Marcus Sakey - Brilliance

But you don’t have a rifle, you have a sidearm, and at this distance you may as well try to take him down with harsh language.

Half afraid that if he turned away Smith would vanish like some sort of demon, Cooper panned the binoculars. It took him just seconds to spot the exterior guard. The man was in the worst possible position, almost directly between the pine tree and the cabin. Cooper could go through him, but not without alerting Smith.

You get one chance. There’s too much at stake to rush it.

He took a deep breath, calmed his nerves. Turned back to watch the man smoke. Despite the fact that he had been waiting for this moment, had been planning for it, he was staggered by the emotional punch of it.

Here was the reason, Cooper realized, that he existed himself. That he had done the things he had done and slept soundly despite them.

Smith was everything he had fought all his life. Not just a murderer, not even a terrorist; a hurricane in human form. A tsunami, an earthquake, a sniper at a school, or a dirty bomb in the water supply. A man who didn’t believe in anything beyond his essential rightness, who killed not because it would make the world better but because he strove to make the world more like him. Standing barefoot under a stunning Wyoming sky, smoking a cigarette.

When he finished, he flicked the butt into the night, the ember wild and loose and momentarily bright. Then he turned and walked back inside. A moment later the light in the bedroom went out. John Smith—

It’s only nine o’clock. Hours before he’ll go to bed.

Smokers never stop at just one.

Who locks the door of a second-story balcony behind them? Especially when they know they’ll be back soon?

—was done.

Cooper hung his binoculars over a branch. He wouldn’t need them again. Moving carefully, he began to climb. When his boots crunched dry soil, he dropped to a heel squat, his back against the tree, and waited for the guard to come around again.

When he did, Cooper started counting Mississippis.

At 100, he rose and started walking. He wanted to run, but couldn’t risk either the noise or a turned ankle. It took the guard about eight minutes to walk a complete circuit of the fence. 480 Mississippi.

He kept his eyes down so that the light from the cabin wouldn’t wreck his night vision, and checked his footing with each step. The moon was bright, which was good and bad. Good because he could keep a decent pace, bad because it meant he’d be easier to spot. A flush of energy ran through him, the world dropping away. It was just him and the silvered ground and the breath in his lungs and the pressure of the Beretta in his waistband. At 147 Mississippi, he reached the split-rail fence. The guard was out of sight on the other side of the property. Holding onto a post, Cooper slung first one leg and then the other, and stepped into Helen Epeus’s yard.

That name, it meant something, but damned if he could remember what. No time. He took a moment to assess the situation—

The guard is a professional. A soldier of sorts.

Soldiers learn to work as a team. A team that divides responsibilities and then trusts each man to fulfill his part is far more effective than one where every man is trying to cover every angle.

He’ll leave the security of the cabin to the security in the cabin.

—then dropped to his elbows and knees and started a fast army crawl toward the cabin.

At 200 Mississippi, the guard rounded the far side of the building. Moonlight danced down the barrel of his submachine gun. Cooper kept crawling. Rocks jammed into his knees, and something thorny tore at his gloves.

He could go faster, but didn’t dare. It felt to him as if he was making a lot of noise as it was, scraping the ground with each move. He locked his core and checked his breath and pushed.

240 Mississippi. The guard was half a football field away. Cooper had made it about fifty feet, not quite halfway between the fence and the cabin. He lowered himself prone. The hard ground was cold through his camouflage. With an effort of will, Cooper closed his eyes. Even in the dark, few things were more recognizable to one human than another human’s face, especially the eyes, which could catch any spare glint of light.

If he was right about the guard, if the man trusted his team, then his attention would be focused outward. He’d be looking for motion in the woods, not for suspicious shapes lying between him and the cabin.

250 Mississippi. A shuffling of footsteps. Rocks and dirt beneath combat boots. The man couldn’t be more than twenty feet away.

A pause. A scrape. Cooper’s nerves screamed to move, to roll on his back and pull the pistol and fire. Lying prone, unable to see, he was completely helpless; he was rendering his own abilities moot.

There’s more to you than just your gift, soldier.

He lay still.

265 Mississippi.

270 Mississippi.

The footsteps resumed. Cooper began to breathe again.

At 340, he opened his eyes and rolled to a crouch. The guard was out of sight. After the total darkness, the cabin seemed ablaze with light, light streaming out the windows, light leaking under the doors. Light framing the balcony. He rose and walked toward the house, no longer worried about being seen. Even if the interior guards happened to glance at a window, night would turn the glass into a mirror.

He rolled his shoulders, shucked his gloves, and dropped them. Then he pushed into a hard run, straight at the wall of the cabin. At the last second he leaped, planting one boot against the cedar siding and pushing upward as he strained and turned.

His hands caught the lip of the balcony. He hung for a moment to combat the lateral inertia, and then he pulled himself up, first to the spindles, then the handrail, and finally over, crouching in the same spot John Smith had smoked his cigarette.

His breath came easy. His senses were sharp. He felt powerful and free and alive.

Cooper drew the Beretta and moved to the glass door. The bedroom beyond still swam in darkness. So far, so good. He’d made a little noise against the wooden siding, but not much. If you lived in a cabin in the woods, you got used to unexpected noises: animals on the hunt, windblown branches scraping the eaves, long-dead trees finally giving way.

Of course, everything depended on the glass door being unlocked. He was confident in the logic of his patterning, but as always with his gift, it came down to intuition, not certainty.

So stop stalling and find out if you win a gold star.

He put his free hand on the handle and tugged.

The door slid easily.

Pistol in hand, Cooper slipped inside.

The bedroom was dark, but his eyes were ready. A queen bed with plush linens and too many pillows. Unruffled; if Smith and his lady friend had been at it, they’d done it somewhere else. Nightstand by the bed, rocking chair in the far corner, hardwood dresser. Master bath off the west side. A painting, big, something abstract in dark colors.

He held the gun low and in two hands, his finger resting gently on the trigger. It felt good, molded for his hands.

Sounds: his own breathing, a little faster than normal, but steady. A television from below, laugh track to a joke he couldn’t hear. The ticking of the clock on the bedside table. He hated clocks that ticked; every click a moment gone. Couldn’t imagine sleeping in a room with one, drifting into unconsciousness to the sound of life slipping away.

No alarm, no sounds of panic.

He moved to the bedroom door, which was closed but not all the way. Slid along the near wall and glanced through the crack. A hallway. Keeping his right hand on the gun, he used his left to inch the door open. It swung in silence. The hallway was hardwood, new-ish. Good. Old hardwood creaked.