Dan Simmons - Darwin's Blade

Dar sighted through the Redfield scope, still watching the TV monitor—which had miraculously survived the ricochets so far—with his open left eye. As with all scientists using a microscope or telescope, Dar had been taught as a sniper how to concentrate with his scope eye while keeping the other one open to aid in ranging and peripheral vision.

The Russian in the cabin appeared to have been distracted by the .50-caliber slugs. Now he got to one knee and peered into the dark basement opening, obviously hoping to see a body to report to Zuker and Yaponchik before hastily leaving the area.

The Russian leaned forward, peering down the ladder. Suddenly there was a flash and the gunman’s white oval of a face on the monitor became an irregular patchwork of grays and blacks. The body flew backward and landed with arms open, AK-47 flying across the floor.

Dar held his fire and watched. Bullets whined above him and one ricocheted no more than a millimeter from his right ear. A calm part of Dar’s mind was reporting to him that the sniper fire against him had lessened in volume. Obviously there was only one SVD firing against his position now—which meant that either Yaponchik or Zuker, probably Zuker, had moved out to flank him—but the main focus of Dar’s attention at the moment was that black square on the video monitor.

Syd’s head and shoulders came up quickly, a shotgun even more quickly. She swiveled, holding aim, seeing the three dead Russians but checking every visible corner of the cabin.

Dar had to grin. She had found the Remington 870 shotgun he had left in the hallway, probably opened the safe-room door and perhaps hidden in the room or at the very least behind the steel door during the grenade and AK-47 attack, and then had come out to meet her attacker.

Dar reached for the cell phone on his belt to call her. The cell phone had been shot away.

Shit.

He saw her run to the receiver of the phone still lying on the floor, but then he saw that the phone itself had been blasted to pieces by one of his .50-caliber rounds. He watched her toss the receiver aside and then crawl over to the Russian with the missing foot. She pulled a radio from his belt and the microphone from where it was strapped high on his left shoulder. Dar could see her listening and he knew that she could speak Russian.

Good girl, he thought, glad that Syd could not hear the sexist comment. There was no way that he and she could communicate right now, but at least she might get some information on what the two surviving Russians were planning up the hill.

Which reminded Dar to abandon this position before Zuker showed up behind him and opened fire into the stone trench.

The SVD fire was still slamming off the rocks inches above Dar’s head, and it was so wonderfully aimed that Dar instinctively felt that it was Yaponchik, the top shot, who had stayed behind, ordering his spotter to flank Dar.

Of course, Dar had taken some care to choose a position where he could not be flanked that easily. His field of view and easy killing zone still commanded the area near and above the north side of the cabin, so it was doubtful if Zuker would head downhill in that direction to cross the ravine where it shallowed out. There was zero chance that Zuker was going to climb down into the ravine and simply hope there was some way up its vertical east wall where Dar would not hear him coming. So Zuker had left the sniper roost and was working his way north and east, closer to the ridgeline, almost certainly moving very slowly through the thick forest and foliage there, hoping or knowing that there would be an easy crossing somewhere up there where the ravine narrowed and was at its deepest. Dar knew that the Russians had been here before, so he assumed that they had checked out the entire area; any decent sniper would have. That meant that they both knew about the fallen log that crossed the ravine near the waterfall—Reichenbach Falls, Dar had unofficially named it. The wide fir had fallen many years before, and was slippery with spray from the falls and overgrown with moss. The walls of the ravine opened onto it from small, thickly shrubbed gullies on either side. Dar estimated the ravine to be about sixty feet deep there, with overhanging ledges and nothing but ragged boulders below.

Tucking the Light Fifty under the ledge to protect it from Yaponchik’s deliberate ricochets, Dar glanced a final time at the monitor—Syd was crouched near the window with the Remington shotgun at port arms, obviously awaiting developments. He took his M40 rifle and crawled slowly backward and out of the trench, sliding below the ridgeline and rocks there, out of Yaponchik’s field of fire for the first time.

He spent ten seconds checking to see how badly wounded he was. The backs of his legs burned as if someone had branded him, but the blood was already coagulating—stiffening his ripped trousers—so it couldn’t be a serious wound. A quick pat confirmed that it was indeed a groove-wound, shallow, deeper in his right leg than his left. He was also surprised to discover that the ricochet that had destroyed his cell phone had also passed through his web belt and embedded itself in his right side, directly under the skin above his hipbone. It hurt no more than a bruise, but Dar knew that it had driven quite a bit of dirty fabric into him, so it would have to be cleaned and dressed and the slug removed if he was to avoid infection.

I’ll deal with that later, Dar thought, and began running north through the woods, keeping his rifle ready, making as little sound as possible in such thick woods. He made sure that his head was always below both the rocks along the ravine and line of sight to Yaponchik. His legs burned and he realized that the groove-wound was as much along the cheeks of his ass as through the backs of his legs. How undignified, he thought. He listened to his own panting and to the jingling of extra magazines and M40 ammo in his camo-fatigue pants and blouse.

Dar knew that he was in a race for his life. If Zuker had jogged to the log bridge, he would have arrived first, found a good firing position, and could easily kill Dar as he came crashing uphill through the trees. But Dar’s subliminal memory confirmed that Yaponchik had not been firing solo for very long before Dar had noticed it and bailed from his position. Most important, snipers were trained for stealth and caution, and it took a fool to run blindly through the woods the way Dar was. Zuker, Dar knew, was nowhere near as desperate as Dar was at that moment, and odds were that he would not be moving so fast.

Dar reached the shallow gully—not more than a meter and a half deep, filled with ferns and brambles—which ran about four meters to the fallen tree over the ravine. He was alive. So far, so good. But he was panting so hard that he could not hear if anyone was in the weeds here with him. Dar undid the clasp on his K-Bar knife—feeling lucky that the knife scabbard had not been shot off his belt along with the cell phone—and began crawling toward the tree, rifle aimed.

There was no one else in the gully on this side. The log looked longer and narrower than Dar remembered it, and the ravine much deeper. Spray rose from the rocks below. Dar knew that this fissure, not as deep but still formidable, ran several hundred yards north, almost all the way to the ridgeline. To cross there, a sniper would have to come out of the trees and expose himself along that ridgeline.

Dar caught his breath and peered through the ferns at the twenty feet of fallen log. The mossy surface was wet. Only one old branch might serve as a handhold along the way, and Dar was certain that it was rotten and would not hold his weight if he went off. He had often noted this log in his hikes up the hill, but he had never crossed it. Why should he? It would be a profoundly stupid thing to do.