Mac watched them shoot and talked with the men waiting their turns, collecting their stories. He leaned against a table that had an assortment of weapons on it — a couple he wouldn’t mind owning. Targets were tacked to trees at various distances. A couple were partially obscured by other trees. And he watched Angie who moved around taking pictures, smiling and joshing with some of the men. She was easy to watch, he thought.
The men weren’t very good. But Craig moved around, correcting stances patiently. Apparently getting a certificate on a gun didn’t require accuracy. Mac shook his head.
After about an hour, Craig looked his way. “Hey Marine!”
“Yo!”
“You bring a rifle? Wanna show them how it’s supposed to look?”
Mac laughed. After watching this long, hell yeah, he wanted to shoot. He got his Remington out of the back of his 4-Runner, locking it back up carefully. He didn’t want the curious to realize the weaponry he had back there. Wouldn’t that be a clusterfuck? He probably should have left it all home. But Lindy’s lover and friends were the artsy-fartsy dippy-shit liberal crowd, and they’d be horrified to realize there were guns in the house. He didn’t want to deal with their outrage. He liked them all, but Jesus, those damn liberals could get outraged and yap!
So, he’d converted the wheel-well and bed of his truck into a large gun safe shortly after he moved in. And he didn’t want to deal with inexperienced people handling them either. There were a couple of weapons tucked discreetly around the house for defense. And he had a couple in a lockbox under his bed. But the real firepower was in his rig.
He brought the Remington back to the table, and looked at Craig. “Call it,” he said.
Craig called out a target number. Mac brought the rifle to his shoulder and shot.
Another number, another shot.
And another. Mac felt the tension in his back and shoulders subside as he let everything go except the feel of the tension in the trigger, the scope of the rifle, and the target.
There was silence when he stopped shooting. He grinned at Craig. “So, soldier,” he called back. “Think you can match them?”
He couldn’t beat the six shots he’d taken: they’d hit the center of the bullseye of each target.
Craig laughed, and grabbed a rifle from the table. “Maybe not,” he said. “But I’ll give it a try.”
Craig put a bullet through each of the holes Mac had made. “Guess so,” he said.
Mac laughed and held out his fist for a fist bump.
“OK men,” Craig called out. “Let’s see if you all can at least hit the targets by lunch.”
Mac snorted. For some of them he thought that was an unrealistic goal.
Chapter 20
While everyone ate lunch, Craig Anderson went over the afternoon plans. They’d be divided into three teams. Ken Bryson would lead one. Two of his crew would lead a second, and Craig would lead the third. Mac and Angie would go out with him. Mac suspected he was worried about Angie after the breakfast shenanigans. But Angie had taken her turn at target shooting and good-naturedly accepted their teasing at her failure to hit the targets. And when she finally did, and did a little victory dance, they cheered her. She was turning them around.
Most of them. And Mac was watching the holdouts closely.
So, each team had a list of coordinates, a camera, and a compass. The task was to find the marker at the coordinates, stand on it, find the target and shoot. Take a picture of the shooters on the marker. Grab the target, hopefully with multiple holes in it, and move to the next set of coordinates.
The last set of coordinates was the pick-up site to bring them back for supper. “There are prizes for the best performance,” Craig said cheerfully. “But the real prize? If you’re successful, you eat supper. If you aren’t? Well, we’ll come find you eventually.”
People laughed. Mac gave Craig credit. He ran a good program and made it fun. And so far, he hadn’t shot anyone. Mac didn’t think he’d be able to say the same if he was in charge.
Mac got the small Ruger out for Angie. She stashed it in her camera bag. He pocketed his Glock, then picked up the Remington and slung it over his shoulder. Added extra ammunition for both to his own backpack and was ready to go when Craig headed out.
Craig handed the set of coordinates to one man, the compass to another. “Lead on,” he said good naturedly.
“Who made the lists?” Mac asked as he waited for the two men to figure out what direction they needed to take.
“Ken came up during the week since this is a different staging spot than the one we usually use. It’s not a small task. Three different routes. Five sites with markers and targets. And the routes have to be in completely different directions so no one shoots someone. Because God knows we can’t depend on them to actually hit the targets.”
Mac snorted. The team was finally moving out along a trail that was heading S-SW he thought. It occurred to him he might want to be able to backtrack to camp if he needed to. He started to ask for the coordinates of the camp when he noticed Angie pull out a compass of her own. He grinned.
Craig noticed too. “She’s something else,” he said with admiration. “I’m impressed. When you asked to bring her along, and I asked Norton about her? I expected some princess who would be a pain in the neck. Norton’s got some weird hang-up about competent women.”
“Believe me, she noticed,” Mac said with a laugh.
They fell quiet as they followed the trail. The men slowed to a stop, and the two navigators were arguing. Craig grinned, but he didn’t intervene. Finally, they resolved the dispute, and turned off the trail onto a small animal trail through the underbrush. Mac
