I’d given the art galleries a pounding as well, and she’d taken me to Swan Lake at the Bolshoi ballet, and Così Fan Tutte at the opera house. I’d always thought it was a kind of ice cream.
I didn’t feel I’d entered a world that I’d been missing. When I’d thought I was dying, I’d felt like I had some kind of hole that needed filling. Now it was just great to know something new. But it wasn’t going to take over my life. That was why I still needed to keep my eye in on the range.
3
It’s easy to shoot well, in theory. If the weapon is correctly aimed, the trigger is squeezed and the shot released without moving it, then the round will hit the target. However, the perfect or ‘lucky’ shot that is going to save your life is the result of years of practice. It’s like building muscle at the gym: use it or lose it.
I started loading the seventeen-round magazine. A couple of punters to my left pressed their return buttons and man-shaped targets of Russian hoods with knives slid towards them. Lots of Russian piss-taking came from their cubicles as they checked each other’s hits.
Gaston Glock was a genius. He’d had no experience with firearms when he entered a design competition for a new pistol for the Austrian Army in the 1980s, but he’d come up with the idea and built a prototype within a couple of months. He might have known jack about weapons, but he knew a lot about synthetic polymers, and that was one of the things that made this gun so different. The Glock’s plastic frame made it much lighter and easier to handle, but it was also what made it so hard for people — myself included — to accept initially. But in the last thirty years it had proved reliable and durable, and old Gaston had done all right for himself.
I liked it here at Gunslingers. There was always a great mixture of police and Mafia, as well as gun nuts and European tourists doing the ‘Russian military experience’. They paid the equivalent of five euros a round to fire weapons, and up to 16,000 to fly in a MiG 23. Some of these guys, mostly the Germans, blew off about thirty grand in euros over a long weekend.
It wasn’t as if I talked to any of them or had mates there. Apart from anything else, I’d only learnt a phrase or two of Russian in the time I’d been in the country. There wasn’t much point. Moscow was one of the big tourist destinations these days and most people knew enough English for me not to have to learn Russian. If they didn’t understand me I’d do the British thing of pointing and shouting. It seemed to do the trick. I’d nod at the regulars, but only if they nodded at me first. Police and Mafia tend not to be the most sociable of people, and that was the way I liked it. I also liked coming in early, before the first tourists Rambo’d in and the place got packed.
Standing in my cubicle, I put the target out at about ten metres. I loaded a mag, pulled back on the top slide, and let go so it rammed a 9mm round into the chamber.
In the movies, when actors load semi- or automatic weapons they always pull back the top slide and keep hold of it as it goes forward. It looks good, but it’s bollocks. You’ve got to let the top slide go. The spring then forces the next round out of the magazine and into the chamber. Hamper this action and you’re going to have stoppages. Law-enforcement agencies all over the world have trouble training recruits because of how they’ve seen the likes of Russell Crowe fuck it up on screen. When a Hollywood hard guy takes cover against a wall, the camera shows him with his weapon up, barrel near his face and pointing at the sky. It’s yet more bollocks. The weapon’s got to be pointing out towards the threat. The reason directors show it the way they do is so you can see the sexy weapon very close up, so it’s next to the actor’s head and you can register his emotion before they cut to the next scene.
I still used the Weaver stance when I shot. Your body became a firing platform by adopting the stance of a fighter. My legs were shoulder-width apart, left leg forward so my body turned forty-five degrees to the target. Now I was balanced forward and back, left and right.
The eyes are the aiming mechanism and the brain is the decision maker of when to fire, but everything else is used to create stability for the weapon. The web of my right hand was pushed hard and high into the grip. The higher the grip, the better the bore axis, the better the control of the weapon as the muzzle jumped when I fired. That was important. If I had to draw down outside this club it wouldn’t be just one round at a time and at a paper target. Semi-automatic pistols are designed for a high grip. When the top slide comes back to reload after a round is fired, it needs to move against the abutment of a firmly held weapon frame. If not, the top slide may not go all the way back and may not be able to reload. Then I’d be fucked.
My bottom three fingers were like a vice. My thumb was wrapped round the other side of the pistol grip. Only my trigger finger was free. It was the only thing that was allowed to move. Fuck the gentle tremor that I knew would be there as I aimed. This was a lump of metal that had to be controlled if it was to do its job. If I gripped the weapon and aimed correctly, the tremor would be where I wanted to hit.
I brought the weapon up towards the target, my support hand wrapped around the dominant hand. My shoulder was forward so my nose was closer to the target than my toes. My right arm pushed the weapon towards the target as my left exerted rearward pressure so the platform was rigid.
I lifted the weapon to the centre mass of the raging Russian. Both eyes fixed on the target; dead centre of mass. The weapon’s metal foresight came into my vision and became my primary focus. The target and the rear sight were now just blurs. I made sure the split at the back of the rear sight was level with the foresight. Then everything blurred as I focused on the foresight with both eyes.
As I squeezed, I felt the trigger safety with the first crease in my finger, the small lever that released the trigger action.
The foresight rested on the centre of mass and I finished my squeeze. The trigger went back. The round kicked off.
I didn’t check to see where my round had hit. I’d find out soon enough when I retrieved the target. I just carried on firing, bringing the weapon down, then slowly up again into the same point of aim.
The only negative about coming down to Gunslingers was that it gave me itchy feet. Not to get out of Moscow, or away from Anna — far from it. But there was only so much reading, art and opera you could take in one burst. If I wanted to get out there again, it wasn’t because I needed the money. There was still plenty of that left. If Anna had taught me one thing, it was that money isn’t everything. It certainly wasn’t her motivation. It was easy for me to say that money wasn’t mine now that I had plenty of it, but I was starting to understand why Anna did what she did. Besides, going away for a bit of work the next time Anna was on a trip would make me want to come back to her and Moscow even more.
I squeezed off round after round, no double taps, just slow-time singles, making sure my skills and my eye were still in. I was in no rush. I’d bang out a couple of mags, clean my weapon, and take a walk home to get stuck into a bit of Punishment.
4
The coffee shop was further down the corridor, in an area that looked as if it had once been a Cold War nuclear bunker. The new owners had given it a complete makeover. It was warm and welcoming, and did a good trade in coffee and a roaring one in vodka and Baltika beer. Nobody saw a problem with customers having a few looseners before they picked up a weapon.