Killer Instincts v5 (12 page)

"Ready when you are, Richard."

"Three!" Richard shouted, and I started killing nameless Hollywood extras.

We stayed out most of the morning. It was amazing how fast the Uzi could go through seven magazines, and since reloading took far longer than shooting, there was ample time for Richard to critique my work while we loaded.

"Working with a chatter-box like the Uzi, trying too hard to use the sights will get you killed as you muddle about lining up the perfect shot. Best to sight over the weapon at these ranges and watch where the bullets strike, then correct your aim accordingly.

"I can see you're trying to count exactly how many shots you're firing. Don't do that. Get good at firing in short bursts, and then practice not necessarily counting the bursts, but knowing how many you've fired instinctively. The more you practice, the more it'll become second nature.

"Don't put a death grip on the gun, even in full-auto. Trying to keep the gun from jumping from the recoil by holding tighter is just going to tire you out even faster. Instead, use the recoil to your benefit. Aim low with your first shot, then ride the recoil up through the target, like you're closing a zipper starting at his navel and ending at his chin."

"Only I'm not zippering him up, I'm zippering him open.” I add.

"That's the ticket," Richard nodded. Our conversations always left me in awe of how casually Richard discussed an automatic weapon's ability to tear a person apart.

We ate lunch back at the cabin, and in the afternoon, we walked back to the well-ventilated white buckets, bandaged their burst bellies with a roll of duct tape, and topped them off with spilled sand and desert dirt. By now, the sun was a white-hot hammer beating at me from the sky, the desert floor serving as the anvil. We weren’t sweating so much as simply evaporating water directly through our pores, and we hydrated constantly. We guzzled warm water from plastic bottles, left in the shade of the Suburban's cargo bed to keep them at a drinkable temperature, but the water left our bodies almost as quickly as we drank it. Even though I had been drinking water all day, I found by one in the afternoon I had yet to pee.

I did protect my light skin from the sun, wearing a pair of sunglasses and a wide-brimmed straw hat like Richard, with a bandanna tied around my neck kept soaked with water, the evaporation helping to keep me cool. I made sure to regularly coat exposed skin in sunblock, although Richard had me use a low SPF so that in time I would develop a healthy tan.

"If you baby your skin out here too much, that one day you forget to protect it, you'll pay. Better to build up a good tan over time and let it do some of the work for you."

During the afternoon, Richard had me begin working with the little Beretta automatic.

"Shooting with a handgun in close combat is all about making sure the gun is pointing in the right direction when you pull the trigger."

"My uncle said much the same thing when we shot that revolver,” I said.

"Jamie certainly knows what he’s talking about. Problem with a pistol is, its a very short and light object being held out from the body unbraced and subject to many gross motor functions being applied in the simple act of pulling the trigger. Your body's natural action in pulling the trigger, if unchecked, will cause that barrel to wander all over hell and back. The only thing that prevents that mess, especially when the pucker factor is high, is training and muscle memory."

So, unlike shooting the Uzi, with the Beretta we took things slow. Richard showed me how to hold the pistol correctly, how it should sit in my hand and where my finger should rest on the trigger, repeating the instructions I received from Jamie a few days before. Once my grip was correct, I began to fire slow, sure, steady shots at the buckets, one shot every few seconds, focusing on keeping the movements consistent and smooth, not worrying about putting every bullet as close to the "bulls-eye" as possible, just keeping all my shots consistently center mass.

"It's cliche to say it," Richard explained, "but you don't pull a trigger, you squeeze it. Of course, it's not a slow squeeze, not in a firefight, but it is a smooth squeeze. There's a difference between doing something slowly and doing something smoothly. It's a subtlety that you'll learn over time and it's going to give you an advantage over all those other dummies. When they draw and fire, their guns are never pointing in the right direction when the hammer drops. If your gun points true when their's isn't, you might just walk away intact."

"I thought you said this morning that marksmanship isn't as important as having the right kind of killing instincts,” I said.

