Frank Zafiro - Heroes Often Fail

“Assume a ready position. Remember to focus on the front sight.” There was a pause after Sergeant Morgan’s final instructions, then the target turned to face the shooters.

Kopriva drew smoothly and leveled his weapon at the target. His eye focused on the front sight. He found the target, which was appropriately fuzzy. He squeezed the trigger.

Bam!

Taking only a brief moment to reacquire his target, Kopriva squeezed off four more rounds. He paid no attention to where they may have hit. Switching hands, he raised the pistol again and put the front sight on the fuzzy target.

He felt the dull ache in his shoulder and upper arm. Ignoring it, Kopriva squeezed the trigger. The gun gave a sharp report and bucked in his hand. Slivers of pain shot up and down his arm.

He squeezed and the gun kicked again. The pain increased slightly. Kopriva ground his teeth and fired a third time. By the time he fired the fourth and final shot, the pain was buzzing like an electrical current from his elbow to his collar bone and back again. Even his left knee, which had only been a distant ache all day, seemed to sing out with more pain in answer to his arm.

Kopriva swallowed hard and scanned briefly before shifting the gun back into his right hand. He holstered a little awkwardly, still not used to the plainclothes holster after almost four years of wearing a patrol duty belt.

The target turned before he could get a look at where he’d hit.

At the fifteen-yard line, he fired five rounds while kneeling and nine rounds while standing. He knelt on his right knee to spare his left from the pressure, but it throbbed in protest even at being bent sharply. Sweat trickled down his back, even though the Spring morning was cool. He forgot to look to see where his rounds landed before the target turned.

The final distance for the department qualification shoot was twenty-five yards. He fired another fourteen rounds, kneeling and standing. There was no time limit, so his target remained facing him until the last officer finished firing. He rose slowly after his last shot. His knee felt ragged and his left arm and shoulder throbbed from the effort of being a support side as he’d fired. He tried to ignore the pain, thinking of the pills in his car. Instead, he strained to see if any rounds had hit outside the black silhouette.

After Sergeant Morgan had directed everyone to clear their weapons, he was allowed to go forward and retrieve his target. He was at the seven-yard line when he saw the small hole in white paper, just over the right shoulder of the silhouette.

A clean miss.

He had two groin shots, which cost him points, but he didn’t worry so much about those. It was still a hit and an effective one on a human target. He had a tight cluster of holes punched in the center of the target and a few drifting outward, but all were good hits. Except for the one.

Kopriva carried his target back towards the range building to score it. Co-ops, who were college students studying law enforcement at the local community college, had already begun to pick up the expended brass at each position.

Kopriva suppressed a sigh. He preferred combat shoots to department qualifications. Punching holes in paper was fine for the basics, but he found that not only did he enjoy the combat shoots more, he was better at them. The range personnel usually did an excellent job of setting up a challenging course to put officers through. They used hostages, metal targets and pop-ups to effect a sense of realism.

“How’d you do, Stef?” Katie asked as she fell into step next to him.

Kopriva shrugged. “Dunno yet. Threw one, though.”

Katie held her target up for him to see. A hole the size of a small saucer was torn raggedly in the center of the target. One errant round was just to the left in the eight-ring.

Kopriva tried to appear disgusted.

She wouldn’t even have to add hers up. Fifty rounds, ten points each. She got one eight, forty-nine tens. Four hundred and ninety-eight. She’d get rated as a Master shooter again.

“Nice shooting, show-off,” he muttered.

“Jealous?” Katie’s eyes shined.

He shook his head. “No. I’d like to see you try that naked, though.”

“I’ll bet you would.” Katie smiled, but looked around to see if anyone had heard.

They entered the range building. Katie put her target in the used target stack and filled out her slip, handing it to Sergeant Morgan.

“See you later,” she whispered to Kopriva as she walked by and out the door.

Kopriva watched her go. He was glad she was careful about letting people know they were seeing each other. It was no one’s business and if it became common knowledge, it would invariably cause trouble. It was trouble he was willing to endure if necessary, but he did not particularly welcome it. The rumor mill at the River City Police Department was grinding, always grinding.

Kopriva was surprised that he missed her already.

He added up his score. He came up with four hundred and sixty when he felt a tap on his shoulder. Sergeant Morgan stood beside him. The stern range-master pointed to Kopriva’s single miss with the end of his pen.

“Good target. Except for that.” He looked to Kopriva for an explanation.

Kopriva thought about the dull throb in his knee and the buzzing current in left arm. “No excuse, Sarge,” he said.

“Take your time,” Morgan told him gruffly. “You can’t miss fast enough.”

Kopriva nodded as if he hadn’t heard the same piece of advice as many times as “focus on the front sight.” He knew Morgan’s concern was sincere and even if he was a zealot, it didn’t bother Kopriva. The training had saved his life on at least one very infamous occasion.

Sergeant Morgan gave him a fatherly nod and wandered off to inspect the results of other officers.

Kopriva put his target in the used stack. A Co-op stapled new targets onto the old ones. He recognized Kopriva. His eyes grew eager behind his acne-riddled face and Kopriva knew a question was coming. He knew exactly what the question would be.

“You’re Kopriva, right?”

“Yes.”

“You were in the shootout at the Circle K.”

Kopriva nodded.

“Oh, wow, man.” The Co-op’s eyes shone with admiration, then turned serious. He leaned forward intently. “Did shooting these targets help? I mean, when things were for real and guys were shooting at you, did any of this really help?”

Kopriva glanced away and shifted his weight to his right leg. “Yes,” was all he said.

“Did you-” the Co-op started to ask, but another voice interrupted in a harsh, sarcastic tone.

“Excuse me, can I get through?”

Kopriva stepped aside as Jack Stone moved forward to put his target on the stack. Obvious disgust filled the fifteen-year veteran’s face. The Co-op didn’t seem to notice, but Kopriva could feel the hostility radiating off of Stone. He knew Stone as a by-the-books officer, even if he was gruff with the public. Kopriva had heard that Stone generated more than his fair share of citizen complaints. He also knew that he required a backup unit for virtually everything and despised “code-four cowboys” who did things with what he considered insufficient back-up.

Stone was not alone in his feelings among patrol officers, Kopriva knew. Since the shooting at the Circle K, his reputation as the eminent code-four cowboy had soared.

Stone turned from the rack and regarded Kopriva with a curled lip. “What would you know about following training?” he said in a low voice.

Kopriva felt a surge of dull anger at the veteran’s condemnation. He knew when he was code-thirteen, needing a backup, and he knew when he was code-four and didn’t. That night at the Circle K, he needed everyone he could get as he stumbled onto an armed robbery in progress. The robber had been known as Scarface, who had a run of about twenty robberies in little more than a month. When he was ambushed at the scene by Isaiah Morris, a Compton Crip, and shot three times, he needed even more help. It seemed like forever before backup arrived.