THIRTY-THREE

33

A1 Shooting-Range was just off the Barnet By-Pass. I lay at the five hundred metre firing point at the range. The white peg in the grass beside said 4.4, and the same number was recurrent high up on the distance but above the single six-foot square target that looked no larger than a postage stamp to the human eye and in the May dusk. But my lens, an infrared scope fixed above my rifle, covered the whole canvas. So, I could easily differentiate the pale-blue and beige colours into which the target separated. The six-inch semi-circular bull looked as big as the half-moon that started to show low down in the blackening sky above the A1.

My last shot, an inner left – had been shit. I took another glance at the yellow-and-blue wind flags. They were coursing across the range from the east rather more firmly than I had begun my shoot half an hour before. I set two clicks to the right of the wind gauge and navigated the cross wires on the telescopic sight back to the