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.
I looked for a small mound in the rough ground to double as a sandbag, and after a beastie check, lay down behind it in the prone position. The steel plate of the weapon butt was in the soft tissue of my right shoulder and my trigger finger ran over the trigger guard. My left forearm was resting against the mound and I let my hand find its natural position along the stock of the weapon, just forward of the rear sight. There were grooves cut into the furniture each side to give a better grip.
Your bones are the foundation for holding a weapon; your muscles are the cushioning that holds it tightly in position. I had to make a tripod of my elbows and the left side of my ribcage. I had the added benefit of resting my forearm against the mound. I needed to ensure that the position and hold were firm enough to support the weapon, and that I was also comfortable.
I looked through the sight, making sure there was no shadowing around the edges of the optic. There was no problem about closing my left eye: half the job had already been done for me yesterday. The biggest mistake made by novice firers using a post sight is that they think the point to aim at is where the horizontal line crosses the post. It's not, it's the top of the post, right where the point is. The horizontal line is so you can check there's no canting (weapon tilting).
I took aim at the centre of the not-too-circular black circle then closed my eyes and stopped breathing. I relaxed my muscles slightly as I emptied my lungs.
Three seconds later, I opened my eyes, started to breathe normally, and looked through the sight once more. I found that my point of aim had shifted to the left-hand edge of the sheet of paper, so I swivelled my body round to the right, then did the same thing twice more until I was naturally aligned to the target.
It was pointless trying to force my body into a position that it didn't want to be in: that would affect the round when I fired. I was now ready to take the first shot.
I took three deep breaths to oxygenate my body. If you're not oxygenated you can't see correctly; even if you're not firing a weapon, if you just stand and gaze at something in the far distance and stop breathing, you will see it go blurry very quickly.
The weapon sight moved up and down with my body as I
sucked in air, and settled to a gentler movement as I started to breathe normally. It was only then that I took off the safety, by pulling back and turning it to the right. Acquiring a good sight picture once more, I aimed before taking up the first pressure. At the same time I stopped breathing, in order to steady the weapon.
One second, two seconds ... I gently squeezed the second pressure.
I didn't even hear the crack, I was so busy maintaining concentration and non reaction while the weapon jumped up and back into my shoulder. All the time I kept my right eye open and followed through the shot, watching as the point of aim came back to settle on the centre of the target. That was good: it meant my body was correctly aligned. If not, the point of aim would have moved to where my body was naturally pointing.
The round needed to be followed through because although there might only be less than a second between me taking the second pressure, sending the firing pin forward and striking the round, and the bullet heading up the barrel as the gases forced it out towards the target, the slightest movement would mean the point of aim not being the same at the instant the bullet exited the muzzle as when I fired. Not good news if you're trying to kill somebody with a single round.
That was the end of the firing sequence. I became aware of the different colours and sizes of the flocks of birds lifting from the trees. The canopy rustled as they screamed and flapped their wings to make their getaway.
In real time there are many occasions when these drills can't be used. But as long as you understand them, and have used them to zero the weapon, there's a good chance you can take on an opportunity target and drop it.
I looked through the sight to check where my round had fallen. I'd hit the top of the main sheet of paper: about five inches high. That was OK, it should be high at this close range: the optic was set at 350. The main thing was that it wasn't higher than seven inches.
The problem was that, although the round was at more or less the correct height for the range, it had gone to the left of the centre line by maybe as much as three inches. At 300 yards that would become nine inches. I would have missed the chest, and maybe hit an arm if he was static and I was lucky. That wasn't good enough.
I lay back and watched the birds coming back to their nests. I waited maybe three minutes before reloading because I needed this to be a cold barrel zero:
when I took the next shot, the barrel had to be as cold as the last. Variations in the barrel's temperature will warp the metal. Taking into account the inconsistency in the ammunition, it would be stupid to zero with a hot, or even warm barrel, since it would be cold when I took the shot.
