The Demon Plagues (14 page)

The trombone case rested in the back of the
Fiat, lying on the folded-down back seats at an angle. On top of it
were a used backpack, a long coat, a sweater, a bedroll, a couple
of pillows, two moderately interesting paintings and some other
bric-a-brac that he had obtained at the massive flea market held
yesterday at the
Plainpaleis
. It was all tossed carelessly
in, the better to withstand scrutiny if he was checked for any
reason.

Driving carefully within the speed limits, he
eventually parked in a paid place north of the airport, watching
for the faint light of dawn coming up in the east over Lake Geneva.
He had enjoyed his day off yesterday, just relaxing, the first such
day in many years, where he didn’t have to be concerned about thugs
with knives or raids by the SS. Maybe when he retired, if he ever
did, he would retire to Switzerland. Its precision, its discretion,
its cleanliness and order conformed to and epitomized the values of
the sniper. It agreed with him.

Loading the backpack, he slid the trombone
case into it and wrapped the blanket around its protruding end. He
packed water bottles and food into the pockets – wonderful bread
baked fresh that morning, butter from wildflower-hay-fed Swiss
milch cows, cold cut Black Forest ham, Gruyere cheese, chocolate
and fresh fruit. It might be a long day. Or two.

The most important thing he packed was his
ghillie jacket. He did not have the time nor need to make a full
suit, so he had contented himself with taking a commercial hooded
jacket of dark grey and stapling torn strips of green and brown
material to it.

He hoisted the heavy mass easily; there was
no need to save weight, as he would probably abandon most of the
gear in place. In the faint growing light he covered the half-mile
through the woods to his chosen hide, a hut perched on a hill
overlooking the flight path of all of the aircraft flying in and
out of Geneva.

The lowing of cattle mingled with the
clanging of copper cowbells as he crossed an open pasture
surrounded by thin strips of woods. The animals ignored him, well
used to humans and their movements. One curious cow and calf had to
be shooed away as he walked up to the wooden structure he had
chosen.

It was one of many
hutte
that dotted
the landscape, each a kind of mini-barn the size of a two-storey
cabin with an overhanging roof. They held tools and implements of
the farmer’s craft – cowbells on spare collars, scythes to cut any
hay that machines could not reach, stakes and fenceposts and rolls
of barbed wire and hammers and pliers and gloves, all conveniently
stored for use. The upper floor of this one was perfectly sited,
its small square window overlooking his field of fire out to six
hundred meters, encompassing the eastern half of the airport and
the flight approach.

He was ready to break in but found no lock or
barrier at all. Slipping inside, he put down the pack and climbed
the ladder, hearing the rustle of some small animal, perhaps a
bird. The shed smelled musty and, mixed with the scents of cowpies
and wood, reminded him of childhood visits to his uncle’s farm in
Oregon.

Back on the ground floor he retrieved an
ancient hatchet from its peg above a workbench, reaching up with
his long arms and placing it on the loft floor to the left side of
the ladder. He then fastened a short line to the pack and, climbing
once more to the loft through the small hatchway, he hoisted its
weight up carefully and quietly.

After putting on soft-faced knee pads, he
cleared a space in front of the window, on the rough boards of the
loft that comprised the second storey. He unrolled his camping pad,
then his bedroll, and unpacked his bulging backpack to set out his
food and the trombone case in the growing light. The window faced
south so the breaking dawn angled its glow slantwise. Slivers and
circles of sunshine poked through the cracks and holes in the
walls, though not in the well-maintained metal roof.

He took out the Zeiss binoculars, the best
optical model he had found. He didn’t trust the new electronic
models, even though they could do fancy things like interface with
computers, take pictures and video. Besides, he had the camcorder
for that work.

