Free I Hate Martin Amis et al. by Peter Barry

direction they want, many staying where they are overnight. But this other sniper was too close. Snipers are like large predatory animals. We need a lot of space between each other. Birds, small mammals, squirrels and suchlike can live surprisingly close to each other, even in adjoining trees. They don’t need a lot of territory. But lions, tigers, hippos, elephants – even the bears that are said to still roam these hills – they’re not keen to brush up against their neighbours. They need their space, they want air. It’s the same with snipers: we like a few hundred yards between us, then there’s no overlapping of interests, no conflict, and we’re not a menace to each other.
    Work it out. The telescopic sight I’m using magnifies by the power of six. It places someone who is three hundred yards away from me just fifty yards away. Someone who is fifty yards from me might as well be in the same room. I can see the colour of his eyes and the stubble on his chin. So I’m not too happy being that close to another killing machine, even if he’s on the same side as me. I never forget: all that can beat a sniper is another sniper. Already I’ve learnt not to trust anyone.
    The fact is, we had our own targets, my neighbour and I. I always divide up my area of operations as if I were slicing a cake. I’m at the centre, and the thin slices fan outwards as far as the eye can see. There were the bus and train stations, the National Museum, the Holiday Inn hotel, the mustard-yellow hotel where overseas journalists stay, and behind that, twin office towers. If I could shoot someone near the hotel and on Snipers’ Alley – so-called because it’s the main road that leads out of town to the airport and is open to all of us up in the hills – there was a good chance of making it onto the evening news back home. It was even possible that my parents, sitting in front of their telly, might see one of my victims crumple to the pavement. Look at our son. Doing a fine job, isn’t he? Gone and hit another one. Makes you proud . Some of the overseas news cameramen, I’ve been told, leave their videos running all day, covering the intersection in front of the Holiday Inn hotel, hoping they’ll catch the actual moment someone is shot and killed. Ideally, they’d like to recreate Robert Capa’s photograph of the soldier killed in the Spanish Civil War. They’d make a tidy sum for such a scoop, a well-paid, legitimate snuff movie.
    My neighbouring sniper must have been facing the city proper, including the old town, the main post office, the City Hall and the National Library, and mosques and offices. This means he’d definitely shot someone in my sector. What’s more, and even more worrying, is the fact he obviously saw me shooting around the cigarette smoker, intentionally missing him. I wondered what would happen if he told everyone back in camp.
    Despite the cold, I was almost blinded by sweat. The cigarette smoker lay motionless. He wasn’t about to inhale again, that was for sure. I looked towards the open door, fearful that my failure, or indecision, had been witnessed. I couldn’t believe I’d failed again. I told myself that I’d been close to succeeding. I’d just been unnerved by the fact the man hadn’t been running, hadn’t been trying to hide. I’d been frozen by his immobility, by his naked vulnerability. It would have been too close to murder. I needed him to have run, to have been like one of those rabbits in Mr Sinclair’s field darting – no, haring – for the safety of its burrow. Then it might have been possible.

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    I t’s his farm now. I don’t know when Mr Sinclair died, but that Andy now lives there with his mother, his wife and his young son, I do know that. When I last visited my parents, I saw him. Ran into him in the centre of town, doing his Christmas shopping,