Chapter 3 - Turn It Off
Gabriel lowered himself behind the long-range rifle like the ground had been waiting for him. He did not fuss with the mat. He did not ask for a wind briefing. He did not admire the optics or complain about the setup. He settled behind the stock, closed the bolt with one smooth motion, and rested his cheek in exactly the same place a man does after decades of muscle memory refuse to die.
The spotter reached for the digital wind meter. Gabriel raised one hand without looking at him. “Turn it off.” The spotter blinked. Hayes gave a sharp laugh. “You serious?” Gabriel’s eye stayed near the scope. “If it told the truth, you’d have hit the plate by now.”
That killed the last of the laughter. Decker leaned closer, not interrupting anymore, only watching. Colonel Hughes stood behind the line with his hands clasped, his face unreadable but his posture changed. He had gone from curious to alert. Hayes noticed and hated it. The colonel was looking at the janitor the way senior officers look at men they should have recognized sooner.
Gabriel rolled the windage turret back to zero. Hayes stared. “You’re taking off the correction?” Gabriel breathed once, slow and shallow, watching the shimmer downrange. “There is no correction if you don’t know what you’re correcting.” He looked with both eyes first, then through the scope, then over it again. He read the canyon the way other men read screens: the lean of scrub, the trembling mirage, the tiny pauses in dust where air folded into itself. For almost ten seconds, nobody moved.
Then Gabriel exhaled halfway and stopped.
The rifle cracked.
The recoil slammed into his shoulder and rolled through him without breaking his position. Brass spun onto the concrete. Far downrange, nothing happened. One second. Two. Three. Four. Hayes opened his mouth, ready to laugh.
Then the steel plate rang.
May you like
The sound came back thin and bright across two thousand yards of heat.
The spotter stared through the scope as if the glass had betrayed his entire generation. His voice dropped to a whisper. “Dead center.”
