Chapter 3
I looked downrange and said the only line that mattered. "Then let the math speak."
I fired once.
The spotter's voice cracked over the radio a full two seconds later, like he didn't trust what the scope was showing him. Center mass. Dead center, at a distance that had eaten thirteen reputations whole that morning. Nobody clapped. Nobody on that range knew how to clap for something that felt less like a shot and more like a debt finally being collected.
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General Harris stood up slowly, the way men stand when they're recalculating everything they thought they understood about a person. He didn't look at Morgan. He looked at me, and he said the words that mattered more than the shot itself. "Clear the line for Captain Hayes."
I didn't smile. I had learned a long time ago that smiling in that moment gives men permission to call it luck. I just closed the notebook, slid the brass casing back into the flap, and let the wind carry the dust off the concrete the same way it had carried thirteen wasted shots into nothing.
