#27 Targeting

by Matthew Brennan

Like mosquitos to body heat, the sniper’s eyes, scope, and barrel turned to the pinprick of light flaring up through the rain. Many soldiers now were daytime smokers, indoor smokers, lighting up in hidden corners or in places they believed were safe. Some were. But there were still a few who couldn’t wait a whole night, who didn’t believe snipers were patient enough to wait for them in this rain, or couldn’t see. But Sean could see, and Sean could wait. Had waited, arriving to this hillside at dusk when color and motion were harder to see, had lain out through the dark and the rain, watching. Now he had a mark, one more second to wait and he would have his target, too. A match’s flame was a point; the tip of the cigarette, igniting to orange, was a second, forming a line leading to his target. There . . . match to cigarette moved to the left, setting a dusty glow against the lips and cheek—a pinpoint in the eyes—of the target. He adjusted his aim the length of a cigarette, then the length of a cheekbone, having already accounted for wind and rain and distance, preferring nighttime hunting for its lack of faces, and fired. Eye still to his scope, Sean watched the shadow fall, the still-lit match arcing down toward the ground, clasped in the dead man’s hand, where it landed, outstretched beyond the overhang of the roof, extinguished in the rain.