Page 87 of The Final Vow (Washington Poe #7)
A good sniper has the capacity to stay motionless for hours; a great one for days. They’ll go into a bubble, emptying the mind of all things but the target. Nothing distracts them. Nothing.
It’s the sniper’s greatest strength.
It’s also their biggest weakness.
Because snipers need spotters. They need them like babies need milk.
The spotter’s role isn’t just to identify targets; it’s to provide situational awareness.
And protection. They’re the eyes and ears of the team, vigilant because the sniper can’t be.
The sniper is the weapon, the spotter is the early warning system.
And right now, Ezekiel Puck’s warning system was going into overdrive. It was screaming DANGER at the very top of its voice.
Even as he stared down the sight, the muzzle already starting to twitch, he realised the danger was at his end, not Poe’s. Without thinking, without moving, he mentally checked his five senses. He thought that was where the answer would lie.
Nothing had changed visually. Poe was still hunkered down in his cottage. It wasn’t sight that was giving him the shakes. He couldn’t hear anything untoward either. Nothing had touched him and for obvious reasons he could discount taste. Smell perhaps? He didn’t think so.
Maybe he’d imagined it. He’d seen Poe enter his cottage and he’d been watching the only way in and out all night.
Poe was inside. His dog was inside. He could still hear it barking.
There was no doubt about it. All five senses checked out.
He breathed out again. Took a fresh one.
Held it again, waited for Poe to open the door.
But his unease persisted. He’d forgotten something, he was sure of it.
Unbidden, a memory resurfaced. It was one of his lessons with Davy Newport, the guy who’d taught him to shoot.
The dour Scotsman had been a bore, but he knew his stuff when it came to stalking the most cautious prey animal in the UK.
He remembered one particularly tedious lecture on a damp morning in the Scottish Highlands.
Newport had told him that the nervous system’s five main senses were important, but he shouldn’t neglect the others.
Newport had told Puck that as far as the stalker was concerned, humans had nine primary senses, not five.
He’d explained that proprioception was the ability to tell where your appendages were.
Close your eyes and lift a finger to your nose.
Proprioception allows you to find it without looking.
Important if you need to reach for something but can’t move your head.
And what about chronoception: sensing the passage of time?
The stalker had to know how long the hunt had lasted without relying on a watch.
Checking your watch was unnecessary movement.
Newport didn’t have a name for the stalker’s eighth primary sense – the ability to detect changes in wind pressure – but as changes in wind direction meant changes in scent direction, knowing which way the wind was blowing meant you could stay downwind.
Downwind was good, upwind was bad. And finally, there was thermoception.
The body’s ability to sense temperature.
It’s how humans can tell if something is hot without having to touch it.
Newport had told Puck that of all the additional four primary senses, thermoception was the most responsive to subtle changes. The most accurate.
And then Puck understood the terrible danger he was in. The back of his neck was warm. Shap Fell was cold but his neck was warm. Logically, that could only mean one thing. An external heat source. Someone was standing over him.
Someone was breathing over him.
His brain processed this in a fraction of a second, but it still wasn’t quick enough.
He tried to spin round but the man standing over him was too quick.
He’d seen the man’s serious reflexes before, but only from a distance.
When he’d grabbed Matilda Bradshaw out of harm’s way on the roof of that London skyscraper.
The man stamped on his arm, snapping it like a twig.
He then brought his boot down on Puck’s throat.
Held it there, pinning him to the cold, wet moorland.
‘How?’ Puck managed to gurgle.
‘Hello, Ezekiel,’ Poe said. ‘Nice to finally meet you.’