Nikki watched her mother run toward the edge of the shelf, then turned herself, lashed the horse, felt it churn into a gallop. The dust of the slashing hooves floated everywhere, clotting her breathing, and the tears on her face matted up with it, but she stayed low and whipped the horse and whipped it again, and though it neighed in pain, whipped it still a third time, gouging it with her English boots, and in seconds, the dark shadows of the enfilade covered her and she knew she was safe.
Then she heard a shot.
CHAPTER twenty-seven.
He fired and the sight picture at the moment of ignition--the stout, heroic chest quadrisected perfectly by the crosshairs zeroed exactly for a range of seven hundred meters-- told him instantly that he had hit. As the scope came back, he saw red from the falling body, just a fraction of a second's worth, but square in the full chest, until it was lost in the dust.
Then he shifted to the woman but-He was astonished by the swiftness with which the woman responded. His whole shooting scenario was based on her utter paralysis when her husband's chest exploded.
She would be stupefied and the next shot would be easy.
The woman reeled her horse about almost instantaneously and he was astounded at how much dust floated into the air. You cannot anticipate everything, and he had not anticipated the dust. He had no shot for almost a second, and then, faster than he could have begun to imagine, she and the child were racing hellbent and crazed toward the pass and safety.
He had a momentary flash of panic--never before had such a thing happened!--and took his eye from the scope to get an unimpeded visual on the fleeing woman. She was much farther away than he had figured, the angle was oblique, dust floated in the air. Impossible shot! Only seconds remained as she and the girl raced toward the pass.
He fought his terror, and instead let the rifle sit, and picked up his secret advantage in all this, a set of Leica binoculars with a laser range finder, since unknown distance shooting is almost pointless, and he put the glasses on her to see the readout as it shot back to him, straight and true. She was now 765 meters, now 770, racing away.
His mind did the computations as he figured the lead, all while setting the binocs down and reacquiring the rifle, flipping through a bolt throw with the shell ejecting cleanly to the right. A lifetime's experience and a gift for numbers told him he had to shoot a good nine meters ahead of her--no, no, it would be nine if she were preceding at an exact ninety degrees, but she was on the oblique, more like forty-five or fifty degrees, so he compensated to seven meters. A mil-dot--that is, one of a series of dots etched into the crosshairs--in the scope, at this range, was about thirty inches, so when he went back to the rifle, he led her six mils and a mil high, that is, putting her just inside the edge of the solid part of the horizontal cross hair
Impossible shot! Incredible shot! Close to eight hundred meters on a fast-mover at the oblique away from him in heavy dust.
The rifle jolted in recoil and came back to reveal a ruckus of disturbance. He could see nothing. The horse was down, then up, bucking and kicking in fury, dust floating in the air.
He cycled the bolt again.
Where was she? The child was forgotten but that was not important.
He searched the dust, then put the rifle down and seized the binoculars, which would give him a much bigger field of vision.
Where was she? Had he hit her? Was she about? Was she dead? Was it over? He waited for centuries, and without oxygen. But now, there she was, hit--he could see the blood on her blue shirt--and stiff with the pain of the fall.
But she had not gone into shock, was not surrendering and, like many who discover themselves in mortal circumstances for the first time, giving up to lie and wait for the final blow. Heroically she moved away from the horse and the dust to the edge.
Soft target. Giving herself up for the girl, who didn't matter.
She was at the edge.
He put the binoculars squarely on her and had just a glimpse of her face, only the fleetest impression of her beauty. A melancholy closed upon him, but his heart was strong and hard and he put it away. He pressed a button to fire a spurt of smart laser at her and it bounced back and he looked to the readout and got a range of 795 meters, and knew he'd have to hold dead center of the first low vertical mil-dot.
He set the binocs down, went back to the rifle and saw her at the edge, just standing there, daring him to concentrate on her while the daughter vanished into the shadows of the pass. The woman's foolish courage sickened him.
Her dead husband's insane courage sickened him.
Who were these people? What right did they have to such nobility of spirit? Why did they consider themselves so special? What gave them the right? He put the center of the first mil-dot below the horizontal cross hair on her.
The hatred flared as he pulled the trigger.
The rifle jolted. Time in flight was about a second, maybe a little less. As the 175 grains of 7mm Remington Magnum arched across the canyon, tracing an invisible parabola, unstoppable and tragic, he had the briefest second to study her. Composed, calm, on two feet, defiant even at the end, holding her wound. Then she disappeared as, presumably, the bullet struck her. She tumbled down and down, raising dust, until she vanished from sight.
He felt nothing.
He was done. It was over.
He sat back, amazed to discover the inside of his jacket soaked with sweat. He felt only emptiness, just like the last time he'd had this man in his scope--only the professional's sense of another job being over.
He put the scope back on the man. Clearly he had been eliminated. The gravity of the wound, its immensity, its savagery, was apparent even from this distance. But he paused. So resilient, so powerful, such an antagonist. Why take the chance?
