American Sniper: The Last Round – Episode 41
The silver spider emblem trembled against the steel target while Carl Oliver read Rachel Fisher’s message again. Mercer was leaving before midnight, and Black Widow demanded that he come alone. The invitation was too precise to be anything but a trap, yet ignoring it could surrender the only chance to stop Meridian’s commander from disappearing.
Jane Valentine took the phone before Carl could pocket it. She had seen him recognize the familiar pressure hidden inside the words. Rachel expected the King of Guns to protect everyone by excluding them, because isolation made even a legend easier to control.
Carl said he would answer without promising to obey. Jane reminded him that they had just chosen a future built on honesty. A secret departure before the ruins cooled would turn that promise into decoration. Lewis agreed, though his attention remained fixed on the angle of the shot that delivered the message.
The bullet had crossed the entire property from an unfinished apartment tower beyond the highway. Rachel could have killed any of them, but she selected the only surviving target and struck its center. Her restraint was not mercy. It was proof that she still wanted a contest conducted on her terms.
Elena traced the message through six relays and found a final location at North County Stadium, abandoned after structural damage. Rachel set the meeting for ten o’clock, leaving less than two hours before Mercer’s supposed departure. Ruiz offered a tactical team, but Carl knew visible surveillance would end the contact.
They designed a smaller operation. Carl would enter through the players’ tunnel while Jane and Lewis observed from separate positions. Elena would monitor radio traffic, and Ruiz would keep his agents beyond Rachel’s likely detection range. Rebecca remained with Chris and Alex at the temporary range office.
Before leaving, Carl tied Lewis’s opening-day ribbon around his rifle stock. Jane noticed that he no longer treated the cloth as a reminder of debt. It represented people waiting for him to return. That difference mattered more than the medal still resting in its evidence box.
North County Stadium stood hollow beneath the city lights. Rainwater filled the lower seats, and torn banners moved above the field. A single lamp illuminated the fifty-yard line, where Rachel waited beside two identical rifles and a row of small steel targets.
She had expected Carl to bring Jane despite ordering otherwise. Black Widow said love made capable men disobedient in predictable ways. Carl corrected her: trust made people harder to isolate, which was why Mercer spent so much effort turning allies against one another.
Rachel offered a bargain. Ten targets would rise across the stadium in random order. If Carl won, she would provide Mercer’s actual flight plan and access code. If she won, Carl would publicly name her the only shooter who ever defeated the King of Guns.
Carl asked why she cared about a title while Meridian collapsed. Rachel said reputation was the only country that never betrayed her. Governments hired her, criminals feared her, and Mercer paid her, but skill alone belonged to her. She needed the world to measure it against his.
Jane watched through binoculars from the press level. Rachel’s targets were wired to an encrypted controller, but Elena found no explosive circuits. The contest appeared genuine, which made Jane more suspicious. Black Widow never relied on a single purpose.
The first target rose behind the home dugout. Rachel and Carl fired almost together, but Carl’s bullet arrived first. Two more appeared along the upper deck, forcing both shooters to change elevation and wind correction. Their impacts rang across the empty stadium like competing clocks.
Rachel gained the lead when a target emerged behind a sheet of rain. Carl refused a rushed shot because a maintenance worker moved beyond the stadium fence. Black Widow struck cleanly and mocked his caution. He answered that a victory requiring ignorance of the background was only an accident waiting for a victim.
By the ninth target, they were tied. The final plate rose beneath the scoreboard, partly concealed by a steel beam. Rachel fired first, sending her round through a narrow gap. Carl used the beam for a controlled ricochet, and both bullets struck the plate less than a second apart.
Elena analyzed the impact microphones. Carl’s shot arrived three hundredths of a second earlier. Rachel lowered her rifle without anger. She seemed relieved that the contest had produced an answer no contract could purchase.
Black Widow gave Carl a code and named an airfield outside the city. Mercer planned to depart aboard a medical transport at eleven forty. She warned that the passenger manifest was false and the aircraft carried a defensive system capable of engaging vehicles on the runway.
Jane saw movement in the dark luxury boxes behind Rachel. A laser point crossed Black Widow’s back and settled on Carl’s chest. Someone had used the contest to keep both shooters under observation. She warned them over the radio as a suppressed shot came from the upper level.
Carl knocked Rachel behind the lighting stand. The bullet struck one of her rifles and shattered its receiver. A second round targeted Jane’s press box, proving the hidden shooter knew every position despite their precautions.
Rachel looked toward the luxury level and recognized the firing pattern. “Mercer never planned to let me collect,” she said. Then the stadium floodlights ignited all at once, exposing Carl and Jane while dozens of automated rifles unfolded from beneath the seats.