Random Violence by Jassy Mackenzie Read Free Book Online

her eyes from the worst of the glare, which meant she was able to see the owner of the range glow-ering down at her.
    “How old is this child?”
    “She’s thirteen today,” her father replied proudly.
    “Well, she’s too young to be shooting on my range,” the owner said. “Fourteen years and over, that’s the rules here. I don’t want the police on my back, thank you very much.”
    Commissioner de Jong didn’t tell the owner he was, in fact, the police. And he wasn’t discouraged. His daughter was going to have a shooting lesson for her birthday. They’d set their minds on it.
    They ended up at a game reserve on the outskirts of the Kalahari desert. The game ranger there was an old friend of her father. Jade knew that because he called her father Rooinek and her father called him Doppies.
    Doppies led Jade onto their range, which was just a long dirt track sloping down into a valley and up the other side.
    He stopped to point out a large bird with rusty-red feathers on its head. It was perched in a wizened-looking tree.
    “Do you know what bird that is?”
    Jade shook her head. “No, sir.” She wasn’t going to call him Doppies.
    “Red-necked falcon. We don’t often get them here. They like those camelthorn trees.”
    Jade took another look. It looked just like any other bird to her.
    “Come on,” her father said. “Enough about birds. Let’s get on to what we came here for.”
    “She can have a go with this.” Doppies passed what he called an elephant rifle to her father. Jade looked at it in amazement. It was almost as tall as she was.
    “It’s not an elephant rifle,” Jade’s father corrected him, shaking his head at the folly of a man who could think that species of birds were more important than types of gun. “That’s what he tells the ignorant tourists,” he said to her. “This is a Musgrave 30-06. Locally-made barrel. If you’re shooting lighter bullets at targets far away, you’ll kill a small buck with it easily. Close up, with heavier ammo, you’ll get a kudu or a gemsbok. I know people who’ve taken lions down with them at close-range. Now then, this one’s a bolt-action. What does that mean?”
    “It means you operate it by hand.” Jade had swotted up on her gun knowledge in preparation for her big day.
    “And is it more accurate than a pump-action shotgun?”
    “Yes, it is. And it’s more powerful.”
    “Good girl.”
    Doppies watched this exchange. He muttered some-thing that Jade thought sounded like “Jesus Christ help the child.”
    Her father showed her how to lie prone on the dusty track. Doppies put his jacket over a ridge on the ground and rested the barrel of the gun on it. Jade hefted the gun in her hands, her left elbow wedged into the ground for support. She pressed the butt of the gun against her cheek.
    “If you do that, you’ll break your jaw,” the ranger told her, pushing the gun away from her face. “These guns have a massive recoil. Hold it against your shoulder, or you’ll be sorry.”
    Jade didn’t want to break her jaw. Her nervousness and the weight of the gun made her arms start to shake. She looked through the telescopic sight. Far, far away through the milky glass, she could see a Coke can propped upright on the ground. It was on the track on the other side of the valley. It was so distant that if she took her eye away from the sight, she couldn’t see it at all.
    The can seemed to be circling in a large orbit that took it way outside the crosshairs of the sight. She knew the can wasn’t moving. Her trembling arms were causing the rifle to circle. If it moved like that, there was no way she would hit her target.
    Jade took a deep breath and steadied the rifle. She stared at the target and tried to calm her nerves. The circles became smaller. She pulled back on the trigger, feeling resistance. Now she thought it was ready to fire.
    She focused on the target. It still moved in tiny circles. There was nothing she could do about that.