Last Light

by Andy McNab

  Luz was just finishing her food as Carrie checked the clock by the sink.

  "You know what? Just leave your plate on the side and go and log on. You don't want to keep Grandpa waiting." Luz nodded with delight, got up with her plate, and put it down next to the sink before disappearing into the computer room.

  Carrie took another sip of coffee, then called out, Tell Grandpa I'll say hello in a minute."

  A voice drifted back from inside the computer room.

  "Sure."

  Carrie pointed at the hug pictures on the fridge door and one in particular, the guy in a polo shirt with grey-sided black hair, holding hands with Luz on the veranda.

  "My father, George he teaches her math."

  "Who are the ones holding the babies?"

  She turned back and looked at the fading picture.

  "Oh, that's also my father, he's holding me we're on the far right. It's my favourite."

  "Who are the ones with you?"

  Luz stuck her head round the corner, looking and sounding worried.

  "Mom, the locks picture has closed down."

  That's OK, darling, I know."

  "But, Mom, you said it must always be-' Carrie was sharp with her.

  "I know, baby, I've just changed my mind, OK?"

  "Oh, OK." Luz retreated, looking confused.

  "We home-school everything else here. This keeps her in contact with her grandfather, they're real close."

  I shrugged.

  "Sounds good," I said, really not that fussed she hadn't answered my question. There were more important things on my mind. It was time to cut to the last page. Is that rifle in the bedroom in working order?"

  'You don't miss much, do you, fever man? Of course ... why?"

  "For protection. We can call your handler for one, it's not a problem. It's just that I haven't got much time and I want to get going as soon as I can."

  She rested her arms on the table.

  "Do you people never feel secure without a weapon?"

  Those intense green eyes burnt into me, demanding an answer. Problem was, I reckoned her question was more complicated than it seemed.

  "It's always better to be safe than sorry that's why you have it, isn't it?

  Besides, Charlie's no Mr. Nice."

  She stood up and walked towards her bedroom, "For sure, like death but if he catches you doing whatever it is you're going to do, you'll need more than an old rifle."

  She disappeared behind the door. From this side of the room I could see the foot of the bed and the opposite wall. It was covered with photographs, both old and new, smiling adults and children doing more family love-fest stuff. I could hear working parts moving back and forth, and the chink of brass rounds as they fell on to each other. I supposed you'd have it loaded and ready to go, otherwise why have it on the bedroom wall?

  She reappeared with a bolt-action rifle in one hand, and a tin box with webbing handles in the other. It didn't have a lid, and I could see cardboard boxes of ammunition.

  My eyes were drawn to the weapon. It was a very old-style piece of kit indeed, with the wooden furniture stretching from the butt all the way along the quite lengthy barrel to just short of the muzzle.

  She put it down on the table. It's a Mosin Nagant. My father took it from the body of a North Vietnamese sniper during the war."

  I knew about this weapon: it was a classic.

  Before passing it across, she turned it to present the opened bolt and show me that the chamber and magazine were clear. I was impressed, which must have been plain to see.

  "My father -what's the use of having one if you don't know how to use it?"

  I checked chamber clear and took the weapon from her.

  "What service was he in?"

  She sat down and picked up her coffee cup.

  "Army. He made general before retiring." She nodded over at the fridge pictures. The beach? Those are his Army buddies."

  "What did he do?"

  Technical stuff, intelligence. At least there's one good thing that can be said about George he's got smarts. He's at the Defense Intelligence Agency now."

  She allowed herself a smile of pride as she gazed at the picture. There's a senior White House adviser and two other generals, one still serving, in that photograph."

  That's some bad-looking scar on the end. Is he one of the generals?"

  "No, he left the service in the eighties, just before the Iran-Contra hearings.

  They were all involved in one way or the other, though Ollie North took all the heat. I never did know what happened to him."

  If he was part of the Iran-Contra affair, George would know all about jobs like this one. Black-ops jobs that no one wanted to know about, and people like him wouldn't tell anyway.

  The connection between these two, George and the Pizza Man, was starting to make me feel uncomfortable. But I was a small player and didn't want to get myself involved with whatever was going on down here. I just had to be careful not to bump into it, that was all. I needed to get to Maryland next week.

  Luz called from the other room, "Mom, Grandpa needs to talk with you."

  Carrie got up with a polite "Won't be long," and disappeared into the next room.

  I took the opportunity to have a double-take at the tall, square-jawed, muscular George smiling with Luz on the veranda. It was easy to see where she got her big green eyes from. I checked out the digital display on the bottom right of the picture. It was taken in 04-99, only eighteen months ago. He still looked like the all-American boy with his short hair and side parting, and, what was weird, he looked younger than Aaron. The Pizza Man, on the other hand, looked like death warmed up compared with his black-and-white former life. He was skinnier, greyer and probably had lungs like an oil slick, going by the way I'd seen him take down that nicotine.

  TWENTY-TWO

  I got back to the real world and examined the weapon, which looked basic and unsophisticated compared with the sort of thing around nowadays. Not that the basics had changed for centuries: trigger, on and off switch, sights and barrel.

