The Mosin-Nagant bucked back against his shoulder. Most snipers will remain in position after a shot, letting their barrel return to the firing plane. Thinking about another task to be accomplished immediately after the shot makes the attention wander. Trusov had more skill than most and more concentration than most. He instantly lowered the rifle to the boulder he hid behind and brought up his binoculars. He had practiced the maneuver, and the binoculars immediately found the tower glass.
A black slash in the flat scene visible in the binocular lenses was Trusov's bullet, flickering through the air, then disappearing with distance. The tower window shimmered as a hole was punched into it.
Blood and bone and shards of glass filled the air and lashed against the tower's far window like windblown rain. Pete Coates spun and then collapsed. Blood and bits of flesh slid down the far window. Trusov lowered the binoculars.
Snipers are taught that if they are captured or if they are surrounded, the time to break out is now, not later when the enemy has had time to regroup. All glass and plywood, the fire tower offered no protection from bullets. Coates groaned, blood spreading on the floor under his shattered elbow. Gray pushed him toward the hatch and without a word shoved him through. Coates landed heavily on the ground. The rifle in one hand, Owen Gray followed the detective through the hatch to the rocks below.
He landed hard on the incline and rolled involuntarily downhill, almost to the support post. Behind him, blood dripped from the hatch to splatter the stones. His shoes pushing against the loose rocks, Gray scrambled up the incline to push Coates behind a boulder. The detective moaned and his eyes opened. His elbow was frayed and bleeding, his jacket wicking away blood.
"Stay down," Gray ordered.
A bullet slammed into the rock supporting Gray's right foot. His leg collapsed, and he slid further down the incline. He tried to reach for the eight-by-eight, but he slid past, out into the blinding sun. He tightly gripped the rifle.
Hoping to find a foothold, he jammed a leg against the mountain-side, but the loose stones slid away beneath him, rolling and bouncing down the slope. He clawed at the rocks and managed to slow himself. His slide stopped when his foot found a brace against a stone.
Blasting up a cloud of granite grit, another bullet kicked away that stone. Gray fell again. The side of the mountain gained in pitch, and he slipped more quickly, his body bouncing painfully as he skidded over the rocks. He tried to jam the stock of his gun against a boulder to stop himself, but he was sliding too quickly and the boulder ripped the weapon out of his hand.
Feet downward he slid, crashing down the incline. With his left hand he frantically grabbed at a Scotch broom, a tawny, strong plant that would hold him. His fingers caught a branch. He stopped, perched precariously against the side of the mountain. Blood flowed from his legs where pants and skin had been abraded.
A bullet coursed into his left arm, digging a half-inch trench in his triceps. His arm jerked spastically and he lost his grip. Yet another bullet struck the heel of his boot, tearing off the leather and burning the bottom of his foot. His leg collapsed, again sending him helplessly down the steep hill. When his leg caught on a rock, his momentum flipped him to one side and he began to roll length-wise down the gully side, stones smashing into him as he tumbled. The world whirled madly around him. Blue sky and gray stone spun over and over. His head banged into a rock, then another.
He came to rest at the bottom of the gully. Scraped and shot and bleeding, he crawled behind a boulder that hid him from the south slope. His rifle was somewhere up the slope.
Gray heard several more shots and the shattering of glass. Trusov was disabling the Jeep.
Five minutes passed before his vision lost the fuzziness at the edges and Gray admitted to himself that he could think clearly again. The Russian hadn't been out to kill him or he would have. All the pieces of that day in Vietnam weren't yet in place. Gray was safe, the Russian probably gone.
Gray rose from behind the boulder. Limping and bleeding and aching, he crawled back up the slope.
The computer monitor displayed the photographs one after another, all with the clarity of 35-millimeter slides. Owen Gray at twelve months, a scant halo of dark hair, pudgy cheeks, an open smile revealing four baby teeth. Owen Gray, eighth grade, shy grin, eyes a little to the left as if a friend off-camera is razzing him. Owen Gray wearing a narrow black tie and a full grin, his hair over his forehead in the new fashion imported from Liverpool, his high school yearbook photo. Owen Gray's Marine Corps boot camp ID photo, shaved head, stunned look. Another Marine photo of Gray, this time receiving the Honor Man citation from a colonel, Gray wearing a white dress cap and a single chevron.
Next was a snapshot of Gray sitting in front of sandbags wearing a small mustache, a rifle with a starlight scope just visible at the edge of the frame. Next was a college yearbook photo, then one from law school, then a photo from his first year as a prosecutor. Gray was aging as the photos rolled by, a few wrinkles at the corner of his eyes, a slight rise in his hairline above the temples. The last, from six months ago, was taken at a federal prosecutors' dinner, showing Gray in black suit and a floral tie, wearing a confident but tired grin.
For a moment, Adrian stared at the screen, at the most recent photo, then she stroked the keyboard several times and Gray's baby photo appeared again on the monitor. Distant laughter from the troopers at their car on the other side of the big larch tree did not distract her. She went through the photos of Gray, this time more rapidly, watching him grow and stabilize and age. The photos revealed little, only what Gray was prepared to show the camera, but still, for a student of human nature as Adrian Wade was, there was much to be seen. Some scoffed at the notion of intuiting personality traits from photographs of a face. It smacked of the fakery of phrenology. But a camera could peek behind the surface of the skin, could betray confidences and convictions to the careful viewer.
She leaned back in her chair studying Owen Gray's face. Her work in the mountains was finished, her investigating and computer skills no longer needed. She should have been packing her few things, readying for the journey east, but her clothes remained on pegs in the bedroom. She idly tapped her fingers on the base of the keyboard. She wore her Goretex jacket, only slightly askew on her shoulders because of the handgun under the fabric. To her left, the antler chandelier swung slowly in a draft. Sunlight streamed through the windows, making the room dark by contrast. Outside, a song sparrow let loose with its three piping cheerful notes, followed by a rapid slur of a smaller trill. Adrian lifted her wallet from the desk and pulled out her driver's license. She held it up alongside the monitor. She stared at the small colored photograph of herself, then her eyes shifted to the image of Owen Gray on the screen.
She smiled knowingly and said to the screen, "I know your future better than you do."
The cabin's front door burst inward, the sound of the blow and the splintering of wood seeming to have a physical impact on Adrian. She flinched, then spun out of her chair. The door wagged left and right, its top hinge dangling loose and the knob hanging by a few wood shreds. Sunlight poured through the door. The room was alive with new light. Her hand went inside her jacket.
Holding a deer rifle, Nikolai Trusov stepped to the door. He filled the frame and was backlit with rays of sun streaming off the black silhouette of his body like tiny searchlights. He was magnified by the harsh light, but his stony features were made murky by the shadows. Adrian hissed through her teeth at the sight of him.