George shifted the rifle a couple of times before finding a comfortable position that still allowed him to place the red dot on the man's chest.
“Aim small… miss small,” he said quietly as he recited the phrase his shooting instructor had taught him. That retired Marine sniper had spent every Saturday at the range with him for nearly three months, teaching him everything he knew about marksmanship.
As the President raised his right hand with the Senate candidate’s hand up in the air, that was the moment when George decided to make history. “This is for you, little brother,” he thought, hopeful that his actions would speed the war’s end and bring his brother home.
He took a deep breath, then applied pressure on the trigger, just like he had been taught, until he heard the rifle bark, recoiling hard into his shoulder. The glass sliding door in front of him shattered instantly as the .300 magnum round flew out the barrel at 3,000 feet per second, crossing the 500 meters between George and the President in less than a second.
Through the scope, he saw the round hit the President. Before he could comprehend what he had just done, he immediately pulled the bolt back, ejecting the spent casing and loading another round into the chamber. George took aim at the stage, which was suddenly being swarmed by Secret Service agents who were attempting to cover the President. The businessman who had just been holding the President's hand ducked for cover, just as George squeezed the trigger again, sending a second round at the stage. His next round slammed center mass into the upper body of the Secretary of State, who was being led off the stage by the Secret Service.
Once his second shot was fired, George immediately worked the bolt, loading the third round into the chamber, and scanned the stage. A cluster of Secret Service agents was carrying the President off the stage, and now the Secretary of State. George was scanning quickly for another high-value fascist to take out as precious seconds were ticking by.
“There you are,” he said aloud, speaking to no one in particular. The President’s vehicle, “The Beast,” pulled up and an agent was yanking the door open as several agents tried to throw the President inside. George fired his third round, hitting one of the agents as he attempted to move the President into the vehicle. The agent fell, and it looked like the President fell with him. Then the two of them were shoved into the vehicle together, and it sped away faster than a vehicle that size and weight should be able to move.
Just as George scooted off the table away from his rifle, the optical sight on his Winchester exploded, scaring him half to death. George fell to the floor and began to backpedal toward the wall when a second round flew into the room and hit the floor where his foot had just been. George quickly jumped to his feet, grabbing his backpack, and was out the door of the apartment seconds later. He quickly made his way down the emergency exit stairs, practically leaping from one landing to the next as he desperately tried to get out of the building.
When he entered the lobby, he immediately made a beeline for the front door. Outside the apartment complex, hundreds if not thousands of people were running down the street, screaming and yelling, trying desperately to get away from the danger. No one knew if another attack was going to happen or not. Then they heard a loud Boom!
About a block away, a small charge in a dumpster blew up right on time.
“`Bout time my Antifa brothers did their part,” George thought as he joined the throng of people trying to run away.
There was chaos all around him. George could hear helicopters flying overhead and police sirens traveling in multiple directions. Several clusters of police were trying to stop the mass of humanity from running past them as they attempted to set up a perimeter.
“Crap!” thought George. “I need to make it past that perimeter before they get it set or I’m screwed.”
Several dozen police cars suddenly descended on the crowd maybe a block ahead of him. Looking up in the sky, he saw a police helicopter and several of those new tiltrotor helicopters he had seen on the news circling above them. George darted to the left down a side alley when he spotted several teenagers veer off that direction. He sprinted with all his might, trying to keep up with them as they did their best to find another way past the police. Huffing and puffing to keep up with them, he called, “Wait up, guys! I’ll pay you each a hundred dollars if you can help me get past the police.”
As they stopped to catch their own breath, the teenagers looked at him suspiciously as he pulled out five one-hundred-dollar bills. “Look, I’m on probation,” he said, “and the last thing I need is to get stopped by the police. My probation officer will have my ass. Can you guys help me?” he asked, hoping his cover story might be enough.
The kid with red hair just nodded as he reached over and took the money from George’s hand. “My brother has a PO who’s a real piece of work. I understand. Follow us this way. Bill here works for a pizza joint, and we can walk through it to get to the other side of the police roadblock, but only if we hurry.” They took off down the side street toward the road the police were cordoning off.
A half hour later, George had made it past the police roadblock and was waiting at the bus stop for the next available bus. When it arrived, he paid cash for three stops and then got off. Activating the new smartphone he’d purchased the day before, he opened up the Lyft app and called for a ride. When the driver showed up, he ducked inside and was on his way out of the city to a friend’s house, where he’d be able to hide and lie low for a while until he figured out what to do next.
“Shots fired!” shouted Major Natal. He immediately lifted his binoculars to his eyes and scanned the building just beyond the park. His eyes quickly settled on the most likely position of an enemy shooter, a thirty-story building nearly opposite of the stage where the President had been speaking. While Secret Service agents were swarming the stage, Major Natal scanned the building, making his way up each floor. Then a second shot rang out, followed by more screams.
Someone yelled, “Secretary Johnson has just been hit!”
A new sense of urgency took over as Natal desperately looked for the sniper. “There you are, you old goat!” he thought.
Natal clicked the talk button on his mic. “White apartment complex directly across from the stage, eighteenth floor. Enemy sniper. Take him out!” he shouted to his own sniper. The FBI and Secret Service snipers would surely also shift to get a shot on the shooter.
Bam! A third shot rang out.
Boom! The report on the Barrett M82 .50 sniper rifle barked as a JSOC sniper fired into the enemy sniper nest. Seconds later, another sniper fired, and then he heard his JSOC team yell out, “We’re moving to the location of the shooter. Requesting primacy!”
Then the combat-equipped men took off at a full sprint toward the apartment complex.
Special Agent Terry Lightman could barely breathe as he coughed up more blood. “Hang in there, Mr. President,” he said. He climbed off the President and tried to help turn him over, so he could inspect the President’s wound. He needed to relay as much information as possible to the hospital, which would be standing by to receive the President. When Lightman turned the president over, all he saw was blood, but he wasn’t sure if it was the President's or his own. Looking down, Terry saw he had been shot clean through his back, and the bullet had exited his chest.