Killer Instincts v5

by Jack Badelaire

  Boiled down to its most pragmatic terms, a warrior from a herding and butchering culture had the know-how and stomach to advance in a coordinated fashion against an enemy, rout them by forcing them into close combat, and cut them down like animals when they fled. A rival culture who had only progressed warfare to the point of hurling missiles and insults, with the occasional ritual duel thrown in for good measure, had no hope against an enemy who would come at you undaunted through a hail of slings and arrows in order to bury a sword in your guts, and not even blink when your blood hit him in the face.

  It came to me then, that the last two weeks had been my electro-shock treatment, my swift immersion into that pragmatically bloody mindset. Richard knew I came from the modern equivalent of your typical segregated agrarian society; someone who looks at cute cuddly animals as pets to be loved, and whose meat is killed and prepared by someone else so I never had to see or perform the deed myself. I had to be forced into the role of the pastoral herder-slaughterer, to smell fresh blood and not be sick, to not faint at the sight of a raw wound. I needed to be able to think of the men I was going to kill in the same way a herdsman would separate out the sick animals from the pack and cull them so the rest could flourish.

  Richard was doing his job remarkably well. He was worth every penny.

  We got back to Richard's cabin around eight in the morning. We had only eaten some dried fruit, jerky, and nuts while breaking camp, so after Richard entered the cabin and disarmed any "surprises", we set about preparing a better breakfast. We ate powdered eggs, canned beans and tomatoes on crackers, along with a pot of tea and some reconstituted milk. Funny how a meal you'd turn your nose at back home tastes like a feast after you've been living out in the desert for a week.

  After putting some food in our bellies, Richard and I took turns cleaning up. For the last two weeks I hadn't had a decent shower, but at least while staying at the cabin I would wash up every night with a small bowl of hot water and a washcloth. Out in the desert, I had lacked that small comfort, and I realized we were both utterly filthy, and pungent to boot. We hadn't shaved for a week, either, and we could pass for a pair of vagrants. A thorough wash-up, a shave, and a new change of clean clothes, and I could tell even an old campaigner like Richard was feeling remarkably more put-together.

  Next, Richard led us through a set of stretches and light calisthenics, and we went for our customary run, although Richard kept it short. I could tell I was sore and out of practice; although we had finished every day out in the desert exhausted, we hadn't done a lot of running. Getting in even a short run was remarkably refreshing, and I noted with satisfaction that I had, if anything, more energy and stamina now than last week, despite the weariness I had felt at the end of every day.

  Richard and I returned to the cabin around eleven in the morning.

  "Now that we're back into the routine a little, let's strip down and clean everything. Guns, gear, even the Suburban's cargo bed."

  We spent another three hours going through our gear and making sure that not only was everything accounted for - including the spent brass - but that our packs were clean, the carbine and the AR-15 were stripped, cleaned and oiled, and both pistols given the same treatment. After two weeks, gun maintenance had become second nature to me.

  By the time all our equipment was attended to, and the Suburban was cleaned, it was early afternoon. I prepped a quick lunch of canned beef stew with added vegetables. Sitting at the table together, eating our lunch, Richard looked at me thoughtfully over his bowl.

  "Hmmm?" I asked.

  "You ever play checkers?"

  "The board game, checkers?"

  "That's right, checkers."

  "Back when I was a kid, yes. Played against my kid sister a lot. Probably haven't played a game in ten years."

  Richard chewed another mouthful.

  "Reckon you'd be up for a game?"

  I laughed. "After the last week, anything that involves sitting in the shade and not crawling over rocks and dust sounds fantastic to me."

  Richard chuckled for a moment, then got up and walked into his room. A few moments later he brought in an old, battered cardboard checkers box. Laying out the board, he deftly populated the squares with the red and black playing pieces, save one of each. Holding them behind his back, Richard asked me, "Right or left?"

  "Left."

  He held out his hand. A black disk.

  "Smoke before fire, kid. Your move."

  I had always been an indifferent checkers player, and over the course of the first game, I realized I had forgotten most of the rules. Richard coached me through the game, reminding me where necessary what moves I could and could not make. It was mostly a confusing muddle, and although I lost the game, I felt I finally had a grasp of what to do, so I asked Richard for a rematch.

  Ten minutes later, the game was over. Richard had won again.

  I asked for another game. Richard beat me after twelve minutes.

  We played for a couple of hours, and game after game, Richard came out on top. Some of the matches I just got frustrated and made stupid mistakes that were quickly exploited, while other times I felt I was being clever and sneaky, only to have it all fall apart a few moves into my "master plan". Either way, Richard played with an infuriating calm, taking his move the moment I finished mine, without any need to think about what he was doing.

  Finally, after what must have been a dozen games, Richard looked up at me from across the board.

  "Why do I always win?" he asked me.

  "Because apparently, you are a master of the checkerboard."

  "No, seriously. I haven't played a game of checkers in years. I probably haven't played it since the last time you played. But why do I always win?"

  "I dunno, you've probably still played more games. You've got several decades of experience over me."

  "What else? What am I doing that you aren't doing?"

