by Dan Simmons
The hardest thing for Dar to recapture was trigger control. This had come natural to him in the Marines, but he knew from firing-range practice that he had to work to find it now. Trigger control was nothing more complicated than taking up the slack at precisely the correct point in his breathing cycle while he fine-tuned his aim, then squeezing the trigger the extra millimeter needed without moving the rifle in any way. It was not complicated, but it took mental focus, muscle control, and breathing control.
Having zeroed the M40, Dar took targets down into the open field below the cabin and fired scores of rounds in actual wind conditions. Tuesday was a windy day, and in a steady 15-mph wind, the 7.62 mm bullet would drift 4.5 inches off target at two hundred yards, a disturbing 20 inches off target zero at six hundred yards, and a ridiculous 48 inches off target at six hundred yards. Of course, the wind was almost never steady.
Dar knew that the new generation of snipers went into battle with pocket calculators or—in the more sophisticated weapon systems—minicomputers in the actual scope with electronic wind sensors attached.
Dar thought that this was a waste of human brainpower and basic senses. He had been well trained to gauge the wind. Less than 3 mph and one can hardly tell if the wind is blowing, but smoke drifts. Gusts of 5 to 8 mph will keep tree leaves in a constant motion, and Dar had long since learned the sound of different wind values in the ponderosa pines and Douglas firs that surrounded his cabin. Any wind between 8 and 12 mph kicks up dust and grit, blows loose leaves, and can be seen in swirls and dust devils. Between 12 and 15 mph the tiny birch trees in the field would be constantly swaying.
Dar had instinctively known, even as a young Marine sniper trainee, that the wind’s speed is only a small part of the equation. The wind direction must also be properly sensed and factored in. Any wind blowing at right angles to his direction of fire—from eight-, nine-, ten-, and two-, three-, four-o’clock positions—was a full-value wind. Any oblique wind—one, five, seven, eleven o’clock—would be accorded only half value, so a 7-mph breeze from his nine-o’clock position would be rated as a 3.5-mph wind when he made his lateral adjustments to the scope. Finally, if the wind was blowing directly at his firing position or from the rear—six or twelve o’clock—Dar would factor in only minimal effect on the bullet: a slight drop in velocity firing into the wind; a corresponding rise in velocity with a tail wind. Being a sailplane pilot had honed his skill in sensing wind velocity and direction.
Once these factors of range and wind were taken into account—preferably in microseconds—then Dar just used the old Marine marksman formula of range, expressed in hundreds of yards, multiplied by wind velocity expressed in miles per hour, and divided by fifteen. Dar could perform this calculation instantly and instinctively even after all these years.
Lying and kneeling out in that long, grassy field all Tuesday afternoon, Dar kept the small video monitor tuned to camera one activated beside him—making sure that no one was driving up to the cabin while he was practicing. Sometimes wearing his ghillie suit, sometimes in his green slacks and field shirt, Dar fired at regular range targets and Paladin targets and concentrated on achieving m.o.a. and sub-m.o.a. groups. Even after he was achieving these groupings regularly—in slightly gusty conditions and at all of his preset ranges—Dar reminded himself of one crucial point.
These targets are only paper.
On Wednesday evening, just before dusk, all of the FBI men on the Russians’ ranch-house perimeter came to full alert. By this time, eight tactical team snipers in ghillie suits had wormed their way to within 150 yards of the house and all three sides of the property bordering the street. Three of the snipers were in the tall grass less than five yards from the manicured lawn.
At 4:30 P.M. the only telephone call of the day came in. It was trapped and played back on the FBI tape recorders.
Voice: Your dry cleaning is ready, Mr. Yale.
Voice thought to be Gregor Yaponchik: All right.
The FBI traced the call within seconds—it had come from a Pasadena dry-cleaning establishment. Warren had an agent call the place and ask if Mr. Yale’s dry-cleaning was ready yet. The manager said that it was and confirmed that he had just called to inform Mr. Yale of that. The manager apologized for not being able to deliver the dry cleaning, but explained that the unincorporated area north of Pasadena was outside their normal delivery area. The agent calling assured the manager that this was all right.
