Chapter 17 - CALCULATING THE IMPOSSIBLE
Kane scrambled into position beside her, his breath coming in ragged gasps. Up close, he could see the intense, hyper-focused transformation in her demeanor. The quiet, unassuming woman from the armory was gone. In her place was an absolute apex predator, fused seamlessly with forty pounds of cold steel and high-explosive ordnance.
Claire laid her cheek against the adjustable cheekpiece of the stock. Her right eye aligned perfectly behind the ocular lens of the Schmidt & Bender tactical scope.
"Distance?" Claire asked calmly.
"Laser rangefinder says one thousand, five hundred and forty-two meters," Ellis reported, his eye glued to the high-magnification spotting optic. "Angle is negative fourteen degrees depression. We are looking down at them, but they are looking across at an offset angle."
"Wind?"
"At our position, five knots from nine o'clock," Ellis said, his voice tightening. "Mid-valley... Jesus, Claire, the heat shimmer is boiling down there. The mirage is running hard from right to left. Mid-valley crosswind is at least eighteen knots, gusting to twenty-four."
"I see it," Claire whispered.
She reached up with her left hand, making small, deliberate clicks on the elevation and windage turrets. Her thumb was black with weapon grease, moving with supernatural precision.
"The wind will push the bullet six feet to the left during the first eight hundred meters," Claire murmured, analyzing the physics aloud in a terrifyingly detached voice. "Then the thermal updraft from the canyon floor will catch the boat-tail and lift it two feet high. As it passes through the cold shade of the eastern overhang, the air density drops. The round will drop faster in the final three hundred meters."
Kane listened in stunned disbelief. She wasn't guessing; she was visualizing the entire trajectory of the bullet across a mile of violent, turbulent atmosphere, mapping out invisible air currents that no ordinary human eye could even detect.
"Target identified," Claire said. "Eastern ridge, beneath the limestone shelf. Spotter is wearing a green shemagh. The shooter is prone behind a KSVK rifle, adjusting his bipod. He's lining up on the wounded operator behind the Suburban."
"Take him!" Kane urged involuntarily, his fists clenched in the dirt. "Shoot!"
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"Not yet," Claire whispered, her breathing slowing down to a rhythmic, imperceptible crawl. "Wait for the wind gust to break. If I fire into the gust, the round will miss by inches, and they will duck into the cave network. I only get one shot before they realize where we are."
Below them, on the canyon floor, the hostile marksman racked the bolt of his massive rifle. The glint of his muzzle brake caught the harsh desert sun as he prepared to deliver the fatal blow to the stranded diplomat.
