Her stomach was balled up like a threatened opossum. Seth was the best diet she’d ever been on, and could throw her into anorexia quicker than anything. In rare, quiet moments, when Hammer walked alone on a beach or in the mountains, she knew she had not been in love with Seth for most of their marriage. But he was her weight-bearing wall. Were he knocked out, half her world would crash. That was his power over her, and she knew it like any good wife. The children, for example, might take his side. This was not possible, but Judy Hammer feared it.

“I’m not talking because I have nothing to say,” Seth reasonably replied.

“Fine.” She folded her cloth napkin and dropped it on the table as she began searching for the waitress.

Miles away on Wilkinson Boulevard, past Bob’s Pawn Shop, trailer parks, and Coyote Joe’s and near the topless Paper Doll Lounge, The Firing Line was conducting a war of its own. Brazil was slaughtering silhouettes screeching down the lane at him. Ejected cartridge cases sailed through the air, clinking to the floor. West’s pupil was improving like nothing she’d ever seen. She was proud.

“Tap-tap, you’re out!” she rudely yelled, as if he were the village idiot. “Safety on. Dump the magazine, reload, rack it! Ready position, safety off! Tap-tap! Stop!”

This had been going on for more than an hour, and good ole boys were peering out from their booths, wondering what the hell was going on down there. Who was that babe shouting like a drill sergeant at that faggy-looking guy? Bubba, who was begot by a Bubba and probably related to a long line of them, was leaning against a cinder-block wall, an Exxon cap low over his eyes. He was big and bad in fatigues and a camouflage vest, as he watched the target screeching closer and closer to the blond guy.

Bubba was aware of the dense, tight spread, recognizing this guy’s skill at head shots. Bubba drooled snuff in a bottle, and glanced back at his own lane to make certain no one thought about touching his Glock 20 ten-millimeter combat-type handgun or his Remington XP-100 with Leupold scope and standard load of fifty-grain Sierra PSP bullets and seventeen grains of IMR 4198 powder. This was a handgun that rested very nicely over sandbags. His Calico model 110 auto pistol, with its hundred-shot magazine and flash suppressor, wasn’t half bad, either, nor was the Browning Hi-Power HP-Practical pistol, complete with Pachmayr rubber grips, round-style serrated hammer, and removable front sight.

There was little Bubba liked better than to machine-gun a couple of targets, brass flying like shrapnel, as drug dealers walked behind him, not the least bit interested in messing with the man. Bubba watched the bitch down range unfasten a target from its metal frame. She held it up and looked at her dead-eye, sweet boyfriend.

“Who pissed you off?” she asked Brazil.

Bubba’s manly stride carried him their way as more rounds exploded like strings of firecrackers.