Chapter 16

Now that Jack had joined them, they needed another rifle. George decided that this piecemeal scheme of getting weapons was a waste of effort. They needed to stock up on weapons so that they would be available when new recruits showed up. Also, George had mentioned trying to kill judges, etc. by sniping when he last talked to Canada. Henry suggested that he go for a larger caliber weapon, something in the order of a rifle for hunting big game. He suggested that they look for one of the new recreations of the M14 military rifle. That was a heavy rifle that fired a military round and could penetrate much of the light armor that a victim might try to use.

Henry said that he had seen such a rifle from Italy, and it was an excellent copy of the original. It had the further advantage of having the potential to be converted to fully automatic, though there was a problem in controlling it when fired that way. It was clip-fed so that it could be reloaded quickly, and the clips from Italy held 20 rounds, which should be enough for their kind of work. Henry promised to send some pictures and a more detailed description to Joseph's shadow e-mail box in the next few minutes. Thus, when they went on their gun hunt, they had a good description of the M14 to work with.

In keeping with the idea of looking at stores as far as possible from their home base, they went completely across town to visit their first store. Here they found four of the .22 rifles of the style they used, and they picked up the pistols, etc. that they wanted. They also grabbed two cases of LR ammunition.

This store was a lost cause for the M14, though, so they moved on. The next store had a couple of rifles they took and a few loose boxes of LR ammunition, but nothing else. They had similar results at the next two places they visited, but then they struck pay-dirt. This store, which was a very upscale establishment, had two of the M14s in stock, and two cases of ammunition. They also found two extra clips, so they took them.

That's when they spotted the telescopic sights. Otto remembered reading about them when he was doing his original search for books on weapons. They weren't sure what they were getting, but they picked up four of the most expensive ones in the store. They weren't even sure that they could be used with the M14s or their other rifles, but the price was right, so they took them.

It was now close to sunrise, so they needed to scoot home. They were using the furniture delivery van, and Nancy was driving. She had taken lessons from Helen, and she was OK at the job as long as there were no other vehicles on the road, but she tended to wander from lane to lane, and that could be a problem if they were spotted by cops.

They had been gone so long that Mavis had taken over the cooking job. She had been uncertain when George would get back, and there was plenty of time to fix one of her favorite dishes, a sort of pseudo-Mexican dish that was not too spicy for American tastes. The dish turned out well, and Mavis was complimented by all on how tasty it was.

After dinner, George tried out the M14. Son ... Of ... A ... Slave! ... Talk about recoil! This rifle was a bugger after shooting the .22, but it was not too bad for him to master it. He was just surprised by the difference between the two rifles. An interesting point was that the Italians had loaded the cartridges with a heavier powder load than had been specified by the government back in 1906. George didn't know that, nor would he have fully understood why they did it if he had known, but the idea was to get a flatter trajectory for the bullet. That should make it easier to hit an object at different ranges without having to change the sights in an emergency. George could use all of the help that he could get, though he did not fully appreciate that fact at this moment.

This was a rich person's toy, so there was an extensive manual that had come with the rifle. It explained everything that George needed to know about the care and use of the rifle, so he was very happy with it in only a few days. Finally, he was ready to take it on a mission, and everybody was anxious to see what the weapon could do.

George had carefully measured off the 25m range specified in the manual and carefully zeroed in the sights. He now had his base for setting the sights for up to 500 meters. He sincerely doubted that he would ever shoot at anything that far away, but he faithfully went through the procedure, anyway. The instructions suggested that he set the sights for 100m, as that would cover 85% of his estimated targets. Of course, the manual was talking about hunting animals such as elk and such, but George figured that the same advice should be good for shooting at humans.

They reached their favorite hunting zone and went up on the roof of the nearest building. On Henry's suggestion, George had picked up a set of binoculars with night-vision capability. He used them to scan the neighborhood, and he could not find any worthwhile targets.

In disgust, he happened to look about three blocks away, and there he saw two cops harassing a civilian. From the woman's dress, she was not one of the rich bunch that he hated so much, so he though that he would help the woman out if he could. This was pushing his range limit, but he reset his sights and carefully lined up on the cop who seemed to be the leader in the harassment. George went through the routine in preparing to shoot and squeezed of his shot.

He was kind of disappointed when nothing seemed to happen at first. Then, after a noticeable delay, the cop kind of jerked in place and fell over; he knew that he had hit her. The other cop was totally startled and frozen in place. This gave George enough time to line up a shot on her, and he squeezed off his shot. There was the same delay, then the second cop fell. The woman being harassed realized that her chance had come, and she ran off before any more cops could show up.

As it happened, she just got away before two more cops showed up. George shot them, too, but it did take two shots to knock off the second cop. He was far enough away that he wondered if any of the policewomen had even heard the sound of his shots. Certainly, women on the street who were closer to him did not react to the shots, so they probably did not hear them, either. That was a useful fact to file away for future reference.

George didn't know if he had killed the cops quickly or slowly, but he was sure that they were dead because he could not see them move when he looked through his binoculars. Each one had a red splotch on her chest, and he figured that must be blood from the bullet wound. His guess was confirmed when he saw two red splotches on the uniform of the woman he had needed two shots to put down. Well, he was certainly pleased with his new toy, and he was anxious to try it out against more enemies at a distance. It was a lot of fun to shoot at them because of the added challenge of the extra distance.

They had to move to another building before they could find any more targets. This time, the cops were closer, so he let the three others with the .22s shoot at them. He just stood aside and acted as backup. That was six cops in one evening, and they had not been out as long as usual. It looked like the long-range capability of the hunting rifle was well worth the effort.

They hunted some more and were pleased to find a group of people arriving at a posh restaurant. The interesting point here, was that one of the women was wearing a very fancy uniform. George had no idea what the uniform signified, but he couldn't resist taking a shot at her. The giveaway that she was important was that she was obviously surrounded with bodyguards. That made the target that much more delicious!

She was only about 120 meters away, so he didn't think that it was necessary to reset his sights. He lined up the shot on her head, not for any special reason, it was just more fun to do it that way. He aimed carefully and fired. There was no perceptible delay before the woman's head exploded, blowing brains and blood all over those people standing nearby.

One of the bodyguards pushed another especially well dressed woman into the front seat of the car, obviously to gain some protection for her. The bodyguard then lay down over her to add some additional protection. This was another tempting target, so George fired at them, too. He had only the bodyguard to aim at, but there was a good chance that he would hit the woman that she was protecting if the bullet just went all the way through the first woman.