Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Perfect Predator Moment

One last story from the training. This is the other side of my character flaw.

We're in position, one changing a tire, unarmed. One hidden in the trunk of his car, ready to pop the latch. He's very much armed. One guy on long cover, watching from inside a bulding. His firing will be the signal (but he's a rookie and has fired prematurely in every scenario so far). I'm waiting behind a door. This time we aren't going to hit the witness on the way in, but on the way out.

I watch from the shadows through a crack in a window. They drive in, wary of the guy changing his tire. They set up a perimeter, move the witness in and fallback to a tight inner perimeter on the 'clinic'. In a few minutes they come out. Someone sees the rookie and the officers respond professsionally, firing back, moving to cover, preparing to roll their vehicles out of the death zone, pulling the witness back to the hard cover of the clinic. The ambush is blown.

I step out. One officer is responsible for my sector- he's in the rear seat of the car with a rifle. He's looking right at me but I fire three shots to his face before he is consciously aware that I am there. The team leader is scrambling to get into the car, the passenger seat on my side. Three more shots ,two to the back of the head and one to the neck, then I fire two over his shoulder into his driver's head and turn towards the clinic. Someone is firing his weapon out the door at my long shooter across the street. I put two sim rounds on his hand and he falls back, cursing. I feel my slide lock back and change magazines without looking. I hear the officers inside. One takes command, "We need to get to the truck!" They file out, witness in a protective sandwich between them. Weapons at the ready, eyes darting. They walk out the door directly in front of me like I am invisible on their left flank. Three shots on each blamblamblam, blamblamblam, blamblamblam. Pastel colors explode all shots in tight groups at the edge of the arm holes in their body armor.

I'm untouched. It was only sims, only a game, but the cold precision of it is settled in my belly. Nineteen rounds, nineteen hits. There's a round in the chamber left and an empty mag in the weapon. I can feel it. The world is huge and fills my senses and at the same time it is exactly the size of the very tip of my front sight.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Rory,
Did the protection team say why they didn't respond to you?
Mike K

Rory said...

Mike- I talked to the guy who was lead yesterday. Obviously, if they had been aware that they weren't responding, they would have responded. Guesses- I hit them from a direction where the car was responsible for their flanks. Like disciplined troops, they maintained their own sectors of fire. It's also possible that I was so close and wearing the same type of armor that their brains registered me as one of them. In the end, I don't know and neither does he. Zanshin?

Anonymous said...

Commenting on a way old post here:

could you wear clothes over the armour? ie xxxl t-shirts and tracksuit pants for the bad guys and uniforms or whatever for the police?

Rory said...

Absolutely, and we do that in dedicated scenario training. But when you're taking turns being bad guys, you can lose a lot of valuable training time to costume change.