  I wasn't a weapons anorak, but I was familiar enough with the Russian weapon's history to know that, regardless of how it looked, these things had sent thousands of Germans to their graves on the eastern front in the forties. The arsenal marks stamped into the steel of the chamber showed it had been made in 1938. Maybe this was one of them. It had probably quite a history, including zapping American targets in Vietnam.

  The one I had in my hands had been beautifully maintained. The wooden furniture was varnished, and the bolt action had been lightly oiled and was rust-free. I got it into the aim and looked through the quite unconventional optic sight, unsure if it was the original. It was a straight black and worn tube about eight inches long and about an inch in diameter mounted on top of the weapon.

  It had to be a fixed power sight as there was no zoom ring to adjust the magnification, just two dials half-way along the sight the top one to adjust for elevation (up and down), and the one on the right-hand side for windage (left and right). The dials had no graduation marks any more the top discs were missing just some scratch marks where it had been zeroed.

  Looking into the sight and aiming at a fuzzy book spine at this short distance, I could see I had a post sight to aim with. A thick black bar came up from the bottom of the sight and finished in a point in the centre of the sight picture.

  Just below the point was a horizontal line that crossed the whole width of the sight.

  I'd never liked post sights: the post itself blocked out the target below the point of aim, and the further away the target was, the smaller it became and the more the post blocked it out. But beggars can't be choosers, and as long as it went bang when I pulled the trigger, I'd be half-way happy. There were also conventional iron sights on the weapon a rear sight that was set just forward of the bolt, about where my left hand would go on the stock. The sight could be set between 400 and 1200 metres. It was set at the all-round 'battle sight' setting
of 400. The foresight was protected by a cylindrical guard on the muzzle.

  I placed the weapon on the table and went and helped myself to more coffee from the cooker. Thinking about this rifle's possible history reminded me that, years earlier, in the early eighties, when I was an infantry squaddie in BAOR (British Army of the Rhine), I'd owned a Second World War bayonet that an old German had given me. He told me he'd killed over thirty Russians with it on the eastern front, and I wondered whether he was bullshitting me, since most Germans of that generation said they fought the Russians during the war, not the Allies. I'd put it away in a cupboard at the house in Norfolk and forgotten about it; then, along with everything else, it had been sold to pay for Kelly7 s treatment. A skinhead with a stall in Camden Market gave me twenty quid for it.

  I'd nearly finished pouring when Carrie returned.

  "Do you know how to adjust the sights?"

  "No." It would save me a lot of time if I didn't have to experiment.

  "It's got a PBZ at three hundred and fifty yards," she said, walking to the table.

  "Do you know what that is?" I nodded as she picked up the weapon and turned the dials.

  "Stupid, I'm sure you do."

  I could hear the clicks even above the noise of the fans before she handed it to me. There, the notches are in line." She showed me the score marks levelled off against the sight on both dials to indicate the correct position for the sight to be zeroed.

  I put down my coffee, took it off her and checked out the dull score marks.

  "Anywhere I can go to check zero?"

  She waved her arms. Take your pick. There's nothing but space out there."

  I picked up the ammunition tin.

  "Can I have some of your printer paper and a marker pen?"

  She knew exactly what I needed it for. Tell you what," she said, I'll even throw in some tacks for free. See you outside."

  She went into the computer room and I went out through the squeaking mozzie screen and on to the veranda. The sky was still brilliant blue. The crickets were going for it like there was no tomorrow, and a monkey or something was making a happy noise somewhere in the canopy. But I wasn't fooled. No matter:

  after a shower and some cream on my back, the love affair with the jungle was back on.

  Even in the shade of the veranda, it was already much hotter out here. I was glad I was beginning to feel better, because it was an oppressive heat.

  My dizziness had all but disappeared, and it was time to stop feeling sorry for myself and get to grips with what I was here to do. The mozzie screen squeaked open and chopped off my train of thought as Carrie came out carrying a crunched up paper bag. She handed it over.

  "I've told Luz you might go hunting later, so you want to try out the rifle."

  I'll be over there." I indicated the treeline about two hundred metres away, to the right of the house. It was on the opposite side to the track, so if Aaron came back early from rescuing jaguars he wouldn't get a 7.62 in his ear.

  "See you in a bit."

  As soon as I left the shelter of the veranda, the sun's fierce glare blinded me.

  I screwed up my eyes and looked down. Most of the moisture had evaporated off the grass, but the heavy humidity meant the puddles were still intact apart from a muddy crust around the edges.

  I could feel my shoulders and the back of my neck burning as I kept my eyes on the rough, thick-bladed grass. I knew that once

  I got to the treeline things would improve. It would be just as hot and sticky, but at least this rabiblanco wouldn't be getting blow-torched.

  I had a quick check of Baby-G. Unbelievably, it was only 10.56. The sun could only get hotter.

  Carrie called out from behind me, still on the veranda.

  "Look after it." She pointed to the weapon.

  "It's very precious to me." I had to squint to see her, but I was sure there was a smile.

  "By the way, only load up four rounds. You can place five in the magazine OK, but can't close the bolt without stripping off the second round got it?"

