Chapter 4 - THE REMOVAL OF THE GLASS
Rourke’s jaw tightened. He had counted on an excuse. An excuse would allow him to mark her down for poor attitude, to file an administrative note on her lack of tactical resolve. Her flat refusal to complain left him off-balance, hovering awkwardly across the table.
Elena raised the heavy wooden rifle to her shoulder.
She tucked the curved steel buttplate into the pocket of her right shoulder with effortless precision. Her neck lowered slightly, her cheek finding the cold, unyielding comb of the walnut stock in a clean, repeatable weld.
She closed her left eye and looked through the glass of the ART II optic.
Through the shattered internal lens, the world was a fragmented nightmare. The fluorescent light tubes appeared multiplied three times, bent into distorted streaks across the cracked prism. The crosshairs were canted seven degrees to the left, the vertical stadia wire severed near the center junction. It was an optic that could not hold a zero, could not gather light, and would cause a shooter to miss a man-sized silhouette at fifty yards, let alone three hundred.
Elena looked through the ruined scope for exactly one second.
She lowered the weapon from her shoulder, holding the receiver flat against her abdomen.
She did not set the rifle down. Her left hand slid under the scope base, fingers feeling for the twin knurled thumb-nuts that anchored the antique mount to the left side of the receiver.
CLICK.
The thumb-nuts were corroded, seized by years of neglected storage and oxidized oil. An ordinary shooter would have needed a flathead screwdriver, a multi-tool, or a hammer to break them free.
Elena did not reach for a tool.
She adjusted the leverage of her fingers, positioning the thick pad of her left thumb across the rusted serrations of the forward mounting screw. She applied a sudden, concentrated pulse of isometric torque from her forearm.
CRACK-TICK.
The frozen threads broke free with a sharp, metallic pop that made Sergeant Dylan Hayes blink in surprise.
Elena spun the forward screw with three rapid flicks of her thumb. She shifted to the rear thumb-nut, breaking its seal with identical, effortless power, spinning it loose until the bracket disconnected from the receiver dovetail.
The sound of the turning metal threads was rhythmic and cold: tick, tick, tick, tick.
The entire briefing room fell into a dead, suffocating silence. The operators who had been smirking at her now stared at her hands in disbelief.
May you like
Rourke took an involuntary half-step backward, his eyes widening slightly as he realized what she was doing.
"You’re not serious," Rourke muttered, his voice losing its confident, performative bite. "You can't qualify on the long-distance tactical lane with a bare receiver."
