My Little Armalite (24 page)

—Yes, nearly all times. This is not so good grouping, I tell you true. We fix this. But for begin is fine.

I stared. The holes in the paper were smaller than you would make with a stabbing biro. But holes they were. I could already shoot! I felt a ludicrous grin tugging at the edges of my mouth. Suddenly, I wanted very much to giggle and slap my leg.

—You think this hole is small, yes? This is the small bore for you. But remember high velocity. So there is no kick and the hole is small here, but the high speed will destroy, how you say, when it go in it will kill all the, in here, I do not know the word, I am sorry.

—Internal organs?

—Yes, yes, exactly. The internal organs. And, of course, the round she will tumble when she hit, so exit wound is much greater, Toni.

—Ah, of course.

—If you get shot close with Armalite, is better than get shot at two hundred yards, because the bullet she is not yet tumbling. She go in straight, out straight, pow.

—Yes, I can see that would be true.

I watched, trying not to smile with pride, as George
placed small black stickers over my ten bullet holes. Six were clearly within the angular outline of the humanoid form; two were high and to the left, one low and to the right. I had only missed completely once. How could it be so easy? I did not trust myself to wire plugs safely enough for use in my kids' bedrooms, but I could already hit a man-shaped target with an assault rifle six times out of ten at fifty yards. And come close enough to scare the shit out of the bastard another three times out of ten, ha ha!

But of course it was easy, I reminded myself.

I was a cultural historian, I should know that. The medieval longbow had a far quicker rate of fire and as great an effective range as the musket right up to the Napoleonic Wars. So why bother using muskets? Because it takes years to train up a longbowman, but any idiot farm labourer can be rounded up, taught to fire a gun reasonably straight in half a day and then sent out to charge cannons or shoot demonstrators. Extraordinary, nonetheless, to have it demonstrated so concretely. No wonder governments keep these things out of people's hands …

—I think you miss these two because you use the hook of your finger, like I tell you not. This pull the gun, like this, you see? Give me your hand, I show you again now.

—Oh yes, I see. Sorry, George.

—No, no, this day is for you to learn. Toni, I see you are wise man, serious about gun. I like this. Most days is just drunks from Germany, England, Holland. This is not why I make career as instructor. You understand me?

—Yes. Actually, George, you know, my career didn't really turn out as I expected either.

—So you understand. I am Muslim from Sarajevo. You know this city? Of course. My father has shop, one
day it will be for me. What do I know about guns? Nothing. But then the Serbs come, the Chetniks. So now we fight, or we die. We have some good guys with us, mujahidin, paid for by CIA. They train me, they teach me Arabic for jihad. All paid for by CIA, yes, ha ha, crazy! But we have no guns, why? Because nice England and nice France say no sell no guns to anyone. Oh, poor us, the Serbs already have the tanks and the artillery! But at last the Americans bomb the Serbs and we are so happy. The airstrikes come, bang! We see a big ammo dump go up, in the mountains, where those Chetnik bastards been shooting us for a year, killing our children, our mothers. Boom! We know this time it is they die. We cheer. Bill Clinton very good guy, Americans very good people. I go to train with US Marines. Never again I am the one who do not know to use gun, I say. Very good. So I am trained. I think maybe I get career in executive protection. But now Americans make this war in Iraq. They cannot win, they will lose. Now everybody think they are stupid, everybody hate them. You think I show my nice certificates from US Marines now? I am so stupid I want my head cut off? I want to go to America. But guess what? I am Muslim. Muslims were good guys in 1994. Now we are bad guys. Not so good to get visa now, oh no! Maybe I go to England. But I think is not much gun work in England?

—We don't really do guns, in England.

—Still, maybe I think I try. I like British Army. I train with them also a little in Germany. I meet very funny guys. So, enough, I waste your money talk of me and my life. Not professional. So sorry. Perhaps we have nice coffee later, then we talk.

—Yes, that would be nice. And really, George, it isn't a problem. It's, well, actually, it's nice to talk.

—Yes, very nice. But now it is time for tuck-tuck.

—Tuck? Well, yes, a sandwich would be nice. I'm pretty hungry, actually. Missed breakfast. And dinner, come to think of it. Amazing, that you use that word.
Tuck
. Did you learn it when you were talking to our army men? I mean, obviously, yes, don't get me wrong, George, it's a perfectly good word for
food
, well,
snacks
, you know. But pretty old-fashioned. Sorry, George, did I say something wrong?

