Darwin's Blade

24 “X is for Terminate”

Dar immediately tapped the preprogrammed number for Syd’s cell phone. She did not answer. He let it keep ringing while he slid forward and studied the area around the cabin with the gyrostabilized Leica DBII glasses.

There she was.

Syd had gotten out of the Taurus with a Heckler & Koch submachine gun raised and ready, her shoulder bag slung behind her. She was approaching the cabin stealthily, and Dar guessed that she had muted her phone or turned the damned thing off. She was still wearing a Kevlar vest from the FBI raid, but the black body armor was hanging loose, not tightened by the side Velcro. A perfect through-the-ribs heart shot at this range.

Dar felt his pulse racing and his mind going blank. He had lost track of the two Russians with their assault weapons—they were somewhere in the woods not far from Syd—and he could think of no way to warn her.

Concentrate, goddammit. Dar struggled to get his breathing and pulse rate under control. Syd was fifty feet from the cabin door now, visible through the trees for a second, and then obscured, and still he could not find the Russian gunners.

Dar popped his head up long enough to use the binoculars on Yaponchik and Zuker’s sniper’s position three hundred yards west of him. He could just see the top of Zuker’s head and the barrel of Yaponchik’s SVD. Zuker was spotting with binoculars. Dar had memorized the field of fire from both of those positions and knew that Syd would be visible and within perfect range in just a few more steps. Before Dar dropped back into his ledge slot, he saw Zuker whispering into a radio.

Shit. The Russians could communicate and Dar could not.

Syd came into the open, her attention focused on the cabin. She looked confused, as if she expected a different situation. She took a careful step, the H&K submachine gun with its diopter sight raised and ready, swiveling to look first at the wooded hillside to her left and then at the cabin door ahead and to her right.

It’s locked, thought Dar, trying to send the information through the sheer force of will. No extra key out there. It’s locked, Syd.

Dar pulled the M40 Sniper Rifle to him, started to peer through the scope in preparation of sending a warning shot in her direction, and then had a better idea. He lifted the binoculars instead.

Syd started toward the cabin door. If he had left the cabin unlocked, the Russians might have let her enter before coming in after her, trying to bag both of them. But once she tried the door and found it locked—once they realized that he was not inside—Dar had no doubt that they would cut her to ribbons.

Dar laid the M40 next to him—glanced at the monitor where camera three showed the third Russian closer on the south slope, less than thirty yards from the porch—and then sighted through the binoculars again.

The Leica was equipped with a Class One laser, but the device was meant for range-finding flashes, not for projecting a constant beam. Nonetheless, by tapping the red button atop the binoculars as quickly as he could, Dar sent a red laser dot flicking and dancing almost at Syd’s feet.

She looked down in a long second of confusion. Dar hoped that none of the Russians could see the winking red spot on the pine needles. Just as Syd realized what she was looking at, he aimed the binoculars at her chest and continued tapping the red button. The range kept flashing in the digital display to one side of the viewfinder—264 yards, 263 yards, 262 yards—but Dar ignored it and kept the red dot winking on the black body armor directly above Syd’s left breast.

She dropped and rolled as if a trapdoor had opened up to swallow her. There were soft coughs from the forest, a slight noise from the ridge above, and bullets began to rip at the spot where Syd had been standing a second before. He held her in the binoculars long enough to see her roll behind a fallen Douglas fir trunk and then splinters and chunks of rotten wood were flying everywhere as the unseen gunmen in the woods continued firing with their suppressed AK-47s.

The lack of noise made the firefight seem unreal. A second later, reality reasserted itself as Syd lifted her H&K MP-10 above the level of the fallen tree and sprayed bullets at random into the woods. That noise was quite audible. The effect was neglible.

Move! Move! Don’t stay in that spot. Yaponchik can fire through that rotten tree!

This time the telepathy seemed to work. Dar saw Syd roll just as the DVD bullets—the Russian sniper weapon could fire at semiautomatic rate—tore through the thirty-inch trunk as if it were made of papier mâché.

Dar decided that it was time to get in the fight. He rolled to the Barrett Light Fifty, sighted into the stand of pines, firs, and birch just uphill from Syd, and opened up. The noise was terrific. Dar had almost forgotten that the first five magazines he had laid out were loaded with SLAP rounds—saboted light armor penetrators—capable of punching through nineteen millimeters of steel plate at a range of twelve hundred meters. The effect on some of the trees was dramatic. One entire young ponderosa pine was clipped off about twelve feet above the ground and came to earth with a crash. A giant Douglas fir absorbed a heavy round, but the entire 200 feet of tree rocked back and forth as if in a high wind, while wood chips and sap flew everywhere.

