The Company We Keep by Robert Baer Read Free Book Online

like a vacation for her.
    Jeff, the head instructor, looks up and down at our tables to make sure we each have a holster and a Glock 9-mm semiautomatic pistol. He’s about forty, with a receding hairline, hollow cheeks, and a pair of cold, silver blue eyes. He has a briskness that tells you he’s run this course more times than he cares to remember.
    “Small-town cops wear their weapons on their hips,” he says. “It’s not the way we do it here. You holster your weapon on the small of your back.”
    I watch the others as they undo their web belts and thread their holsters through them to the back. I do the same. I remember my Leatherman, take it off, and thread it back on my belt on the left side.
    I wait until everyone else grabs his Glock off the table before I pick up mine. I follow suit as they pop out the magazine, rack back the slide, and hold the weapon up to show that the chamber is clear.
    “It’s a hot range,” Jeff says. “Get your ammo.”
    We line up in front of a table set with boxes of ammunition, and cram fistfuls of rounds into our cargo pockets. Walking to the range, we load fifteen rounds into each of our magazines. Jeff takes us to a ten-foot-high berm with twenty-five black-and-white silhouette paper targets lined up in a row. It’s quiet except for the wind whistling through the metal frames. We spread out to pick a target. I take the last one at the end.
    “You may dry-fire before you qualify,” Jeff shouts.
    I’ve never drawn a gun from a holster, and for a few seconds I watch the others draw their pistols, cup them in their hands, aim, and squeeze the trigger. They do it all in one smooth, even motion,and all very quickly. I try to imitate them, only a lot more slowly. Thank God no one is looking at me.
    “Load and make ready,” Jeff yells. “One round, two seconds. On the whistle.”
    Please, please, please
, I tell myself.
Just get them all on the paper
. My hand shakes, and my heart pounds. What if I do something really, really stupid—like hit someone else’s target.
    Jeff blows the whistle, and loud pops fill the range. I force myself not to close my eyes, and concentrate on squeezing the trigger rather than jerking it. It’s the one basic I can’t forget. The Glock bucks up when I fire, but I bring it back down, and then holster it. I look at my silhouette, but it’s too far to see what I hit.
    We do this five more times and then move back ten feet and do it again. We shoot from behind a barricade, on both the right and the left. The last thing we do is shoot with our weak hand.
    “Unload and show clear!” Jeff yells. We take out the magazines, pull back the slides, and hold our Glocks up in the air for Jeff to see. “Downrange!” he yells.
    I walk toward my silhouette with my eyes on the ground. When the time comes for Jeff to count the holes in my target, I hold my breath and stare at his back.
    “All there,” he finally says.
    I look up and count them. I can’t believe it. They’re all there on the paper! Who cares if half are outside the man’s silhouette.
    “Next time put them here.” Jeff makes a fist and puts it in the middle of the man’s torso. “Center mass.”
    Cheri walks over. “You’ll get there, Sunshine. Just a little practice.”
    And practice is just what we get for the rest of the day, the next day, and the day after that. For a few minutes each morning we start by drawing our unloaded Glocks from our holsters. It’s to geta feel for the weapon. Jeff watches, prodding us to move faster and faster. “It’s either you or them,” he says.
    Then there’s a live qualification on the silhouette targets. Almost everyone passes on the first day, except for me and a couple of others. “We don’t move on to higher-speed stuff until everyone qualifies,” Jeff says.
    We settle into a routine. Mornings are “live fire” on the paper silhouette targets, and afternoons are on the “pop-up” range—metal targets that only go down when you hit