End Game (Will Robie #5)(8)
She knew one thing clearly: She was the single most lethal person on this battlefield, able to precisely and consistently kill at over twelve hundred meters. The other side knew this as well. Thus, the bull’s-eye on her was a large one.
And if she were ever captured?
Well, in addition to being an American and a woman, snipers historically were not known for receiving a kind reception from their captors.
If she were about to be captured, Reel had long since decided to eat a round instead.
The time came and she readied her rifle.
Years ago her head had been turned into a ballistic computer, analyzing the key physical forces on a bullet fired long-range: altitude, temperature, humidity, and wind, particularly wind two-thirds of the way to the target. But now, with second-and third-generation long-range sniper systems, these calculations were done faster and more accurately by machine than a human ever could. Automation was even hitting the ranks of the elite snipers, not just working joes on assembly lines in Detroit. Thus devices like a ballistic computer, projected reticle display, digital compass, and meteorological and inclination and related sensors traveled everywhere she did. She had ballistic software downloaded on her iPhone. It was all fed into her optics, which had cost twice as much as her gun.
As the old saying among long-range shooters went: Buy once, cry once.
Now covered with a ghillie suit the color of sand, she lay on the ground and went to work.
The key attribute for any sniper was patience. You worked in a bubble of focus, staying sharp and alert despite exhaustion. And you didn’t move. For this reason, she wore a diaper under her clothing so she wouldn’t have to get up to relieve herself.
She’d already zeroed her weapon at the range she would be shooting. Her computer had allowed Reel to laze her target, and a ballistic-solution crosshair had been spit out.
When holding her weapon Reel never gripped anything, because muscular exertion caused the limbs to do something no sniper could tolerate: It caused appendages to shake, however imperceptibly. It was also called the death grip in sniping circles; if you missed because you were shaking, the other side would get a chance to take you out.
Thus, her left forearm ran straight and true along her weapon’s stock. Angled right or left you used muscle to hold the gun. Vertical on vertical meant gravity was doing the job for you. Her toes were pointed out, the sides of her feet flat to the sand. She looked like she was about to do some yoga move. She could and had held such a position for hours, because virtually no strength was required.
Her main snipe rifle was based on the tried-and-true Remington 700 platform with some customization. Her spare was a Barrett M82. For this tour of duty she had switched over her ammo from the legendary .338 Lapua magnum rounds to the .300 Winchester Magnum rounds. Her rifle barrel held a right-hand twist, which meant the bullet coming out of it would cheat a bit in that direction, a phenomenon known as spindrift, which she had accounted for. And she was shooting over such a long distance that the earth’s rotation also came into play; it was known as the Coriolis effect. It really only mattered if you were shooting pretty much straight north or south. The bullet would fudge slightly to the left if the target was north and to the right if the target pointed south. If you didn’t compensate for it, the earth’s constant movement would rotate your target right out of the kill zone. A millimeter error of calculation on this end would result in the shot’s being a foot off on the other end.
Ballistics confirmed, her spotter satisfied, all data dialed into her optics, she was ready to execute.
Her finger went to the trigger. She would press with the soft part of the finger midway between the tip and the first joint. This was the area of the finger that moved the least sideways.
She slowly squeezed the trigger on the down breath right at the point where she no longer needed to exhale or to start inhaling again. This respiratory phase was the stillest your lungs would be without duress or discomfort and that meant it was the most calmly immobile your body would be. When you inhaled, the muzzle dropped, when you exhaled, the muzzle rose. But the sweet spot was on the exhale breath, and in between a heartbeat; that was what every good sniper strived for.
Reel kept a smooth, consistent trigger-press pressure all the way through the shot and then led the trigger back to its forward position.
The bullet blasted out of her barrel and was immediately subject to the rules of drag, and also of gravity, meaning it had begun to fall back to earth. The Win Mag round covered 30 percent of its max flight in a heartbeat. Two-thirds of the way to the target, drag was minimized and gravity became the biggest obstacle to a clean shot.
And that was why Reel had fired at an angle equal to the target being nearly sixty feet tall. By the time it got to the end of its flight path, it would impact the target at fifty-four inches off the ground, meaning directly into the brain of the five-foot-ten-inch man seated at a rough wooden table on the other end.
Before the ISIS field commander that had caused her side endless grief even fell dead, Reel’s scope had come directly back to her such that after recoil she saw the same image through her optics. If this had been on the range for practice she would have received high marks.
Since it was combat for real, someone’s life had just ended.
Her shot had covered nearly fifteen hundred meters, or a little under a mile. A superior distance, it still would not have put her in the top ten of longest kill shots. The current number ten on that list was a Marine sniper who had done the deed from over sixteen hundred meters. For many years number one on that list had been a Brit who had killed two Afghans from nearly twenty-five hundred meters with a single bullet. But that shot had recently been bested by a Canadian elite special forces fighter who had recorded a kill shot in Iraq at more than thirty-five hundred meters.