25.12.2014 Views

American Sniper - Boekje Pienter

American Sniper - Boekje Pienter

American Sniper - Boekje Pienter

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

Create successful ePaper yourself

Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.

156/439<br />

laid them out on the door. That made a semi-comfortable, elevated<br />

bed to lie on while working the gun. A rolled mat gave us a place to<br />

rest the end of our guns on.<br />

We opened the window and were ready to shoot.<br />

We decided we’d work three hours on, three hours off, rotating<br />

back and forth. Ray took the first watch.<br />

I started rummaging through the complex to see if I could find any<br />

cool shit—money, guns, explosives. The only thing I found worth acquisitioning<br />

was a handheld Tiger Woods golf game.<br />

Not that I was authorized to take it, or even did take it, officially. If<br />

I had taken it, I would have played it the rest of the deployment. If I’d<br />

done that, it might explain why I am actually pretty good at the game<br />

now.<br />

If I had taken it.<br />

I got on the .300 Win Mag in late afternoon. The city I was looking out<br />

at was brownish-yellow and gray, almost as if everything was shaded<br />

the light sepia of an old photograph. Many, though not all, of the<br />

buildings were made of bricks or covered with stucco in this same color.<br />

The stones and roadways were gray. A fine mist of desert dust<br />

seemed to hover over the houses. There were trees and other vegetation,<br />

but the overall landscape looked like a collection of dully painted<br />

boxes in the desert.<br />

Most of the buildings were squat houses, two stories high, occasionally<br />

three or four. Minarets or prayer towers poked out of the grayness<br />

at irregular intervals. There were mosque domes scattered<br />

around—here a green egg flanked by a dozen smaller eggs, there a<br />

white turnip glinting white in the sinking sun.

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!