‘Oooh yes, let’s!’ Itchy rubbed his hands and moved across. He stopped next to the case, made a bowing gesture, and swept his arm to one side. ‘I mean, after you, of course.’
They shifted the case to the low coffee table and Silva clicked open the catches and opened the lid.
‘Perfect!’ Itchy peered in at the weapon encased in foam. ‘Our trusty old L115A3.’
The weapon was identical to the rifle Silva had used in the army. Bolt action with a five-shot magazine firing .338 rounds. Also in the case was a telescopic sight and a suppressor to minimise sound and muzzle flash.
‘There are better, but I’m used to it. No point trying something new.’
‘This is a one-shot mission, right?’ Itchy said as Silva ran her fingers over the gun’s stock. ‘No second chances.’
‘There’s going to be a firework display, so a miss might not be noticed. But if I hit her with a non-killing shot it’s unlikely I’ll get another one in.’ Even as she spoke there was a small part of her that recoiled at the clinical way she’d said the words.
‘We’d better make sure you don’t miss, then.’ Itchy walked over to the dining table where he’d laid out maps and satellite imagery. ‘Do some practice at the exact distance and get some information into the DOPE book. You ready for that, Silvi?’
‘Yes, I guess.’ She turned to Itchy. He was head down over the documents, working on the numbers. She knew this was black and white for him. Hope had been complicit in the deaths of innocent people and was guilty as charged. All that remained was to carry out the sentence.
The DOPE book was the data of previous engagements, a data reference specific to each individual weapon. Since Silva had never fired this particular rifle, the book was empty. Only by firing the weapon multiple times in different conditions could they work out how to set up the rifle and scope.
Itchy continued to pore over the maps and the pictures, and within a few minutes he had the distance and elevation figures for Positano.
‘Fairchild chose good,’ Itchy said, pointing down at the map. ‘One thousand, two hundred and twenty-nine metres is my best guess until we get in on the ground. I don’t know if he knew what he was doing but there’s a height difference of just twenty metres and perfect line of sight, albeit it at an acute angle. Should make doing the ballistic calcs a doddle. We’ve just got to hope a sirocco doesn’t blow up from the south. Pushing against the cliffs it would cause one hell of an updraught. Accuracy would go out the window.’
‘What would I do without you?’
‘Miss.’ Itchy laughed. ‘Then again, I’ve got to do something for the money, right?’
‘Aside from the wind, what will the weather be like?’
‘You know forecasts, but probably warm. Low to mid-twenties in the evening. Humidity around sixty-five per cent. Air pressure something like one thousand and fifteen millibars.’
‘Sounds perfect.’
‘It needs to be.’ Itchy shook his head and looked at the satellite image. He traced his finger from one side of the bay to the other. ‘It’s one hell of a shot. The bullet’s going to be arcing down like the end of a rainbow by the time it reaches Hope. Be a drop of something like ten metres. And if you’ve only got one chance…’
‘We’d best get out and practise, then,’ Silva said. ‘Come on.’
They hiked up to the trail Gavin had pointed out, leaving the rifle behind but taking stakes, a steel target board and the GPS. They set up a firing position on top of the ridge and selected a suitable target location across a small valley. Navigating their way down through the thick macchia and up the other side was almost impossible, and by the time they got to the top Silva was scratched all over. She pulled out a water bottle from her sack and took a long draught while Itchy wandered around taking GPS readings.
‘Here,’ he said, scuffing the ground with his foot. ‘One-two-two-nine with a twenty-metre difference in elevation. We should be able to simulate the shot perfectly aside from the barometrics. We can adjust for that later.’
‘I’d half forgotten all this stuff. Didn’t think I’d ever be using it again.’
They rigged the steel plate, stuck a paper target to it and headed off back down the valley and up the other side. Itchy took some more GPS readings to double check and they returned to the lodge for lunch.
After they’d eaten, Itchy cleared away the plates.
‘You ready?’ he said. ‘For the serious business?’
Silva nodded, but in truth she felt far from ready. The last time she’d fired a weapon it had ended in tragedy and now all of a sudden the reality of the situation struck her. She was planning to kill Karen Hope, but Hope wasn’t a soldier belonging to an opposing force. She was a civilian. She was guilty of a horrendous crime, but shouldn’t any punishment be legally sanctioned by a court of law?
‘Silvi?’ Itchy stood beside her. ‘She killed your mother.’
‘Yes.’ Silva nodded. ‘You’re right. Let’s do it.’
She gave the rifle a final check and grabbed a box of cartridges. They spent the next few minutes loading several magazines and firing a few close-range shots in the field at the front of the lodge in order to zero the sights. Then they hiked back up the side of the mountain. Itchy set up his spotting scope and pulled out his phone. He opened his ballistics app and shielded the screen from the glare as he began to input various figures. Silva eased herself down and tried to get comfortable with the
