Tap.
Then I crawled beneath the last wire and stood.
Mud poured from my uniform.
Vance stared at me.
I stared back.
Neither of us spoke.
Three hours later, I was hidden on a rocky ledge two hundred yards above an abandoned logging cabin.
The final assessment.
The Live-Fire Stalk.
Infiltrate unseen.
Locate the VIP.
Fire one simulated lethal shot.
Each candidate carried exactly one live .308 round.
Vance was the VIP.
For safety, he was unarmed.
I settled behind my Remington 700 and found him through the scope.
Orange vest.
Clipboard.
Standing on the porch.
My injured eye pulsed.
The target drifted.
I corrected.
Controlled my breathing.
Measured the wind.
Then the forest went silent.
No birds.
No squirrels.
Nothing.
Movement appeared behind the cabin.
Two men stepped from the trees wearing mud-stained orange prison jumpsuits beneath torn hunting coats.
My stomach tightened.
There was a maximum-security prison twenty miles north.
The larger fugitive carried a sawed-off shotgun.
This was not part of the exercise.
Vance heard a branch snap and turned.
The shotgun came up.
He raised his hands.
The second prisoner kicked the backs of his knees.
Vance collapsed into the mud.
Both corroded barrels pressed against his skull.
Everything inside me went cold.
His radio was on the hood of his truck around the cabin.
No one else was close enough.
Except me.
Through the scope, I watched the fugitive’s trigger finger tighten.
Vance turned his head toward the tree line.
Toward my hide.
He couldn’t see me.
But he knew a candidate was out there.
And he knew that candidate had exactly one live round.
