Annie Oakley

ANNIE OAKLEY

JULY 2020

"Fun," John said, as Roni nosed her rental up to a long building at the end of a rutted county road in Alabama, a half hour away from base across the Chattahoochee. Two yellow lozenges of light shone on either side of a darkened front door. He counted four roof-mounted cameras. He squinted at a stenciled sign over the doorway.

"A gun club," he said then repeated, "A gun club?"

"Yeah." Roni threw the rental into park and killed the engine. "I like target shooting. Makes me feel better."

"Okay." Seriously? On the other hand, he could sort of see it. All the gun ranges around his family's place in Texas had been packed the day the Twin Towers came down and for a solid week afterward: hordes of angry, scared people banging away, hoping all those bullets somehow made up for their inability to go after an enemy whose face they didn't even know. "So, you come to a gun club in Alabama? Why not shoot on the base range?"

"Because there aren't many weapons to choose from, and it's too…" She searched for the word. "Public. Everybody knows you. I don't want to give guys like Horner any reason to make stupid jokes about shrinks going postal, especially after today."

John almost said that Horner would never do that but then reconsidered. The guy was a jerk. The truth also was that he and Roni were, hands down, the best shots in their class. What with her dad being an instructor at Mountain Warfare, Roni came by guns honestly. As for John, deer hunting was practically a religion in Wisconsin.

Plus, he'd had some additional instruction from his uncle who'd been a Ranger and a sniper in Vietnam. He saw no reason, though, to talk about a detail that belonged to another boy's past anyway.

"But I don't have a weapon," he said.

"I called ahead. We're all set." She killed the engine. "The owner's a nice guy."

"But it's dark . Roni, you got to have some other way of working off steam."

"I do." Pulling the ignition key, she pushed out of the rental, pocketed the fob, and said, "But this is better than throwing knives or axes."

"Axes?"

The gun club was bare bones: a concrete floor with display racks of long guns, boxes of ammunition on shelves, handguns in glass cases, and display hooks in pegboard with slings, holsters, suppressors, magazines, and other gun-related paraphernalia. The place smelled of gun oil, cleaning solvent, dust, and worn leather floating atop a base layer of dried sweat.

An older man with a pot belly, a big nose, a bushy metal-gray beard, long white hair pulled back in a tail, and a MAGA cap on his head perched on a stool in back of the long glass counter. He was reading a paperback but looked up as they came through the front door.

"Hiya, Roni," he said, putting the paperback, The Collected Letters of Seneca , face down on the counter. He wore stained jeans, a faded green T-shirt stretched over his gut, and a pair of scuffed Red Wing work boots. Levering himself off his stool, he came around, tilted his head back to look John in the eye, and stuck out a calloused hand. "You must be John. I'm Emery. Roni says you're a hell of a good shot."

"I'm okay, sir." The stool had given Emery the illusion of height; he was a small guy, no taller than Roni. Emery's grip was strong, though. There was a Vietnam-era POW-MIA tattoo and the words You Are Not Forgotten done in black ink on his right arm. On his left, he sported an odd tattoo: a leaf outlined in red, with a lightning bolt jagging down the center. 25 th was in red ink to the right of the leaf and Div. was on the left. "Thanks for letting us in after-hours."

"Wouldn't do it if I hadn't seen her shoot. That, and"—Emery gave a conspiratorial wink—"I knowed of her daddy. He was after my time in 'Nam but give my grandson a what-for last summer at Mountain Warfare. Anyway, Roni, gotcha the gear you asked for and those Glock 19s you like."

"Glocks, not Sigs?" John asked Roni. Sig-Sauers were standard Army issue. "That's almost unpatriotic."

"Sigs." Emery made a rude noise with his lips. "What's the Army know?"

"Sigs are ugly," Roni said. "It's the color. I don't like camo brown. It's not elegant."

"A shooter with fashion sense." Emery grinned. "Unless you want, maybe, a S&W M&P, son? Or I got a Walther PP if you want or scrounge up a couple raceguns."

"No, the Glock is fine, sir," John said.

"Okay, then." Pulling a flashlight from a back pocket, Emery nodded toward a side door. "Come on out."

