by Pat Price
"Come on over to the Veteran of Foreign Wars hall this evening and me and some of the boys will buy you a drink."
"Well thank you Mr. Burton," I said, "I would like that and I for sure will be there."
"Mr. Burton was my Daddy son, my name's Dan," he said smiling. He got up, pulled his pants back up to his waist and left, shuffling to my right until he got to the middle isle then merging into the other diners. He stopped briefly at the door where one of the waitresses was standing behind a small podium collecting ten-dollar bills.
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I spent two weeks driving around the town, getting the lay of the land as they say in the movies. The town of Kingman is about 10 miles long from the west to the east and about evenly divided north and south by Interstate 40. Old Highway 66 still runs through Kingman. Rte 66 enters Kingman proper from the north and becomes 6th St., which runs south from I-40 about four miles and wraps around to the west becoming Andy Devine Boulevard. Andy Device turns north from that point and intersects Interstate 40 on the western edge of the town. Just before Andy Devine Boulevard passes under I-40 a two lane road branches off to the west. This road is the continuation of old Route 66 and heads west through the hills outside of Kingman and winds up 20 miles later in the small mining town of Oatman.
Oatman is a revived mining town with a single main street and a thriving tourist trade. The town center is about 200 feet long and looks like an old western town’s main street with wooden board walks and old time stores selling film and trashy mining era souvenirs imported from Asia. To the west of the town center is a hill where most of the town’s people live. The hill overlooks the Colorado River and Needles, California on the western side of the river and Fort Mohave on the eastern side of the river. The road to Oatman from Kingman passes under I-40 shortly after it branches off from Andy Devine Blvd. in the old section of town. From there it runs parallel to I-40 for about ten miles before starting up into the hills where Oatman is located.
Two miles after it passes under I-40, on the north side of the road is a shooting range. The range is owned, according to the sign posted on the packed dirt roadway leading into it, by the Mohave County Sheriff's Department. The range is not manned, but again, according to the sign, it is available for use by the public. The range is where I spent several hours each day the second week after I arrived in Kingman. Protocol on shooting at an unsupervised range when you are the stranger is that you use an unoccupied station or position at one end of the range. If others are shooting, you don't put up or change targets while they are shooting and you for sure do not shoot while they are out on the range. Shooters are by nature pretty polite people so from day one I was treated well and about the third day on the range two of the other shooters started talking to me.
Shooters tend to mostly use first names. Bob, Bill, and Ted were the regulars at the range. All of them appeared to be on the sunny side of 60 and were dressed in jeans, hiking boots and tee shirts. All of them wore sun glasses and by squinting just a little, all of them could have passed for men shown in the FBI photographs of the militia of which there are two basic types. The first type of militia is populated by week-end warriors and the 2nd type are the hard core 2nd amendment types who believe that everyone should be carrying a gun and that the government has a secret plan to disarm and subjugate the citizens of America. The guys on the range looked like they were members of the 2nd type of militia. Of course, in all fairness, about a third of the men in Kingman also fit the images in the photographs of the 2nd type of militia. I was there two to three afternoons a week and so were they, just like clockwork.
Shooters as a whole are probably one of the nosiest groups on the planet. Anyone who shoots has already convinced himself that he is the best shot in the world and feels he owns lifetime bragging rights. On visit two of week 2, old Bob came over to me, curious about what I was shooting.
"Excuse me son," he said, "I'm curious as hell about that rifle you're shoot'n. What in the hell is it anyway?"
"It's an H&K model MSG-90," I said.
"That one of them Germ-men brands?" he asked.
I loved the dialect of these people. Germans were called germ-men, people from the middle-east were called A-rabs and Iraqis were I-rack-ees.
"Yeah," I said looking at him, "it sure is one of them."
"What's she chambered in? One of them there foreign met-trick calibers?”
"Nope, it's chambered in good old 308 Winchester."
"Damn, imagine that. Pretty accurate, is it?"
Old Bob had been watching me shoot for three weeks. I had caught him and his buds looking at my targets through spotting scopes more than once so I knew that he knew that I could drive nails at a hundred meters if I wanted too.
"Well sir," I said with a smile, "the Smoke House in town has four Buds in the cooler that says it can out shoot that shoulder buster you're burning powder with over there."
Old Bob was shooting a four-pound Savage bolt action-hunting rifle chambered in 30-06. That cartridge was designed over 60 years ago and can probably be fired in millions of rifles. The cartridge itself holds a bullet identical to that in the Winchester 308. The difference is that the ‘06 cartridge is thin, long, and tapered while the Winchester cartridge is thicker in diameter and shorter. The ballistics experts claim that all things being equal, the Winchester cartridge will hold a group size twice as small as the ‘06 at any range out to two thousand yards, not that I can really hit anything past a thousand yards.
