Darwin's Blade

From the outside, there was no hint that the cabin had a basement: no basement windows, no outside entrance. But it did. Dar rolled back the red Persian rug on the far side of his bed, found the faint seam in the floor, opened it, and used another key to unlatch the trapdoor. The basement light went on automatically as the door was lifted and latched in place.

Dar went down the steep ladder and shivered slightly in the cave-coolness of the narrow corridor. There was nothing in this cement-block hallway except the steel door at the end. This required two keys to open and Dar fumbled for the second one.

The room beyond was only a third the size of the huge living space upstairs, but it was large enough for Dar’s purposes. He had to snap on the lights here, but once they were on, there were no shadows in the neatly arranged stacks of boxes, crates, shelves, and drawers. The temperature in this room was regulated and the air dehumidified. The cinder-block walls were lined on the inside by a contained-asbestos layer and a thin wall of aluminum. The room was essentially a large safe-deposit box, safe from fire, tornado, or distant nuclear blast. Dar smiled at the irony of how much this rarely visited room had cost him.

On the far wall was a padlocked grille that opened to an oversized air shaft. It ran 122 feet to the abandoned mine shaft of a gold mine more than a century old; the mine shaft itself ran another 208 feet to its small opening in the steep gully. The shaft ended more than a hundred meters east of the sheep wagon. This air shaft—padlocked on both ends—had cost Dar almost as much to dig and install as it had to build the entire rest of the house.

He walked the narrow path between the storage boxes. As always, he glanced at his “go bag”—the black suitcase that had always been packed and ready when he worked for the NTSB. As always, without his thinking about it, his hand passed over the large green crate that held all of Barbara’s clothes, all of their photographs from that time, and David’s baby clothes. As always, Dar did not open the crate.

There was an unconcealed wall safe at the rear of the room, and Dar turned the dial quickly. He knew it was foolish to use David’s birth-date numerals as his combination, but anyone who had come this far wouldn’t be deterred by a mere combination lock.

It was a large safe, deep, with several metal shelves holding documents and computer disks and photographs. Dar ignored these and pulled out a walnut box with a carrying handle.

He closed the safe, set the thin walnut box on top of a crate, and clicked it open. Inside, laid carefully in green felt with sections packed in Cosmoline-filled plastic wrap, was a disassembled M40 Sniper Rifle—a military version of the classic, bolt-action Remington 700 sporting rifle.

Dar ran his fingers over the wooden stock of the rifle and then removed the 3–9 variable-power Redfield Accu-Range telescopic sight from its creche. He glanced once through the sight and then set it back in its place. He was clicking shut the locks on the carrying case when he heard a distant but loud banging from upstairs.

Dar took the gun case with him as he left, locked the storeroom, and climbed the steep ladder. Someone was banging loudly at the front door. Dar secured the trapdoor and the carpet, considered assembling the rifle as the banging at the door became a pounding, but kept the gun case closed as he peered out the front window.

Dar sighed, slid the gun case onto a lower shelf of books, and went to open the door.

“Are you all right?” asked Syd. She was holding her ninemillimeter Sig Pro in her right hand. All that banging on the door had been with just her left hand. Her knuckles on that hand were red.

“Sure,” said Dar, standing aside so she could come in.

“Then why didn’t you answer the door?”

“I was in the bathroom,” said Dar.

“No you weren’t,” said Syd. “I walked around and peeked in that window. I couldn’t see you anywhere.”

Dar knew that the trapdoor, even locked open, was out of the line of sight of any of the windows. “Two hours ago you said you wouldn’t follow me,” said Dar. “Now you’re peeking in my bathroom window.”

Syd’s face was flushed. It grew redder as she reholstered the semi-automatic and pulled her linen jacket closed. “I didn’t follow you. I tried to call your cell phone, but it wasn’t on. I tried to call your cabin number, but you didn’t answer.”

“I just got here a few minutes ago,” said Dar. “What’s happened? Is something wrong?”

Syd’s eyes darted around the room. “Could I have a glass of Scotch?”

“We’re both driving,” said Dar. “I’m headed back tonight, remember? I was just going to leave in a few minutes.”

“I know what a ghillie suit is now,” said Syd, rather breathlessly, as if she had run from her car to the cabin. “And I know about Dalat.”

17

“Q is for Quagmire”

I never told Barbara about Dalat, thought Dar as he poured the drinks and rounded up the spaghetti-making equipment. As close as we were, I never talked about any of it. Not to her. Not to Larry. Never to anyone.

Things are different now, he argued with himself. A Russian sniper tried to kill you the other day.

All right. Dar clinked glasses with Syd and they drank good Scotch while he began preparing the meal in a mutual silence filled with the turmoil of too much thought.

Dalat was and is a highland Vietnamese city located at the foot of Lang Biang Mountain, some fifty miles from the coast. In 1962 President Ke

Cut to March of 1975. Nixon and Kissinger had successfully “Vietnamized” the war. The soldiers who had been equipped to take the place of the six hundred thousand American grunts, Marines, Air Force perso

In the middle of all the confusion—burning files, fleeing families, abandoned equipment, thousands of Vietnamese “helpers” petitioning to be flown out—two South Vietnamese technicians showed up at the U.S. embassy and diffidently reminded the Americans that the Dalat reactor was still up and ru

The Vietnamese technicians allowed that they would very much like to do that, but respectfully reminded the general and the ambassador that Dalat was in the process of being overrun by both Viet Cong and NVA units, that all of the roads and railroad lines to Saigon and the coast had been interdicted by the enemy, and that all scheduled flights in and out of Dalat’s tiny airport had been canceled because of the proximity of NVA soldiers. All of the other reactor perso