"You do it."

Mike stood beside me and pointed the revolver. He let off six rounds, before refilling the gun with a speed loader that Pete handed to him with another six. Every one of them made its mark somewhere on the threatening thug.

"Maybe you'll like the semiautomatic better," Pete said. "What do you use, Mike?"

"A Glock 19," he said, unholstering his gun from his ankle.

Pete walked inside the stable with the revolvers and returned with a different gun for me. "Try this. It's a Sig-Sauer. A nine millimeter semiautomatic."

"Too many moving parts for her. This is a broad who can't operate a DVD player, Pete. She may never get it, but Mercer and I are determined to try."

More men were turning to watch me now-mocking me-as Pete explained the differences between the guns.

"There's one bullet in the chamber," Pete said, "and fifteen in the magazine. It requires good isometric tension to use one of these, Alex. There's a lot of jump in the recoil."

I could guess from firing the revolver what recoil was, but I didn't have a clue about isometric tension.

"Put your right index finger on the trigger," Pete said.

Mike moved in again to position me. He had put his own gun back in his ankle holster. "Stand with your legs apart, arms straight out."

"Why don't you just let Pete do this with me, okay?"

"Put your right index finger on the trigger," Mike said, ignoring me as he was not unused to doing. "Both thumbs on the left side of the grip. No, no, no. You can't cross them like that."

The guy to my right stepped back, with good reason. I pressed hard on the trigger, and when the gun discharged, my arms flew up with the kick and pulled to the side. It seemed like I had grazed the thug's kneecap, although I had been aiming for his chest.

"Look, I can't do this with everyone staring at me."

"You? I'm thinking your dream gig is to try a four-perp murder case that's televised on Court TV. What's with the shy shooter thing? You giving up?"

"Not yet. Is there any other way to do this without an audience?" I asked Pete.

"FATS. That's an indoor facility. Let's go over there. It's the Firearms and Tactics Simulators," he said, pointing to another area of the vast operation.

I returned the Sig and ear protectors and started to walk with Mike.

"You two head over," Pete said, stepping into an office as we passed through the stable to the far side of C-range, the designated pistol target area at which we'd been firing. "I'll put these away and be right there."

"It's amazing no one's been killed here."

"Shot, no. Killed, yes," Mike said. "Thirty years ago, one of my father's friends was blown up."

"What do you mean?"

He walked backwards and squinted to look off to the south, beyond the pistol range. "There's a huge crater they call the Pit. It's on the southernmost tip of the peninsula here, that juts into Eastchester Bay. The bomb squad detonates all the devices that are recovered in the city. They've done it since the days of the Weathermen. One of the earliest bombs they brought here detonated prematurely, and Brian's friend didn't make it away in time."

"How horrible," I said. "Is that why the range is restricted? The bomb danger?"

"This whole enclave is the NYPD's practice territory for urban warfare," Mike said, to the background noise of gunshots. "You've got all the special weapons that the antiterrorist squads use-MP5 submachine guns and Colt rifles and Ithaca shotguns. There's a helipad for the department's choppers. You got Aviation and police boat docks, the Bomb Squad, Special Ops, Highway Patrol, all hidden in this out-ofthe-way place that nobody seems to know about. It was even an emergency base after 9/11."

The range was a beehive of police activity. We passed a mess hall and a gun shop and the entrance to an underground bunker that Mike said held at least one of every kind of firearm ever manufactured, including rare World War II weapons.

There was a series of prefab shacks lined up in a row, and the fourth one of those had the FATS logo hanging over its railing.

I scooped up a handful of empty cartridges from the ground as Pete jogged toward us. "Don't get too attached to those," he said. "I've got my lead poisoning test next week."

I opened my fingers and watched them drop.

"Takes a lot more than that. But we were losing police dogs at a terrifying rate. Turns out they were absorbing the lead through their paws."

I winced as he opened the door to the small cabin. The overhead lights were on when we entered. Pete turned them off so that the three of us stood in complete darkness.

"Private enough for the princess?" Mike asked.

"It might not make any difference in my shooting skills that I can't see, but I think some light would be helpful."

Pete stepped over to a computer monitor and played with the controls. The entire far wall became an enormous screen, and the first frame of a movie was frozen against it.

"Move over behind here, Alex." He guided me to a large, empty oil barrel standing on its end in front of the screen. "This is all you've got in case you need to take cover. Mike, take the one next to her."

On top of each was a semiautomatic. "They're real guns," he said, "but they've got soap cartridges inside. They're connected to the computer. You seen these yet, Mike?"

"Nope."

"I'm going to run these films. Each one is three or four minutes long. You and Mike have answered a call to come to this apartment. Shots fired. Reports of a drug deal gone bad. Try aiming your gun, Alex. It should be a lot lighter than the one you just used."

I lifted the gun and pointed it at the screen, lining it up with the sight. Not only was it dark, but I thought the quiet should make it easier to concentrate.

"Ready?"

"Yes."

The clip began with the closing of the door of the patrol car behind me. I was viewing everything from the vantage point of the first officer on the scene. Voices in the tenement building I virtually entered were shouting that the cops had arrived. A man in a bright-colored shirt was racing up steps-several flights-as I tried to overtake him, and from behind me, Pete was barking out commands.

"Police! Drop your weapons! Stop! Police!" he shouted as though he were actually at the scene. "C'mon, Alex, you're chasing the guy up the stairs. He's taking them two at a time. He's got you beat." The camera lens bounced up and down as I was turning corners after the fleeing suspect. An apartment door slammed shut somewhere above me and the camera lurched upward, toward the high-pitched sound of a child screaming for help.

"It's that one, Alex," Pete yelled. "You're going to kick on that door. You'd better tell them you're a cop."

My virtual foot shoved the door and it opened onto a frenetic scene. A man whose Hawaiian print shirt resembled the clothing of the guy who had run up the stairs leaped over the back of a sofa. He was holding something but he moved so quickly I couldn't tell if the object in his hand was a gun or not.

"Is that your man in there? Are you sure? You better tell them to freeze, Alex. Let me hear you shout at him, okay? Where's your partner? Has he got you covered?"

It was all happening too fast. The slender woman seated on the edge of her chair had drug paraphernalia in front of her. I could make out the white powder and pipe, and as I looked to my right to see whether Mike had his gun poised to back me up, I caught a handlettered sign over the picture of a uniformed cop that said "Kill the pigs."

The man behind the sofa stuck his head up above the top of the cushion and called something out to his companion. I couldn't understand what he said. A baby started crying on the left side of the screen. As my eyes darted in that direction, the woman lifted the lid on the shoebox next to the cocaine and pulled a gun from it.