Pyramid Lake

by Draker, Paul

  A few benches to our left, some LEO guys—Sheriff’s Department, according to their badges—were spending more time shooting the breeze than actual bullets. They were all pretty lousy shots, too, judging from the random scattering of holes in their targets. Sad.

  I popped the locks on my gun’s hard case and lifted the HK 416’s upper and lower halves out of the gray foam interior. The upper receiver and barrel slid onto the lower receiver and mag-well with perfectly-machined precision, and I pushed the receiver pins into place. With the rifle assembled and ready, I lay it on the bench rest and opened the case containing my EOTech optic. I snapped the scope’s QR mount into place on my rifle’s top rail. Then I turned on the holographic laser sight and looked downrange through it while adjusting the intensity of the floating red circle-and-dot crosshair.

  “Jesus Christ, Trevor,” Roger said. “You think the zombies’ll just wait for you while you finish fussing with all that mall-ninja shit?” He hefted his gun, a Colt 6920. “Leave your optic on the rail, and get yourself a soft zipper case.”

  Most people would be unable to tell our rifles apart. Both were modern black AR-15 flat-tops with full-length quad-rail hand guards floated over their barrels. But mine was a Heckler and Koch gas-piston model, and Roger’s was more or less the same direct-impingement M4 that our military used.

  Roger plunked a few full magazines onto the bench in front of me—banana-curved Magpul thirty-rounders. “Hundred-and-five-grain DU core, man, with the extra powder needed to push it downrange. This’ll punch through an engine block. Go nuts.”

  “Will it damage my barrel?” I asked.

  He shook his head. I figured he would know. Roger’s expertise with exotic-metal alloys and composites was one-of-a-kind. Cassie and I had run out of time yesterday before visiting his lab, and I hadn’t really wanted to inflict more of Roger on her than was necessary. But the vacuum induction furnaces and ceramic-susceptor microwave melters he used to cast his depleted uranium were interesting to see.

  Roger’s research had a broader purview than the other programs at Pyramid Lake, too. A rotating cast of Department-of-Defense sponsors—Navy, Marine Corps, and Army, often several at a time—underwrote his specialized materials for use in projectiles, penetrators, and heavy armor.

  “Shooting depleted uranium at paper is stupid,” I said.

  He grinned, and glanced over at the Sheriff’s department guys. “I’ve got some metal and other shit we can put out there later, after Five-O leaves.”

  We shot for a while. I made some decent ten-round groups—a couple inches in diameter—not bad, considering that my holographic sight was designed not for bench rest but for heads-up tactical shooting.

  Roger always shot scary-accurate, and today was no exception. His groups with bare iron sights were tighter than mine with optics. Once he slapped his fiber-optic ACOG 4x scope on the rifle, his groups shrank to a single tight hole in the paper.

  Roger being a better shot than I didn’t bother me. But the way the Sheriff’s-department guys kept looking over at my gun did.

  I left it at the bench and walked over to the four of them.

  “Slow patrol day?” I asked.

  I didn’t get an answer, so I just stood there with a neutral expression and watched their eyes. One of them glanced down at my hands, and then another, and it finally clicked for me.

  They hadn’t been checking out my gun at all.

  “You look familiar,” the youngest one said. “Live around here?” He was a guy about my age, tall, with a sandy mustache. He looked like he was in decent shape.

  “Up in Flanigan,” I said.

  “You work at Pyramid Lake. On the Navy base.” It wasn’t a question.

  I nodded, and all four Sheriff’s guys visibly relaxed.

  “Evan Peterson,” the mustache guy said, holding out a hand.

  I reached out and shook, but he didn’t let go afterward. Instead, he turned my hand over, knuckles up. “Some nasty bruises you got there.”

  “Caught it in a door,” I said.

  “Need to watch them doors. A guy down in Spanish Springs caught his face in one Friday night.”

  “Hope he’s okay,” I said.

  “He’s a jerk-off,” Evan said. “Don’t worry about him.” He let go of my hand. “But try not to catch your hand in any more doors, because then it’ll start looking funny to us.”

