Isabel's run

shooters to my left; I saw her do the same thing. At twenty-seven years old, she’d just had a birthday two weeks ago. She was dressed in camouflage-print fatigue-style pants that had no business looking as good as they did on her, green tactical boots, and a beige long-sleeved T-shirt that had an American flag and Made in the U.S.A. printed on it in big, bold red letters across the chest-just in case you were having trouble noticing the way she filled out the shirt (which, I suppose, would have been pretty good proof that you were legally blind). The other guys didn’t know it, but I knew that the long sleeves covered a full-sleeve tattoo on her left arm and a delicate little Celtic-weave tat on her right. Her thick, dark hair was covered with a backward-facing baseball cap, itself covered with her ear-protection headset. She wore yellow-tinted shooter’s glasses. She looked like a Victoria’s Secret model at a gun show-she was distracting as hell, and I was glad there was space between us. When we straightened up, she caught me looking and she smiled.

Oops. This wasn’t one of her “I love you” smiles or even one of her playful ones, for that matter. We’ve been friends for a long time-I’ve known her for more than five years. I’ve seen her use about twenty different smiles- she’s got one for every occasion. I know most of them pretty well, but as for this one, her meaning was quite clear. She was giving me the nasty, evil little grin that usually comes when we’re locked in competition. We both hate to lose, and shooting qualifications bring out our competitive natures. She looked pretty smug-must have fired another clean stage. I turned away and started walking downrange to inspect my target.

“Holy crap, Nichols!” Gunny yelled as he inspected the first shooter’s target. “You do know you’re supposed to be shooting target number one, right? You fired five rounds, but I only see three damn holes!” He turned and looked at the next target on the line. “You got any extra holes on your target?” he said to that target’s shooter. “Nope?” He turned back to the first unlucky guy. “Nichols, you had two rounds off the whole damn target! That’s pathetic. Ten points each-it’s going to cost you a twenty-point penalty.” He shook his head with disgust. “What’s worse, if this were real life, that means you’d be the proud owner of two.40-caliber projectiles flying through the air at 1,100 feet per second looking for something solid to hit besides their intended target.” He looked at the sheepish shooter. “You understand that’s bad, right?”

The man nodded. “Sorry, Gunny.”

“Yeah, you are,” Gunny nodded in agreement. “Looks like we’ll be seeing you back here this afternoon.”

Gunny moved down the line, examining each shooter’s target. His comments were usually short and to the point. “You pushed this one,” or “You flinched before you pulled the trigger here, see? Caused you to jerk low left.” The shooters-all experienced police officers with years and years of training-listened carefully. Gunny Owens was held in universal high esteem. He’d forgotten more about shooting than most of us would ever know.

He reached Toni’s target and stared at it for a second. “Holy hell, she’s doing it again!” he called out. The other shooters turned to look at Toni’s target. “This young lady,” he said, “-a civilian, I might add-qualifies on this very course every ninety days without fail. And I have never-I repeat never-seen her put a round outside the ten ring. Look at this shooting here. Y’all should do so well. Excellent! Well done, young lady.” Toni smiled demurely. “A solid 250,” Gunny said. “Perfect score.”

Gunny continued down the line until he reached my target. He examined it carefully, counting the number of holes. When he was finished, he turned to me. “Staff Sergeant Logan, did you yank one off the target?” Gunny liked to call me by my former military rank.

“Hell no, Gunny,” I said. “Look here.” I pointed to one of the bullet holes in the center of the target that was a bit more oblong than the others.

Gunny leaned forward and inspected the hole. “Oh, yeah,” he said, smiling. “I see. Same damn hole.” He stood up. “Folks, listen up! Another perfect score from the other civilian in the group.” He paused for a moment, and then he continued. “Although technically, I ain’t sure you can call him a civilian-he’s former U.S. Army 101st Airborne. It don’t happen often, but from time to time, the army turns out a damn fine shooter. Right, son?” That was about as high a compliment as an army grunt’s likely to get out of a marine (MARINE: “Muscle are Required- Intelligence Not Essential”).

“Hooah, Gunny!” I yelled out. You better believe it.

