American Sniper: The Last Round – Episode 56
Dozens of masked buyers studied Jane Valentine as Sergei Smith’s welcome echoed through the docking bay. Her voice modulator and digital signet remained active, but the announcement suggested her cover had already failed. Running would expose the agents before they reached the archive. She kept her posture bored and impatient, imitating the entitlement Matthew displayed whenever he believed money made him untouchable.
Sergei stepped onto an upper balcony wearing no mask. He clarified that several guests had personal connections to the weapons displayed, a privilege intended to demonstrate the One’s reach. Attention shifted away from Jane as screens revealed officials, competitors, and criminals linked to previous operations.
Elena whispered that the ambiguity had been deliberate. Sergei wanted every buyer wondering who had been compromised. Suspicion kept them isolated and easier to control, repeating the method Meridian used against soldiers and witnesses.
The auction moved into a presentation hall below deck. Glass cases displayed prototype rifles, autonomous targeting modules, and stolen military technology. Jane recognized serial markings from contracts in the Crown Ledger. Every display represented stolen public trust.
On the support vessel, Carl Oliver watched through Elena’s concealed camera. Distance, sea motion, and reinforced walls left him unable to protect Jane with a direct shot. His role was to provide information and trust her decisions, a challenge different from marksmanship but no less demanding. Each time the image turned away from Jane, he resisted filling the unseen space with imagined disaster. Lewis kept him focused on observable movement, treating fear like uncertain wind data rather than fact.
Lewis monitored the vessel’s wind and movement while Ruiz coordinated allied warrants. Three governments had authorized intervention, but Sergei’s diplomatic flag delayed boarding approval. The legal dispute would outlast the auction unless Jane secured proof of the active weapon. Sergei depended on that delay as deliberately as he depended on armor.
The first lots sold through anonymous cryptocurrency accounts. Elena inserted tracking code into each transaction, linking buyers to the financial ledger. Every successful bid quietly created evidence for arrests beyond the ship. Governments might dispute ownership of weapons, but their representatives would struggle to explain payments recorded in real time.
Jane used Matthew’s signet to purchase access to the premium viewing deck. The credential opened a corridor toward the archive, but a biometric checkpoint required the account owner’s face. Her disguise would not survive the scan.
An undercover agent created a disturbance at the nearest weapons case, claiming a rifle was counterfeit. While security examined it, Elena looped the scanner with Matthew’s hospital verification video. Jane passed before the system detected the repeated image.
The archive deck contained rows of isolated servers and a central console labeled KOVAC. Daniel’s stolen files were being combined with the Crown Ledger data Sergei obtained through Meridian leaks. The resulting archive could expose victims while protecting buyers who paid for deletion. Daniel’s attempt to reveal corruption had been converted into a marketplace for the people he opposed.
Jane connected the brass cartridge to Elena’s portable reader. Lewis’s financial ledger supplied the verification keys needed to copy the data without activating its erasure protocol. The transfer estimated twelve minutes, longer than their remaining cover. Elena divided the copy into prioritized layers so prisoner locations and buyer identities would survive even if time ran out.
Sergei introduced the LAST ROUND system in the auction hall. A robotic rifle rotated toward a target placed behind three steel barriers. Using Carl’s recorded ricochet patterns, it fired through engineered gaps and struck the center.
The buyers applauded, but Carl saw the system’s weakness through the feed. It reproduced known solutions without interpreting moral context. A maintenance worker crossed behind the target after the shot, and the machine never adjusted for the unexpected person. Accuracy had been separated from judgment, leaving a flawless calculation attached to blindness.
Sergei announced a live city demonstration. The system selected Dr. Helen Ward’s hospital room, calculating a path through adjacent buildings from the ship’s stabilized deck. Jane realized the earlier hospital attack had gathered environmental data for this final shot.
Elena could not stop the weapon without abandoning the archive transfer. Jane told her to keep copying. She left the server room and headed toward the weapons deck, trusting Carl and Lewis to guide her through the unfamiliar vessel.
Carl identified a ballast-control panel beneath the demonstration platform. Altering the ship’s angle by less than one degree would corrupt the firing solution without alerting the system. Jane reached the panel through a crew passage and opened the emergency valve.
Seawater shifted between ballast tanks. The deck moved almost imperceptibly as LAST ROUND fired. Its bullet passed wide of the hospital and struck an empty rooftop water tower, exposing the live attack to coastal defense radar.
Allied authorities received immediate authorization to board. Sergei locked down the ship and ordered every buyer confined. Masks were disabled remotely, revealing Jane’s face across the security network.
She returned toward the archive, but armed guards sealed both ends of the corridor. Elena reported the transfer at eighty percent. Destroying the server would save Jane from capture only if she surrendered the evidence they came to recover.
Sergei appeared on the corridor screen. He told Jane that Carl’s greatest weakness had finally boarded the vessel voluntarily. His mistake was believing her presence reduced her to something Carl needed to rescue. Then he opened the outer bulkhead, and freezing seawater began flooding the archive deck.