  I lifted the weapon as I walked. I'd keep the PBZ (point blank zero), if it still existed. Why mess with something that might already be right? I might cock it up by trying to improve it.

  I let my hand drop with the weapon and carried on towards the treeline, thinking of how the three snipers in London would have reacted to the idea of using a PBZ to drop a target, on top of ammunition that could have been made by the local blacksmith. To ensure consistency, they'd have pulled apart every one of the rounds I supplied them with to check there was exactly the same amount of propellant in each cartridge case.

  PBZ is just a way of averaging out the averages to ensure the round at least hits the target somewhere in the vital area. Hunters use it; for them, the vital area is an area about seven inches centred on the animal's heart. The way it works is quite simple. As a round leaves the barrel, it rises, then begins to fall because of gravity. The trajectory is relatively flat with a large 7.62mm round like these: over a range of 350 metres the round won't rise or fall more than seven inches. As long as the hunter isn't further away than 350 metres, he just aims at the centre of the killing area, and the round should drop the bear or whatever else is charging towards him. My shoot should be from a maximum of 300 metres, so if I aimed at the centre of the target's sternum, he should take a round somewhere in the chest cavity what is known in sniper world as a target-rich environment: heart, kidneys, arteries, anything that will make him suffer immediate and catastrophic loss of blood. It was not as sophisticated as the London snipers' catastrophic brain shot, because the weapon and rounds weren't exactly state-of-the-art, and I hadn't had enough practice.

  A heart shot would probably make the target unconscious, and kill him in ten or fifteen seconds. The same went for the liver, because the tissue is so soft;

  even a near miss can sometimes have the same effect. As the round travels through the body, crushing, compressing, and tearing away the flesh, a shock-wave comes with it, causing a massive temporary inflation of neighbouring tissues that messes them up big-time.

  A hit to the lungs would incapacitate, but it might not kill him, especially if he was treated quickly enough. The ideal would be for the round to hit the target's spine high up, above his shoulder-blades, as it exited, or entered if I took him back on. This would have very much the effect the three snipers had been trying to achieve: instant death, dropping him like liquid.

  This was all very fine in theory, but there was a host of other factors to contend with. I might be trying to hit a moving target, there might be a wind. I might only have one part of a body to aim at, or only one weird angle to take the shot from.

  Trying not to think about the boy smiling out of the Lexus, I wandered the two hundred or so metres to the treeline, put down the ammunition box, and stood for a while in the shade, looking towards the hill, the target area. Then I set off towards the rising ground.

  I found a suitable tree and pinned a sheet of paper to the bottom third of the trunk with one of the drawing pins. With a marker pen I drew a circle about the size of a two-pound coin and inked it in. It was a bit of a lumpy circle with uneven edges because I was pushing it against the bark, but it would do.

  I then pinned a sheet above and another below the first, then, making the best of the shade, turned and walked back with the weapon and rounds, counting out a hundred one-yard paces. At that range, even if the sight was wildly inaccurate, with luck I would cut paper to see how bad it was. If the zero was out by, say, two inches at a hundred yards, then at two hundred yards it would be four inches, and so on. So if I lay down initially at three hundred, I could be six inches out, either up, down, left or right,

  possibly missing the paper altogether. Trying to see my strike as I fired would waste time, of which I didn't have much.

  A hundred paces later and "still in the shade of the treeline, I checked for beasties, sat against a tree, and slowly closed the bolt action. It was extremely well made: the
action was soft, almost buttery, as the oil-bearing surfaces moved over each other without resistance. I pushed the bolt handle down towards the furniture (the wood that shapes the weapon), and there was a gentle click as it fell into its locked position.

  Before I fired this weapon I needed to find out what the trigger pressures were.

  Correct trigger control will release the firing pin without moving the weapon.

  All trigger pressures are different, and nearly all sniper weapons can be adjusted for the individual firer. I wasn't going to do that because I didn't know how to on a Mosin Nagant, and I wasn't that particular anyway I usually adjusted myself to whatever the pressures were.

  I placed the centre of the top pad of my right index finger gently against the trigger. There was just a few millimetres of give as I squeezed backwards until I felt resistance. This was the first pressure. The resistance was the second pressure; I gently squeezed again, and instantly heard the click as the firing pin pushed itself out of the head of the bolt. That was fine for me: some snipers prefer no first pressure at all, but I quite liked having that looseness before firing.

  Pulling the bolt back once more, I took one of the twenty-round boxes of large brass 7.62 rounds out of the ammunition box, and fed in four, one at a time, from the top of the breech, into what should have been a fixed five-round mag.

  Then I slid home the bolt once more, watching as it pushed the top round into the chamber. There was a slight resistance only as I pushed the cocking handle down towards the furniture and the bolt locked into place, securing the round so it could be fired. The on off switch was at the back of the cocking piece, a flat circle of metal at the rear of the bolt about the size of a fifty-pence piece, and turning it to the left I applied Safe. It was a pain in the arse to do, but I supposed there wasn't much call for them when this thing was made it was too busy killing Germans.