Chapter 10
I settled into the prone position behind the rifle.
The snow soaked through my tactical pants instantly, freezing against my skin.
I reached inside my jacket with my left hand, pulling out the small black battery pack. I plugged the short wire into the port on my mechanical brace.
I didn’t turn it on. Not yet.
I reached up with my left hand and dialed the magnification on the massive optic to maximum.
I pressed my cheek against the freezing cold stock of the rifle and looked through the glass.
The bunker leaped into view, filling my field of vision.
The magnification was so intense that the image was slightly warped by the cold air thermals rising off the snow in the valley.
I slowly panned the rifle, scanning the massive, featureless concrete of the southern wall.
Then, I found it.
The ventilation shaft.
It was incredibly small. At this distance, it looked like a black postage stamp pasted onto a gray wall. Inside the shaft, it was pitch black. I couldn’t see anything.
“We have exactly ten minutes until the target window,” Cross whispered, his eye pressed to his spotting scope.
Ten minutes.
My right hand was spasming so violently now that my entire shoulder was shaking. If I didn’t engage the dampener soon, the muscle fatigue would be so severe that I wouldn’t even be able to pull the trigger when the time came.
“Cross,” I whispered, my teeth chattering loudly. “Give me the environmental data. Everything you have.”
“Barometric pressure is dropping fast,” Cross said, reading the tiny digital display on his weather meter. “Temperature is negative twelve. Humidity is zero. The air is dense. It’s going to drag the bullet down hard.”
He paused, staring through his spotting scope.
“The wind is the real killer,” Cross muttered. “I’m looking at the snow drifts in the valley. The wind is pushing hard right to left off our ridge. But down near the bunker, the snow is blowing left to right.”
He pulled his eye away from the scope and looked at me.
“You’re going to have to aim off the target,” Cross said, his voice laced with doubt. “Way off. You have to aim into empty space, compensate for a massive drop, and pray the bullet rides the invisible wind currents exactly right.”
“Give me the hold,” I commanded.
Cross went quiet, rapidly punching numbers into a ballistic calculator strapped to his wrist.
He was calculating the impossible. Distance, bullet weight, muzzle velocity, barometric pressure, spin drift of the bullet’s rotation, the Coriolis effect of the Earth’s rotation, and the chaotic, contradictory wind speeds.
“Okay,” Cross whispered, his voice incredibly tense. “Elevation… dial in one hundred and forty-two MOA up. The bullet is going to drop over three hundred feet during its flight.”
I reached up with my left hand and carefully turned the elevation turret on my scope. Click, click, click. The tiny metallic sounds were deafening in the silence.
“Windage,” Cross continued, swallowing hard. “You need to hold four mils left of the ventilation shaft.”
I stared through the scope.
Four mils left of the shaft put my crosshairs aiming directly at solid, six-foot-thick reinforced concrete.
If Cross’s math was wrong by even a fraction of a percent, if the wind changed speed by one single mile per hour during the four-second flight, the armor-piercing round would shatter harmlessly against the concrete wall.
And Elara would be executed.
“Two minutes to the window,” Cross whispered.
My heart began to slam against my ribs like a trapped bird.
The cold was unbearable. My fingers on my left hand were growing numb. My right hand was a vibrating blur of pain and panic.
I looked at the black hole of the ventilation shaft.
I thought about the two thousand dollars in the dirt. I thought about the arrogant laughter of the Delta operators. I thought about the three years I spent sitting in the dark, convinced my life was over.
I am not a broken joke, I told myself. I am a predator.
“One minute,” Cross said. His voice was trembling now. He was finally realizing the reality of what we were trying to do.
I reached over with my left numb fingers.
I found the small toggle switch on the side of my mechanical brace.
I flipped it.
A low, mechanical hum instantly vibrated through the titanium exoskeleton.
The micro-hydraulics flooded with power. The joints locked. The kinetic dampeners engaged with a heavy, pressurized hiss.
Instantly, the violent, agonizing shaking in my right arm stopped.
My hand became perfectly, flawlessly still.
It was a terrifying, beautiful sensation. For the first time in three years, I had control. I reached out and wrapped my right hand firmly around the pistol grip of the massive rifle. My finger slid into the trigger guard, resting gently against the cold metal curve of the trigger.