The side door leading from Emery's office opened onto the walkway covered by a ballistic canopy that sheltered ten shooting stations. Each station consisted of a simple but hefty wood table large enough to rest a long gun on a tripod.

Earl talked as he walked. "Gotchyer berm at three hunnert and twenty-five yards, targets set up at a hunnert and a hunnert and fifty. Ground in-between is just packed dirt. No stray brass. Impact berm's thirty feet high, but you'll see that when you light 'er up." He stopped at two stations midway down the line and used his flashlight to pick out items on the near table. "Ear and eye protection. Weapons are identical, and lasers already zeroed in, so all you gotta decide is who's right and who's left."

There were two weapons at each station. One was the Glock 19 Emery promised, equipped with a combination IR laser and illumination set mounted beneath the barrel. Next to each Glock was an M4 outfitted with an FWS-I, which stood for F amily of W eapons S ights- I ndividual. (In John's experience, the military never met an acronym it didn't like.) The unit fed thermal images via Bluetooth to an imaging monocle, the ENVG-III, which was, in turn, meant to be attached to a helmet. Anything the camera saw, the soldier could, too.

"This is some fancy gear, Emery," he said. "But where'd you get it? Far as I know, this is military-issue only."

"Don't ask, don't tell," Roni said.

"Let's just say I got friends." Emery offered a thin smile that showed no teeth and changed the subject. "You ever practice with one of these units, son?" When John shook his head, the older man said, "You just put on that monocle and then whatever the gun sees, you do, too."

"The setup's thermally based," Roni put in. "Whatever the camera sees is fed to the ENVG. That way, you don't have to shoulder your weapon for a peek the way you would if you were looking through a scope. All you have to do is slide the barrel out at a right angle to a wall and see what's going on. Saves getting your head blown off."

"Yeah, as long as that fancy Bluetooth connection doesn't drop," Emery said, dryly. His tone made it obvious what he thought of all that high-falutin' gear, too.

"Cool," he said. "But we're just not going to be in those kinds of situations."

Roni cocked her head. "Never say never again." And then at his narrow look: "What? I thought you'd be impressed with my knowledge of James Bond movies."

He rolled his eyes. "Get real, Roni. We're doctors. If we go anywhere, it'll be Germany or Qatar and even that's a big maybe. They're not going to send us into a combat situation. Something would have to go seriously FUBAR for us to be deployed anywhere dangerous."

"You're in the Army, son," Emery said. "Something's always a whisker away from going FUBAR."

They started with the Glocks.

After his first half-dozen shots, Roni studied his target. "You're whacking the gun." She pointed to a scatter of shots so wide they might as well have been in another time zone. "It's because you're trying to do it as fast as I am."

"She's right." Emery sucked on his lower teeth. "You want, I could go get my Viper. Slide's like butter. You'll cycle through right quick."

"No." He was annoyed but not for the reasons they thought. The reality was...he knew exactly how quickly he'd popped off shots, but his speed had nothing to do with being competitive. What he worried about was being as good as he knew he was.

It was one thing to show competence on the rifle range in front of his classmates. Everyone knew he hunted. Handguns were different, though. Do it right in front of people who knew what they were looking at and a person might get questions he didn't want to answer .

Except...missing on purpose was killing him. Like telling an elite tennis player to, say, stop returning the ball so often.

"Thanks for the offer," he said to Emery. "I just have to slow down."

"What you need is to stop trying to beat her," Emery said.

"Heh." Clearly in a much better mood, Roni favored him with a cocky grin. "Too late."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah." Though he liked that she was smiling. "Less talk," he said, pulling his earmuffs on again. "More shooting."

After that, he allowed himself to pull dead even with but not outshoot Roni. "Good shooting," Emery said, comparing targets, though, again, he slipped John that sidelong glance. "Noticed you took some care there."

What had the older man seen? That he tried very hard not to shoot through his own holes? "Ah," he said. "You know, just lucky."

"Uh-huh," Emery said after a short silence that stretched for one beat too many. "Lucky." Then: "Y'all ever done an Annie Oakley?"

"I'm sorry?" Roni asked. "A who?"

"Not a who, " said Emery. "A what. An Annie Oakley is where you shoot the flame from a candle without hitting the candle."

