Page 8 of What is Lost

“Axes?”

The gun clubwas bare bones: a concrete floor with display racks of long guns, boxes of ammunition on shelves, handguns in glass cases, and display hooks in pegboard with slings, holsters, suppressors, magazines, and other gun-related paraphernalia. The place smelled of gun oil, cleaning solvent, dust, and worn leather floating atop a base layer of dried sweat.

An older man with a pot belly, a big nose, a bushy metal-gray beard, long white hair pulled back in a tail, and a MAGA cap on his head perched on a stool in back of the long glass counter. He was reading a paperback but looked up as they came through the front door.

“Hiya, Roni,” he said, putting the paperback,The Collected Letters of Seneca, face down on the counter. He wore stained jeans, a faded green T-shirt stretched over his gut, and a pair of scuffed Red Wing work boots. Levering himself off his stool, he came around, tilted his head back to look John in the eye, and stuck out a calloused hand. “You must be John. I’m Emery. Roni says you’re a hell of a good shot.”

“I’m okay, sir.” The stool had given Emery the illusion of height; he was a small guy, no taller than Roni. Emery’s grip was strong, though. There was a Vietnam-era POW-MIA tattoo and the wordsYouAre Not Forgottendone in black ink on his right arm. On his left, he sported an odd tattoo: a leaf outlined in red, with a lightning bolt jagging down the center.25thwas in red ink to the right of the leaf andDiv.was on the left. “Thanks for letting us in after-hours.”

“Wouldn’t do it if I hadn’t seen her shoot. That, and”—Emery gave a conspiratorial wink—“I knowed of her daddy. He was after my time in ’Nam but give my grandson a what-for last summer at Mountain Warfare. Anyway, Roni, gotcha the gear you asked for and those Glock 19s you like.”

“Glocks, not Sigs?” John asked Roni. Sig-Sauers were standard Army issue. “That’s almost unpatriotic.”

“Sigs.” Emery made a rude noise with his lips. “What’s the Army know?”

“Sigs are ugly,” Roni said. “It’s the color. I don’t like camo brown. It’s not elegant.”

“A shooter with fashion sense.” Emery grinned. “Unless you want, maybe, a S&W M&P, son? Or I got a Walther PP if you want or scrounge up a couple raceguns.”

“No, the Glock is fine, sir,” John said.

“Okay, then.” Pulling a flashlight from a back pocket, Emery nodded toward a side door. “Come on out.”

The side doorleading from Emery’s office opened onto the walkway covered by a ballistic canopy that sheltered ten shooting stations. Each station consisted of a simple but hefty wood table large enough to rest a long gun on a tripod.

Earl talked as he walked. “Gotchyer berm at three hunnert and twenty-five yards, targets set up at a hunnert and a hunnert and fifty. Ground in-between is just packed dirt. No stray brass. Impact berm’s thirty feet high, but you’ll see that when you light ’er up.” He stopped at two stations midway down the line and used his flashlight to pick out items on the near table. “Ear and eye protection. Weapons are identical, and lasers already zeroed in, so all you gotta decide is who’s right and who’s left.”

There were two weapons at each station. One was the Glock 19 Emery promised, equipped with a combination IR laser and illumination set mounted beneath the barrel. Next to each Glock was an M4 outfitted with an FWS-I, which stood forFamily ofWeaponsSights-Individual. (In John’s experience, the military never met an acronym it didn’t like.) The unit fed thermal images via Bluetooth to an imaging monocle, the ENVG-III, which was, in turn, meant to be attached to a helmet. Anything the camera saw, the soldier could, too.

“This is some fancy gear, Emery,” he said. “Butwhere’d you get it? Far as I know, this is military-issue only.”

“Don’t ask, don’t tell,” Roni said.

“Let’s just say I got friends.” Emery offered a thin smile that showed no teeth and changed the subject. “You ever practice with one of these units, son?” When John shook his head, the older man said, “You just put on that monocle and then whatever the gun sees, you do, too.”

“The setup’s thermally based,” Roni put in. “Whatever the camera sees is fed to the ENVG. That way, you don’t have to shoulder your weapon for a peek the way you would if you were looking through a scope. All you have to do is slide the barrel out at a right angle to a wall and see what’s going on. Saves getting your head blown off.”

“Yeah, as long as that fancy Bluetooth connection doesn’t drop,” Emery said, dryly. His tone made it obvious what he thought of all that high-falutin’ gear, too.

“Cool,” he said. “But we’re just not going to be in those kinds of situations.”

Roni cocked her head. “Never say never again.” And then at his narrow look: “What? I thought you’d be impressed with my knowledge of James Bond movies.”

He rolled his eyes. “Get real, Roni. We’re doctors. If we go anywhere, it’ll be Germany or Qatar and even that’s a big maybe. They’re notgoing to send us into a combat situation. Something would have to go seriously FUBAR for us to be deployed anywhere dangerous.”

“You’re in the Army, son,” Emery said. “Something’s always a whisker away from going FUBAR.”

They started with the Glocks.

After his first half-dozen shots, Roni studied his target. “You’re whacking the gun.” She pointed to a scatter of shots so wide they might as well have been in another time zone. “It’s because you’re trying to do it as fast as I am.”

“She’s right.” Emery sucked on his lower teeth. “You want, I could go get my Viper. Slide’s like butter. You’ll cycle through right quick.”

“No.” He was annoyed but not for the reasons they thought. The reality was...he knew exactly how quickly he’d popped off shots, but his speed had nothing to do with being competitive. What he worried about was being as good as he knew he was.

It was one thing to show competence on the rifle range in front of his classmates. Everyone knew he hunted. Handguns were different, though. Do it right in front of people who knew what they were looking at and a person might get questions he didn’t want to answer.

Except...missing on purpose was killing him. Like telling an elite tennis player to, say, stop returning the ball so often.

---