Darwin's Blade

18 “R is for Recon”

Dar, the merciless ex-Marine sniper, spent the rest of Friday night and all day Saturday sewing and going through his back issues of Architectural Digest.

Some years ago, when Lawrence was poking around amidst Dar’s shelves, the adjuster had come across several years worth of the white-spined interior design magazines, and said, “Who the hell do these belong to?” Dar had made the mistake of trying to explain why he liked reading such home interior design magazines—how the pictured worlds without humans were so static, so perfect, so…minded…how that frozen-forever-perfection always translated in the prose to a couple, gay or straight, living in a timeless, clutterless, decision-free universe since everything was in its place, every pillow fluffed and creased to perfection. In reality the Architectural Digest edition was usually off the stand less than three months before the director and movie star who had built their perfect palace announced their divorce. The irony of the great gap between the perfectly designed, perfectly photographed homes and the chaos of real life amused Dar. Besides, it made good bed and bathroom reading.

“You’re nuts,” Lawrence had suggested.

Now Dar thumbed through almost two years of back issues before coming across the article he remembered.

Dallas Trace’s $6 million home had been built from scratch in a crowded neighborhood just below the crest of Mulholland Drive along the Valley side. The neighborhood—Coy Drive, Dar found out, although not through the magazine article, of course—was comprised of relatively modest ($1 million and up) 1960s-era ranch houses, but Attorney Trace had bought three of the properties, had the homes bulldozed, and hired one of America’s stranger architects to build him a Luxor-like post-postmodernist cement, rusted iron, and glass…thing…clinging to the hillside and dwarfing all of the other homes on the ridgeline.

Dar read and reread the article, concentrating on three pages of photographs and memorizing which of the huge windows looked out from which room. There was a small insert of the thinly smiling Counselor Trace—“The World’s Best Legal Mind” was the caption—sitting in an uncomfortable-looking Barcelona chair. His bride, Imogene, the big-breasted then twenty-three-year-old Miss Brazil (second runner-up in that year’s Miss Universe competition) whom Dallas Trace had legally renamed Destiny (because it was her destiny to marry the famous lawyer), perched on the even-less-comfortable-looking metal arm of the chair.

Dar thought that the house itself was an abomination—all postmodernist walls going nowhere, show-off knife-edge cornices, pretentious forty-foot-high living room ceilings, industrial materials with bolts and hinges and catwalks jutting everywhere, rusting iron “wings” that did or signified nothing, a strip of swimming pool narrow enough to step across—but he was delighted to read about the architect’s decision “…not to bother with such bourgeois amenities as drapes or blinds, since the tall, magnificent windows, many coming together glass-to-glass at sharp angles overhanging the wild ravine, served to destroy any distinction between ‘outside’ and ‘inside’ and to pull the magnificent wilderness into each of the bright and varied living areas.”

This “magnificent wilderness,” Dar knew from studying his Thomas Guide and topo maps of the area, was actually the only undeveloped ridge in the area, one saved from the bulldozers by the discovery of multiple Indian artifacts and the relentless lobbying of some of Coy Drive’s more stubborn residents—including Leonard Nimoy and a writer named Harlan Ellison.

Sewing the ghillie suit was a pain in the ass. Dar had to take the oversized, two-piece camouflage overalls, attach netting to the whole damn thing, reinforce the front of the suit with heavy canvas—also camouflage-patterned—and then sew on more tough canvas to the elbows and knees.

Dar then took the several hundred irregularly cut strips of hessian/burlap and “garnished” the suit—a seven-hour job of sewing the bastardly bits of cloth to every part of the net, which in turn had been sewn to the outer coveralls. The front of the ghillie suit was only lightly garnished, but Dar had to apply enough strips to the back of the suit for the floppy pieces of fabric to hang down to drape on the ground whenever he was in a prone position. The wide-brimmed boonie hat he had purchased was similarly garnished, only here the Alaskan mosquito-netting outfit came in handy.

Dar had never worn or made himself a ghillie suit in his training for Vietnam—Marines had humped into the jungle and fought in their green or camouflage fatigues, often using branches and greenery for camouflage while waiting for the enemy, or occasionally excavating a dug-out and camouflage-covered so-called belly-hide fire position. Ghillie suits were just too damned hot and clumsy for jungle fighting. But in the mid-1970s at Camp Pendleton just up the road from San Diego, Dar had been taught the history of the ghillie suit.

Ghillies had been Scottish gamekeepers in the 1800s who developed such man-made camouflage outfits for stalking game—and poachers—on the great Highland estates. German snipers had started the trend toward the modern ghillie suit in World War I when they discarded their issued, oversized, hooded, stiff and cumbersome canvas greatcoats and constructed their own camouflage robes for use when crawling around in No Man’s Land. They had soon discovered the usefulness of adding a camouflaged hood that could be pulled over the head, leaving only a small slit with a gauze eyepiece for vision. Snipers also soon learned that the human eye—especially in a battlefield environment—is exceptionally sensitive to both unusual movement—say, a bush crawling along under its own propulsion—and to the slightest glimpse of the outline of a human face. The sight of a rifle barrel also tended to catch a soldier’s or countersniper’s attention very, very quickly.