  They had recognized me from the bartender’s cell-phone photo. I nodded. “Officers. Y’all have a nice day.” I looked at their targets. “Try to squeeze, rather than jerk, the trigger.”

  I went back to my bench.

  “What was that all about?” Roger muttered out of the corner of his mouth without looking over.

  “They were asking about you,” I said. “Wanted to know whether you had anything in your car they should be concerned about.”

  Roger paled visibly. “I was just thinking, let’s pack up here and move over to the thousand-yard range.”

  • • •

  On the way back home, Roger steered the Beast one-handed. With his other hand, he held up a three-quarter-inch-thick plate steel target and looked through the holes he had put in it.

  “That’s sick,” he said. “The .308 punched right through.”

  “I couldn’t hit anything past six hundred yards,” I said. “Even with the ten-X Leupold on.”

  “What did you expect, shooting two-two-three? That’s a varmint caliber.”

  “Works just fine for the military,” I said.

  “Yeah, for door-to-door spray-and-pray grunts who need lightweight ammo so they can carry a bunch of it,” he said. “Not for designated marksmen. And definitely not for snipers.”

  Roger had switched to his .308 LWRC Reaper when we moved to the longer range. His .308 rounds did make my .223 bullets look puny.

  “Time to man up and get a three-o-eight, Trev.” He held up the perforated steel target, and looked through the holes again. “Too bad I didn’t get a chance to try the three-thirty-eight Lapua. Or the fifty BMG.”

  “I know DU’s heavy,” I said. “But those holes look like they were cut by a laser.”

  “Pyrophoric effect, man.” Roger grinned sideways at me. “DU round penetrates steel and then fragments, and the dust ignites white-hot when exposed to air. Two thousand degrees—basically melts its way through. That’s how DU rounds kill tanks.”

  The section of 445 we were on ran east, toward Sutcliffe, along a flat valley. Peaks rose gently on both sides of us, the rocks of the foothills almost bare of vegetation but colorful with splashes of red, ochre, orange, yellow, and white. Five miles ahead, the lake spread across the horizon—a ribbon of dark blue interrupted by the brown bump of Anaho Island.

  Roger turned the steel target in front of his face again, squinting at it.

  “Watch the road,” I said. “Or let me drive.”

  “There isn’t another car for miles.” He grinned, dropping the target onto the seat between us. “Besides, the Beast would barely notice if we hit something. Unless it was a tank.”

  “What’s this thing weigh?” I asked. “Three tons? Four?”

  “More.”

  “Five? Six?”

  “More.” Roger’s grin turned sly.

  The Beast’s doors did seem ridiculously heavy whenever I opened them, like the doors to a safe. I tilted my head back and stared at the Beast’s ceiling. I could guess what kind of armor plating he had added inside the frame, doors, and undercarriage—probably even to the front-hinged hood.

  “You dumb son of a bitch,” I said. “I’m riding around in this thing? I might as well be climbing inside a microwave.”

  “DU’s perfectly safe, man. I keep telling you.”

  “Thank god I already have a kid.”

  “Uranium’s a naturally occurring element. It’s one hundred percent green, Trev.” Roger pointed north out his window, where the flat valley rose into the slope of a nearby mountain. “Look, man. Tule Peak. You know why those rocks are
so colorful? Nature’s bounty. Lots of mining claims up there. I used to spend every weekend exploring, checking out old mines.”

  “Hoping to find some leftover gold or silver?” I snickered. “That’s pretty sad, Roger.”

  “Forget gold and silver. Dudes used to mine uranium up there, man—that’s what I’m talking about. And tungsten. And manganese. This whole area’s honeycombed with interesting mines. You know that old concrete shack next to Highway Four-forty-six, at the bottom of the lake?”

  I nodded. “Greenish, no roof, old wood doors under a rock arch in the hill behind it?”

  “Guanomi molybdenum mine. You alloy DU with molybdenum, it’s even harder than titanium.” He pulled a face. “Corrodes quick, though.”

  The reservation boundary lay just ahead of us.

