Billy Summers

Other than my rifle, the biggest piece of equipment we had in the bucket with us was the M151, also known as the Spotter’s Friend. Taco set up the tripod and I shuffled out of his way as best I could. The platform bounced a little and Taco told me to hold still unless I wanted to put a bullet in the sign over the shop door instead of in Jassim’s head. I stayed as still as I could while Taco did his thing, making calculations and muttering to himself.

Lieutenant Colonel Jamieson had estimated the distance as 1,200 yards. Taco took his readings on a kid bouncing a ball in front of Pronto Pronto Photo Photo and called it 1,340 yards. A long shot for sure, but on a windless day like that one in early April, a high confidence one. I had made longer, and we had all heard stories of world-class snipers making shots at twice that distance. Of course I couldn’t count on Jassim being perfectly stationary, like the head on a paper target. That concerned me, but the fact that he was a human being with a beating heart and a living brain didn’t. He was a Judas goat who had lured four men into an ambush, guys guilty of nothing but delivering food. He was a bad guy and needed to be put down.

Around quarter past nine, Jassim came out of his store. He was wearing a long blue shirt like a dashiki and baggy white pants. Today he was wearing a knitted red cap instead of a blue topper. That was a wonderful sight marker. I started to line up the shot, but Jassim just shooed the ball-bouncing kid away with a swat on the butt and went back inside.

‘Well doesn’t that suck,’ Taco said.

We waited. Young men went into Pronto Pronto Photo Photo. Young men came out. They were laughing and scuffling and grabassing around as young men do all over the world, from Kabul to Kansas City. Some of them had no doubt been shooting up those Blackwater trucks with their AKs just a couple of days before. Some of them were undoubtedly firing at us seven months later as we went from block to block, cleaning them out. For all I know, some of them were in what we called the Funhouse, where everything that could go wrong did go wrong.

Ten o’clock came, then ten-fifteen. ‘Maybe he’s taking his smoke break out back today,’ Taco said.

Then, at ten-thirty, the door of Pronto Pronto Photo Photo opened and Ammar Jassim came out with two of his young men. I sighted in. I saw them laughing and talking. Jassim clapped one of them on the back and the two men strolled off with their arms around each other’s shoulders. Jassim took a pack of cigarettes from his pants pocket. I was in the optics and could read Marlboro and see the two trademark gold lions. Everything was clear: his bushy eyebrows, his lips as red as a woman’s wearing lipstick, his salt-and-pepper beard stubble.

Taco was sighting with the M151, now handheld. ‘Fucker’s a dead ringer for Yessir I’m-a Fat.’

‘Shut up, Tac.’

I laid the crosshairs on the knitted cap and waited for Jassim to light up. I was willing to allow him one last drag before putting out his lights. He stuck a cigarette in his mouth. He put the pack back into his pocket and came out with a lighter. Not a cheap disposable Bic but a Zippo. He might have purchased it, either in a store or on the black market. It might also have been looted from one of the contractors who had been shot, burned, and hung from the bridge. He flipped it open and a tiny sunstar winked off the top. I saw that. I saw everything. Master Gunny Sergeant Diego Vasquez at Pendleton used to say that a Marine sniper lives for a perfect shot. This one was perfect. He also said, ‘It’s like sex, my little virgins. You will never forget your first.’

I drew in a breath, held it for a five-count, and squeezed the trigger. The recoil hit the hollow of my shoulder. Jassim’s knitted hat flew off and at first I thought I had missed him, maybe only by an inch, but when you’re sniping, an inch might as well be a mile. He just stood there with the cigarette between his lips. Then the lighter fell out of his fingers and the cigarette fell out of his mouth. They landed on the dusty sidewalk. In the movies, the person who gets shot flies back when the bullet hits. That’s rarely how it happens in real life. Jassim actually took two steps forward. By then I could see that it wasn’t just the hat that had come off; the top of his head was inside it.

He went to his knees, then full on his face. People came running.

‘Payback’s a bitch,’ Taco said, and clapped me on the back.

I turned and yelled, ‘Get us down!’

The platform started to descend. It seemed very slow, because the gunfire had begun on the other side of the river. It sounded like fireworks. Taco and I ducked as we left the canvas sand-shield behind, not because ducking made us safer but because it was instinctive. I listened for bullets passing and tried to get ready to be hit, but I didn’t hear anything or feel anything.