Warlock of Omaha

by Hemaccabe

Adventures of a Warlock who lives in Omaha in the Dresden Files universe. No overlap with characters from the series. Less violence and more sex than actual books. Rated M for both explicit sex, violence and some language.

3. Chapter 3

Warlock of Omaha

By Hemaccabe

Chapter 3: This Way Lies Madness

I know I'm a bit obsessive-compulsive. Sometimes it's a strength. I can focus and work on problems with an intensity I know many can't match. Mostly, it's a problem. I know it's part of why I'm not as empathic as most people. I watch "Big Bang Theory," even though I feel like it's more mocking to the geeks and nerds than sympathetic, because the character of Sheldon is a gift. I don't much like Sheldon. He's selfish and self-centered. Being OC isn't an excuse for everything. I see too much of myself in Sheldon sometimes. He makes a good cautionary tale.

On my grounds, I have a garage. From the main house, one has to walk down a short hallway from a door near the kitchen to get to it. It's a pretty big garage. It holds several vehicles, a motorcycle and a mid-size RV I use for some field trips. Not to mention an extensive fab, repair and re-build space. I park my half-ton Dodge Pickup in there, the girls' Subaru, a cool custom Jeep Wrangler pickup, a Nissan GTR and an Infiniti FX 60 among other things. There's also a Nissan Juke I have spent way too much time on.

Above the door near the kitchen there's a sign that reads, "This Way Lies Madness." The girls all have different explanations of what that means.

The sign really is a warning to me. I've spent the years since the White Man's wakeup call working to make myself a tougher nut to crack. If something out there wants to try and eat me or dominate me or worse, my best and only defense is to make myself so nasty that it's not worth it. That means making myself as strong as I can be. Strength can mean many things, but it certainly includes physical power. One obvious sphere of physical power is to have a powerful vehicle. If I ever get into a situation where I have to fight from my vehicle, the tougher my vehicle is, the better chance I have to survive.

The thing is, vehicles are one of many spheres. And like many of them, it's deep. There are so many different makes and models of vehicles in the world and that's just the top of the ocean. Beneath the stock models is a completely bottomless ocean of parts and modifications. If one goes to the SEMA show in Las Vegas, and I have, several times, one will see thousands of booths, each with entire catalogs of parts. It could take years to review just one show, and they're only there for a few days and one only has so much time between trying to seduce booth girls. So far, my record is six.

Further, I only have so much time. I sleep about nine hours a day. My waking hours include basic hygiene, eating, playing, etc. There is only so much time during the day. That's why time is the coin of my realm. I have plenty of money and could get more easily if I needed it. I have physical companionship, pleasant surroundings, etc. The limiting factor in what I can achieve and do is time.

I'm also still a bit irrational. I should trade the Dodge for a heavier vehicle to pull a trailer rather than an RV and drive the Jeep around. Instead, I find myself trading the Dodge every few years and when it's time to jump into something and go do an errand? I take the Dodge.

So how do I handle it? I buy a top of the line Dodge pickup and take it to a local place I like. Jed, the owner, is deep in the local street racer culture and spends his life knowing the ins and outs of what's available. The truck gets a cold air intake, dual turbos, a supercharger and some other knick knacks under the hood. Underneath she gets improved, but not crazy loud, exhaust, up rated suspension with air ride, bigger stronger wheels with bigger stronger run flat tires. Inside, she gets a very serious space frame cage, some nice seats that are still cushy but have five-point harnesses, and other safety considerations. Lastly, she gets ceramic door inserts, floor and roof and more resilient glass. She still looks and feels like a luxury truck, not a refugee from a road warrior movie, but she has some bottom if things get messy. It may sound like a lot of work, but trust me, there is a world of performance, including NOX, that does not go in. More importantly for me, Jed does it. I pay him fairly, including letting him keep all the brand-new parts he just took off my stock truck. I depend on Jed's advice as to what are the best parts to put in. Jed knows his work will be heavily inspected. Further, I'm a serious, educated, repeat, cash cow customer so I get good recommendations and work. It's not time free, but I offload a huge number of hours of research and building onto him and I get back a pretty cool truck.

I may sound smart, but the Nissan Juke is my constant reminder. I leave it in not running condition as a punishment to myself for pouring more and more time into trying to build an ever-crazier advanced car. The Juke sucked me in along with months of my life. It looked like the ultimate compromise car, small, light and quick handling, but also tough and able to handle some bad weather or rough terrain. I won't go through all the crazy stuff I tried, including times I had it running with amazing stuff working and then tore it all apart again to rebuild with a whole new generation of crazy. I know I can't go down the rabbit hole and focus like that on a car and burn way too much time on it. My penance includes that the battery pack sits on the floor behind the car and the engine and transmission on the floor underneath.

