Filed to story: American Sniper: The Last Round (Carl Oliver) Book PDF Free
AGENT MEMPHIS
: Base, goddammit, I have him, I have him, I-
BASE: No authorization. Hold it, Charlie Four, I can’t let you shoot, I-
AGENT MEMPHIS
: [garbled]-have it, dammit, I can-
BASE
: Negative, negative, Charlie Two, can you give me a visual?
AGENT O’BRIAN
: I can’t see his gun, Base, I, oh, Christ, he’s going to fire-
BASE
: [garbled] Shoot, green light, fire, goddammit, take his ass down-
AGENT MEMPHIS
: [garbled]
BASE
: God, you hit the girl, he hit a girl, oh, Jesus, in the back-
AGENT O’BRIAN
: Suspect is firing on his hostages, Jesus, will somebody hit him, Nick, hit him, hit him, hit him!
AGENT MEMPHIS
: I can’t see, he’s behind, oh, Jesus, he’s shooting them, I can’t get another shot, oh, Jesus, help them, help them, somebody, help them!
AGENT O’BRIAN
: He just blew his own head away. [obscenity], Nick, he put that gunbarrel in his mouth and blew his [obscenity] head away, he-
BASE
: Get those people medical aid, get those people medical aid, Jesus Christ, get those;-
AGENT MEMPHIS: Shit.
That was enough. Why hadn’t Memphis had a spotter, someone sitting next to him up there? Sniping was a two-man job, or it was a one-man, on his lonesome, job. It wasn’t for a guy with a radio playing in his ear. And Base. Base was the real enemy; Base had made it impossible for the guy to hit that shot, blabbering away like an old woman.
“They fucked him, but good,” said Carl through tight lips. He thought of the poor jerk, watching the great Tulsa massacre through his scope, helpless, enraged, and most of all unforgivingly furious at himself for having missed the shot and hit the woman.
“What happened to him?”
“He married the woman he hit. He quadded her, and he married her. Still in the Bureau, with a poor woman in a wheelchair to care for the rest of his life.”
Well, here’s to you, Nick Memphis, thought Carl. If I were still a drinking man, I’d lift a glass to you, and if I ever become one another time, then I’ll lift one for you too.
“It’s remarkable how institutions reveal themselves under stress,” said Hatcher. “See, the Bureau is basically a bureaucracy, and under everything it does, there’s a bureaucratic imperative. So Base had to monitor Memphis, even at the moment of firing. Had to, neurotically, pathologically. That was Base’s first operating principle, to cover his own ass. And poor Memphis, being a team guy, even though the solo artist, poor Memphis played along. And in so doing, completely compromised his shot.”
There was a pause.
“But Mr. Oliver, you didn’t. Because you’re not a member of a team, and you have no norms and traditions to live up to. You can just go for it. You see through to the necessary which is utmost concentration. That shot was probably within the furthest reaches of Memphis’s envelope, and under perfect circumstances, he’d have made it. But he got fucked. We tried to fuck you, and you just sailed on through it. Man, you whacked Willie Downing good.”
There were several other fans clustered around Carl, besides the gooney Hatcher. He could sense their admiration, and despised them for it.
“Now, Mr. Oliver, we’ve got one more test for you. Do you still want to play?”
Carl launched another gob into the dust, queerly uncomfortable but not entirely displeased with the awe that was being thrust upon him.
“I’ll take another shot,” he said. “Maybe I’ll get lucky again.”
“This one is straight up your alley. It’s pure sniper war. This one is based on an incident that took place outside Medell?n, in Colombia, in 1988. It’s highly classified so I’ve got to ask you never to disclose specifics to anybody. Fair enough?”
“I’m just here to shoot, not talk.”
“As I explain it to you, I think you’ll understand the need for delicacy in the matter. It involves a DEA agent who took a fourteen-hundred-yard shot at a drug dealer who was responsible for the murder of a DEA team. The guy had fantastic security, bunches of Colombians packing a lot of automatic heat. And the word was out, if anybody tried to take the guy down, the Colombians would just start blasting. So, reluctantly and unofficially, DEA decided to take the guy out with a minimum of fuss. Highly illegal, but it was felt a message had to be sent to certain parties in Colombia.”
“So it was a straight hit?” Carl asked.