And so the sniper’s ghillie suit had evolved this century through a harsh but very efficient process of natural selection. Today, in sniper schools such as the Royal Marines’ school at Lympstone in Devon or the U.S. Marines’ Scout Sniper Schools in Quantico, Virginia, or Camp Lejeune and Camp Pendleton, it is common practice for the Marine NCOs to take visiting officers from other services out onto the training field and explain the theoretical advantages of camouflage in the profession of sniping. At the end of the short lecture, five to thirty-five ghillie-suited snipers stand up—usually none of them farther than twenty paces from the startled Army officers, and many of them literally within touching distance. The rule in making a successful ghillie suit is that if someone can see it before he steps on it, it’s back to the sewing machine or forward to the grave.

Dar was pleased in some obscure way that even today, the Marines’ Sniper School students were expected to make their own ghillie suits during their spare time. Some of the products, Dar knew from visiting Camp Pendleton in recent years, were quite original.

This reminded him. He stopped sewing and cussing for a few minutes and called Camp Pendleton, making an appointment to see Captain Butler there late on Tuesday afternoon. Returning to his worktable, Dar was glad that he would not be bringing his own ghillie suit along for inspection. Marines can be very insensitive sometimes.

Dar finished the ghillie suit about dinnertime. He tried it on—slipping into the fatigues, buttoning everything up, pulling on the boonie hat with its three feet of netting and mosquito-screen camouflage attachments—and then went to stand in front of the full-length closet mirror to see how he looked.

There was no full-length mirror—only its frame and two bullet holes.

Dar went into the bathroom and stood on the edge of the tub to check out his new suit. The bathroom cabinet gave him only a partial view, but it was ridiculous enough to make him just want to lie down in the tub and take a nap until everything—including Dallas Trace and his Alliance and his Russian enforcers—just went away.

Dar thought that he looked like some low-budget, Roger Corman, 1961 horror-movie monster—a shapeless sheepdog mass with hundreds of irregular dun and tan and soft green tatters hanging from it. He could not see his own eyes through the mosquito-netting veil, and accompanying camostrips. His hands were concealed by the overhanging sleeves, netting, and strips of hessian/burlap. He was no longer a human shape, merely a raggedy-ass blob looking like a pile of ambulatory hound dog ears.

“Boo!” he said to his reflection. The blob in the mirror did not react.

Lawrence agreed to give him a twilight ride to a trailhead so that Dar could go camping. The ghillie suit and everything else Dar needed—theoretically—was crammed into his oversized rucksack.

When Dar had called with the request, about 7:00 P.M. that Saturday evening, Lawrence had said, “Well, sure, I’ll drive you to where you want to go camping…but what happened to that nine-ton Land Crusher you used to own? It seems to me that would do the job.”

“I don’t want to leave it on the road where I’m hiking in,” Dar said truthfully. “I’d worry about it.”

Lawrence certainly understood that. It was a running joke between Trudy and Dar how Lawrence invariably parked in the most distant edge of any parking lot, and then with the curb and shrubs and cacti on one side if he could—anything to avoid dings. When Larry’s car got dings, Larry’s car got sold.

“Sure, I’ll drop you off,” Lawrence had said. “I wasn’t up to anything except watching a video tonight.”

“Which one?”

“Ernest Goes to Camp,” said Lawrence. “But that’s OK, I’ve seen it.”

Two hundred and thirty-six times, thought Dar. Aloud, he said, “I appreciate this, Larry.”

“Lawrence,” said Lawrence. “You want to leave your Crusher here or shall I come pick you up in town?”

“I’ll drive out to your place,” said Dar.

Now, on the way out from Escondido in Lawrence’s Trooper, the bulging rucksack loaded in the backseat, Lawrence said, “Where you headed? Borrego Desert State Park? Cleveland National Forest? Or are we going as far as Joshua Tree or someplace?”

“Mulholland Drive,” said Dar.

Lawrence almost drove off the road. “Mul…hol…land…Drive? As in L.A.?”

“Yeah,” said Dar.

Lawrence squinted at him. “For camping.”

“Yep,” said Dar. “Probably two days worth. I’ve got my cell phone, so I’ll give you a call when I need to be picked up.”

“Eight-thirty on a Saturday night, it’ll be after midnight when we get there, and you’re going camping somewhere off Mulholland Drive.”

