Time to Hunt

After a literally explosive opening where sniper fire cuts through the chest of an unnamed victim (Swagger?), readers of Time to Hunt are plunged into the final years of the Vietnam War and the struggles of Marine Donny Fenn. Stationed in Washington, D.C., after recovering from a nearly mortal wound, Fenn is asked to spy on Marines who may have ties to the peace movement. What Donny quickly learns, however, is that his Navy superiors are more interested in framing somebody than they are in finding the truth. In this first section, readers waiting to discover the outcome of the assassination and glimpse Bob "The Nailer" Swagger will instead be swept away by Hunter's vivid painting of the divided loyalties and torn identities that plagued soldiers and citizens in the early 1970s. But all of this action is only a prelude to Donny's subsequent relationship with Swagger in Vietnam. Hunter fleshes out the mythology that he began to create in Point of Impact as readers watch Swagger add to his famed body count and confront his nemesis, Solaratov. Hunter moves deftly from the mind of Solaratov to Donny and back to Swagger, and in each character finds the core of the Vietnam experience--fear, coldness, sadness, horror, elation. The last two sections cut to contemporary events and find Swagger married to Donny's former love, Julie. Slowly, the events of the first half of the book begin to merge with Swagger's present history and stories that readers will recognize from Hunter's earlier novels. Swagger uncovers a deep connection between the Vietnam demonstrations of the 1970s, the predatory work of the CIA, and the killer who is after him and his family now. Nothing is as it first seems, and readers of Point of Impact and Black Light will have to revise all their expectations. --Patrick O'Kelley From Library Journal When a sniper shoots a man in the mountains of Idaho and wounds the woman who is with him, it is not an isolated incident but the deliberate culmination of events that began during the Vietnam War. Bob Lee Swagger, who was a Marine sniper in Vietnam known as "Bob for the Nailer" for his lethal shooting, at first believes that he was the gunman's intended target. The wounded woman is his wife and the widow of his wartime comrade, Donny Fenn. Donny had been killed by a Russian sniper assigned the task of neutralizing Bob, or so Bob had always believed. But now it seems possible that Donny might have been the main target all those years ago and that it is Donny's widow that the sniper has come to kill, not Bob. Both a gripping war novel and a complex thriller coiled around the convoluted intrigues of the supposedly concluded Cold War, this is page-turning entertainment that will delight action adventure readers.?Charles Michaud, Turner Free Lib., Randolph, MACopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Kirkus Reviews Bob Lee Swagger, master sniper, returns (Black Light, 1996; Point of Impact, 1993), which means testosterone at the boil, gore galore, and filled-up body bags row on row. A super-sniper (not the illustrious Swagger but his nemesis Solaratov) shakes off the Arizona morning chill, hunkers over (for those who care) a ``Remington 700, with H-S Precision fiberglass stock and Leupold 10X scope,'' and seconds later a ``man's chest explodes'' (snipers in this novel miss maybe once a decade). Flash back, then, to 1965. The war in Vietnam is winding down and, tragically, a young marine, Swagger's partner, is blown away the day before he would have finished his tour. Are the two super-sniper incidents connected? Though for years Swagger has believed that the bullet that killed his friend was meant for him, events in the present prove him wrong. Unwillingly, then, he has to face the terrible fact that the death of his friend in 1965 was just the first act in a violent melodrama that now threatens his wife who was once married to his long-dead comrade. The answer behind the decades-old conspiracy is as convoluted as it is nefarious, involving chicanery in the corridors of power. Swagger, however, has little time to fritter away on inductive reasoning, since it's time to hunt for that enemy sniper and take him out before harm can come to the innocent and helpless. ``You're a sacred killer,'' an admirer tells Swagger. ``Every society needs one.'' Whether that's true or not, the stage is set for a grim denouement, and Swagger drops from a helicopter--demigod ex machina--to frustrate evil. Hunter's prose doesn't get much above pedestrian, and the dialogue is particularly weak. But Swagger in battle--brandishing his wondrous rifle, Excalibur with a trigger--will hold most and enthrall some. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. "Stephen Hunter is in a class by himself. Time to Hunt is as vivid and haunting as a moving target in the crosshairs of a sniper scope."--Nelson Demille, author of Mayday "Stephen Hunter is simply the best writer of action fiction in the world and Time to Hunt proves it."--Phillip Margolin, author of The Burning Man "The best straight-up thriller writer at work today." --Rocky Mountain News "Thrilling in the manner of ancient storytellers, with battles fierce enough for a war and characters crazy enough to fight them to the death." --New York Times Book Review From the Publisher "Stephen Hunter is in a class by himself. Time to Hunt is as vivid and haunting as a moving target in the crosshairs of a sniper scope."--Nelson Demille, author of Mayday "Stephen Hunter is simply the best writer of action fiction in the world and Time to Hunt proves it."