Chương 13 - THE TROPHY IN THE DUST
Back at Fort Carson, the sun had fully set behind the Rockies.
The range was illuminated only by the tall halogen floodlights mounted on the wooden telephone poles lining the perimeter fence. The spectators had long since departed, their trucks and sedans streaming out through the main security gate in a long, red-tail-light convoy.
Only two men remained near Lane 14.
Grant Holloway sat on the wooden bench, his hands resting on his knees. His rifle was packed away in its aluminum flight case, but he hadn't locked the latches.
Beside him on the shooting table sat the regional trophy. It was a magnificent piece of silver craftsmanship—a stylized sniper figure holding a rifle atop a block of polished walnut, engraved with the words: FIRST PLACE - ANNUAL HIGH-DESERT PRECISION INVITATIONAL.
Miller stood three feet away, holding two paper cups of lukewarm coffee he had bought from a vending machine near the armory. He handed one to Grant.
Grant didn't take it.
"You need to drink something, Grant," Miller said softly. "You've been sitting here for two hours."
Grant looked up at the trophy. The bright white halogen lights made the silver shine with a cold, unforgiving brightness.
"She didn't even look at the target after she fired," Grant said, his voice raspy.
Miller sighed, pulling up an empty plastic chair and sitting down opposite his shooter. "Grant, let it go. It was a fluke. An experimental system, or maybe some kind of computer-guided smart bullet they're testing out of DARPA. Nobody hits a six-inch plate at two miles with an unmagnified optical sight using conventional hand-loaded rounds."
"It wasn't a computer-guided round, Miller," Grant said fiercely, turning his bloodshot eyes on his spotter. "I stood four feet away from her when she opened the action. It was a standard brass casing. No wire guides, no optical sensors on the tip, no fins. It was a lead-core projectile."
"Then she got lucky with a thermal draft," Miller argued, though his voice lacked conviction.
"Lucky?" Grant stood up abruptly, his chair scraping loudly against the concrete pad. "She controlled her breathing so completely that her chest didn't move for twenty seconds before she touched the trigger! She read the wind flags across three separate sectors by watching the movement of the dust particles in the air, not the fabric! She didn't use a rangefinder, Miller! She looked at the canyon wall, estimated three thousand five hundred yards in her head, and made the shot!"
Grant walked over to the edge of the firing line, staring out into the pitch-black void of the canyon where the floodlights couldn't reach.
"I've spent fifteen years believing I was at the top of this food chain," Grant said, his voice dropping into a desperate whisper. "I thought if I trained harder, if I bought better optics, if I spent five hours a day studying wind profiles, I was the best shooter in the country. And then this woman steps out of a unmarked van, dismisses everything I've ever achieved with one round, and walks away like it was a routine errand."
"So what are you going to do?" Miller asked, standing up and tossing his paper cup into a nearby trash bin. "Quit?"
Grant reached down, picked up the silver trophy by its walnut base, and looked at it for three seconds.
May you like
Without a word, he turned and tossed the trophy into the dark steel dumpster sitting beside the administrative tent. It landed with a heavy, hollow thud against the empty tin cans and scrap paper inside.
"I'm going to find out what unit she belongs to," Grant said, locking the latches on his rifle case with three sharp slams. "And then I'm going to ask them to let me try out."
