Dan Simmons - Darwin's Blade

Even from several hundred feet up, the meadow looked smooth enough. Dar was wise to the lie of that appearance: there would be large rocks and small boulders, gullies and rock-dense shrubs, and probably larger obstacles. Whatever the Bell Ranger hit, it hit hard, the front of the skids digging in and the helicopter going nose over in an instant, the freewheeling rotors slamming into the earth one second later and sending a cloud of dust a hundred feet into the air.

Through that dust Dar could make out the Bell Ranger tumbling end over end, the tail boom ripping free, the cockpit bubble smashing inward. The sound was audible and terrible even from two hundred feet above it all. Then the mass of twisted fuselage came to a stop against two larger boulders about a hundred yards downhill. There was a lesser noise to the south and Dar twisted just in time to see the folded mass of the Twin Astir disappear into the tall pine trees several hundred yards away.

Dar concentrated on trying to land gently, showing Syd how to do it by example. It was not much of an example. He ended up hitting a thick willow crotch first and catapulting head over heels into the weeds, coming to rest on his back with the chute dragging him across the slope. Syd landed gently fifty feet uphill…on her feet. She took two hops and stood there, apparently dazed but certainly in one piece.

Dar struggled out of his harness and jumped to his feet to help her out of her gear before the wind came up and started dragging her back up the slope. Suddenly everything began to spin again. He decided to sit down for a second until the movement stopped, and he had no sooner flopped on his butt than Syd was there—free of her harness and helping him disentangle his feet from the chute fabric billowing all around him.

“Come on,” she said, and the two of them started moving down the hill toward the debris field of the Bell Ranger.

Syd paused to look at the tail boom and mangled rotor—pieces of their sailplane’s wing still entangled—but Dar stupidly jogged the last hundred feet. He could smell the raw stink of aviation fuel in the breeze and knew that if anything ignited the passenger cabin, anyone surviving the crash would have done so in vain.

The cockpit was completely smashed in. The pilot was dead—still in his harness and seat—eviscerated and almost decapitated by the twisted Plexiglas and metal floor. Dar could not see in the back. Fuel was running freely from the wreck. He pulled himself up the skids of the toppled machine and stood on the main cabin, looking down into the backseat. Constanza was not there.

“Dar!” Syd shouted from seventy-five feet uphill, and then froze.

Tony Constanza had just staggered from behind the larger of the two boulders. He was battered and bloody, his suit jacket and shirt almost torn off, but he was pointing the AK-47 assault rifle at Dar.

“Freeze!” shouted Syd, going into a crouching stance and aiming the little Sig-Sauer.

Constanza gave her a fleeting glance. He was not eight feet from Dar and the Kalashnikov automatic weapon was aimed at Dar’s chest.

I can jump him, Dar thought muddily. No, you can’t, asshole, was the more clear mental reply.

“You going to shoot me with that little thing from way back there, bitch?” shouted Constanza. “Not before I cut this motherfucker in two. Drop your gun, cunt.”

Hearing that word almost made Dar leap. The AK-47 kept him standing in place.

Syd lowered her weapon.

“No!” shouted Dar.

“I said drop it, bitch,” screamed Constanza, raising the assault rifle’s muzzle toward Dar’s face.

Syd brought the Sig-Sauer back up and fired three times, the shots so close together that they sounded like one continuous hammering to Dar. The first bullet blew Tony Constanza’s left knee into a flap of red meat and white gristle; the second struck him high in the left leg; the third hit him in the left buttock and swung him around.

The AK-47 emptied half its banana clip into the dirt.

Dar jumped down and kicked the weapon away. Syd bounded down the hill in great strides, keeping her pistol trained on the screaming, rolling man the whole way.

“Help me, Jesus fuck,” said Constanza as she slid to a stop next to him. “You shot my balls off, you bitch.”

“Not likely,” said Syd. She kicked him over on his belly, held the pistol to the back of his head as she expertly patted him down, and then pulled his wrists behind him and cuffed him.

“Syd,” said Dar softly, “didn’t they train you at Quantico to shoot for center body mass at that pistol distance?”

“Of course they did,” said the chief investigator. “But we need this guy alive.” She holstered her weapon. “Is this the only way you know how to deal with felons?” she said. “By crashing into them?”

Dar shrugged. “It’s what I know best.” He knelt next to the whining man. “He’s going to bleed to death from that thigh wound,” said Dar, “if we don’t do something.”

“Yes,” agreed Syd, with no emotion visible on her face.

Dar held Constanza still while Syd removed the man’s belt and lashed it tight high on his upper thigh, using it as a tourniquet. He screamed when Syd put full pressure on the belt, and then he fainted.

Dar sat heavily on the dry grass. “He’s still going to bleed to death before anyone finds us. It’ll be hours before Steve or Ken gets worried.”

Syd shook her head. “Sometimes, Darwin, my dear, you are such a Luddite.” She took her cell phone out of her vest pocket and punched a speed-dial number. “Warren,” she said. “Jim…Syd Olson here. Yeah. Well, we’ve got Tony Constanza with us, but he’s hurt pretty bad. If he’s going to be our star witness, you’d better get a medevac helicopter to…” She lowered the phone. “Where the hell are we, Dar?”

“East face of Mount Palomar,” said Dar. “About the four-thousand-foot level. The helicopter has a box of colored flares in the back…Tell Warren that we’ll pop smoke when we hear the dust-off chopper.”

“Did you get all that, Jim?” said Syd. “OK. Yeah…we’ll sit tight.” She looked at Dar. “They’re sending a Marine medical chopper from Twenty-nine Palms.”

“Tell him that this area is thick with rattlesnakes,” said Dar.

“We’ll sit tight,” repeated Syd, “but Dar says that this hill is rife with rattlesnakes, so please tell the Marines to move their asses if you want your witness and his captors alive.” She rang off.

They looked at each other, at the unconscious gunman, and then at each other again. They were both wet with sweat, blue with bruises, red from blood flowing from small cuts and gashes, and sticky with dust. Suddenly they grinned at each other.

“God, you’re beautiful,” said Syd.

“I was just going to say that to you,” said Dar.

Then they were holding each other and kissing so passionately that a stray boot almost woke up the moaning but still unconscious hit man.

Almost but not quite.

Dar was invited to be in on the arrests, but he declined. He had work to do. He heard the details later.

In England, Syd explained later, the police prefer to wait for a suspect to enter his or her home before making an arrest. There is less chance of violence and of innocent bystanders being hurt that way. In America, of course, exactly the opposite is true. A home, all too frequently in America, is an arsenal and fortress. American cops prefer to make arrests in semipublic but controlled places, where the suspect can be—at the very least—outgunned. The exception in this case was to be the ranch house where the five Russians—including Zuker and Yaponchik—were known to be hiding out and where the FBI wanted to hit them with surprise and overwhelming force.