But the shooting competition held no interest for Ben. He was here to catch hold of Clayton Cleaver, take him somewhere private and press some truth out of him.
He’d pretty much planned his strategy. He liked simple plans, and this one was very simple indeed. If Cleaver didn’t confess right away, he was going to beat it out of him about what had happened to Zoë and where she was. If she was dead or alive, either way, Cleaver’s fate was sealed. There was Charlie to pay for. Once he no longer needed him, he was going to take Cleaver to a quiet spot somewhere and blow his brains out. Leave him where he lay. Then home, and try to pick up where he’d left off.
He wondered where Cleaver was. He could see the house in the distance, a large colonial-style mansion with columns and porches, white and glimmering through the trees. His fists clenched with rage and for an instant he felt the urge to walk straight over there and find him.
Then he spotted him. Of course. He should have expected that the man wouldn’t be far from the crowd and the cameras. Cleaver was in the middle of the throng clustered around the Augusta Vale Trust marquee, surrounded by press photographers, shaking as many hands as he could, the big broad smile never leaving his face. Miss Vale was there too, looking elegant and gracious as she attended to all the people around her and delegated tasks to her assistants. As Ben approached, she caught sight of him and waved. He smiled and waved back.
As he came closer, he saw Cleaver’s eyes shoot him a glance. Suddenly the Reverend seemed to have a pressing engagement elsewhere. He melted away into the crowd.
‘Catch you later,’ Ben muttered under his breath.
Miss Vale took his arm as he joined her. ‘Isn’t this just wonderful? Look at all the people.’ She beamed up at him. ‘There’s someone I want you to meet.’ She turned to two of her assistants nearby, a thickset woman with ginger hair standing talking to a petite and very attractive Japanese girl in her early twenties.
‘Harriet, where’s young Carl?’ Miss Vale asked anxiously. ‘It’s quarter to twelve. It starts in fifteen minutes.’
‘I think he just arrived,’ the ginger-haired woman said.
‘He’s cutting it a little fine. I shall have to scold him.’
The Japanese girl caught Ben’s eye and smiled at him.
‘Let’s go meet him,’ Miss Vale said.
They started walking towards the parking field. Harriet and the old lady were deep in conversation. Ben followed behind, and the Japanese girl walked with him.
‘I’m Maggie,’ she said. ‘Pleased to meet you.’
‘Ben,’ he said. ‘You work for the Vale Trust?’
She nodded. ‘Miss Vale has been telling us all about you,’ she said.
‘Really? So who’s this Carl we’re going to meet?’
‘One of Miss Vale’s protégés,’ Maggie replied. ‘The Trust puts a lot of young kids from underprivileged backgrounds through college. The aim is to support and empower them. Carl Rivers is only nineteen, but he’s already a champion rifle marksman. The Trust has been paying for his training, and we’re hoping that one day he’ll represent the USA in the Olympics.’
‘Impressive,’ Ben said.
‘Miss Vale has organised a special sponsorship event for this year’s match,’ Maggie said. ‘She’s put a hundred thousand dollars of her own money in the pot, and she’s persuaded a whole lot of wealthy folks to back him too. He’s up against pro shooters from five states, but we’re hopeful. If he wins the fullbore rifle class, we’ll have raised about half a million for the hospital. It’s really important.’
‘Miss Vale told me about the children’s wing,’ he said.
Maggie nodded sadly. ‘So sad.’
They reached the parking field. Away from the rest of the cars was a section cordoned off closer to the ranges, for competitors only.
‘That’s him over there,’ Maggie said, pointing.
Ben looked. A young black kid was standing next to a badly beaten-up old Pontiac. He had a friend with him, a gangly, gawky-looking white teenager with jeans ripped at the knees and thick glasses that magnified his eyes so much that they almost filled the lenses. The friend was unloading a long black rifle case from the back of the car.
‘I don’t suppose Carl Rivers is the one with the glasses,’ Ben said.
Maggie laughed. ‘No, that’s Andy; I don’t think he’d be much of a shot.’
Carl was in the middle of an animated discussion with his gawky-looking friend, and hadn’t seen them approaching. He was leaning with his right hand against the side of the car as Andy laid the rifle case down on the grass. Whatever they were joking about, Carl suddenly threw his head back and burst out laughing. Andy was laughing too, his big eyes creased up with mirth behind the glasses. Then he reached up quickly and slammed the car boot lid shut. Right on Carl’s fingers.
Carl’s laughter suddenly became a scream. He thrust his injured hand between his legs, hopping around in a circle.
