DOMESTIC ENEMIES 2
Ranya was slumped down in the driver’s seat of a rusted-out ambulance, behind a defunct auto repair shop which bordered a truck stop. She was staring across the backs of a row of 18 wheelers, toward the truck stop’s mini-mart. High up on the red and yellow Love’s sign facing the interstate, diesel was advertised for $18.95 a gallon. Below the price were the words “Cash Only.”
She finished a plastic container full of fruit salad from the warden’s kitchen, while watching the store for the return of a driver. Much of the fruit she recognized from D-camp’s fields and orchards. Linssen’s internally framed brown back pack was on the seat beside her, ready to grab. After 45 minutes of observation, Ranya had narrowed her attention to a pair of trucks which had entered from the direction of Oklahoma City and immediately gassed up. The driver who returned from the Love’s mini-mart first would be her initial target.
In the meantime she listened to AM talk radio through the ear plugs on Linssen’s jogging radio, dreading a breaking news announcement about a murder and a prison escape. The host was yelling about an upcoming constitutional convention scheduled to take place in Philadelphia. It was the first she had heard of it. Any news which had dribbled into D-Camp was at least five or six months old, the new detainees having spent at least that long in interrogation centers before arriving.
An hour earlier, she had watched the dead warden’s black pickup roll into a half-acre cattle stock pond. With the hood, doors and tailgate open, the truck had disappeared without leaving more than ripples and a trail of bubbles on the opaque water. The water would hide the pickup from helicopters, even from their infra red scopes, but by abandoning the vehicle so permanently, she had committed herself to finding transportation at the insignificant crossroads town. Ranya had changed out of Linssen’s ISA uniform in the concealing shade of a willow tree by the pond. The dead warden’s casual clothes were loose on her, but with the belt cinched tightly around her waist, the pair of khaki hiking pants she had selected fit tolerably well. The nylon pants had legs which zipped off above the knees. Ranya decided to remove them and stash them in the warden’s back pack. She was grateful that the dead woman seemed to have been an outdoorsy type; her camping and hiking gear was now put to good use.
From the cattle pond it was only a short hike across bare fields to the abandoned junkyard of the bankrupt repair shop adjoining the truck stop. She was halfway between Oklahoma City and the Texas line. Her newly-dyed black hair fell just to her neck, cut straight around at the level of her earlobes. She was wearing a pale green scooped-neck sleeveless t-shirt. Her neck “tattoos” had been mostly rubbed off with spit and elbow grease while waiting in the ambulance. She had forgotten to look for makeup remover or cold cream in Linssen’s house.
One of the double glass doors of the mini-mart opened with a flash of reflected afternoon sunlight. A man wearing jeans, a white t-shirt and a black cowboy hat walked out, he was one of her chosen westbound drivers. Ranya slipped from the abandoned ambulance, leaving the door open, and walked through tall weeds behind several other junked cars to the truck parking area. The trucks were all slant-parked at an angle, their cabs toward her. She crouched behind a wrecked Toyota, and watched. His truck was a dusty red Peterbilt, with a generous sleeping compartment behind the seats.
The Stetson-wearing driver walked from the back of his rig carrying a plastic shopping bag, inspecting his tires as he went. He paused by the passenger side of his cab, unlocking the door with a remote control on his key chain, then stepped up on the platform over his fuel tank. He was a sunburned and clean-shaved Caucasian about 40 years old, Ranya guessed. Not bad looking, but a bit on the hillbilly side with Elvis sideburns.
She moved out from cover, stepped over the guard rail at the property line, and walked toward him displaying her most fetching smile. She hoped she came across like an eager-beaver small town truck stop whore. The Glock was in her right hand, hidden behind her hip. “Hiya cowboy! Listen, you wouldn’t be heading west, would you?”
The driver was just opening the door, taken completely by surprise and turning to her. “Huh? Uh…well…I…I can’t take hitchhikers. It’s…uh, company policy…” He was standing above her, his eyes flicking between her face and her chest.