“Right,” said Dar. “Just off Beverly Glen Boulevard, actually. You don’t have to drive on Mulholland, just through Beverly Hills and up Beverly Glen to just over the ridgeline…on the Valley side.”

Lawrence squinted at him and then slammed on the brakes, kicked up dust in a turnout, and turned the Trooper around, headed back toward his home.

“You’re not going to take me?” said Dar.

“Sure, I’ll take you,” growled his friend. “But if I’m going into goddamned Los Angeles on a Saturday night and going through goddamned Beverly Hills, and stopping on Mulholland after midnight, I’m going home to get my .38.” He glanced suspiciously at Dar. “Are you armed?”

“No,” Dar said truthfully.

“You’re nuts,” said Lawrence.

Dar asked Lawrence to stop once, on Ventura Boulevard. It had taken Dar three minutes on the Internet to track down Dallas Trace’s unlisted phone number, and now he used a pay phone to call that number. A woman’s voice answered in a Latina accent—not sultry Brazilian, but no-nonsense Central American housekeeperese.

“Mr. John Cochran calling for Mr. Trace,” he said in his softest male-secretary voice.

“Just a minute,” said the woman. A minute later, Dallas Trace’s fake West Texas drawl boomed on the line. “Johnny! What’s up, amigo?”

It was Dar’s turn to turn on a fake dialect. Speaking through his red bandana, he growled in his best East L.A. gang voice, “Chew’re what’s up, you honky motherfucker turf-jumping chickenshit bastard. If chew thing you can off Esposito that way and cut us all out—I mean, fuck your Russian fucking mafia, man—we know about Yaponchik and Zuker and we don’t give a fuck, man. Those Commie fag bastards don’t scare us, man. We comin’ for you, homme.”

Dar hung up and got back in the Trooper. Lawrence had been close enough to hear most of Dar’s monologue.

“Calling your girlfriend?” said the adjuster.

“Yeah,” said Dar.

Dar had Lawrence drop him off about two hundred yards east of the intersection of Beverly Glen Boulevard and Mulholland Drive. They waited for a car or two to pass, until the road was dark, and then Dar was out of the Trooper with his rucksack and moving quickly downhill into the tall weeds. He did not want to be arrested by Sherman Oaks police in the first five minutes of his mission. Lawrence drove off.

Dar reached into his heavy rucksack and found the carefully wrapped L. L. Bean night-vision goggles and the small box of camouflage color sticks. The ghillie suit was heavy, but most of the weight in his pack came from optical aids he had brought along and wrapped carefully in foam.

Dar was wearing black jeans, dark Mephisto boots, and a black Eddie Bauer cotton henley. Clicking on the battery-powered night-vision goggles, he saw that he had stopped just before running into a barbed-wire fence. The lights of the San Fernando Valley were so bright that it caused the goggles to flare every time Dar raised his gaze above the uninhabited ridge.

“The Counselor and his wife designed the house to take maximum advantage of the view of the city lights,” the Architectural Digest article had read, “the same view that inspired their former neighbor, Steven, to create the unforgettable alien Mother Ship.” It had taken Dar twenty minutes to figure out that the writer was talking about Steven Spielberg, who had lived in this neighborhood long ago when he was working on Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Right now that Mother Ship–shaped V of bright lights visible between the darker hills was just a pain in the ass—or to be more specific, a pain in the eyes.

Dar removed the night goggles and used the camo-sticks to paint his face and hands. The idea was to use light colors on those parts of the face where shadows were formed—under the cheeks and chin and nose, in the eye sockets—and darker colors on prominent features such as his nose and cheekbones, jaw and forehead. The important thing, both with the face and hands, was to create an irregular pattern that would keep the human brain from piecing together the outline of a human face or hands at a distance.

This was a point of no return. If a Sherman Oaks PD searchlight suddenly pinned him now, he would have a hell of a time explaining the face paint. Of course, he rationalized, the night goggles and rucksack full of ghillie suit might be a problem to explain as well. Then again, so far he had not trespassed.

Dar eliminated that technicality by climbing the barbed-wire fence and heading out onto the long ridge, passing through the few trees that ran along Mulholland and into the scrub grass and shrubs. The ridges on either side—each about two hundred yards away—were developed to capacity with homes, most with outside security lights. Between that glare and the moonlight, Dar realized that it was easier to slip along with the night-vision goggles up on his forehead.

It took him about ten minutes to hike to a place on the ridgeline directly opposite Dallas Trace’s mansion. Dar knew from Architectural Digest that the huge home presented a fortress’s blank face to the street: high walls, windowless concrete, a basement garage with automatic doors, no sight of the main door. It must be, Dar knew, a serious problem for the FBI, NICB, state’s attorney’s office, or anyone else who was trying to carry out legal surveillance of the place.