Richard gave me an ominous smile. "Don't worry, we'll work on that too."

As the afternoon shifted to evening and the air began to cool down a little, we collected most of the spent brass from the day's shooting before returning to the cabin.

"Even though we're in a state that discharges more firearms per capita than anywhere else in the country, I don't want someone wandering through when we aren't around and finding hundreds of new, shiny, spent pistol casings. At best, it might draw unwanted curiosity to what we're doing. At worst, someone might think I'm stashing guns in the cabin and try to break in, which would result in a very bad accident on their part, and me needing a new cabin."

Before doing anything else that evening, Richard taught me how to break down, clean, and reassemble the Uzi and the Beretta.

"For a soldier, there is no more important skill than being able to quickly and proficiently service their weapon in any condition; rain, sleet, snow, desert, swamp, jungle, whatever. Guns in the field get dirty, and dirty guns fail to work, which gets you killed. You, on the other hand, will be working for only short periods of time in a mostly clean urban environment, and can break down and service your guns at your leisure, so we're not going to do the whole field-strip and clean blindfolded routine like you see in the army movies."

After cleaning the guns, Richard put me through another set of stretches, loosening up those muscles that had tightened during a day of range work like my neck, shoulders, arms, and back. Stretches were followed by more calisthenics, which were in turn followed by another run. This time Richard required me to run out to the hidden cache so I knew where it was if I needed to find it, and after a little confusion, I was able to locate the gnarled bush on the back slope of the hill. We then half-ran, half walked back to the cabin, Richard looking none the worse for wear, while I was utterly spent.

After dinner, it was time to do my homework. Richard had prepared several binders for me filled with photocopied or scanned articles from a number of combat-related periodicals, some geared towards civilian sport shooting and personal defense, some geared towards law enforcement, and some purely for military or "armchair commando" types.

"This is going to be a crash course in the world of the private sector gun-for-hire, so you need to get your head into that world, and fast. I'm going to be using terms and talking about concepts that I need to express without taking the time to explain them to you, so this is going to be your required reading."

That evening I read articles on the history of the Uzi, about point shooting and trigger control, on concealed handgun carry, self-defense laws in various states and the overall perception of self-defense as it pertained to handguns in America.

"Richard, I suppose this is all relevant, but I'm not looking to engineer my revenge killings into a series of legally justifiable self-defense shootings. Why am I reading this?"

Richard sat down at the table next to me. "First things first, it’s all about cultural immersion. Illicit or not, you're entering a niche with its own lingo and its own viewpoint on the world. Second, if you ever find yourself caught in the web of Johnny Law, you're going to want to know what to expect. I hope to teach you what you need in order to avoid getting caught, but there aren't any guarantees in life, except for death."

"So this is hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst."

"Got it in one," Richard said.

I finished my reading by ten and rolled into my cot ten minutes later, after brushing my teeth and a quick wash-towel bath. I don't think I’d ever been so tired in my life. Oddly, I don't think I'd ever felt so satisfied in a day's hard work, either.

I was probably asleep before my eyes closed.

The rest of the week, we continued what had I started. Every morning Richard and I would start with stretching and calisthenics, followed by a four-mile round trip run. We'd then have a light breakfast and follow that by loading magazines, then spend the morning shooting the Uzi. After a couple days playing "pick a number", Richard had me try shooting at a distance, learning control and technique, as well as firing at a walk and even at a run. I must have fired ten thousand rounds of ammunition by the end of the week.

Afternoons were dedicated to handgun shooting, and after the third day, Richard had me working on rapid firing two or three shots at a time. I also expanded my practices to include all three pistols, switching between the Beretta and the Glock, sometimes even emptying one, then drawing the snub-nose revolver from a back pocket and emptying it as a follow-up. Richard explained that often, the fastest reload was simply to draw another firearm and keep shooting.

For most of the pistol drills, Richard's emphasis was on close range, center of mass targets, engaging quickly with several shots at a time.

