by James Tarr
Brian stared at her for a second, then looked at Dave. “I hate you.”
Dave laughed and smiled. He moved a step closer to Gina and murmured in her ear, “You’re not wearing a bra, are you?” It wasn’t really a question.
Her only response was a smile.
The state championship consisted of nine separate and different shooting exercises called stages. Most of the targets were cardboard silhouettes, although there were a number of falling steel targets as well. Competitors began each stage in the mandated starting position, which could be standing with their loaded handgun holstered or sitting in a chair with their pistol unloaded in a nearby drawer. Every stage was different.
Upon the start signal from an electronic timer which actually heard the shots, the shooter had to engage the paper targets with at least two shots each, and engage the steel targets until they fell down. Accuracy, Power, and Speed were the words to live by in “action” pistol shooting, and Dave liked to say it was the shooting sports’ equivalent of running with scissors.
Two hours later they’d already shot three out of the nine stages, and the match was moving along quickly, but Gina was obviously getting bored.
“How long is this match going to last?” she asked Dave.
“We’ve got nine stages, and we’ve shot three in just over two hours. What with the boxed lunches they’re going to be bringing out, I’m guessing that it will be another five hours or so.”
“Oh God.” While the shooting was somewhat interesting, there just wasn’t a lot of it. Dave’s first stage had been what he’d called a “speed shoot”, where he’d stood in one spot, drew his pistol, and shot four paper targets and two pieces of steel. It had taken him maybe three seconds. Then she’d had to wait forty-five minutes before he’d done anything else. Boooooring.
Dave caught the knowing smile Taran threw his way. “If you’re bored, why don’t you ask Taran about the time Jennifer Garner shot him in the nuts,” Dave suggested. Taran had worked with all the principals of The Kingdom, and Dave was sure that was the main reason why the climactic running gun battle in the movie was so epicly awesome.
“You know Jennifer Garner?” Gina gushed.
“So are most of the guys shooting here today cops?” Gina asked after lunch, while they were waiting for the shooting to start back up.
“Oh, no,” Brian told her. “We’ve got what, eighty people shooting the match? How many are cops or in law enforcement Gunfighter, four, five?”
Dave looked around. “Something like that.” He thought out loud, and pointed each out in turn. “Downriver cop, he’s a corrections officer, and somebody here is with Oakland County. Plus we’ve got this jack-booted thug with us,” he said with a twinkle in his eye, pointing at Al Safie. Safie held up a hand like his name had been called. Dave looked at his girlfriend. “Most cops aren’t much interested in shooting, and really aren’t very good shots,” he told her.
“No,” she said, assuming he was just messing with her.
“I’m serious,” he insisted.
She looked at the guy sitting with them, Al, who they’d told her was an FBI agent. He’d been staring at her tits all day, but she didn’t mind. That’s why she’d paid all that money for them. You’ve got to spend money to make money. “Is he telling me the truth?”
“I wish I could say he wasn’t, but that’s pretty much the case,” Al admitted. “I think it’s a little better with the FBI, but I spent six months last year running the range, and most of our agents only shoot when they’re required to qualify with their weapons.”
Brian jumped in. “Compare that to the average recreational shooter, who heads to the range, what, once or twice a month? And forget practical shooters, we’re on another level entirely.” Dave nodded, he had to agree. His dryfire practice alone was five or six hours a week.
Safie went on. “I try to get them interested in shooting, come to some of the local matches here, but nobody’s taken me up on it.” He’d actually almost been shot twice by accident during annual quals by a couple of agents who had no grasp of muzzle awareness or how to keep their finger off the trigger.
“It ain’t that tough to pass most department pistol qualifications,” Brian added. “There’s a reason for that.”