—I do not understand, Toni. You want to stop and eat food?

—Um, well, sorry, I thought you said it was time for
tuck
?

—Tuck-tuck, Toni. I teach you tuck-tuck next. Two quick shots.

—Oh. Oh, I see. God, sorry, yes, of course.

—You are happy we go on? I can stop. Karel can make you sandwich.

—No, Christ, George, please. This is what I came for. And I'm very glad I did. Tuck-tuck, eh? Two quick shots?

—Yes. This is very important, Toni. Think, Toni. If you need to shoot them once, you need to shoot them twice.

—Well, yes, I suppose you would.

—The Israelis are very
haa haa! aah
! Always they go full auto, but with full auto most times the third shot go where you think? Yes, no one knows. Also, is hard to count your shots with full auto. I can do this counting now, full auto, but many times when I start I get it wrong. This is very important. You must know always how many shells you have left, or maybe you see two bad guys, you think, aha, now they are mine, but you have only one shell left. You do not know this. You get one but then, ah! Poor you! This is why with US special forces always we use just two quick shots, you see, not full auto, just tuck-tuck.

—Right. Tuck-tuck.

—So, this time you load the magazine all yourself, yes? Good, that is better. Always tap on the table. If you wearing helmet you can tap on this too, like that, make sure the bullets all right inside. No jams. You try. Yes. That is good! So. Now you put clip in. You are on safety, no problems, you see? And now cock. And now you stand like so. I show you. Sorry, leg like this, like I show you. Good. This arm a little lower. I tell you. You watch I do, you copy me. You take all weight of gun only in right hand, to see. I always think this is best. Good. You see? Balance like this. The left hand now, just to steady her. Good. This is low ready position. You can walk like this all day, you see? You can look around, you do what I do, Toni. You can look around, maybe you see something, easy to bring her up, yes, like this. Oh, nothing. Back down. Very good, Toni! But now, aha! You damn sure you see something, some bad guys there, there, and there maybe. So now you go high ready. Still you can look around and easy cover your ass, but now when you see the bad guys, is very simple just swing up this little bit, then tuck-tuck.

—I see, yes. Yes, ha.

—So, now we try with live. You are cocked, is good, so now switch to fire. Do what I do. Low ready. Ah, over there, I think bad guys. High ready. Yes, I see bad guys, that target there, three o'clock, Toni.

BANG-BANG
.

—You get him, Toni! Just tuck-tuck, you see. Exactly! Very good. And again we do it. Low ready. We walk, we watch. Oh, look out, Toni, bad guys five o'clock. No no, five o'clock is over here, Toni.

—Oh, sorry …

Cold? Not any more.

We stood and we knelt and we lay prone. We shifted from target to target mid-clip, at his calmly shouted command. We let the magazines drop where they fell and slapped in new ones with scarcely a break, taking care to stagger our changeovers and thus be able to cover each other from our virtual foes as we did so. I began to see what George meant about my tweed. It made no noise at all. From somewhere beyond the big sandbanks, the Russian Army fetishists were firing off incredible, teeth-juddering blasts from a World War II heavy machine gun. I could hear my heart thudding fast inside my earphones.

Swiftly our notional enemies fell before our fire. I don't know who George was shooting at in his head (I imagined that it was nineties Serbian mortar groups), but my own targets were very well-defined, my own mission clear.

Margaret Thatcher I got with ten out of ten shots, five bursts of tuck-tuck right into her chest, the bitch. I turned round to grin at George so quickly that my ear-protectors fell off, then forgot about them in my excitement and nearly deafened myself when I moved swiftly on to waste Blair, for whom I decided a few in the face would be more fitting, as the reward of treachery. George rolled over a wall and landed cat-like on the ground beside me.

—This is good, Toni, your enemies fall. You slot them good.

—Slot?

—Is what British special forces say. Always they slot people. Is not good English?

—Slot? Oh yes, it's a perfectly good word. I just never heard it in this context. I'm not sure what it must be derived from. Presumably from some notion of fate, of us all having a
slot
allotted to us? Or perhaps from slot as in a
slot in the earth
, a grave?

