"The" Snipper.

Dice que mató a 255 personas en Irak y que no se arrepiente.

"La leyenda", "el exterminador" y "el diablo de Ramadi" son sólo algunos de los apodos por los que se conoce al francotirador estadounidense Chris Kyle.

Oficialmente se le adjudican 150 víctimas, una cifra que supera el récord anterior, de 109, alcanzado por un francotirador durante la Guerra de Vietnam.Entre 1999 y 2009, el entonces oficial del pelotón Charly, tercer grupo de la fuerza de élite estadounidense conocida como Navy SEALs, se ganó la reputación de ser el francotirador más letal en toda la historia del grupo.

Pero Kyle afirma que el número es mayor. Sólo en su segunda batalla en Fallujah, a finales de 2004, dice haber dado muerte a 40 enemigos.

En "American Sniper", un libro publicado recientemente en EE.UU. por la editorial HarperCollins, Kyle relata con lujo de detalles el trabajo que desempeñó como combatiente en Irak :

We were on the roof of an old run­down build­ing at the edge of a town the Marines were go­ing to pass through. The wind kicked dirt and pa­pers across the bat­tered road be­low us. The place smelled like a sew­er—the stench of Iraq was one thing I’d nev­er get used to.

“Marines are com­ing,” said my chief as the build­ing be­gan to shake. “Keep watch­ing.”

I looked through the scope. The on­ly peo­ple who were mov­ing were the wom­an and maybe a child or two near­by.

I watched our troops pull up. Ten young, proud Marines in uni­form got out of their ve­hi­cles and gath­ered for a foot pa­trol. As the Amer­icans or­ga­nized, the wom­an took some­thing from be­neath her clothes, and yanked at it.

She’d set a grenade. I didn’t re­al­ize it at first.

“Looks yel­low,” I told the chief, de­scrib­ing what I saw as he watched him­self. “It’s yel­low, the body—”

“She’s got a grenade,” said the chief. “That’s a Chi­nese grenade.”

“Shit.”

“Take a shot.”

“But—”

“Shoot. Get the grenade. The Marines—”

I hes­itat­ed. Some­one was try­ing to get the Marines on the ra­dio, but we couldn’t reach them. They were com­ing down the street, head­ing to­ward the wom­an.

“Shoot!” said the chief.

I pushed my fin­ger against the trig­ger. The bul­let leapt out. I shot. The grenade dropped. I fired again as the grenade blew up.

It was the first time I’d killed any­one while I was on the sniper ri­fle. And the first time in Iraq—and the on­ly time—I killed any­one oth­er than a male com­bat­ant.

It was my du­ty to shoot, and I don’t re­gret it. The wom­an was al­ready dead. I was just mak­ing sure she didn’t take any Marines with her.

(...)

Kyle se enorgullece de haber matado a un hombre a una distancia de 2.100 metros, en Ciudad Sadr, un distrito en los suburbios de Bagdad, en 2008.

(D.F. Acotación: El record en distancia es del 2010, 2200 metros, 2 blancos. Así que el suyo debió de serlo hasta esa fecha.)