This didn’t make any sense to her. “But don’t they…I mean, they carry a gun every day—”
Brian shook his head. “They carry a gun, but what do they do? Cops do paperwork every day, and drive cars. They’re great at paperwork and driving. And arresting idiots and wrestling with drunks. Shooting? Shit, chances are if they have to shoot somebody, they did something wrong, weren’t paying attention. Most cops never have to pull their gun their whole career, right? What’s the saying?”
Dave said, “Cops do paperwork, shooters shoot.” He looked at Taran. “Haven’t you worked with a lot of high-speed military spec-ops types? Aren’t those the guys who are doing a lot of the technical advising in Hollywood? Retired SEALs and Delta? How good are they?”
“Yeah, I’ve hung around with a lot of the ninja deathstalkers,” Taran admitted. “A few of them are awesome shots. Most of them are okay shots. Not great, but okay. Mediocre. But they’re mediocre shots crawling over glass carrying backpacks filled with snakes. Shooting people across the room doesn’t take a lot of skill, it just takes a lot of balls. Especially if they’re shooting back.” He nodded at Dave.
“Hey, were you in on the arrest of that DPD SWAT team?” Dave asked Al Safie. It had been all over the news for the past week. Freaking Detroit Police Department SWAT team members doing armed robberies of strip clubs. Only in Detroit. He figured they’d end up in jail with the former mayor who’d been convicted of corruption, or racketeering, or bribery…something like that. Maybe all of that. There’d been so many trials it was hard to keep track exactly what the mayor had been convicted of, versus what he’d just been charged with. “I bet that was scary as hell, considering most of the assholes you go up against don’t know how to shoot.”
“I can’t really talk about it,” Safie told them, but he’d been face to face with Paul Wilson when they’d arrested him. They’d simply knocked on his front door and told him he was under arrest. His wife and daughters were home, and Wilson had been pissed about being arrested in front of them, but he’d gone quietly, without incident. Hell, that’s why they arrested him at his house with his wife and kids—less chance of him doing something stupid like pulling a gun. Although, just in case, they’d had agents all around the house.
All the other arrests had gone smoothly as well, except for Edward Mitchell. He’d been at his apartment, alone, and blown his top when the agents told him why they were there. Mitchell had gotten in a couple of punches before they’d dog-piled him into a bookcase, and then it was over but for the swearing.
Safie had spent more than half of his twelve years with the Bureau in various sandy shitholes of the world working on multi-jurisdictional anti-terrorism task forces. Thanks to a very interesting family life, he was fluent in both Arabic and Chaldean, which was actually an evolved version of Aramaic, and his language skills had made him very highly prized.
When he wasn’t in Iraq, or Yemen, he still found himself getting dragged into the same kind of cases, what with the huge Arabic population in Dearborn. It was actually kind of refreshing, getting to arrest good-ol’-fashioned Americans for a change.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Dave said with a smile. It was that kind of cool shit that had made him want to join the FBI in the first place.
“You say California’s fucked up, but at least we’re not arresting our own SWAT teams,” Butler said. There was suddenly a lot of activity around them. It looked like it was time to start back up, and Dave was first up after lunch.
Dave waved his hand as the Range Officer called out, “Next shooter!” He stepped into the start position, which was heels against the paint marks on one of the boards. The shooting area, the area that he had to stay within while engaging targets, was marke
d off by long wood slats nailed into the ground. For this stage it was a bit of a simulated hallway, and he’d have to advance down the hallway, engaging various targets through ports in the walls. There were a few tough shots, but mostly after the buzzer went off it would be balls to the wall at max speed, as all the targets were close.
“Shooter, do you understand the course of fire?” the RO asked him. Dave had known the RO for years, but range commands, at a big match, were codified and very formal. Dave nodded. “Then make ready.”
As Dave loaded and reholstered his pistol, the RO looked back at the people walking by, coming back from lunch. “Line’s going hot!” he warned them, and those few people who didn’t have their hearing protection in place quickly reached for it.
“So, did you win?” Gina asked Butler as they were carrying their gear back to Dave’s car. The weather had been nice, and even with the stress of it being the state championship they were barely dusty or sweaty. Action shooting was not an endurance sport, but it was stressful.