But the back of Defense Attorney Trace’s home was a blaze of lights. Every room seemed to be lighted. Dar went to one knee, set the rucksack down carefully, and extracted his old Redfield Accu-Range telescopic sight. The scope was only 3–9 variable magnification, but it was easier to use than binoculars and had the advantage of showing only one set of optical lenses to the sun in the daylight.

Well, there was no doubt that this was the house. The four-foot-wide pool on its strip of coral-colored concrete that made up the backyard was brightly lit, as was the almost vertical strip of mowed grass below it. Dar could make out a security fence about twenty yards down the hill: razor wire atop an outward-slanted fence. The rear lights were bright enough to illuminate the hillside, but he could see extra motion-detector-activated lights on the wall and fence. Dar had no doubt that the fence and the lights, as well as the doors and the windows, were all hooked to state-of-the-art anti-intruder circuitry and that both the Sherman Oaks private security agency and the police would be notified if so much as an errant squirrel ended up in that yard. Mr. Dallas Trace’s home was not an easy target for a lazy or careless burglar.

Dar could see no one moving in any of the rooms, nor anyone visible in couches or chairs, even though a sixty-four-inch high-definition projection TV was flickering away in one of the lower-level rooms. The magazine article had not exaggerated when it had raved about the forty-foot-high window walls on the main level; they jutted out like a ship’s bow over the ravine to Dar’s west. As always when confronted with such architectural monstrosities, Dar’s thoughts were Who the hell changes the light bulbs in the ceiling and washes those windows? He had come to peace with the realization that he was a Philistine of practicality at heart.

Right now practicality demanded finding a good place to spend the next twenty-four hours or so. Once planted in a ghillie suit, a sniper did not move in daylight unless there was pressing need to. The idea was to stay prone in one place during all the hours of the day, observing. Dar knew from experience that it was difficult to do this if one staked out one’s position on an anthill or a cactus or too many rocks or on the opening to a rattler’s den.

Dar used the night goggles to search for a place just northeast of Trace’s house—where every window and room on this side was still within view—and found a relatively flat area below the crest of the ridge, tucked in between Spanish bayonet yucca and a large ottoman-sized boulder. Another boulder behind him would shield him from daylight view of anyone strolling idly along the ridgeline. Taller grass in front should make a good viewing blind. His ghillie suit should blend well with the tall but dry tan grass growing along this stretch of hillside. But to make sure, Dar flipped up his night-vision goggles, crouched with his back to the Trace house, and used a tiny, shielded penlight to study every inch of the position. Moving any stone larger than his fingernail—and knowing that even those tiny pebbles left would be well known by sunrise—he did his checklist: fire ants, no; cacti, no; snakes, no; gopher hole, no; dog shit, no; fox den, no; animal tracks, no (it was never smart to set your sniper position on a game trail); and finally, signs of humans—cigarette butts, shell casings, Dairy Queen cups, used condoms—no.

Dar sighed, pulled out his ghillie suit and wrestled himself into it with as little noise as possible, laid his rucksack under the extra camouflaged netting he had brought for that purpose, and lay prone, feeling the padding of the thick canvas on his elbows, knees, and belly, setting his camera with the huge four-hundred-millimeter lens under the ghillie suit next to him, and using the Redfield as his spotting scope. Thus the long night began.

During his training with the 7th Marine Regiment more than two and a half decades earlier, Darwin Minor had been taught how to keep a sniper’s log. He had no pencil and paper with him now, but if he had, the log might have read something like this:

Date: 6/24 (Saturday)

Time: 2300

Place: Hill 1, Finger 1 (coord. 767502)

2310 — First movement in house. Maid leaving.

2345 — Mrs. Dallas Trace (Destiny) enters main room accompanied by a man. The man is blonde, well tanned, a muscle-bound bodybuilder type. Not Mr. Trace. Probably not Yaponchik or Zuker. He looks more like the stereotype of a Beverly Hills pool maintenance man.

2350 — Mrs. Trace and bodybuilder enter upstairs bedroom. Turn on one lamp. Engage in strenuous sexual intercourse.

6/25—Sunday A.M

0005 — Bodybuilder appears ready for nap. Mrs. Trace does not. Previously observed activity begins again.

0030 — Mrs. Trace wakes up bodybuilder and ejects him from room.

0038 — Dallas Trace enters downstairs main room one minute after Mr. Muscles leaves by kitchen door. Trace is accompanied by 4 bodyguards. Photographed everyone with Nikon using 400-mm lens and ultra-high-speed film. Bodyguards appear too young and stupid to be Yaponchik or Zuker.

0045 — Bodyguards check backyard pool area, sweep area with night scope. Had worried about thermal imaging, but hoped that residual heat from boulders would muddy TI scan. Bodyguards use only image intensifiers. They carry Mac-10s.

0050 — DT goes upstairs to check on Mrs. Trace. She is sleeping. Trace goes back downstairs to confer with guards.