Madness is letting myself get focused on one small thing to the exclusion of the many balls that must to be juggled. Like the bolts I'm currently not working on.

Of course, there's a flipside to that coin and that would be Baby.

When it came time to replace the shotgun, the obvious successors were two guns, a pistol and a rifle. A pistol is less capable but can be kept nearby at all times and can be kept discreet out in public. A rifle is more ostentatious, but also orders of magnitude more capable for those times when it's necessary. You already know what pistol I chose, but what rifle? Well that's where a trip down the rabbit hole worked out pretty well.

The most popular rifle on the United States civilian market is the AR. Don't let the name fool you, the M-16 and M-4 used by the military are members of the AR family. The finest gun development lab on Earth, by many orders of magnitude, is the US civilian marketplace. By rights, the US military should have a rifle that is head and shoulders better than any other military on the planet. The problem is, long ago, the US military chose the AR and the AR is a dog. The direct impingement action that the AR runs breaks both the cardinal rules of military rifle design, it's inherently unreliable and complex. Unfortunately, because it's the US military rifle, it's going to be popular on the US civilian marketplace and soak up the lion's share of that free civilian development. Which means new versions of the AR have been periodically rolled out keeping this hot mess just good enough to stay in the US military inventory for decades.

The AR does have some strengths. One is versatility. One can keep the same bottom half, or lower, and switch the top half, or upper relatively easily. Different uppers can be very different for different jobs, hence versatility. Near the high end of what the AR can handle in ammunition size is something called the .50 (pronounced: "fifty") Beowulf. I decided that would make a good top end for my rifle choice. Are there other even bigger rounds I could have chosen? Yes. I admit part of my selection choice reasoning was that the name ".50 Beowulf" just sounds cool. However, most rifle rounds, when one starts getting into that size class, start focusing on long range accuracy. The .50 Beo, with it's big slug and relatively small powder charge, is all about focusing on causing massive damage to a target, which I did want, not extended range I would likely never need. If you wanted a practical combat weapon, smaller rounds would give you more range, speed, controllability and ability to carry more rounds. Practically, the .50 Beo makes no sense in the mundane world, it's a classic unicorn hunter designed to kill monsters we know don't exist, except they do.

Since the .50 Beo lives a little in the AR world I can use some AR accessories. For example, the .50 Beo doesn't require weird, exotic, crazy expensive magazines. It will work in the same 5.56 mags that normal ARs use, which means I can use cheap off the shelf mags, or in my case, crazy expensive high-performance off-the-shelf mags and mag holders. Major time saved.

It would be nice if there was an off-the-shelf rifle that shot the .50 Beo, but since the only rifle that shoots the .50 Beo is an AR and you know how I feel about ARs, I had to pick something else knowing modification would be necessary. I looked over everything on the market. Firearms are a deep ocean, but not as deep as cars. I picked the Tavor.

The Tavor is a bullpup rifle made by Israel Weapons Industry. The Israeli design philosophy is very focused on form follows function which means they aren't likely to produce a .50 Beo version any time soon. So, I bought a Tavor, it sits in a safe on the premises to this day. The gun I take out and use is nominally that rifle, but really is fabbed from the ground up. The Tavor has a polymer chassis, I made mine from titanium reinforced carbon fiber. Mine has a mag release button up by the shooting hand, like the military Tavor rifles in Israel, not the funny lever like on the US civilian release. My Tavor keeps the oversized hand guard and rubberized fore-grip like the civilian release.

In the modern world, the main rival to the AR family of rifles is the AK. The AK family of rifles are the ones made by Russia and used by all the bad guys, both real and in the movies. Unlike the AR's direct impingement system, the AK and Tavor both use a long throw piston system. One could, with quite a bit of merit, argue that the Tavor is basically a modernized, bullpup AK. Unlike the AR, the AK family of rifles have a well-earned reputation for incredible simplicity and reliability.

The biggest knock on the Tavor, and bullpup designs in general, is that they have poor triggers. Triggers, as the ultimate interface between shooter and weapon, are critical for fast, accurate shooting. Unfortunately, the stock Tavor trigger lives up to this bad reputation with a very heavy and gritty pull. Luckily, with the Tavor now available on the US market, some of that US civilian marketplace love has been poured on it. A key example of the power of the US civilian marketplace is a company devoted to trigger design and development known as Geissele. Geissele has been kind enough to create an improved trigger pack and Lightning Trigger Bow for the Tavor rifle which, when installed, give the Tavor excellent trigger performance.

