"John Unertl was in World War One. He was a German sniper stationed on the Bulgarian border. He didn't think much of the rifle scopes that had been available then, even the best German ones. Said he would have done a lot better shooting with better optics. When he came to the United States, he decided to fix that. Unertl Optical always made every single part of each one of their scopes. Lenses were still ground in this country, in Pennsylvania, when the factory closed in '91 or '92. Everyone else's come from Germany or Japan. If you don't mind the three-pound weight, Unertls are still the best." His eyes narrowed. "When John Unertl applied for U.S. citizenship, back in the early '30s I think it was, one of the standard questions was 'Have you killed anyone?'"

"Did he say 'no'?" Cracker asked.

"He wrote on the papers, 'Two hundred forty-seven Bulgarians'. They let him in." Orville Crocker nodded, but said nothing.

Curt Behnke picked up the rangefinder and used it on the most distant ATF agent. They're spread out more now he noted. 555 meters. Back down sixty-eight clicks. "Use plugs and earmuffs both," he told the other man. "Don't want you flinching at the muzzle blast. You're going to have to call my first shot right on the money. I'm figuring the crosswind component at three miles per hour average over the distance. That's eighteen inches, and the three miles per hour is a guess. Be pure luck if I connect on the first round at this range."

"Shooting for center of mass?"

"No," the gunsmith said as he slid a round into the action. "Don't know what he's got on under that jacket, and I've heard Henry talk about some kind of ceramic stuff that will stop .308 AP rounds at ten feet." Behnke paused. "I'm going to try to put it on the bridge of his nose."

"All set."

Curt Behnke adjusted the position of the big rifle on the sandbags with gentle nudges until the dot in the center of the Unertl's reticle was two headwidths to the right of the FBI man's nose. Behnke touched his finger to the trigger and began exerting slight but ever-increasing pressure. Orville Crocker gritted his teeth and willed himself to ignore the coming concussion.

Trey Mullins jumped reflexively and almost dropped his rifle. "What the...?" he said to no one in particular as he shook his head. It was as if someone had fired a cap pistol an inch from his right ear. He twisted his neck and had the irrational thought that a vertebra had popped when his subconscious registered the faint boom that was rolling across the prairie.

"Just a little left-like less than three inches from his ear," Orville Crocker said excitedly. "Saw it all the way in. Perfect elevation." His voice was quivering. Curt Behnke had already opened the bolt and plucked out the fired case; the match action had no ejector. He slid another round in the loading port, closed the bolt, pulled the scope back to its original position, slid the gun forward on the sandbags until the stock touched the forend stop, and once again began making minute adjustments to the rifle's position.

"Watch close," Behnke said in a normal tone of voice. It did not occur to him that Crocker, with two sets of hearing protection, might not hear him. Little more wind than I figured he thought as he adjusted his hold one head-width farther to the right and once again began exerting slight but relentless pressure on the twoounce trigger.

FBI Agent Mullins' first instinct, after he realized that it was a high-velocity rifle bullet which had passed by his ear, was to look for the ATF agents a third of a mile in front of him. Three were immediately visible, then he saw the fourth off to the left. It was hard to tell, staring into the sun the way he was, but it looked like they were all facing the rock outcropping far in the distance.

Agent Mullins second instinct was to throw himself flat on the ground, but that was overridden by the instantaneous realization that there was absolutely no cover. Mullins had no idea where the shot could have possibly come from, but that did not matter. Presenting himself as a stationary target was a sure way to get killed, and the FBI man knew it. Mullins' leg muscles started to contract, and he was just about to push off into a sprint when Curt Behnke's second shot found its mark, 1172.34 yards from where it had originated.

"My God..." Orville Crocker breathed.

"Where was it?" Curt Behnke demanded as he pulled the scope back and repositioned the rifle. He had already reloaded.

