SEAL Admiral Asked Her Rank As A Joke — Until He Noticed Her Sniper Tattoo And Froze
Chapter 3
Theme:
Font Size:
24px
The woman doesn't react to any of it. She just breathes: 4-4-4. Her finger stays outside the trigger guard. Range discipline—perfect, textbook. She reaches up, makes a minor adjustment to the scope's parallax dial, another adjustment to the windage. Her movements are small, precise, the kind of adjustments someone makes when they've done this thousands of times.Ellis is ten feet away now, close enough to see her grip. The way her thumb rests along the receiver, the angle of her cheekbone against the stock—his heart starts beating faster. He knows this posture. He's seen it in exactly two places in his entire career, and both of those places are classified above his clearance level."Whenever you're ready," Kane calls out, voice dripping with false courtesy. "We haven't got all day."The woman's breathing changes: three cycles. In, hold, out. In, hold, out. In, hold, out.On the fourth cycle, at the bottom of the exhale, when her lungs are at their emptiest and her body is at its stillest, her finger moves to the trigger.The first shot breaks clean. The rifle barks once, recoil absorbed smoothly into her shoulder. She doesn't flinch, doesn't pull her head off the scope, just works the bolt, chambers the next round, settles, breathes.Second shot, same rhythm: bolt, chamber, settle, breathe, fire.Third shot.Fourth shot.Fifth shot.Total elapsed time from first to fifth: 18 seconds.Ellis doesn't need to check the target monitor. He already knows, but he looks anyway, pulling the spotting scope to his eye and ranging downfield to the 800-meter mark.The target is a standard silhouette, black on white, with concentric scoring rings. In the exact center where the highest value zone sits, there are five holes. Five perfect holes clustered so tight they almost overlap. Bullseye. Every single one.He lowers the scope slowly. His hands are shaking just slightly, but enough that he has to clench them to make it stop.Brooks has gone quiet. The other officers, too. They're staring at the monitor screen mounted on the tower showing the automated camera feed of the target. The computer's scoring system is displaying the results in bright green numbers: five shots, five tens. Perfect score. 800 meters, 18 seconds.Kane's jaw is tight. He steps closer to the screen as if proximity will change what he's seeing. "Check the equipment," he says quietly. "Make sure the rangefinder is calibrated correctly.""Sir, it's calibrated every morning," Ellis replies, voice rough. "That's protocol. It's accurate.""Check it anyway."One of the junior officers jogs out to the 800-meter line, handheld laser rangefinder in hand. He takes three readings, then radios back. "Distance confirmed, sir. 800 meters plus or minus 0.5."Brooks is staring at the woman now. She's sitting back from the rifle, hands resting loose in her lap, face still neutral, still calm, like she just did something completely ordinary.He clears his throat. "Lucky shots. Wind must have been favorable. Or maybe the scope is just really high-end. What kind of glass are you running?"She doesn't answer, just looks at him with those storm water eyes."I asked you a question," Brooks says, voice sharper now.