At 8:10 P.M. a white van pulled up and three Hispanic men in gray shirts and work pants got out. The van had a yard-service ad on its side and Special Agent in Charge Warren had his people on the phone within ten seconds, checking with the company to see if this was a legitimate visit. It certainly did not seem kosher at this hour.
It was. The yard-service people assured the special agents that this was the weekly service and that it had been held up because of van problems and “complexities” at the previous customer’s home. Syd later explained that Warren was tempted to tell the service company to call their people and to get them the hell out of there now, but the three yard men had already begun their work—mowing the yard, clipping the shrubs, and cutting up a small, dead tree—and the FBI man decided that it would draw less attention to let them finish. It was almost dark.
One of the workmen went to the front door, and agents in the house a quarter of a mile from the Russians’ place got a clear photograph of Pavel Zuker talking brusquely to the quickly nodding yard worker. Zuker closed the door and a second later the garage door went up. In the dim light the FBI people could make out heaps of leaf bags next to the two Mercedeses in the garage.
The workers were fast—racing true darkness—and they mowed the lawn in a rush, coming within feet of the facedown and flattened FBI snipers in the higher grass. Once, one of the yard men stopped his mower, picked up what looked like a metal horseshoe, and tossed it into the high grass beyond the yard, almost braining an FBI marksman.
It was almost full dark when the mowing and pruning was done, and the FBI watched carefully as the three workmen disappeared into the garage and reappeared a moment later, carrying the bulky leaf bags.
“Count them,” commanded SAC Warren over the radio link.
“The leaf bags?” said some unfortunate special agent.
“No, you moron, the workers. Make sure that only the three who went into that garage get into the van.”
“Roger that,” came the confirmation from observers and marksmen.
The three went in and came out, tossing the leaf bags in the back of the van and stowing other detritus. The porch light and small driveway lights came on automatically. Lights in the house switched on as the van drove away.
“Shall we intercept them?” asked the special agent at the outer perimeter.
“Negative,” said Warren. “Their boss said that they’re working overtime and they’re headed home from here. Let them go.”
The snipers in the grass and the observers in the houses and passing high-altitude helicopters switched to night vision. Everyone there would have preferred planning the assault for 3:30 A.M., when the Russians would be at their groggiest—or better yet, all asleep—but because of the timing of the other arrests, it had been decided that the assault could commence no earlier than five A.M. Warren and Syd and the others had decided that it would be worth the extra risk of a dawn assault just to make sure that Dallas Trace and the others targeted for arrest that morning heard nothing on the morning news.
Dar had also fired the Barrett Light Fifty for several hours into Tuesday evening. That was a fascinating experience. The rifle came with a bipod, but it was still a beast to manhandle around—weighing twenty-nine and a half pounds without the telescope and measuring an inch more than five feet long. A monster. Adding the M3a Ultra telescopic sight and a few cartridge boxes to the load reminded Dar that he had a bad back.
On Wednesday Dar did his work at the condo, talked to Syd briefly in late afternoon, took the Remington Model 870 shotgun out fro
m under the bed, loaded it, filled his pocket with some extra shells, and carried his overnight bag to the Land Cruiser. He looked around carefully in the basement parking garage before walking to his vehicle. It would be embarrassing to go through all this preparation and then have a pissed-off Russian shoot him with a .22 pistol in his own parking garage.
None did.
Dar drove out through Wednesday traffic. He wanted to arrive at the cabin well before dark, and he did. Stopping on the long gravel driveway to the cabin, he activated the various video cameras one by one. Nothing on the road ahead. No one in the sniper points high above the cabin. No one immediately visible in the field below the cabin. No one in the cabin.
Dar drove the rest of the way, carried in his bags and some groceries, and made dinner. He thought about calling Syd, but knew that she would be busy at the tactical command center all that evening.
What the hell, he thought. I’ll hear about it on the radio tomorrow and read about it in the evening paper.
He sipped some coffee. I hope.
Somewhere around midnight, he double-checked that the cabin doors were locked and turned off the lights. A fire still burned in his fireplace, filling the warm room with flickering light, and he left a soft light on in the kitchen and another next to the bed.