Ranya wasn’t having it. “Oh please, I insist.” She raised the Glock and leveled it at his stomach, moving to within a few feet of him. “Get in. I can handle this rig just fine, no problem, but I’d rather have you drive. So please, don’t make me put a hole in you. Really, I just want a ride.” Her smile was gone, her pistol steady. “Drop the bag inside, climb in and slide across behind the wheel. Keep your hands where I can see them. I’m getting in right behind you. Please believe me: I’ll shoot you if you do anything stupid.”
The driver stared open-mouthed at the pistol. She waved it toward the cab’s open passenger door to get him moving, and he dropped the bag into the foot well area. “Look, the company… Oh shit, forget it. J-just get in, a-and watch that trigger, okay? Don’t slip or any…”
“I won’t slip. I just want a ride, that’s all.”
“What’s the matter?” he croaked, his throat suddenly dry, “A boyfriend after you? Or the law?”
“Just get this thing started, and get on the highway, going west.”
“Yes ma’am.” He slid behind the wheel and did as he was told, starting the massive engine, releasing the brake, and backing smoothly out of his spot.
In short order he was going through the gears, merging into the right lane, westbound on I-40.
She kept the pistol aimed at him, resting it across her stomach. “I’m heading to Albuquerque. How long until we get there?”
“Albuquerque? I’m not going there.”
“Oh really? Change of plans. This Glock says you are.”
“Look, you don’t understand. I’m not routed there. If I go off of my route, the GPS is going to alert my dispatchers, and they’ll check me out. Automatically.” He pointed through the roof with his finger, presumably indicating the location of the GPS transceiver. “Then they’ll call me. And then if I don’t check in, they’ll call the highway patrol, and they’ll come looking. I’m sorry, but that’s how it is.”
“Shit. So where are you heading, then?
“Salt Lake City. I’m going to take 287 up into Colorado. We don’t hardly go into New Mexico, not anymore. Almost never.”
“What’s the matter with New Mexico?”
“What’s the matter with New Mexico? Where have you been, darlin’? First of all, it’s Nuevo Mexico now, that’s what they call it. I can take you as far west as Amarillo, but that’s where I turn north, and if I don’t…”
“I know. Your GPS rats you out.” She heaved a sigh in frustration.
“Mind if I smoke?” he asked. “Makes me mighty nervous, you pointing that thing at me.”
“Go ahead.”
He withdrew a Winston from a pack in his console, and lit it one handed, his left hand on the big wheel. “You in trouble?” He glanced over at Ranya, taking in the incongruent tan lines on her arms, the residual ink marks on her neck, and the choppy haircut. “Look, I’ve had my own run-ins with the law. I’ve done some time, in my younger days.”
She changed the subject. “So, what’s the deal with New Mexico?” She asked.
“Shit. That place is messed up bad, even more since last year. That’s when they passed the ‘Spanish only’ laws. ‘Español Solamente,’ they call it. You speak Spanish?”
“I can speak it okay.”
“Well, you’ll need to speak it good in Nuevo Mexico. All the highway signs are in Spanish now, almost everything is. They made all the cops take a Spanish test, and fired everybody who didn’t pass it. All the gringo cops got the axe. They did it after Idaho passed an English only law, I think. That’s what I heard on talk radio, anyway. Montana and Wyoming did it first—passed English only—and then they started booting out the illegals. You know, illegal Mexicans.
“But New Mexico, they really went crazy down there! It’s nothing but hassles, driving through there! You’d think you were in friggin’ Castro Cuba or some damn commie country. Trucks get impounded and confiscated right and left. And now they’ve got these new cops, called ‘Milicias’. They’re the ‘brown berets’, and they’ve got special checkpoints all over the place. Any way, I won’t go into ‘Nuevo Mexico’, no ma’am, not if I don’t have to. I’ll take 287 straight up into Colorado instead, even though it’s longer. This is my truck we’re sitting in, and I aim to keep it.”
