“Why was the mast disconnected, Colonel?”
Hale looked toward the canyon.
“The sensor was unreliable.”
“The calibration records say otherwise,” I replied.
I opened the weather log.
For six years, Hawthorne Range had used three measurement points: the firing line, the center ridge, and the target basin.
The canyon’s most dangerous current formed in the middle third, where sunlight heated a narrow southern cut and forced rising air into the main western wind.
Without the center mast, a shooter saw only the surface flow at the line and the tail movement near the target.
Both suggested a steady push from left to right.
The hidden middle current pushed in the opposite direction and climbed.
A shooter relying on the remaining instruments would make a reasonable correction and miss badly.
That was exactly what had happened all morning.
Hale tapped the log with one finger.
“They are supposed to read terrain.
A competent marksman should not need a machine to tell him the wind changes in a canyon.”
Briggs finally spoke.
“Sir, you ordered us to use the official range data.”
Hale turned on him.
“Are you making excuses for a forty-percent score, Sergeant?”
Briggs held his gaze.
“No, sir.
I’m stating what happened.”
That was the first crack in Hale’s control.
All morning, the operators had accepted his insults because they assumed he was defending a legitimate standard.
Now they understood that he had removed critical information, ordered them to trust what remained, and then attacked their competence when the false picture caused them to fail.
Mercer looked at me.
“Can you demonstrate the effect?”
“Yes, sir.”
Hale gave a short, humorless laugh.
“Of course she can explain it after watching twenty shooters.
That does not mean she can solve it behind a rifle.”
The insult was weaker than the one he had thrown at me at 0800, but the purpose was the same.
He needed the line to see me fail.
If I missed, he could turn an investigation into a dispute between competing experts.
Mercer understood that.
“Chief?”
I removed my rifle from the case.
It was not new or decorative.
The stock carried pale scratches from rock, transport, and years of work.
Hale had called it a toy before seeing it.
Now he watched me check the action, inspect the chamber, and mount the same type of optic used by the men he had spent the morning humiliating.
“Ten rounds,” Hale said.
“Same target.
No electronic wind solution.”
“Agreed.”
“And no center-mast data.”
“I have not received any.”
His eyes narrowed.
“Then let’s see the legend.”
I ignored the word.
Legends were stories people built after the difficult parts had been cleaned away.
I trusted measurements, observation, and repeatable decisions.
I lay behind the rifle.
The ground pressed heat through the mat.
In the scope, the distant target floated in the mirage.