Bob turned to his two pals and said, "hey guys, this here boy just offered to buy us a beer at the Smoke House."
"No he didn’t! Did he?" exclaimed one of the old guys.
"What we got to do fer it?" Bill asked.
"I got to out shoot him and that Germ-man gun of his," Bob explained, his dialect thickening.
Bob turned to me and said, "400 meters, 3 shots measured from the bull’s eye to each shot center, all distances added, 10 seconds total shooting time. That all right with you son?"
The distinctive dialect had disappeared and it dawned on me that if I had been anyone else I would have been fresh meat for these guys.
"Ok by me," I said, "you shoot first."
"Ok son," Bob said handing me a pistol size target about 12 inches across. I typically shot a 12-inch target with a handgun out to distances of 50 feet. This would probably be fun. I took the target and followed Bob as he walked out onto the range. We were passing the 100 meter marker when he next spoke.
"I'm going to feel bad about drinking that beer son. By the way what's your name?" He had turned sideways and stuck his hand out.
"Ed," I said, "and don't feel bad because you haven't won it yet.
"Don't be so sure," Bob said to me, a grin on his old wrinkled face. "I haven't bought a beer in over two years shooting out here on the range." We passed the 200 meter mark and he was into the 'how great I am' speech designed to impress and intimidate the new guy.
"Yez sa mister Bob," I said, interjecting my black field hand accent, "I be sure ta fetch dem beers fo you an dem friends of yous just as soon as yous kin make dat old gun of yous shoot."
Bob could not restrain himself and he started laughing. "Ok son, where and when did you serve?"
"Rangers, Gulf War, ‘91."
"Nam, class of ‘68," he said. "What did you do in the Rangers son?"
"Mostly lived in the desert killing Iraqi officers."
"Let me guess. You were a sniper, right?" he asked stopping and turning.
"Right as rain," I said. "If you run, you die tired."
Bob looked at me with a squinted eye for second then asked, "Do I stand a chance of out shooting you?"
"Probably not but what the hell, it’s not like you're betting your balls. All we're talking is about a couple of beers, right?"
"Right as rain," he laughed, then started walking for the targets.
Bob clipped a 12-inch pistol target onto a target stand and I did the same. The target stands were made of one-inch angle iron
with the apex of the angle pointing toward the firing line. This was an attempt to extend the life of the target holders and for the most part it worked somewhat. The edges of the angle iron were scalloped from being hit by jacketed slugs. Anyone shooting at 400 meters was using jacketed ammo and all of the target holders out past 400 meters had numerous bullet holes on the apex of the angle iron.
We finished clipping the targets on the holders and walked back to the firing line. The nice thing about shooting at the Kingman range was that the sun was at your back in the afternoon. I walked down to the end of the range I was shooting from and picked up the H&K and three rounds of ammunition. I walked over and sat my rifle down on the shooting bench next to Bob. He had placed three sandbags on the far end of the bench and the fore stock of his rifle was resting on the bags. He was planning on shooting from a bench rest. That was a popular position for sitting with a rifle so that most of the human factor was removed from the shoot.
"Ok boys, get them muffs on," Bob said as he closed the bolt on the Savage, stripping the first of three rounds of ammo from the clip in his rifle. Ted, Tom, and I slid our shooting muffs into place on our ears.
I developed a slight ringing in my ears from the war and from firing too many weapons in closed spaces like small rooms and from inside cars. The doctors called it tinnitus and their diagnoses said that I had been too near too many high intensity sounds. Since the doctors and I agreed on the cause, I always wear muffs on my ears when I'm shooting if I have the opportunity.
I sat down at the bench next to Bob and unfolded the bipod feet on the H & K. I pulled the stock back to my shoulder and focused the scope on Bob's target. I dialed the magnification up to ten. I was betting myself that the bastard was good despite his bragging.
Bob pulled the Savage back into his shoulder. Ted pressed a small button on his watch and said, "Go."
Bob pulled the trigger and the round punched a hole in the target at what looked to be about an inch and a half from the center of the bull's eye at the 3:00 position. I started counting seconds as soon as he fired and was not quite to three when the 2nd shot went off, again punching a hole at the 10:00 position about three inches from the center. Three seconds later a 3rd shot rang out and the last hole was almost four inches away from the center of the bull’s eye and back at the 3:00 position. Bob was typical of sport shooters with lightweight rifles. A large caliber bolt action weapon weighing around four or five pounds or so will transfer a lot of the recoil to the shooters shoulder, especially considering that sporting rifles rarely have muzzle brakes. Firing three second rounds gives the shooter a lot of punishment and will typically make it hard to stay on target regardless of a bench rest or not. None the less, I suspected that if Bob was shooting at anyone out to a thousand meters, their ass would be grass and he would be the lawn mower as we used to say in the Army sniper school.