Ranya sighed again in resignation. “Sign we just passed says it’s 200 miles to Amarillo. Three hours, right? Any problems at the Texas state line? Weigh stations, checkpoints, things like that?” She still held the Glock across her lap, now only casually pointed at him.
“There’s an inspection station a few miles in. It’s not open, or it shouldn’t be. And Texas doesn’t care about the federal gun laws, if that’s what you mean by checkpoints. Nothing like back East. I can find out about it out on the CB.” He reached for the radio microphone, mounted in the ceiling.
She waved the pistol at him, bringing his hand quickly back to the wheel. “No radio. We’ll take our chances.” Traffic was sparse out here in western Oklahoma, she thought. An unusual number of the vehicles she did see seemed to be loaded down with luggage, furniture, and jerry cans, somehow reminiscent of a distant generation of Okies fleeing the dustbowl days of the 1930s. “The Grapes of Wrath.” She remembered the Steinbeck classic from high school English class. It had seemed like ancient history at the time.
After long minutes of silence between them, he glanced over at Ranya and said, “Look, if you’re really set on going to Albuquerque, I know where you want to go first. It’s a place in Texas, north of Amarillo. If I wanted to find the best way into New Mexico with no hassles, it’s where I’d go. I mean, I’ve been in trouble with the law, I know how it…”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“Oh, I do know! Look, can you please put the gun away? Point it somewhere else? I don’t need a heart attack, okay? If I wreck this thing, it won’t do either of us any good! And get a couple of sodas out of the bag down there. Please? If my mouth was any drier, it’d catch on fire.” He turned and looked at her. “Listen lady, I’m trying to help you, okay? I’ll drop you off at a place where you’ll be clear, and then you can find your own way into New Mexico. It’s a campground a little west of 287. Honestly, it’s your best bet. Deal?”
Ranya kept her hand on the Glock, but she pointed it forward, away from the driver, her finger well clear of the trigger. “Deal.” Then she reached into the plastic shopping bag on the floor with her left hand, and twisted out a pair of cold Mountain Dews from a six pack.
It was dark when he let Ranya out. He stopped the eighteen wheeler on the shoulder of the highway near the overpass and she climbed down, thanking him before she slammed the truck’s door shut. She hiked an hour west from 287 on the dirt shoulder of the county road. She stepped away from the road and crouched behind scrub at the first hint of headlights, until the occasional vehicles were past. Finally she left the road and walked up a dry wash, and found a place to sleep rough. The driver had given her a gray wool Army blanket from his truck’s sleeping compartment. If he was going to call the police, there was nothing stopping him now. Before finding a flat grassy spot, she zipped on her pant legs, and put on a black hooded sweatshirt from her pack.
Each time she put on another article of stolen clothing, she thought about Starr Linssen, wrapped in her seashell pattern shower curtain, concealed beneath her bed. She wondered if the warden had been found yet. Linssen had said she had signed out for the rest of the day; there was a chance she might not be missed until she failed to show up for work, or failed to answer her phone or pager too many times. It was Friday night, so it was even possible she wouldn’t be missed until Monday…
There was no news of any prison break (or murdered assistant warden) on any of the AM radio stations Ranya could tune in. Still, she knew that the word could have been put out only to the police on their own radio and email networks. In the meantime she was engrossed in catching up on the current news. It was the fourth night of deadly arson riots in Los Angeles, despite martial law curfews and “shoot to kill” orders. The tense standoff was continuing in the besieged Muslim Quarter in Detroit. Marines were engaged in heavy combat in some city called Nazeer-Bakaf, where ever that was. An emergency meeting of the Federal Reserve Board was scheduled for Monday.
Headlights passed less frequently as the night wore on. She slept fitfully, with her head on the warden’s pack, and the Glock beneath it. She was wrapped in the blanket on a bed of flattened range grass, with her black sweatshirt hood pulled up, the string tied tightly in a circle. Mosquitoes buzzed around her exposed face, other insects trilled and chirped. It was miserable attempting to sleep this way, but she was well hardened to misery. Through a slit in the folds of her blanket she could see a brilliant swath of stars, and she found Orion standing guard among the constellations.
