The Company We Keep by Robert Baer Read Free Book Online Page A

the figure’s torso or head. We shoot standing, kneeling, and on our stomachs. One afternoon it rains, but we keep at it. By day three, the Glock starts to feel like an extension of my arm, and I finally qualify, the last to do so.
    On Friday morning the Glocks are gone, and 12-gauge shotguns are waiting on our worktables. “One chance to qualify, people,” Jeff says. “You won’t need more than that anyway.” I have no idea why we only get one chance, but from the way everyone stands around joking, planning their weekends, I can tell they all agree this is going to be easy.
    I’ve never picked up a shotgun before, and the moment I fire it, I hate it. It’s heavy, loud, and obviously determined to dislocate my shoulder when I pull the trigger. I don’t have the strength to hold up the shotgun with my left hand while I fumble in my pocket for shells to reload. It’s not like you can set it on the ground to do it.
    Jeff tells us we will shoot three rounds (slugs) at twenty-five yards. We then reload three more shells while holding the shotgun pointed at the target, a “combat load,” and then fire them. Finally, we will move up to “cover the threat,” firing a final three shells at fifteen yards.
    Jeff blows the whistle, and I pull the trigger. But the gun doesn’t fire. I realize too late that I didn’t flick off the safety. My first shotgoes way wide, missing the target altogether. I get off the next two shots and then try to reload, but drop a shell on the ground. When Jeff blows the whistle to change position, I haven’t even finished loading the third shell. I move forward with everyone else to the fifteen-yard line and shoot three shells. But now I have to combat-load four to make up for the one I dropped. I don’t even have time to aim, and can’t see if I hit the target. When the whistle blows to fire the last three rounds, I realize too late that I’ve miscounted, leaving one unfired.
    Jeff comes over and takes the shotgun from me. I follow him as he walks up to my target. All my slugs went wide except one. Jeff doesn’t need to tell me that I didn’t qualify. Or that everyone else has. I already know there’s no half-passing this class, and I walk back to my room thinking about the prospect of being sent back to Los Angeles.
    There’s a knock at my door. It has to be Jeff. I don’t answer, and there’s another knock, then a girl’s voice. It’s Cheri.
    “I heard,” she says, sitting down, one leg over the chair’s arm. “Can I tell you a story?”
    Two years ago Cheri was in Kuwait on a protection detail. The VIP she was protecting was in a meeting, and she asked a local policeman where the bathroom was. He pointed her down the hall. Rather than a toilet, it was a “Turkish bomb sight”—a hole in the floor with two ribbed places for your feet. When she finished, she pulled the chain hanging from the tank to flush, but instead of flushing, it dumped a gallon of water on her! It was a shower. Her new Ann Taylor suit dripping wet, Cheri was mortified, unsure of what to do. There wasn’t even toilet paper to dry off. So she did the only thing she could: she went back and pretended nothing had happened.
    “Everyone was too polite to say anything,” Cheri says. “Andthe moral of the story, Sunshine, is never let them see you sweat. Pretend it never happened.”
    It’s pretty clear by the next week that the idea is to turn up the heat, see who cracks and who doesn’t. Today it’s high-speed driving.
    As I watch the speedometer edge over seventy, the Jamaican instructor, George, says, “Go, girl.” George is short with thick glasses and a floating eye—I wonder where the CIA found him. When I hit eighty, he gives me the thumbs-up. “Now we’re cooking with gas!”
    The car, an old government Crown Vic, loses its footing as we make the first bend. It just wasn’t meant for high-speed driving on a racetrack. At the straightaway I pick up speed again, noticing out of the corner of