Chapter 32

Rural Oxfordshire. Early October.

Millicent Neve stood on the large paved area outside her father’s old and rambling manor house, watching the sun come up. It was a cold but sunny day, a slight breeze from the north-east made it even colder, but there was a beautiful cloud free sky, and the view out over the estate was lovely. From the outside, and indeed from much of the inside of the mixed use estate, nothing looked out of place. However, two rooms in the house, the entire stable block, one of the patches of woodland, and a couple of the fields had all been given over for use by the just over fifty people who had slowly descended upon them to form one over-strength company of men and women ready, willing and able to fight against Thorn’s people.

Millie knew that on other farms and estates, in a block stretching from Oxfordshire to the south coast, and probably much farther afield, there were other companies. Most of them were organised, with the help of people like her father’s estate manager Tony Goodwin, into the exact same form that a light infantry company would be organised.

There had been a couple of hiccups. A couple of years earlier the South Buckinghamshire company had had half its men arrested, and the rest had made a run for it. Most had ended up in Berkshire, but a couple had gone elsewhere. There had been nothing in South Bucks ever since, as the Patrol were suddenly everywhere. It was too close to High Wycombe, where the local police had almost started an insurrection, and to Chequers, the Prime Minister’s country house. Even the North Buck’s company, based not far from Milton Keynes, had been forced to keep it’s collective head down.

Slowly, and quietly, they had organised and recruited, grown and trained, and waited. Weapons and ammunition had trickled slowly in, but in far too small a quantity to be really useful. Then, just a month before her father’s ‘promotion’, he had had a Confederacy visitor and within weeks they had started to receive the arms and ammunition they needed. Older weapons vanished, new ones arrived, and soon they had all they expected to need. Millie hadn’t found out for some months where these new weapons were coming from, but by the time she did, they were already starting to produce them on the estate. The roof of the manor house was now festooned with solar panels, part of the cellar now contained solar powered batteries, and there were even a few wind turbines scattered about the house and grounds. Their electricity supply had shot through the roof, which was just as well as their usage had gone sky-high too. Even so, some days they had to limit what they switched on as other things were too important to be switched off.

Like everyone else in the company, Millie had been put through a set of basic training that she, and they, had all hated. Then she had been given a rifle. Only a point 22, but a real rifle nonetheless. It was one she had used a few times as she was growing up, but now, with proper training, she had discovered a skill. She had quickly graduated to an old 303 Lee Enfield bolt action rifle, then a modern five point five-six first with the single shot L98 cadet rifle, then the L85 and L86. She’d had real fun setting them to fully automatic and just letting loose. Finally she had tried the larger calibre longer ranged sniper rifles. With all of them, she had turned out to be a crack shot. Although she had mastered the L115 long-range rifle, it was the L129 snipers rifle she had really found to her liking, and was now her weapon of choice. She was quite a small woman, and the eight-point-five-eight L115 was a little too big for comfort. Only with a great deal of padding had she been able to control it and not dislocate her shoulder.

She had loved her new found skill, and loved the fact that she was the best marksman in town, in the county.

Today she was probably going to have to use that skill in anger though, and the thought of actually taking a life terrified her. Up until now her targets had mostly been inanimate, but had also included about half a dozen pheasant, a quail and a few dozen rabbits, all of which helped with the food supply. Neither bird nor rabbit had ever been an issue for her in the past. Over the years she had shot enough rabbits with the shot gun. Target shooting with the smaller rounds was harder, it was at greater range for one thing, but still she had had no qualms about it. A man was another thing though.

Gareth Boase, one of Thorn’s chief toadies and, as it happened, a man who had a particular dislike for her father, was expected to be coming through a local village later that day. The convoy was heading from Chequers in Buckinghamshire, to the old RAF base at Brize Norton that the patrol had commandeered a few months earlier and turned into a prison camp.

It was pure chance that somebody, neither Millie nor her father knew who, had found both his itinerary and his route, and had been able to pass it on. They had been given not quite thirty hours notice, and planning had swung into operation immediately. Boase was one of about seven or eight top tier TaF people, all of whom were in the sights of the Maquis. Unfortunately they went around in armoured Bentleys and Rolls Royces, with security escorts, so getting at them was extremely difficult.

