Dan Simmons - Darwin's Blade

Dar felt no fury, no approaching katalepsis . He had damped his feelings down for so many years—turning to the humor found only in irony for his salvation—that he felt no anger controlling him now. But as he lay on the mountainside waiting—he had to admit that his hope was that the Russians might come for him. Despite all logic to the contrary, the hope burned in him like a cold fire.

Every time Dar had ever visited an accident scene, he had thought of Epictetus. Tell me where I can escape death: discover for me the country, show me the men to whom I must go, whom death does not visit. Discover to me a charm against death. If I have not one, what do you wish me to do? I cannot escape from death, but shall I die lamenting and trembling?…Therefore if I am able to change externals according to my wish, I change them: but if I cannot, I am ready to tear the eyes out of him who hinders me.

Epictetus might have scorned the impulse, but Dar had to admit that he was quite ready to tear the eyes out of the Russians if they came at him again. Thinking this, he felt the long K-Bar knife in its sheath on his belt. He had spent an hour honing that knife the previous evening and another hour spraying and coating it, even though the thought of sliding cold steel into another human being’s body made him want to throw up on the spot.

Some person asked, “How then shall every man among us perceive what is suitable to his character?” How, he replied, does the bull alone, when the lion has attacked, discover his own powers and put himself forward in defense of the whole herd?

Damn Epictetus anyway. Dar did not consider himself a brave man…nor a bull. And he had no herd to protect from the lion.

Syd, came the thought, unbidden. But he had to smile at that. Even as he lay here, hiding in his nook in the rocks in the middle of the night, forty miles from the city and danger, Syd was preparing to assault the bad guys. It was she who was protecting the herd from the lion.

Dar spent the hours shifting to get comfortable, keeping watch through his goggles and monitor, listening to the breeze stir the pines (while instinctively estimating the wind velocity), and generally deconstructing the philosophy upon which he had based his entire life.

Thou art a little soul bearing about a corpse, Epictetus had taught. Having seen so many fresh corpses in his life, Dar could hardly argue. But during the last few weeks—during the moments with Syd—he had not felt so much the corpse animated by only a little spark of soul. He had to admit to himself…he had felt alive.

By 5:00 A.M., tired and sore but still wide-awake, Dar had reviewed all of his ontological and epistemological underpinnings and realized that he was an idiot.

Be like the promontory against which the waves continually break, Epictetus had taught, but it stands firm and tames the fury of the water around it.

Well, fuck that, thought Dar. Didn’t Epictetus ever go to the seashore? Didn’t he know that sooner or later every promontory gets battered down and washed away? Probably the Aegean did not have waves like the ones Dar watched every week at the edge of the Pacific. The sea always wins. Gravity always wins.

After more than ten years of trying to be a promontory, Dar was tired of it.

Predawn light crept over the hillside. Dar put away his night-vision goggles but kept toggling the camera views. The access road was empty. The cabin was empty. The field below was empty. The sniper sites were empty.

By 7:00 A.M., Dar felt a surge of relief mixed with a strange disappointment. The raids were all scheduled to have begun by now—Syd had told him that much—and he understood that the Russians were to be rounded up before the American civilians.

By 7:30 A.M., Dar was tempted to say the hell with it and just hike down the hill, prepare himself a big breakfast, call Syd, and get a few hours’ sleep. He decided to wait a bit longer. Syd would still be busy now.

At 7:35 A.M., Camera One showed movement on the driveway. A huge, black Suburban with tinted windows moved slowly past the camera position, stopped, and then backed into the slight turnout across from the surveillance tree.

Five Russians got out. They all wore black sweaters and slacks, but Dar recognized Yaponchik and Zuker at once. The older Russian—he still reminded Dar of Max von Sydow—seemed almost sad as he handed out the weapons to the others. The three younger men headed down the road and out of immediate camera range carrying their AK-47 assault rifles. Even on the small video screen, Dar could see that they were also armed with knives and semiautomatic pistols on their belts.

Yaponchik and Zuker also had holstered sidearms, but they were the last to pull their weapons from the back of the van, two Snayperskaya Vintovka Dragunova —sniper rifles of the type that had killed Tom Santana and the three FBI agents.

Dar had to smile. Even with all their money, the Russians stuck with the weapons they knew best. Sentimental, he thought, feeling the wood stock of his own antediluvian sniper rifle. Dar saw that both weapons had ten-round detachable magazines and a combination flash suppressor and compensator to reduce muzzle jump and flash. He had noticed that the other three Russians’ AK-47s were also fitted with suppressors. Evidently this group wanted to stop by, kill Dar Minor silently, and get on their way.

Dar knew that the SVD had some serious limitations as a sniper rifle. It was accurate enough out to a maximum range of six hundred meters, but at eight hundred meters, it had only a 50 percent chance of hitting a stationary, man-sized target. Theoretically, this gave Dar’s longer-range M40 a great advantage. But unfortunately, it was only three hundred yards to the cabin and less than that between the two sniper roosts—his and the one Yaponchik and Zuker seemed headed for.

Dar used the cameras to watch the Russians deploy. One of the men with a submachine gun appeared on the southern slope below the cabin, crawling through the high grass. Two entered the woods above the cabin. Yaponchik and Zuker came into camera range high up on the hill…paused…and then selected the less obvious of the two sniper positions. Dar’s video camera had a perfect view as the two older Russians settled into the tiny redoubt and ranged in their weapons and spotting gear.

Dar’s heart was pounding wildly. Time to call in the cavalry, he thought. He pulled out his cell phone, checked that the charge was good—he had brought an extra battery—and lifted his thumb to punch Special Agent Warren’s preprogrammed emergency number. That was when more movement on the video screen caught his eye.

Dar had set the monitor to cycle through the five camera positions. Now he could see Syd Olson’s Taurus driving past the parked Suburban, pausing, and then driving on to the cabin. Right toward the waiting Russians.

Dar immediately tapped the preprogrammed number for Syd’s cell phone. She did not answer. He let it keep ringing while he slid forward and studied the area around the cabin with the gyrostabilized Leica DBII glasses.

There she was.

Syd had gotten out of the Taurus with a Heckler & Koch submachine gun raised and ready, her shoulder bag slung behind her. She was approaching the cabin stealthily, and Dar guessed that she had muted her phone or turned the damned thing off. She was still wearing a Kevlar vest from the FBI raid, but the black body armor was hanging loose, not tightened by the side Velcro. A perfect through-the-ribs heart shot at this range.

Dar felt his pulse racing and his mind going blank. He had lost track of the two Russians with their assault weapons—they were somewhere in the woods not far from Syd—and he could think of no way to warn her.