“I don’t know. It took me a couple stages to get used to the gun. I haven’t shot a Glock in a while.”
“Please,” Dave said, making a face. “Let’s dump this stuff, then go back and check. They’ll probably have the final results posted in just a few minutes.” After a shooter shot a stage, his score was entered into a Nook or Kindle that had a scoring program, and then the totals were uploaded into the Match Director’s computer. It was a lot faster than doing everything by hand.
“Hey, meat lover, you gonna be able to give me a ride to the airport?” Taran asked him as they walked back. “My flight leaves in like three hours.”
“What were you going to do if I said no? Way to plan ahead, Hollywood. Yeah, don’t worry about it.”
From the crowd it looked like half the shooters were sticking around to see where they’d placed. “All right, I’ve got the finals now, I’ve just got to print out the different divisions and then I’ll post them on the wall,” Randy said from inside the small shed where he was working over his computer.
“Divisions?” Gina said.
“Competitors are separated based on what kind of gun they’re using,” Dave told her. “Revolvers only hold six shots and are slower to reload than Glocks, or anything else, so they’re in a separate division. Taran usually shoots a really expensive custom 1911, and those are in a separate division from Glocks too. Usually.” He actually could have gone into a lot more detail, but knew how long her attention span was when it came to a subject that wasn’t shoes.
“All right, stand back and I’ll post these on the Wailing Wall,” Randy said, stepping into view with several sheets of paper. He stapled them onto the notice board on the side of the building, and the shooters clustered around. Butler had won Overall by two percent, and won his division, beating the second place finisher by fifteen percent. Dave saw he had come in third, with 84.59% of Taran’s score.
“I knew you beat me, but I was hoping to do better than eighty-four percent,” he said. “You beat me with my own damn gun.”
“That’s good, dude, you should be happy. How long have you been shooting this sport, a couple of years? And you’re already a Master class shooter, and getting better. Don’t worry about it. I’ve been doing this for twenty years. That Glock’s pretty gonzo. How much did I charge you for it? Probably not enough.”
“Nice finish, dude,” Al Safie said to Dave, smacking him on the back. The FBI agent had finished second, beating Dave by a mere .23%. “You almost got me.” A few other shooters standing nearby congratulated Dave as well.
A shooter Dave vaguely recognized moved away from the score sheets with a dark look on his face, grumbling. “Gumball circus shooting,” he said to a friend. “Shooting like that would get you killed in the real world. No tactics, no cover, nothing. That’s why I usually only shoot IDPA.” It sounded like sour grapes. The man looked to be pushing fifty, and wearing an older GI Colt .45 in a leather hip holster.
The International Defensive Pistol Association had been founded by disgruntled USPSA members who’d thought the sport had drifted too far from its self-defense roots. Whereas USPSA was all about speed with accuracy, IDPA focused intently on use of cover, drawing the pistol from underneath a concealment garment, and re-enacting realistic self-defense shooting scenarios.
As far as Dave was concerned IDPA did everything it could to slow people down, including using a scoring system that unrealistically favored accuracy over speed. IDPA and USPSA were the two most common action shooting sports in the country, but they attracted two very different types of shooters. Dave didn’t have a problem with IDPA shooters…..as long as they didn’t badmouth his sport.
“In the real world,” Dave said to the guy, “hitting the other guy first seems to me to be pretty tactical. As long as you’re hitting what you’re aiming at, whoever’s fastest wins. IDPA does everything it can to slow you down.” The inside joke was that IDPA really stood for I Don’t Practice Anymore. “You guys are all wrapped up in stupid rules like never dropping mags with ammo in them on the ground. There’s no rules in a gunfight.”
The guy stared at Dave. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, kid,” he spat. “The hell you know about shooting someone?” He looked to his buddy for backup, but his friend was a regular shooter, and knew Dave. He wasn’t saying anything, and had an Uh-Oh look on his face.
