A supply clerk fired five rounds that appeared to completely miss the target, but the range supervisor saw something that made her freeze.

Master Sergeant Monroe didn't join in the laughter.

Her dark eyes had narrowed into tight, razor-sharp slits as she stared past the white paper target at lane four. She looked past the target, past the fifty-yard line, toward the concrete backstop fifty yards behind it—and then toward the distant, dusty mountain ridge two hundred yards beyond the perimeter fence.

Her breath caught in her throat.

Something on the distant hill caught the glare of the bright afternoon sun—a tiny, metallic glint that flickered once, twice, before vanishing into the dust.

Monroe’s face went completely pale. The sarcastic composure of a range supervisor vanished, replaced by an expression of pure, unadulterated shock.

She took three rapid steps toward the edge of the firing lane, stepping right past Caldwell, her eyes glued to the distance.

"Colonel..." Monroe said, her voice low, tight, and dangerously sharp.

Caldwell stopped his sarcastic clapping, turning to glare at her with a look of mild annoyance. "What is it, Master Sergeant? We need to clear this lane so the next group can shoot."

"Colonel, look at the target," Monroe commanded, her hand pointing steadily downlane.

Caldwell sighed, shaking his head as he stepped up to the railing, shading his eyes with his hand. "I'm looking at it, Monroe. The paper is blank. She missed every single shot by a mile—"

"No, sir," Monroe interrupted, her voice shaking with an intense, terrifying realization that made the laughing soldiers behind them freeze in their tracks. "Look at the center of the bullseye. Look at the paper fibers."

Caldwell frowned, pulling a pair of high-powered tactical binoculars from his belt and raising them to his eyes. He adjusted the focus ring, zooming in directly on the chest of the fifty-yard paper target on Lane Four.

At first, he saw only the clean white paper.

Then, as the wind died down for a brief second, his heart dropped into his stomach.

There were not five separate bullet holes scattered across the paper.

In the absolute, mathematical center of the black bullseye—a circle no larger than a tiny coin—the paper was not torn or ragged. It had a single, perfectly smooth, round hole.

All five 5.56mm rounds had passed through the exact same microscopic point in space, one after another, with such mind-boggling precision that the paper fibers hadn't even frayed. They had entered the exact same hole so perfectly that from ten feet away, the target appeared entirely untouched.

Caldwell’s breath hitched. His hands began to tremble slightly against the rubber grips of the binoculars.

"That's... that's impossible..." Caldwell whispered, his face turning as white as a sheet. "Five rounds... in the same hole? In a thirty-knot crosswind?"

"She didn't miss, Colonel," Monroe whispered, turning slowly to look at Private Claire Morgan, who stood quietly beside the bench, her hazel eyes cold, distant, and completely calm. "She just didn't want us to know what she was aiming at behind it."

Monroe shifted her binoculars past the paper target, tracking the path of the five rounds through the single hole, across the fifty-yard gap, past the concrete backstop, and up onto the pale, dusty mountain ridge two hundred yards away.

There, resting silently in the brush beyond the perimeter fence, was an unauthorized surveillance drone that had been monitoring the base—its steel camera housing completely shattered, obliterated by five identical, high-velocity hits delivered through the center of a paper target.

Caldwell lowered his binoculars slowly, turning to stare at the quiet supply clerk with a look of profound, terrifying awe.