American Sniper

by Ian Patterson

  Shouldering the weapon, the man checked it for comfort, for balance, and for heft. Looking down to The Grand View Terrace, he calibrated the sight. He tracked a half dozen targets through the cross-hairs all the while speaking in a low, measured tone.

  “Easy. Easy. Easy. Easy…”

  He uttered the words like an incantation.

  Satisfied, the man relaxed. Retrieving the spotting scope, he monitored the trail with anticipation, waiting for his target to reappear.

  EIGHT

  MOUNT RUSHMORE NATIONAL MEMORIAL

  BLACK HILLS REGION, SOUTH DAKOTA

  STRUGGLING MIGHTILY TO KEEP UP, Elizabeth shouted ahead, “If we fall, the Rangers won’t know where to look for us!”

  Libby wasn’t panicked, not yet. But soon, she feared, hysteria would set in. From below, the incline appeared nowhere near as rugged to her, and nowhere near as steep. Only part way up, with the loose stone uncertain beneath her feet, did Libby realize she had no clue how she’d get back down.

  Do mountain lions or Grizzly bears live in these hills, she wondered? Snakes, scorpions, poisonous spiders? Nearing tears, Libby cried out. “Come on, Sarah! Don’t be a bitch! You’re going to get one of us killed!”

  NINE

  MOUNT RUSHMORE NATIONAL MEMORIAL

  BLACK HILLS REGION, SOUTH DAKOTA

  SARAH HEARD LIBBY SHOUT but couldn’t make out the words. The mountain swallowed-up sound like a Dyson sucks up dirt. It came to her from everywhere and from nowhere at once. Creepy, Sarah thought. For a moment, she hesitated, considered turning back, using Libby as the excuse.

  Ahead through the trees, the stone monolith glowed impossibly brilliant and seductively tall. A thousand feet tall! Well, not a thousand feet, but a few hundred for sure.

  Viewed from below, climbing the gigantic stone tower to take a selfie with the scowling Presidents in the background and posting the image to Instagram had seemed like a bright idea. Now, not so much.

  Unwilling to give Libby the satisfaction, Sarah pushed on.

  TEN

  MOUNT RUSHMORE NATIONAL MEMORIAL

  BLACK HILLS REGION, SOUTH DAKOTA

  USING THE SPOTTING SCOPE, the man scanned the trail-way and each of the scenic outlooks in turn. Nothing, a handful of couples and children; in children, the man had no interest.

  Trained to observe not what he should see but what he shouldn’t—a glint of sunlight off metal, a splash of color, a shift in shadow, a rapid movement at the corner of the eye—the man scanned the length of The Presidential Trail running along the base of the mountain. He paid particular attention to a patch of Ponderosa Pine to the west rising vertically from the path near the exit to the Heritage Village. Here, looking mottled and grey like the skin of a dead elephant, a massive stone formation broke the crust of the earth.

  Along the path, a chipmunk and a red squirrel foraged for nuts and seeds. On the incline, a trio of mule deer scratched the stony soil for wildflowers, shrubs, and tree bark.

  Just as he was planning to reconsider his options, the man reacquired the target through a gap in the trees. He watched as the dirty-blonde-hair girl with the athletic physique skittered cat-like up a near-vertical path of loose stone, visible one moment, gone the next.

  Eventually, she came to a place where trees meet rock at the base of the three-hundred-foot tall stone monolith. Here, standing fully exposed, the target paused—either to rest or to calibrate her options. He didn’t know which.

  The man reached for the CheyTac M300 he’d set down beside him. Shouldering the weapon, the man chambered a round. He sighted the target in the cross-hairs of the Leupold Mark 4. The man inhaled and exhaled, breathing evenly. Continuing to breathe normally, the man relaxed. He steadied his nerve.

  As was his custom, he would press the trigger after the second release of breath, for him a five-second window of calm occurring between respiratory cycles. Known as a natural respiratory pause, for many shooters, it’s considered The Window.

  But, unexpectedly, before he could release, the target was on the move scampering along a stony ledge of stair-like rock leading from the base of the monolith to its peak. It was an unmarked, untended, potentially hazardous trail.