Ranya awoke before it was fully light, stiff from sleeping on the uneven ground. She unwrapped herself from the blanket, stood and stretched while surveying the desolate landscape. She breakfasted on bottled water and crackers from the pack, then quickly brushed her hair and rolled up the blanket. She had slept fully clothed and was ready in a few minutes.
She walked back to the cracked asphalt road and picked a hidden location, sitting Indian-style behind the partially desiccated carcass of a road-killed steer, where she could observe any cars coming in the distance from either direction. The grim mound was disgusting, but there was not enough other natural cover to screen her from view in broad daylight. The steer’s horned skull had become detached from the rest of the remains, and was picked clean and bleached white, lying at her side. She would stand and step out from behind the concealing pile of cowhide and bones to hitch a westbound ride, but only when she was certain an approaching vehicle was not a cop. If the police had been alerted to her escape, she knew that a young female hitch-hiking on a rural Texas two lane road would draw their immediate attention.
It was eighteen hours since Starr Linssen had drawn her final breath of water and foam. Ranya was guessing that by now the police in all of the states around Oklahoma would be searching for her, even if their hunt was not publicly announced on the radio.
It was over 20 desolate miles to the safe haven the truck driver had suggested. If she had not heard any news accounts of escaped prisoners on her mini radio, then the odds were that neither had any other ordinary civilians who were out driving today, and presumably it would be safe for her to catch a ride. Otherwise, it would be an all day hike across sage land and cattle country. She unzipped her tan pants legs, took off her black sweat shirt, and stowed them in her pack.
A dark sedan appeared from the east, a possible police cruiser, so Ranya lowered her head, her huddled form blending in with the steer carcass. A black Mercedes flew past at better than 90 miles per hour, the driver unseen behind tinted windows. Other cars passed but she was afraid they might be police, so she stayed hidden. Almost two hours later a camper came into view, a boxy RV with a sleeper extension over the cab. Ranya weighed her chances, and stepped to the edge of the blacktop, waving her arms enthusiastically. The camper drove past with a small push of air, and then came to a stop several hundred yards beyond her. The tail lights blinked indecision as Ranya slung on her pack and ran after it.
The big camper had a green and white fiberglass body like a bloated cocoon. A sleeping area extended out over what appeared to be the vestigial front of a full-sized van. The camper was made even taller by the addition of antennas and cargo on top. Metal and plastic Jerry cans and a pair of bikes were strapped in racks along the back.
The front side window was down when Ranya jogged up alongside. The passenger was a gray-haired woman somewhere around 60. The driver was a bald man at least as old, leering out at her through black-framed glasses. He was already gawking and grinning through ill-fitting dentures, but his wife inspected Ranya more skeptically.
She said, “Sorry to make you run so far, but we had to make sure you were alone.”
“No problem, I understand.” Ranya had already rehearsed what she would say. “You wouldn’t be heading to Bartlett’s Creek by any chance, would you?” She assumed the most fresh-faced college girl smile possible under the circumstances, considering that she had slept on the ground in the same clothes she had worn since yesterday.
The old driver said, “We sure are, Missy! That’s right where we’re going.”
His wife looked her up and down and asked, “My, what happened to you?”
“My car died last night, back on 287. I walked as far as I could. I’ve got friends at Bartlett’s campground, so if I can make it there, I’ll be fine.”
The husband was nodding enthusiastically, already convinced. The wife studied Ranya and then said, “Well…I see. It’s tight up here in front; there’s no room for your pack. So let’s throw it in the back, and then you can sit up here with us. How’s that sound?”
“Wonderful!” She put her hand out, and shook their hands through the open window. She understood that they wanted her sitting in front with them, to keep an eye on her. It didn’t matter, she was just glad for the lift. She would have cheerfully sat on the roof with the other strapped-on cargo.