The rapid fire did not throw off Dar’s aim, although there was precious little to aim at. I’m killing a lot of trees, thought Dar. The automatically ejected brass, rattling and rolling on the slab next to Dar, offended his sniper sensibilities—he had been trained to police all his cartridges—but he ignored the aesthetics of the situation, slapped in a second magazine—regular 12.7-by-99mm rounds this time, firing standard 709-grain bullets—and blasted away into the woods, trying to sense movement or muzzle flashes.

The heavy fire from above must have rattled the Russians; their firing stopped. Syd appeared to have run out of ammunition. For a second, all was silence except for the ringing in Dar’s ears.

I fucked up, he realized, too late. Totally fucked up.

Dar swiveled the Barrett .50-caliber until the cabin’s doorway filled the sight. He slapped in another magazine of SLAP rounds. The first shot tore a five-inch hole in the wood above the door handle. The second shot blew the lock to bits. The third shot blasted the door open and half off its hinges.

Go, go, go, he thought toward Syd, and then did something that should have been fatal: he went to his knees swinging the heavy Barrett 82A1 Light Fifty toward Yaponchik and Zuker, propping the long weapon on the rock. If they had already sighted and ranged him, Dar knew, he would die instantly.

He caught a glimpse of Zuker’s head, binoculars trained twenty yards or so to Dar’s right, still hunting, and then he loosed off the seven shots left in the magazine.

The armor-piercing shells seemed to explode around the Russians’ niche in the boulder, throwing sparks and hunks of granite fifty feet into the air. One shot, too high, struck the boulder above the firing position and unleashed a small avalanche of pebbles and shards. But Dar was fairly certain he had not hit either Russian.

He dropped back into his own slot, could no longer find Syd in his sight, and flicked the monitor to the inside cameras.

Syd had made a successful dash for the cabin and was hunkered down near the bedroom window. The Russians near the cabin were spraying the building and window with automatic weapons fire, throwing glass shards across the bed, splintering wood, ripping into couch cushions, and making Syd flinch back to the corner. The door was still hanging open and ajar behind her. Dar saw at once that she had run out of ammo for her H&K MP-10 and had left the extra magazines outside with her shoulder bag. And telephone, he thought grimly. Syd was crouched with her 9mm Sig Pro pistol held in both hands, facing the opened door and obviously waiting for the first Russian to come through that opening.

Dar pulled his phone from his web belt and dialed the cabin number. There was no sound from the tiny TV monitor, but he saw Syd jump and look over at the phone.

Answer it, thought Dar. Please, answer it.

There came a brief lull in the Russians’ fire and Syd lunged for the phone, pulled it off the table, and threw herself back into the corner. Dar kept shifting his vision from the small monitor to the Light Fifty’s scope, ready to cut down the Russians if they made an assault on the open door.

“Syd!”

“Dar? Where are you?”

“Up the hill…Are you hit?”

“Negative.”

“All right, listen. There’s a trapdoor to the basement—the opening’s right at the end of the long rug on the right side of the bed, about four meters from you—the keys are under the ice tray in the refrigerator…”

“Dar, how many—”

“You’ve got two of the Russians in the woods above you with suppressed AK-47s,” said Dar. “Yaponchik and Zuker have sniper rifles farther up the hill. One guy south of the cabin…” Dar activated Camera Four on the south slope. The Russian was under the porch and moving to the side of the cabin, obviously ready to rush the back door. “Under the porch and ready to enter,” finished Dar. “Get the keys! Go!”

He laid down covering fire into the trees as he watched Syd’s tiny image dash through the room, throw the ice tray out of the refrigerator, grab the small leather case, and rush back to the side of the bed.

Yaponchik and Zuker both started firing. Dar could hear the cough of their inadequate suppressors, but more impressive was the splintering of the north wall as the 7.62mm rounds slammed through the thin wood where Syd had been crouched in the corner a moment before. The slugs blew Dar’s favorite lamp to pieces and ripped into the hardwood floor.

Dar wanted to lay down cover fire—knowing well that the two snipers would be lying out of sight—but he had to see if Syd made it into the basement.

She was fumbling with the keys, dragging the phone across the floor to her as she did so.

“I can’t get the fucking—”

“The narrow key,” said Dar. “That’s it.”

