Dan Simmons - Darwin's Blade

Dar had to pause a second above the trough in the stone, not just to catch his breath but to wonder at the number of ricochets that had scarred the stone where he had been lying. The poncho and rucksack containing his handmade ghillie suit were shot to tatters. At least two of the Light Fifty magazines had been perforated like tin cans on a shooting range. His video monitor had been blasted to shards by a wayward ricochet—which ruled out Plan A. So much for watching to see when and if Yaponchik reached the Suburban.

Dar jumped into the slit and pulled the .50-caliber Barrett Model 82A1 out from under the rock overhang. The Light Fifty had not been hit. Dar quickly filled his oversized pockets with both SLAP and regular ammo magazines and then began jogging back along the rim to the base of the ravine.

He had forgotten how heavy and unwieldy this so-called Light Fifty was. The ten-power telescopic sight did not make it lighter. While in the Marines, Dar had always pitied the radio men and heavy-weapons guys humping their monsters—PRC-77 ass-kicker scrambler/descrambler radios, or their M60 machine guns or M79 “thumper” 40mm grenade launchers. He wondered if all of them—all of them who survived—had ended up with bad backs later in life.

By the time he scrabbled up the last slope from beneath the porch and joined Syd behind her boulder, he was not only bleeding freely again from both wounds but was soaked with sweat. At least he’d had the presence of mind to take the twenty-five-pound body armor off.

“No movement,” reported Syd. “I’ve been using the glasses rather than the scope on your rifle.”

Dar nodded his approval. “No sounds?”

“I haven’t heard the Suburban start up…but then it’s way the hell down the road.”

“But you’re sure it hasn’t passed that open spot?” said Dar.

“I said no movement, didn’t I?” said Syd a bit crossly.

Dar took the Light Fifty and jogged to his left, down the slope a bit, keeping out of line of sight with the woods or road nearby, moving toward a flat-topped boulder just above the last little stand of fir trees before the hillside became grassy pasture. When he had successfully crossed the space without drawing fire, he gestured for Syd to join him.

Dar had set up the Light Fifty on the flat top of the boulder and was lying prone, reading the mil-dot scope reticles and adjusting the wind and elevation settings. The wind was a minor factor today—even out here in the open—with only slight gusts below three miles per hour. But at this distance, Dar knew, even the slightest factors had to be entered into the equation.

“You’re shitting me,” said Syd, staring at the distant patch of open road through her borrowed pair of seven-by-fifty binoculars. “That has to be at least a mile away.”

“I estimate about one thousand seven hundred yards,” said Dar, still working with his settings. “So a little less than a mile.” He tried to get comfortable with the weapon again, getting the spot weld of his thumb and cheek around the stock and slowing his breathing. In the far distance, they heard a V-8 engine roar to life.

“Good,” said Dar. “Unless he’s coming back here, we know where Yaponchik is now. And he has about half a mile to drive to that curve.”

“You’re not seriously thinking of—”

“Spot me,” interrupted Dar. “I only have time for a couple of practice shots.” He peered through the M3a Ultra scope. “I’m going to aim for that boulder on the cut just where the road turns right again.”

“Which boulder? The dark one or the light?”

“The light,” Dar said, and squeezed off a round. The unsuppressed blast and gas recoil made Syd jump.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t see the hit point.”

“That’s all right,” said Dar. “I think I missed the whole fucking hillside. Spot me.” He fired two more rounds.

“I see the second strike,” said Syd, excited now. “About thirty meters short of the road. Shall I use meters or yards?”

“Shit,” said Dar, making more adjustments. “It doesn’t matter—meters is fine,” he said, sighting again. He had two rounds left in this clip and he knew that the Suburban would be appearing in seconds. He fired off the last two rounds, made no effort to spot their impact, ejected the clip, and clicked in another magazine of SLAP rounds.

“They both hit the cut,” said Syd, working hard to keep her binoculars steady. “One about a meter to the right and the other about a meter and a half high and to the right of the light boulder.”

“Got it,” said Dar, making final adjustments. “Close enough for government work. Now I’m going to keep my eye in the scope, so you tell me as soon as the hood of the Suburban appears.”

“You’ll only have a second or two to—”

“I know,” said Dar. “Don’t speak until it appears. Just say ‘now.’”

Syd was silent, looking through her optics while Dar blinked away fuzziness in his right eye, found the correct eye relief—that is, the perfect distance of about 2½ inches between his eye and the glass of the scope—forced his left eye to stay open, and concentrated on the crosshairs. At this range he would have to lead the truck, and to do that, he had to estimate its speed. The road was bad and the curve was sharp, but Dar doubted if Yaponchik would be driving slowly to save wear and tear on the Suburban’s suspension. If he were Yaponchik, he’d try to take the turn at thirty-some miles per hour. There would be a lot of dust as the Suburban braked to make the curve.

The image in Dar’s scope was blurred by near-vertical, shimmering waves. Dar knew this phenomenon as a “boiling mirage” which was created by heat waves rising across the great distance; it helped him figure wind velocity. If the parallel ripples had been leaning just a bit more to the left, Dar knew that on a day with eighty-degree Fahrenheit weather such as this, the wind would be moving the mirage waves at a speed of three to five miles per hour. Since they were almost vertical, it meant that there was no appreciable wind at that instant. Also, Dar knew instinctively that the higher temperature was going to increase the muzzle velocity of the Light Fifty slugs—already leaving the barrel at a minimum velocity of twenty-eight hundred feet per second—and that meant that each bullet would strike a bit higher than usual on the target. But the day had turned muggy—Dar guessed about 65 percent humidity—and the added moisture made the air denser, which offered more resistance, which would slow the bullet some. Dar added these factors into his elementary equation of the range—1,760 yards was his final estimate, all the while wishing that he had his Leica with the laser range-finder back—times a wind velocity of 1.5 miles per hour, divided by fifteen. He made a half-click adjustment to his elevation sights and waited.

In the second or two left before engagement, Dar realized the absurdity of the situation. At this range, with this ammunition, factoring in for gravity alone meant that his aiming point was more than sixteen feet above the window level of the vehicle. The target would be moving almost at right angles to Dar’s field of fire—which was good—but if Yaponchik was braking to only thirty miles per hour for the sharp curve, Dar would have to lead the moving vehicle by twenty-some feet. Dar had already estimated that he only had about thirty-five feet from the time the Suburban became visible before it would pass his aiming point. He could not track this target, so he would have to “trap” it—which meant that the Suburban and the SLAP rounds had to arrive at the aiming point at the same time. Luckily, the Suburban was one big fucker. All right, factor in the time it would take for Syd to give the warning and—