Arlington

Second Chapter

Location: (DARPA) Headquarters

Address: 675 North Randolph Street, Arlington, VA, 22203

Date: 8/26/2013

Time: 11:23 a.m.

Valery Strazio was in her office. Frustrated, she balled up a piece of paper and tossed it in the recycling bin. She missed, but still proclaimed, "Kareem with the skyhook shot!" She then mocked the sound of an audience. That paper contained blueprints for a multimillion dollar project that she was designing. She had an idea for a .50 caliber sniper bullet that could change paths when fired. The project was called EXACTO, which stood for Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordinance.

Valery Strazio was a program manager for the Tactical Technology Office (TTO) of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). She was well qualified, and thoroughly professional, except for a moment when she had a Taylor Swift song stuck in her head. She sang the little part she knew under her breath, "I don't know about you, but I'm feeling twenty-two." She recently turned 34, but looked as if she could have been in her late twenties, and her social maturity level had people guessing she was even younger than that. But when it was time for her to focus, her skills, her education, and her ambition honed in like a sniper focused on their target.

She leaned back in her office chair, extended her arm, and took a shot. "Jordan!" It missed. One of her colleagues walked in, saw the pile of papers on the floor, then asked if she wanted to go to lunch. She agreed; she didn't want to stay in her office anymore.

She sat with a few of her employees, talking about what had happened on the last episode of The Walking Dead. Then Valery declared, "DARPA could totally make zombies if we wanted to." The table filled with smiles, because even they didn't know how much truth that joke could have held. "A couple of guys from the BTO department could be fooling around with that shit right now. Just think about how the U.S military is actually trained to handle zombie conflicts." She giggled and then bit into her grilled cheese. Valery loved to crack jokes and mess with her employees; she was that kind of boss. Why not have a sense of humor, especially in a field where the job was to find ways to end human lives on a genocidal level?

* * *

Location: US Army Garrison, Fort A.P Hill

Address: 18436 4th Street, Fort A.P. Hill, VA, 22427

Date: 8/26/2013

Time: 3:12 p.m.

Later, in the training grounds, Valery was testing out her new developments. The rifle she had was standard and boring, at least to DARPA standards. But it wasn't about the weapon itself being considered; hell, she had a whole buffet of rifles behind her. She was testing out her rounds. From exactly 1000 yds away she set her sights on the target. She aimed for the head then pulled the trigger. One of her assistants ran to the dummy target to confirm; a perfect head shot, right between the eyes. He threw his thumb up and then ran out of her sights. Valery aimed 5° off the target to the left, then pulled the trigger. The assistant again ran out to confirm the head shot. Once he left, her sight was reset on the dummy; then she aimed 10° to the right, pulled the trigger, and the assistant confirmed the head shot. When aimed 20° off to the left, the target was hit on the side of his face. 30° to the right and she completely missed. The assistant gave her a thumbs-down.

She recorded the progress of these experiments in a journal she kept. She jotted down, "Improvements need to be made."

She walked back over to the buffet, where she had an appetite for a Barrett MRAD with a .338 Lapua Magnum Cartridge. She picked up the sniper rifle and said, "Delicious." Her assistant Malachi went over to her, "I can understand why a sniper may be 5° off. But why does the military want a bullet that can hit a target, when the shooter is 20 to 30° off?"