The trapdoor came up and the basement light came on. Syd looked around her. The third Russian came in through the porch doorway and opened fire. Syd ducked behind the raised trapdoor, but the bullets struck the varnished wood and knocked her back and down. She dropped out of sight into the basement and Dar saw her 9mm pistol sliding across the floor, obviously knocked out of her hand by the force of the trapdoor hitting her. He could only pray that the metal-lined hardwood trapdoor had stopped the slugs.

The cabin cameras showed the other two Russians coming in the front door now, covering each other as one knelt and the other hovered above him, both weapons swiveling. The third Russian, standing near the trapdoor, gave the “all clear” signal and pointed toward the floor.

The Russian by the trapdoor removed something from his belt.

Shit, thought Dar. Grenade of some sort.

Before Dar could fire, the first Russian to enter the room had lifted the trapdoor, dropped his grenade in, and thrown himself away from the entrance. The blast blew open the trapdoor. Dar saw that the basement light had been knocked out—the entry was just a black square in the polished wood floor now—and then he saw the three Russians gather around the trapdoor and aim their weapons into that darkness.

Using the video monitor as his reference point, Dar aimed the Light Fifty and fired off two SLAP rounds. The first one penetrated the wall just to the left of the window frame and struck the Russian who had dropped the grenade. The armor-penetrating shell entered the small of the man’s back and blew his spine, internal organs, and rib cage out through his chest, exiting the cabin by blowing a wide hole through the south-facing windows. The second SLAP round struck the falling corpse’s head and exploded it.

He saw both of the other Russians flinch and fall, one of them obviously struck in his unarmored arms and face by skull fragments.

Dar shifted his aim to where the unwounded killer was lying in the corner—right where Syd had been a few moments before—and he fired the three remaining SLAP rounds in this magazine through the wall there. Two of the rounds missed—high, as the Russian crouched into a tight fetal position—but the third one struck him just above the ankle, blowing his foot off and propelling it and a shank of white bone across the room, almost striking the last crouching Russian.

Dar slapped in another magazine and only then realized that he himself was under heavy fire.

Both Yaponchik and Zuker must have been firing. The heavy 7.62mm slugs were striking the rocks to the east, west, and north of him. Some of the better-aimed shots sent slugs down his east-west sniper trough and the bullets whined by inches below his boots before ricocheting up and out. The other ricochets—the ones from the tilted slabs above and behind him—were as bad as he’d feared.

Bullets ricocheted into his rucksack. Another slug struck his Leica binoculars and flung them far out over the ravine. Then one struck the back of his Marine flak vest, directly between his shoulder blades. The impact wasn’t too bad, he thought. No worse than someone hitting you in the back with a small sledgehammer. It knocked the wind out of him for a full minute and dimmed his vision as red as a three-g loop in the sailplane.

Maybe it penetrated and severed my spine, he thought dully and distantly, feeling his back. There was a nice hole in his camouflage blouse, but the heavy vest he was wearing underneath was intact. He could actually feel the flattened slug in the ceramic and metallic fiber. Jesus, he thought respectfully, and that’s only a ricochet at 280 yards—with much of the slug’s velocity depleted in the original strike.

There were both physical and philosophical implications to consider, but before Dar could get his mind and body fully back on-line, other bullets whined around him. He checked the video monitor.

The last surviving—or at least the last functioning—Russian in the cabin had belly-crawled over to the open trapdoor and was now spraying the basement with his AK-47.

Dar did not see how Syd could have survived if she had been in the basement corridor rather than the locked storeroom, but he decided it still would be best if he killed that Russian.

The problem with that plan was that the SLAP rounds might well penetrate the floor as well as the last Russian and kill Syd if she was lying wounded in that basement corridor. Dar’s “safe room” was steel-lined, but the basement corridor had only regular flooring between it and his armor-penetrating shells. He removed the magazine of SLAP rounds, tapped a regular .50-caliber magazine twice on the rock next to him, and slapped it into the Light Fifty.

Ignoring the sniper fire that was ricocheting off rocks to his right and back into his niche from rocks above, Dar used the monitor to help him sight on the Russian as he controlled his breathing, steadied the crosshairs reticle on the patch of wall behind which the Russian was lying, and gently squeezed the trigger.

No good. The first three .50-caliber rounds penetrated the wall easily enough, but they were deflected slightly, striking around the Russian. Also, it looked to Dar as if the .50-caliber rounds were penetrating the floor. He would have to use the M40 and hope that he would get a shot through the window.

