Chapter 5
My mind flashed back to my grandfather, a man who had spent thirty years teaching young Marines how to survive in the worst conditions imaginable before retiring to a isolated cabin in the absolute wilderness. He used to make me train in the middle of winter blizzards, forcing me to hit small steel targets placed across freezing mountain chasms while the wind howled loud enough to deafen a person.
“The rifle is just an extension of your skeletal system, Annie,” he would tell me, his rough hand resting on my shoulder as I shivered in the snow. “If you fight the wind, the wind wins. If you fight the recoil, the rifle wins. You don’t control the bullet after it leaves the barrel. You only control the peace inside your own chest before it leaves.”
I let out a slow, deliberate breath, letting the freezing clarity of that memory wash over me. The heat of the Nevada desert didn’t matter. The terrifying status of the Navy SEALs standing around me didn’t matter. The ticking clock of the mortar platoon didn’t matter. There was only the reticle, the pin, and the space between them.
I adjusted the elevation turret again. The TAC-50’s mechanical adjustments were incredibly precise, but at nineteen hundred and fifty yards, the factory markings on the dial were just a starting point. I had to manually account for the air density, which was dropping rapidly as the desert sun baked the valley floor. Low air density meant less drag on the bullet, causing it to ride higher than the standard ballistic tables predicted.
“Master Chief,” I murmured, my eye locked into the rubber eyepiece of the scope. “Keep your eyes on the child. If the slab moves even a fraction of an inch before I fire, you tell me immediately.”
“I’m on her,” Miller replied. His voice was trembling slightly, a human flaw that he couldn’t hide. “The dog is losing its footing, Annie. The gravel is sliding out from under its rear legs. You have less than thirty seconds before they both go over.”
“Jackson, hold the wind call,” I commanded.
“Wind is shifting,” Jackson said instantly. “It’s coming around to ten o’clock. Steadying at fourteen knots. Wait… it’s dropping. It’s dropping hard. Twelve knots… ten knots…”
This was the dangerous part. A sudden drop in the wind meant the bullet wouldn’t drift as far to the right as I had calculated. If I fired with my current windage hold during a sudden lull, the massive fifty-caliber projectile would drift too far to the left—straight into the concrete wall directly behind where the little girl was clinging to the dog.
“Don’t fire yet,” Jackson whispered, his knuckles white against his binoculars. “The lull is a trap. The air is building up behind the ridge line. It’s going to slam back in a second.”
I kept my finger perfectly relaxed against the side of the guard, not yet entering the trigger well. I watched the dust patterns down in the valley. The thin, wispy trails of sand near the old dry creek bed were beginning to swirl in tight, frantic circles. The air was compressing, preparing to burst through the canyon gap like water breaking through a dam.
Through the scope, I saw the little girl look up. Even at nearly two thousand yards, the raw terror on her face was unmistakable. She was screaming for her mother, her small mouth opening and closing, though no sound could reach us over the distance. Her pink jacket was torn, and her small hands were slipping from the dog’s tactical harness. The German Shepherd let out a frantic, desperate series of barks, its front claws clawing frantically at the solid rock as the heavy concrete slab above them gave a sudden, violent lurch.
A sharp, metallic screech echoed down the valley as the structural rebar inside the collapsing masonry began to tear under the immense strain.
“The slab is sliding!” Miller yelled. “Annie, fire! Fire now!”
“Hold!” I snapped, my voice commanding an absolute authority that surprised even Miller.
I could feel it. The skin on the back of my neck was sensitive to the tiny, subtle changes in the air currents moving across the ridge. The wind wasn’t dropping; it was gathering strength.
Suddenly, a violent gust of wind slammed into the left side of my face, kicking up a blinding cloud of fine sand that rattled against the metal receiver of my rifle.
“Now!” Jackson roared. “Twenty-eight knots from nine o’clock! It’s blowing hard!”
The reticle inside my scope danced violently as the massive gust buffeted the heavy barrel of the TAC-50. The target vanished for a split second behind a wall of blowing dust, then reappeared through the haze. The rusted steel pin was shifting wildly in the thermal distortion, appearing to jump up and down like a ghost.
