Free The Other Side of Bad (The Tucker Novels) by R.O. Barton

eyes over towards Spain’s booth.
    I stepped back and looked into Spain’s booth to find him in a two-handed shooting stance with his gun pointed at the target.
    Ever since Spain and I’ve been shooting against each other, spanning over a decade, we’d been playing this game. I took all his shenanigans as a compliment.
    “Spain, why don’t you come over here and keep me honest,” I said quietly.
    His shoulders hunched, like a small boy caught in the cookie jar.
    As he turned to look at me, I ducked back into my booth. When he came around, I could tell he didn’t know if I had seen him or not.
    “I trust you, Tucker,” he said, with big innocent eyes.
    “I’m sure you do, but I think we’d both have better scores if we could see each other. You know, make it a more interesting competition.”
    I looked around and said, “What about you guys? Wouldn’t ya’ll like to see us go at it, side by side?”
    Almost everyone had crammed into the booths in order to see the targets, so they hadn’t been privy to Spain’s point shaving tactic.
    There were nods and murmurings of agreement. There wasn’t much Spain could do, but come over with me.
    I scooted over, which put him to my left. I wasn’t worried about his ejected brass hitting me. On all the guns I worked on, I made sure the brass went almost directly over the shooters right shoulder. That kept them out of the way of their partners in a firefight, and I had definitely worked on the gun Spain was going to shoot.
    “Let’s do this!” Spark yelled irritably. “I want to go home!”
    I said, “Hold on, Spark, I’ve got to clean these glasses. There’s something all over them.”
    I reached over, take hold of Spain’s cream-colored silk tie and started cleaning the glasses.
    “Thanks, buddy,” I said. “This won’t scratch the lenses.”
    He didn’t say a word, just looked straight ahead like a guilty defendant receiving his sentence.
    Spain set his extra magazine on the bench with the .45 next to it, and I did the same.
    “You ready?” I asked.
    “Yep.”
    I looked over at Spark and nodded, then looked at Patrolman Walker and caught his eye, took off my leather jacket and handed it to him. He gave me a sheepish smile and blushed. Walker was just a kid, couldn’t be more than 22 or 23.
    “One . . . two . . . three!” Spark yelled, and hit the button.
    The lights started, red . . . red . . . . amber . . . . green.
    By then I had tunnel vision, my heart rate had slowed, and The Calm had settled over me.
    When the green light glowed, I stepped, picked up my gun, with slightly bent knees and a two-handed grip, both eyes open, I looked at the target and shot five times. BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG.
    After each shot, as soon as the muzzle dropped back into the target, I fired again. The way I have my gun tuned, this happens about every three-tenths of a second.
    After the fifth and last round, the slide locked back. With my thumb, I pressed the magazine release button and the empty mag fell on the bench. I shoved the extra magazine, that I don’t remember picking up, into the gun, thumbed down the extended slide release as I aimed, pulled the trigger, starting the next five-round sequence, BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG.
    The shots were so close together, it was hard to distinguish one from the other, it almost a continuous roar. Again, as the last round was spent, the slide locked back.
    I yelled, “Red!”
    I released the slide, thumbed up the safety, slipped the gun in my holster and stepped back.
    “God damn, motherfucker, son-of-a-bitch,” were just some of the less colorful expletives bouncing around the room. Cops have such broad vocabularies. I heard one say, “Fuck-me-running! Even a… “Shit the bed!”
    I knew I’d shot faster than Spain; that was obvious. He was still shooting when I holstered my gun, and he didn’t bother to say ‘red’. But, had I outshot him? I don’t see where my bullets strike when I’m shooting. I just