Die for Me (Killing Eve #3) - Luke Jennings Page 0,48

look out to sea, about one o’clock, you should be able to see a red buoy. It’s quite small and near the limit of visibility. Got it?”

I squint through my glasses, which have become blurry in the damp salt air, and finally see a tiny dot of red.

“Once you’ve got eyes on it,” Ginge orders us, “look at it through your scopes.”

He’s right, the Leupold is an amazing piece of kit. The buoy looks close enough to reach out and touch, as it swings from side to side on the waves.

“OK. That buoy is five hundred meters from this firing point, give or take, and that’s the range we’re going to be looking at today. I understand that the shot you’re going to have to make on the day is at a range of just over seven hundred meters. Your target will be moving and the atmospherics will be challenging. So, shall we get to it?”

As Charlie and I rehearse the spoken procedure, Ginge sets up the targets. In the rucksack there’s a box of yellow party balloons, a ball of twine, scissors, a bag of small plumb-weights, and an air canister. Ginge inflates a balloon, ties it off with a length of twine, attaches a weight and slings the whole thing off the edge of the platform. A minute later it drifts into view, blown by the wind toward the buoy. Ginge, meanwhile, is preparing the next balloon.

I let the first one drift for about a hundred meters, then pick it up in the spotter scope. The waves are not high, perhaps half a meter, but the rise and fall of the water is quite enough to make the balloon a hard target. At moments it disappears altogether. Beside me Charlie seems to draw into themself, and becomes almost preternaturally still. Cheek to cheekpiece, eye to eyepiece, finger to trigger.

“Range four eighty,” I announce. “Four ninety. Send it.”

There’s a sharp crack, instantly whipped away on the wind. The balloon continues its dance on the waves.

“Where did it go?” Ginge asks.

“I didn’t see,” I confess. “There wasn’t a splash.”

“Don’t look for the splash, watch the passage of the bullet. You should be able to follow the trace through the scope.”

Charlie fires again, and this time I see it. A tiny, transparent trail, spearing through the crosswind.

“One click to the right,” I tell Charlie.

A third crack, and the balloon disappears. I lift my eye from the scope and glimpse a pink balloon bobbing up and down a few meters to the left. There’s a faint snapping sound and it vanishes.

“Looks like we’ve got competition,” murmurs Ginge. “Anton reckons that other girlie’s a real dead-eye. One of the best shots he’s ever worked with.”

“Let’s see,” says Charlie grimly, and Ginge gives me a wink.

As the hours slip by, we settle into an efficient routine. Charlie maintains a kind of zen state, their breathing slow, their cheek welded to the cheekpiece, their features wiped of expression. There’s just the wind, the snapping of the frayed edge of the tarpaulin, and the quiet glide of the bolt. “Send it,” I say, and wait for the whipped-away crack of the shot. I try not to think what we’re preparing for. A .338 round is a hefty projectile and at a range of half a kilometer an upper body shot will leave an exit wound the size of a rabbit hole. It’s not quite the same thing as popping a balloon.

We continue to pop them, nevertheless, and so do Oxana and Anton. Ginge starts counting off our hits against theirs, yellow against pink, but there’s really nothing in it. At midday we make our way to the canteen for tea and microwaved shepherd’s pie, which we eat with plastic spoons. Oxana doesn’t speak to me at lunch, or even look in my direction. Instead she hunkers down in her chair next to Anton, eating swiftly and in glowering silence. Nobby and Ginge sit together with their backs to me, comparing notes in an audible undertone. “Yours might be more of a natural marksman,” Ginge murmurs. “But long-term I’d back mine. She’s—”

“You’re not supposed to call her ‘she.’”

“Bloody hell, I’m not, am I? But you just did.”

“Did what?”

“Call her ‘her.’”

“Call who her?”

“Her. My one.”

“You wouldn’t think they’d care, would you? Being Russian and that.”

“‘They’ as in both of them, or one of them?”

“Fuck knows. This PC lingo does my head in.”

“You’re a dinosaur, boyo, that’s your trouble. You should be woke, like me.”

“Ginge, no offense, mate, but