten feet, my breath coming incredibly slowly in order to make the least noise, when his paranoia gets the better of him, and he turns his head and glimpses me.

He locks eyes with me.

Time slows down, mired in thick molasses. His rifle is useless this close up. In the mental slow motion that follows, I see it. A Remington, with a bipod, a nicked and scratched fiberglass stock that has seen better days. It's too long and heavy to swing around easily. He rolls to the side to disturb my aim, fumbling for what must be a pistol on his underside - nothing but fatigues to camouflage him there, as he presents his belly to me. In some distant part of my brain, I register him to be like some sort of hedgehog, though I have never seen one in anything but pictures. Coarse, uniform 'quills' of camouflage upon the back, with a soft, vulnerable belly.

I distantly register the repeated kicks of my rifle. I notice the pistol glint in the sun as it flies out of his flailing hand, his muscles contracting in pain and shock as four holes appear, staggering themselves along his abdomen and chest in a diagonal line.

"Finish me off." He gurgles, and I realize that I have stomped my boot into his arm, his outstretched hand inches from his handgun. I had been an instant away from doing as he asked, my finger already half-depressing the trigger. I release it, already feeling myself shake slightly from the adrenaline. It can't have been more than three seconds. He spits up bloody saliva. I see pink foam bubble from one of the injuries, arterial spray from another. I have hit his liver and lung. He won't last.

I put my weapon on safe, lean down, collect the pistol, unload it, secure my own holster so that he cannot grab it. Then I lean close, and study his face. It's weathered, gaunt, worn. The sun has been beating on it for too long. Perhaps he started white, but he is brown now - brown from decades of wandering under harsh daylight. I wonder if he's ever been indoors. He is older than I expected, for having made such mistakes. I had been expecting to find a bright-eyed, scared rookie, a bright one that knew all the tricks but was too scared to apply them. Instead... this man looked ancient. Ancient before his time. "Why?"

He coughs a few times, grasping towards the barrel of my rifle, but I swat his hand away. "Gggh..."

I draw my knife and hold it with the point an inch above his eye, leaning against him with my elbow along his stomach. Our faces are close. The smell of his blood fills my nose. "Tell me why. Tell me where you're from. Tell me why you shot our man. Tell me something."

He smiles dimly at me, almost as if this is ironic, or funny, or reminds him of something. "Thought... thought he was after me. Like you were. You..." He hacked up blood again, trying to clear his throat. "... you were pretty good."

"He was an engineer." Somehow this seems inadequate - lame in the face of everything.

"I'm... a wanderer, just like yourself, miss... a wanderer with a rifle. Ahh... haaaah..." He is in great pain.

"A wanderer from where?" I ask. When he does not respond, I lean closer. "Where?! Tell me. Tell me, and I'll kill you... I'll kill you quickly." My voice falters.

"A little town... a little town that doesn't exist anymore." I feel his body spasm. His eyes are growing unfocused, are having trouble finding much more than the glinting silver of my knife point. I thought I had dulled it.

He is not the first man I've killed with a knife. My heart does not quail at doing so. Yet this... this is different. I bring the knife up. Hesitate. Yet soon, he is still, by my hand, a faintly grateful expression on his face. I hoped I had made it painless.

I should call it in, I think, as I recline back into a sitting position. Turn on my radio and call for pickup, if I am still in range for my tiny hand-portable machine to reach home. It is a pre-war relic, just like his rifle and his fatigues, no doubt pilfered itself from another, and then another, handed down through war and violence since the end of the world separated it from its original owner. I simply sit there and stare at the corpse, turning his battered rifle over and over in my hands, wondering about how much died with him, how many of his own questions were left unanswered.

They tell me that I have done honor to Sergeant Galloway, and conveniently forget to reprimand me for going alone. I do not listen. My mind is elsewhere, as it always is when I am back home and waiting to move again. Mcvenner and my other teammates do not ask where I have been. They know I am not in the mood, and my ashen face tells much of the story, bolstered by the rumors that are already flying about.