  “Hell, Trev, there’s mines all around here nobody knows about anymore.” Roger reached past my shoulder to point south into an empty valley that sloped up toward Moses Rock. “When the United Nations troops come hunting…” He glanced at me and dropped his arm, looking forward again. “Anyway, you need to get yourself a three-o-eight.”

  CHAPTER 19

  “School was boring today,” Amy said. “Miss Dubrow can be very patronizing.”

  I let my refrigerator swing shut and cracked a Red Bull, smiling at my daughter’s voice.

  “Humor her,” I said. “She’s a teacher, so patronizing is part of her job description.”

  “Jen says—”

  “Mom says,” I said. “Mom. It’s weird to call your mother by her first name when you’re seven years old.”

  “Fine.” I could picture Amy rolling her eyes. “Mom says teachers can tell when you’re humoring them. It makes them mad.”

  Dropping onto the couch, I adjusted the volume on my earbud headphones. “Well, you were just saying how you were bored, so that ought to liven the class up a bit.”

  Amy giggled—a kid’s happy, high-pitched trill—and I relaxed. She was growing up fast, but she was still my little girl.

  “I had soccer practice after school,” she said. “I scored two goals.”

  “I wish I could have been there to see you.” I tilted my head back, stared at the featureless white ceiling, and felt my throat tighten.

  “Me, too, Dad.” Amy was quiet for a moment. “I miss you.”

  “I miss you too, honey.”

  “Dan took me and Mom out for ice cream afterward, to celebrate.”

  I closed my eyes. Opened them again. “Did you get my present?” I asked. “I sent it last week.”

  “The iPhone. Yeah.” Something in her voice made me sit up straight. “Jen wants to talk to you about that.”

  The Red Bull can gave a sudden loud creak in my hand. I put it down.

  “Okay. I’ll talk to your mom when we’re done,” I said, thinking of the two Cirque du Soleil tickets, now crumpled in a wastebasket at my lab. The show in nearby Reno had been a special event. I didn’t know when they would be back to do another. “There’s something else she and I need to talk about, too.”

  “Are you all right, Dad? You don’t sound real good right now.”

  “I’m fine, Ames. I just want to see you soon. That’s all.”

  “Hang on…” I could hear Jen’s muffled voice in the background, saying something to her. Then my daughter was back. “I love you, Daddy. I’ve got to go. Jen says she’ll call you back in a bit.”

  • • •

  “It’s a phone,” I said. “A goddamn phone. Half the kids in her class probably have them.”

  “Trevor, I don’t want my seven-year-old daughter—”

  “Our seven-year-old daughter.”

  “—our seven-year-old daughter to have a phone. Especially one with Internet access.”

  “You’re going to handicap her.” I kept my voice as even as I could. “She’ll fall behind at school.”

  “Frankly, I don’t think that’s what we need to be worried about. Guess how many other seven-year-olds are in her fourth grade? Her classmates are nine. Look…” She took a deep breath. “She didn’t tell you, I guess. I didn’t think she would.”

  My stomach tensed. “Tell me what?”

  “Hang on a sec.”

  I could hear Jen’s steps, a door clicking closed.

  “We’ve had some more problems,” she said more quietly. “At school.”

  I stood up. “What kind of problems?”

  “With teachers. Other students. The principal called me in again.”

  “Amy’s smart, Jen. Smarter than her classmates and smarter than her teachers. She understands what’s going on around her a lot more than most kids do. Trust me, it can be tough going when you’re—”

  “Trevor, you’re not listening! You never listen!” She was almost shouting. “They want me to make an appointment now, take Amy to see a psychiatrist.”

  I sat down hard, ears ringing. “A psychiatrist? No, she… We can’t let them do that to her, Jen. Oh, fuck, just say no. You have to say no.”

  “They thought Amy might benefit from a different learning environment. One that’s better suited to her needs, where they have specialized staff and more experience with difficult—”

  “Who said?” My teeth ground together. “Who is telling you this shit?”

