Brilliance

by Marcus Sakey

  “What happened to Lee Chen and his family? Never mind. I know the answer. Can you help them?”

  “Help them?”

  “They don’t know anything. Truly. He’s just a school friend of Shannon’s.”

  “They harbored two of the most wanted terrorists in America. They got caught. They’ll face the penalty. They have to.”

  “Drew, listen to me. The girl, Alice. She’s eight years old.”

  There was a long pause. Finally Peters sighed. “All right. I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Now. What’s your status?”

  “I’m…” He took a breath, straightened his back. The anger that had seized him, it was easy to understand. Over the last few days, he’d seen the lie in a lot of the truths he’d held self-evident. But none of that mattered, not right now. “I’m calling because I’ve got my opportunity. I’m going after the target.” A minor risk; even if Smith had a world-class intelligence network, it couldn’t extend to the desk phone of a car dealership. “He dies tonight.”

  “So you’ve really done it,” Peters said.

  “I’m about to.”

  “You have your exit strategy worked out?”

  “I’ll jump off that bridge when I come to it. That’s why I’m calling. Just in case. I wanted you to know that I’m living up to our deal.” Cooper paused. “And I wanted to hear that you are, too.”

  “Of course, son.” Peters’s voice rarely betrayed emotion, but Cooper could hear the hurt in it. “No matter what happens, I’ll do that. You’re a hero.”

  “Kate—”

  “Your daughter will never be tested. I’ve already taken care of the existing record, and taken measures to make sure that there will never be another. She’s safe. I gave you my word, Nick. Whatever happens, I’ll take care of your family.”

  My family. He had a flash of that morning, months ago, whirling his children on the front lawn of their house. One of them clinging to each arm, the weight of trust and love tugging at him with a pull he never wanted to be free of. The green blur of the world beyond them.

  What you’ve seen has changed you. Fine. But that doesn’t matter. You’re not doing this for the DAR.

  You’re doing it for them.

  CHAPTER 29

  Back in action.

  In his life, Cooper had killed thirteen—no, counting Gary on the freeway, fourteen—people. That made him neither uncomfortable nor proud. It was just a fact. He wasn’t a violent guy, didn’t get off on hurting people. He was a soldier. When he acted, it was for a reason, and it was to save lives.

  And yet he had to admit it felt good to be back in action.

  The last six months had seen plenty of excitement. Some of it he’d enjoyed, testing himself, building a reputation that would allow him a chance to get closer to John Smith. But at the same time, it had felt like a holding pattern, something he was doing while his real life was waiting. His real life as a father, and his real life as a government agent, as a man fighting for a better future.

  As of tonight, the holding pattern was over. He’d have this one chance at Smith. Succeed or fail, this phase would be behind him. No more pretending, no more running.

  Well, that’s not quite true. If you fail, there will likely be some running involved. He smiled and killed the engine.

  The ridgeline the cabin sat on backed up to the Shoshone National Forest. After studying the maps and satellite imagery Epstein had provided, Cooper had settled on a narrow fire lane two miles from the house as a place to leave the truck. Earlier he’d stopped at a hunting-goods store in Leibniz and bought supplies, and now he stripped down to his skivvies and put them on. A thermal base layer, camouflage pants and jacket, a pair of Vasque hiking boots, and light gloves. He’d splurged on good binoculars, Steiner Predators, which had set him back two grand. Worth every penny—not only would the newtech lenses let him see in the dark, the chipset analyzed the image and highlighted motion. The guy behind the counter had said, “You looking to do a little nighttime hunting?”

  “Something like that.” Cooper had smiled.

  “These are the ticket, then. Need ammo?”

  “I’m good.”

  He checked the Beretta now, then looked at the spare magazines, decided against them. If he needed to reload, he’d already lost. Besides, they could make noise if they knocked into something. Cooper locked the truck, tucked the keys under the bumper, and started walking.

  The air was crisp and cool, sweet in the way that air was supposed to taste but rarely did. He savored it and the clean movement of his muscles, the warmth in his legs as he climbed. He moved steadily but without hurry, and by the time he’d hiked up the back of the ridgeline, the sky had faded from indigo to purple and finally a velvety black. The moon cast sleek, wet-looking shadows.

  The ridgeline was rocky, the trees old and bent with wind. The towers of vertical stone looked even more like fingers, the hand of a giant pushing up from below. Cooper squatted and glassed the area. It took him a few minutes to pick the right tree: an enormous Ponderosa pine about two hundred yards from the cabin.

  Ten minutes later, he was perched on a broad limb twenty feet above the ground. His gloves were sticky with sap, and the rich, sharp smell of pine rang in his nostrils. Through the bunched needles, he had a perfect view of Helen Epeus’s home. It was an attractive place with a boxy Pacific Northwest flavor to the architecture. Lots of glass and stylish cedar siding gapped in clean rows. The windows glowed a homey yellow. A cozy, serene spot…except for the man walking the perimeter with a submachine gun.

