Read Online The Crisis by David Poyer - Free Book Online

Oberg’s glove. “Over three thousand feet per second. Don’t try these in your regular chambers. You’ll blow pieces of your face all over the landscape.”
    It was much heavier than even the long-range sniper rounds Teddy was used to. A shiny black, queerly elongated bullet with a dull green plastic tip. He turned it over and inspected the base. “Why’s it so heavy?”
    â€œDepleted uranium, with a tungsten core for penetration. Both heavier than lead. So we get a three-hundred-grain bullet, and a ballistic coefficient off the charts.”
    Kaulukukui whistled. “Who thought of this?”
    â€œLike a lot of the new stuff, it came out of long-range competition. The Army Marksmanship Unit was up against the stops with the Sierras they were shooting. Somebody says, why not go to a denser metal, see what happens. Course, they can’t shoot these at Perry. Be over a hundred dollars a round. Plus, anything with the word ‘uranium’ in it sets the nut fringe off. Next thing, they’d be calling them atomic bullets and yammering to ban ’em.” Skilley turned one of the cartridges before his eyes as if admiring some rare ruby.
    Teddy looked at Kaulukukui. “So this gives you less wind drift.”
    â€œLess drift, a spin of one in five, and image stabilization on the scope. Bottom line: a quarter MOA. A steady hand, you can hold a head shot at a thousand meters.”
    The Hawaiian whistled again. Skilley stood. He handed the rifle to Oberg. “I run my mouth enough. It takes forty-two muscles to frown, seventeen to smile—”
    â€œBut only three for proper trigger control,” Teddy finished.
    â€œHooyah. Shoot the fucker.”
    He accepted it gingerly. With the long, thick barrel, the suppressor, and the heavy sight, it had to weigh at least twenty pounds. He twisted the sling outward and got his left arm through it and snugged tight under the handguard. He stretched out on the ground and hitched a leg up. As he set the buttstock into his shoulder Skilley reached in to turn a dial on the scope. “Got to load one round at a time. That cartridge won’t fit in the magazine. But you can carry another mag full of regular rounds, to slap in if they rush you.”
    The bolt snapped closed, and his thumb rotated the safety to FIRE.
    When he put the scope to his eye the sight picture was the standard reticle. A grid at the top, so you could estimate range by the arc an erect male figure subtended. Below that were aiming dots for various distances. On the right was something new: the laser range finder. He moved back for eye relief, and steadied the sight on the distant orange fleck Skilley had painted. The spot quivered with the involuntary tremor of his muscles, and of the heat waves cooking off the desert floor.
    That was the mirage. A subtle shimmer that took training for the eye to read. He focused back and forth, reading that trembling of the atmosphere halfway between him and the target, then a quarter, then three-quarters. Each time he focused, the mirage rolled like surf in a different direction at a different rate, or simply boiled in place, a milling scramble of heated gas.
    No bullet ever went where you pointed it. Gravity, spin, the wind, the very rotation of the earth pulled it off track. Some of those you could allow for. Some you could guesstimate, if you fired enough thousands of rounds. But in that boil of the mirage, no one could be absolutely certain where a projectile would go.
    â€œAbout a three-minute wind? Right to left?”
    â€œCrank it on. Estimate your range,” Skilley breathed.
    The range finder would be more exact, but Teddy didn’t like to put out a laser beam. Protective details were starting to carry laser detectors. He calibrated the top and bottom of the rock against the upper grid, then doubled it, since it wasn’t six feet high. The mirage hesitated, then began to roll left to right. Sweating,