Red Dragon - Thomas Harris [56]
A change in the sound brought the rangemaster's glasses up again. They had the earmuffs on now and she was working with a short, chunky revolver. The rangemaster recognized the pop of the light target loads.
He could see the pistol extended in her hands and it interested him. He strolled along the firing line and stood a few yards behind them.
He wanted to examine the pistol, but this was not a good time to interrupt. He got a good look at it as she shucked out the empties and popped in five from a speedloader.
Odd arm for a fed. It was a Bulldog .44 Special, short and ugly with its startling big bore. It had been extensively modified by Mag Na Port. The barrel was vented near the muzzle to help keep the muzzle down on recoil, the hammer was bobbed and it had a good set of fat grips. He suspected it was throated for the speedloader. One hell of a mean pistol when it was loaded with what the fed had waiting. He wondered how the woman would stand up to it.
The ammunition on the stand beside them was an interesting progression. First there was a box of lightly loaded wadcutters. Then came regular service hardball, and last was something the rangemaster had read much about but had rarely seen. A row of Glaser Safety Slugs. The tips looked like pencil erasers. Behind each tip was a copper jacket containing numbertwelve shot suspended in liquid Teflon.
The light projectile was designed to fly at tremendous velocity, smash into the target and release the shot. In meat the results were devastating. The rangemaster even recalled the figures. Ninety Glasers had been fired at men so far. All ninety were instant oneshot stops. In eightynine of the cases immediate death resulted. One man survived, surprising the doctors. The Glaser round had a safety advantage, too - no ricochets, and it would not go through a wall and kill someone in the next room.
The man was very gentle with her and encouraging, but he seemed sad about something.
The woman had worked up to the full service loads now and the rangemaster was pleased to see she handled the recoil very well, both eyes open and no flinch. True, it took her maybe four seconds to get the first one off, coming up from the bag, but three were in the X ring. Not bad for a beginner. She had some talent.
He had been back in the tower for some time when he heard the hellish racket of the Glasers going off.
She was pumping all five. It was not standard federal practice. The rangemaster wondered what in God's name they saw in the silhouette that it would take five Glasers to kill.
Graham came to the tower to turn in the earmuffs, leaving his pupil sitting on a bench, head down, her elbows on her knees.
The rangemaster thought he should be pleased with her, and told him so. She had come a long way in one day. Graham thanked him absently. His expression puzzled the rangemaster. He looked like a man who had witnessed an irrevocable loss.
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Red Dragon
CHAPTER 16
The caller, “Mr. Pilgrim,” had said to Sarah that he might call again on the following afternoon. At FBI headquarters certain arrangements were made to receive the call.
Who was Mr. Pilgrim? Not Lecter - Crawford had made sure of that. Was Mr. Pilgrim the Tooth Fairy? Maybe so, Crawford thought.
The desks and telephones from Crawford's office had been moved overnight to a larger room across the hall.
Graham stood in the open doorway of a soundproof booth. Behind him in the booth was Crawford's telephone. Sarah had cleaned it with Windex. With the voiceprint spectrograph, tape recorders, and stress evaluator taking up most of her desk and another table beside it, and Beverly Katz sitting in her chair, Sarah needed something to do.
The big clock on the wall showed