“Well, okay then,” said the woman. “I can get you some orange juice and biscuits while we’re in the back. I don’t guess you’ve had breakfast yet today?”
“No ma’am! Just crackers and a little water. That sounds great.”
“I’ll bet it does, honey, I’ll just bet it does. By the way, my name’s Olivia, and my husband is Melvin. We’re coming from near Houston, heading to Idaho...”
Bartlett’s Creek was a sprawling makeshift RV campground. It stretched along both banks of a stream which bisected endless miles of scrub prairie and cattle grazing land. After slowing and turning off the pavement, a gravel road led to a barbed wire fence, and a cattle guard made from pieces of railroad track. Next to the break in the fence a guard sat on a lawn chair beneath a gray plastic awning. A bike leaned against the last fence post. The man stood up from his chair at their approach. He had a revolver holstered on the belt of his jeans, and he wore a blue t-shirt tucked in under it. He carried a notebook and a walkie-talkie as he walked over to greet them.
“You folks been here before?” he asked Melvin, the old driver.
“Nope, first time.”
“Where you from?”
“Clear Lake, by Houston.”
“Houston? Any of you been east of the Mississippi in the last two years? No?” He studied them closely; they all replied that they had not. The oldish woman sat in the middle between Ranya and her husband.
“Well then, fine. Here’s the camp rules. Read them, and then put your John Hancock here on the next line in my book. We don’t have enough copies of the rules left to give you one to keep, so read it and hand it back.” The gate guard passed over a well-worn sheet of paper with a dozen numbered sentences printed on it, and then he began to rattle them off from memory. “You can only stay three weeks. If you like it, you gotta leave for a week, then come back. This keeps the grass fresh, and we don’t wind up with broken down heaps that can’t move. We don’t want homesteaders or squatters; this here is a transit camp. Cost is fifty dollars cash a day, for now, subject to change any time the boss feels like it. If you want, we can take barter in ammunition, gold, canned goods, all the usual stuff. We don’t take credit cards, debit cards, E-bucks or bank checks, so don’t even ask.
“It’s an open-carry camp, but if we think you’re unsafe with your weapons, you’ll be politely asked to leave. You can carry concealed if you prefer, but nobody cares either way. You can drink, and you can shoot at our range, but if you drink and fool around with guns at the same time, you’ll be run out of here pronto. You can only shoot on the range, no where else. We got a mobile sewage pump out, the cost is reasonable, and if you dump on the ground, it’ll cost you a lot more, a hell of a lot more, before we run you out. We keep quiet hours from 10 PM to 7 AM, and that means no motorcycles, generators or loud music or talking that bothers anybody. They’re pretty reasonable rules, and you don’t look like jerks anyway. I think you’ll like it here. You plan on staying a full three weeks?”
“Not sure,” replied the bald driver. “We’re heading to Idaho, once we can figure out the safest way there. New Mexico’s out and we’re not too sure about Colorado.”
The gate guard offered, “Lots of people are heading up that way; you’ll find plenty of company. Folks ‘convoy up’ here. Convoys leave all the time. You can even find gas, if you’ve got plenty of cash or anything worthwhile to trade. I think you’ll make out fine. If you made it here from Houston, the worst is behind you. You’ll make it the rest of the way to Idaho, no problem.”
“That’s mighty welcome news, mister,” replied the driver. Visible relief flowed into all three of the visitors at the prospect of a layover in a safe refuge.
“I’ll lead you to your spot now; it’s a nice grassy place. Just follow behind me, okay?” He turned, and spoke into his two way radio, then clipped it onto his belt and mounted his bike.
They drove in at the guard’s unhurried cycling speed, jouncing down a dirt track with tents, trailers and RVs on both sides. Most sprouted a wide variety of antennas, solar panels and wind generators mounted on top. The wind generators all whirred madly, their sounds merging from one campsite to the next. And everywhere, flags were whipping back on the breeze: Lone Star Texas flags, the Stars and Stripes, Confederate battle flags, yellow Gadsden “Don’t Tread On Me” flags, and other banners in every color and dimension. Specific state flags appeared among clusters of RVs, evidence of regional clannishness, or convoy intentions.