The main, single carriage way, road approached the tiny hamlet from due south, with a sharp left hand turn in front of the village green. This forced vehicles to slow to between ten and fifteen MPH as they negotiated it. The plan, such as it was, called for a sniper closer in to shoot out the tyre of the preceding escort vehicle, just after it had turned the corner, forcing the already slow moving vehicles to go even slower. This was not expected to be difficult as it was believed to be an ordinary Security Patrol ex-police car, so a high powered air rifle at relatively close range was to be used. This had three advantages: It was hoped the air pellet would disintegrate, leaving no evidence that it was anything other than an accident, a tyre blowing out through age and normal wear and tear. Even if the pellet was found was expected to be so deformed that it would be impossible to identify; the air rifle itself was all but silent. Importantly though, it would be from a completely different direction from where Millie would be shooting. Even if the Security Patrol suspected something, it was hoped they would be looking the wrong way. If that happened though, they were already in trouble, because that shooter would be barely thirty yards from the cars, and only hidden by a dip down to a stream. There was half a dozen birch trees a couple of meters from the edge of the road, between the sniper and the road, and as no one could hide behind them, it was hoped this would indirectly protect the close-in sniper. He would have support, but would not be able to quickly escape without being seen. It was all very definitely a botch job and no-one truly liked it.

Gareth Boase’s nature meant that if his stretched Rolls Royce was unable to get past the stationary vehicle, as was expected on the tight corner, he was likely to get out and start ordering people around. That was Millie’s cue to bring her silenced L115A5 long range snipers rifle into action. She would be shooting from just over a mile away, seventeen hundred and thirty seven metres according to the laser range finder. Give or take a couple of metres depending upon where exactly Boase happened to be at the time. From that distance, it would take three or four seconds for the bullet to arrive at her target, and she hoped to have rechambered and fired a second round for good measure.

Heavy footsteps sounded behind her, telling her that her sniper teammate was approaching.

“Sergeant?”

“Yes Corporal?” answered Millie.

“It’s time. We need to be heading to the hide now.”

Millie just nodded. It would take forty minutes to get to the hide, and she would need to be in place a good hour before time. She would need to make herself comfortable before she got set up, checking the wind, humidity and visibility. She hoped she could get off three or four ranging shots, but couldn’t risk more than that. Even silenced, the powerful rifle firing an over-pressured round was not quiet, but it was hoped that at that distance the sound would not be noticed. Too many in too short a time, even that distance from the quiet hamlet, could still attract unwanted attention. “We should have got a few motor cyclists to start revving engines,” she muttered. “Just to hide our shots.”

“Yeah. Too late now though. Something for next time maybe.” Corporal Neil Sharkey was her spotter. He was almost as good a shot as she, and would have both a 7-62mm L129A3, as well as a spotter’s telescope. The L129 didn’t have the range, but would be useful if they ended up being spotted and having to react to Security Patrollers charging them. If they missed and were not seen, and there was still time, they would swap positions and Neil would take over the L115 to take up to three more shots with the remaining cartridges in the magazine. Millie would then become his spotter, whilst also taking over the role of radio operator. Despite building up her strength, and using all the shoulder padding she could, half a dozen or so shots was the most she could manage before her shoulder became too sore for her to fire the heavy gun accurately.

A second team would be about six hundred meters away, providing support if necessary, but also giving a slightly different angle for if Boase didn’t play ball. They had a fractionally shorter range, about fifty metres, but as Millie was the best shot of the four, she would be the lead shooter. She had to be in the best place to get him if he went where he was expected.

She nodded again and picked up her heavy rifle. “Come on then.”

Late the previous evening, they had created a hide in a slight dip in the hillside to the south. Access to it was across open ground, but they got in and made themselves as comfortable as they could. Oddly, now she was in position, she felt far more relaxed. Her breathing had slowed, her pulse rate had dropped a little, and her heart was no longer pounding in her chest.

