Free Saint by Ted Dekker Page B

rifles have been sighted in at four hundred yards.”
    She walked to the left, eyeing Jenine. “You will expend ten rounds on the reactive targets. Consider it a warm-up. Beyond the yellow reactive targets are the static targets. Do not shoot these targets. Dale, take the far left; Jenine, center; Carl, on the right. Take your places, find the targets, and fire at will.”
    Carl turned to his right and walked to his sandbag. He’d shot more rounds on this field than he could count, much less remember. What he could remember with surprising detail were the technical specifications of the rifles, handguns, and cartridges that he’d spent so many hours with.
    The rifle leaned against a small fiberglass rack by the sandbags. It wasn’t just any M40A3, he saw. It was his. He’d sighted it in at four hundred yards himself; he could remember that clearly now.
    Warmth spread through his chest. He wanted to run for the weapon, to pick it up gingerly and examine it to be sure they hadn’t scratched it or hurt it in any way. His heart began to pound, and he stopped, surprised by his strong emotional reaction to the weapon.
    A hand touched his elbow. “It’s okay,” Kelly said softly. “Pick it up.” She looked at him sheepishly, as if she’d given him the very gift he’d been waiting for so long. And she had, he realized.
    Kelly winked. “Go on, it’s yours.”
    Carl walked to the rifle, hesitated only a moment, then picked it up and turned it in his hands. So familiar. Yet so new. The sniper rifle fired a .308 round through its free-floating twenty-four-inch barrel. Internal five-round magazine, six including the one chambered.
    He ran his hand over the well-worn fiberglass stock and noticed that his fingers were trembling. He had to seize control, but these feelings were so comforting that he allowed them to linger.
    Did he always feel this way when he picked up his rifle? Did the others feel this way?
    He lifted his eyes and saw that Kelly was watching him with interest. Maybe some understanding.
    He knew that the rifle he held was nothing more than a tool formed with precision, but then, so was a woman’s hand. Or an eye. It was what he could do with this rifle that fascinated him.
    â€œThank you,” he said.
    â€œYou’re welcome. Shoot well today.”
    â€œI will.”
    She walked back toward the others.
    Carl picked up a box of .308 rounds and set his emotions aside. Shooting well, as she put it, was like the beating of his own heart. Both could be controlled, both gave him life, both could be performed without much conscious thought.
    He dropped to one knee and set the box of cartridges on top of the sandbag. A quick examination satisfied him that the mechanisms of the rifle were in perfect working order. He pressed five rounds into the magazine, disengaged the bolt, slid a cartridge into the barrel, seated the bolt, and took a deep breath.
    He was eager—too eager. After the jumble/void of the last day/week, he felt fully alive, kneeling here, staring downrange. A slight, steady breeze, five miles per hour, he estimated, from the east. Temperature, seventy Fahrenheit. Low humidity.
    It was a perfect day for killing.
    Carl unfolded the bipod and lay down behind the rifle. Scope cover off. The thin thread that hung from the barrel to indicate wind barely moved. He drew the weapon back into his shoulder and glassed the field.
    Three rubber cubes—yellow, blue, and red, each five inches square—sat on the ground. The yellow was his. When hit, the cube would bounce, thus its identification as a reactive target.
    Carl snugged the weapon and swung the Leopold’s familiar cross-hairs over the target. He knew the charts for dozens of rounds intimately. The 150-grain boat tail bullet had a muzzle velocity of twenty-nine hundred feet per second. It would take the projectile just under half a second to reach twelve hundred feet. In that