Cruel Tutelage
"So she was hot?" Jeff asked me.
"Smoldering. Almost painful to look at," I replied, grinning. "The kind of girl that usually doesn't talk to me."
"So what happened?"
"Well..."
A few days later, Gordon and SFC Dave finally did show up. They gathered most of us new guys together, and drove us out to a secluded compound way out in the desert. We were to bring none of our own gear, only a few changes of working clothes and various sundries. Fortunately for me, they didn't search us. I smuggled my S&W 642 snubby along with me, and ten rounds of ammo. I didn't trust these people.
They dropped us off in a small barracks. There were twelve of us in that group, from varied backgrounds. It was apparent that this training was just for the trigger-pullers, as Sarah and the other support types weren't there.
We were assigned partners. My partner was an interesting fellow named Tailor. He was...well, he's hard to describe. Chain-smoking, irritable, foul-mouthed, cocky, looked and talked like Zorg from the movie The Fifth Element (but with less hair). Despite being nearly polar opposites, we became good friends. But hardship brings people together like that.
"What hardship?" Jeff asked me.
"Oh, there was plenty. It started there, though. Ever see the Kill Bill movies? There's a chapter in the second one called The Cruel Tutelage of Pai Mei, or something like that."
"So you learned kung foo?"
"I think it was more of a blended fighting style, based on the stuff the Special Forces use. But instead of Pai Mei, we got a man they referred to simply as The Instructor..."
"FASTER!" The Instructor screamed at me. I was doing the pushups as fast as I could. I was exhausted, and my arms were about to give out on me. I could tell. I hadn't done pushups since I'd gotten out of the Guards. I was out of shape something awful.
The Instructor kicked me in the stomach, knocking me out of the leaning rest position onto my back.
"You disgust me, Forty-Seven." Forty-seven was the number they had given me. We each got one, and we were never referred to by our names. Tailor was number forty-six.
"Look at you," he said, as I clutched stomach, gasping for breath. "You're fat. Weak. Out of shape. Pathetic." He walked towards me, and went to kick me again. As he approached, I felt myself grow suddenly calm, like I wasn't really there. Like playing a first-person shooter. I had missed this feeling. Before his foot connected, I rolled out of the way and was up on my feet.
The Instructor laughed.
"Movin' fast now, ain'tcha, boy?" He approached me, and I felt my muscles tense up. He stepped in front of me, and leaned in really close, the way drill sergeants like to do. I didn't say anything.
"Look at you, boy", he said, a cruel grin splitting his face. "I think you got some fire in yer belly. You think you can take me?" I didn't reply. I just matched his intense gaze, staring into his right eye. The left side of his face was broken by a long scar that went from above his eyebrow down his cheek, and he was apparently blind in his left eye. There was no color in his left eye, either, making his gaze very unsettling.
"Nothing to say, boy?" I looked behind him to his left. Tailor was there, looking at me, the expression on his face asking me if I wanted help. To his right, I saw Gordon approaching.
"How's it going?" Gordon asked casually, lighting a cigarette. He wore dark sunglasses and seemed disinterested.
"Pathetic bunch," The Instructor replied, still looking at me. "Bunch of frightened children." The Instructor extended his arm, and a massive hand clamped around my throat. He grinned, and I'd had enough.
My left hand reached down as my left leg came up. I retrieved the snubby from the small holster on my left ankle, and in a flash the revolver was pointed at his chest. I didn't bring it up to eye level; at contact distance I didn't need to. His grip tightened, and I fired twice.
The Instructor staggered back, releasing me. I collapsed to my knees, and began to bring the gun back up to eye level. The next thing I knew The Instructor had wheeled around in a sort of roundhouse kick. His right boot connected with the right side of my head, sending me, my gun, and my glasses flying. Everything went black.
When I came around, I was on my back in the sand. Four men, sporting the whole "contractor" look (5.11 khaki pants and vests, M4 carbines, Wiley-X sunglasses, severe expressions) loomed over me, weapons trained on me. My snubby was nowhere to be found, and without my glasses, things were a touch blurry. Behind them, the other students had gathered in a semicircle, shocked expressions on their faces.
I thought I was dead, to be quite honest.
"Try not to kill them," I heard Gordon say as he walked away. "We've only go so many."
"Stand down," I heard The Instructor say. The four men backed off, and he was standing over me. His khaki shirt was unbuttoned, revealing a thin body armor vest, with two dents in it. He dropped two small objects in the sand next to my head. I looked over at them, and recognized them to be mushroomed Golden Saber hollow points.
"That was ballsy, kid," he said, smiling. He extended his hand downward. I hesitated for a moment, then took it. he helped me up. My head and jaw were aching. He stood me up, and clapped me on the shoulder. Holding his left hand high, he turned to the other students. I saw that in his left hand, he held my snubby.
"Did you all see what happened here today? This man brought a weapon to my training class, after we told you NOT TO BRING ANYTHING! I can't believe this. You know what I can't believe? That out of all of you, out of so many supposed badasses, self-proclaimed criminals, and wannabe gunslingers, that this college boy is the only one that thought to bring a damned gun! What the hell is wrong with you people? Yer all here against yer will, are getting led around without knowin' what's goin' on, and are here gettin' screamed at and abused. And none of you think to pack? Just because somebody told you you shouldn't? You are all PATHETIC. I'm here to change that, though. When I get through with you all, you'll be able to smuggle a gun anywhere, and know how to make do without one. You'll be able to get in and out of situations that you can't dream of right now. You need to take this training to heart, boys. If you fail, you don't wash out. We don't send you home. We still send you into the field, and you get killed. And you know what? Yer momma don't even get a flag. So I suggest you all pay attention from here on out."
"Instructor..." I heard Tailor say. I was still bewildered.
"What do you want, Forty-Six?" he asked, examining my revolver and not looking at him. Tailor didn't respond. A couple seconds later, The Instructor looked over at him, and smiled.
In his outstretched right arm, he held a small Bersa .380 (not in a firing grip).
"Both of you head back to the barracks, get cleaned up, and hit the chow hall. Get a good night's sleep tonight. Here's yer glasses and yer gun, kid." He handed me back my things.
"The rest of you, head over to the track and start runnin'. I'll tell you when to stop." Tailor and I looked at each other, both grinning. Blood trickled from my right nostril.
"Niiiice," Tailor said, chuckling. He pronounced it 'noice'. He kind of talked funny like that. We both reholstered our weapons and headed back to the barracks.
"Holy crap," Jeff said.
"Like I said, bro, it was surreal," I said, sipping Dr. Pepper. "Nearly three months they kept us there. PT. Shooting. Running. Tradecraft. How to get in and out of sticky situations. We learned some basic Arabic. It was like a mix of boot camp, spy training, and SERE school, condensed into three months."
"Sounds pretty cool."
"I hated every minute of it. Lucky if you got six hours of sleep a night, usually four or five. Few guys got hurt, and were taken away. Don't know what happened to them. Towards the end, we finally got briefed on our mission, what we were going to be doing there, the whole nine yards."
"What was the mission?"
"Well, Qatar was sort of a Switzerland for the terrorists. They didn't do any attacks there, and the Qatari government left them alone. The US government couldn't convince the Qatari Amir to take a proactive stance against them, so the US came up with a deniable plan to deal with these guys. Qatar was in many ways their home base. Safer for them than Saudi or Kuwait. They banked there, held fundraisers there, lived there, had their families there, recruited there. It was their backyard. Our mission was to take the war to their doorstep. It was their turn to be afraid."
TO BE CONTINUED...