  The gun was cross-slung, the grip in easy reach of the man’s right hand, and judging by the way he moved, he’d reached for that grip before. The guard had a quiet ease and a ready alertness that Cooper recognized. A man who knew how to handle himself.

  No surprise. But is he expecting anything?

  A split-rail fence about fifty yards from the cabin marked the boundaries of the property. The guard followed the fence, moving slowly, checking shadows and keeping an eye on the road below. Cooper lay still on the branch, glad of the base layer—the night was getting chilly—and watched. The Predators traced a thin red outline around the man, reacting to his steady motion. It took the guard about eight minutes to walk a circuit, and while he varied his route, he rarely strayed far from the fence. A professional, but not showing any sign of anxiousness.

  Good enough. Cooper turned his attention to the house itself.

  The Predators went white as they adjusted to the change from darkness to light, and then he could see right in: Shaker furniture, shelves lined with books and pictures, a cottage kitchen with a half-full coffeepot. The second guard reminded Cooper of a drill sergeant: silver crew cut, lean muscles, ramrod posture. Sarge poured himself a cup of coffee, then turned to talk to someone Cooper couldn’t see. That would be guard number three; while John Smith might be chummy with his security detail, tonight was about romance. Smith would be upstairs.

  Okay. Three guards. A fourth was technically possible, but it would have been sloppy to have three inside and only one out, and Smith would never tolerate sloppy tactics.

  The rest of the house looked as expected. The ground-level doors and frames were steel, and the locks heavy. A camera gazed down on the back entrance. In all, it was solid security, the kind of setup that would make a civilian feel safe. But a long way from unbeatable.

  So the question is, how are you going to beat it?

  A broad balcony hung off the second floor. A sliding glass door led to a bedroom, probably the master. The lights were off, the queen bed smooth. Unoccupied. He didn’t doubt he could get up to the balcony. Only, what then? The door was likely locked, and the glass bulletproof.

  It was too bad Shannon wasn’t with him; he had no doubt she could stroll right past. He, on the other hand, might have to go in heavy. Sneak up on the exterior guard. With a little luck, he could take him down silently. With a lot of luck, the guard would have a key
.

  What if he doesn’t? Or the doors run off a keypad? Or the security team all wear biometric sensors, so they know if a man goes down?

  Risky. He was confident he could do the security team, especially if he took them by surprise. But while that was happening, what was to say Smith wasn’t sprinting out the opposite door?

  Still, what choice was there—

  The light in the master bedroom snapped on, framing a silhouette. The sound of the glass door sliding on the track seemed loud in the Wyoming night. The figure was backlit. Another guard? Cooper refocused the binoculars.

  And nearly dropped them. The figure wasn’t security. It wasn’t a stranger.

  It had been seven years since the photograph that decorated Drew Peters’s wall had been taken, a young activist addressing a crowd.

  Five years since the massacre at the Monocle, that horrifying video he’d watched countless times, the calm butchery of seventy-three civilians.

  Two years since the last confirmed photo, a blurry image taken at a distance as he climbed into the backseat of a Land Rover.

  Now, through the wavering lenses of his new binoculars, Cooper watched John Smith step onto the balcony.

  He wore jeans and a black sweater. His feet were bare. As Smith reached into a pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, it struck Cooper how much older he looked. Like the pictures of presidents before and after their first term, Smith seemed to have aged two decades in a handful of years. His dark hair had salted, and his shoulders had a heaviness to them. But his eyes were sharp as broken glass when he snapped a silver lighter and lit his cigarette. The night vision optics amplified the flame to a halo of fire that seemed to engulf him.

  Cooper stared.

  The most dangerous man in America seemed at peace. He smoked meditatively, the cigarette pinned between his first two fingers. The night was too cool for bare feet, but Smith didn’t seem bothered. He just stood there, staring out at the darkness.

  It was unbelievable. A clean shot, no wind, adequate visibility, the target unaware. If he’d had a rifle, he could have ended a war with one squeeze of his finger.

  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 him? Especially when he knows he’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 on to 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.

  CHAPTER 30

  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, newish. Good. Old hardwood creaked.

  Light on his feet, joints supple. The hall ran a handful of feet and then one wall fell away, a railing with cables instead of wooden spindles. Light from below, and the television louder. A great room, connected by a spiral staircase. Three doors, one open; he could see tile on the floor, a guest bathroom. Cooper eased down the hall, setting each step with care. The next door, also open. He squatted low, glanced around the edge. Guest bedroom, dark. The last door was closed, a trickle of light glowing at the bottom. He moved to it, stood outside. No noise he could hear. He gave it a twenty count with breath held, then another thirty breathing. Nothing.