The Company We Keep

by Robert Baer

  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. “And the 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 my eye George pulling something out from under his seat. I concentrate on the road, preparing for the next turn, when the windshield goes blank—George has thrust a piece of cardboard in front of me so I can’t see the track!

  When I hit the brakes, George yells, “Keep your speed, girl.” I take it back over seventy, George watching the speedometer. Without warning he pulls the cardboard away, and in front of me is a stack of baled hay. I hit the brakes hard, sending the car sliding sideways into the hay. The Crown Vic comes to a stop in a cloud of straw and dust. “Next time, drive around, girl,” George says. “One day there will be a car there.”

  George then teaches us to run a moving car off the road by driving up alongside it and swerving into its rear quarter panel. At sixty miles an hour, the other car instantly loses traction and spins down the road in a 360-degree circle, the tires smoking. We do that four or five times, and then we take our turn in the car getting run off the road.

  There’s a week of bailing out of a moving car, rolling across the ground, coming to a stop on your stomach, drawing your Glock, and firing at metal pop-up targets. We learn how to ram cars to smash them out of the way, and drive backward at sixty miles per hour before cranking the wheel over and slamming the car into forward. By the end of two weeks we must have gone through a dozen cars. I wonder what the salvage yard thinks about them when they arrive.

  While almost everyone drives back to Washington for the weekends, I stay on base. So does Cheri, and it’s not long before we’re friends. We spend Friday nights in the Jacuzzi singing country songs at the top of our lungs. Sunday morning we play football with a couple of the guys. My spiral pass isn’t bad and wins me points. Cheri and I go off base Sunday afternoons to go shopping.

  Sometimes I look at Cheri and wonder if one day that’s going to be me. For the last three years she’s been traveling around the world teaching foreigners to shoot, sometimes working with the Secret Service, sometimes with the CIA’s paramilitary group. She tells me she loves it and can’t imagine what else she’d do in life that would interest her as much. Part of it is that she’s good, a better shot than many of the guys. She’s modest about it, though, trying to convince me that video games honed her hand-eye coordination. Maybe. But what I really admire about Cheri is her raw confidence. “I’m not afraid of shit,” as she puts it.

  One Monday morning, three bosses from Langley come down to see how the class is doing. Over breakfast, the rumor starts flying that they’re here to select a couple of us for an assignment at the end of training. They want to see who can shoot and who can’t.

  After we run through a quick requalification on the Glock, Jeff and the bosses walk down the silhouettes examining our groupings, the tightness of our shots. When they get to mine, Jeff says something to them, and they look over at me. I know my groupings are now pretty good, but I’m sure he’s just told them I didn’t qualify on the shotgun.

  Jeff then takes us to the pop-up range, where one of the instructors can’t make a metal target go down. Jeff walks downrange to help, bends down to take a look, but he can’t fix it, either. He looks up and asks if someone would drive back for a toolbox.

  I hesitate a moment and then take my dumb Leatherman off my belt and hold it up. “Will this help?”

  Jeff looks at me with my silly drooping cargo pants, my Leatherman held high, then motions for me to bring it to him. It takes him two minutes to fix the target with the fold-out pliers and screwdriver.

  At lunch in the cafeteria, one of the bosses comes by our table. “Hey, girl with the multitool, hope one day we get to work together.”

  It all comes back to guns, who can shoot and who can’t. But the ability to put a round in a paper target’s bull’s-eye doesn’t necessarily make you good with a weapon. The only way to find that out is by mixing it up. Some nights it’s live fire where we have to reload our magazines in pitch blackness, by feel. Just as we start to feel comfortable, they start throwing flash-bang grenades and shooting blanks above our heads. Other nights we simulate a fire-fight with paintball guns from moving cars. One night they send us solo out on the track to practice high-speed turns in the dark. As I’m driving a straightaway I see a guy on the side of the road frantically waving his arms for me to stop. As soon as I slow down and pull off to the shoulder, four instructors with paintball guns ambush me before I can even draw my weapon. Point taken: Don’t stop for anyone or anything.

  They leave the hardest for the last—“the shoothouse.” A shoothouse is a one-story structure built of stacked old tires filled with sand, thick enough to stop a bullet. Plywood inner walls give the sense of a real house. There are even windows and doors, furniture and appliances.

  Jeff stands at the front door. “We’re going through one by one. Take down the bad guy and don’t shoot any women or children unless they have a weapon.”

  We put on our bulletproof vests and load our Glocks. Jeff follows the first guy through the door. The rest of us wait outside, trying to imagine what’s going on inside. After a couple of seconds there’s a muffled yell, followed by two gunshots. It’s silent for a couple of minutes, and then two more shots.

  One of the guys in the class walks up to me. He’s a DEA agent on loan to the CIA, a nice guy who’s helped me with my shooting. He’s six-four, and standing next to him I feel like his little sister.