  Moving like an Afghan insurgent in Tora Bora, the girl climbed.

  The man smiled, impressed.

  ELEVEN

  MOUNT RUSHMORE NATIONAL MEMORIAL

  BLACK HILLS REGION, SOUTH DAKOTA

  IGNORING LIBBY’S DEMANDS to turn back, Sarah vanished from view. Even to Libb, her own voice sounded hysterical. And why not? She was a thousand feet high along a near-vertical conveyor belt of shifting earth, terrified to retreat, terrified to advance. With her only other option a tumble to certain death, advance, Libby did.

  TWELVE

  MOUNT RUSHMORE NATIONAL MEMORIAL

  BLACK HILLS REGION, SOUTH DAKOTA

  SARAH DISCOVERED THE SUMMIT littered thoughtlessly with discarded water bottles, candy wrappers, and cigarette butts.

  So, what if it isn’t a view few others ever get a chance to see, Sarah lamented. Her nine hundred forty-three Instagram followers would never know the difference.

  What started as a steep ascent turned eventually into a modestly challenging climb, switchbacks leading to the top of the outcrop over steps as measured as if laid down by a stonemason’s hand. Though one false move could still get you impaled on the jagged rocks below, as Rangers hadn’t posted signs warning of Danger! Keep Out! Risk of Imminent Death! Sarah imagined it unlikely.

  Walking to the precipice, Sarah turned her back to the Presidents. Extending her iPhone at arm’s length, she smiled. Holding the phone in landscape view, Sarah stood for a first shot aligned at the right cheek of George Washington. For the next photo, she aligned herself to the left of Honest Abe Lincoln. For good measure, Sarah snapped a half dozen more pictures from different angles. With only a few minor edits, she posted the images to Instagram waiting for the inevitable flood of Likes.

  THIRTEEN

  MOUNT RUSHMORE NATIONAL MEMORIAL

  BLACK HILLS REGION, SOUTH DAKOTA

  STANDING EXPOSED AS A TURKEY ON A PLATTER atop the outcrop, the man admired the target her spirit if not her choices. He raised the CheyTac. Taking aim, drawing breath, he readied to fire.

  FOURTEEN

  MOUNT RUSHMORE NATIONAL MEMORIAL

  BLACK HILLS REGION, SOUTH DAKOTA

  ELIZABETH REACHED THE BASE of the monolith, muscles twitching with fatigue, nerves shattered. Thankfully, she had thought to bring water. Retrieving a bottle from her backpack, she drank deeply. She removed her iPhone from a rear pocket of her blue jeans, damp and clingy with sweat and dirt. Holding the device aloft, she searched for a signal. Here, at the base of the rock face, nothing, nada, a flat line where she should have four bars.

  “Fuck!” she said. Then “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!” this time more meaningfully.

  Feeling vulnerable, abandoned, and very alone, at this precise moment, Elizabeth Stein hated Sarah Petty.

  FIFTEEN

  MOUNT RUSHMORE NATIONAL MEMORIAL

  BLACK HILLS REGION, SOUTH DAKOTA

  THE FLASH WAS BRIEF, no more than a flicker appearing at the limit of his peripheral vision. Lowering the CheyTac for a second time, the man retrieved the spotting scope. There, at the base of the stone monolith, the dumpy-looking girl holding a mobile phone aloft and puffing like an ox. Respecting her choices even less, the man sighed.

  Sighting his weapon, he fired.

  SIXTEEN

  MOUNT RUSHMORE NATIONAL MEMORIAL

  BLACK HILLS REGION, SOUTH DAKOTA

  THE .375 ROUND ROCKED ELIZABETH Stein, the force of impact driving her back three yards to an overhang where a million years of runoff had created a narrow crevasse. With her significant organs eviscerated and her brain paralyzed by shock, Elizabeth tumbled backward over the ledge where gravity did the rest.