  I stared at the board for a long moment. "You make your move as soon as I make mine. It's like you don't need any time to think about what you're going to do."

  "But that's ridiculous, right? Of course I'm thinking about my moves."

  "But you don't take any time," I countered.

  "Says who?"

  "Then you...you're thinking about your move while I'm thinking about mine. But how do you know what to do when I haven't done it yet?"

  Richard smiled. "Mhmmm?"

  I stared at him, annoyed. "'Mhmmm' what?"

  Richard began to put pieces onto the board at random, setting up what looked like a mid-game distribution.

  "What are your options?" he asked, pointing to the board.

  I looked the board over for a minute, then told Richard the half-dozen possible moves I could see. Richard nodded along with each of them, and when I finished he looked at me.

  "Every time we play, every time it's your turn, I can practically hear you thinking out your moves, just like that. Your eyes, your body language, sometimes even your lips move. I know the move you're going to make before you even reach for the piece."

  I just looked at him.

  Richard continued. "Furthermore, because you take so long and make your move so obvious, I've got plenty of time to plan my move, so that when I make it, you now have to react to it instead of planning your own strategy. Do you see what I mean?"

  "Uh..."

  Richard leaned in over the board. "Let me ask you again, why do I win?"

  "Because you can plan faster. Because when I'm figuring out what to do you're already figuring out how to counter my move."

  "And what does that mean?"

  "You've always got me on my back heel. I'm not playing to win, I'm playing to try and not lose."

  Richard smiled at me. "Give the kid a cigar."

  "So is that it?" I asked.

  Richard barked out a laugh and threw his arms up over his head. "Is that it? Is that it? Son, you are talking about the single most fundamental point in the art of war; making the enemy react to
you instead of you to him. Action-reaction. Offense and defense. The man who never manages to throw a punch never wins a fist-fight."

  "But you have to be able to protect yourself against the other guy's moves," I protested.

  "What moves? If every move your opponent makes is to defend against one of your own, you already know what he's going to do. You utterly dominate the battle because you control everything your enemy does. You guide his movements because he is constantly moving to defend against you. You control his attacks because he can only attack from where you left him. You offer him only what you want him to attack and force his strategy to conform to yours. In this situation, he is left so busy reacting that he never has a chance to act himself."

  I shook my head. "Okay, that's great, but how do you do that?"

  Richard folded his arms across his chest. "When you were playing baseball in little league or summer camp or wherever, what was the most important thing you needed to do in order to make contact swinging your bat?"

  "Keep your eye on the ball," I said.

  Richard nodded. "What does that mean, exactly?"

  I frowned. "Uh, it means watch the ball so you know where to swing."

  Richard shook his head. "It means much more than that. It means you need to pay attention to what you want to achieve. The goal of swinging the bat isn't to swing the bat well, it's to make contact with the baseball. Do you see the difference?"

  "I think so, maybe. No."

  "Think about checkers. What is the goal of the game?"

  "To eliminate all the opponent's pieces."

  "So, it's not moving your pieces around on the board?"

  I sighed. "Get to the point, please."

  Richard waggled his finger at me. "This is the point. In any combat situation, the end goal is to defeat your enemy. It is not to avoid getting hurt yourself, although that factors into it. It is not to shoot the bad guy; that is just a means to an end. If the most fundamental point in the art of war is to make the enemy react to you, then the path to performing this feat is keeping your end objective foremost in your mind and always be moving towards that objective. If you are playing checkers, always ask yourself, 'will this move contribute to winning the game, or am I just moving a piece because it's my turn?'. If your answer is the latter, then you are failing to keep the end goal in sight, and you are going to lose every time."

  After his lecture to me, Richard decided it was time to introduce me to a greater portfolio of weapons. We unpacked ammunition for his scoped AR-15, as well as the Remington shotgun Richard had shown me on my first day, but never took out to the firing range. We also stripped and cleaned all the weapons we scavenged from the meth lab. Richard had ammunition for everything, and in large quantities.

  One by one, I took the guns out to our makeshift firing range. Richard walked me through loading and unloading each weapon, any special features they had, and any tips on how to handle each weapon. By now, I was getting to the point where I could figure most of it out on my own; a safety lever is a safety lever, a bolt is a bolt, a magazine is a magazine. For a few hours, we blasted paper targets and Richard's much-battered five-gallon buckets filled with sand.

  "I've told you this before, but it's worth repeating; you want to be able to pick up a bad guy's gun and use it just as well as your own firearm. Guns jam, break down, get shot up, run out of ammo, fall down elevator shafts...anything that can go wrong, will go wrong."

  That night, Richard started me on a regimen of reading a steady stream of excerpts from "books about war", for lack of a better term. Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, Miyamoto Musashi, Julius Caesar, Wang Jingze, and a plethora of more modern sources, from US military field manuals to excerpts from military biographies and after action reports. Richard had boiled the readings down to a manageable degree, but there was still a couple hours of reading every night.

  During my last two weeks, we made several trips into town, mostly to purchase building materials; two-by-fours, sheets of plywood, nails and hinges and the like. Richard and I spent our evenings constructing target stands, doors and doorways, partial walls of various shapes and sizes, even windows and railings. Richard wanted me to be comfortable moving through a doorway with a gun, being able to engage targets not only while moving, but moving into a space, over a railing, leaning around a wall or through a window.

