The Hornet’s Nest. Patricia Cornwell

Or boys? She did not understand Andy Brazil as he foraged through shelves of

ammunition inside the firing range shop, picking out Winchester 95 grain full metal

jacket . 380, Luger’ll5 grain ball nine-millimeter cartridges, and contemplated . 45

automatic 230 grain, Federal Hi-Power, Hydra-Shok hollowpoints, and Super X 50

Centerfire that were too expensive for practice. He was going nuts.

This was a candy shop, and West was buying.

Gunshots sounded like a war going on inside this range, where NRA rednecks worshiped

their pistols, and drug dealers with cash and leather hightops got better at killing. West

and Brazil were loaded down with hearing protectors, safety glasses, and boxes of

ammunition.

She was a woman in jeans, carrying two pistol hard cases.

Dangerous-looking men gave her hostile glances, not happy about girls invading their club. Brazil was picking up danger signals as he surveyed his surroundings.

The men didn’t seem to like him, either. He was suddenly conscious of being in

Davidson tennis sweats and having tied a bandana around his head to keep his hair out of

his eyes. These guys all had guts and big shoulders, as if they worked out with forklifts

and cases of beer. He had seen their trucks in the parking lot, some of them with six

wheels, as if there were mountains and streams to climb and cross along 1-74 and 1-40.

Brazil did not understand the tribe of Male he had grown up around in North Carolina.

It was beyond biology, genitals, hormones, or testosterone. Some of these guys had

naked pinups on the mud flaps of their tractor trailers, and Brazil was frankly horrified.

A guy saw a foxy woman with a body, and he wanted her protecting his radials from

gravel? Not Brazil. He wanted her at the movies, the drive-through, and in candlelight.

He was using the staple gun, fastening another target to cardboard and attaching it to the

frame in his lane. West, the instructor, was examining her pupil’s latest target. The

silhouette she held up had a tight spread of bullet holes in the center of the chest. She

was amazed. She watched Brazil push cartridges into the magazine of a stainless steel

Sig-Sauer . 380 pistol.

“You’re dangerous,” she let him know.

He gripped the small gun with both hands, in the position and stance his father had taught

him in a life he scarcely recalled. Brazil’s form wasn’t bad, but it could be improved, and

he fired one round after another. He dropped out the empty magazine and smacked in a

new one. He fired nonstop, as if he couldn’t shoot fast enough and would kill anybody

else in life who hurt him. This would not do. West knew the reality of the street.

She reached for a button in his booth and held it in. The paper target suddenly came to

life and screeched along the lane toward Brazil, as if it were going to attack him.

Startled, Brazil shot wildly. BARNI BARNI BARNI Bullets slammed into the target’s

metal frame, into the back rubber wall, and then he was out of ammo. The target

screeched to a stop, rocking from its cable in his face.

“Hey! What are you doing?” He turned to West, indignant and bewildered.

She did not answer at first as she pushed cartridges into black metal magazines. She

smacked one into her big bad black . 40 caliber Smith & Wesson semiautomatic, then

looked at her student.

“You shoot too fast.” She racked back the slide and it snapped forward. She aimed at her own target in her own lane.

“You’re out of ammo.” She fired. BAM BAM

“And out of luck.” BAM BAM

She paused, and fired twice again. She set down her pistol and moved close to Brazil, taking the . 380 from him, and opening the slide to make sure the gun was unloaded and

safe. She pointed it down the lane, hands and arms locked, knees slightly bent, in the

proper position and stance.

“Tap-tap and stop,” she told him as she demonstrated.

“Tap-tap and stop. You see what the other person’s doing and adjust.” She returned the .

380 to him, butt first.