  “Lookit, I’ve worked with petite girls like you before. The only way they can do this is if they go completely out of character.”

  I’m not sure what he means.

  “Scream as loud as you possibly can, use every swear word you know. Coming out of someone like you, it’ll throw them off guard. Trust me, it gives you an edge.”

  When it’s my turn, I walk in trying to ignore the Glock shaking in my hands and Jeff right behind me. I crouch low at the first door, listening. When I don’t hear anything, I swivel into it, my Glock sweeping the room. No one’s there. At the kitchen door I do the same thing. There’s a paper mom in a blue ruffled apron standing at the sink and a little girl in a pink jumper behind t
he table. I whisper at them to get in the closet and stay there. I continue down a hall and wait at the door of the back bedroom. I listen. There’s no noise. I swivel into the room. I don’t see anything, but then a paper man with a gun in his hand swings out from behind a cupboard.

  I don’t pause even a beat, and yell at the top of my lungs, “Drop the fucking gun and get your fucking hands in the air, or I’ll blow your fucking head off!”

  The silhouette doesn’t move and I put two rounds into its forehead, less than an inch apart.

  When I come out of the shoothouse, everyone’s laughing—I could be heard swearing as clear as a bell. Several of them come up and pat me on the back. Later I learn that a few of the guys took out both the mom and the little girl.

  As with the rest of the course, they constantly raise the shoothouse ante. They move furniture around to confuse us, leaving toys and junk in the darkened halls to make us trip. Sometimes we do it after running an obstacle course, our heart rates up over 140, sometimes to deafening music, sometimes in the dark with night-vision goggles. Cameras mounted on the wall record our every mistake. But at the end of three weeks I feel pretty good and move a lot faster than when I started. I can almost sense in which room they have a paper bad guy.

  One day it’s a dry-fire exercise—pulling the trigger with no bullets in the weapon. I stand outside with a couple of the guys, laughing. I’ve almost managed to put it out of my mind that I haven’t qualified on the shotgun. At least they know I’m as good as everyone else in the shoothouse.

  It’s my turn. I crouch in the first door, listen for a beat, and peek in. Mom isn’t in the kitchen today. I back out, turn, and cross the hall to the next room. I crouch and listen again. There’s not a sound. I swivel into the room crouching. I’m just about through the door when I sense something behind me. It’s too late. It’s a man. He hits me with the full force of his body, hurling me to the floor, knocking the air out of me. He pins me to the ground with his knee. He’s big, heavy, and I can’t move or breathe. He yanks my left arm behind my back, the one without the Glock. Then he grabs at the gun. I pull my arm free, stick two fingers through the trigger, and wrap both hands around the barrel of the pistol and hang on. We roll across the floor, with him yanking at the barrel of the gun. I manage to pull it away and shove the gun between my legs, my hands locked around it. He gives my right arm a hard yank, but can’t pull it away. He jumps up and runs out of the room. “Fantastic!” a voice exclaims over the intercom.

  I walk out of the shoothouse shaking, trying to get my breath. Carlton, a very large African-American instructor who’s helped me all through the course, walks up to me. He’s breathing hard too. He says I’m the last one he would have thought he couldn’t take a Glock from. He shakes my hand. “You’ll do well in a bar fight.”

  The last day of the course we sit at our tables cleaning our Glocks. Jeff comes over and tells me to go outside and see Carlton.

  Carlton is standing there with a 12-gauge shotgun and a box of shells. He says that if I can keep him from grabbing my weapon, I can do this. He knows I haven’t picked up a shotgun since the day I failed to qualify, and I can only think he’s counting on sheer confidence to get me through it now. I take the shotgun and the box of shells and follow him to the range.

  I load three shells and put six in my pocket. Carlton blows his whistle. I take a deep breath, point the shotgun, and squeeze the trigger, evenly and steadily. I fire all three and combat-load three more. I walk up to the fifteen-yard mark and fire three more shells and reload. I walk to the ten-yard mark and “cover the threat.” Carlton blows the whistle a last time, and I fire the last three.

  Carlton walks over and looks at the slug holes in the silhouette. “Nice. All center mass.”

  I notice Jeff has been watching the whole time, and he walks over.

  “I’ve got the first assignment, and it’s yours if you want it,” he says.

  I’m sure I’ve misunderstood him. “Excuse me?”

  “Ever been to Texas?”

  It’s not exactly overseas, but I spend the next ten days in Houston with Jeff and Carlton, guarding the queen and a princess of an Arab royal family. We drive in a motorcade formation, weaving in and out of traffic, blocking cars coming up on our rear. One day I escort the queen and princess to tea at the Ritz Carlton. Another, I shop with the princess for lingerie at Nieman Marcus. I stand behind the queen as she gets her hair blown out, my hand on my back around the Glock. One evening I sew a button on a dress for the princess. I would like to see any of the guys try that.