He set the two devices up on tripods, the
camcorder in the direction of the airport, the binoculars down
toward the farmland and broken woods, both well back from the
window so no glint would be seen. Adjusting the camcorder, he
linked it to the airweight computer he had purchased yesterday.
Soon he had a continuous recording feeding the hard drive, showing
the front of the hangar containing the Chairman’s airplane. He
didn’t have to work very hard to figure out which one it was. To a
trained observer, with a Swiss security force of at least twenty
personnel and eight vehicles they might as well have put up a neon
sign pointing right at it.

Next he spent some time surveilling the
ground under the flight path, ignoring the airplanes taking off and
landing from time to time. There were only three real possibilities
for his enemies to place their forces.

Two were private farmhouse complexes, each
composed of a main house and several outbuildings and barns in a
rough rectangle, all connected by the traditional whitewashed brick
or stone wall. This arrangement turned the farms into fortresses,
and had been effective from the Dark Ages through Napoleonic times
and even into the mechanized wars of the Twentieth Century. Each
Swiss male and his family was ready to defend his country against
all invaders at a moment’s notice; it was this commitment to
heavily armed neutrality that had kept the Swiss safe and
prosperous for centuries.

My kind of place.

The other location was some kind of light
industrial affair, a cluster of buildings, a half-dozen two-ton
trucks and stacks of materials. Closer examination through the
binoculars confirmed that it was some kind of building materials
and contracting yard. He didn’t see any untoward activity at any of
the three; that was a good sign. It meant he had time.

He took a break to finish his coffee and eat
sparingly, then prepared the tools of his trade.

Opening the trombone case, he gazed at the
musical instrument inside. It was old but appeared functional,
another flea-market purchase. If need be, he could even blow a few
notes on it. There was no telling if he would have had to show it
to a curious policeman or security officer, but fortunately he had
never been stopped. Even so, there was a mouthpiece, polishing rag,
a mute, and a bottle of mineral oil, half-filled, in the
accessories niche.

Releasing a hidden catch, he lifted the whole
arrangement out to reveal the SIG SG 510 beneath. Its front half
had been wrapped in ghillie rags that broke up its outline but did
not impair its functionality. There were two full twenty-round
magazines and the remainder of the hundred rounds were stored in
holders nose-down, ready to be loaded. He swung down the arms of
the bipod attached near the front, to place their feet firmly on
the floor of the loft. Lining the weapon up roughly in the
direction of the materials yard, he then fixed the day sight to the
top. He tapped the angle cosine indicator, a device fixed next to
the sight that indicated the vertical angle of the barrel, to make
sure it was floating freely. It would give him an instant reading
of the down-angle as he set up the shots.

Now came the most dangerous part of the
exercise short of its execution. To ensure proper zeroing of the
weapon, he eventually had to fire it. If possible, a sniper always
fired several rounds after any adjustment in the weapon – for
example, having affixed a new, untested sight. There had been no
chance to do that. In fact, Skull did not want to take the risk of
visiting a firing range to try it out. Besides, the results might
have been misleading, since he would have, by law, had to purchase
and fire new, unmatched ammunition from that range, using it all up
before leaving.

However, it simply had to be done; perhaps
with one shot, but best with two. He settled himself in behind the
weapon, feeding in the first magazine filled with the best
ammunition selected by the deliberately unnamed old armorer, and
choosing a point of aim high up on a tree trunk well away from any
human being, at a distance of about five hundred meters. He pushed
disposable foam earplugs into his ears to save his hearing, then
noted the angle on the cosine indicator; about twelve degrees
down.

Then he waited.

The buzz of a turboprop passed overhead, but
Skull continued to wait. The whine of an executive jet came next,
but still he waited. It was only when the roar of a midsized
commercial airliner, two engines at full thrust for its
heavily-laded takeoff, that he relaxed his mind, his vision and his
breathing and loosed the shot.

Recoil slammed his shoulder but he ignored
that and held the weapon firmly inward, his cheek welded to the
stock and his eye as close to the padded sight as could be without
striking his brow, focusing on his aim point. Normally a spotter
would fulfill this role but today, as every day for the past ten
years, he played the lone wolf.

