Chapter 18

 

I knew Brad had killed before. He’d done it for Queen and Country when he was in the SAS, which was understandable. But he’d also done it in the past to save my life when I’d been kidnapped following an investigation I was working on. It was either me or the bad guy, and Brad had no choice. He and his friends had got rid of the body, and it had never been found. I could understand him wanting to shoot Ivan for what he’d done to Dana. Hell, I wanted to shoot him, too. But we were in America now. We didn’t have a cleanup crew at our disposal. What if something went wrong and we got caught?

‘Look, I know you want to kill Ivan for what he and his thugs did to Dana, but we can’t,’ I said as we walked towards the Strip, hand in hand.

‘We’re not going to kill anyone. Don’t worry.’

‘Then where are we going?’

‘When I was looking through those guidebooks, I found a gun range not far from here. I thought we could shoot some rounds and pretend it’s Ivan. I need to let out some inner anger.’

‘Don’t you need to have a gun and a license to shoot at a range here?’

‘This is America.’ He shrugged. ‘Gun capital of the world. They want you to shoot something.’

Brad hailed a taxi, and we arrived at The Gun Shack five minutes later. It wasn’t anything like a shack. It was huge. To the left of the reception was a shop where you could buy any kind of firepower you wanted. I thought about all the nutters out there who could get hold of a gun as easily as buying a carton of milk. Scary.

The tiny brunette receptionist welcomed us with a huge smile and told us about the different shooting packages we could buy. They had a standard package, a coalition package, a WWII package, a machine-gun package, a zombie package—WTF?—and even a wedding package, where couples could get married in between an arsenal of firearms and walk down the aisle to gunfire. Bizarre. It brought a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘Shotgun Wedding.’

‘I don’t want the WWII or the coalition package,’ Brad said. ‘I’ve had enough of war. What do you fancy?’

The only thing I’d ever shot was a pistol. I even shot my ex-boss in the arse when I was a copper. To make a long story short, she totally deserved it. My own inner anger about what had happened to Dana and my ruined wedding bubbled to the surface, and I had the urge to shoot something meaty.

‘How about the machine-gun package?’

‘Oh, that’s a good one!’ the receptionist enthused. ‘You get to use an AK47, an Uzi, a Colt M16, and an MP40.’

‘Fabulous!’ I said.

Our own dedicated range instructor, Hank, took us to pick up the guns and ammo before giving a safety talk and explaining about how the weapons worked.

‘Have you ever shot before?’ he asked us.

‘I was in the army, so you could say I know a thing or two,’ Brad said.

I nodded. ‘I’m an ex-cop. I shot my boss once.’

‘Jesus.’ Hank raised his eyebrows.

‘Don’t worry. I promise to only shoot the target today.’

Hank led us to an indoor forty-lane range at the rear of the building. It had booths with glass walls on either side that ran up to the ceiling, partitioning each shooter from the next. We found two empty booths. To our right was a twenty-something woman wearing stilettos, the tiniest denim shorts that weren’t even worth wearing—if she’d come out in a thong, she’d have been more covered up—and a very low-cut top that showed off her surgically enhanced cleavage. Perfect shooting attire. On the other side of her was an old man with a walking stick propped up against the counter in front of him, shooting a pistol.

Brad put two of the machine guns on his counter, and I did the same with mine. When we’d fired our allocated rounds of each, we were going to play swapsies.

‘OK, if you have any questions, just ask,’ Hank said. ‘I’ll be standing right here behind you for safety procedures.’ He pointed to a button on the side of my booth. ‘Press here to bring the target holder towards you, and you can load your target on. Press it again, and it goes back to the end of the range.’

I pressed my button and loaded up a target sheet, which wasn’t the usual black-and-white head and torso—it was actually a scary-looking clown. I sent the target back again.

‘Ready, guys?’ Hank asked.

‘Hell, yeah,’ I said, donning my ear mufflers to drown out the loud bangs and positioning myself with a fixed stance, ready to shoot the AK47.

And then I was off in my own little world, blasting away and imagining Ivan was the clown.

Yay, headshot! Take that, you arsehole. Ooooh, one in the heart, woo-hoo! That’s for Dana!

My ammo was gone much too quickly. I put the AK47 down on the counter and stole a glance at Brad. The muscles rippled underneath his shirt. He finished his ammo and caught my glance, winking. We both recalled our targets, removed them, and compared our accuracy. His were deadly spot-on in head and heart shots. Mine were pretty good, but nothing like when I shot with a pistol.

I used the Uzi next and annihilated my target. When I’d finished, Brad and I swapped our guns and loaded up with ammo and new targets. I got to work on the MP40.

As I was reloading a new clown, movement from the girl in the booth next to me caught my eye. I looked over. She was jumping up and down, gun in one hand, screaming her head off while her other hand scrabbled down the front of her top.

‘Argh! Hot! Hot!’ she yelped, waving the gun hand around. ‘It’s burning!’

I guessed that a hot shell casing had flown out of her gun, bounced off the stall divider, and landed down her top. Ouchie!

‘Put the gun down on the counter!’ Hank yelled at her, but she didn’t seem to hear.

‘Helppppppppp! Get it out!’ She screamed, turning around to Hank, thrusting her chest in his face, carrying on waving the gun madly as she tried to dig the casing out of her cleavage with her other hand.

‘Ma’am, put the gun on the—’ But Hank didn’t get to finish what he was saying. In her panic, she pulled the trigger and shot the old man next to her in the arse.

Double ouchie!

‘Shit!’ Hank yelled, taking hold of the woman’s hand and extracting the gun before she could do any more damage.

‘What the hell!’ the old man yelled, clutching his backside, eyes wide with pain. ‘You shot me, you idiot!’ He glared at the woman.

‘It was burning me! I panicked and forgot to put the gun down.’ The woman pulled out the offending spent shell cartridge from in between her boobs, rubbing them and pulling down her T-shirt to get a look.

‘I need a paramedic,’ the old man shouted, slumping to his knees and doing a face plant on the floor, hands clutching his backside, and groaning.

‘I need a paramedic!’ the woman yelled. ‘I’ve got third-degree nipple burns!’

Hank spoke on the radio that was clipped to his belt and said they needed medical assistance for a gunshot wound and casing burns then kneeled beside the man. ‘Are you OK, sir?’

‘Of course I’m not OK. I’ve got a bullet in my ass!’ he yelped.

‘I’m so sorry,’ the woman said.

‘Sorry? You shot me.’ The man’s voice was muffled into the ground.

‘At least it wasn’t me this time,’ I said to Brad.

Brad shook his head slowly. ‘This is why you can’t just walk in off the street and shoot a gun in the UK.’

The mood was kind of ruined then by the old guy groaning and the woman crying hysterically, so we decided not to bother shooting our last machine gun and left before anything else decided to spontaneously happen around us.