0115 — DT makes several phone calls.

0205 — Bodyguards reenter house. DT goes to upstairs bedroom.

0210 — Lights out in bedroom. Guards remain in main room and billiard room. Work in shifts of 2.

0300 — Cramp in left leg only 4 hours into watch. Too old for this crap.

0450 — Predawn light. Make sure ghillie suit and extra camo-cloth covers everything.

0521 — Sunrise. Was freezing all night. Already beginning to get too hot.

0640 — Pissed into small fissure next to boulder without moving. Violates training, but will be damned if I’m going to ruin these new coveralls this early. Glad I fasted and purged system all day Sat.

0715 — No movement in DT house except change of guards. Using polarizers to see through reflection of rising sun. Partially successful.

0735 — Female jogger runs up trail twenty meters above me. Hear her Walkman. Doberman with her. Dog came down to sniff, peed on me. Was called back by jogger.

0930 — Redfield scope sees through kitchen window well enough to spot DT eating large breakfast the maid cooked for him. Mrs. DT still asleep.

1039 — Mrs. DT joins husband in kitchen. DT on phone.

1115 — DT dresses—jeans, cowboy boots, western blue silk shirt, bison vest.

1138 — DT leaves home. 3 of 4 bodyguards go with him.

1222 — Maid leaves. 4th bodyguard led upstairs by Mrs. DT. Strenuous sexual intercourse.

1250 — Bodyguard returns to main room.

1300 — Maid returns.

1430 — Heat very intense. Using water judiciously, but finish second bottle. One left.

1440 — Rattlesnake crawls over my right leg and suns itself on boulder approx. 1 meter to my left.

1630 — Snake leaves immediate area.

1645 —Heavy rain. Visibility still acceptable.

1655 — Last night’s bodybuilder returns. He is the pool man. He hangs around under patio canopy to stay out of rain.

1710 — Mrs. DT leaves with 4th bodyguard. Pool man is called into house by maid. Two engage in strenuous sexual intercourse in video room.

1820 — Rain ends, but rivulets of water are pouring off boulders and through my position. Maid and pool man have left house. No movement visible.

2120 — Last twilight gone because of clouds. Eyes very tired because of scope use. Eyedrops almost gone.

2210 — DT returns with his 4 guards and 5 unidentified men. New men look foreign. 3 of them stay in main room with DT’s regular bodyguards while 2 go upstairs with DT to office.

2245 — Long conversation. DT sits with his back to the glass just like in his Century City office. The 2 men continue standing during the discussion. Shoot 3 rolls of high-speed black-and-white film using bipod to steady 400-mm lens. This is the sniper team: Gregor Yaponchik and Pavel Zuker. Zuker even stands 3 paces back on Yaponchik’s left during discussion, just as a spotter does for his master sniper. Cannot quite read the Russians’ lips—although I can tell that they are speaking English—but I seem to make out the words “Latino” and “Mexican” several times. I assume they are discussing whether my phone call of the night before was a fraud.

2255 — DT is showing the 2 men photographs of lawyer Esposito and me. The photos of me were obviously taken by a long lens—2 outside my San Diego condo and 1 at the Gomez wreck. Last 2 were taken at the cabin. Damn.

2300 — Meeting breaking up. Clear images of Zuker and Yaponchik. The spotter looks nothing like the FBI photo of the man with the beard—he is tall, thin, and clean-shaven, with short-cropped black hair and deeply sunken eyes. He smokes a cigarette during the discussion; I can see the anger on DT’s face as the lawyer gets up to find an ashtray.

Yaponchik is an older man, perhaps 2 to 3 years my senior. He reminds me of some Swedish actor…can’t recall his name…Bergman movies. Short blonde hair, long, lined face, thin lips always seeming to be ready for an ironic smile, blue eyes, sculpted cheekbones and chin. Very large hands with long fingers. Dressed in a very expensive Italian suit. Does not look Russian. More Scandinavian.

2320 — The 3 go back downstairs and talk to the 7 gathered bodyguards. I am certain that the 3 who came with Y and Z are foreign, Eastern European or Russian—their taste in suits has not yet evolved—while the original 4 appear to be American thugs, professional but not in the Russians’ league.

2330 — Rain starts again. Photographed all 10 men. Resisted urge to call Dallas Trace on my cell phone and ask for Yaponchik.

2340 — Mrs. DT comes home and goes straight to bed.

2345 — Yaponchik, Zuker, and 3 other Russians leave.

6/26—Monday

0015 — DT makes three calls from his office.

0042 — DT goes to bed. Mrs. DT sleeping. He tries to rouse her. Fails. DT watches TV in bedroom.

0150 — TV off. Bedroom dark. Guards on 2 shifts.

0200 — Remember his name—Max von Sydow. Yaponchik looks a lot like Max von Sydow.

