skill, practice and mental arithmetic,’ Goldberg said. ‘Anyone with a steady hand and half a brain can shoot at six hundred yards. The best Russian snipers can shoot accurately to over one thousand yards. But that’s only half of the story.’
For dramatic effect, Goldberg paused, spread his arms out wide and took in a broad sweep of his surroundings.
‘Right now it’s light. Your target is easily visible, there’s no rain and a steady wind. Most importantly, there’s no enemy sniper ready to blow your brains out if you poke your head up too high, or let him catch the sun reflecting in your telescopic sight while you’re looking for him.
‘So I’m not just going to train you how to shoot. I’m going to train you how to shoot in the dark, when it’s lashing with rain, when you’ve been running all day, and you’re hungry, muddy, and so exhausted that your heart is pounding and you can barely hold your eyes open and your gun upright. These next ten days will be tough. At the end of them, you’ll either be a damned good shot or you’ll be walking with my boot wedged permanently in your butthole.’
Notes
7 USAF – United States Air Force.
8 Yard – One yard equals 91cm (or a little less than a metre).
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Five and a half days after Sergeant Goldberg first escorted the boys to the firing range, the quartet had a night-time exercise in a forested area five kilometres from campus.
With the help of eighteen-year-old trainee PT and training assistant Kindhe, Goldberg had spread eight firing points over ten kilometres of steeply sloped woodland. The boys worked in pairs. They had four bullets for each target, and had to alternate between sniping and target spotting.
Besides shooting accuracy, the boys would be assessed on how quickly they navigated between targets and the safety of their chosen shooting positions. Marc and Luc hated each other, so from day one, Marc paired with Paul and Luc with Sam.
It was two in the morning, with limited moonlight as Paul threw down a kit bag. It was his turn to shoot and he found a good bracing point for his rifle in the fork of a tree.
According to their map, the boys had to locate a circular target between four and seven hundred yards from their aiming point. It was a warm night and Marc’s T-shirt and combat jacket stuck to his back as he knelt on one knee, scanning darkness through high-powered binoculars.
Their bodies ached. They’d not been fed since lunch and their feet had been in boots for twenty hours. To make matters worse they were behind the schedule set by Goldberg and they’d just run two kilometres flat out to make up time.
Marc blamed Paul for selecting an easy footpath, rather than a steep-but-direct climb from the previous target. But Marc kept his trap shut, because Paul had to start controlling his breathing and getting his heart rate down to control four shots.
The rifle scope only magnified by three times, so it was Marc’s job to find their target with binoculars. It took ninety seconds of methodical sweeps before he sighted a yellow ship’s lifesaver ring chained to a tree trunk on the opposite side of a valley.
‘Acquired,’ Marc said, sticking to the language Goldberg had taught them to make describing target locations easy. ‘North-east, aiming down twenty degrees. Two trees, with a willow growing out almost horizontally in front of them.’
‘I see them,’ Paul said, as he peered through the scope. ‘Setting range.’
Paul’s telescopic sight had a split-focus device that enabled him to gauge distance to his target. As he turned the focusing ring, Marc watched swaying treetops.
‘Same wind we’ve had all night,’ Marc said. ‘Coming from your left at less than five knots.’
As the target was down in a valley, Paul suspected that the wind would be lower than up in the trees. But his real concern was that he had to shoot down at the target. To aim this low he couldn’t lie flat. He had to brace, with one knee against the trunk and his right shoulder taking the weight of his upper body.
The technique Goldberg taught for sniper shooting was a form of self-hypnosis. Paul had to cut himself off, imagining he was in a dark space, listening to his own breathing getting slower and slower. He closed one eye as he pulled the bolt to load a bullet.
So still that he could feel the pulse in his neck, Paul shut down until the