“Damn right,” he said, nodding his head sharply. He turned and continued his inspection.

After he finished with the last shooter, he returned to the center of the line. “Gentlemen, and Ms. Blair,” he said, “Y’all gather round.” When we’d formed in a group around him, he said, “One of y’all’s coming back this afternoon.” He turned to the offender. “That’s you, Nichols. I want you to practice with Officer Mendez here,” he pointed at one of his assistant RSOs, “right after lunch: 1300 hours. If you’re ready, you’ll get another shot at qualifying at 1400. We’ll see if you can keep all your rounds on your own target this time.” He looked at the rest of us. “As for the rest of you-you’ve all officially qualified. Congratulations.” The men nodded their heads quietly. They’d done this before and most were good-if not very good-shooters.

“Before you leave, though, we do have a dilemma,” Gunny continued. “We have a tie for top honors-two perfect scores.” Here we go, I thought. Same as last time. “And as some of you may know, I don’t like to end things with a tie. No closure that way. So what say we have ourselves a quick little tiebreaker shoot-out?”

“Yeah!” the men agreed enthusiastically.

“Good. Randy-do me a favor and throw a couple of clean targets on lanes three and four, would you? The rest of you, follow me.”

Gunny walked us back past the fifteen-yard marker where we’d fired the last sequence. He kept walking, past the twenty-five yard marker until he reached a marker that said thirty-five yards. “We’ll do it from here,” he said. “Make it interesting. A little over one hundred feet-a real test. Ms. Blair-you’re on number three. Staff Sergeant Logan-you’re on lane four. Everybody else: behind the line.” I looked downrange at the small targets. One hundred feet is a long pistol shot if you have something solid to brace against. Without a brace, it was really long.

He waited until the targets were set and everybody was behind us. “Okay, you two,” he said. “I want you to load one round-and one round only-into a magazine. This will be a one shot, do-or-die competition. We’ll run you through one at a time. Who wants to go first?”

“I will,” Toni said quickly. I looked at her, and we locked eyes. She no doubt was trying to psych me out. Good luck with that.

“Ladies first, then,” Gunny said. “Oh, I forgot. We’ll use the electronic timer. You’ll start from the low ready position, two hand grip-or one hand if you want. Your choice of stances. When the timer beeps, you’re to raise your weapon and fire. You’ll have two seconds to get your shot off before the timer beeps again. If you go over, the timer will tell us, and you’ll be DQ’d. So don’t go over time.”

Two seconds! Two seconds was very fast from thirty-five yards. I glanced at Toni. If she was concerned, she didn’t show it. She was already concentrating on the target.

“You two ready?” We nodded.

“Okay, everyone. Hearing protection on!” Gunny reverted to command voice.

“Shooter number one, at this time, load and make ready!” Toni slapped a magazine into her Glock 23 and cycled the slide.

“Shooter, assume a low ready position!”

Toni crouched down, her weapon held before her pointed toward the ground at a forty-five degree angle.

“Shooter, watch your target!”

BEEP! The electronic timer sounded. Toni instantly raised her weapon, sighted, and one second later, fired. BOOM! followed nearly instantly by BEEP! as the timer sounded again. Toni had beaten the clock by a fraction of a second.

Everyone looked downrange and strained to see the bullet hole in the target. “One point eight seven seconds, and she’s in the bottle,” Gunny called out, “chin level, just a hair right of center. Seven points. That’s fine shooting from thirty-five yards, young lady. Especially in under two seconds.” The “bottle” is the broad, bottle-shaped area of the target that includes the upper torso and the neck up to the center of the head. Toni’s shot was very nearly right on the centerline in the “neck” of the bottle, but it fell midway between the four-inch diameter “ten” ring centered around the top of the target’s nose and the six-inch diameter “ten” ring centered around the target’s heart-in other words, just under the chin. It was an outstanding shot, but looking at Toni, I could tell right away she was not happy. She felt me staring, turned to me, and stuck her tongue out.

“The bad guy is definitely down,” Gunny said. “Probably for good, I’d say. But-with a score of seven,” he