Fever Dream - Douglas Preston [71]
Selecting a smooth, broad trunk, the shooter pinned a target to the wood, tacking it down with an upholstery hammer. It was a warmish day for winter, in the low sixties, the smell of water and rotting wood drifting in from the swamp, a flock of noisy crows croaking and screeching in the branches. The nearest house was ten miles away. There wasn’t a breath of wind.
He walked back up to where he had left his gear, counting his steps again, satisfied that the target was about a hundred yards away.
He opened the hard Pelican case and removed the rifle from it: a Remington 40-XS tactical. At fifteen pounds, it was a heavy son of a bitch, but the trade-off was a better-than-0.75 MOA accuracy. The shooter hadn’t fired the weapon in quite some time, but it was now cleaned and oiled and ready to go.
He knelt, laying it over his knee, and flipped down the bipod, adjusting and locking it in place. Then he lay down in the matted grass, set the rifle in front of him, moving it around until it was stable and solid. He closed one eye and peered through the Leupold scope at the target affixed to the tree. So far, so good. Reaching into his back pocket, he removed a box of .308 Winchester rounds and placed it in the grass to his right. Plucking out a round, he pushed it into the chamber, then another, until the four-round internal magazine was full. He closed the bolt and looked again through the scope.
He aimed at the target, breathing slowly, letting his heart rate subside. The faint trembling and movement of the weapon, as evident from the motion of the target in the crosshairs, subsided as he allowed his entire body to relax. He placed his finger on the trigger and tightened slightly, let his breath run out, counted the heartbeats, and then squeezed between them. A crack, a small kick. He ejected the shell, resumed breathing, relaxed again, and gave the trigger another slow squeeze. Another crack and kick, the sound rolling away quickly over the swampy flatlands. Two more shots finished the magazine. He rose to his feet, gathered the four shells, put them in his pocket, and walked down to inspect the target.
It was a fairly tight grouping, the rounds close enough to have cut an irregular hole to the left and slightly below the center of the target. Removing a plastic ruler from his pocket, he measured the offset, turned and walked back across the meadow, moving slowly to keep his exertion down. He lay down again, gathered the rifle into his hands, and adjusted the elevation and windage knobs on the scope to take his measurements into account.
Once again, with great deliberation, he fired four rounds at the target. This time the grouping lay dead center, all four rounds more or less placed in the same hole. Satisfied, he pulled the target off the tree trunk, balled it up, and stuffed it in his pocket.
He walked back to the center of the field and resumed firing position. It was now time for a little fun. When he first began firing, the flock of crows had risen in noisy flight and settled about three hundred yards away at the far edge of the field. Now he could see them on the ground under a tall yellow pine, strutting about in the needle duff and picking out seeds from a scattering of cones.
Peering through the scope, the man selected a crow and followed it in the crosshairs as it pecked and jabbed at a cone, shaking it with its beak. His forefinger tightened on the curved steel; the shot rang out; and the bird disappeared in a spray of black feathers, splattering the nearby tree trunk with bits of red flesh. The rest of the flock rose in an uproar, bursting into the blue and winging away across the treetops.
The man looked about for another target, this time aiming the scope down toward the swamp. Slowly, he swept the edge of the swamp until he found it: a massive bullfrog about 150 yards off, resting on a lily pad in a little patch of sun. Once again he aimed, relaxed, and fired; a pink cloud flew up, mingled with green water and bits