I checked the new scope and my rifle – there were many like it, but that one was mine – and used a square of chamois to wipe everything clean. In the suck, the sand and dust got into everything. I handed my piece to Taco for the mandatory recheck. He handed it back to me, licked his palm good and wet, then stuck it out through the firing slit.
‘Wind speed nil, Billy-boy. I hope the bastard shows, because we’ll never get a better day for it.’
Other than my rifle, the biggest piece of equipment we had in the bucket with us was the M151, also known as the Spotter’s Friend.
Billy stops, startled out of his dream. He goes into the kitchen, where he splashes his face with cold water. He has come to an unexpected fork in what has been, up to now, a perfectly straight road. Maybe it makes no difference which of the diverging ways he takes, but maybe it does.
It’s all about that M151. It’s the optical scope the spotter used to calculate the distance from muzzle to target, and with eerie （it was to Billy, at least） accuracy. That distance is the basis for MOA, minute of angle. Billy needed none of that for the shot that took out Joel Allen, but the one he was responsible for making on that day in 2004, always assuming Ammar Jassim left his storefront to make it possible, was much longer.
Does he explain all that, or not?
If he does, that means he expects, or just hopes, that someday someone will read what he’s writing. If he doesn’t, it means he has given up that expectation. That hope. So which is it to be?
Standing there at the kitchen sink he flashes back to an interview he heard on the radio not long after he got out of the sand. Probably on one of those NPR shows where everyone sounds smart and full of Prozac. Some writer was getting interviewed, one of the oldtimers who was hot stuff back in the days when all the important writers were white, male, and borderline alcoholics. For the life of him Billy can’t remember who that writer was, except it wasn’t Gore Vidal – not snarky enough – and not Truman Capote – not quacky enough. What he can remember is what the guy said when the interviewer asked him about his process. ‘I always keep two people in mind when I sit down to write: myself, and the stranger.’
Which brings Billy back full circle to the M151. He could describe it. He could explain its purpose. He could explain why MOA is even more important than distance, although the two are always joined together. He could do all of those things, but only needs to if he is writing for a stranger as well as himself. So is he?
Get real, Billy tells himself. I’m the only stranger here.
But that’s okay. He can do it for himself if he has to. He doesn’t need … what would you call it?
‘Validation,’ he murmurs as he goes back to the laptop. He once more picks up where he left off.
7
Other than my rifle, the biggest piece of equipment we had in the bucket with us was the M151, also known as the Spotter’s Friend. Taco set up the tripod and I shuffled out of his way as best I could. The platform bounced a little and Taco told me to hold still unless I wanted to put a bullet in the sign over the shop door instead of in Jassim’s head. I stayed as still as I could while Taco did his thing, making calculations and muttering to himself.
Lieutenant Colonel Jamieson had estimated the distance as 1,200 yards. Taco took his readings on a kid bouncing a ball in front of Pronto Pronto Photo Photo and called it 1,340 yards. A long shot for sure, but on a windless day like that one in early April, a high confidence one. I had made longer, and we had all heard stories of world-class snipers making shots at twice that distance. Of course I couldn’t count on Jassim being perfectly stationary, like the head on a paper target. That concerned me, but the fact that he was a human being with a beating heart and a living brain didn’t. He was a Judas goat who had lured four men into an ambush, guys guilty of nothing but delivering food. He was a bad guy and needed to be put down.
Around quarter past nine, Jassim came out of his store. He was wearing a long blue shirt like a dashiki and baggy white pants. Today he was wearing a knitted red cap instead of a blue topper. That was a wonderful sight marker. I started to line up the shot, but Jassim just shooed the ball-bouncing kid away with a swat on the butt and went back inside.
‘Well doesn’t that suck,’ Taco said.
We waited. Young men went into Pronto Pronto Photo Photo. Young men came out. They were laughing and scuffling and grabassing around as young men do all over the world, from Kabul to Kansas City. Some of them had no doubt been shooting up those Blackwater trucks with their AKs just a couple of days before. Some of them were undoubtedly firing at us seven months later as we went from block to block, cleaning them out. For all I know, some of them were in what we called the Funhouse, where everything that could go wrong did go wrong.