Sydänkäpy vs. Violin

The woman knelt there, a figure wrapped in darkness, lost in shadows. Invisible.

She studied the rooftop across the street through a Nightforce Optics 5.5–22×56 NXS Riflescope mounted on her Accuracy International’s L115A3—the best .338 rifle on the market. Finding the other sniper had taken time and patience, but she knew he had to be there. Somewhere.

All her intel and all her instincts said he must be there. In the dark. A ghost, like she was.

He was good, though. No rookie errors of allowing the metal or glass of his weapon to reach into the path of any stray light. Finding an expert is one of the most challenging and frustrating parts of the game. Snipers know how not to be found.

But in the end, the sniper needs to take a shot. The woman calculated the best angle for the kill and balanced it against the sniper’s need to escape. In daylight, at a distance of eight to twelve hundred meters, the muzzle flash is minimal unless they are looking right at it. Bullets travel faster than sound, so the target never hears it, and the report is difficult to echolocate. However, the woman followed the sniper’s line of sight to the street, where a man in an overcoat and black glasses—a blind man—was getting into a cab with his dog. The man was big and had pale hair. The dog was white as snow.

The woman tucked the stock of the rifle against her shoulder and fired.

The timing was very nearly tragic. The sniper was more prepared than she’d thought, and he fired at the same moment.

Or … the tiniest fraction of that moment. Her weapon fired a bullet at the approximate speed of sound—340.3 meters per second—and it struck the sniper in the eye as his finger pulled the trigger. The difference was one ten-thousandth of a second. At that angle, at that distance, with the reduction of the sound suppressor, that was enough. His bullet hit the asphalt twenty inches from the blond man’s right shoe.

Her bullet blew the sniper’s head apart.

-Relentless pg. 405, Kindle Edition.