Chapter 4 - The Painted Target
Cole shook his head, raising his voice so the camera microphone would catch every syllable. "She says 'one shot.' You hear that, boys? One shot. If she hits the berm, I'll pay for everybody's chow tonight!"
Evelyn fed a single cartridge into the open port. Her thumb drove the round down into the internal magazine with an authoritative, metallic snap. Her palm swept the bolt forward, chambering the round, and turned the handle down into the locked recess.
She did not pause to adjust any dials. She did not consult a wind gauge.
Her right index finger slipped inside the trigger guard, resting lightly against the curve of the cold steel. She exhaled half her breath, found the bottom of the respiratory cycle, and squeezed.
CRACK.
The rifle discharged with a dry, whip-like report that possessed none of the bass-heavy thud of modern suppressed systems. It was a sharp, high-velocity crack that tore through the firing pavilion, echoing off the steel roof overhead. The recoil pushed her back barely an inch; her frame absorbed the shock like an anvil anchored in granite.
Before the brass casing had even finished clattering against the concrete floor, her hand was already moving.
Clack-slide. The empty shell spun into the dust. Her left hand fed another cartridge from the bench into the receiver with blistering, mechanical fluidity. The bolt locked down.
CRACK.
Clack-slide.
CRACK.
Clack-slide.
CRACK.
Clack-slide.
CRACK.
She fired five rounds in less than six seconds. It was not rapid fire; it was a rhythmic, uninterrupted execution of marksmanship so smooth, so devoid of hesitation or wasted movement, that it sounded like a single mechanical sequence orchestrated by an automated press.
The final casing bounced twice on the concrete and came to rest near Cole’s boot, sending a faint wisp of gray smoke curling toward his ankle.
The mocking laughter behind her stopped.
The air on Lane Seven hung heavy with the acrid scent of ancient propellant. Evelyn did not fire again. She lowered the rifle, opened the bolt to demonstrate an empty chamber, and rested the warm barrel against the sandbag.
Cole lowered his phone slowly, blinking in the glare. "What... what was that? She didn't even use a spotter. She was just dumping rounds downrange."
Corporal Miller was already turning toward the electronic scoring monitor mounted to the support post of lane seven. The system was tied to high-definition cameras and acoustic hit-sensors situated on the electronic target faces a thousand yards away at the base of the distant mountain.
"Hey, Cole," Miller said, his voice dropping into an unsettled whisper. "Look at the screen."
Cole stepped up to the monitor, his brows furrowed in annoyance. "What? Did she even clip the paper?"
The digital display refreshed, rendering the high-resolution image of the standard silhouette target at one thousand meters.
There was no spread. There was no wide grouping scattered across the outer scoring rings by the treacherous crosswind.
Dead center in the black bullseye, precisely inside the head and chest zone of the silhouette, five distinct bullet holes had perforated the electronic backing.
Two holes sat perfectly parallel at the top, spaced exactly two inches apart to form a pair of eyes.
Beneath them, three closely spaced holes curved upward in a tight, impossible parabolic arc, tracing a clean, undeniable, symmetrical smile.
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The five shots had formed a deliberate smiley face inside the heart of the bullseye at ten football fields of distance, fired through a thirty-knot crosswind using a rifle held together by duct tape.
Cole’s mouth fell open. His phone remained limp at his side, the recording still running, capturing his own blank, pale face reflected in the dark glass of the scoring console. The recruits behind him fell into a suffocating, absolute silence.