  With these more sophisticated drills came equally sophisticated scenarios. I could see now why Richard had begun with checkers and moved on to The Art of War; he was conditioning me to see each confrontation as a series of moves and counter moves, and to understand that the way to survive the confrontation was to have my game plan in place before the first shot was even fired.

  "The trick is to practice positive visualization, " Richard told me one day. "You have to not only see yourself progressing through your plan of action, but you have to see success at the end of every scenario. Victory often goes to the side who can see themselves winning before the battle has even been joined."

  "Isn't that being over-confident?" I asked. “What about ‘plans never survive contact with the enemy’?”

  "There's a big difference between being cocky and never believing in the no-win scenario. If you are confident that there is no situation so dire that you can't find a way out, you've taken the first step towards succeeding where others would give up and fail. You can read accounts of battles where time and again, the side who won was simply the side who refused to accept the odds stacked against them, and kept working to come out on top."

  "It sounds like you've been there a few times yourself."

  "You have no idea. But, I'm still here because I never quit when another dummy would have just stood up and ate some lead to get it over with. I've fought to the last bullet, and when my guns ran dry I've used my knife, and when that broke I've used my fists until my knuckles were bloody. But every time, I won through."

  By the middle of my third week, we had a pretty solid routine. Up at dawn for exercises and our run, a light breakfast followed by setting up a combat scenario that I worked through in several different ways under Richard's tutelage. After lunch, while cleaning our weapons and making repairs to our target range, Richard and I would play out games of "What if".

  "Have you ever tried a role-playing game?" Richard asked me one day over lunch.

  "I don't know if that's any of your business, pervert."

  Richard sneered. "Not sex, idiot. It's a kind of game."

  "You mean like, what, Dungeons and Dragons? Wearing a cloak and pretending to cast magic spells with elves? No, I've never done that."

  "I'm not talking about pretending to be a elf, dummy. Not every role-playing game is about dragons and gnomes. Some of them are about secret agents, or commandos, or anything else you can think of. A role-playing game is a natural evolution from cops and robbers or cowboys and indians into something much more structured and codified. The principle, however, is the same. A scenario creator posits a challenge, and the participants offer up ways in which they would overcome the challenge, with the creator acting as a referee, determining success or failure."

  "If I checked under your bed, I wouldn't find a wizard's hat and a magic wand, would I?"

  Richard flicked a cracker crumb at me. "It is a tool for training your mind to approach situations analytically, and quickly find a solution to the problem."

  "Okay, you win, Bilbo Baggins. Give me a challenge."

  And so, Richard and I played out what-if scenarios. Your target is in a sedan and you are trying to engage from a distance, how do you do it? Ground level or from a rooftop? Is it better to take the shot at night or during the day? Do you shoot through the sheet metal roof or the windshield? Do you go for the kill first, or do you try and immobilize the vehicle? Is it better to keep the target pinned down in the car, or get them to exit the vehicle? What if the target has a bodyguard? What if you want to take them alive?

  Richard's ability to come up with a scenario that became increasingly more complex and convolut
ed was remarkable. Every time I found a solution to a problem, Richard would add another element or complication that forced me to step back, re-evaluate, and come up with a alternate plan. Our discussions became so complex that after a couple of days we drove into town one afternoon and bought ourselves some plastic soldiers, toy cars, and other visual aids. We built a "sandbox" that we could set up on the dining table in order to build out the imaginary terrain, erecting buildings made from cracker boxes, toy cars, soldiers representing both targets and innocents. These sandbox scenarios grew increasingly more involved, and the lessons I learned from playing checkers against Richard served me well. I would plan my "moves" while Richard adjusted the position of the enemies and the civilians, and I focused on making Richard react to me, and not the other way around.

  "When we first tried this," I said to Richard, "I felt kind of silly. But now, I see how helpful it is to visualize all the players in the scenario and their spatial relationships."

  "There's nothing silly about it. There is a reason they call chess 'The Game of Kings'. For thousands of years, generals have played out similar war games, sandbox battles pitting one enemy force against another in mock table-top warfare. Even professional sports teams use similar techniques; every football coach has a chalkboard with arrows showing sweeping flank maneuvers or headlong charges. Now that we've entered the computer age, programs have been written to pit opposing forces against each other on a virtual battlefield, calculating such minutiae as how weather, terrain, hunger and thirst affect the performance of the soldiers on the field, determining trajectories and percentages of rounds delivered on target."

  "I've heard the Army encourages their soldiers to play computer games in order to develop their reflexes and understand the benefits of certain tactics."

  Richard nodded. "There will come a day when much of a soldier's training will happen in virtual reality, although nothing will ever be able to fully replace the experience of live field exercises."

  My last week in Texas was an unrelenting grind of training and study. Although Richard had said in the beginning we would focus on "guns, not Judo", he felt I had progressed far enough in my marksmanship that some basic unarmed fighting techniques made their way into our training schedule. First I was taught what Richard claimed was the most important skill: how to fall.