In the past I'd done quite a bit of sniper work, and at one stage I'd worked as commander of the sniper detachment on the Regiment's SP team. Stew, also, had been on the team. But for that work we'd used 7.62 calibre PM rifles — far smaller, lighter weapons. The only one of us with experience of a .50 was Tony, who'd trained on it in the States.
The carrying case for this one was home-made but practicaclass="underline" a tube of rigid grey polythene, like a length of outsized drainpipe, with a cap on each end carefully sealed with parcel tape. Inside, we found the rifle cocooned in a jacket of bubble-wrap. As I drew it out on to the kitchen table, everyone crowded round, including Farrell, who was now cuffed to Stew.
'Are those curtains good enough?' I gestured at the window behind me. 'They look bloody thin to me.'
'No, no. They're OK,' said Whinger. 'I've checked from outside and you can't see through.'
Afterwards, I wished I'd been watching Farrell's face when the wrappings came off the weapon. As it was, I kept my eyes on the job in hand, but when the. angular grey metal flame appeared, he gave a low whistle.
'What the hell is it?' I said. 'Not a Barrett at all. No woodwork.'
'No,' said Farrell. 'It's a Haskins. I know that feller.'
'You mean you know this actual rifle?'
'Ah… I mean, no. It's the type. I've seen the type before.'
Even in the excitement of unveiling the fearsome beast I had noticed that odd hesitation, but I carried on peeling off: the layers of bubble film until the weapon lay revealed. The rifle comprised a long, thick barrel with a sound-deflector at the muzzle, a skeletal action, a bipod hinged under the fore-end, a high-grade telescopic sight on top, and, strangest of all, a short metal stock joined to the action by twin hydraulic shock-absorbers, clearly designed to soak up some of the recoil. The rifle had seen service — its metalwork was scratched here and there — but it looked beautifully clean, and when I drew the heavy bolt back it moved sweetly in its oiled bed. I noticed that there was no magazine: single shots only.
Also in the pack were two short belts of rounds, twelve in each, every cartridge six or seven inches long, as big and menacing as an anti-tank shell.
'Bloody hell!' said Whinger. 'That thing would kill a fucking elephant.'
'So it would,' said Farrell. 'And leave a big hole in the bastard, too.'
I picked the rifle up — it weighed at least twenty pounds — and flicked down the legs of the bipod to set the weapon up on the floor. Then I lay down behind it, brought the stock into my shoulder and shuffled myself into an easy position. Of course I couldn't see much through the sight, because it was out of focus, pointing straight at a wall about five feet away, but I liked the look of the reticle: crossed bars, thick at the edges, thin in the middle. I imagined it centred on the distant figure of a man, probably wearing a loose, woolly dumper.
Altogether the rifle felt comfortable and solid. I opened and closed the bolt to cock the mechanism and applied the first pressure on the trigger. At the second pressure it went off crisp and clean, giving a loud click, with a pull I estimated to be four pounds.
When Tony also got down for a trial, I told him, 'Don't touch the sight. It's suppose to be set at six hundred yards, which is dust right. We'll try it in the morning.'
'No sweat,' he grunted. He too took a couple of dry pulls on the trigger and said, 'Yeah — it feels quite nice.
I could hit something with that.'
I lifted the rifle back on to the table, and over a brew we all got talking about long-range shoots, not least the effect of wind on the bullet.
'The thing is,' said Tony, 'even if there's no wind at the firing point, there can be some farther out. You need to watch for that — anything like leaves or grass moving near the target.'
'Yes,' Farrell said, 'and you have to look out for mirage, too.'
'Mirage?' said Whinger. 'What the hell's that?'
'You know when you get a heat-haze, and see the air kind of boiling? If there's no wind the air will be rising vertically, and you get what's known as a boiling mirage. Lateral movement — what you might call drift looks like a stream of clear water rippling over a bed of pebbles. That canaffect the bullet quite badly, so you've to learn how to judge it.'
'OK,' I said, 'but we're not going to get that in the early morning, are we?'
'Probably not,' Farrell agreed. 'But then term perature's going to be a factor. A high temperature will increase your muzzle velocity and throw your bullet high.'
'Yeah. But again, early morning's likely to be cool.'
'Sure, so you may need to aim fractionally high.
Humidity's another thing. If you get a mist, that means the air's more dense. Your bullet meets greater resistance and drops — so again, you need to give it more elevation.'
'Light,' said Tony. 'That's important. If it's dull and cloudy like today, you're liable to shoot high. Dunno why, but that's how it seems to work.'
'It probably will be like that at seven in the morning,'
I said. 'Anyway, we can try it tomorrow.'
'Have you got somewhere lined up for a practice shoot?' Whinger asked.
'Yep. We found a place.' Because Farrell was with us I didn't describe the little range in the woods. I turned to him. 'It's amazing how your people find the sites for hides. I mean, the one where we collected the rifle — it was miles from anywhere. How the hell would they know about a place like that?'
'Easy,' Farrell replied. 'Some Paddy gets a job working on the farm. Maybe he does a bit of pigeon- shooting or something. Gets to know the woods, finds the old well. Next thing he's in the pub, blathering about it, and there's a man listening. Or maybe the Paddy falls out with the farmer. Maybe he gets the sack and thinks, I'll luck this fellow up a bit. Use his property without him knowing.'
'Is that how guys get drawn into the organisation? As simple as that?'
'Sometimes, yes.'
I stared at our prisoner, with his heavy but still handsome face and his thick, wiry black hair. The swelling on his lip had gone down, and his eyes were back to normal, so that he looked quite presentable again.
'Don't you ever feel guilty about some of the things you do?' I asked.
'Guilty?' He gave a kind of snort. 'What about? It was those stupid fuckers of ancient Greeks who invented the idea of guilt. They thought there were creatures called the Furies who came after you if you did something bad. They called them the Eumenides, the Kindly Ones, to try and make them seem less frightening. It was all a load ofbollocks, of course — but people 5have been foolish enough to go on believing it ever since.'
'Some people call it conscience,' Ton7# said drily.
It was on the tip of my tongue to ask why the dickers had been out, watching the approaches to the hide, but instead I said, 'How does someone like you get into the PIP, A? I mean, you went to university. You're an educated guy. You could have a good job and a settled life. If you'd gone straight you could be making a good living by now.'
'Making a living!' Again Farrell gave that derisive snort. 'What d'you think you'd be like if you'd been brought up in Belfast? You'd be the worst fucking killer of the lot. I know. That's all you army fellers are, anyway — trained killers. Are you not? A tribe of murdering bastards.'
As Farrell glared at me and I glared back at him, I suddenly realised that we'd all started chatting over the weapon and listening to his advice as if he were one of us. The way he'd been talking, he could have been a sniper instructor. Obviously he was hot on the subject; but not only that — it had sounded as if he'd had training from Americans. Some of the phrases he'd used were out of American text books.
In a flash it occurred to me that maybe it was he who had done all that damage in Ulster. Maybe he was the mysterious long-range assassin who'd harassed the security forces so badly. To my disgust I realised I'd been drawn into discussion with him in a way I'd vowed I would avoid. It was bad enough that for a few minutes I'd been treating him as an ordinary human being; far worse was the fact that I'd talked things over as though speaking with an acknowledged expert.