Large signs that said RESTRICTED were posted along the roadway that separated this isolated area from Pelham Bay Park, of which it was once a part
There's a first time for everything, Coop," Mike said, leading me up to a table in front of a low wooden building that looked like an old stable. We both put on padded ear protectors, although they did little to muffle the constant sound of gunfire. "Settle down. He knew me as well as I knew myself. I didn't like it here. That was evident from the expression on my face and the stiffness of my body.
I was scoping the vast property as we walked through the stall to the place where we would stand for my first lesson firing guns, which I had promised Mike and Mercer I would take after a confrontation with an armed killer.
We were both in jeans and polo shirts already coated with a fine layer of dust from our walk from the parking lot to the area where dozens of cops were lined up side by side, shooting hundreds of rounds of real ammunition as cartridges discharged around us.
"I'd rather be talking to Herb Ackerman. Or checking out Bowery bars."
"Later for that. You do well in school and I'll take you bar-hopping. Okay, we're starting with a revolver."
One of the instructors came up behind me and Mike introduced us. He was dressed in the standard uniform of the firearms squad-all khaki, instead of the dark blue that street cops wore, with crossed pistol insignias on the collar. His name was Pete Acosta, and he had a revolver for each of us.
"But you don't even use one of these anymore."
"I started with this because my old man swore by his. Once upon a time, everybody on the force used a.38. Cops love them 'cause they always fire," Mike said. "And for beginners like you, they're usually easier to handle. Now there's too much fancy hardware on the street and these just can't keep up."
The day after rookie police officers were sworn in, there was a weapons selection event at the academy. It had become increasingly rare for young cops to choose to work with these guns, once thought to be more reliable, though much slower, than semiautomatics.
"Don't look so frightened," Mike said, prodding me in the back. "Step out there. No one's going to shoot you."
He loaded his revolver with six rounds while Pete loaded mine.
To both sides of me, only eight feet apart, were officers firing their guns, maybe a dozen men and women in all. In front of each position was a target, set in the ground about thirty feet away.
The human form, a drawing of a life-sized figure in sharp black outline, was pointing his gun at us. Every cop was blasting away at his chest or head. Most of the rounds were smacking into their paper targets, killing the gun-wielding menace again and again. Some missed high or wide, and you could see the dust kick up on the dry mounds of dirt that formed a perimeter to the rear of the range.
"Go ahead, Alex," Pete said, smiling at my hesitation. "Eight million rounds are fired here every year and nobody's ever been hit."
I looked from side to side at the men practicing around me and raised my arm, lining up the notch on the tip of the revolver through the sight.
"Get the thug," Pete said.
"What?"
"We call him the thug."
I pulled back on the trigger and the gun discharged.
"Sweet Jesus," Mike said. "Check with the Montauk police, Pete. Somebody might be sitting on his deck, gunshot wound in the middle of his forehead. She sailed that one right out of the ballpark. You check your vision lately, Coop?"
The sound of the constant gunfire unnerved me. I had never heard anything like it. I picked up the revolver and aimed again, or so I thought. The bullet lodged somewhere in the dirt beyond the thug's shoulder. He wouldn't even have needed to duck.
Mike stepped in closer behind me and put his arms over each of mine. "You see that guy on the target? He's aiming to blow your brains out. Think of it that way."
He was trying to keep my arms in place after I sighted the chest of the paper figure. "Pull back."
I fired once more, into the mound off in the distance, and now the cops on either side of me stopped to watch. Then I tried the last three rounds, but none of them came close.
"You do it."
Mike stood beside me and pointed the revolver. He let off six rounds, before refilling the gun with a speed loader that Pete handed to him with another six. Every one of them made its mark somewhere on the threatening thug.
"Maybe you'll like the semiautomatic better," Pete said. "What do you use, Mike?"
"A Glock 19," he said, unholstering his gun from his ankle.
Pete walked inside the stable with the revolvers and returned with a different gun for me. "Try this. It's a Sig-Sauer. A nine millimeter semiautomatic."
"Too many moving parts for her. This is a broad who can't operate a DVD player, Pete. She may never get it, but Mercer and I are determined to try."
More men were turning to watch me now-mocking me-as Pete explained the differences between the guns.
"There's one bullet in the chamber," Pete said, "and fifteen in the magazine. It requires good isometric tension to use one of these, Alex. There's a lot of jump in the recoil."
I could guess from firing the revolver what recoil was, but I didn't have a clue about isometric tension.
"Put your right index finger on the trigger," Pete said.
Mike moved in again to position me. He had put his own gun back in his ankle holster. "Stand with your legs apart, arms straight out."
"Why don't you just let Pete do this with me, okay?"
"Put your right index finger on the trigger," Mike said, ignoring me as he was not unused to doing. "Both thumbs on the left side of the grip. No, no, no. You can't cross them like that."
The guy to my right stepped back, with good reason. I pressed hard on the trigger, and when the gun discharged, my arms flew up with the kick and pulled to the side. It seemed like I had grazed the thug's kneecap, although I had been aiming for his chest.
"Look, I can't do this with everyone staring at me."
"You? I'm thinking your dream gig is to try a four-perp murder case that's televised on Court TV. What's with the shy shooter thing? You giving up?"
"Not yet. Is there any other way to do this without an audience?" I asked Pete.
"FATS. That's an indoor facility. Let's go over there. It's the Firearms and Tactics Simulators," he said, pointing to another area of the vast operation.
I returned the Sig and ear protectors and started to walk with Mike.
"You two head over," Pete said, stepping into an office as we passed through the stable to the far side of C-range, the designated pistol target area at which we'd been firing. "I'll put these away and be right there."
"It's amazing no one's been killed here."
"Shot, no. Killed, yes," Mike said. "Thirty years ago, one of my father's friends was blown up."
"What do you mean?"
He walked backwards and squinted to look off to the south, beyond the pistol range. "There's a huge crater they call the Pit. It's on the southernmost tip of the peninsula here, that juts into Eastchester Bay. The bomb squad detonates all the devices that are recovered in the city. They've done it since the days of the Weathermen. One of the earliest bombs they brought here detonated prematurely, and Brian's friend didn't make it away in time."
"How horrible," I said. "Is that why the range is restricted? The bomb danger?"
"This whole enclave is the NYPD's practice territory for urban warfare," Mike said, to the background noise of gunshots. "You've got all the special weapons that the antiterrorist squads use-MP5 submachine guns and Colt rifles and Ithaca shotguns. There's a helipad for the department's choppers. You got Aviation and police boat docks, the Bomb Squad, Special Ops, Highway Patrol, all hidden in this out-ofthe-way place that nobody seems to know about. It was even an emergency base after 9/11."
The range was a beehive of police activity. We passed a mess hall and a gun shop and the entrance to an underground bunker that Mike said held at least one of every kind of firearm ever manufactured, including rare World War II weapons.