She settled into her position and slowly and calmly set up and checked her rifle, padding and adjusting the tripod to ensure it was stable and perfectly level. She looked down at their ‘target’, a small red circle painted onto a tree about five metres beyond where Boase was expected to be, but a little lower than his head to take into account the fact that she was a good fifty metres higher then he would be. It was only an approximation, but it was the best they could do at such short notice. “Shot one,” she said some ten minutes later. She slowly squeezed the trigger.

“Way low. You were at least two hundred metres short, I saw the kick up on the road.”

“Okay,” she muttered.

“Shot two,” she called after a small adjustment.

“Seventeen to twenty meters left” reported Neil some fifteen seconds later. “Height seems to be about right.”

“Uh huh,” she adjusted her aim very slightly, and re settled her grip. “Shot three.”

“Three to five metres right, about ten high, you hit the berm by the stream.”

“That was wind. No way it should have moved twenty meters.”

“Wind on second or third?”

Millie paused, considering, looking at the ground between her and the target. “Both probably.” Again she fractionally adjusted herself. She waited, one eye peering through the sight, the other around it, at the ground between her and her target. “Shot four,” she called after another two minutes.

“On the money,” called Neil a few seconds later. “Four and a half second flight time.”

Millie carefully checked her scope, noting where the individual reticules were in relation to her imaginary target, then carefully rested the rifle down, moved back and ejected the magazine.

In silence Neil handed her a full replacement, taking the almost empty one to refill. Once he had done so, he handed her a water bottle. Millie took a couple of sips and then settled in to wait, slowly exercising her shoulder.

“Extreme range, and not perfect conditions,” whispered Neil softly.

“Uh huh. There’s going to be a lot of luck in this shot,” she muttered, more to herself than to her companion. “A hell of a lot.” Her mind wandered a little as she settled down to wait, while keeping an eye on the weather conditions.

It was four years since her father’s estate had turned into an armed camp; she had initially been sceptical, then accepting, and finally a committed believer in what her father was doing. It had been almost three months before she had found out about it, and although she had initially scoffed at the idea, things she had seen and heard during her daily commute to, and work in, London had quickly changed her mind.

When she had finally made up her mind to join the organisation, her father hadn’t been against her officially joining, but he hadn’t encouraged her either. He’d been far more concerned that she was doing it for the right reasons, not just because he was involved.

Her mind was brought back to the present moment by the sound of the muted crack of a muffled rifle shot. Turning her head slightly, she lifted her binoculars and saw that the other team were doing their ranging shots. Like her they took just four shots, over about fifteen minutes, to get ranged in. Now they all just had to wait. She glanced quickly at her watch, still about thirty minutes to go, assuming Boase was on time. With the short amount of time they had had to plan this operation, she didn’t know whether to pray he was early, that he was late, or even that he had changed his itinerary or route. There were far too many things that could still go wrong, and many of them would get her or her people killed.

“About seven minutes,” she heard Neil say softly a few minutes later. She knew he was listening in on the radio, the earphones clamped to his head so that he could hear the faint signal, while any noise the radio made did not disturb her. A spotter a few miles farther down the road would have radioed that he could see the convoy. It was a little early.

She nodded and slowly moved back into position. Slowing her breathing, she aimed the rifle at where she expected the target to be, and waited.

The convoy of six cars came into view through the trees, slowing exactly as expected for the tight corner. In moments it was obvious that the initial target hadn’t been stopped. “Shit,” she muttered, but then it pulled into the side of the road, all the other cars pulling in behind it.

The driver got out and went around the back of the car. He bent down to have a look at the rear-nearside tyre, the one farthest from her, and in fact from the drivers position. Millie guessed that the air rifle had punctured the tyre, but in a way that just cleanly let out the air, instead of exploding the tyre. Unfortunately it meant that there was now room for the other cars to move past. She held her breath for a moment, waiting to see whether their target would emerge, willing him to emerge.

He did. Millie followed his movements in her sight as he stalked towards the temporarily immobilised vehicle. Another figure got out of the car, following Boase, but she was concentrating on her target, and didn’t pay any attention to it.