Darwin's Blade (30 page)

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:

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.