I use Geissele's Lightning Trigger Bow stock, but the trigger pack I re-did because I wanted 3 round groups and full auto as options and the version Geissele makes doesn't have select fire but having Geissele's model to work from was enormously valuable. I take the rifle out in public and only fire and safe show on the switch, but 3 round and full auto are there. The AR that runs the .50 Beo uses a bolt designed for the 7.62x39 caliber, luckily such a bolt exists for the Tavor, but it has not been released in the US. I stole the CAD design instructions and made a dozen copies in my shop from much higher-grade stainless steel than they would normally use for such a part. Works great. The biggest trick in fabbing out the new .50 Beo Tavor was not producing or assembling the parts, but rather since they often were different sizes, weights and pressures than the original, the system had to be re-tuned for balance and reliable operation. I've kept some features like quick disconnect sling mounts, but have ditched others, like my rifle is not set to be ambidextrous with replacement bolt.

The ammo I produced was a 400-grain boat tailed, bonded hollow point with steel tip penetrator a little like the M-855 version of the 5.56 that NATO uses. A bullet has all the constraints of aerodynamics and Newton's laws of motion. Accuracy and range comes from idealizing the bullet's air-smooth shape and use of the most and best propellant possible. As I explained before about ammunition, or cartridges, are actually small systems of their own. I bought the brass shells, primers and powder in extremely high quantity. I have tens of thousands of finished rounds stored in several places around the home, and storage depots around the country, so they can't all be destroyed in one hit. I probably have ten times as much in unassembled makings. I buy when the market is cheap, directly from large distributors. My .50 Beo is essentially a larger version of my 10mm I described earlier. The bonded hollow point is designed to squash flat while still penetrating deep into the target and causing massive wounds. The boat tail is a more aerodynamic shape meaning it will fly farther truer. Many manufacturers are experimenting with placing polypropylene tips on their hollow points now. The plastic still squashes nicely, is very light and gives a very non-aerodynamic hollow point a much more aerodynamic shape. I have poly tipped versions of my rounds which I use in public competition. For business, I have the very hard stainless-steel tips which still squash the hollow points but are so good against an armored or magic shell.

My most original invention for ammo is the shape of the base of the bullet. On a standard boat tail round, it comes to a flat bottom. I have removed some of that flat bottom material which is actually not very necessary and leave a precision carved tiny cup on the bottom. This reduces the weight of the slug in a useful way, but more importantly, helps it use more of the force from the propellant meaning my rounds have roughly a ten percent advantage in speed out of the barrel of the rifle, generally known as muzzle velocity. That translates into much harder hits and much longer range.

I can't say that I have an Auto Assault 12 on the premises. Having such a weapon would be very illegal for several reasons, including that it would have to be stolen. However, the AA-12 uses a long throw piston like the Tavor and AK family of rifles. The AA-12 has developed features to be even more robustly reliable and remove kick. I have used all of them. I also stole Benelli's gas block technology which gives my rifle remarkable reliability across a wide selection of rounds. That's probably not necessary as I always shoot my own home-made round, but better to have and not need then need and not have.

My biggest addition to the world of firearms though, is in the barrel. There are a huge number of considerations in making the ideal barrel. Length is generally determined by powder burn. The explosion of the powder when one pulls the trigger is what drives the bullet down the barrel and powers it to target. The barrel puts a spin on the bullet and focuses it on a particular path. One wants the barrel long enough that all the powder explosive force gets to add more speed. Too long, and the explosion runs out while the bullet is still in the barrel and then the barrel starts to slow the bullet down, reducing range and accuracy. I tested a huge number of barrel lengths, bullet sizes, twist rates and powder/primer combinations.

In addition, the longer the barrel is, the less handy it is, the harder to get around corners or drag through bushes. An AR should probably have a barrel around eighteen to twenty inches, but the US military's current issue rifle, the M-4, has a barrel that is ten inches, giving up substantial range and accuracy, because ten inches is much more handy.

