Not a member of Pastebin yet?
Sign Up,
it unlocks many cool features!
- Four months of stakeout. Even Butler, the consummate professional,
- was beginning to dread the long nights of dampness and insect bites.
- Thankfully, the moon was not full every night.
- It was always the same. They would crouch in their foil-lined blind in
- complete silence, Butler repeatedly checking his equipment, while
- Artemis stared unblinking through the eye of the scope. At times like
- these, nature seemed deafening in their confined space. Butler longed to
- whistle, to make conversation, anything to break the unnatural silence. But
- Artemis’s concentration was absolute. He would brook no interference or
- lapse of focus. This was business.
- Tonight they were in the southeast. The most inaccessible site yet.
- Butler had been forced to make three trips to the Jeep in order to hump the
- equipment across a stile, a bog, and two fields. His boots and trousers
- were ruined. And now he would have to sit in the blind with ditchwater
- soaking into the seat of his pants. Artemis had somehow contrived to
- remain spotless.
- The blind was ingenious in design and interest had already been
- expressed in the manufacturing rights— mostly by military representatives
- —but Artemis had resolved to sell the patent to a sporting goods
- multinational. It was constructed of an elasticated foil polymer on a
- multihinged fiberglass skeleton. The foil, similar to that used by NASA,
- trapped the heat inside the structure while preventing the camouflaged
- outside surface from overheating. This ensured that any animals sensitive
- to heat would be unaware of its presence. The hinges meant that the blind
- would move almost like a liquid, filling whatever depression it was
- dropped into. Instant shelter and vantage point. You simply placed the
- Velcroed bag in a hole and pulled the string.
- - Artemis Fowl, Chapter 4
Advertisement
Add Comment
Please, Sign In to add comment