—Toni, you are clever man. You know much, I see this. But still you must learn. When you kneel to shoot, no bone on bone. Your elbow here, not there on your knee bone.

—No bone on bone, gotcha, George.

—Yes, you learn good with me, Toni. Now, this time I cover you, you go first, yes?

—Rightyho!

How refreshing to be the beginner pupil for once. A very fertile experience for any university teacher, when you thought about it, to learn absolutely from scratch a subject which they had never expected to encounter. Enlightening. Especially with regard to teaching students from underprivileged and unconventional entrance streams. Absolutely. Should be part of every colleague's Best Practice. Must mention this place to those pathetic cretins in the Staff Development and Quality Delivery Unit, ha ha!

And how enlivening, how useful for the cultural historian indeed, to feel that one is acquiring an age-old though of course essentially undesirable human skill. Guns, after all, are merely the latest development in missile weapons (as opposed to shock weapons), no fundamentally different in philosophical principle or tactical use to a Stone Age bow and arrow (as opposed to a club). Get them at distance, enemy or prey. And fascinating to discover this whole new vocabulary.
Mentally stimulating, rather. A long time since I had seriously learned something entirely new. Bit rut-stuck, had I become? Good for the synapses, this? Undoubtedly.

Tuck-tuck
.

And indeed as our guns jerked and banged, I found myself thinking with a whole new clarity, as if my mind itself had been switched firmly on to ‘safe' for far too many years.

I mean, when you thought about it (
tuck-tuck
), my allegedly English fear of guns was perfectly stupid. I (
tuck-tuck
), as a sophisticated intellectual and cultural analyst, really should know better than to merely accept such alleged normality at face value! Why, in fact, had Englishmen (
tuck-tuck
) for many centuries rarely been encouraged, let alone obliged, to train with guns? Simple: because having (
tuck-tuck
) led the way in deposing and/or decapitating their rightful kings by force of arms, they had then given up killing each other and had taken to attacking foreigners with a bloody great navy (
tuck-tuck
,
tuck-tuck
), to which over time they so devoted themselves that from Trafalgar onwards no one could threaten them, whilst they could intervene at will in the politico-military settlements of others. For the next century the Royal Navy was to the world what the USAF became after World War II: a force which, if it could not actually occupy and control territories, could damn well bugger them up (
tuck-tuck
). Having been overtaken by technology and America during the Second World War, this navy found itself briefly eclipsed by the RAF before being gratefully re-equipped with the biggest gun (
tuck-tuck
) ever devised by man, one that could level cities Bible-style and which only a few other countries on earth were allowed to possess.

No wonder Englishmen don't need to know about guns.

Tuck-tuck
.
Tuck-tuck
.
Tuck-tuck
.

And think:
Bleak House
, you could pop into a shooting gallery just off Leicester Square and blaze away any time you fancied.
Five dozen rifle and a dozen pistol
. Dr Watson casually packing his revolver in his stout Edwardian luggage without Conan (
tuck-tuck
) Doyle making any great fuss about the telling. Elementary. Always go armed east of Aldgate! You could hardly call Dr Watson un-English!

Tuck-tuck
.
Tuck-tuck
.

Now
that
felt right. Yes, unless I was much mistaken, that would turn out to be
bloody
good grouping. So much for Ronald bloody Reagan. Press with finger, let it drop, in with the new clip,
chonk
! Already cocked, you see! Yes, I have to say, George is quite right about the AR-15, it really is rather …

Over there, George? Right. Mine.
Tuck-tuck
. John Major. Well, perhaps he didn't really deserve that.
Collateral damage
. Sorry, John.

Morover, consider: what, when you thought outside the liberal box for just a moment, could be more convenient for capitalism than an entire country full of people who have been nurtured to fear and loathe the very instruments without which they can, if and when the need comes, be cowed easily into submission by a few battalions of the armed lackeys of big business and the corporate state, eh? Oh yes! Whereas compare and contrast the capacity of the small wee Bogside to resist, simply because armed with a few dozen Armalites. Precisely! Ever since the Normans built castles no Saxon peasants could ever hope to storm, there has been an arms race between the ruling class and the rest of us. And look who's won it. Well, quite. I mean, imagine for a minute how differently the Miners' Strike might have panned out if we'd had a few of these babies!