The Russian was distracted by the heavy-caliber shells striking around him and he looked over his shoulder at the perforated wall. Dar could see on the monitor that the Russian was calling to his comrade in the corner, but the man who had just lost his foot was curled in a ball and evidently quite unconscious. A dark pool was visible all around his leg.

As Dar grabbed the modified Remington 700 from its hiding place under the ledge of rock, a bullet ricocheted twice and cut across the back of his thighs just below his buttocks. Dar gritted his teeth rather than scream aloud and looked over his own shoulder. He couldn’t see anything because of the bulky vest and loose camouflage blouse, but when he put his right hand back, it came away quite bloody. He decided that he would operate under the assumption that it was just a fat-and-muscle groove-wound with no serious arteries struck; he would know soon enough if he was wrong.

Dar sighted through the Redfield scope, still watching the TV monitor—which had miraculously survived the ricochets so far—with his open left eye. As with all scientists using a microscope or telescope, Dar had been taught as a sniper how to concentrate with his scope eye while keeping the other one open to aid in ranging and peripheral vision.

The Russian in the cabin appeared to have been distracted by the .50-caliber slugs. Now he got to one knee and peered into the dark basement opening, obviously hoping to see a body to report to Zuker and Yaponchik before hastily leaving the area.

The Russian leaned forward, peering down the ladder. Suddenly there was a flash and the gunman’s white oval of a face on the monitor became an irregular patchwork of grays and blacks. The body flew backward and landed with arms open, AK-47 flying across the floor.

Dar held his fire and watched. Bullets whined above him and one ricocheted no more than a millimeter from his right ear. A calm part of Dar’s mind was reporting to him that the sniper fire against him had lessened in volume. Obviously there was only one SVD firing against his position now—which meant that either Yaponchik or Zuker, probably Zuker, had moved out to flank him—but the main focus of Dar’s attention at the moment was that black square on the video monitor.

Syd’s head and shoulders came up quickly, a shotgun even more quickly. She swiveled, holding aim, seeing the three dead Russians but checking every visible corner of the cabin.

Dar had to grin. She had found the Remington 870 shotgun he had left in the hallway, probably opened the safe-room door and perhaps hidden in the room or at the very least behind the steel door during the grenade and AK-47 attack, and then had come out to meet her attacker.

Dar reached for the cell phone on his belt to call her. The cell phone had been shot away.

Shit.

He saw her run to the receiver of the phone still lying on the floor, but then he saw that the phone itself had been blasted to pieces by one of his .50-caliber rounds. He watched her toss the receiver aside and then crawl over to the Russian with the missing foot. She pulled a radio from his belt and the microphone from where it was strapped high on his left shoulder. Dar could see her listening and he knew that she could speak Russian.

Good girl, he thought, glad that Syd could not hear the sexist comment. There was no way that he and she could communicate right now, but at least she might get some information on what the two surviving Russians were planning up the hill.

Which reminded Dar to abandon this position before Zuker showed up behind him and opened fire into the stone trench.

The SVD fire was still slamming off the rocks inches above Dar’s head, and it was so wonderfully aimed that Dar instinctively felt that it was Yaponchik, the top shot, who had stayed behind, ordering his spotter to flank Dar.

Of course, Dar had taken some care to choose a position where he could not be flanked that easily. His field of view and easy killing zone still commanded the area near and above the north side of the cabin, so it was doubtful if Zuker would head downhill in that direction to cross the ravine where it shallowed out. There was zero chance that Zuker was going to climb down into the ravine and simply hope there was some way up its vertical east wall where Dar would not hear him coming. So Zuker had left the sniper roost and was working his way north and east, closer to the ridgeline, almost certainly moving very slowly through the thick forest and foliage there, hoping or knowing that there would be an easy crossing somewhere up there where the ravine narrowed and was at its deepest. Dar knew that the Russians had been here before, so he assumed that they had checked out the entire area; any decent sniper would have. That meant that they both knew about the fallen log that crossed the ravine near the waterfall—Reichenbach Falls, Dar had unofficially named it. The wide fir had fallen many years before, and was slippery with spray from the falls and overgrown with moss. The walls of the ravine opened onto it from small, thickly shrubbed gullies on either side. Dar estimated the ravine to be about sixty feet deep there, with overhanging ledges and nothing but ragged boulders below.

Tucking the Light Fifty under the ledge to protect it from Yaponchik’s deliberate ricochets, Dar glanced a final time at the monitor—Syd was crouched near the window with the Remington shotgun at port arms, obviously awaiting developments. He took his M40 rifle and crawled slowly backward and out of the trench, sliding below the ridgeline and rocks there, out of Yaponchik’s field of fire for the first time.

