The Treasure of Lei Fong Wu

Chapter Fifty-Five

RESCUE PARTY –40:04

Jayne crawled forward on his belly, making nary a sound. The corridor was dim, lit only by the widely spaced emergency lights, and Jayne wore an all-black tactical suit, courtesy of the former Imperial Army. He had a bullpup carbine in his hands, but when he spotted his target he set it down, slowly, carefully, without even a click as it touched the cold deckplate. Instead he drew a large black automatic, pre-equiped with a silencer. That toy he had liberated from the armory, and he wouldn’t soon part with it. It was an odd caliber, a .41, but he didn’t mind. It was just the tool for taking out a sentry without calling undue attention to oneself.

It was a longish shot, nearly a hundred feet. But Jayne waited for the right moment, watching the man patrol until he caught on to the pattern of his movements. While one part of his brain was doing that, the rest of it tried its best to think of nothing at all. He’d learned a long time ago that part of the art of sniping was not alerting your target, and for some reason if you stared at a man long enough, intently enough, he started getting nervous even if he didn’t know you were there.

Folk got killed for that kind of subtle thing. You didn’t bring your attention to bear on a target until you were sure you were ready to pull the trigger. It was something you had to be careful with, and patient. It surprised some that a man like Jayne Cobb, who was so sloppy about so many things in the rest of his life, could operate with such care and professionalism when he was offing a body.

Fact was, Jayne was real good at anything that might serve to keep Jayne breathing, a state he had grown accustomed to over the course of a long life. If not making any noise would get yourself shot, then Jayne would be the quietest gorram mouse in the church.

Until he was ready, that is. Then his attention snapped totally towards his prey, just as he turned his back, and Jayne exhaled loudly