hundred-yard distances, starting at three hundred and going up to a thousand.
Sergeant Goldberg spent much of the morning working one-on-one with each boy, making tiny adjustments to their shooting technique. The tolerances for long-distance shooting are extraordinarily fine, so a tiny change in body position or breathing technique can add a hundred yards to the range over which a sniper can shoot accurately.
Goldberg’s biggest breakthrough came with Sam. The No 4 rifle was a long weapon, and Sam was at full stretch when he shot. Goldberg rectified this by replacing the wooden stock on Sam’s rifle with one from a more compact version of the No 4 developed for commando operations.
Changing a sniper’s weapon so late in the course was a risk, but after a few rogue shots Sam began hitting targets at five to seven hundred yards. Nobody took score, but by the time they broke for lunch Sam’s smile looked like it had been glued on.
‘I’m real competition for the second slot now,’ Sam said, as the quartet downed an unappetising lunch of tinned beef stew tipped over mashed potato.
Paul smiled. Marc liked anything that reduced the possibility of his having to do the mission with Luc. Inevitably, Luc himself looked annoyed.
It all came out after lunch, when Sam went upstairs for a pee and Luc bundled him against the tiled wall.
‘What’s your problem?’ Sam shouted.
‘I thought we were partners,’ Luc said. ‘I’ve carried half your kit for the best part of two weeks.’
Half was an exaggeration, but Luc had carried some of Sam’s stuff because he was faster and much bigger.
‘We’ve always been fighting for the same job,’ Sam said.
‘You’re younger,’ Luc said, as he gave Sam another shove. ‘Your time will come, but this is my mission.’
Sam didn’t want to make an enemy of a thug like Luc. ‘If I throw a couple of shots, you’ll owe me a big favour.’
‘That’s fair,’ Luc said, nodding. ‘I’ll beat someone up for you, or whatever.’
Sam’s jubilant mood was gone as he walked down to a ground-floor classroom for their afternoon session. He tried telling himself that he hadn’t expected to make it on to the mission when he got out of bed that morning and his situation was no worse now. But he hated the fact that he’d let Luc get his way.
The classroom-based afternoon session was all about calculations. Over normal distances, shooting is about taking a good aim and pulling a trigger, but for sniping the steadiest hand and perfect technique are useless unless you’re also able to grasp the physics of a flying bullet.
‘Range six hundred and forty yards north-east,’ Goldberg said, as he rapidly chalked figures on the blackboard. ‘Wind gusting three to seven knots, heading south, temperature eighty degrees, humidity high, target eighty metres above the firing position.’
The trainees each had pieces of chalk, a handheld slate and a selection of pre-printed range tables.
‘Time,’ Goldberg said, after about forty seconds.
The four boys held up their slates, each with figures for vertical and horizontal aim-off chalked on them.
‘The good news is that you’ve all got similar figures,’ Goldberg said. ‘The bad news is that you’re all going to send bullets ploughing into the dirt well short of the target. High humidity makes air more dense, which means?’
Sam raised his hand. ‘The arc of the bullet is less pronounced and the denser air makes the trajectory decay faster, sir.’
‘Correct,’ Goldberg said. ‘So why didn’t you take that into account in your calculation? Assuming you don’t have a barometer handy, how can you judge humidity?’
Paul raised a hand, ‘You can expect high humidity after rainfall, sir. Humidity is more likely to be high if you’re near to large bodies of water …’
Goldberg interrupted. ‘I didn’t ask where humidity was, I asked how you judge it.’
Paul hesitated. ‘The amount you sweat is a clue, and if you fog a piece of glass such as the back of your scope, or breathe on a cold mirror, rapid evaporation means that humidity is low, sir.’
‘Good,’ Goldberg said. ‘But it’s going to be different depending on which mirror you use. Your breath will have less moisture in it if you’re breathing heavily. So if you’re in a climate where it’s hot and humidity is likely to affect your shooting, you’ve got to practise. Find a barometer with a humidity gauge, test your mirror under different circumstances.’
Sam raised his hand again. ‘Can you get little humidity gauges that you can carry around, sir?’
Goldberg nodded as he walked towards Marc, who’d apparently