--Phillip Margolin, author of The Burning Man "The best straight-up thriller writer at work today." --Rocky Mountain News "Thrilling in the manner of ancient storytellers, with battles fierce enough for a war and characters crazy enough to fight them to the death." --New York Times Book Review From the Inside Flap st dangerous man alive.xa0xa0He only wants to live in peace with his family, and forget the war that nearly killed him... It's not going to happen.Stephen Hunter's epic national bestsellers, Point of Impact and Black Light, introduced millions of readers to Bob Lee Swagger, called "Bob the Nailer," a heroic but flawed Vietnam War veteran forced twice to use his skills as a master sniper to defend his life and his honor.xa0xa0Now, in his grandest, most intensely thrilling adventure yet, Bob the Nailer must face his deadliest foe from Vietnam--and his own demons--to save his wife and daughter.During the latter days of the Vietnam War, deep in-country, a young idealistic Marine named Donny Fenn was cut down by a sniper's bullet as he set out on patrol with Swagger, who himself received a grievous wound.xa0xa0Years later Swagger married Donny's widow, Julie, and together they raise their daughter, Nikki, on a r Stephen Hunter is the author of eight novels with over three million copies in print, including the national bestsellers Black Light, Dirty White Boys, and Point of Impact. He is also a film critic for the Washington Post and the author of a nonfiction collection of his criticism, Violent Screen. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland. From The Washington Post Time to Hunt is edge-of-the-seat reading, but it is a step above Point of Impact and Black Light , his previous "Bob the Nailer" efforts. It is a well-plotted thriller, infused with enough lyrical prose and insightful musings about the human condition to make it worth the time of even less adventure-prone readers. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. "You will crawl all night," Huu Co explained to the Russian. "If you do not make it, they will see you in the morning and kill you."If he expected the man to react, once again, he was wrong. The Russian responded to nothing. He seemed, in some respects, hardly human. Or at least he had no need for some of the things humans needed: rest, community, conversation, humanity even. He never spoke. He appeared phlegmatic to the point of being almost vegetable. Yet at the same time he never complained, he would not wear out, he applied no formal sense of will against Huu Co and the elite commandos of the 45th Sapper Battalion on their long Journey of Ten Thousand Miles, down the trail from the North. He never showed fear, longing, thirst, discomfort, humor, anger or compassion. He seemed not to notice much and hardly ever talked, and then only in grunts.He was squat, isolated, perhaps desolated. In his army, Huu Co's heroes were designated "Brother Ten" when they distinguished themselves by killing ten Americans: this man, Huu Co realized, was Brother Five Hundred, or some such number. He had no ideology, no enthusiasms; he simply was. Solaratov: solitary. The lone man. It suited him well. The Russian looked across the fifteen hundred yards of flattened land to the Marine base the enemy called Dodge City, studying it. There was no approach, no visible approach, except on one's belly, the long, long way."Could you hit him from this range?"The Russian considered."I could hit a man from this range, yes," he finally said. "But how would I know it was the right man?xa0xa0I cannot see a face from this distance. I have to hit the right man; that is the point."The argument was well made."So then . . . you must crawl.""I can crawl.""If you hit him, how will you get out?""This time I'm only looking. But when I hit him, I'll wait till dark, then come out the same way I came in.""They'll call in mortars, artillery, napalm even. It is their way.""Yes, I may die.""In napalm?xa0xa0Not pleasant. I've heard many scream as it ate the flesh from their bones. It's over in an instant, but I had the impression it was a long instant."The Russian merely glared at him, no recognition in his eyes at all, even though they'd lived in close proximity for a week and had for days before that pored over the photos and the mock-up of Dodge City."My advice, comrade brother," said Huu Co, "is that you follow the depression in the earth three hundred meters. You move at dark, in maximum camouflage. They have nightscopes and they will be hunting. But the scopes aren't one hundred percent reliable. It'll be a long stalk, a terrible stalk. I can only hope you are up to it and that your heart is strong and pure.""I have no heart," said the solitary man. "I am the sniper."For the first recon, Solaratov did not take his case, which by now all considered a rifle sheath. He carried no weapons except a SPETSNAZ dagger, black and thin and wicked.He left at nightfall, dappled in camouflage, looking more like an ambulatory swamp than a man. Behind his back, the sappers called him not the Solitary Man or the Russian but, with the eternal insouciance of soldiers, the Human Noodle, because the stalks were stiff like unboiled noodles. In seconds, as he slithered off through the elephant grass, he was invisible.Huu Co noted that his technique was extraordinary, a mastery of the self. This was the ultimate slow. He moved with delicacy, one limb at a time, a pace so slow and deliberate it almost didn't exist. Who would have patience for such a journey?"He is mad," one of the sappers said to another."All Russians are mad," said the other. "You can see it in their eyes.""But this one is really mad. He's nuts!"The sappers waited quietly underground, in elaborate tunnels built in the Year of the Snake, 1965. They cooked meals, enjoyed jury-rigged showers and treated the event almost like a furlough. It was a happy time for men who had