I actually rented a spot on a local guy's farm and built a very narrow one-thousand-yard range. I promise that the farmer and I exchanged every spaghetti farming joke ever made during the process. I then invested a small fortune in measuring equipment. Most people who load their own ammo just measure speed out of the barrel, I needed to know speed downrange, that's expensive. The farmer was curious, and I taught him to be a useful assistant. We came to an agreement that I would not be charged rent, the equipment remained mine, but would stay on the farm, I had no place for it back home anyway, and he could help others as he helped me. I know he's made a lucrative side business of helping various cartridge manufacturers test various loads.

It took a lot of testing, but I settled on a bullet, primer, powder and barrel length of 400 grains for bullet weight, barrel length of 18.2 inches and twist rate of 1:14. The primer and powder will be my secret.

One still has other needs for the barrel. The barrel should have a flash suppressor. A standard M-16 or M-4 uses what is known as an A-2 birdcage design which is almost no help at all. Particularly in the dark, flash is a key giveaway, good flash suppression is critical in tactical situations in the dark.

A good barrel will be recoil compensated. The blast force of the powder will naturally shove the rifle back, better known as kick. Remember Newton's Laws of Motion? However, if one catches some of this blast power against the end of the barrel, that backwards recoil can be lightened, or compensated. Standard issue military rifles don't do this at all.

A good barrel will be sound suppressed. There is a basic reason military rifles are not sound suppressed. The US military is almost wholly dependent on civilian R&D for improvements. Gun control activists, in their infinite wisdom, have succeeded in making sound suppressors just shy of illegal and thus removed them almost completely from the civilian R&D world and from soldiers' hands. How many US soldiers have died for this sleazy bit of pointless, zero-sum game "common sense" from gun control activists in just our recent adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan? My educated guess is it's in the thousands. Strangely, this sort of maneuver on the part of gun control activists makes gun rights partisans a little leery of more "reasonable compromises."

I don't want to fight the whole gun control debate right here, but what law can any sane person believe will take a single gun out of the hands of criminals when fifty plus years of war on drugs is yet to take drugs out of the hands of a single person? While I feel very badly for the hundreds of people who die wrongly by gun violence each year, I remember the millions who are protected by their legal ownership. My sympathies are with the millions.

That said, a barrel should have good sound suppression built in as well, the longer it takes the other guy to figure out where you are by sight and sound, the more likely you are to come home.

Another new design idea is for the barrel to have heat sink-like cooling fins. This keeps the barrel cooler longer if it needs to fire in high-volume. I didn't really ever expect to have to fire the rifle in three round bursts, much less in long, high intensity confrontations, but better to have and not need then need and not have.

Another new design idea is that some of the steel material of the barrel be replaced with a carbon fiber wrap, allowing the barrel to be stronger, but lighter.

Another design concern is whip. If one was to watch a barrel, particularly of long length, high caliber and thin walls on very high-speed film, one would see that it whips, like a high-pressure water hose. That's bad for accuracy. That means the barrel needs to be strong enough not to whip.

I feel like most gun design is a bit prehistoric, still in the, "If it needs to be stronger, add more metal, ugga ugga!" stage.

I'm not a design genius. Most of the tricks I've done with my stuff has just been figuring out who had the best mouse trap already and adapting it to my needs. But, early on in life, I did get one excellent lesson about design. I had a science teacher in high-school my Dad loved. He got me involved in a design contest and I learned some very important lessons there. The contest was a model bridge building contest. Each kid would get a set amount of balsa wood and glue and would have to build a bridge across a set distance. The bridge that held the most weight won. One has to remember, this was before the Google age where one can just click up a search for good bridge designs in seconds. Trying to come up with any info in my home town, even with the good university library and well stocked local library was like picking hen's teeth. There was no internet. Phone calls anywhere were pre-break up ma bell expensive, were not looked on favorably by the parental units and I had no idea who to call. Trying to get periodicals or books not already in the library meant weeks and the contest was not that long. Most kids built slabs of flat balsa wood and glue ala "add more steel." Those were the weakest. The top contenders had delicate looking gossamer constructions that looked like the Golden Gate or George Washington bridges. Mine wasn't a slab, but it wasn't that fancy either, I came in fifth. I did learn a valuable lesson about design. Essentially, that structure can be far more valuable than material when one wants to build strong.

