Chapter 3 - FIVE SHOTS
The test tunnel smelled of cold gun oil, rubber flooring and recycled air.
Jace pushed the target system back toward two hundred yards with obvious annoyance. The young couple followed as far as the viewing area. Walter entered behind them and remained near the wall.
“All muzzles stay downrange,” Jace said loudly, rediscovering professionalism now that other people were watching.
I nodded.
Safety was never the issue.
I removed a compact shooting support from my canvas bag and positioned it at the bench. It was an adapted model I had helped refine years earlier, designed to stabilize a rifle without requiring a shooter to imitate someone else’s body.
Jace recognized none of that.
He watched my sleeve instead of my hands.
I adjusted the support, settled behind the rifle and checked my position. There was no rush. Competence rarely looks dramatic to the person performing it.
The range went quiet.
I fired five controlled rounds.
Each report struck the tunnel walls and returned as a short, hard echo.
When I finished, I cleared the rifle and placed it safely on the bench.
Jace released the target return.
The paper traveled slowly toward us.
He stepped to the spotting scope before it arrived, determined to discover five scattered impacts he could explain to the room.
Then he stopped moving.
The young couple leaned closer.
“What?” the man asked.
Jace adjusted the scope.
“That can’t be five shots.”
The target reached the line.
At its center was one tight, torn group, the impacts close enough that Jace first believed two rounds had missed the paper.
They had not.
Walter stepped away from the wall.
Jace looked from the target to me.
“You’ve done this before.”
“I told you I knew what I was holding.”
“You didn’t say you competed.”
“You never asked.”
He turned toward Walter, perhaps expecting the older man to confirm that the result was some trick.
Instead, Walter reached beneath his polo shirt and removed an old military Distinguished Rifleman badge he kept on a narrow chain.
The metal was scratched from years of being carried rather than displayed.
He held it toward me.
My eyes moved from the badge to his face.
I recognized him then.
Not from Briar Creek.
From Fort Benning, seventeen years earlier.
Walter’s voice became low and hard.
“You really don’t know who you just mocked?”
Jace’s expression changed.
Walter pointed toward me.
“That woman rebuilt the Army’s adaptive rifle course after losing her arm. Half the instructors your grant application claims to follow were trained using her methods.”
The range fell silent.
May you like
Then Walter added the part that unsettled Jace most.
“And she isn’t here to shop.”