"Seriously?" He gave what he thought was a very convincing, very bewildered laugh for a guy who knew exactly what an Annie Oakley was. "That's impossible."

"Not for Annie Oakley. She could do it with a lever-action rifle at thirty-five yards. I had an old buddy could do it with a High Standard competition pistol."

"Wow," he said, injecting just as much disbelief into his tone as he thought prudent. "So, how far with a modern weapon, like an M4?" Like he didn't already know the answer.

"A good sniper at night and without a spotter?" Emery sucked his teeth, considering. "Probably two hundred yards, two-fifty. Either of you up for a try?"

"I'm game," Roni said.

"Sure," he said, though he thought he was just a half-beat too slow. "Can't hurt to try."

"The way it works is you each get three shots." Pushing up from the dirt where he'd set up a Remington M2010 on a bipod, Emery dusted himself off. "Cutting the candle in two is no good. You got to snuff the wick, and that's it."

"How many yards again?" Her head swiveled toward a solitary flicker downrange, so far away as to be only bright and no color at all. "That looks awfully far. "

"Three fifty," Emery said. "Right up against the berm."

She goggled. "Seriously?" At the same moment John protested, "I thought you said two-fifty with a spotter."

"I figured you two might be up for a challenge."

"Can you hit that?" she asked.

"Me?" Emery made a raspberry sound. "Not in a million years."

Annoyed, she planted her fists on her hips. "Then how fair is that?"

"Don't sweat it. All it means is we'll be in good company when we miss." John made a half-bow. "Ladies first."

"Uh-huh." She huffed out her cheeks. "I know what you're doing: taking notes."

"You want me to go first?"

"No, no." She was annoyed, though couldn't put her finger on exactly why. "I'll do it."

"Then, go," Emery said. "More you think about it, worse it will get. Take your shots before that thing burns down."

She did everything almost right. She lay on her stomach. She spread her legs. But she couldn't get comfortable with the gun. What's wrong with you? She fidgeted, snugging and then adjusting the butt of the Remington into her right shoulder as the men watched.

She knew what bothered her. The tiniest finger of disquiet poked the nape of her neck. John was...there wasn't something quite right about him. Like he's holding himself back. But why would he do that?

What also hit her then was just how much she didn't know about him. She could say the same of the others, but with John, once she relaxed and they talked...there'd been this palpable tug of attraction. With him so close, she'd had this sudden, crazy urge to pull over, throw the car into park, and then throw herself all over him . She ached to taste the salt of his neck then run her tongue to the angle of his jaw and down to circle his nipples. She would work her way back up to his mouth, his gorgeous lips, while her fingers worked the snap over the bulge in his jeans and then reach in and slide her hand around his?—

"You okay down there?" Emery asked.

"Fine." Focus. Wrenching her mind away from fantasies of sweaty limbs and sighs and moans, she worked her neck then embraced the rifle the way her dad had taught and let her breathing settle down.

After her third shot, Roni pushed to her feet and brushed off her pants and shirt. Downrange, the flame still flickered, a tiny bright speck seen through a pinprick in black fabric. "This is impossible," she grumped.

"But you tried," John said .

"Yeah, yeah, dare you to do any better , hotshot."

"Easy there, Roni," Emery said, his tone mild. "I think you were just distracted is all. It happens."

"Want to go again?" John said. "I don't mind."

"No." Then, as his smile faltered as if that single word were a lash, she said, with effort, "I mean, thanks, but we should stick to the rules." She waited a beat then continued, "I just don't like to lose."

"Yeah? You know, come to think of it, neither did Captain Kirk."

That broke the tension. "Do tell." Her mouth quirked into a lopsided grin and then she laughed outright. "And why was that?"

"Are you kidding? Always ready to fire phasers and take names?" John showed a dazzling smile, playful and somehow very intimate. "Kinda no guts, no glory. Totally my kind of guy."

"Uh-huh." A loud, phlegmy cough from Emery. "If you space cadets are finished?—"

My God, she'd forgotten the man was there. And when had she moved closer to John?

"Yeah," she and John said at the same time and then John went on, "I'm good, sir."

"Okay, Captain Kirk, then let's see what you got." Emery cocked a thumb at the Remington. "Go on, Doc. Go for glory."