Dave became aware that several people standing around them had tuned into the conversation, and gotten quiet. He probably wasn’t going to say anything in response, but before he’d even made up his mind one way or the other Taran pointed at Dave and said loudly to the guy, “Jackass, how do you think he got the nickname Gunfighter?”
CHAPTER TEN
What surprised him was not so much the roll call room itself, which looked like most every classroom he’d ever stepped foot in (albeit a bit smaller), but the number of officers that turned out for each shift.
Warren was the third most populous city in Michigan, behind Detroit and Grand Rapids, with over 175,000 residents. Those numbers went way up during the day, when workers streamed in to the Chrysler plant on Mound Road, the huge GM Tech Center, U.S. Army TACOM, or any number of smaller factories and businesses. And yet, looking around the room, there were maybe a dozen officers getting ready to hit the road. Sure, there was the command staff, a couple sergeants, a lieutenant, an evidence tech, and any number of plainclothes officers working on interdepartmental drug or auto crime task forces, but hitting the streets? A dozen uniformed officers for afternoon shift for a city six miles square (minus the small chunk in the center that was Center Line); a city which had a six mile long border with Detroit, the infamous 8 Mile Road.
Since he didn’t have to “suit up” in the locker room, Dave waited for the officers in the roll call room. At the back of it, actually; cops were no different than kids in school—everybody had their preferred seats, and woe to any baby-faced college intern who sat in one.
Afternoon shift started at 3 p.m. and ran til 11. Currently the department was a little tight with the overtime, so the officers who wanted the extra money (or time off, as they could burn the accumulated hours as comp time as well) had to be a little creative. Pulling over a drunk driver half an hour before shift end was the preferred way to get a guaranteed hour of overtime (for which they were credited time and a half). Arresting officers were required to complete the processing, it couldn’t be passed off to officers coming on duty. Between the in-house breathalyzer, prisoner intake, and report writing, that was an hour, easy.
At about twenty before the hour officers started shuffling into the room, some of them toting oversize containers filled with coffee or Mountain Dew. A lot of the officers seemed addicted to Red Bull or Monster energy drinks. Afternoon shift was the preferred home of the younger officers, as that was where the action was. They had the lowest seniority and probably would have gotten stuck on that shift anyway, so the twice annual shift pick usually worked out to everyone’s satisfact
ion.
Dave was a week and two days from the end of his five week internship, which counted for a four-credit class for his junior year at Michigan State. The first week had been both boring and interesting, sitting at the front desk answering the phones and listening to the officers interact with the residents who came in to make reports. Auto accidents where both people were able to drive away from the scene, petty thefts (mostly bicycles and power yard tools stolen out of unlocked garages), and random interpersonal problems usually involving neighbors or relatives.
The second week he’d ridden around with the evidence tech, which had been really cool. He’d seen two dead bodies (both geezers who’d croaked naturally), helped with a scene investigation at a fatal accident involving a motorcycle, and watched the officer as he dusted for prints at a local party store that had been broken into overnight. The thieves had stolen tens of thousands of dollars worth of scratch-off lottery tickets, which were apparently a common target—who knew?
Week three had been riding around with a uniformed officer on day shift. He’d spent the whole week riding with Officer Jim Stone. They’d handled a lot of car accidents, residential burglar alarms (all false), a few family fights, one missing teenager, and a stolen car report.
His last week was scheduled with the Detective Division, and he wasn’t sure whether that was going to be boring or interesting, but before that happened he had to get through his week-long ride-along on afternoon shift. Three days down, two to go, all of them riding with veteran officer “Wild” Bill Kennedy.
Dave still wasn’t sure why they called him Wild Bill. Grumpy Bill seemed a lot more accurate….maybe Asshole Bill. Dave wondered why Kennedy had agreed to him riding along with him for the week, because he sure didn’t seem to be enjoying it.