Chapter 3
He grinned. "Or what?"
"Or you'll wish you had."
His smile widened because men like Bishop read warning signs as invitations.
Harland watched the whole exchange from the coffee station. He stirred powdered creamer into a paper cup and did nothing. That was when I understood that what I was dealing with was not only immaturity. It was permission. Systems are built every time a powerful man watches cruelty and calls it discipline.
The next morning, at 0740, Harland pinned a printed copy of the photograph to the bulletin board outside the training room. Someone had written LITTLE MISS SHOT across my chest in black marker. Bishop stood against the wall watching me the way a boy watches a fire he started.
"Come on, Voss," he said. "Laugh a little."
I reached up, took the paper down, folded it once along its center, and slipped it into my cargo pocket.
Harland stepped out of his office. "Problem?"
"No, Sergeant."
"Good." He smiled the way a man smiles when he has been saving something. "Because today you shoot. One round. Eight hundred meters. Cold bore. You miss, you're out of my course."
Bishop's grin sharpened to the specific point of a man who believes the conclusion is already written.
I looked past them to the window. Outside, the flag above the command office snapped hard in the wind. A good instructor never uses humiliation as a test. A desperate one always does.
I nodded. "All right."
By noon, everyone on Fort Camden's long-range field had gathered behind the safety line. Forty-three recruits. Harland with his range log under one arm. Bishop with his phone angled low at his side, positioned for the angle that would document what he planned to post later.
May you like
The dust moved in thin sheets over the gravel. The 800-meter target shimmered in the Georgia heat. My rifle was cold under my hands in the way that rifles are cold when they have not yet been asked to do anything, which is the best time to ask them.
I took the folded photograph from my cargo pocket and placed it beside the bench where I could see it.
