One Shot

in 1959, 141 hits in 134 games, but the Yanks still only finished third.
    Cash took a roller ball pen from his shirt pocket and wrote
R. Richardson, 300 yards,
and the date and time on the paper.
    “Record keeper,” Reacher said.
    “Habit,” Cash said. Then he drew an
X
inside the inner ring. It was about half an inch tall and because of the slant of his handwriting a little less than half an inch wide. He left the paper on the counter and walked away into the room with the refrigerator noise. Came back out a minute later carrying a rifle. It was a Remington M24, with a Leupold Ultra scope and a front bipod. A standard-issue Marine sniper’s weapon. It looked to be well used but in excellent condition. Cash placed it sideways on the counter. Detached the magazine and showed Reacher that it was empty. Operated the bolt and showed Reacher that the chamber was empty, too. Reflex, routine, caution, professional courtesy.
    “Mine,” he said. “Zeroed for three hundred yards exactly. By me myself, personally.”
    “Good enough,” Reacher said. Which it was. An ex-Marine who in 1978 had been the third-best shooter in the world could be trusted on such matters.
    “One shot,” Cash said. He took a single cartridge from his pocket. Held it up. It was a .300 Winchester round. Match grade. He stood it upright on the
X
on the paper target. It hid it entirely. Then he smiled. Reacher smiled back. He understood the challenge. He understood it perfectly.
Hit the X and I’ll talk to you about James Barr.
    At least it’s not hand-to-hand combat,
Reacher thought.
    “Let’s go,” he said.

    Outside the air was still, and it was neither hot nor cold. Perfect shooting weather. No shivering, no risk of thermals or currents or shimmer. No wind. Cash carried the rifle and the target, and Reacher carried the cartridge in the palm of his hand. They climbed into Cash’s Humvee together and Cash fired it up with a loud diesel clatter.
    “You like this thing?” Reacher asked, over the noise.
    “Not really,” Cash said. “I’d be happier with a sedan. But it’s a question of image. Customers like it.”
    The landscape was all low hills, covered in grass and stunted trees. Someone had used a bulldozer to carve wide straight paths through it. The paths were hundreds of yards apart and hundreds of yards long, and all of them were parallel. Each path was a separate rifle range. Each range was isolated from the others by natural hills and backed by high berms made from the earth scraped up by the bulldozer. The whole place looked like a half-built golf course. It was part green, part raw, all covered with red earth gashes. White-painted rocks and boulders delineated tracks through it, some for vehicles, some for foot traffic.
    “My family has owned this land forever,” Cash said. “The range was my idea. I thought I could be like a golf pro, or tennis. You know those guys, they’ve been on the tour, they retire, they set up teaching afterward.”
    “Did it work?” Reacher asked.
    “Not really,” Cash said. “People come here to shoot, but to get a guy to admit he doesn’t really know how is like pulling teeth.”
    Reacher saw three pickup trucks parked at separate shooting stations. The guys who had been waiting at eight o’clock were well into their morning sessions. They were all prone on coconut mats, firing, pausing, sighting, firing again.
    “It’s a living,” Cash said, in answer to a question Reacher hadn’t asked. Then he pulled the Humvee off the main track and drove three hundred yards down the length of an empty range. He got out and clipped the paper target to a frame and got back in and K-turned the truck and headed back. He parked it neatly and shut it down.
    “Good luck,” he said.
    Reacher sat still for a moment. He was more nervous than he should have been. He breathed in and held it and felt the thrill of caffeine in his veins. Just a tiny microscopic tremble. Four fast cups of strong coffee were not an ideal preparation for accurate long-distance shooting.
    But it was only three hundred yards. Three hundred yards, with a good rifle, no heat, no cold, still air. More or less the same thing as pressing the muzzle into the center of the target and pulling the trigger. He could do it with his eyes closed. There was no fundamental problem with the marksmanship. The problem was with the stakes. He wanted the puppet master more than he had wanted the Marines’ cup all those years before. A lot