0210 — Two guards “sleeping” in extra downstairs bedroom engage in homosexual activity. Details not observed after initial foreplay.

0235 — Phone to request extraction. Lawrence displeased.

0530 — Extracted just after first light.

0540 — Lawrence inquires if I have lost my fucking mind.

Dar slept two hours on Tuesday morning and then developed his rolls of film in the little darkroom off the loft’s bathroom. Some of the close-ups of the men were grainy, but all were clear enough.

Next Dar used his reverse L.A. phone directory to look up the names and addresses of the people Dallas Trace had called during the recon session—Dar had been able to see all the numbers punched except for one call when Trace’s body had blocked the view through the scope. Several were unlisted, but he found those soon enough through Lawrence’s Internet skip-chase service. Dar circled several locations in his L.A. County Thomas Guide.

Special Agent Warren had left two messages on Dar’s machine, and when Dar called him back, the FBI man said that the files Dar had requested were available. Dar asked if they could be messengered over early that afternoon. Syd Olson had also left several messages. Dar called her at the Justice Center, assured her that he had enjoyed his camping trip, and made an appointment to see her at her office at an improbably early hour the next morning.

A young FBI agent personally delivered the dossiers, had Dar sign five forms, and still looked unhappy when he left. Dar almost wondered whether he should have tipped the young man.

Dar showered a third time, dressed in chinos and a blue Oxford-cloth shirt, and tried to wake up as he studied the dossiers before driving up to Camp Pendleton. Yaponchik’s file was thicker than Zuker’s, but most of it was official information obtained through tapping unclassified Soviet army sources. The KGB-related material was largely blacked out—Dar always loved that Freedom-of-Information-sort-of aspect to dossiers—but the outline was there for both men: Russian army snipers active in Afghanistan, KGB paramilitary during the last years of the regime, Russian mafia ties through the mid-1990s, no recent information. There was the blurry picture of Zuker—Dar was convinced that they had photographed the wrong man—and one labeled “Yaponchik and Zuker with rifle platoon,” which appeared to have been taken in Afghanistan with an Instamatic camera from about a mile away. Even with enhancement, the photo was nothing but grain, the faces mere blobs.

Dar smiled at this page. The previous page would serve his purposes. Right now, he realized, his purpose was to get his ass up to Camp Pendleton before he was late for the appointment.

Odds were that the U.S. Marines would entertain you on the drive up the I-5 beyond Oceanside, and today was no different. Light Marine tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles—followed by the occasional dune buggy with a .60-caliber mounted machine gun—roared along the camp side of the fence to the east of the interstate, kicking up dust before following ruts back into the barren hills. On the ocean side, landing craft were standing a mile or two offshore while hovercraft filled with Marines roared toward the beaches, up the beaches, and then into the dunes and scrubby woods beyond the dunes.

There were no interstate exits between Oceanside and San Clemente beyond the northern end of the huge base, but Dar had exited at the Hill Street/Camp Pendleton exit and used one of the southern entrances to the base. Before he reached the administration complex, he had been stopped three times: twice at gates complete with pop-up steel and concrete obstacles where it was confirmed that he had a 3:00 P.M. appointment with Captain Butler, and once by a Marine traffic cop who held him up a minute while three tanks roared across the access road at forty miles per hour and disappeared back into the dunes.

There were more security checks in the admin building, but by the time Dar strolled toward the last set of undistinguished concrete office huts, he was wearing his visitor badge and stepping a bit more lightly than usual.

The U.S. Marine captain did not keep Dar waiting. The secretary showed him in and Captain Butler, a tall, thin black man in desert camo-fatigues that were starched to a razor’s edge, jumped up from his desk and gave Dar an uninhibited bear hug that was very much non-Marinelike.

“Damn, it’s good to see you, Darwin,” said the captain, grinning broadly. “We’ve missed a few of our monthly nights on the town.”

“Too many,” agreed Dar. “It’s good to see you, Ned.”

The captain always kept a cool pitcher of iced tea and a bowl of freshly picked lemons in his office—his one self-indulgence, Dar knew—and they went through the iceclanking, pouring, lemon-cutting, and toasting ritual.

“Absent friends,” said Ned.

They both drank and then took their seats—Dar on the worn leather couch, Captain Butler in the even more worn leather chair near it. Ned’s grin remained.

After Dalat, when Dar had been rotated stateside, he used his first leave to visit his spotter’s widow and two-year-old toddler in Greenville, Alabama. He had met Edwina before, during the long training when Ned Sr. and Dar had fought each other for every point in marksmanship and fieldcraft. This time Dar simply showed up and said that anything either of them ever needed, he would try to provide.

