Now, through the wavering lenses of his new binoculars, Cooper watched John Smith step onto the balcony.
He wore jeans and a black sweater. His feet were bare. As Smith reached into a pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, it struck Cooper how much older he looked. Like the pictures of presidents before and after their first term, Smith seemed to have aged two decades in a handful of years. His dark hair had salted, and his shoulders had a heaviness to them. But his eyes were sharp as broken glass when he snapped a silver lighter and lit his cigarette. The night vision optics amplified the flame to a halo of fire that seemed to engulf him.
Cooper stared.
The most dangerous man in America seemed at peace. He smoked meditatively, the cigarette pinned between his first two fingers. The night was too cool for bare feet, but Smith didn’t seem bothered. He just stood there, staring out at the darkness.
It was unbelievable. A clean shot, no wind, adequate visibility, the target unaware. If he’d had a rifle, he could have ended a war with one squeeze of his finger.
But you don’t have a rifle, you have a sidearm, and at this distance you may as well try to take him down with harsh language.
Half afraid that if he turned away Smith would vanish like some sort of demon, Cooper panned the binoculars. It took him just seconds to spot the exterior guard. The man was in the worst possible position, almost directly between the pine tree and the cabin. Cooper could go through him, but not without alerting Smith.
You get one chance. There’s too much at stake to rush it.
He took a deep breath, calmed his nerves. Turned back to watch the man smoke. Despite the fact that he had been waiting for this moment, had been planning for it, he was staggered by the emotional punch of it.
Here was the reason, Cooper realized, that he existed himself. That he had done the things he had done and slept soundly despite them.
Smith was everything he had fought all his life. Not just a murderer, not even a terrorist; a hurricane in human form. A tsunami, an earthquake, a sniper at a school, or a dirty bomb in the water supply. A man who didn’t believe in anything beyond his essential rightness, who killed not because it would make the world better but because he strove to make the world more like him. Standing barefoot under a stunning Wyoming sky, smoking a cigarette.
When he finished, he flicked the butt into the night, the ember wild and loose and momentarily bright. Then he turned and walked back inside. A moment later the light in the bedroom went out. John Smith—
It’s only nine o’clock. Hours before he’ll go to bed.
Smokers never stop at just one.
Who locks the door of a second-story balcony behind them? Especially when they know they’ll be back soon?
—was done.
Cooper hung his binoculars over a branch. He wouldn’t need them again. Moving carefully, he began to climb. When his boots crunched dry soil, he dropped to a heel squat, his back against the tree, and waited for the guard to come around again.
When he did, Cooper started counting Mississippis.
At 100, he rose and started walking. He wanted to run, but couldn’t risk either the noise or a turned ankle. It took the guard about eight minutes to walk a complete circuit of the fence. 480 Mississippi.
He kept his eyes down so that the light from the cabin wouldn’t wreck his night vision, and checked his footing with each step. The moon was bright, which was good and bad. Good because he could keep a decent pace, bad because it meant he’d be easier to spot. A flush of energy ran through him, the world dropping away. It was just him and the silvered ground and the breath in his lungs and the pressure of the Beretta in his waistband. At 147 Mississippi, he reached the split-rail fence. The guard was out of sight on the other side of the property. Holding onto a post, Cooper slung first one leg and then the other, and stepped into Helen Epeus’s yard.