Darwin's Blade (40 page)

The qualities that went into superb marksmanship included the control of breathing that was so important, extraordinary eyesight, patience, the ability to fire a weapon from several positions, and the ability to factor in distance, gravity, wind, and the weapon's unique quirks with every shot. Another important—and underrated—requirement was cleverness with adjusting the rifle's sling, a skill difficult to teach but which had come naturally to young Dar. Now, almost thirty years later, Dar knew that his eyesight had deteriorated to a mere 20/20 for distance shooting, but the comfort with the weapon, the ability to adjust the sling properly without thinking about it, the sense of proper range and ability to zero the weapon, the ability to fire easily and accurately from a prone, kneeling, sitting, and standing position—all these remained.

Dar took great care that Tuesday afternoon to zero the M40. His modified Redfield scope was fitted with mil-dot reticles as well as elevation and windage turrets. He adjusted the elevation turret according to the different ranges he was firing, and clicked the windage turret left to right to compensate for the lateral effects of wind on the bullet. The “zero” of the weapon was simply the setting required to put a shot exactly on target center at any given range with no wind blowing. Here the ravine came in handy because it blocked the prevailing winds from the west and allowed Dar to zero the weapon at all distances during lulls when there was no breeze whatsoever.

During advanced sniper training at Quantico and again in Vietnam, Dar had set his own accuracy requirements. Firing match-grade ammunition such as he was using now, Dar was not satisfied unless he could group his shots within a diameter of 20 millimeters at a range of one hundred yards, 125 millimeters at six hundred yards, and 300 millimeters—regularly—at one thousand yards. The final goal was not as generous as it sounded, Dar knew, because it took a bullet fired from his M40 approximately one second to travel six hundred yards, but a full two seconds to travel one thousand yards. Two seconds is an eternity in ballistics. Wind variations come into play over such a huge amount of time, and if the target is moving…forget it.

Dar spent five hours on Tuesday firing the M40 from all four positions—prone, sitting, kneeling, and standing. He would assume the position, feeling the sling snug tight and right, the stock tight against his cheek, a “spot weld” of contact between his cheek and his thumb on the small of the wooden stock, trigger finger positioned on the trigger with no contact with the side of the stock, his breathing so calm as to be imperceptible. And then he would close his eyes for several seconds. If, when he opened his eyes, the crosshairs in the scope were still precisely on his previous aiming point, he knew that he had obtained a so-called natural point of aim.

The hardest thing for Dar to recapture was trigger control. This had come natural to him in the Marines, but he knew from firing-range practice that he had to work to find it now. Trigger control was nothing more complicated than taking up the slack at precisely the correct point in his breathing cycle while he fine-tuned his aim, then squeezing the trigger the extra millimeter needed without moving the rifle in any way. It was not complicated, but it took mental focus, muscle control, and breathing control.

Having zeroed the M40, Dar took targets down into the open field below the cabin and fired scores of rounds in actual wind conditions. Tuesday was a windy day, and in a steady 15-mph wind, the 7.62 mm bullet would drift 4.5 inches off target at two hundred yards, a disturbing 20 inches off target zero at six hundred yards, and a ridiculous 48 inches off target at six hundred yards. Of course, the wind was almost never steady.

Dar knew that the new generation of snipers went into battle with pocket calculators or—in the more sophisticated weapon systems—minicomputers in the actual scope with electronic wind sensors attached.

Dar thought that this was a waste of human brainpower and basic senses. He had been well trained to gauge the wind. Less than 3 mph and one can hardly tell if the wind is blowing, but smoke drifts. Gusts of 5 to 8 mph will keep tree leaves in a constant motion, and Dar had long since learned the sound of different wind values in the ponderosa pines and Douglas firs that surrounded his cabin. Any wind between 8 and 12 mph kicks up dust and grit, blows loose leaves, and can be seen in swirls and dust devils. Between 12 and 15 mph the tiny birch trees in the field would be constantly swaying.

