lost concentration. He flicked Marc’s ear, before grabbing all the velocity and distance charts on his desk.
‘When you’re working in near dark, you can’t stand around looking at charts, or squinting at a mercury bar on a tiny humidity gauge,’ Goldberg said. ‘A good sniper knows the underlying physics so well that he feels his shot. Senses the wind, temperature and humidity, and rattles off the maths as easily as you’d do your two times table.
‘That level of skill only comes with years of experience. So when this course ends tomorrow I want you to keep memorising your charts. Take your weapon out and practise regularly, in rain, snow and heat. Is that clear?’
‘Yes, sir,’ the boys barked.
‘Right,’ Goldberg said. ‘New calculation. Range one thousand three hundred and thirty feet. Shooting north, wind twenty-two knots, gusting south by south-west. Target is eighteen yards above your shooting position, and you’re lying in thick snow, with your breath visible.’
*
After a morning of shooting and an afternoon of brain-numbing maths, Goldberg had devised an evening potato hunt that would raise morale, while testing the four recruits’ stealth and camouflage skills.
A sack of potatoes had been distributed in the area around the old village school, Henderson’s cottage and the nearby church graveyard. The trainees worked alone and had to collect as many spuds as possible, while Goldberg had mustered more than a dozen staff and fellow trainees to hunt them.
If a trainee was caught, they had five potatoes taken out of their sack and had to run back to a starting position near the campus gates before resuming the hunt.
The first round of the game only lasted ten minutes, at which point Henderson’s wife Joan emerged from their cottage and began yelling. She was trying to get her two-year-old to sleep, but it was proving impossible because he kept running to the window every time he heard something exciting going on outside.
After that little glitch, all potatoes were moved away from the Hendersons’ cottage and the game resumed. When ninety minutes running around in twilight were up, Paul surprised everyone by winning. His cunning strategy had been to hide all the potatoes he’d collected until the end of the game, which meant he didn’t have to worry about losing five of them every time he got caught.
Goldberg had thrown himself into his role as a hunter, and his uniform was wet and streaked with grass stains as he walked up to the dormitory rooms on the first floor. All the kids who’d taken part were in high spirits, and a new battle had broken out with pillows, flying boots and balled-up socks as they got changed for bed.
‘I’ve enjoyed working with you four,’ Goldberg told his trainees, once they’d gathered around. ‘People your age learn fast, which makes my job easier. There’s going to be one final exercise tomorrow morning. Kindhe and I are driving out early to set up four shooting points in the woods.
‘You’ll each work alone, four shots per target and you’ll lose a point if you don’t reach each shooting zone within twenty minutes. I want you at the front door ready to shoot at 9 a.m., so I’d suggest you all get a good night’s sleep. The two trainees who score highest will parachute into France with Henderson.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The Group A dorm was full of snores and nasal whistles as Marc opened one eye and peered at his bedside clock. It was 2:30 a.m. He rolled out of bed, dressed in underpants and grubby from all the running around he’d done the previous evening.
After sweeping his boots, shirt and trousers from under the bed, Marc did a furtive three-sixty glance before dashing through the open door, along the hallway and down to the ground floor. The main door creaked alarmingly as he pulled it open; then he ran on bare, blistered, feet to the side of the building.
Marc leaned against a cold wall as he stepped into his trousers. He did his shirt up in the wrong button holes, pushed grit-covered soles into his boots and dashed off towards the graveyard with his laces trailing behind.
Cutting across the graveyard brought him out on to a path, and he reached the armoury after a three-minute jog. It seemed empty, but he nervously circled the building to make sure.
The main door was padlocked, but it was an easy climb over a shoulder-height fence on to the pistol shooting range and once he’d dropped into the compound the door between the pistol