  In the CIA, training never really stops. It seems like I’m in some course every couple of months, either on a range requalifying or blowing something up. But somewhere along the way I realize that all the training is not just about learning how to shoot, but as much about building confidence in yourself, learning things you never thought you could. It’s also about bonding, not a whole lot different from military basic training. They want to see if you can work in a group, follow orders, get along, and think on your feet. It’s all a safe way for them to see who has common sense and who doesn’t. Better to find that out in training than in the field.

  I would carry guns overseas when that was what the orders said. But like everyone else I work with, we consider them a liability, a constant worry hanging over your head that you’ll get stopped and searched. And the fact is that without a weapon it’s a lot easier to talk your way out of a tight spot. You just look more innocent.

  Anyway, what I end up doing has nothing to do with banging down doors and firefights. The CIA doesn’t try to turn me into some femme Nikita. Instead, I join a deep-cover team that travels the globe, trying to stay out of trouble rather than get into it. I know all of this goes against the myth of CIA ninjas roaming from hot spot to tinderbox, assassinating people and rendering justice. As it almost always is, the truth is a lot blander. The CIA’s rock-cut ethic is never to leave a fingerprint behind, let alone pull the trigger on a gun. The moment a gun comes out, the mission is compromised.

  SEVEN

  Before coming to Tajikistan, please visit your dentist, optometrist, and any health care professionals you see regularly. Bring a spare set of glasses. Contact lens wearers should bring a supply of cleaner and soaking solution, which may not be available locally throughout the year. New arrivals should bring an ample supply of all prescription medications, since pouch deliveries take several weeks.

  Some Russian and Turkish crackers and cookies can be found, but you take the risk of them being stale. If you do not want to bake your own, we advise that you include these in your consumables. A variety of jams can be found. There is no peanut butter. Canned goods such as tuna fish are sometimes available and sometimes not. Bring your own favorite condiments (ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, etc.) and pickles, baked beans, and other canned goods as well as marinades, barbecue and spaghetti sauces and so on, and your favorite salad dressing, in your household shipment or order them as a consumables shipment. Some of these items can be found on a hit-and-miss basis, and you can try the Russian versions of salad dressings and sauces, if you like, but these are sometimes expensive and whether you like the flavor is a personal choice. Frozen vegetables sometimes disappear from the store freezers for several months in the winter.

  In general, you can get along without bringing the above named items with you, but your quality of life will probably suffer and you will spend a lot of time going from store to store to try and find which one has the items you need in stock. There is nothing you can do about the quality and selection of meat, cheeses and fresh produce you can find here, but if you send yourself the usual spices and other products that you like to use, you will probably save yourself some frustration at the least.

  Very limited veterinarian care is available. The usual process is for surgeries etc to be carried out on your kitchen table with rudimentary equipment.

  —www.ediplomat.com/np/post_reports/pr_tj.htm

  Dushanbe, Tajikistan: BOB
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  It takes an abscessed tooth for me to find out there isn’t a dental X-ray machine in the entire city of Dushanbe.

  “You see, come,” the nurse at Dushanbe’s main hospital says. She motions me to follow her. We walk through dark waiting rooms, corridors, and wards. People stand and lie everywhere, two to a bed, some on filthy blankets on the floor, others squatting against the walls. They’re eerily silent, as if they know the hospital is a place to die rather than be healed. There’s spalling from shrapnel on the wall, blistered paint from a fire. I’d heard about an attack on the hospital last month, and it’s only now that I believe it.

  The nurse stops at a small room in front of a hulking X-ray machine. She flips on a switch, but nothing happens. “See. Broke,” she says. She flips the switch up and down in rapid motion. Still nothing.

  I point at my tooth, telling her in Tajik again that it really, really hurts. She shrugs and takes me to a waiting room, where I sit on a hard wooden bench next to a young boy who stares at me, a glass eye rolling in its socket.

  Half an hour later an Uzbek man in his sixties comes to see me. He tells me he’s a dentist, and has me stand up so he can stare into my mouth. I point below my cheek, where pain radiates like a glowing ember. He reaches into my mouth with his index finger and thumb and starts shaking my lower jaw. It feels like he’s just yanked out my tooth.

  “I will pull all these,” he says. He adds that he’s very good at making gold teeth. I believe him; his own mouth is full of them.

  He sighs when I say no, looks into my mouth again, and offers to drill around until he finds the abscess. It takes me a moment, but I understand what he’s proposing are three root canals.

  I’m about ready to leave when he tells me he has another idea. “A Soviet miracle that will fix our tooth for good.” I know he means my tooth. But I’m curious now.