One Shot Kill - Robert Muchamore Page 0,46
back and reached his first shooting zone after an eight-minute uphill run.
It had rained heavily that morning and his thighs grew soggy as he settled into a firing position where a boulder served as cover. As it was daylight, he had an easy time spotting a pair of circular targets set at four-eighty and six hundred yards.
The instructions stapled to his map said he had to take two shots at each target. Goldberg’s point system only distinguished between hit and miss, but Marc still took pride in two hits on the centre of the nearer target.
A wind gusted strongly into his face as his first shot at the more distant target punched the earth several metres short. He corrected upwards by half a degree to compensate for the wind and got his final shot dead on.
The route to the second shooting zone involved doubling back, and Marc and Luc exchanged grunts as they passed on a steep slope. Marc got slightly lost on his way to the second target, but scraped inside the twenty minutes he needed to avoid losing a point.
The firing position for the second target was down at a sharp angle, but he still hit with four out of four. He missed two shots on the third target, but the range was over seven hundred yards and he was the only one of the four trainees who could regularly hit targets over that sort of distance.
The final shooting zone was more than five kilometres from the third. Rather than kill himself trying to run it in under twenty minutes, Marc walked, trading the loss of a point for being in good shooting condition when he arrived.
The final target was two hundred and fifty yards away, but the shooting position was a muddy riverbank and late morning sunlight reflecting off fast-moving water meant he saw nothing but golden blurs when he tried using his split-image rangefinder.
Marc was concerned. There was no certainty he could hit the target without a clear view through the scope and if it clouded over when the other lads arrived they’d have four easy shots. He looked up hoping to see a cloud heading towards the sun, but the only thing in the sky was birds.
Luc had tried to beat the twenty-minute arrival time and burst through the undergrowth between two large trees as Marc sent his first shot a few inches wide of the target.
‘Sir?’ Luc shouted, sounding a touch desperate.
Marc broke out of his sniper state, to look around. Henderson and Goldberg were walking uphill towards the shooting zone.
‘Sir, I’d like another go.’ Luc said. ‘There’s something wrong with my gun.’
‘What makes you say that?’ Goldberg asked.
‘I’ve not hit a thing,’ Luc said. ‘Might have caught the edge of one target, but that was more a fluke than anything.’
Marc’s nerves jangled as he turned back to his scope and tried to focus. He’d hoped that the scratches he’d made in the barrel would cause two or three missed shots and be dismissed as Luc having a bad day. But if Luc had missed all but one target, there was sure to be an investigation.
Marc’s second shot was a near miss, but a minor correction sent the third and fourth flying into the centre of the rectangular target.
‘Good morning, sir,’ Marc said, standing up as Henderson stepped up to him.
‘How did it go?’
‘I hit eleven out of sixteen, sir,’ Marc said, trying to sound confident. ‘Minus one for arriving late at the last target.’
‘Sounds good,’ Henderson said. ‘I’d be surprised if that isn’t enough to book your ticket.’
As Marc spoke he kept one eye on Goldberg, who’d begun inspecting Luc’s gun.
‘I expect it’s dirty,’ Goldberg said unsympathetically. ‘I’ve warned you enough times. You’ve nobody to blame but yourself.’
Sam came scrambling out of bushes from the opposite direction to which Marc and Luc had arrived, which brought a smile to Henderson’s face.
‘Why are you coming from that way?’
‘Got lost, sir,’ Sam said, breathlessly.
‘How’s the shooting going?’
‘Can’t get it right today, sir,’ Sam said. ‘I’ve only hit four from twelve. And I’m late to this shooting zone, so I’ve lost a point for that too.’
‘See if you can make it up here then,’ Henderson said.
‘Luc’s scored one or zero,’ Marc said. ‘Claims there’s something wrong with his gun.’
Marc expected to see a grin, but Sam looked worried as he found a shooting position a couple of yards left of the one Marc had taken. Sam had deliberately missed a couple of shots on the assumption