The shooter lay perfectly still under his car, peering through the scope as Corporal Grimes and his friends milled about in the picnic shelter. With the faintest of movements, the shooter adjusted his aim, watching a target a moment before moving on to the next. He would get only one shot. The range was at the extreme limit for the Browning, around 1,200 yards, but he was good.

 

No, he was very good.

 

He’d been waiting for a chance to make his statement, and this setup was flawless—a target rich environment with a broad, flat, clear firing lane. He’d been following the Souls for weeks, learning their patterns and movements. This was outside their regular routine, but that’s what made it so perfect. They were down there, almost three-quarters of a mile away, totally unaware that death was waiting to choose one of them.

 

His car was parked in the back corner of the recreation center parking lot; a parking lot that overlooked the entirety of Gravely Park. There were enough cars to provide plenty of cover so that his Honda Accord didn’t stand out, but not so many that he was likely to be discovered. Lying under his ghillie net, he was just another part of the shadows. He’d picked this spot because there was a gentle depression in the pavement that channeled water into a storm drain that gave him just enough room to squeeze under the car.

 

He kept his eye on the scope, adjusting his aim again, the sight picture sliding over to rest on a brunette with big breasts talking in a group of other women. His cock throbbed with excitement, imagining her chest exploding in a geyser of blood as the 150-grain full metal jacket bullet ripped her apart. At this range, the high-powered rifle round would lose much of its knock-down power and would impact with no more energy than a handgun round. But a handgun could be just as deadly with proper shot placement.

 

The crosshairs moved again, coming to a stop on Corporal Grimes. The shooter watched as Grimes ate a burger, telling some story that made everyone laugh. His finger tightened on the trigger. Two pounds. Only two pounds of pull to end his life. The crosshairs slid again, coming to rest on the chest of a man standing beside Grimes holding his own burger.

 

The shooter exhaled slowly and held his breath as he became still as death.

 

###

 

The first sound Hammer heard was the heavy thud as the bullet impacted Stilt’s chest before erupting out of his back in a spray of blood, bone, and meat, followed by the hissing snap of a supersonic bullet.

 

He’d served only one tour in Iraq, but in combat you learned quick or you died.

“Down!” he shouted, grabbing the nearest two people, one in each hand, and hauling them down as his instincts took over and he threw himself onto the concrete. They were taking sniper fire and any target the shooter could see he could kill.

 

“Get down!” he roared again as several women stood in stunned amazement. They weren’t moving fast enough.

 

He leaped to his feet and scrambled to the nearest woman, staying behind the tables until he reached her and dragged her down.

 

“Stay down. We’re taking fire!” he snarled before he popped his head up for a quick look around. Everyone was down now, he ducked his head again before he lost it.

 

Hammer scrambled to Knife as he crouched beside Stilts. “What the fuck?” Knife snarled as Hammer arrived.

 

“Hold on, brother,” Duck murmured as he tried to stop the bleeding, pressing his hand against Stilts’ chest.

 

“We’ve got a man shot!” Mike shouted into his phone. “Gravely Park at…” He paused. “What the fuck is the number of this place?” he cried as he looked for some identifying marker.

 

The men glanced around as they frantically looked for some identifying number.

 

“Three,” Goose called out.

 

“At picnic shelter three!” Mike paused again as he listened. “No! No one, but I know a fucking gunshot when I see and hear one!”

 

Hammer tried to help Duck. “Hang on brother,” Hammer said, ripping off his Souls jacket and pressing it against the wound to try to slow the bleeding. It was hopeless, a puddle of blood was already leaking out from under Stilts, but he had to try. “Stay with me, okay?”

 

Stilts looked at him and nodded, but said nothing. He was beginning to gurgle as his lungs filled with blood.

 

“Tell them to haul ass!” Hammer roared at Mike, then looked back at Stilts. “You’re going to be okay, you hear me? You’re going to be okay. Just stay with me, Stilts. Medical is on the way, so you stay with me!”

 

Stilts nodded again. “Hurts,” he murmured.

 

“That’s good. It’s good it hurts,” Hammer said, softer. “That tells you you’re still alive.”

 

Stilts began to nod again, but then a look of peace came over his eyes, and he stilled.

 

“Stilts! Stilts, goddamn you. Fight! You fight, you bastard!” Hammer tried to call his friend back from the edge. He released his two-handed press of his coat and searched for a pulse. He found it, but it was far too fast and shallow as Stilts’ heart pumped his life out onto the ground.

 

“Hang on buddy,” Hammer said, his voice thick as he pressed harder on his brother’s chest. “Just hang on a few more minutes. You can do that. You can hang on just a couple more minutes. Come on buddy. Hang in there. You can do it.”

 

The rest of the Souls had crawled over, staying low behind the tables, gathered around Stilts from all sides. Duck’s old lady was holding Stilts’ hand as tears streamed down her face, trying to give him comfort in his final moments.

 

Hammer was the only active member to have served in the armed forces, and they could hear the pain in his voice as he talked to Stilts, encouraging him to hang on for a while longer. No one knew what had happened to Hammer, he wouldn’t talk about it, but they knew he’d seen more than his share of death.

 

Hammer checked for a pulse again, desperate for the faintest sign. His hands were red with Stilts’ blood. He rocked back and sat on his heels, his head hanging low in defeat as some of the women sniffled.

 

“He’s gone,” he said, but it was barely a whisper.

 

###

 

The shooter watched through the scope as the men and women disappeared behind the tables. He could see slivers of movement as they scrambled, but nothing he could paint a target on. He saw Grimes’ head pop up, but before he could acquire the mark, it disappeared again. They were down and wouldn’t be coming back up. They knew what had happened.