Kids rode bikes, chased one another on foot, and threw balls and Frisbees. Their camper passed a wide bend in the creek, where a few people waded and splashed in the sluggish water between cat tail covered banks. They passed a redheaded woman riding a mountain bike in the other direction; she had an AR-15 carbine slung nonchalantly across her back, its muzzle down. She exchanged waves and hellos with the gate guard on his bicycle. The staccato popping sound of pistol and rifle shots could be heard in the distance.
The woman beside Ranya asked, “Honey, do you see your friends yet? What kind of a rig do they have?”
“Not yet,” she lied. “They should be here, somewhere. At least, that’s what they told me last week. We haven’t seen half the place yet. Listen, thanks for the ride, but I don’t want to impose on your hospitality…”
The old woman smiled and said, “Nonsense, honey, it’s no trouble. If you need…”
“If I know my friends, they’ll be hanging out at the range. If you let me out now, I’ll just walk out there.”
“Well that’s fine, if that’s what you want,” said the woman. “But listen…first let me finish cutting your hair, it’s kind of rough in the back.”
“Olivia’s right, honey,” said her husband, chuckling. “If you’re going on the lam, you’ll need a better hair-do. If you didn’t cut it yourself, I’d say your hair stylist needs to find a new line of work!”
“Is it that obvious?”
“Sure it is dearie, but who cares?” responded the woman. “We’re all escaping from something these days, aren’t we? Well join the club. And if you don’t find your friends…you’re welcome to stay with us for a time.”
The range was a half mile walk down another dirt road away from the creek into the scrubland, past scattered trees and immobile rocking-horse oil pumps. She felt more confident with her hair trimmed evenly, and the residual ink on her neck scrubbed off with Olivia’s cold cream. She had gratefully accepted the offer to wash up in their camper’s bathroom, and felt much better with a fresh and clean face and teeth.
All of the clothes she wore belonged to a dead woman, from her tan leather hiking boots, to the Texas Rangers ball cap and even Linssen’s gold-rimmed aviator-style sunglasses. This was more than a bit creepy, but after years of nothing but prison denim, it felt nice to be dressed in casual civilian clothes. No matter how they were obtained.
She walked on, enjoying her aloneness, reveling in her anonymity. There were no terrain features to speak of anywhere around Bartlett’s Creek, only the most subtle rolling texture was visible over vast expanses of land to the horizon. Willows and cottonwoods and cattails defined the course of the creek to the east and the west.
The firing line consisted of a dozen rough unpainted wooden tables, with a plywood roof extending above all of them. About two hundred yards from the firing line, there was a bulldozed dirt berm for a backstop. This was the only “hill” in the vicinity. A few cars, pickup trucks, motorcycles and bicycles were parked on the grass behind the firing line.
A red flag twenty feet up a pole announced the range was open. Nobody paid her any attention as she dropped her pack on an empty table at the end. The line was hot; five men were shooting rifles from sandbagged positions on the tables at paper and cardboard targets 100 yards away. There was a small plywood range shack behind them which had paper targets for sale.
Ranya had only the Glock and two full magazines of 9mm bullets, just thirty rounds in all, taken from Linssen’s bedroom. She had no plan, no itinerary, just a general desire to get to Albuquerque somehow, and the range had drawn her back to the sights and sounds of her youth. Any shooting range was familiar, friendly territory, a place where she felt she had the best chance of making the kinds of contacts she would need to assist her on her way.
A pair of men behind one table fiddled with a Mini-14 rifle, they couldn’t get the stuck magazine out. The range safety officer wearing a red ball cap walked over and admonished them for pointing the muzzle of their rifle sideways down the line. So there were novices and goofballs even here in Texas, Ranya mused.
