As the sun rose the pair started to scan every bit of the city. There were very few people about, mainly because they knew that today Rome was about to turn into the sniper's equivalent of the O.K. Corral. To Walther that was a good thing, for it kept them out of harm's way. He had decided that this was between the four of them and it was unnecessary to draw anyone else into it.

At about seven Walther directed Daniela to look at something interesting that he saw. At first glance Daniela only saw an abandoned house about 400yards away with a garden gone to seed. Then she realized what Walther had seen. In one corner of the garden the dead leaves formed a layer, almost as though someone had put it there to conceal something. Daniela used her scope to examine the leaf litter carefully and somewhere in one of those piles she saw the barely noticeable heel of a boot among the dead leaves. Then, looking around the boot she began to notice details that she never noticed before, like the difference in colour between the deep brown leaves and slightly lighter brown jute fibres or the almost unnoticeable irregularities in the layers of leaf litter. Almost by magic, the entire human outline appeared and Daniela felt that unmistakable sensation of fear.

The man lying among the dead leaves was staring in their direction.

Using her left hand to guide the barrel of her DSR1, she brought the crosshairs to the area where the head appeared to be. Noting the way the winds were blowing the nearby grass and leaves, she shifted the crosshairs about an inch to her right and applied a bit of pressure to the trigger, taking up the first stage.

"Hey, stop," Walter's voice came across as a harsh whisper. "Remember we're looking for two shooters. If you shoot now without finding the other shooter, he'll use the report to figure out where we are and kill us. Hold your fire until a good moment comes."

At that Daniela stopped increasing pressure on the trigger, but she refused to take her finger off the first pressure. Walther could understand, for he was feeling the terror too and he knew it well. At any moment the shooter might just spot something that they carelessly overlooked and both of them would be dead before they knew it. They were caught up in a twisted game of hide and seek where the first one to die loses and with the seeker staring right at them, even the slightest movement would lead to them losing the game.

Time passed agonizingly slowly for Walther and Daniela, whose lives were being gambled on their confidence in their camouflage. Suddenly, a car near the abandoned house started to backfire. Daniela held the rifle firmly into her shoulder, steadied the crosshairs and gently applied an ounce of pressure with her trigger finger.

Walther had heard the car backfiring and through his scope he saw the appearance of a pink mist and in the patch of leaf litter there was a small movement as the man's muscles went limp and he slumped over his rifle. In a low voice Walther whispered to Daniela, "I've got nothing left to teach you. That was brilliant." Underneath the black camo cream, Walther could see a light pink tinge appear on Daniela's cheeks and she reached for the bolt handle and chamber in another round. Normally Walther would have told her to concentrate on the mission but this time he was too relieved to bother. What Daniela had done was to use noises in the environment to mask the report of the rifle, in this case it was the car backfiring. The result is was something akin to attaching a silencer to her rifle, with her neutralizing the shooter and leaving his still-hidden counterpart none the wiser. That may very well have saved both their lives.

Now another problem presented itself. Usually the other shooter would be nearby, but they had examined the layer of dead leaves and couldn't find any sign that might give him away. Now with one of the pair dead, he would be in a state of panic. Walther knew that this made him particularly dangerous because the terror would cause him to instinctively yearn to live. At the same time, he would also become desperate as he sees his options disappear before his eyes. Standing up and walking away certainly wasn't feasible so he would fight his unseen adversary to the bitter end, with desperation causing him to employ new and unorthodox tactics. Definitely not a pleasant opponent to duel with. Since neither side knew where the other was, the duel lapsed once again into another hide-and-seek match with each waiting for the other to make a fatal mistake that would reveal their position.

By about ten that morning, it became apparent to Walther that the duel had to end soon. He was relatively unaffected by the strain of the wait, for he had conducted more than one counter-sniper hunt before and was quite familiar with all the stress that a sniper would face when he is hunting another sniper. He was feeling it all, the paranoia that their adversary was watching them and getting ready to shoot, the terror that any moment his life wasn't certain and not to mention the natural "fight-or-flight" response screaming at him to stand up and run away from it all. Fortunately Walther had experienced it all before and he accepted that it was a normal part of a high-risk sniping operation and shouldn't allow it to affect his shooting or fieldcraft, lest it give his adversary that fatal insight into his position.

However, this was the first time Daniela was doing this and she wasn't as calm. Occasionally Walther stole a few glances at her and noticed that not only was she perspiring heavily, the look in her eyes was of someone who was being taken over by anxiety and fear. The last thing he needed was Daniela to do something dangerous and put everyone in danger. Later the technicians back at SWA would tell him that this was an unusual case of Daniela being programmed to protect her handler from danger but at that point she couldn't do anything about an unseen sniper. That, coupled with the high stress of the mission, gave rise to a conflict within her to obey her handler and leave him in harm's way, or to disobey him and fire an incendiary round into the leaves to burn the shooter out. Of course at that moment Walther was blissfully unaware of all this. All he knew was that his voice comforting her seemed to calm her down and so, while he watched the garden and at the same time gently whispered to her to calm down.

Then he noticed it. There was a slight movement in the leaves. Actually Walther wasn't too sure if that was his imagination or not but what was certain was that he could now see the light of the late morning sun reflecting off a shiny surface in the leaf litter. Seizing the moment, he aimed at the glint, putting his crosshairs a little to the right to compensate for the wind, and increasing pressure on the trigger until his H&K 417 going off gave him a gentle surprise.