Pulled the stock to him and snuggled it in close. Dragged the bipod
legs an inch to the left and swung the butt a fraction to the right. He
smacked the bolt in and out and pressed himself close to the ground.
Eased his cheek against the stock and put his eye to the scope. Joseph
Ray stepped from the edge of the crowd and offered Reacher his field
glasses. Reacher nodded silently and took them. Held them ready.
Borken’s finger tightened against the trigger. He fired the first
shot.
oco
The Barrett’s huge muzzle brake blasted gas sideways and downward. Dust
blasted back up off the matting. The rifle kicked and boomed. The
sound crashed through the trees and came back off the mountains,
seconds later. A hundred pairs of eyes flicked from Borken to the
target. Reacher raised the field glasses and focused eight hundred and
thirty yards up the range.
It was a miss. The target was undamaged. Borken peered through the
scope and grimaced. He hunkered down again and waited for the dust to
clear. Reacher watched him. Borken was just waiting. Steady
breathing. Relaxed. Then his finger tightened again. He fired the
second shot. The rifle kicked and crashed and the dust blasted upward.
Reacher raised the field glasses again. A hit. There was a splintered
hole on the target’s right shoulder.
There was a murmur from the crowd. Field glasses were passed from hand
to hand. The whispers rose and fell. The dust settled. Borken fired
again. Too quickly. He was still wriggling. Reacher watched him
making the mistake. He didn’t bother with the field glasses. He knew
that half-inch shell would end up in Idaho.
The crowd whispered. Borken glared through the scope. Reacher watched
him do it all wrong. His relaxation was disappearing. His shoulders
were tensed. He fired the fourth. Reacher handed the field glasses
back to Joseph Ray on the edge of the crowd. He didn’t need to look.
He knew Borken was going to miss with the rest. In that state he’d
have missed at four hundred yards. He’d have missed at two hundred.
He’d have missed across a crowded room.
Borken fired the fifth and then the sixth and stood up slowly. He
lifted the big rifle and used the scope to check what everybody already
knew.
“One hit,” he said.
He lowered the rifle and looked across at Reacher.
“Your shot,” he said. “Life or death.”
Reacher nodded. Fowler handed him his magazine. Reacher used his
thumb to test the spring. He pressed down on the first bullet and felt
the smooth return. The bullets were shiny. Polished by hand. Sniper’s
bullets. He bent and lifted the heavy rifle. Held it vertical and
clicked the magazine into place. He didn’t smack at it like Borken had
done. He pressed it home gently with his palm.
He opened the bipod legs, one at a time. Clicked them against their de
tents Glanced up the range and laid the rifle on the matting.
Squatted next to it and lay down, all in one fluid motion. He lay like
a dead man, arms flung upward around the gun. He wanted to lie like
that for a long time. He was tired. Deathly tired. But he stirred
and laid his cheek gently against the stock. Snuggled his right
shoulder close to the butt. Clamped his left hand over the barrel,
fingers under the scope. Eased his right hand toward the trigger.
Moved his right eye to the scope. Breathed out.
Firing a sniper rifle over a long distance is a confluence of many
things. It starts with chemistry. It depends on mechanical
engineering. It involves optics and geophysics and meteorology.
Governing everything is human biology.
The chemistry is about explosions. The powder behind the bullet in the
shell case has to explode perfectly, predictably, powerfully,
instantly. It has to smash the projectile down the barrel at maximum
speed. The half-inch bullet in the Barrett chamber weighs a hair over
two ounces. One minute it’s stationary. A thousandth of a second
later it’s doing nearly nineteen hundred miles an hour, leaving the
barrel behind on its way to the target. That powder has to explode