He spent ten seconds checking to see how badly wounded he was. The backs of his legs burned as if someone had branded him, but the blood was already coagulating—stiffening his ripped trousers—so it couldn’t be a serious wound. A quick pat confirmed that it was indeed a groove-wound, shallow, deeper in his right leg than his left. He was also surprised to discover that the ricochet that had destroyed his cell phone had also passed through his web belt and embedded itself in his right side, directly under the skin above his hipbone. It hurt no more than a bruise, but Dar knew that it had driven quite a bit of dirty fabric into him, so it would have to be cleaned and dressed and the slug removed if he was to avoid infection.

I’ll deal with that later, Dar thought, and began running north through the woods, keeping his rifle ready, making as little sound as possible in such thick woods. He made sure that his head was always below both the rocks along the ravine and line of sight to Yaponchik. His legs burned and he realized that the groove-wound was as much along the cheeks of his ass as through the backs of his legs. How undignified, he thought. He listened to his own panting and to the jingling of extra magazines and M40 ammo in his camo-fatigue pants and blouse.

Dar knew that he was in a race for his life. If Zuker had jogged to the log bridge, he would have arrived first, found a good firing position, and could easily kill Dar as he came crashing uphill through the trees. But Dar’s subliminal memory confirmed that Yaponchik had not been firing solo for very long before Dar had noticed it and bailed from his position. Most important, snipers were trained for stealth and caution, and it took a fool to run blindly through the woods the way Dar was. Zuker, Dar knew, was nowhere near as desperate as Dar was at that moment, and odds were that he would not be moving so fast.

Dar reached the shallow gully—not more than a meter and a half deep, filled with ferns and brambles—which ran about four meters to the fallen tree over the ravine. He was alive. So far, so good. But he was panting so hard that he could not hear if anyone was in the weeds here with him. Dar undid the clasp on his K-Bar knife—feeling lucky that the knife scabbard had not been shot off his belt along with the cell phone—and began crawling toward the tree, rifle aimed.

There was no one else in the gully on this side. The log looked longer and narrower than Dar remembered it, and the ravine much deeper. Spray rose from the rocks below. Dar knew that this fissure, not as deep but still formidable, ran several hundred yards north, almost all the way to the ridgeline. To cross there, a sniper would have to come out of the trees and expose himself along that ridgeline.

Dar caught his breath and peered through the ferns at the twenty feet of fallen log. The mossy surface was wet. Only one old branch might serve as a handhold along the way, and Dar was certain that it was rotten and would not hold his weight if he went off. He had often noted this log in his hikes up the hill, but he had never crossed it. Why should he? It would be a profoundly stupid thing to do.

Dar got to his knees and exposed his head and shoulders, inviting a shot if Zuker was waiting somewhere across the ravine. That would have been Dar’s strategy if he were up here alone—hide and wait for Zuker to cross the log. But he was not alone here. Syd was pinned down in the cabin, and Yaponchik could go after her at any time.

Ten seconds passed and there was no fatal shot. Dar slung the M40 across his back—difficult to get to but guaranteed not to fall into the ravine unless he did—and then jumped out onto the log and started the crossing.

Pavel Zuker, a slim, mean-faced man, jumped out onto the log at the same instant. Dar did not know which of them looked the more surprised. Zuker had not been able to see Dar from his waiting point in the opposite gully, and Dar certainly had not sighted the Russian before this.

Both men had slung their rifles similarly and there was neither time nor sufficient balance to go for them, so each went for the weapon at his belt. Dar pulled his K-Bar knife. Zuker pulled an ugly little semiautomatic pistol and aimed it at Dar’s face. They had both come too far out to turn back and were now separated by only nine feet or so. Dar froze.

“Isn’t this just like a stupid American?” said Zuker, his accent thick. “Bring a knife to a gunfight.”

An old joke, thought Dar, crouching near that one protruding branch. Still holding his K-Bar knife in his right hand, Dar used his right boot to give that branch a heavy kick just where it entered the trunk.

It broke off, just as Dar had thought it would, but not before rocking the entire tree twenty degrees to the right and then back.

Zuker fired twice, the second bullet passing an inch or so over Dar’s head. Then the Russian dropped to straddle the log, hanging on with his left hand until the rocking stopped, trying to steady the pistol with his right arm. He fired again.