Dar had instinctively known, even as a young Marine sniper trainee, that the wind's speed is only a small part of the equation. The wind direction must also be properly sensed and factored in. Any wind blowing at right angles to his direction of fire—from eight-, nine-, ten-, and two-, three-, four-o'clock positions—was a full-value wind. Any oblique wind—one, five, seven, eleven o'clock—would be accorded only half value, so a 7-mph breeze from his nine-o'clock position would be rated as a 3.5-mph wind when he made his lateral adjustments to the scope. Finally, if the wind was blowing directly at his firing position or from the rear—six or twelve o'clock—Dar would factor in only minimal effect on the bullet: a slight drop in velocity firing into the wind; a corresponding rise in velocity with a tail wind. Being a sailplane pilot had honed his skill in sensing wind velocity and direction.

Once these factors of range and wind were taken into account—preferably in microseconds—then Dar just used the old Marine marksman formula of range, expressed in hundreds of yards, multiplied by wind velocity expressed in miles per hour, and divided by fifteen. Dar could perform this calculation instantly and instinctively even after all these years.

Lying and kneeling out in that long, grassy field all Tuesday afternoon, Dar kept the small video monitor tuned to camera one activated beside him—making sure that no one was driving up to the cabin while he was practicing. Sometimes wearing his ghillie suit, sometimes in his green slacks and field shirt, Dar fired at regular range targets and Paladin targets and concentrated on achieving m.o.a. and sub-m.o.a. groups. Even after he was achieving these groupings regularly—in slightly gusty conditions and at all of his preset ranges—Dar reminded himself of one crucial point.

These targets are only paper.

On Wednesday evening, just before dusk, all of the FBI men on the Russians' ranch-house perimeter came to full alert. By this time, eight tactical team snipers in ghillie suits had wormed their way to within 150 yards of the house and all three sides of the property bordering the street. Three of the snipers were in the tall grass less than five yards from the manicured lawn.

At 4:30
P.M.
the only telephone call of the day came in. It was trapped and played back on the FBI tape recorders.

Voice:
Your dry cleaning is ready, Mr. Yale.

Voice thought to be Gregor Yaponchik:
All right.

The FBI traced the call within seconds—it had come from a Pasadena dry-cleaning establishment. Warren had an agent call the place and ask if Mr. Yale's dry cleaning was ready yet. The manager said that it was and confirmed that he had just called to inform Mr. Yale of that. The manager apologized for not being able to deliver the dry cleaning, but explained that the unincorporated area north of Pasadena was outside their normal delivery area. The agent calling assured the manager that this was all right.

At 8:10
P.M.
a white van pulled up and three Hispanic men in gray shirts and work pants got out. The van had a yard-service ad on its side and Special Agent in Charge Warren had his people on the phone within ten seconds, checking with the company to see if this was a legitimate visit. It certainly did not seem kosher at this hour.

It was. The yard-service people assured the special agents that this was the weekly service and that it had been held up because of van problems and “complexities” at the previous customer's home. Syd later explained that Warren was tempted to tell the service company to call their people and to get them the hell out of there
now,
but the three yard men had already begun their work—mowing the yard, clipping the shrubs, and cutting up a small, dead tree—and the FBI man decided that it would draw less attention to let them finish. It was almost dark.

One of the workmen went to the front door, and agents in the house a quarter of a mile from the Russians' place got a clear photograph of Pavel Zuker talking brusquely to the quickly nodding yard worker. Zuker closed the door and a second later the garage door went up. In the dim light the FBI people could make out heaps of leaf bags next to the two Mercedeses in the garage.

The workers were fast—racing true darkness—and they mowed the lawn in a rush, coming within feet of the face-down and flattened FBI snipers in the higher grass. Once, one of the yard men stopped his mower, picked up what looked like a metal horseshoe, and tossed it into the high grass beyond the yard, almost braining an FBI marksman.

It was almost full dark when the mowing and pruning was done, and the FBI watched carefully as the three workmen disappeared into the garage and reappeared a moment later, carrying the bulky leaf bags.

“Count them,” commanded SAC Warren over the radio link.