Miss Vale went rushing over to him. ‘Dear child, let me take a look.’
‘Shit, what happened?’ Maggie said in alarm.
Carl was obviously in a lot of pain. Ben examined the damage. The first three fingers of his right hand were mashed and bleeding.
‘Can you flex them?’ Ben asked.
Carl tried, and whimpered.
‘Could be broken,’ Ben said.
‘There’s a first-aid tent not far away,’ Miss Vale said, shooting a look at Andy, who was standing to one side biting his lip in distress. ‘They can take a look at it, but I think you need to get this seen to by a doctor.’
‘She’s right,’ Ben said.
‘Yeah, but I’m supposed to be shooting here today,’ Carl protested.
Just as he said it, there was an announcement over the loudspeakers that the fullbore rifle event would be starting shortly, and would the competitors please make their way to the firing line.
They walked him quickly to the first-aid tent, where a nurse examined the fingers as best she could, bandaged him up and told him he needed to get to a hospital soon for an X-ray.
‘I can’t. I’ve got to shoot,’ he argued.
‘Not with those fingers, you can’t,’ the nurse said, tight-lipped. ‘Unless you can learn to shoot left-handed, son, you can forget it.’
Carl left the first-aid tent almost in tears with pain and frustration, and they headed back towards the car. Andy trailed in their wake, all penitent and full of useless suggestions. Miss Vale was calm, though the disappointment was clear in her eyes. ‘The important thing is that you get to the hospital and get that seen to.’
‘But the money,’ Carl said. ‘The money for the charity.’
‘Nothing you can do, child,’ she said resignedly. ‘We’ll see if we can reorganise it next year.’
‘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.
The referee gave the command to commence firing.
Ben thumbed off the safety catch. He did a quick ballistic calculation and let the crosshairs hover on a point a few inches low of the centre of the target to allow for the three-hundred-yard zero.
To his left, Billy Lee Johnson’s rifle boomed, dust flying up off the ground near the muzzle.
Ben controlled his breathing. The sight crosshairs wavered against the target. Up, down, sideways. Sweat ran down his brow and prickled his eyes. He blinked it away.
In his mind, he saw Charlie again. He thought of the bombing victims on Corfu, the maimed and the dead. Thought of Nikos Karapiperis, and Zoë Bradbury, and the torment that her family was going through. Rhonda and the child who would never know its father. All because of the man standing behind him. He could feel Cleaver’s presence there, almost touching him.
Different people reacted differently to anger. For some, it was a form of stress that affected their concentration, dulled their thinking and slowed their reactions. He’d seen it happen many times.
But for him, it was different. He’d always been able to control his rage, to channel it, making the energy work for him instead of against him. It made him focus. He could feel every tiny detail of the texture of the rifle stock in his hands. He peered through the scope. Now the sight picture held rock steady. The target was sharp and c
lear. In his mind, he was aiming right at Cleaver’s head.
He hardly felt the smooth trigger face against the first joint of his finger. The trigger broke and the rifle kicked back hard against his shoulder. He lost the sight picture for a moment, and when he brought the rifle back to aim he saw the little black hole he’d made in the target. The first shot had cut the edge of the x-ring.
Looks like you haven’t lost it, he thought.
And an hour later, he knew it for sure.
After the first round, seven of the thirty shooters were eliminated from the competition. There was a twenty-minute break so that the range officers could take down the targets and set up the new ones, four hundred yards further downrange. They were slightly larger than the first ones, but through the sights they were minute.
Round two began. Ben had imagined that the five-hundred-yard course of fire would have a devastating effect, and it did. When it was over, only nine shooters were left. He was one of them. So was Billy Lee Johnson, the ex-Marine sniper. Now, when he looked at Ben, the smile was gone.
But Ben wasn’t interested in Johnson. He was enjoying the fact that Clayton Cleaver was still there, watching. He was giving him a message, as surely as if he was telling him to his face. He wanted Cleaver to fear him, and he knew it was working.
Then the five-hundred-yard targets were taken down, and the survivors settled in for the real test. At a thousand yards, things look very, very small, even through the magnifying lens of a powerful scope. But it wasn’t simply a question of holding the gun steady and pulling the trigger. At such extreme range, there were many other factors involved. The wind could send a bullet’s trajectory way off course. It had to be anticipated. So did the parabolic arc of the bullet as it gave way to the forces of the Earth – and from such a range Ben expected it to drop several feet. He had to compensate by aiming high, and that was where the true art of the sniper came into play.
The Ben Hope Collection: 6 BOOK SET Page 81