So, I have my own tooling and can produce cold hammer forged barrels with chrome linings. Yes, that's very unusual. I can't make barrels in great quantity, but how many do I need? My chrome linings are a little thicker than industry standard as that makes the barrel more durable. The chrome lining is where the rubber meets the road, so to speak, absorbing the abuse of bullets slamming down followed by, literally, burning hot corrosive gasses. The next level out from the chrome lining in my barrels is a thin steel shell, but strong, due to fluted ridges that spiral down the exterior, great for dissipating heat and creating strength with structure, not brute force. I have also created a jacket for my barrels that is made from high grade chromium steel, but also some exotic materials like carbon fiber and ceramic. The jacket works with the barrel in a way that makes the whole barrel a sound suppressor, which also works great as recoil compensator which also helps flash suppress which helps sound suppress, etc. I make all that stuff in a load bearing structure so it also all adds barrel strength, meaning no whip. The barrel is thick, not without weight, but light years ahead of current design. And I've tested. A barrel twice as thick made from solid steel isn't as strong or rigid. Bridge design rides again. The strength of the barrel also lets me mount a really wicked standoff device.

By the way, it's also free floated, but you'll have to look up what that means.

So, what does this whole package get me, particularly with weeks' worth of magic poured in? Minute of angle accuracy at one thousand yards, high-quality sniper rifle-like accuracy from a caliber previously only thought of as effective at short range. Flash is almost completely eliminated. Recoil, from a caliber that normally shocks experienced shooters, is less than most staple guns. Sound is funny, it chuffs very little out the barrel, but snaps about fifty yards downrange when it pops through the sound barrier. Still every second they're trying to figure out where you are…

Oh, and if you're wondering just how capable .50 Beo is, there are plenty of videos on YouTube. I particularly like the one where the .50 Beo hit's the cement block and shatters it. My version is much more nasty.

We got in my truck and went for a drive. We drove out past the airport to Carter Lake and then along the Missouri river. Carter Lake is not that big a place and eventually Jake pointed and said, "That's the place."

"Are you sure?" I asked.

"Yeah, I can smell her and those spoiled fish Fomor right now." He answered. I drove by casually and snapped a few pics with my smart phone. Then drove us back to town.

On the way back, we did run some errands.

I stopped at a random cell phone place and bought a disposable phone with a thousand minutes and gave it to Jake.

"This is so I can contact you. You will be tempted to call Cassie. Don't. When you think it's too tempting. Don't. If you call her, that will reduce her odds of survival. Do you understand?"

"Yes." Jake answered sullenly.

"When you think you've come up with a way to call her that won't get her in more trouble. Don't. The Fomor have been playing the treachery game for thousands of years. They're smarter than you. They're smarter than me. They're smarter than both of us put together. Don't call. Whatever you think will happen, you'll end up telling them where your Grandma keeps her jewelry. Do you understand?"

"Yes." Jake answered a little more aggressively. I wanted to press more, but I could tell he would just dig in his heels.

I then took Jake back to his bike and had him follow me to a local Super 8. I checked in and gave Jake the room key, a business card from the hotel and a Visa Debit card with some money on it.

He was giving me a funny look.

"Do you want to have sex with me? Is that part of the price?" He asked.

I rolled my eyes.

"No. I'm putting you in a hotel room to cool your heels for a bit. There's a Super Target a block that way and there are restaurants all around here including two all-you-can-eat Chinese places." I said as I pointed in their general directions.

"There are plenty of gas stations so get your bike fueled. If you get lost, call the hotel and I'm sure they can give you directions back. If you need me, you now have my cell, call. If you want, you can order in delivery and just hole up in the room. No partying. No drugs. No alcohol. When this is done you can make yourself as blotto as you want, but I need you not in jail and sharp till then. Do you understand?"

He nodded. It seemed like he got it.

"I need you to sit tight here for a while. You can go out and do a little shopping and eating but stay close to the hotel. Feel free to buy yourself stuff if you need it, clothes, toiletries, food. Don't try and buy anything too expensive there's not that much on there."

He nodded again.

"Do you know how to drive a car?"

He nodded.

"I'm going to have a rental dropped off. You can use it for your errands or your bike, just don't do anything crazy."

He nodded.

"Is there anything else you need or want to say?" I asked.

He shook his head.

"Then I'll see you later. Enjoy yourself but stay quiet. Make sure you're fed, rested and clean and both vehicles are fueled. On second thought, take the car to Target, buy a really good first-aid kit with extra bandages, tape and disinfectant. Ask the pharmacist for help. Tell him you're going hunting with some friends and you want to make sure you have everything you need if someone gets hurt or shot. Then buy it. Then leave it in the trunk of the car. Can you do that?" I continued.

"Yeah." He answered trying to look competent.

"Good. See you later."

Saying that I got in my truck and left.

*** And now a word from our sponsor! ***

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