"You got him. He's dead." Crocker continued to stare through the big binoculars at the inert form crumpled on the prairie two-thirds of a mile away. He did not pay attention to Curt Behnke, who was twisting the Unertl's elevation knob clockwise at a rate barely slow enough to counts the clicks.

For the rest of his life, Orville Crocker would remember what he had seen through the big twenty-power glasses. The sun had been at his back and he had been positioned in the exact plane of the bullet's flight path as it traveled away from him. Under those conditions, and with top-quality optics, it was often possible for a spotter to 'see' the bullet as it headed for the target. What the spotter was actually observing was a moving tube of compressed air as it was formed around the high-speed projectile, like a tiny heat wave arching out into the distance. Twenty-power magnification compressed the entire viewing distance twentyfold, revealing a visual effect that was invisible to the naked eye. Trained spotters with their scopes directly behind shooters at 1000-yard matches were usually able to 'call' each shot within three or four inches of its point of impact, even though the holes in the target were much too small to discern at that distance. These spotters sometimes referred to the phenomena as 'laser beams', or 'contrails.'

Orville Crocker had never heard these terms, but he saw the streaks firsthand. Crocker had watched Curt Behnke's first shot from the 6mm-.348 rise up near the top of his field-of-view, then drop back down into the center. It passed by the FBI agent's ear at the end of its descending arc and disappeared into a clump of sagebrush in line with his collarbone. The time-of-flight was one and four-tenths seconds.

With the magnification making it appear that the FBI man was only 58 yards away, Crocker had seen the agent's reaction to that near miss. Surprise, indecision, fear, and resolve had appeared and metamorphosed on the FBI agent's face as the second contrail had streaked towards him, ending on his upper lip. Trey Mullins' head had exploded in a fan-shaped geyser of red mist larger in diameter than a man was tall.

"Get with me, now," Behnke said, removing the rear sandbag and replacing it with his left fist. "Far man, over on the left."

"Right," Orville Crocker answered, wrenched back to the reality that there were still four men out there who were planning his death. "Got him," he said when he had the ninja-suited agent in his field of vision.

That's it, talk to your buddies Curt Behnke thought as he watched Agent Hildebrandt bring his radio up to his mouth and speak into it. The 36-power Unertl target scope made the man appear fifty feet away. At the actual distance of 633 yards, and with plugs in his ears, the gunsmith would not have heard any of the words even if Hildebrandt had been yelling. Guy doesn't know his backup's dead Behnke thought, making the inference from gestures and body language. The black-clad agent had not turned around to look behind him. Wind should only push the bullet a quarter as far at this range. Behnke moved his left fist under the rifle's butt until the dot reticle was on the right edge of the man's head. The black-clad agent was raising his left hand towards the top of his ski mask as Curt Behnke touched his finger to the trigger.

"He's shooting up in those rocks," Hildebrandt said into the radio. He was midway between Behnke and the dead FBI man. For that reason, the sound of the bullet's impact had reached his ears at about the same time as the much louder muzzle blast, so he did not hear the bullet strike. "Still too far to see anything. Spread out and we'll surround him. I'm going around this way to the north. Move in closer, but make sure you maintain a safe distance. Call me when you get him spotted. Out."

Agent Hildebrandt slid the radio back in the black nylon pouch and brought his hand up to shield his eyes as he faced directly into the late afternoon sun. Hildebrandt squinted, and thought he saw something at the very edge of one of the large rocks more than a third of a mile in the distance. Reflexively, he opened his mouth to say so, even though there was no one nearby.

The thin-jacketed 115-grain Berger match bullet at 600 yards was still traveling at a higher velocity than a .30-06 at the muzzle. It struck Agent Hildebrandt's left front tooth. Still spinning at over 250,000 RPM, its copper-alloy jacket ruptured in less than a microsecond. The lead core disintegrated like an overrevved flywheel and dumped over two thousand foot-pounds of energy inside Agent Hildebrandt's head.

