such force he shattered several of the man’s teeth. The man yelped, giving up immediately, and released the rifle to hold his face, bringing his knees up into the foetal position in an effort to protect himself from further punishment while he cried some garbled words that could have been in any language. Stratton pulled the weapon away from the man, ripped out the breech, tossed it away, then jammed the end of the barrel between two large rocks and stamped on it fiercely enough to put a kink in it, rendering it inoperable.
The man looked between his fingers at Stratton and his whimpering slowed as he noticed his assailant’s Western features.
‘You ain’t Palestinian,’ he said in what sounded like a New York accent.
Stratton ignored him and moved to where he could see Abed looking up between some rocks. When he saw Stratton, he got to his feet brushing the dust from his clothes.
‘Where you from, man?’ the sniper asked in a pathetic tone, blood seeping from his mouth, the broken teeth giving him pain. Stratton did not answer. ‘If I knew you weren’t Palestinian I’d a never shot at ya. Honest, man.’
‘Why didn’t you ask?’
‘I’m . . . I’m sorry.’
Stratton threw down the gun, his anger melting at the sight of the pitiful creature, a flask and sandwich box beside him. ‘Where you from?’ he asked.
‘Brooklyn. I’m American.’
‘What are you doing here? Hunting out of season in New York?’
‘I’m Jewish, man.’
‘You speak Hebrew?’
‘Some words . . . No.’
Stratton scanned the walls of the settlement in case the shooting had attracted any of the sniper’s friends. There was no sound or movement but prudence dictated that they move on as soon as possible.
Abed climbed over the edge and stood the other side of the sniper, looking down on him. The sniper rolled on to his back to look up at Abed and grew even more frightened at the sight of the Arab. He looked between the two men frantically trying to gauge them.
‘What are you gonna do to me?’
‘You got any other weapons?’ Stratton asked.
The man hesitated before deciding this was not a man to lie to.
‘I gotta semi,’ he said, indicating the left side of his torso.
Stratton leaned down and pulled open the man’s jacket to reveal a steel-coloured semi-automatic pistol in a shoulder holster. He pulled it out of the spring-grip and inspected it. Afghanistan was the last time he had held a Russian 9mm Tokarev. The date on the side was 1938, the same age as the one he had taken off a dead Taliban in Kabul. He removed the magazine to find it full of the peculiar long Tokarev 9mm copper-coated bullets. He pulled back the top slide to find the breech not loaded and repeatedly slid it back and forth to test the return spring, the mechanism designed to pick up another bullet and shove it into the breech after the previous one had been fired - the return spring was one of the weaknesses of old semi-automatic pistols and this one was almost twice Stratton’s age. It felt strong enough. Perhaps it had recently been replaced. Stratton slid the magazine back into the bottom of the pistol grip, cocked it, putting a round into the breech, and let his arm fall to his side, the barrel, perhaps coincidentally, aimed at the man’s crotch. The man knew his weapon well enough. The Tokarev had no safety catch and when the hammer was back it was ready to fire at the touch of the trigger.
‘Spare clips?’ Stratton asked, using the American word for magazine.
The man kept one eye on the pistol and one on Stratton as he quickly reached into a pocket to produce a spare magazine filled with bullets.
‘These nine mil. longs are hard to come by.Where’d you get them?’ Stratton asked.
‘A guy in the settlement. He can get any weapon you want.’
Stratton placed the magazine in a pocket.
‘What are you gonna do to me?’ the man asked again, this time expressing more concern.
Stratton looked at Abed as if to ask him for an answer. Abed looked away. It was not his place to say, but if it were up to him he would leave the man alone. He no longer had the stomach for killing. He would never kill again unless he had no choice, he was sure of that.
Stratton had no intention of harming the sniper any further. For some strange reason he felt something of a hypocrite even considering it. He was