"Don't fire once and pause to see if you hit or not. Handguns aren't reliable man-killers, especially something small like the Beretta. You want to shoot until you put your target on the ground, then maybe a couple more for good measure. Remember, you're not a cop or a law-abiding citizen. For you, there's no such thing as excessive force when it comes to dealing with these slobs, just kill or be killed."

In the evenings we would conclude the physical training with more exercises and another run, followed by a quick dinner and more homework. There was an unbelievable amount of information to take in, and Richard was an expert in all of it, from guns to explosives to disguises to logistics and finances.

"Your first week, we are going to focus on shooting. Using a firearm is something that, once upon a time, any young American male living in a rural area learned as a perfectly normal part of becoming a man. Certainly around here, marksmanship would have been learned alongside riding a horse, building a fire, and navigating the wilderness by the sun and the stars. All of America's wars, even back before we were Americans at all, were fought and won by young men who had learned to lead a moving target and put a round in a vital place long before they entered military service."

"So what you're saying is, I've got a long way to go."

"I've got a lot of later twentieth-century poppycock to drum out of you, kid. We’ve got a long way to go before you're anywhere close to your average turn of the century rabbit-sniping hillbilly."

"In happier times, I'd consider that a compliment."

One of Richard’s homework assignments was to memorize a deck of one hundred index cards, each with the picture of a gun on one side and a handful of relevant facts on the other. The cards listed caliber, capacity, basic method of operation, whether it had a safety or not, and any other notable features. About half of the guns were pistols of some sort, while the other half were split between rifles, shotguns, and submachine guns. Their designs and intended uses were myriad, and they came in all shapes, sizes, and styles.

Richard insisted on the importance of this knowledge. "Sooner or later, you will find yourself in a situation where the only working gun you can use is the one in the hands of the guy you just killed. You're going to need a basic familiarity in how the gun operates, where the safety is, if you need to cock it before it can fire, how to check the magazine, even how many bullets it can hold.  Having that knowledge in your head and ready to be recalled is going to save you precious seconds and keep you alive."

By the end of the first week even Richard admitted that, within urban firefight ranges - perhaps thirty or forty feet - I was able to point and hit my target with acceptable reliability. Richard reminded me again and again that lining up for the perfect bullseye wasn't what won a gunfight; it was hitting your target and putting him down.

"The only scorecard that ever gets tallied in the real world is how many times you walk away from the fight and leave your opponent dead in the dust. I can shoot damn straight when the occasion calls for it, but I’m not a bulls-eye expert. The difference is, I can hit a man on the other side of the street while I'm running, ducking, and dodging automatic weapons fire. Sacrificing pinpoint accuracy for shooting fast and on the move may mean you burn a little more ammo, but in the end, it's going to keep you alive a lot longer. Gunfighting isn't a biathalon. It's an ugly business that rewards dirty tricks and being faster and meaner and more ruthless than the other guy. It's the only way you're going to win.”

Little did I know, I was about to learn exactly what Richard meant.

EIGHT

I awoke to Richard's boot lightly nudging my cot. Sitting up, I rubbed my eyes and looked around. It was still dark out, and a sleepy voice in the back of my head told me I hadn't been asleep for more than a couple of hours. Richard held a lantern in his hand. He was fully dressed, and a heavy black automatic fitted with a suppressor hung under his armpit in a shoulder holster.

"What's up?" I asked, running a hand through my hair.

"Time for a field exercise," he said to me, little humor in his voice.

I dressed quickly, the fog of sleep in my brain evaporating fast. Black boots, dark blue jeans, black t-shirt, a dark grey pullover, black knit watch cap, and thin black neoprene glove liners. Southern Texas in the spring can be positively frigid when the sun is down, and I could almost see my breath outside. Before we got into the Suburban, Richard handed me a gunbelt with my holstered Glock, two extra magazines, and a small tactical flashlight. No sooner did I buckle it on, when Richard then handed me a Kevlar-lined tactical vest with six SMG magazines, three to each side. I could tell just by looking at them that they were magazines for the Uzi.