Chapter 53: Making a Move

After breakfast I wondered down to the range, just keeping an eye on things as the training got started.

I wasn't really surprised by the fact that most of the guys were not very good with hand-guns on the range. They were almost all ex-military and had focused on assault rifles and larger weapons. There were a very few who performed decently, but they were invariably either ex Special Forces or had received post military training, either as part of a sport activity or as a result of the work that they had done. There were a large number who had spent a number of years working in Iraq and Afghanistan. I had heard somewhere that at one stage there were more South Africans working for PMCs in Iraq than the entire official contingent of the British Army; some eight thousand or so.

The skills represented by these guys ranged the spectrum and I knew I was luck to have access to this bunch as a lot of them were at loose ends with the war in the Sandbowl slowing down and the clampdown on the utilisation of PMCs.

We had some nice exercises set up to test, teach and stretch the abilities of all skill levels. In the normal run of things, my first concern was with safety. Teaching it and ensuring that all actions on the range were by the rules so that we could avoid any accidents. I was really pleased to see that I didn't have to worry about that with these guys. They had a relaxed professionalism about them that could be deceiving. There was a fair amount of horsing around, but it was good natured and generally involved the natural competiveness of any group of men. More often than not, the teasing was aimed at pointing out faults or prompting someone to try harder to improve their performance.