Pyramid Lake by Paul Draker

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