Observing the explosion of bark three inches
above and to the right of his point of aim, he adjusted the sight
accordingly. He then gently placed the butt of the weapon on the
bedroll surface and got up to stretch. Walking the perimeter of the
loft, he peered through the cracks and knotholes in the rough wood
of the walls, looking for anyone who might have heard the shot,
however improbably, above the din of the ascending aircraft.

Cows lazily cropped grass. A small combine
mowed and baled hay in the distance.

He lay back down and took up the rifle again,
to once more wait for the loud roar of a commercial liner. His
patience was rewarded after almost an hour, when he fired and
confirmed his shot’s fall exactly at the crosshairs. He now had a
true zero for five hundred meters; he would adjust for any other
range and for wind by using the fine crosshairs within the
sight.

As he made the circuit of the loft once more,
he froze as he observed a tractor coming up the road with a flat
trailer carrying bales of fresh wildflower hay. Taking out his
earplugs, he watched the two men, one driving and one riding on the
back, pull into his field. They drove the tractor to a point in the
middle of the area, then dumped off the hay bales. The cows and
their spring calves hurried over to eat.

The tractor’s next stop was the water trough,
filling it from a tank of perhaps two hundred gallons fixed to the
trailer, then the vehicle turned toward the shed.

Skull cursed to himself, quickly surveying
the ground floor from the top of the loft’s ladder. Other than the
missing hatchet, he didn’t see anything out of place. He picked up
the tool, now a weapon, and lay down on the bedroll, his eye to a
crack in the floor where he could observe the door.

One man came inside; he had the hale,
energetic look of a Plague carrier rejuvenated from age, the
slightly deliberate movement of someone who had once been old and
wasn’t completely comfortable being young. He picked up a hammer,
some tongs and some soft copper rivets, and left the shed.

Soon Skull could hear him hammering on
something, probably the water trough, making repairs. He didn’t
move, merely tried to relax as the men chatted away in French as
they ate a midmorning meal and watched their cattle eat and drink;
he caught a few words here and there.

Half an hour later the man dropped off the
tools and they drove away. Skull let his breath out with relief.
More best-laid plans had gone awry from chance and circumstance –
from Murphy’s Law – than from enemy action.

Setting his Patek to chime every hour and his
computer to notify him if it noted movement on the video feed above
certain parameters – the door opening, for example, or vehicles
moving – he dozed, conserving his strength and concentration.

Every hour he surveilled his zone of fire,
the ground where his enemies must, by the immutable laws of
physics, take their positions. Assuming his logic was sound – by no
means certain – the only hole in Markis’ security, the only place
they had no control, was on his aircraft’s departure. He had to
believe the Swiss would attempt to cover it; it was elementary
security to occupy the ground beneath the travel path of high-value
aircraft. Therefore his enemies must have a hide, a secure place to
use and avoid the Swiss security long enough to engage and shoot
down the plane.

No security could cover every place to engage
an aircraft, but only certain locations yielded a high kill
probability, and then only with certain weapons. Such weapons had
to be portable, they had to be available, and they had to be
effective. This reduced the possibilities to some form of MANPADS,
man-portable air-defense systems. The layman usually called them
Stingers, after the US-made weapon of that name, shoulder-fired
missiles designed to chase and blow a low-flying aircraft out of
the sky.

Engagement envelopes of these missiles
against jets was very limited; depending on the make and model,
they had to fire from specific angles, usually directly to the
rear, and at certain narrow ranges. Too close, and the weapon would
be flying too slow or perhaps would not even have armed itself
before impact, resulting in a miss or a hit with no detonation. Too
far and the missile would run out of fuel and fall to Earth. Too
much deflection – left or right angle from the bearing of flight –
and the missile may not ‘see’ to effectively engage the heat of the
target. Prepare the weapon too soon or too late, and the
supercooled heat sensor in the nose of the missile would not be at
its narrow critical temperature. If the system was one of the few
that used lasers or radar illumination instead of infrared to guide
the missile, then there were also system-specific limitations that
yielded a roughly similar set of results.