The Third Bullet by Stephen Hunter

Author:Stephen Hunter
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2013-01-15T06:00:00+00:00

Swagger ambushed Richard at the Palm over his weekly steak and martini.

“Mind if I join you?” Swagger said, appearing from nowhere just as Richard had finished his meat and put in an order for coffee and Key lime pie.

“Man,” said Richard, “you were in the spy business. I know you were. You move too silently, you follow too well.”

“Ain’t true a bit,” said Swagger. “I picked up my skills by being worried about Communist guerrillas in the mountains of Ecuador. Had a run-in with the same mob, different race, in Malaysia. Those were men who wanted us exploiters of the wonderful peasants dead. I developed a sixth sense for danger, and I learned how to disappear in plain sight. I was once three feet away from two guerrillas with AK-47s and went so still, they looked right past me, and here I am to tell the tale.”

“You could have fooled me.”

“Anyway, I wanted to tell you about something I discovered on the Net that’s interesting to me. A lot of it is shit, but this gal seems to know a thing or two.”

Swagger went on for a few minutes about the discovery. Some researcher had noted that when the FBI expert Robert Frazier had talked about the relative zero of the Hollywood scope on the Oswald rifle, it was clear that Frazier, a distinguished high-power marksman, was unfamiliar with scopes and unaware that if a scope is miszeroed, it will shoot groups in the same spot on the target relative to its miscalculated aiming point, altered only by the geometric progression of the range. If it’s an inch low and an inch to the right at fifty yards, it will be two inches low and two inches to the right at a hundred yards, and three inches low and three inches to the right at 150 yards, out until the distance where gravity and falling velocity have a larger influence than the scope misadjustment.

“The point is,” said Bob, “how can this guy say the rifle is accurate if he doesn’t know the most fundamental thing about the physics of the scope? How can he say a scoped rifle is easy to shoot? He doesn’t know enough to make either of those judgments, but those are key factors in the commission’s conclusion that Oswald was capable of making the third, longest shot at the smallest and most quickly moving target.”

“It’s not really my thing,” said Richard. “I guess I get it, but it would be helpful if you could show me some of this stuff.”

“I will, I will,” said Swagger. “When I’ve got it all put together, I want to fly you out to Boise and take you to my range. You’ll see it. In the meantime, please be thinking of ways I could package this or someone I could write it up with.”

“Oh, all this on the rifles,” Richard said, as if a new thought had kicked its way into his head. “It reminds me. I’ve been meaning to mention this to you.

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