At first Edwina had thought it was just a gesture, but when she’d phoned to tell Dar she was moving with the baby to California to be closer to her family, it was Dar who paid for air tickets and a moving van rather than let them travel by bus. When Ned showed an early aptitude for math, it was Dar who quietly arranged for enrollment in a private school in Bakersfield, where they lived. When Dar had moved to California after Barbara and the baby’s death, it was Edwina and the high-school-aged Ned whom he’d spent several weeks with before getting on with his life. Dar had been ready, willing, and able to help Ned—whose SAT scores were phenomenal—get into any college or university in the country. Dar had been thinking Princeton. Ned had been thinking Marines.

Ned Jr. had won three battle ribbons during the Gulf War, leading a recon platoon ashore while the Iraqis waited for the massive Marine invasion from the sea that never came. General Schwarzkopf had used the thousands of Marines poised for amphibious assault as a bluff, a distraction, holding the rapt attention of the hundreds of thousands of occupying Iraqi troops. Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of coalition army troops and tanks did their amazing two-hundred-mile left lateral shift, without enemy detection, before beginning the “Hail Mary pass” of an offensive that broke the back of the Iraqi army.

Ned Jr. had turned nineteen during the 1991 Gulf War, precisely the age his father had been at Dalat.

Since the rising young officer’s posting to Camp Pendleton five years ago, Dar and Ned tried to have drinks and dinner together at least once a month. It had been Ned’s frequent deployments to places unmentioned that had interfered in recent months, not Dar’s schedule.

They talked a few minutes about family and mutual friends. Finally Ned set down his iced tea and said, “To what do I owe the honor of this visit?”

Dar briefed the captain quickly and succinctly on the Alliance, Dallas Trace, and the Russian snipers, and then, uncharacteristically, found himself unable to finish. Even though Ned had not taken up his father’s specialty in the Marines, he waited now with a sniper’s patience.

“If you do me the favor I’m about to ask, it may endanger your entire career, Ned,” said Dar. “I will not only understand if you say no, I’m almost hoping that you’ll say no. It’s not just an unusual request, it’s illegal.”

Ned smiled very slightly. “Disclaimer noted, Corporal,” said the captain. “Three good friends—you’ve met them all—and I have some leave time coming. Whom do you want us to kill and how much do you want them to hurt first?”

Dar laughed politely and then realized that Ned was not joking. “No, no,” he said hurriedly, “I was just hoping that I could unofficially borrow some hardware. I can return it before it goes missing on anyone’s manifest.”

The captain nodded slowly. “We don’t have any extra Abrams M1A1 battle tanks here,” he said, “but would a Bradley armored fighting vehicle do?” Ned smiled when he said this, but it was the smile of a carnivore, not a jokester.

Dar sighed. “I was thinking of a rifle.”

Ned nodded again. “It seems to me that despite regulations way back then, you came home from that Vietnam fracas with a rifle as a gift of the 7th Marine Regiment.”

“The Remington 700,” said Dar. “Yes. I still have it.”

“Does it still fire?” said Ned.

“It’s been a few months since I had it on the range, but it was still able to put five rounds into the five-and-a-half-inch-square target head at six hundred fifty yards.”

The captain frowned. “Six hundred fifty yards? What’s wrong with the thousand-yard range?”

“I’m old,” said Dar. “My eyes are old. I use glasses now when I read for long periods.”

“Fuck that,” Ned said, and added, “Sir.” The captain ran his fingers along the knife edge of his fatigue trousers. “All right. This sniper attempt against you at home—what was the opposition using?”

Dar described the Tikka 595 Sporter.

Ned shrugged slightly. “It’s not expensive, but it’s a pretty good weapon. Domestic accurate high-power rifles like that tend to start at about $2,000—European sniper weapons run up from $8,000 or so—I think the Tikka retails at about $1,000. I don’t think that would be the main guy’s first choice in weapons.”

Dar nodded in agreement. “They sent the spotter after me. I suspect that the weapon was meant to be disposable in case of problems.”

Ned grinned again. “The spotter, huh? They don’t think much of you, do they?”

“There are some brilliant spotters,” Dar said softly. “I used to know one who was a better shot and braver man than any top shot I’ve ever met.”

Ned looked at him for a minute. Then he gestured for Dar to follow.

The warehouse was huge. Somewhere off in the shadowy distance, a forklift was humming, but other than that, they were alone.

Ned opened a crate. “If you’re looking to update your old M40, Darwin, this is a nice toy.”

Dar reached in to touch the weapon set in its foam lining.

“H-S Precision HSP762/300,” said Ned. “Comes with barrels and bolts for both calibers—regular NATO 7.62 rounds or .300 Winchester Magnums. The stock is made of Kevlar graphite and fiberglass, of course—no more splinters in Marines’ cheeks, thank you—and it comes with a bipod and adjustable butt plate much like our updated M24s. Look here—see how the fluted barrel is locked into the receiver by an interrupted screw thread and matching bracket plate? You can pack this away in a light twenty-three-byseventeen-inch carrying case and essentially have two different weapons on hand when you unpack it.”

