Dan Simmons - Darwin's Blade

Dar could see no one moving in any of the rooms, nor anyone visible in couches or chairs, even though a sixty-four-inch high-definition projection TV was flickering away in one of the lower-level rooms. The magazine article had not exaggerated when it had raved about the forty-foot-high window walls on the main level; they jutted out like a ship’s bow over the ravine to Dar’s west. As always when confronted with such architectural monstrosities, Dar’s thoughts were Who the hell changes the light bulbs in the ceiling and washes those windows? He had come to peace with the realization that he was a Philistine of practicality at heart.

Right now practicality demanded finding a good place to spend the next twenty-four hours or so. Once planted in a ghillie suit, a sniper did not move in daylight unless there was pressing need to. The idea was to stay prone in one place during all the hours of the day, observing. Dar knew from experience that it was difficult to do this if one staked out one’s position on an anthill or a cactus or too many rocks or on the opening to a rattler’s den.

Dar used the night goggles to search for a place just northeast of Trace’s house—where every window and room on this side was still within view—and found a relatively flat area below the crest of the ridge, tucked in between Spanish bayonet yucca and a large ottoman-sized boulder. Another boulder behind him would shield him from daylight view of anyone strolling idly along the ridgeline. Taller grass in front should make a good viewing blind. His ghillie suit should blend well with the tall but dry tan grass growing along this stretch of hillside. But to make sure, Dar flipped up his night-vision goggles, crouched with his back to the Trace house, and used a tiny, shielded penlight to study every inch of the position. Moving any stone larger than his fingernail—and knowing that even those tiny pebbles left would be well known by sunrise—he did his checklist: fire ants, no; cacti, no; snakes, no; gopher hole, no; dog shit, no; fox den, no; animal tracks, no (it was never smart to set your sniper position on a game trail); and finally, signs of humans—cigarette butts, shell casings, Dairy Queen cups, used condoms—no.

Dar sighed, pulled out his ghillie suit and wrestled himself into it with as little noise as possible, laid his rucksack under the extra camouflaged netting he had brought for that purpose, and lay prone, feeling the padding of the thick canvas on his elbows, knees, and belly, setting his camera with the huge four-hundred-millimeter lens under the ghillie suit next to him, and using the Redfield as his spotting scope. Thus the long night began.

During his training with the 7th Marine Regiment more than two and a half decades earlier, Darwin Minor had been taught how to keep a sniper’s log. He had no pencil and paper with him now, but if he had, the log might have read something like this:

Date: 6/24 (Saturday)

Time: 2300

Place: Hill 1, Finger 1 (coord. 767502)

2310 — First movement in house. Maid leaving.

2345 — Mrs. Dallas Trace (Destiny) enters main room accompanied by a man. The man is blonde, well tanned, a muscle-bound bodybuilder type. Not Mr. Trace. Probably not Yaponchik or Zuker. He looks more like the stereotype of a Beverly Hills pool maintenance man.

2350 — Mrs. Trace and bodybuilder enter upstairs bedroom. Turn on one lamp. Engage in strenuous sexual intercourse.

6/25—Sunday A.M

0005 — Bodybuilder appears ready for nap. Mrs. Trace does not. Previously observed activity begins again.

0030 — Mrs. Trace wakes up bodybuilder and ejects him from room.

0038 — Dallas Trace enters downstairs main room one minute after Mr. Muscles leaves by kitchen door. Trace is accompanied by 4 bodyguards. Photographed everyone with Nikon using 400-mm lens and ultra-high-speed film. Bodyguards appear too young and stupid to be Yaponchik or Zuker.

0045 — Bodyguards check backyard pool area, sweep area with night scope. Had worried about thermal imaging, but hoped that residual heat from boulders would muddy TI scan. Bodyguards use only image intensifiers. They carry Mac-10s.

0050 — DT goes upstairs to check on Mrs. Trace. She is sleeping. Trace goes back downstairs to confer with guards.

0115 — DT makes several phone calls.

0205 — Bodyguards reenter house. DT goes to upstairs bedroom.

0210 — Lights out in bedroom. Guards remain in main room and billiard room. Work in shifts of 2.

0300 — Cramp in left leg only 4 hours into watch. Too old for this crap.

0450 — Predawn light. Make sure ghillie suit and extra camo-cloth covers everything.

0521 — Sunrise. Was freezing all night. Already beginning to get too hot.

0640 — Pissed into small fissure next to boulder without moving. Violates training, but will be damned if I’m going to ruin these new coveralls this early. Glad I fasted and purged system all day Sat.

0715 — No movement in DT house except change of guards. Using polarizers to see through reflection of rising sun. Partially successful.

0735 — Female jogger runs up trail twenty meters above me. Hear her Walkman. Doberman with her. Dog came down to sniff, peed on me. Was called back by jogger.

0930 — Redfield scope sees through kitchen window well enough to spot DT eating large breakfast the maid cooked for him. Mrs. DT still asleep.

1039 — Mrs. DT joins husband in kitchen. DT on phone.

1115 — DT dresses—jeans, cowboy boots, western blue silk shirt, bison vest.

1138 — DT leaves home. 3 of 4 bodyguards go with him.

1222 — Maid leaves. 4th bodyguard led upstairs by Mrs. DT. Strenuous sexual intercourse.

1250 — Bodyguard returns to main room.

1300 — Maid returns.

1430 — Heat very intense. Using water judiciously, but finish second bottle. One left.

1440 — Rattlesnake crawls over my right leg and suns itself on boulder approx. 1 meter to my left.

1630 — Snake leaves immediate area.

1645 —Heavy rain. Visibility still acceptable.

1655 — Last night’s bodybuilder returns. He is the pool man. He hangs around under patio canopy to stay out of rain.

1710 — Mrs. DT leaves with 4th bodyguard. Pool man is called into house by maid. Two engage in strenuous sexual intercourse in video room.

1820 — Rain ends, but rivulets of water are pouring off boulders and through my position. Maid and pool man have left house. No movement visible.

2120 — Last twilight gone because of clouds. Eyes very tired because of scope use. Eyedrops almost gone.

2210 — DT returns with his 4 guards and 5 unidentified men. New men look foreign. 3 of them stay in main room with DT’s regular bodyguards while 2 go upstairs with DT to office.

2245 — Long conversation. DT sits with his back to the glass just like in his Century City office. The 2 men continue standing during the discussion. Shoot 3 rolls of high-speed black-and-white film using bipod to steady 400-mm lens. This is the sniper team: Gregor Yaponchik and Pavel Zuker. Zuker even stands 3 paces back on Yaponchik’s left during discussion, just as a spotter does for his master sniper. Cannot quite read the Russians’ lips—although I can tell that they are speaking English—but I seem to make out the words “Latino” and “Mexican” several times. I assume they are discussing whether my phone call of the night before was a fraud.

2255 — DT is showing the 2 men photographs of lawyer Esposito and me. The photos of me were obviously taken by a long lens—2 outside my San Diego condo and 1 at the Gomez wreck. Last 2 were taken at the cabin. Damn.

2300 — Meeting breaking up. Clear images of Zuker and Yaponchik. The spotter looks nothing like the FBI photo of the man with the beard—he is tall, thin, and clean-shaven, with short-cropped black hair and deeply sunken eyes. He smokes a cigarette during the discussion; I can see the anger on DT’s face as the lawyer gets up to find an ashtray.