  “The school counselor—”

  “I’m coming down there,” I said. “I’m catching a flight tonight. And tomorrow we’ll go see this fucking social worker at her school. Together. We’ll find out exactly why these incompetent idiots think my perfect daughter needs to go into some kind of… some...” I choked. “Jen, she’s only seven!”

  “This is exactly why I didn’t want to tell you,” Jen said. “I know you want to help, but you’ll only make things worse. For Amy.”

  “Don’t you understand? These fucking psychiatrists—these so-called professionals—all their bullshit is so completely subjective. There’s no science behind any of it; they can say anything they want, dream up some mystical mumbo-jumbo term and label Amy with it, making her a pariah for life. A ‘different learning environment’ better suited to her ‘needs’? Do you even know what kind of place they are talking about?” I took a deep breath. “Because I sure as shit do.”

  I started pacing, trying to calm down.

  “We don’t have a choice,” Jen said. “They won’t let her stay in school unless we have a psychiatrist assess her. Maybe moving her to a different program would help.”

  I shook my head, knowing I needed to make Jen understand what was at stake here, what the consequences were for Amy.

  I couldn’t let my daughter go through what I had as a kid. It would destroy her.

  “She won’t be the same person,” I said. “It’ll be even worse for a girl—especially a sweet, gentle one like Amy. You have no idea what kind of kids she’ll be exposed to, six hours a day. Juvenile psychopaths, Jen. Fucking little monsters—they’ll eat her alive. They’ll hurt her. Ruin her. And what if this psychiatrist likes the free vacations and cruises that the pharmaceutical reps comp for him, and he decides Amy needs drugs?”

  “They don’t do that anymore,” Jen said. “I know you had it rough, but it’s not like it was, back when you were a kid.”

  “Ritalin, Jen.” I closed my eyes, remembering the muzzy gray cloud that made it impossible to think clearly. “Adderall.” The ever-present dull anger, muffled and without focus, while I sat there stupefied and docile. “Strattera.” Stumbling through day after day feeling like I was underwater, while weeks and then months dragged by and disappeared into the haze, forgotten. “Risperdal.” Listlessly staring into space, dizzy, my movements slow, my reflexes clumsy—a target for vicious gangs of older kids who saw a drugged zombie unable to defend himself. All the black eyes, the split lips, the bloody noses, the stitches and fractures from ‘falling down’ on the playground. And every time I managed to shake off the fog of sluggishness enough to hit someone back? The fuckers upped my dosage.

  I forced myself to breathe slowly and
evenly. “The counselor specifically said a psychiatrist, not a psychologist, right? A psychiatrist prescribes drugs. That’s what they do. And you’re right, things aren’t like they were back when I was a kid. Everything is computerized now. Data records are permanent. This stupid mistake will follow Amy, hanging over her head forever.”

  “Trevor, please—”

  “In a few years, we’ll be applying for colleges, and she’ll have this on her record, poisoning her chances. Her future.”

  “Dan says—”

  I froze in mid-stride. “Dan will be in a wheelchair breathing through a tube if you involve him in this. Amy’s my daughter, Jen. Our daughter.”

  “I know.” Her voice broke. “How I know it.”

  I sat down on the couch again, crushing the heels of my palms into my eye sockets. It killed me to hear Jen cry even now. I wanted to put my arms around her and hold her, to chase away everything that was hurting her. To chase away this dark cloud hovering over our daughter.

  “I’m so scared,” Jen whispered. “She’s only seven.”

  “Don’t be afraid,” I said. “You’re a good mother. A great mother. Everything’s going to be fine. Amy’s fine. We’ll take care of this somehow.”

  “She lies, Trevor. They say she’s manipulative. She incites things, gets other kids in trouble, and always has an innocent explanation. Her teachers don’t know what to do.”

  “She’s just testing limits,” I said. “It’s a phase. She’ll outgrow it.”

  “She seems so self-possessed, so sure of herself, I think she frightens the teachers. She got a substitute fired from the district last week.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. She told the other kids something, got them to misbehave, until the woman blew up and yelled at the class.”

  “An adult—a teacher—can’t control herself, and they blame our Amy?”