Chapter 3 - THE WATCHFUL RANGE OFFICER
Standing fifteen feet away, resting his arms over a wooden Clipboard station, was the Range Officer.
At forty-eight, he was a veteran Master Sergeant with decades of marksmanship oversight under his belt. He wore dark protective glasses, a brimmed range hat, and carried a heavy tactical radio clipped to his shoulder strap. While the spectators and Grant were chuckling at Claire’s apparent mistake, the Range Officer had not laughed once.
Instead, he lifted a pair of heavy military-grade spotting binoculars to his eyes, scanning the far horizon beyond the official boundary markers.
Through his optics, past the white silhouette targets of the competition line, past the yellow warning flags marking the end of the public range, his lenses focused on a dark, shaded draw between two jagged granite ridges miles in the distance. Nestled deep within the shadows of the rocks—almost completely invisible to the naked eye under the harsh afternoon glare—was a tiny, unpainted steel disc. It hung suspended from two thick iron chains, completely devoid of markings, blending perfectly into the gray granite behind it.
The Range Officer’s jaw tightened. He lowered his binoculars, looking down at his official range map attached to the clipboard. Lane 14 was listed clearly, but written in fine black ink at the very bottom corner of his administrative sheet were coordinates that had not been distributed to any of the competitors.
He looked back at Claire lying perfectly still on her mat. Her patience was absolute. She wasn't watching Grant; she wasn't watching the crowd. She was watching the orange wind flags at six hundred, twelve hundred, and eighteen hundred yards, reading the subtle shifts in thermal waves as the wind swept across the canyon floor.
Grant shook his head, turning back to face his fellow marksmen behind the line. "Well, if she wants to throw away her standing on national broadcast, that's on her."
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The Range Officer stepped forward, his boots crunching against the dry gravel. His demeanor was noticeably serious, suppressing the chatter along the line with his presence alone. He reached up and clicked his stopwatch timer, then raised his right hand into the clear afternoon air.
"Shooter ready," the Range Officer announced, his voice echoing over the loudspeaker system. "Range clear. You may fire when ready."