“Very nice,” said Dar, “but I was thinking of using the old Remington 700 and Redfield scope for regular work.”

Ned frowned slightly. “Why don’t you just go buy a bow and a couple of arrows, Darwin?”

It was Dar’s turn to grin. “Not a bad idea. I hear they’re quieter and a lot cheaper than suppressors. No weapon is ever really obsolete.”

The captain nodded at that. “Not if it still kills,” he agreed. “You set for cutlery?”

“K-Bar,” said Dar.

Ned closed the crate and repadlocked it. “OK, you use your antique M40 for regular work up to the limits of your failing old codger-vision…What did you say that was?”

“I didn’t say,” replied Dar, “but ten yards would be about right.”

“Buy a shotgun,” said Ned. “Or better yet, a big, mean dog.”

“A lady friend gave me a nice Remington shotgun,” said Dar. “Well, loaned me one…”

Ned’s eyebrows shot up, not at the mention of the shotgun but at the phrase lady friend. Dar never spoke of lady friends. The captain said quietly, “All right, what was the special work you were interested in? Perhaps you were thinking of point-five-inch punch?”

“I’ve heard good things about the McMillan MI987R,” said Dar.

“I’ve used it,” said Ned, his voice serious now. “Very accurate. At twenty-five pounds it’s one of the lightest .50-calibers around. It’s got a recoil that would give an elephant hemorrhoids, but most of it’s absorbed by a pepper-pot muzzle brake and lots of recoil pads. We even stock the U.S. Navy SEALs’ ‘Combo 50’ variety with a folding stock. But it’s a standard five-round magazine bolt action. Do you envision needing any rapid fire in addition to your Remington’s slow work?”

Dar hesitated. Snipers were trained to think of one bullet, one kill. That was why the most modern Kevlar/fiberglass sniper rifles had largely reverted to single-shot bolt-action form that would be quite familiar to a sniper from the trenches of World War I. But he had the Remington for long-distance, light-caliber work…What would be his best choice for rapid fire? Ned’s father had saved Dar’s life several times in the forty-eight hours at Dalat with his accurized M-14 firing on full auto.

Ned put his arm around Dar’s shoulder and walked deeper into the corridor of crates. “Would you like to see something my fire team used in the Gulf War? It turned out to be very handy.”

“Sure.”

Ned opened a long box. “We called it the ‘Light Fifty’ over there in the desert. Officially, it’s the Barrett Model 82A1 Sniper Rifle…12.7-by-ninety-nine-mm Browning, just like the .50-calibers of old. It’s got a short recoil—the barrel is actually sent back two inches every time it’s fired and it has a huge muzzle brake. It weighs twenty-nine and a half pounds without a sight, comes with a ten-power Leupold and Stevens M3a Ultra scope, and—here’s the important part, Dar—it has an eleven-round detachable box magazine. It’s the only semiautomatic .50-caliber sniper rifle on the market.”

“What would it cost me?” said Dar. “Out the door, taxes, warranty, undercoating, and optional leather seats?”

Ned’s eyes looked very much like his father’s when he gave Dar a long, searching look. “You bring it—and yourself—back in one piece and it’s yours. I’ll even throw in a modern flak vest, three thousand rounds of regular ammo, and five hundred SLAPs.”

“Holy shit,” said Dar. “Three thousand rounds…and Saboted Light Armor Penetrators. Christ, Ned, I’m not going off to war.”

“Aren’t you?” Ned said, closed the long box, locked it, and lifting the box off the stack, handed Dar the key.

Dar was in heavy traffic on the I-5 heading back into town, wondering whether to stop and pick up a burger or just go straight home to sleep, when Lawrence rang him.

“They found Paulie Satchel, Dar.”

“Good,” said Dar. “Who’s they?”

“Eventually the cops,” said Lawrence, “but first it was the Hampton Quality Preprocessing people.”

“Who the hell are the Hampton Quality Preprocessing people?” said Dar. “And can this wait?” He felt like a thief with the Light Fifty and boxes of ammo under a tarp in the back of the Land Cruiser. He had sweated through his Oxford-cloth blue shirt during the routine drive out of Pendleton and he still expected Marine guards to come roaring after him any second.

“No, it really can’t wait,” said Lawrence. “Can you meet me at this destination?” He gave an address in an industrial section on the south side of the downtown.

“I can be there in about thirty minutes in this traffic,” said Dar. “If I absolutely have to.” It was a shitty neighborhood and he had images of his Toyota Land Cruiser being stolen and the Bloods or Crips suddenly gaining .50-caliber semi-auto firepower.

“You have to,” said Lawrence. “If you haven’t eaten, don’t.”