hurled the bullet down the barrel and forced ahead of it and around it
to explode out into the atmosphere. Most of it was smashed sideways by
the muzzle brake in a perfectly balanced radial pattern, like a donut,
so that the recoil moved the barrel straight back against Reacher’s
shoulder without deflecting it either sideways or up or down.
Meanwhile, behind it, the bullet was starting to spin inside the barrel
as the rifling grooves grabbed at it.
Then the gas ahead of the bullet was heating the oxygen in the air to
the point where the air caught fire. There was a brief flash of flame
and the bullet burst out through the exact center of it, spearing
through the burned air at nineteen hundred miles an hour. A thousandth
of a second later, it was a yard away, followed by a cone of gunpowder
particles and a puff of soot. Another thousandth of a second later, it
was six feet away, and its sound was bravely chasing after it, three
times slower.
The bullet took five-hundredths of a second to cross the Bastion, by
which time the sound of its shot had just passed Reacher’s ears and
cleared the ridge of the roof. The bullet had a hand-polished copper
jacket, and it was flying straight and true, but by the time it passed
soundlessly over McGrath’s head it had slowed a little. The friction
of the air had heated it and slowed it. And the air was moving it. It
was moving it right-to-left as the gentle mountain breeze tugged
imperceptibly at it. Half a second into its travel, the bullet had
covered thirteen hundred feet and it had moved seven inches to the
left.
And it had dropped seven inches. Gravity had pulled it in. The more
gravity pulled, the more the bullet slowed. The more it slowed, the
more gravity deflected it. It speared onward in a perfect graceful
curve. A whole second after leaving the barrel, it was nine hundred
yards into its journey. Way past McGrath’s running figure, but still
over the trees. Still three hundred yards short of its target. Another
sixth of a second later, it was clear of the trees and alongside the
ruined office building. Now it was a slow bullet. It had pulled four
feet left, and five feet down. It passed well clear of Holly and was
twenty feet beyond her before she heard the hiss in the air. The sound
of its shot was still to come. It had just about caught up with
McGrath, running through the trees.
Then there was a second bullet in the air. And a third, and a fourth.
Garber fired a second-and-a-quarter later than Reacher. His rifle was
set to auto. It fired a burst of three. Three shells in a fifth of a
second. His bullets were smaller and lighter. Because they were
lighter, they were faster. They came in at well over two thousand
miles an hour. He was nearer the target. Because his bullets were
faster and lighter and he was nearer, friction and gravity never really
chipped in. His three bullets stayed pretty straight.
Reacher’s bullet hit Borken in the head a full second-and-a-third after
he fired it. It entered the front of his forehead and was out of the
back of his skull three ten-thousandths of a second later. In and out
without really slowing much more at all, because Borken’s skull and
brains were nothing to a two-ounce lead projectile with a needle point
and a polished copper jacket. The bullet was well on over the endless
forest beyond before the pressure wave built up in Borken’s skull and
exploded it.
The effect is mathematical and concerns kinetic energy. The way it had
been explained to Reacher, long ago, it was all about equivalents. The
bullet weighed only two ounces, but it was fast. Equivalent to
something heavy, but slow. Two ounces moving at a thousand miles an
hour was maybe similar to something weighing ten pounds moving at three
miles an hour. Maybe something like a sledgehammer swinging hard in a
man’s hand. That was pretty much the effect. Reacher was watching it
through the scope. Heart in his mouth. A full second-and-a-third is a