"Center hit," Orville Cracker said clearly as the distant thwack confirmed his assessment. "Next target." The image the had just watched through the binoculars had not been nearly so unnerving as the one he had seen fifteen seconds before. It had taken barely a half-second for this bullet to reach its mark, and when it had, the elasticity of the agent's black ski mask had reduced the spray of brain matter considerably. Braced for a replay, Crocker found himself unmoved by the second killing.

"Get on the computer, hit the letter 'R' key on the keyboard," Behnke demanded as he reloaded the rifle, pulled the Unertl scope back into position, and picked up the laser rangefinder. Hope he doesn't choke. "Now what?"

"Hit the RETURN key until it asks for the sight-in range. Then enter six hundred thirty." As he talked, Curt Behnke aimed the Russian device at the most distant of the three remaining figures.

"Done."

"Where's the bullet at...five hundred twenty-eight yards?" he asked, after mentally adding ten percent to the figure in meters displayed in the left eyepiece. Should be around afoot, or less.

"You're eight inches high at 550, eleven-and-a-half at 500. Split the difference, and it's..." "Nine and three-quarters," Behnke answered. "Get back on the binoculars," he instructed as he settled in behind his rifle. "Now, if he'll just stay still..."

Agent Ruiz had been steadily trudging up the gentle grade. The slope was very slight, but Ruiz was a lifelong smoker whose idea of cutting back was setting a two-pack-a-day limit. He was breathing hard and drenched with sweat. His level 2A body armor, which would stop 9mm and .45 pistol bullets, was rubbing his skin raw just in front of his armpits. His whole head itched from the black wool-and-nylon ski mask.

When he had heard the third distant report, Ruiz stopped in his tracks and stared at the rocks over a quarter mile away. As he caught his breath, he turned his head over to the right. He was looking for the team leader from the Cheyenne office who had summoned him up from Denver, but there was no sign of him.

Ruiz squinted, trying to see where the terrain could vary enough to obstruct a six-foot human. It appeared nearly flat until much farther away than the spot he had last seen Agent Hildebrandt. He looked at the other two men a hundred yards ahead. They were both fully visible from the knees up. One of them began waving his arms and shouting, and Ruiz realized he should turn on his radio. He looked down at the radio pouch on his belt, and the 115-grain 6mm boattail slammed into his forehead over his left eye at almost three thousand feet per second.

"He's got a rifle!" Agent Kellogg screamed when he saw Agent Ruiz's body slam into the dirt. "Run!" Agent Figueroa hesitated, for he saw no place where a man could have positioned himself to be shooting at them. The nearest cover was over a quarter mile away. "Run, damn it!" Kellogg shouted, waving his left arm. "I'll pin him down!"

Figueroa turned and ran. Kellogg flipped the selector lever to full auto, raised the H&K to his shoulder, and pointed it at the rocks.

"You got him, but the other two saw it," Orville Crocker reported.

"Mm-hrnm," Behnke agreed as he removed the fired case, chambered a new round, and returned the Unertl to its proper position. "What're they doing?" he asked. Orville Crocker adjusted the position of the big glasses. With their minimal eye relief and 20X magnification, their field-of-view at the 400 yard range where the near man stood with his suppressed H&K was almost a hundred feet wide. Crocker was able to see both men at the same time.

"Looks like the near guy's yelling to the one behind him. The far guy is to his left a bit, now he's starting to run. Now the closer guy's got his gun pointed towards us. With not near enough elevation," he added. It still unnerved Orville Crocker to see the magnified image of the ninja-suited agent pointing a submachine gun at him.

The big Unertl target scope mounted on Behnke's 6mm-.348 was 36 power, and like all riflescopes, it had a lot more eye relief than a pair of binoculars. Its field of view was only about twelve feet at 400 yards, and it took practice to locate targets quickly. Curt Behnke had half a century of experience picking up crows, groundhogs, rockchucks, and prairie dogs in scopes with narrow fields of view. It took him about three seconds to spot Agent Kellogg, who had a submachine gun pointed towards him, and another two seconds to shift the butt of the rifle slightly and pick up the awkwardly running form of Agent Figueroa.

