Chapter 2
"Captain Morrison assigned me to prepare equipment for today's sniper qualification assessment," I said.
Sergeant Davis laughed behind him. "Paper pusher. Another diversity hire. Tell me, sweetheart, what does a civilian contractor know about fifty-caliber precision rifles?"
The old version of me had an answer for that sentence that would have ended the conversation in four words. The woman I was trying to be set the rifle down gently and carried the next case downrange instead.
I worked through the morning the way I had been trained to work — methodically, without commentary, separating match rounds by lot number, laying out wind meters and data books and range cards for five firing positions while Cole's commentary got louder around me and the laughter from the watching Rangers got progressively thinner.
By midmorning, a rifle jammed during Cole's own demonstration.
"Your equipment, your problem," he said, with the particular satisfaction of a man who believes he has been handed a gift. "Show us how a civilian handles a malfunction."
I asked permission. Dropped the magazine. Locked the bolt. Found the brass shaving caught in the lug in under ten seconds and cleared it. The rifle passed function check.
Nobody laughed after that.
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Specialist Baker challenged me on a wind call at fourteen hundred meters — the kind of challenge designed to produce an embarrassing miss in front of an audience. I watched the flags, the dust, the mirage lifting off the black rock between eleven hundred and thirteen hundred meters, the way the thermal layer bent the air wrong in that specific stretch.
"Hold left three point seven mils," I said. "Elevation fourteen point two up. Add half a mil for gust variation."