Bob had fired three rounds in about nine seconds with a total distance to center of about 8.5 inches. He lowered his rifle and looked at me with a grin.
"There you go son."
"Ok dad," I said as I stood and picked up the H&K.
I folded the bipod back against the sides of the fore stock and took a few deep breaths. Next I slid my left arm into the sling and formed a brace with my left elbow tight against the sling. I raised the weapon up to eye level and settled the stock against my right cheek and took 1 last deep breath. I let the breath about half way out and waited a second until I felt the thump of a heart beat then eased the trigger back. The H&K pushed back into my shoulder and settled back into position on target. I took another breath and let it out like I did the first, waited a second and pulled back on the trigger again. The H&K did its stuff again. The third shot went off just like the first two. I lowered the MSG-90 and placed it on the bench. Less than five seconds had passed from the first shot until the last. Bob and the others were looking at my target through their scopes.
"Not bad son," Bob said without taking his eye from his scope. The others were looking at me with no small amount of respect. Without a high power spotting scope I couldn't see exactly how well either of us had shot but I believed I had placed as well as Bob.
I looked at the over the gang of three and said with a smile "Do you boys want to measure the holes or do you just want to buy me a beer now."
The three of them started laughing.” We better measure the holes," Bob said, "just to keep all of us honest."
-22-
Sitting in the Smoke House diner and bar, the four of us had gone through the better part of a case of long neck Bud Lights and all of us had lost track of whose round it was. Bob and the boys were about as well oiled as I was and all of us were in dire need of something to eat. Bob however was still trying to get information from me concerning where I had come from.
"Ok son," Bob said, "Tell me why you stopped in Kingman and do me a favor, please don't piss on my shoes and tell me it's raining."
I thought for a minute before answering. All of these old guys were wired into the town and they could make a perfect conduit for putting out information. So, I thought to myself, through my beer filtered logic, "I'll seed the wind and see what blows back."
"I needed to be out of Southern California," I said, hunching over the table.
Bob looked at me and his eyebrows were pulled together like someone’s grandmother had knitted them in place. His expression was very intense for a few seconds before he spoke.
"You wanted by the law?"
"Not that they know of," I said, trying to look like the beer had more of a grip on me than it actually did. My grandfather once told me to never trust someone who would not get drunk with you. It was several years before I really understood what he meant. I did not want Bob and the boys to think I did not trust them.
"Look, the less you know about me and why I left California the better off we both are." I waited to see if Bob picked up on the difference between "I know of" and "they know of". It did not take long.
"Ok son," he finally said, leaning over the table in an attempt to confine the conversation. We were sitting at a table near the corner of the large room. Music from the fuzzed out speakers of the jukebox drowned out any attempt at listening to a conversation any further away than four feet. "You seem like a good kid. Depending on what it is, I may be able to help you."
We looked at each other for what seemed like a long time. I sat back in my chair and looked around and then back at Bob. I leaned over the table and spoke in the same low tone he had used.
"I don't think you want any of this. I didn't rob a bank or pop a cop or an ex wife. Just trust me, you don't want to know."
There were twenty mostly empty beer bottles on the table. I figured that this would be a good time to break the tension so I stood and looked at Bob and said, "If I don't get rid of some of this beer we are all going to be wet as hell." With that I turned and walked to the men's room, giving Bob and the boys some time to themselves.
I stretched out the time in the little boy's room as long as I could before zipping, washing, and leaving. The one thing in common to all of the rest rooms in the bars of Kingman was that all of them were small. The Smoke House could probably accommodate over two hundred people on a busy night but the men's room had a single urinal and a toilet. On the Friday and Saturday nights I had visited the Smoke House; the line to the men's room started about eight o'clock and never dropped to less than about six feet from the door the whole evening. The women's room was right next to the men's room and the line for the ladies was always about twice as long as the one for the men's room. The other difference was that the women treated the line to their rest room as a social occasion. As a rule, men who don't know each other don't talk to each other while they are standing in line to the rest room, at least in Arizona they don't.
I walked slowly back to the table and noticed that Tim was missing. I also noticed that one of the beer bottles was missing. One thing that Ranger training, and more importantly, sniper training in the Army had taugh
t me was to be observant. Snipers will spend days to weeks preparing for a shot and that involves staying in cover and making notes either on paper or in your mind about everything that you see and what people are doing. The joke in sniper training was that being obsessive compulsive was a survival trait.
There were nineteen bottles on the table and I was sure the waitress had not removed just one. I notice patterns and the pattern that the bottles had made on the table before I left for the restroom had changed. The four of us had gone through five rounds making twenty beers in all. There were nineteen bottles on the table and I was sure the waitress had not removed just one.
I sat down and Bob looked over at me. "Ready for another one son?" he asked.
I looked around for Tim and saw him coming back through the door.
"Ready as rain," I said as I sat down on the now cold chair.
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