The man was angling slightly to the right from where Behnke sat, and the gunsmith knew he was going to have to lead his prey in order to hit him. By the time he made his shot, the range would be a little longer than the last shot but not as far as the 630 yards for which the gun was now zeroed. Flight time about a half second he thought. Behnke put the dot on the man's left side as he mentally counted 'one thousand one'. As he finished the word 'one', there was almost two torso-widths of space between the dot and the left edge of the agent's black suit.

Time to see how bulletproof those vests really are Behnke thought as he put the dot half a bodywidth to the right of the agent. He maintained that distance on the running target with a tiny movement of his left hand under the rifle's butt, and brought his right index finger to bear on the two-ounce trigger. The sear on the 6mm-.348 broke just as Agent Kellogg squeezed off a nine-round burst from his MP5. The muzzle blast of the long range rifle masked the muffled clattering noise of the submachine gun, but through the binoculars, Orville Crocker saw the H&K vibrate in the agent's hands.

"Bullet blew up!" Crocker yelled as he saw the grey-blue smoke streak lance out halfway to the running man and then disappear. The view through the binoculars got hazy as dust was thrown up by the 9mm bullets landing some 300 yards in front of their position.

"Next one won't," Curt Behnke predicted as he removed the fired case and reloaded the gun without moving from his position behind the scope. "And that other guy should be holding a hundred feet over our heads if he expects to do any good."

Kellogg turned and saw that Figueroa was still running. The ninja-suited agent aimed his submachine gun at the top of the distant rocks and held the trigger down until the bolt slammed closed on an empty chamber. Then he saw the dust from his spray of shots and realized he was still several hundred yards away from where Crocker had to be. He crouched down, ejected the empty magazine, and glanced over his shoulder to check on the other agent. Figueroa was still pumping hard, almost two hundred yards farther down the gentle hill. Then a loud crack split the air, and the running figure slammed forward onto his face as if struck between the shoulder blades by an invisible sledgehammer. A half-second later the distant boom rolled out over the prairie, and Agent Kellogg simultaneously emptied his bladder and threw himself facedown in the dirt.

"Nice shot," Orville Crocker said softly. Curt Behnke, wearing earplugs, did not catch it, but he had heard the sound of the bullet hitting. "The other one's thrown himself flat," Crocker said in a louder voice.

"He'll keep. Got to see if this last one's dead, or just knocked down," Behnke said as he made minute adjustments to the rifle's butt while peering through the scope. He found the man crumpled in a heap with his head against some sagebrush. Figueroa's spine was destroyed, for the pistol-rated body armor was no match for the high velocity target bullet. Neither man could tell this, however, for blood did not show up on the black cloth that covered the ATF agent's whole body.

"I don't know if he's dead," Crocker said judiciously as he looked through the binoculars, "but I thi-" He flinched as the concussion from the big 6mm cut him off. The black-hooded head moved an inch against the sagebrush. It was now slightly different in shape. Two seconds after the gun's report came a sound like a paper bag bursting.

"He's dead now," Behnke said as he extracted the fired case and laid it next to the other six on the benchtop. "What's the last fellow doing? Can you tell?"

"Just lying there, looks like."

"Is he using his radio?"

"Hard to see. I don't think so."

"Let's see if I can pick him up in the scope." Behnke began adjusting the position of the rifle on the sandbags. "There he is," the gunsmith said as he stared through the powerful optic. Behnke could not be certain because of the black ski mask, but he thought the man was crying. He chambered another round, checked to be sure the scope was all the way to the rear in its mounts, and made minute final corrections to the rifle's position. Suddenly he stood up and started to tug Orville Crocker by the arm, but the younger man was already moving. He had seen the same thing through the binoculars.