fought hard, been wounded many times. At least six of them were Brothers Ten. They were shrewd, experienced professionals.For his time, Huu Co studied the photographs or waited up top, hidden in the grass, using up his eyestrain to stare at the strange fort fifteen hundred yards off, which looked so artificial cut into the earth of his beloved country by men from across the sea with a different sensibility and no sense of history.He waited, staring at the sea of grass. His arm hurt. He could hardly close his hand. When he grew bored, he snatched a book from his tunic, in English. It was Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkein, very amusing. It took him away from this world but always, when Frodo's adventures vanished, he had to return to Firebase Dodge City and his deepest question: when would the sniper return?The fire ants were only the first of his many ordeals. Attracted to his sweat, they came and crawled into the folds of his neck, tasting his blood, crawling, biting, feasting. He was a banquet for the insect world. After the ants, others were drawn. Mosquitoes big as American helicopters buzzed around his ears, lit on his face, stung him gently and departed, bloated. What else? Spiders, mites, ticks, dragonflies, the whole phyla drawn to the miasma of decay a sweating man produces in the tropics on a hot morning. But not maggots. Maggots are for the dead, and perhaps in some way the maggots respected him. He was not dead and, moreover, he fed the maggots much in his time on earth. They left him alone.It wasn't that Solaratov was beyond feeling such things. He felt them, all right. He felt every sting, bite, prick or tweak; his aches and swellings and blotches and throbbings were the same as any man's. He had just somehow managed to disconnect the feeling part of his body from the registering part of his brain. It can be learned, and at the upper reaches of the performance envelope, among those who are not merely brave, willful or dedicated but truly among the best in the world, extraordinary things are routine.He lay now in the elephant grass, approximately one hundred yards from the sandbag perimeter of Firebase Dodge City, just outside the double strands of concertina wire. He could see Claymore mines facing him from a dozen angles, and the half-buried detonators of other, larger mines. But he could also hear American rock and roll bellowing out of the transistor radios all the young Marines seemed to carry, and listening to it was his only pleasure."I can't get no satisfaction," someone sang with a loud raspy voice, and Solaratov understood: he could get no satisfaction either.The Marines were unbearably sloppy. He had seen the Israelis from extremely close range in some of his ops and the British SAS and even the fabled American Green Berets; all were sound troops. These boys thought the war was over for them; they were worse than Cubans or Angolans. They lounged around sunbathing, played touch football or baseball or basketball, sneaked out to smoke hemp, got in fights or got drunk. Their sentries slept at night. The officers didn't bother to shave. Nobody dressed in anything resembling a uniform, and most spent the days in shorts, undershirts (or shirtless) and shower shoes.Even when they went on combat patrol, they were loud and stupid. The point men paid no attention, the flank security drifted in toward the column, the machine gunner had his belts tangled around him, and his assistant, with other belts, fell too far behind him to do him any good in a fight. Clearly they had not been in a fight in months, if ever; clearly they expected no such thing to occur as they waited for the order to leave the country.Once, a patrol stumbled right over him. Five men, hustling through the elephant grass on the way out for a night ambush mission, walked so close to him that if any had been even remotely awake, they would have killed him easily. He saw their jungle boots, big as mountains, just inches from his face. But two of the men were listening to radios, one was clearly high, one so young and frightened he belonged in school, and the platoon leader, stuck with these silly boys, looked terrified. Solaratov knew exactly what would happen; the patrol would go out a thousand yards and the sergeant would hunker them down in some high grass, where they'd sit all night, smoking and talking and pretending they weren't at war. In the morning the sergeant would bring them in and file a no-contact report. It was the kind of war fought by men who'd rather be anywhere except in the war.Each night, Solaratov would relieve himself, hand-bury his feces, drink from his canteen and slowly, ever so slowly change position. He didn't care what was in the encampment, but he had to know by what routes an experienced man would make an egress on the way to a hunting mission. How would Swagger take his spotter out?xa0xa0Which part of the sandbag berm would they go over and from what latitudes was it accessible to rifle fire?He made careful notes, identifying eight or nine spots where there appeared to be a lane through the wire and the Claymores and the mines, where an experienced man would travel efficiently; of course, conversely, the other Marines would stay well clear of these areas. He read the land, looking for folds that led out of the camp to the treeline, or a progression of obstacles behind which two men, moving quickly, could transverse on the way to the job. They were the only two men still fighting the war; they were the only two men keeping this place alive. He wondered if the other soldiers knew it. Probably not.Twice, he saw Swagger himself and felt the hot rush of excitement a hunter sees when his prey steps into the kill zone. But alwa... Read more