Dar had been ready for the sudden motion and kept his balance, even while jumping forward, knife coming around, left hand grabbing at Zuker’s right wrist. The ninemillimeter slug hit him along his left side, sliding off his heavy body armor but knocking Dar off balance. He would have fallen then if he had not dropped and straddled the tree trunk as well.

The two men were inches apart now: Zuker grabbing and holding Dar’s knife hand, Dar desperately gripping Zuker’s gun hand, keeping the muzzle aim only inches away from his forehead. Zuker fired again. The bullet took a tiny slice out of Dar’s left ear. The entire tree-bridge was rocking. Dar could hear the water hitting the sharp boulders sixty feet below and could feel the spray and sweat loosening his grip on the Russian’s right wrist. They were face-to-face now. Dar could smell the smaller man’s breath and easily see the customized, finger-grooved grip on the Kahr ninemillimeter, as well as the fluorescent yellow front sight and ugly orange paint on the rear sight.

The two struggled in sweaty silence. The cool, analytical part of Dar’s mind sent the message—the CAC Customs Arm Kahr has a 6.5-pound trigger pull—while the adrenaline-filled majority of his brain told the useless analytical part to shut up, for Christ’s sake. Dar realized that even though he was slightly stronger than the wiry Russian, Zuker was going to win this game. All the Russian sniper had to do was bend his wrist enough to get the muzzle aimed at Dar’s head, while Dar had to turn the knife around and into full contact. Though he was ducking his head as far forward and out of range as he could, it was time for a strategy change.

Just as the black muzzle opening was rotating steadily toward Dar’s temple, he threw his head and shoulders back instead of forward, ripping his right arm free by jerking it back violently. He almost dropped the knife, but managed to hang on to it as he leaned far back as Zuker fired, creasing Dar’s scalp this time. Then Dar brought the knife around the side, low and fast under the Russian’s blocking left arm, using more energy in the motion than he thought his body still possessed, stabbing toward the belly with a vertical blade and then tugging up as hard as he could, precisely as he had been taught at Parris Island more than two and a half decades earlier.

The Russian said, “Ooof,” as the wind was knocked out of him, but then he smiled broadly, showing poorly cared for Russian teeth—mostly steel.

“Kevlar vest, American asshole,” said Pavel Zuker, and then, having the leverage over Dar in this awkward choreography, he rotated his weapon further. Dar’s slick grasp slipped a little more, until the yellow forward sight was aimed directly at Dar’s right eye.

Suddenly Zuker’s smile faded and he looked thoughtful, perhaps a bit disappointed. Dar remembered the same look on the faces of childhood friends when they were being called in by their mothers just as the playing got good.

Zuker looked down at his belly and at the blood pumping and squirting out over the handle of the K-Bar knife and Dar’s clenched fist. He was frowning in real confusion now.

Dar knocked the Kahr pistol out of Zuker’s suddenly strengthless grip and then grabbed for the Russian’s vest, but Zuker was already tilting, sliding, falling—gone. Dar caught a last glimpse of the Russian’s eyes—still alert and asking an unspoken question even as the blood quit pumping to the sniper’s brain—and then the man fell out of sight into the spray. Suddenly Dar was busy keeping his own balance as the tree-bridge rocked from the energy of Dar tugging the blade free of Zuker’s midsection. Dar drove the knife into the center of the log and hung on with both hands until the rocking stopped.

Panting heavily, his body debating as to whether he should vomit now or later, Dar looked down through the mist at the broken form sixty feet below. The water ran thick and red downstream from the corpse. Zuker’s pale face was still raised, the mouth open wide as if still trying to ask a question.

“Kevlar doesn’t stop knife blades,” panted Dar, answering Zuker’s unspoken question. “Especially blades sprayed with Teflon.”

Might be a good idea to get off the log, the banished analytical part of his mind suggested diffidently.

Dar crawled on all fours the last ten feet. Pulling himself into and up the shallow gully on the other side, seeing the boot-prints where Zuker had hidden behind a fold in the rock before attempting the crossing, Dar was acutely aware that his middle-aged body wanted to call it quits for the day.

He vetoed that idea and crawled slowly up and out of the gully, sheathing his K-Bar knife after wiping the blade on ferns, and then unslinging his M40.

There were four possibilities. He knew that Yaponchik would not be at the sniper’s nest. He was either downhill finishing off Syd, or running for his Chevy Suburban, or in another good position and waiting to shoot Dar. Or executing some combination of the previous three.

Getting slowly to his feet, banishing the daemon of katalepsis that threatened to possess him, Dar held his rifle at port arms and began moving west through the woods.