‘Is there nobody else who could shoot in his place?’ Harriet asked. ‘What about Carl’s friend?’

‘Andy couldn’t hit the side of a house at twenty feet,’ Carl muttered. He kicked a stone in disgust.

The percussive detonations of rifle shots were coming from the direction of the range, as the shooters started warming up and making their last-minute zero adjustments.

‘They’re starting,’ Carl groaned.

‘Maybe I could help,’ Ben said.

Carl turned and looked at him.

‘You, Benedict?’ Miss Vale said in astonishment. ‘Can you shoot?’

‘I’ve done a little,’ he replied.

They were nearly back at the Pontiac. The rifle case was still lying on the ground behind the car, and Ben walked over to it.

‘The range goes out to a thousand yards,’ Carl said, nursing his hand, frowning. ‘Any idea how small a target is at that distance?’

Ben nodded. ‘Some idea.’

‘If you want to give it a go, I have no problem with that,’ Carl said. ‘You’re welcome to use my rifle. But you’d be up against guys like Raymond Higgins. And Billy Lee Johnson from Alabama. He’s an ex-Marine sniper school instructor. These are world-class shooters. They’re gonna walk all over you.’

Ben unslung his bag and dropped it on the grass. He squatted down next to the rifle case and flipped the catches. ‘Let’s see what you’ve got in here,’ he said.

Chapter Thirty

Ben opened the case and peered down at the scoped rifle inside. ‘May I?’

‘All yours,’ Carl said.

Ben lifted the weapon out of the foam lining and checked it over. It was a bolt-action Winchester Model 70, chambered in.300 H &H Magnum, an extremely potent calibre that launched its slim, tapered bullet at well over two thousand feet per second. The kind of rifle that, in the hands of a gifted shooter, could reach out to incredible distances. A top-flight instrument, with probably hundreds of hours invested in bringing it as close to perfection as was humanly and mechanically possible. It had a heavy competition-grade barrel. The action was slick, and the scope alone was worth as much as the Chrysler he was driving.

He took out a cigarette, clanged open his Zippo and thumbed the wheel. It had run out of fuel. He swore softly and patted his pockets for the book of matches he remembered taking from the hotel. Finding it, he struck a match and lit up. ‘Anything I need to know?’

‘Trigger’s awful light,’ Carl said. ‘Watch out for accidental shots.’

‘What’s it zeroed to?’

‘Point of aim at three hundred yards,’ Carl said.

Ben nodded, turning the rifle over in his hands and peering through the scope. He laid it back in the case, opened Carl’s ammunition box and inspected one of the long, tapered cartridges. ‘You handload your own ammunition?’

Carl nodded. Ben could see in his eyes the love he had for his sport, shining through the pain. Target shooters like Carl devoted a huge amount of time and energy to handcrafting their own match-grade ammunition, selecting the best combination of case, bullet and powder and putting it all together with extreme precision and attention to detail on the most expensive handloading presses they could afford, striving for the ultimate perfection in performance and accuracy. And it was all so that the shooter could drill a little round hole in a piece of paper. Their whole world was a little black circle on a white background. The closer together they could group those little round holes in the dead centre of the circle, the more trophies they could take home.

That was where the huge gulf opened up between the pure target shooter like Carl, and those men who were trained to use these rifles on a real target, a human target. Ben had been one of those men, once. He wondered if the young shooter had any idea of the nightmarish destruction a round like this could inflict on a man, when used for that more applied purpose. At a thousand yards, the descending arc of the bullet as it ran out of kinetic energy meant that it would strike its target from above. Aim at a man’s forehead from that extended kind of range, and the shot would take him on the crown of his skull and drill downwards through his whole body.

Ben had been a young SAS trooper when he’d first seen the remains of a man shot that way. The Iraqi soldier had been hit in the head by a.50 calibre sniper round at twelve hundred yards. He had been peeled apart, exploded into pieces by the bullet and the hydrostatic shock that followed in its wake. One of his arms had been found nearly a hundred yards away.

The sight of the shattered corpse had haunted Ben a long time. What had haunted him more was that the sniper who had taken that extreme long-shot, dug into the dirt on the top of a hill after hours of waiting in absolute stillness, had been him.

Today, the only casualties would be tattered pieces of paper. It made the fearsome weapon seem almost benign.

‘You think you can do it, Benedict?’ Miss Vale asked, standing over them with a worried expression.

‘I can try,’ he said. ‘It’s been a while since I did any rifle shooting.’

‘We’ll be praying for you. Carl, you need to get to the hospital. Can Andy drive you, or shall I call someone?’

‘I’m not leaving here till this is over,’ Carl said. ‘I want to watch him.’

The match referee’s voice announced over a loudspeaker that the fullbore rifle competition was about to start.

‘We’d best hurry,’ Miss Vale said.

Ben tossed away his cigarette, picked up the rifle case and his bag and headed towards the ranks of competitors. Carl followed, his eyes red with pain, clutching his hand. Miss Vale went to talk to the match referee, and within half a minute had persuaded him to let the substitute shooter come in.

There were thirty competitors on the firing line. Ben stepped over the rope cordon and took his place on the line. He dumped his bag on one side of his shooting mat and the rifle case on the other. Opened up the case and lifted out the Winchester. It was too late for sighting-in shots, or to warm up the rifle’s bore. A hundred yards away, range officers were taking down the practice targets and putting up fresh ones.

As he slipped on Carl’s electronic ear defenders and settled himself into the prone position that his sniper training had instilled in him so long ago, Ben hoped he hadn’t taken on more than he could deal with. His heart was beating fast. It had been a long time since he’d taken shots like this. Too long.

He glanced over at the shooter in the next lane. The man had his name stencilled, military-style, on the green metal ammunition box at his side. B.L. Johnson. The ex-Marine sniper Carl had mentioned. For a second they made eye contact. Johnson had the look about him that Carl didn’t have – the look of a man who hadn’t only shot at paper targets. He smiled, not friendly, not aggressive. Just a little knowing smile. Then he went back to his rifle.

Ben felt his heart begin to race as he peered through the scope at the targets. Only a hundred yards away, but the target face was no bigger than a dinner plate. It was divided up into a series of concentric rings, and at its centre was a black circle the size of a saucer. The very middle of the black was a ring that shooters called the ‘x-ring’. It was the size of a large coin. The x-ring was worth ten points, the next ring outwards worth nine, the next worth eight, and so on.

The tournament rules were brutally simple. The shooters would engage targets at one hundred, five hundred and a thousand yards. Ten shots per target, and anything below a ninety score was a disqualifier. It was a tough course of fire. Ben held his breath as he clicked in the magazine and worked the smooth bolt of the Winchester.

Here we go.

The crowd was silent.

Glancing back over his shoulder he saw Carl, Miss Vale and her assistants huddled behind the cordon twenty yards behind the firing line, watching. At the old lady’s elbow was Cleaver, staring coldly at him.