  SEVENTEEN

  MOUNT RUSHMORE NATIONAL MEMORIAL

  BLACK HILLS REGION, SOUTH DAK
OTA

  AFTER RETREATING DOWN the mountain with Libby nowhere to be found, a dozen text messages unreturned and repeated calls going directly to voice mail, freaking-out, Sarah reported her friend missing. She was asked by a Ranger of the National Park Service to file a report. Hoping to reassure her, the Ranger said, “Your friend will turn up, miss. Happens all the time, visitors get separated.”

  Chewing her fingernails, Sarah waited for news of Libby until after nightfall when the park closed. Offered a lift back to Rapid City by the kindly Ranger, he said, “Don’t worry, miss, she’ll turn up” though he declined to say in what condition.

  Back at the motel, Sarah telephoned her parents. Her parents called the Steins. The next morning blood-spatter found at the place where Rangers discovered Libby’s mobile telephone suggested a potential animal encounter; a brazen coyote, possibly, as wolves and big cats in the area are uncommon.

  It took three months for Elizabeth’s decomposed remains to be discovered off the side of the road along Route 244 by a backpacker who’d stopped at the base of a narrow crevasse to collect runoff.

  By this time, the shooter was a thousand miles away planning his twenty-third kill.

  EIGHTEEN

  ANTIMONY, UTAH

  TARA APPEARED AT HIS SIDE just as he bullied the last bail of hay over the tailgate of the battered Ford pick-up truck. Thrusting a frosty liter-bottle of water at him, she said: “Drink, Mathias.”

  Accepting the offer, he downed half the bottle in one long, greedy gulp. Surfacing for air, he said, “I survived the Registan Desert, didn’t I?”

  Beads of sweat glistened on his torso running in rivulets from his shoulders to his chest and over the washboard muscles of his belly, falling from his body to the dirt dry as dust. Tara imagined a meteor shower crashing to the surface of the moon.

  “You almost died in that shit-hole,” she said, matter-of-fact.

  Turning his gaze to the foothills across the horizon and Mount Dutton in the far distance, he replied, “Yeah, but I didn’t. I came back.”

  “Yes,” she said, her tone a mix of hopefulness and doubt. “You came back.”

  Returning the bottle to Tara, he raised the lift and shot the security latch. “Give me an hour to off-load this into the barn. You go inside and make yourself presentable,” he said, tweaking her breast beneath a blue tank-top with the words Go Mavs! Stenciled across the bosom. “Or not.”

  Reaching out, Tara teased the hair of his naked chest, now matted and damp. With her index finger, she traced a scar that ran diagonally over his abdomen from his right nipple to his bellybutton. Jagged and pale, it resembled a lightning bolt against his tan skin.

  “Why put off till later when you can do me right now?”

  Tara unfastened the security latch. The tailgate dropped with a bounce and a clang. In one fluid motion, she hoisted herself to the gate. She shifted her buttocks, parted her thighs.

  “Saddle-up, podna’; let’s ride.”

  “Dirty girl,” he said

  “Yippy-kay-yay, mother-fucker!”

  NINETEEN

  Antimony, Utah

  AFTERWARD, IN THE SHOWER, he allowed the steaming water to beat a tattoo on his skin. Outside, the sun had dropped to below the horizon, the hottest part of the day dissipated, the dust settled upon the land. In the kitchen, he could hear Tara shuffling about banging pots and pans in preparation of an omelet dinner. Inwardly, he smiled, applauding the effort if not the outcome.

  Mathias shuddered. His body ached; pain insidious, grief endless.

  “Gradually,” his doctors had lied, “the pain will subside. With medication, become entirely bearable.”

  Seven years on and still waiting.

  Mathias stepped from the shower. He dried-off, wiped down the fogged bathroom mirror with his damp towel. He studied the broken reflection, taking time to familiarize himself with the man who stared back; the jaw shattered and rebuilt; the nose pulverized and reconstructed; the eyebrow stitched into a too-high arch making him appear either quizzical, doubtful, or perpetually amused.

  According to Tara, “A face like a fractured Utah landscape. Is it why you chose this place to settle?” she’d once asked of his decision to relocate from DC. “So, when the dust settles, you’re unrecognizable?”

  Even to Mathias, the reflection took some getting-used-to.