I don't keep the rifle. I turn it in to be refurbished and reused. I claim none of the sniper's equipment, save a small patch of his uniform I cut away. It joins the few keepsakes I have in my small home, reminders. Always reminders, not trophies. I don't know why I collect them. Perhaps it's to save my own humanity, perhaps it's simply to remember the people I've killed and the things I've done.

One more time before putting it away, I look at it. It was the piece where the name of its wearer was supposed to be sewn on, for identification, for ownership, for your grave marker if you die. Tattered, threadbare, old like the rest of the uniform was, clearly pre-war. US Army. Had to be. His uniform had looked just like the pictures, but he was too young to have been Army before the war. He had inherited it, or perhaps stolen it for its camouflage. Everything else he had apparently made himself.

Who, then, had sewn his name upon it?

The black threads were crisp and fresh, not like the ragged edges of the pocket which I have cut away. D. Ansel. I find it hard to believe that the name could belong to anyone else. The uniform is ancient, but the name is new. Recently sewn. By who? Him? A loved one? His government? Did he even have a government, a faction, an ideology that had driven him here to watch us and be discovered and killed?

I tuck it into my pocket, close the drawer, step out of my house, and wander back towards Camp David. I try not to think about D. Ansel, the man I hunted like an animal, and try to leave the memories with his uniform in my pocket, next to my notepad and pen.

I am not successful.

--

"Sergeant, can I ask a question?" One of the troopers from the next group that I 'ambush' questions me, before he is brought back to the RP. The stain on the rear of his fatigues where I hit him with a paintball gun - a new piece of equipment they brought in for me to pick careless trainees off - is still there, though it soon rotates out of my sight as he turns to face me.

"Yes?" I turn, gesturing to the instructor to wait a moment.

"Just how are we supposed to see you coming out in these hills with only eight guys in a squad? You could be behind anything." The recruit frowns at me, almost as if he feels this is somehow unfair. Green as fresh wood, this one is.

"I suppose I could be." I idly toss my rubber knife from hand to hand. "Or I suppose you could be."

The trooper is silent. He is trying not to glare at me for my flippant response. He is probably scared that if he does, I will put the knife where the sun does not shine. I wonder what people are saying about me.

"Look, kiddo. You never know who might have your number. Stay alert, watch your backs, always think 'If I were sneaking up on us, where would I be?' Put yourself in my boots instead of just sitting on top of a hill looking in one direction all day."

"Are you telling me to leave my position?" He frowns.

"I'm telling you to look behind yourself every once in a while." I can't keep the smile off my face. "And when the first one whizzes over your head, don't stand there trying to find the shooter, get behind something."

"And if you hit me on the first shot?"

"Then there's not much you can do about it, is there? You'll find that's a common thought in this line of work." I reach out and pat him on the shoulder. "Mole drills, trooper. Up, down, up, down. Don't sit still, unless you're well concealed."

"I thought I was."

"You were." I grin. "Then you stood up."

"Alright, that's enough." The instructor beckons, but I hold up a hand. I tug the trooper closer, tapping at the front of his fatigues. On the right breast, there is nothing but a blank patch.

"Ma'am?" He looks at me questioningly. Ice blue eyes. I see determination in them, even behind the quizzical look. His ashen face already has wrinkles from far too much frowning, and it has turned angry red from being in the sun all day.

"Sergeant." I correct, gently. "Hurry up and sew that name in. They won't do it for you."

"Why?" The honesty of the question surprises me. He's very blunt.

"Imagine the bullets are real. Then you'll know why." I pat him on the shoulder, gently pushing him towards the instructor, and soon he and the other recruits with his simulated 'unit' are gone over the hills, back to try it again, vanishing into the haze in the sun.

I find a rock to sit on, adjust my swamp hat, wipe my brow. I wait for the next group of recruits. I am silhouetting myself deliberately, almost daring for something out in the hills to notice me, to reveal itself, yet nothing does. Nothing, until I see the glint off of a steel training rifle, swaying off of the arm of a tired, sun-beaten trainee staggering after his comrades.

It will be a long day.