The Des Plaines Firearms Training Center was located on Lee Street, between a warehouse and a landscaping company, with a sign lacking a central letter that read LA D CAPING SERVICES, which Maxwell noticed and drove past.
He parked the Range Rover in the parking lot at 841. He sat for sixty seconds. The building was a converted industrial space: low ceilings, well-maintained, no unnecessary windows. The kind of facility built without much thought given to what went on inside.
The lobby smelled of solvents and earwax. A glass case on the south wall displayed accessories, organized and proudly shown like those of a serious enthusiast. Behind the counter: a woman in her fifties, with short, practical silver hair, safety glasses perched securely, and a DPTC STAFF T-shirt as comfortable as if she hadn't thought about it for years.
"Is the shooting range time booked?" he asked without taking his eyes off his clipboard.
"Saturday morning at nine. Dragoski."
He understood. Lane seven. First, the safety briefing. He looked up. His assessment was professional and precise, the expert reading of someone who had been observing the new recruits for a long time and knew them inside and out. "Are you new?"
"It's my first time," Maxwell said.
"I'm Diane," she said. "Follow me."
Diane Kowalski gave the safety briefing with the conviction of someone who had given it a thousand times and saw no reason to shorten it, because the only time it was shortened was when something happened, and what happened on her premises was her professional responsibility, and she took it very seriously. Maxwell listened intently. He paid attention. Most of the new recruits didn't.
In lane seven, she placed the Glock 19 on the bench, the magazine beside it. "Go ahead," she said.
He picked it up. Her right hand found the grip exactly where the Level 1 module had placed it eleven days earlier: thumb on top of the frame, index finger in the correct spot, palm resting perfectly on the strap. She brought it closer without thinking, because the thought had already occurred six nights before, sitting in a chair facing a dark lake, while four years of knowledge twisted in her hands. Barrel down. Index finger along the frame.
She stood there for a second.
Diane's face was very serene. She wasn't surprised; she had so much experience that surprise couldn't have been unintentional. But it was special. The face of someone who had found a piece of information that didn't match the labeled container. "You said it was your first time."
"Holding one. Yes."
He observed her grip. Her feet: shoulder-width apart, her weight slightly forward, perfectly balanced. "Where did you learn this stance?"
"I've read a lot."
He stared at her for two seconds, as if he'd read the same material and perfectly understood the gap between reading and action in the human body. Then: "Load the magazine."
She loaded it. The slide moved smoothly, as if muscle memory were telling her it was the right moment, before any conscious decision to act. She cocked the weapon. She exhaled through her nose. She squeezed the trigger hard.
The bullet came out cleanly.
Then the next one. And five more. In the center of the body, at seven meters, grouped in a pattern that wasn't the scattered distribution of a beginner. It was the pattern of someone who did it well because they already knew how the bullets worked.
The last casing hit the shooting bench.
Diane stared at the target for a while. He took off his safety glasses. He wiped them with the hem of his shirt. He put them back on and looked at the white again. "Too much," he said.
"Yes."
He made a sound that was a mixture of laughter and professional judgment, dragged a stool from the wall, and sat down. "I'm going to check the next three magazines," he said.
He observed. He gave four corrections in forty minutes. All correct. Maxwell applied each one immediately, with the characteristic expression of a shooting instructor who has given a correction once and seen it applied before even finishing the sentence. He gave each correction one by one. He didn't repeat himself.
His phone vibrated on the bench at 10:48.
Okay, I'm here. I arrived 13 minutes early. Is that weird? Don't say it is.
Maxwell took out the magazine. He typed: yes.
Maxwell
It's here. Looks great.
He reloaded. He fired the next group. He yelled again:
I forgot my wallet.
He lowered the gun with his index finger. Written with one hand: You forgot...
Just kidding, I got it. I patted my pocket seven times to confirm. Let's go in.
He went back to Target.
11:22: Everything's great. She laughs at the same things I do and has opinions about everything, and Maxwell, I think he was right.
11:30: He asked how my friends were, and I told him my best friend is a logistics guy who's somehow the most interesting person I know, and he asked me what that meant, and I told him I honestly don't know.
Maxwell was at register number seven, pointed his Glock, and stared at the last message for three seconds.
"I honestly don't know" was the right answer, actually. He hung up and went back to work.
He cleaned the gun that afternoon, returned it to the bank, and went back to the counter.
Diane was typing something. She looked up. "Same time next week?"
He paid. "Yes." She wrote his name in the Saturday slot without asking how it was spelled, which meant she'd already decided to reserve the slot before he even asked the question.
He drove the Range Rover south on Lee Street with the calm and composure of someone who had already confirmed a theoretical understanding. Level 1, in practice, worked exactly as it had been set up. The target at seven yards confirmed it. Finally, the three-minute conversation with Diane short, to the point, the register she used for people whose time deserved respect confirmed it.
He made lunch at the condo.He called her mother. He read for forty minutes. Lake worked Saturday afternoon: quiet, patient, He got up around two and stayed put.
At four thirty-seven, the system beeped.
[Hidden Reward Unlocked]
He read it. He prepared dinner: roasted chicken thighs in a sauce with shallots and thyme. Beginner Level 1 cooking. In six hours, it would be something else entirely.
At precisely nine o'clock at night, he sat in a comfortable chair, hands in his lap, gazing out the east window at the dark water stretching beyond, and thought: Yes.
[Ascent Protocol: Upgrade Cycle Begins]
[Level 2: Novice Level 2: The Five Modules]
[Timer: 4 Hours] The heat returned. Different than the first time: less strange, more purposeful, as if something knew the routes and operated them with greater precision. His hands again traced the weapon sequences, the movements broader, more detailed. This time, multiple targets. Reloading under pressure. Aiming in low light. Distance calculation was integrated into his visual processing, at a level even lower than deliberate calculations.
Defensive driving expanded into territory she had never explored before. Acting in an emergency. The dynamics of a vehicle at the limit of traction: the perfect geometry of a controlled drift, where the weight was distributed, how the steering responded, the difference between correction and overcorrection, and what happened in the split second between the two. Counter-surveillance driving: how routes act as tools, how to make a vehicle blend into the background on the road.
Level 2 of Culinary Awareness arrived around the second hour, and he rebuilt his understanding of heat and time, and what a sauce really is. He would prepare something different the next day.
What he felt most was a greater expansion of her situational awareness. Level 1 was reactive: observing, categorizing, evaluating. Level 2 was predictive. Looking beyond what was in the room. The road was going to be like it was twelve seconds from now, not like it was now. He felt the difference like when you adjust lenses: the same scene, suddenly sharper.
At 1:04 a.m., the heat had vanished.
He sat for a moment. The lake was completely dark, barely distinguishable from the sky except for the faint line of lights on the Michigan shore, which looked distant and silent.
He thought about Diane Kowalski and the target at seven yards, and the adjustments he had made to each of them. Tomorrow he would return to make further adjustments, just once to each, and when he finished, he would be in a different place than where he had started.
He went to bed. He fell asleep before the city quieted down.
He slept soundly.
[Condition: First Live Hands-On Application, Firearms Module, Level 1
[Installed knowledge used in a controlled physical environment]
Without hesitation. Maintained proper form at all times. Reward: 1,800 shares of Lockheed Martin Corporation (NYSE: LMT)
[Price, March 24, 2012: $82.63/share]
[Total Value: $148,734]
[Taxes: Handled. Host Liability: $0.00]
[Deposit: Fidelity Account -4471]