“The leaf bags?” said some unfortunate special agent.

“No, you moron, the workers. Make sure that only the three who went into that garage get into the van.”

“Roger that,” came the confirmation from observers and marksmen.

The three went in and came out, tossing the leaf bags in the back of the van and stowing other detritus. The porch light and small driveway lights came on automatically. Lights in the house switched on as the van drove away.

“Shall we intercept them?” asked the special agent at the outer perimeter.

“Negative,” said Warren. “Their boss said that they're working overtime and they're headed home from here. Let them go.”

The snipers in the grass and the observers in the houses and passing high-altitude helicopters switched to night vision. Everyone there would have preferred planning the assault for 3:30
A.M.
, when the Russians would be at their groggiest—or better yet, all asleep—but because of the timing of the other arrests, it had been decided that the assault could commence no earlier than five
A.M.
Warren and Syd and the others had decided that it would be worth the extra risk of a dawn assault just to make sure that Dallas Trace and the others targeted for arrest that morning heard nothing on the morning news.

Dar had also fired the Barrett Light Fifty for several hours into Tuesday evening. That was a fascinating experience. The rifle came with a bipod, but it was still a beast to manhandle around—weighing twenty-nine and a half pounds without the telescope and measuring an inch more than five feet long. A monster. Adding the M3a Ultra telescopic sight and a few cartridge boxes to the load reminded Dar that he had a bad back.

On Wednesday Dar did his work at the condo, talked to Syd briefly in late afternoon, took the Remington Model 870 shotgun out from under the bed, loaded it, filled his pocket with some extra shells; and carried his overnight bag to the Land Cruiser. He looked around carefully in the basement parking garage before walking to his vehicle. It would be embarrassing to go through all this preparation and then have a pissed-off Russian shoot him with a .22 pistol in his own parking garage.

None did.

Dar drove out through Wednesday traffic. He wanted to arrive at the cabin well before dark, and he did. Stopping on the long gravel driveway to the cabin, he activated the various video cameras one by one. Nothing on the road ahead. No one in the sniper points high above the cabin. No one immediately visible in the field below the cabin. No one in the cabin.

Dar drove the rest of the way, carried in his bags and some groceries, and made dinner. He thought about calling Syd, but knew that she would be busy at the tactical command center all that evening.

What the hell,
he thought.
I'll hear about it on the radio tomorrow and read about it in the evening paper.

He sipped some coffee.
I hope.

Somewhere around midnight, he double-checked that the cabin doors were locked and turned off the lights. A fire still burned in his fireplace, filling the warm room with flickering light, and he left a soft light on in the kitchen and another next to the bed.

Instead of going to bed, Dar took the shotgun and the receiver/monitor, moved the strip of carpet slightly, unlocked the trapdoor, and went down into his basement. The lights came on automatically. He left the shotgun propped up against the outer wall, unlocked the steel door, and crossed the storeroom to the ventilator grille. Unlocking the heavy padlock there, he inspected the dusty vent with his flashlight and then crawled on his elbows and knees the 220 feet—breathing much more heavily than he liked—until he came to the second grille. He unlocked it, slipped out into the old gold mine, and found his plastic-wrapped M40 rifle and the heavy rucksack right where he had left them the day before.

He pulled on the Marine-issue flak vest stored in the pack, hefted the heavy rucksack, and slung the rifle comfortably on his right shoulder. Water dripped in the old mine shaft. Puddles were everywhere and often six inches deep. Dar splashed through them, still using the flashlight for illumination. He was wearing waterproof hiking boots and his green slacks and camouflage field shirt loose over the heavy vest. On his web belt was the black-steel K-Bar knife in its scabbard. His cell phone was in his shirt pocket, but it was turned off.

Once he reached the entrance to the mine, he doused the flashlight and stowed it, pulling out the L.L. Bean night goggles. There was no moon and the ravine was filled with shadows, but Dar let his eyes adapt naturally and kept the night-vision goggles raised on his forehead as he found his way up the ravine, up the narrow path on the east face of the gully, and continued climbing toward his preselected spot.