“She’ll choke when it counts.”
The voice came from somewhere down the firing line — low, derisive, and dripping with the kind of confidence only ignorance could produce.
“Women always do under real pressure.”
The men around him laughed.
Thirty seconds later, Sergeant Brin Caldwell cleared a deliberately jammed M4 in under ten seconds, cycled through a malfunction drill most instructors had never seen performed at full speed, and went on to hit fifty-two consecutive targets — every single one.
When the final target dropped, the range fell silent.
Even the wind seemed to stop.
The senior NCO who’d sabotaged her weapon stood frozen in place, his smirk gone. He wasn’t laughing anymore.
No one knew that Brin Caldwell had been learning how to clear malfunctions since she was eight years old.
Fort Benning, Georgia.
The air shimmered with heat and the smell of burnt powder.
Spent casings glinted like brass confetti at the shooters’ feet.