The RSO finished with the two men, and walked over to Ranya’s end table. “You new around here?” He noted her pack, with the rolled-up blanket tied underneath.
“Just got in,” she replied.
“What’re you shooting today?” She had no visible gun case or range bag.
“Glock 19.” She pulled the 9mm pistol from a side pouch on her pack. “I’d trade it for a .45 though, a 1911. It’s more what I was used to. Anybody around here trade guns?” The RSO appeared to be in his mid-fifties, she thought. The same age her father would have been, if he had not been murdered.
The man laughed. “Anybody here trade guns? Who doesn’t? Look, you need ear protection. We’re not very formal around here, but we do insist on hearing and eye protection. I’ll cut you a break though.” He handed her a pair of red plastic earmuffs. The man had sandy hair sprinkled with gray, he wore jeans and a gray polo shirt with the lightning bolt logo from Thunder Ranch. A .45 was holstered high on his right hip.
Ranya asked, “Say, I noticed those two guys who couldn’t get the mag out of their rifle. Are there any instructors here? I could stand to earn a few bucks while I’m here.”
He regarded her carefully. “You might say there’re a few instructors here; you’re looking at numero uno. You look pretty young to be a gun pro. You’re an instructor? NRA? Or just some kind of natural Annie Oaklie?”
“Something like that. All of the above, I guess. I grew up around guns; my father was a gunsmith, he owned a gun store with an indoor range. Back in Virginia. I’m a little rusty, though.”
“Say, what’s your name?” He put out his hand, smiling.
She didn’t hesitate with her assumed name, her name from before her arrest. “Diane. Diane Carson.” This was the name from her long-gone false Canadian passport. Now the name held only sentimental value to her.
“Diane, I’m Mark Fowler. I kind of run this range, and I know everybody that matters at Bartlett’s Creek. Hey, you know what? If you’re really a crack shot, you might be able to make a little money or win some prizes later on this afternoon. There’s not much to do for excitement out here but watch the grass grow and the wind blow, so shooting is pretty much the big sport around here. Of course, we encourage it: we keep the spent brass, and I get to reload it and sell it all over again. It’s how we stay in business, you might say. You gotta be creative to make a buck these days! You know, if you want to shoot for money, I might even lend you one of my .45s. You sure don’t want to be shooting reloads out of that Glock, not even my reloads.”
“No kidding, I don’t want to lose any fingers. But I’ve only got two mags of factory 9mm…”
“Let’s see how you do with one of my .45s. If I think you can make money later on, I’ll sponsor you, and spot you the ammo. How’s that sound?”
“That sounds great Mr. Fowler, I appreciate it.” She smiled back at him, and it was not an act this time.
“Mark. Call me Mark. Let me get my competition pistol out of my truck, and see if you can shoot. None of the suckers around here will go against me anymore, so it might be fun to enter a ringer in the money matches. We have lots of macho men that’ll fall for it: their pride just won’t let ‘em quit when a lady’s whoopin’ on ‘em. Now let’s grab my race gun, and see what you can do with it.”
It took Ranya only a hundred rounds through Fowler’s custom tuned .45 to get her shooting reflexes back up to speed. More and more shooters began arriving after lunchtime, mostly on foot or bicycle, or packed into the backs of trucks. It was becoming evident that gasoline was not only expensive, it was hard to come by. She did as much listening and as little talking as she could, concealed behind her Rangers ball cap and aviator’s sunglasses.
They started off with a contest shooting steel targets for time, a judge with a stopwatch following behind the shooters. Skillet-sized steel plates were balanced on steel bar frames, at ranges from ten to thirty yards from the firing line. When hit, they made a loud ringing clang and flipped down. Shooters had to run from position to position, firing at specific groups of targets, knocking them all down before moving on, changing ammunition magazines as needed.
If nothing else, she figured she would get in plenty of pistol practice, after five years without firing a shot…
Practice which she might need later, when it was time to rescue her son from his kidnappers.
|