 

It was time to go.

 

He inched his way out from under his car and then stood, dropping his camouflage netting as he rose. He slid his rifle into its case in the back seat, tossed in the netting, then calmly walked around his car and slid behind the wheel. He was just another guy out enjoying a day at the park.

 

His five-year-old Honda whirred to life as he twisted the key, and he smiled as he slipped the car into reverse, stroking his hard cock through his pants as he backed out of the parking space.

 

Putting the car in drive, he motored along the road that meandered through the park, passing within a dozen yards of the array of motorcycles parked at one of the covered picnic areas.

 

There seemed to be some sort of medical emergency with a man lying on his back as three other men hovered over him. He smiled and kept moving. He wasn’t a doctor, and there wasn’t any help he could offer the man.

 

When he arrived at the park entrance, he could just make out the faint wail of sirens. He smiled, signaled, and pulled out onto the road.

 

###

 

The park was swarming with police. The red and blue lights from the patrol cars bouncing off every reflective surface around to create a dizzying strobe that was giving Hammer a headache. It didn’t help that they kept asking the same questions over and over while Stilts lay under a covering on the ground.

 

“You saw nobody out of place? Nobody standing around that looked suspicious?” the officer asked.

 

Hammer sighed. “No. It was just Souls. Look around,” he said as he twisted at the waist, his arms outstretched. There were no other structures nearby that could have hidden a person. “If anyone were standing around, we would have seen him. I’m telling you, this shot came from long distance, maybe as much as a mile. There was a long time between when the bullet hit him and the sound of the shot.”

 

“You’re sure about that?”

 

“Of course I’m sure,” Hammer snapped.

 

“And you have no idea who would want to take a shot at Mr. Stilton?”

 

“No.”

 

The officer tapped his notebook against his hand a couple of times. “I think that’s everything. I know this had to be tough, seeing your friend get shot like that. We’ll do everything we can to track the perpetrator down and bring him to justice.”

 

Hammer grunted. Whoever the shooter was, he’d better hope the cops found him first because if the Souls found him before the cops did, there wouldn’t be anything left of him to find.

 

As the cops began to release the brothers and old ladies, they left in twos and threes.

 

“Knife, Mike, I want you to stay with me,” Hammer said quietly as the cops continued to mill around.

 

It took hours, but finally Hammer and his closest brothers were alone.

 

“I want to see if we can figure out where this shot came from. It may not do any good, but we have to start somewhere, and I don’t think the cops know what they’re looking for. I get the feeling they think this guy was standing across the street or something, but he was a hell of a long way away.”

 

“What are we looking for?” Knife asked.

 

“I don’t know,” Hammer admitted. “Where could a guy setup so he couldn’t be seen?” Hammer muttered, almost as if he was talking to himself.

 

He wasn’t precisely sure where the shot came from. The sound was little help, giving him only a general direction. He walked to where Stilts had been standing, facing the same direction, and scanned the distance. The only thing in sight was the recreation center, but there was no way someone could stand there, fire a rifle, and not have someone see them. He continued to scan, but there was nothing else… unless the shooter had managed to climb up one of the trees on the far side of the parking lot, but that didn’t seem likely either.

 

To make a shot from that distance would require a very stable shooting platform, and trees moved with the slightest breeze. No, the trees were out. A sniper always shot from the ground or a building, somewhere that didn’t move.

 

“The rec center,” Hammer said. “It’s the only option.”

 

Mike and Knife looked at each other, then squinted at the building illuminated by the parking lot lights.

 

“Are you shitting me? Nobody can make a shot like that!” Mike protested.

 

“A sniper could. Further even with the right weapon.” Hammer continued to watch the building, thinking, then nodded. “That has to be it. Mike, let’s go. Knife, you’re about Stilts’ size. Stay here and stand where he was standing.”

 

Mike glanced at Knife then followed Hammer as he strode across the ground toward the building. “You sure about this? You can barely see the building from the shelter. How can anyone see a man, much less hit them from there?”

 

“A scope… and practice,” Hammer said as they walked, being careful of their footing in the darkness. “In Iraq, lots of snipers were making kills from around a thousand yards. Some of the longest were nearly three times that far.”

 

It took them almost five minutes to walk the distance the bullet traveled in seconds. Hammer could see the picnic covering, but Knife was almost invisible, even with the shelter lights glowing brightly. He moved to the far corner of the building, but a tree was in the way from there. The other corner was possible, but when he crouched down to get low, a hill blocked his view. He stood and frowned, wondering if he had it wrong.

 

“What?” Mike asked.

 

“It’s not the building… so where…?”

 

Mike indicated to the parking lot. “How about one of the cars?”

 

“No. Not stable enough. But maybe…” Hammer muttered as he started across the parking lot. He stopped at the farthest set of spaces and looked toward where Stilts had been killed. It reduced the distance by a hundred yards of more, and there was a clear line of sight all the way to where Knife was standing.

 

“Look around,” Hammer said, motioning with his hand. “See if you can find a shell casing or something. It was from here, I know it.”

 

“How?”

 

“I can feel it. This is where a sniper would setup for that shot if he could.”

 

“You said he wouldn’t shoot from a car?”

 

“He didn’t. The angle is wrong. But maybe from beside it. Or under it.”

 

They spent several minutes scouring the area. The light wasn’t good, but a shell casing would be easy to see. After several minutes of looking, they came up with nothing, not so much as a piece of trash.

 

“Nothing,” Mike said.

 

Hammer grimaced. He hadn’t expected to find anything. The shooter was too smart for that.

 

“But this is it,” Hammer said, his tone firm as he stood up and stared at Knife’s almost undetectable silhouette.