Instead of going to bed, Dar took the shotgun and the receiver/monitor, moved the strip of carpet slightly, unlocked the trapdoor, and went down into his basement. The lights came on automatically. He left the shotgun propped up against the outer wall, unlocked the steel door, and crossed the storeroom to the ventilator grille. Unlocking the heavy padlock there, he inspected the dusty vent with his flashlight and then crawled on his elbows and knees the 220 feet—breathing much more heavily than he liked—until he came to the second grille. He unlocked it, slipped out into the old gold mine, and found his plastic-wrapped M40 rifle and the heavy rucksack right where he had left them the day before.
He pulled on the Marine-issue flak vest stored in the pack, hefted the heavy rucksack, and slung the rifle comfortably on his right shoulder. Water dripped in the old mine shaft. Puddles were everywhere and often six inches deep. Dar splashed through them, still using the flashlight for illumination. He was wearing waterproof hiking boots and his green slacks and camouflage field shirt loose over the heavy vest. On his web belt was the black-steel K-Bar knife in its scabbard. His cell phone was in his shirt pocket, but it was turned off.
Once he reached the entrance to the mine, he doused the flashlight and stowed it, pulling out the L.L. Bean night goggles. There was no moon and the ravine was filled with shadows, but Dar let his eyes adapt naturally and kept the night-vision goggles raised on his forehead as he found his way up the ravine, up the narrow path on the east face of the gully, and continued climbing toward his preselected spot.
It was a beautiful night—a few clouds, cooler than most summer nights, but perfect for a hike.
The FBI assault team battered down the front door of the Santa Anita ranch house at precisely 5:00 A.M. Agents fired tear-gas projectiles through all of the windows. Other agents at the door tossed flash bangs into the living room and lunged inside, laser beams stabbing for targets through the smoke.
Living room empty. Agents held ladders while other agents threw themselves through the bedroom windows as the FBI snipers covered them. No one in the bedrooms.
Special Agent Warren led the first assault team from room to room on the ground floor, and then up the stairway to the second floor. Two helicopters landed on the lawn while two more hovered overhead, brilliant searchlights shining down through the dissipating smoke and the brightening twilight. FBI men in the choppers fired more tear gas through the second-story windows.
No one on the second floor. No one in the kitchen. No one in the basement.
It was one of the last teams to reach the building who radioed in the report. Dead bodies in the garage.
Warren and a dozen others, everyone bulky in their body armor and helmets, goggles and gas masks dangling, converged there within twenty seconds.
The three dead Hispanic men were stripped to their underwear. Each had been shot once in the head.
“But only three got in the van last night…” began a young special agent.
“The goddamned leaf bags,” said Special Agent Warren.
“Shall we expand the perimeter?” asked a helmeted figure.
Warren sagged back against the doorframe, clicking the safety on his suppressed H&K MP-10. “They could be in Mexico by now,” he said dully.
Nonetheless, Warren was on the radio a second later, alerting headquarters, authorizing helicopter and ground searches for the yard-service van, confirming that the CHP, LAPD, and other agencies had to be briefed immediately, and authorizing a national manhunt.
A message was relayed from the Malibu safe house where Detectives Ventura and Fairchild were being kept. It seemed that Fairchild, who was cooperating with the investigators, had been allowed to go for a brief, escorted walk on the beach the previous afternoon. The FBI agents had not known that there was a pay phone just off the beach, but Fairchild had been allowed out of sight for several seconds to urinate in the bushes, and this morning one of the agents took a walk on the beach and found the phone. He immediately checked to see if there had been any outgoing calls from it.
There had. One of fifteen seconds’ duration had been made at 4:30 P.M. The call was to Detective Fairchild’s brother-in-law, who ran a dry-cleaning establishment in Pasadena.
“Damn,” said one of the agents.
“Damn, heck, and spit,” said another.
“Fuck me,” said Special Agent in Charge Warren, who had no immediate Bureau supervisors on the scene. “I bet Fairchild got more money than Ventura—he just hid it better.”
