all departments and buildings.
By the time Chad got back to the conference room, only Brackish was left, the other men having gone to the firing range. They couldn’t take sitting still for too long. Chad appreciated that about them. He decided to join them. He was good, damn good, when it came to shooting.
He approached just after Sleep had shot. “Nice job, brother,” Green said with a laugh. “When you’re ready to shoot farther than twenty-five yards, let me know and I’ll show you how it’s done.” Chad noticed the scoreboard with some numbers on it. He looked through the glass and saw their targets, the bullseye nearly too small to see. They took pride in being the best, and they didn’t cut corners to get there.
Sleep pushed a button, and his score popped into a slot, putting him in the number three position. Green leaned against the wall with a cocky grin. Of course, he was at the top of the leaderboard.
Chad rapped on the window, letting Sleep know he was stepping inside. Sleep alerted the other men they had a new man entering. “I want in,” Chad told them as he stepped up to the group.
The men set their weapons down at each station and took off their ear protection then smiled. They all loved a challenge, and beating the boss was the greatest one of all. Chad might just surprise them.
“What’s the game? What’s the buy-in? And do I get any warm-up shots?” he asked as he pushed in his numbers on a keypad, his gun vault opening, and his Glock .45 sitting there like she was a work of art on display. He also grabbed four of his fully loaded magazines, pulled out his eye and ear protection, and then moved to the last remaining open bay.
“You get one mag for practice if needed, however if you need more than five rounds you probably shouldn’t waste your money, though I’ll be more than happy to take it,” Sleep said to Chad. “Then the competition is on.”
Chad got into position. “Going hot,” Chad called as he lined up his shot.
He hit his target on the practice round, but he was off a little, his first shot an inch low and to the right. The next three shots were within one sixteenth of an inch of each other, all bullseyes, and his last shot went directly between the triangle that the last three had created. He pushed the button, bringing the target to him, and gave himself a pat on the back. Not too bad. The guys looked it over.
“Not too shabby, Chug,” Eyes said.
“What’s the game?” Chad asked.
“Baseball. We get three shot increments over nine rounds. Outside ring is worth one run, middle worth two runs, inside worth three runs. You can get nine runs in one inning if you’re lucky, but that’s rare. The kicker is if anyone gets the same score as you during the inning, then no one scores. Only the highest score for the inning gets points. After nine innings if there’s a tie, we get one shot at the bullseye. Tightest bullseye wins,” Green said.
“Are we all shooting at the same time?” Chad inquired.
“Not normally, but we’re tight on time, so yes,” Eyes said.
“Okay, what’s the buy-in?” Chad asked. “And how much are you all going to cry when I kick your ass the first time I play?”
“For you, Chug, it’s one dollar because we’re all concerned with you being so much older than us. We don’t want to take too much out of your retirement funds,” Sleep said.
“It’s a hundred buy-in, and this time I’m going to win. These guys always cheat,” Smoke said with a smirk.
“It’s not cheating,” Sleep called. “You just seriously suck.”
“You beat me by one run last time. I think Brackish rigged the computers,” Smoke said.
“Let’s do this. The terrible attempt at trash talk won’t throw me off my game,” Chad said as he threw down a hundred-dollar bill.
Eyes grabbed the money and slid it into a locked metal box inside a safe that a nuclear bomb wouldn’t break open. Every time Chad thought this facility was impressive, the men did something else that boggled his mind. They made it better and better each day. Of course, with nearly unlimited funds and genius level IQs, that wasn’t difficult to accomplish.
The men each lined up in their lane, then waited.
“Gentlemen, Release. The. Kracken!” Eyes yelled, punctuating every word with his dorky smile while making sure they could all