Chapter 3
I racked the bolt, sliding a massive, armor-piercing round into the chamber. The metallic clack echoed loudly in the still air.
“Target is set,” Vance’s radio crackled. “Candle is lit. Ranged at exactly 2,721 meters. Wind is erratic. Sustained 15 miles per hour, gusting to 25. Cross-canyon shear is brutal.”
I pressed my cheek against the stock. I closed my left eye and looked through the scope.
The world narrowed down to a circle of magnified glass.
I dialed the magnification up to the maximum. The heat waves rising off the desert floor created a shimmering, distorted mirage, making it incredibly difficult to see clearly.
I scanned the base of the distant ridge.
There it was. A tiny, imperceptible speck of orange light. The candle flame.
I took a slow, deep breath, letting the oxygen fill my lungs. I slowed my heart rate. I fell into the zone. That dark, quiet place in my mind where nothing else existed except the target and the trigger.
“Wind is picking up,” Vance muttered from behind me, peering through a spotting scope. “You’re never gonna make this. The bullet is going to drop over two hundred feet.”
I ignored him. I factored the wind. I factored the elevation. I factored the spin drift.
I adjusted my crosshairs, aiming high and significantly to the left of the tiny orange dot, aiming into empty space, trusting the math to guide the bullet back to the target.
I exhaled slowly, pausing at the natural respiratory pause.
My finger rested against the trigger. Thanks to the mechanical brace, it was perfectly still.
I thought about Amira. I thought about the crushing weight of that burning beam. I thought about the three years of darkness and despair.
I applied steady, gradual pressure to the trigger.
The trigger broke.
It didn’t snap or click. It broke like a fragile shard of glass under the perfect, calculated weight of my finger.
The explosion was catastrophic.
A .416 Barrett is not a rifle you shoot. It is an event you survive. The sheer violence of the ignition sent a massive shockwave through the cold Nevada air.
A massive plume of fire and hyper-pressurized gas erupted from the aggressive muzzle brake at the end of the barrel. It kicked up a violent cloud of dust, sand, and sharp little pebbles, blasting backward and washing over the Delta Force operators standing behind me.
The recoil slammed into my shoulder like the kick of a wild horse. Even with the heavy kinetic dampening of my mechanical brace and the immense weight of the rifle itself, the physical impact rattled my teeth in my skull.
The sound was deafening. A sharp, thunderous crack that echoed off the distant canyon walls, rolling across the desolate landscape like a crack of thunder tearing the sky in half.
But inside my mind, everything was perfectly, beautifully silent.
The bullet had left the barrel at over 3,000 feet per second. A solid, aerodynamic dart of machined brass and copper, engineered to defy the atmosphere.
Now, it was in the air.
And at 2,720 meters, a bullet is in the air for a very, very long time.
One second.
I kept my eye glued to the optic. I didn’t blink. I didn’t breathe. I stayed perfectly frozen in the follow-through position, letting the heavy barrel settle back onto the shooting mat.
The bullet was currently traveling upward, climbing high into the thin desert atmosphere to compensate for the massive bullet drop over that incredible distance.
Two seconds.
Behind me, I could hear the rustle of tactical gear. The Delta operators had instinctively stepped back from the blast of the muzzle brake. I could hear Vance grunting as he pressed his eye harder into his high-powered spotting scope.
“Wind just shifted,” Vance muttered, his voice tense. “A heavy gust down in the valley.”
He was right. I could see the mirage in my scope suddenly warp and dance in a different direction. The invisible river of air rushing across the canyon had just changed its mind.
Three seconds.
If the wind pushed the bullet even a fraction of an inch right now, it would translate to a miss of several feet by the time it reached the target. The physics of extreme long-range shooting are brutal and unforgiving.
My heart hammered against my ribs. The ghost of Amira’s crying echoed in my ears.
Please, I thought, praying to whatever god watched over broken soldiers. Just let the math hold.
Four seconds.
The bullet was dropping now. Plunging out of the sky at a terrifying angle, bleeding speed, crashing back down through the atmosphere toward the microscopic orange dot on the distant ridge.
Through my scope, I stared intensely at the base of the mountain.
Four and a half seconds.
Nothing.