“Shall we tell Special Agent Faber and Investigator Olson about the Russians?” asked the primary dispatcher.
Warren looked at his watch. It was 5:22 A.M. The Dallas Trace assault was still more than ninety minutes away. “Faber and his people are in position and on radio silence,” he said. “I’ll call Cassio, the agent in charge of the Century City security perimeter covering the assault team’s backs, and tell him that we’re sending another dozen tac-team agents to reinforce him.”
“Do you think the Russians will try to rescue Dallas Trace?” asked a goggly agent next to Warren.
The special agent in charge actually laughed. “Not a chance in hell. These guys know that the balloon has gone up. They’re not going to drive from one ambush into another one. We’ll tell Faber and the rest of the assault team after they do their thing.” Warren’s voice lost all traces of humor then and he said something most un-Bureau-like. “And I want that LAPD cop—Fairchild—castrated.”
Syd received the page eight minutes after the FBI had driven Dallas Trace and his three bodyguards away in separate vehicles. She was standing on the street outside the Century City office tower, busy shaking the sweat out of her hair and ripping the Velcro tabs loose on her bulletproof vest, but she stopped everything when she saw the number on the pager.
Warren explained the situation in two sentences.
“Dar!” said Syd, looking at her watch.
“Investigator Olson,” said Special Agent Warren, “these Russians aren’t amateurs. They have a ten-hour head start on us. They’re not going to waste it on some stupid revenge attempt. They’re probably in Mexico by now.”
Whatever he said next was lost as Syd shouted, “Get two FBI choppers with tac teams out to Dar’s cabin—now!” and then flipped shut the phone, picked up her submachine gun, and ran full speed for her parked Taurus. She had no idea that her cell-phone transmission had been garbled and that Special Agent Warren had understood none of it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“W IS FOR WAIT”
IT SEEMED LIKE a long night to Dar. He told himself that perhaps this was because he was not used to lying on a cold stone ledge all night waiting for a group of strangers to come try to kill hi
m. Nope, he reassured himself, that couldn’t be the reason.
The position he had chosen was a rocky outcrop on the east side of the wooded ravine. The slabs of rock on which he lay were about 260 yards above the cabin—with a clear view of the parking area and entrance through gaps in the trees—and even more important, at approximately the same elevation as the two sniper’s roosts he had identified to the west. The slab he had chosen—the very word slab disturbed him a bit—lay in a natural fissure in the rock with two shooting channels: one looking downhill toward the cabin and the parking area, and the other offering a small slot in the rocks that was perfect for direct fire against the sniper positions. The bad news was that the stones to the east and north of him were higher than his roost and angled downward, which would create a nasty ricochet problem if someone actually started shooting at him from either of the obvious sniper’s roosts to the west. He hoped that it would not come to that.
Dar had stored the Barrett .50-caliber in the rock niche under a waterproof tarp, and now he was lying on that tarp, wishing he’d brought a closed-cell foam pad. The twenty-five-pound bulletproof vest he was wearing over his blouse was thicker than a police-issue Kevlar vest. It was modern Marine-issue and incorporated a thick ceramic chest protector that could stop a 7.62mm rifle bullet at medium range, but that also made it extra stiff and uncomfortable. I’m getting old, he thought.
The Barrett Light Fifty was on its bipod on the slightly down-tilting slab, leaving room next to his position for extra ammo, the Leica range-finding binoculars, and the receiver/monitor. His old M40 Sniper Rifle lay under camo-cover and waterproof plastic in the other gap to his right, ready to be used in an instant if he had to fire on the other sniper positions.
Dar figured that if the Russians did not come that night, they would not be coming at all.
His plan was relatively simple and it did not include any real heroics. If, by any chance, the Russians showed up at his cabin before the FBI nabbed them, Dar had his cell phone charged and programmed with Special Agent Warren’s and Syd’s numbers. Dar always thought of his cabin as being at the edge of the world out here, but the line-of-sight cell phone reception was excellent. This was, after all, Southern California. None of the people who had built expensive cabins out here to get away from it all could afford to be out of touch for even an hour.