  After leaving the military, at loose ends, he’d signed on with a private contractor to conduct mop-up locate, capture, or kill missions against high-value intelligence targets within the more remote provinces of Afghanistan; members of the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and a motley assortment of traitors, agents, and spies. The departing Americans had abandoned the task to the Afghans, who were only too happy to pay the likes of Brookbank Security Solutions millions in Yankee supplied charity to do the work for them.

  The job paid very well; thirty thousand per month into a tax-free account for a minimum twelve-month contract with a ten grand bonus for each capture, twenty-five hundred for each kill. More in a month than Mathias earned in the military over a year.

  Referencing Cormac McCarthy’s classic American novel Blood Meridian, Mathias’s boss at the time explained the bonus structure as such: “Afghan government doesn’t want for us to be seen as taking scalps. Either does the DOD.”

  As a former military officer and Navy SEAL with Special Ops experience, Mathias was assigned his own unit of eight men. Mostly it was easy work. Though Afghanistan is a big, rugged, and remote country, owing to this fact the targets remained close to home, near to family and friends. But five hundred American dollars sprinkled liberally among these same family members and friends was usually enough incentive to turn informant and deliver an insurgent’s head on a platter.

  When confronted by superior firepower, the targets capitulated, raising their hands in prayer to Allah. Though some made a show at resistance, Mathias could see the heart wasn’t in it for them to sacrifice for an already lost cause.

  Those who didn’t surrender got shot.

  Toward the end of his third year and with plans to return home, Mathias was assigned to locate, track-down, and to apprehend or to terminate a local Mullah rumored to be planning an attack on U.S. Forces. Intelligence indicated the Mullah was hiding three hundred miles southwest of Kandahar in the remote village of Rudbar, located in the Registan Desert.

  The journey to Rudbar was undertaken by eight men in two armor-plated Humvees over a sand and pebble track traveling alongside an irrigation ditch within sight of the Helmand River, the longest in the country.

  In Rudbar, the Mullah surrendered peacefully. On the return to base from Rudbar, one hundred sixty miles northeast of the village, the first Humvee passed over a just-planted IED buried in the road. The second Humvee, in which Mathias and the Mullah were riding, came under attack from an RPG. Just as the lead vehicle transformed into a twisted mass of molten metal and flame, but an instant before the RPG struck his own vehicle, the Mullah turned to Mathias and in calm if broken English chuckled: “You Americans are so stupid.”

  A subsequent investigation showed that the mission to apprehend the Mullah was, in fact, a set-up, that the Mullah’s primary target was the mission itself.

  Stupid indeed, thought Mathias long afterward.

  Six men died in the attack—including the Mullah—with three others severely injured, including Mathias.

  Tara McDonald arrived in Kandahar on behalf of Brookbank to facilitate the transport of survivors to a hospital in Germany for emergency medical assistance, then on to America for long-term care and convalescence.

  When Brookbank balked at honoring a contractually obligated commitment to pay the victims a percentage of annual earnings pension for life in the event of catastrophic injury suffered while on the job, Tara resigned from the company. She retained an attorney on behalf of the men and sued for the restoration of pension plus an added one-time payment of one million dollars, each, for pain and suffering. A year later, the terms were agreed to in an out-of-co
urt settlement.

  When Tara turned-up unannounced at Mathias’s doorstep three months later, he said to her, “Here to cash your winning lottery ticket, Ms. McDonald?”

  Taking no offense, Tara replied, “It isn’t like that, Mathias.”

  With the scar over his permanently raised and skeptical eyebrow glowing a fiery red, he said, “You didn’t come all this way looking for love.”

  “Love?” she said, seemingly as perplexed as he. “Perhaps in time. Let’s just say that for now, Mathias, I need you as much as you need me.”

  Six years on they were still trying to decide.

  A sharp rap on the door pulled his attention from the mirror and his once handsome face. He turned to see Tara standing in the doorway, expression grave, skin ashen.

  “It’s for you,” she said, offering him the mobile telephone.

  “What’s happened?”

  “Washington,” she said simply. Then one more time with finality, “Washington.”

  After which Tara turned, leaving him standing naked in the bathroom alone.

  TWENTY