"No use tempting fate."

"My thoughts exactly," Behnke answered as they stepped completely behind one of the large rocks. The two men listened for the distant sound of the suppressed submachine gun, but both were wearing ear protection, and it was inaudible. Crocker stripped off his muffs and pulled the plug out of his left ear. He could hear the faint clatter of the action and the sound of slugs landing in the dust somewhere between them and the ATF agent. The noise stopped, and ten seconds later, there was another thirty-round burst. This time, a few of the bullet strikes were closer.

"Man's a fool to leave his gun on full auto," Crocker said. "He's probably never shot it at long range." "I doubt he's ever fired it at all," Behnke said with a shake of his head.

"You may be right." The two men looked up as they heard the sound of several slugs traveling through the air far above their heads.

"Now he's got it aimed like a howitzer. You count how many magazine pouches he had?" "No."

"Neither did I. Enough of this nonsense." Curt Behnke sat back down at the portable shooting bench and put his cheek against the stock. "Ears," he commanded, and Orville Crocker slipped his muffs back on. The 6mm-.348 thundered for the last time. Curt Behnke pushed the gun back in position and checked the results through the rifle's scope. Satisfied, he stood up, removed the bolt, and began to lay out his cleaning equipment. The old gunsmith had just eliminated the entire Cheyenne, Wyoming ATF office, half the Denver ATF office, and half the Cheyenne FBI office.

"What now?" Orville Crocker asked. Curt Behnke had been thinking about that question before it had been voiced.

"Why don't you pack up your truck, while I clean the rifle. Then let's go down and drag that van loose. I'll drive it back and leave it in town somewhere-supermarket or shopping mall parking lot. Or maybe I'll drive it partway back home. Dump it in another city, take a bus the rest of the way."

"Have to check all the bodies, find the keys," Crocker pointed out. Curt Behnke gave him a look. "I brought my tools," the gunsmith said pointedly.

"Oh. But, uh, shouldn't we go pick up their guns?" Behnke shook his head immediately.

"Bunch of stamped steel things shooting a little 9mm pistol round? What do we want them for? The most worn-out target rifle I own is better than all of them put together. And that way, we won't leave any tracks near the bodies. Why, you want 'em?"

"No, I agree with you. Be better not to leave any more evidence than we already have. And nothing they've got is as good as a Thompson, and I don't need to take the risk anyway. Can you use that bolt action the one guy had?"

"I could, but like you say, why bother?" Crocker nodded, then licked his lips.

"Ah, Curt, how do you think we should, uh, handle this now?"

"I'll box up my guns, ship 'em back at one of those mail service places. You got those out here?" "Yeah, a bunch of them."

"That's what I'll do, then. You keep your mouth shut, no one can prove you had anything to do with this," he said, waving his hand in the general direction of the five dead men.

"Tire tracks..." Crocker thought aloud, "but that doesn't prove anything," he said, answering his own question. "And I've got a set of mud-and-snows mounted up I use in the winter. I could throw them on," he suggested.

"If you do that, make damned sure you get rid of the others where they can never be traced back to you. That's the kind of thing could hang you."

"Maybe I'll just leave 'em," Orville Crocker said. "But what about when they find out you came to visit?"

"I'm not going to tell anyone. If you don't mention it, how're they going to find out? They won't even know what they're looking for." He continued to scrub down the bore of the long range varmint rifle. "And if they do get lucky, what're they going to do with some old retired guy in his eighties?"

"There's that." Crocker agreed. Then he frowned. "What about the bodies?"

"Leave 'em for the coyotes."

"You really like those?" the man asked as he eased up his stride. He was breathing deeply as he jogged. "I see a lot of folks using them." Taylor Lowell nodded to the runner who had come up from behind. He'd been asked before about the red, D-shaped hand weights he used when he ran.