“Heavy, but the muzzle brake helps a lot. I can fire one or two rounds well enough without too much discomfort, so someone of your size should have no trouble.” She lifted a long, black telescopic sight from the table that also seemed quite large. “The scope we have fitted is a Trijicon AccuPoint telescopic sight with a variable zoom of five- to twenty-times. It has an illuminated reticle that requires no battery power and is clearly visible in all light conditions.” She showed him how the scope attached to the weapon’s receiver with just a simple snap catch, making sure he was clear on the procedure. “The sight attaches to the rifle with what’s called a ‘Quick-Detachable’ mount that doesn’t lose zero. We’ll also have a night-vision scope for to you that has an effective range of at least five hundred metres in almost complete darkness.”
“Sounds impressive, that’s for sure,” Kransky conceded, very interested. “I’m assuming the further of the targets are for this?”
“You’d assume correctly,” she confirmed. “The weapon’s already zeroed — give it a try.”
He needed no further urging. As the rest of them looked on, he lifted the weapon once more and slotted the magazine back in under the receiver, jamming it home with the butt of his palm.
“The action is semi-automatic, recoil-operated,” Donelson continued to explain, pointing to relevant parts of the rifle. “Cocking handle is here… safety here… and that’s about all there is to it.”
He hauled back on the cocking handle and allowed it to spring forward, the bolt face collecting a .50-calibre round on the way and loading it into the breech, after which he engaged the safety as she’d demonstrated. He found a cleared space on the bench near the spotting scope, dropped slowly to one knee, and lifted the Barrett to his right shoulder, resting it’s bipod on the table before him. Closing one eye, he squinted through the scope with the other and was impressed with the high-power magnification.
“What’s she zeroed at?” He asked with cold professionalism, the distant targets appearing remarkably close as he stared through the scope.
“Five hundred metres,” Donelson stated softly, and he gave an imperceptible nod as he estimated the range by eye alone and made adjustments in elevation, lifting the cross hairs slightly above his desired point of aim as the others around him covered their ears in anticipation. Inhaling naturally, he disengaged the safety and paused halfway through a released breath before squeezing gently on the trigger.
The M107 bucked heavily against his shoulder, the report painfully loud as the muzzle brake spewed smoke and propellant gas in large clouds on either side of the barrel. As the bright red flash of tracer hurtled away downrange, Kransky noted that the recoil was probably no worse than a 10-bore shotgun, although that was by no means comfortable all the same.
He leaned over and checked the spotting scope, which was already sighted on the targets he’d aimed for, and a smile instantly spread across his face. The shot was a little low — there was a sizeable bullet hole in the centre of the ‘neck’ area of the target rather than the head — but considering he wasn’t accustomed to the weapon, he was still quite pleased.
He’d have been hard pressed to get anywhere near that kind of accuracy at such a range with the German sniper rifle he carried, even in perfect conditions. Although the muzzle velocity of the .50-calibre rifle probably wasn’t much greater than that of his own weapon, if at all, an approximate threefold increase in bullet weight meant that initial velocity would drop off far more slowly, allowing a far greater effective range. The extra bullet weight also meant the weapon’s accuracy would be less at the mercy of prevailing winds and conditions.
Sighting through the scope once more, he repeated the action three more time, leaving the air around them was filled with the smell of cordite, and three large bullet holes now showed in a surprisingly tight group near the head of the first of the further targets.
“Degree of accuracy…?” He inquired.
“Roughly minute-of-angle in ‘out-of-the-box’ condition,” Eileen shrugged, “but we’ve fine tuned the thing a little, and it shoots better than that now by a fair margin. With a bit of practice and the right conditions, you should almost be able to shoot groups as small as ten or twelve inches at a thousand yards.”
“Damn! Good enough to take out a man, that’s for sure!” Kransky did a little mental arithmetic. “Also good enough to use on material targets out to a mile or more, I’d reckon.”
“Correct,” she nodded, “and we have some very effective armour-piercing ammunition to take advantage of that. It won’t penetrate the armour of a tank, although you could certainly break a track, but they’ll take on just about anything short of that at medium ranges.”
“This is all very interesting, Mister Thorne,” Kelly observed with only partial sarcasm, “but does all this actually have anything to do with me?” The irreverent query drew a disapproving glare from Donelson, which he noticed but purposefully ignored. She was in her technical element and didn’t appreciate interruptions from anyone, let alone people she didn’t like.
“Oh, it certainly does have something to do with you, Mister Kelly!” Thorne stated emphatically, although he refused to go on and explain exactly how at that point, instead choosing to step up to the trestle tables beside Donelson. “May I cut in, major…?” He inquired as Kransky looked up from the Barrett’s scope. The American stood and returned the weapon to the table, engaging the safety once more, and Thorne lifted an automatic rifle from the second table and held it up for all to see clearly. It was identical to the weapons the guards had been carrying in that area of the base.
“This is a Kalashnikov AKM assault rifle, Mister Kelly,” Thorne explained slowly as he stepped clear of the table once more. “The British now call it the ‘Number Seven Rifle’, I believe.” He turned the weapon slightly on its side so the Irishman could see what he was doing as he drew back the AKM’s cocking handle. “This rifle weighs about a pound less than the Thompson submachine gun your boys in the IRA are so fond of, and it fires a ‘short’ rifle round that’s far more powerful than the Thompson’s .45ACP pistol cartridge.” He shrugged. “It’s also a damn sight easier to make, not that that’s as much of an issue.” Stepping clear into open ground, he lifted the weapon to his shoulder and sighted down the barrel at the closer targets just three hundred metres away. He fired off five quick, carefully-aimed shots in semi-automatic mode, not one missing the target’s main ‘body’ area.
“The weapon has an effective range of about three hundred yards,” he continued, lowering the rifle once more. “Again, that’s much better than the Thompson, and certainly good enough for ninety percent of all combat situations. It also has one other very handy feature…” He moved a large lever on the weapon’s side and lifted the rifle to his shoulder once more. He held the trigger down longer this time, and the weapon bucked and rattled as it fired off the remaining 25 rounds in its magazine in several loud bursts of automatic fire that caught Kelly — and Kransky, for that matter — completely by surprise.
Although the fire was markedly less accurate, at least a third of the rounds still struck the target Thorne had aimed for and had almost cut it in half. He held the weapon up once more, the muzzle safely pointing skyward as smoke coiled in the air around him.