Three more followed.
'About a six inch group,' the instructor said, and Jimmy acknowledged expressionless. Where else did they expect the bloody things to be? He went to the side wall, by the door, waited a moment for his legs to loosen, then flung himself forward on the floor, rolling all the time before there was an instant of steadiness and he fired twice.
'Eight inches or so apart, both in the chest area,' said the instructor.
Jimmy fired all twenty-four rounds. Some in near-darkness, some with a bright light shining at his face, some on the move, some stationary. All hit the target, each puckered hole in the torso area.
'Bit of a bloody show-off, isn't he?' said one of the watching policemen, but his whisper was overheard by the instructor, who walked across the room to him.
'Look, boy.' His voice was booming, the result of deafness accrued from eighteen years in the underground range. 'There's a fractional possibility he might miss. And there's a fractional possibility you might hit. That's the difference between you and him.'
Jimmy was well pleased with the morning session, and it was over quickly enough for him to fit in a drink before he was due back at the department.
The two of them were asleep in the car.
McCoy lay on his side across the front seats, head just beneath the steering wheel. Famy was curled up in the back, his coat off and covering his shoulders. The car was parked deep in a grassy clearing, far from the road and visible through the high summer foliage only to someone who approached to within a few yards of it. There were many such places in the line of Surrey hills between Guildford and Dorking that block the route to London.
Later they would become a haven for Sunday walkers and picnickers, but in the early morning the two men had the clearing to themselves.
'We must sleep now, any time we bloody-well can get it,' McCoy had said.
They missed the breaking of the dawn, when the darkness gave way to the half-light, and then the sun began to cast its shortening shadows across the grass. They didn't see the rabbits that came to eat and preen themselves, or the fox that hastened them back to their burrows. It was the noise of children that aroused them. Two boys, little more than ten years old, faces pressed against the steamed-up windows of the car, peering in at them, and running giggling away as McCoy started up from his sleep. He swore inaudibly, and tried to collect his thoughts as he gazed around him. There is always that moment immediately after waking before the bad news of the previous night is remembered. McCoy couldn't immediately place why he was in the car. It came to him soon enough, and with the realization came the memory of the events of five hours earlier.
He shook Famy. 'Come on, lover-boy. Time to be on our way.'
'What's happening? Where are we?' Famy too had woken confused.
'Out in the countryside, taking in the sunshine.
Remember?'
Famy inclined his head slowly, deliberately, understanding.
Neither saw the two boys who lay in the thick grass bracken watching the men as they rubbed their eyes and stretched and pawed at the grass, throwing out the stiffness that had accompanied their awkward, limb-twisted sleep.
McCoy beckoned with his hand, an abrupt gesture, and the two began to walk the length of the clearing to the path that meandered away among the pine trees and the birches and the undergrowth. it's a fair walk, and I don't want to hang about,' said McCoy over his shoulder as he led the way. Neither wore the shoes for the country paths, and both slipped and stumbled where the rain had made the surface muddy.
They walked in silence for more than twenty minutes.
Then Famy noticed that McCoy was slowing down his stride, searching for a sign. When he found it he stood still, pleased with himself, beside an old, rusted-up pram chassis.
'That's the first marker,' he said, it's easy enough from here to find the place. We go fifty paces now down the path. Measure them out, and we'll be just about there.'
Famy let the distance between them grow as McCoy, his step accentuated by the care he was taking, marked out the distance.
'At home,' said McCoy when he had counted up to fifty out loud, 'we have to hide our guns. We keep them out in the countryside, but somewhere you can get them night or day, so you need markers, so you can find them on a path in the dark. Has to be straightforward and obvious to the man on the pick-up, but giving nothing away to the Brits.
Now look, and what's the most prominent tree close to us? Has to be the one with the ivy up it, easy to see, would show up by torch. That's the main marker. Now we have to look for something else that's off the path but equally clear… stands out just as much. You walk round the tree, trying to line it up with something that stands out.
Right? If you draw a line between this tree, and the big one, over there, the one the lightning hit, you go on and into the bank. There are rabbits' holes all the way down and along the bank. Well, what we're looking for is the hole in the straight line beyond the two trees.'
He walked forward past the ivy-coated branches, past the dead tree. 'The Brits are too bloody impatient to work it out like this. But once there was a chap on the television, and his men called him "Sniffer". He found more of our guns than any other soldier in the province. And what did the buggers do with him? Sent him first to the Tower of London on guard duty, then packed him off to Cyprus for nine months.'
McCoy was still laughing as his hands sunk into the rabbit hole. Famy watched fascinated as they emerged again clutching the whitened plastic of a farm bag.
'I had to dig the hole out a bit,' McCoy said. 'But who's going to notice fresh earth at a rabbit burrow?'
He pulled the bag out on to the bank, scanned the path in both directions, listened for a moment and then, satisfied that they were alone, started to unwind the sticking tape that sealed the top. From the bag he took three rifles, small, narrow, seemingly ineffective by their very abbreviation. Each was only marginally more than two feet in length, with the steel skeleton of the shoulder-rest bent back alongside the barrel. He placed them on the plastic, handling them with delicacy and concern, and with them two bulky cloth bags.
'What are they?' asked Famy. it's a version of the Mi carbine. World War Two, American. These are the paratroopers' ones, with the folding stock. They wouldn't give me Armalites, the bastards, said three was too many. These are old, but that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with them. They were test-fired ten days ago, across the water, then stripped down and cleaned…'
Famy interrupted, anxiety in his voice. 'There were no Kalashnikovs?'
'We never get a sight of the bloody things. They've tried to bring them in, but we haven't had any reach us. Our stuff is American. One of the reasons our big men got involved in this was to try and guarantee a supply of Kalashnikovs.'
'To you it will sound ridiculous, but I've never trained with any other sort of rifle,' said Famy.
'There's nothing wrong with these. They've packed enough coffins. Three hundred range, more than we need.
Fifteen-round magazine — if we need more than three we're screwed anyway. Small, light — just about six pounds. The Yanks ran off more than three and a half million of them in the war. They're untraceable.'
'Why only three? There were going to be three of us, and then you.'
McCoy was taking loaded magazines from one of the cloth bags. He looked up and into Famy's face. 'You were going to do the shooting. The deal was that I looked after the accommodation and the motor. You looked after the rest.'