Globall War of Terror: Kill House

The gear was heavy on my body. The master instructor checked each item: the handcuffs, the expandable baton, the fighting knife (dull blade, welded cap over the point), the Individual First Aid Kit (fake plastic dressings and an improvised tourniquet), the rear button controlled flashlight (weak), the pepper spray (loaded with water), two magazines loaded with live .22 LR rounds, and a .22 semiautomatic pistol. A total of 31 rounds. A non working radio. All worn in the locations approved for Security Department carry. Most of all, the weighted vest that simulated (but was not) armor.

He repeated the safety instructions again.

"In this exercise, the facility is under attack by a superior force. Your duty is to protect human life of affiliates, resist the attack, and survive. I must tell you that no one has ever passed this course on the first attempt.

"You will obey use of force commands from me absolutely and without discretion. Often you will have to decide if a target is friendly or hostile. Do not look to me for cues or guidance. If I order you to 'holster' you will return the weapon in your hands to its holster, without reloading. If I order 'cease fire' you will stop using any weapon but continue to hold it at ready.

"Only if I order you to 'freeze' you will stop all body motion, including use of any weapon, until I again give you explicit permission to move. Failure to freeze is an automatic fail.

"If you actually become injured, and only for that reason, you may say 'freeze' yourself and then obey that command. The exercise will come to a halt and I will assess your injuries. Self freezing without actual injury is an automatic fail. Proceeding with the exercises despite actual injury is a conditional fail.

"I see that you are participating with a known upper left arm injury. We've taped and padded the spot and will try to avoid it.

"Losing control of a weapon or killing an affiliate target is a fail. Being killed is a fail. Upon my judgment that you have been killed, I will use a contact stun gun built into the vest that you are wearing. How long I press the button depends on how stupid I think your death was.

"In the real world you do not get up.

"This course may be run a maximum of twice a day, with a day off between attempts. This is your first attempt, so I could skip this part but will not. The stations, order of presentation and specifics of each scenario are constantly changed. Do not assume that because you have seen a scenario before that it might play out the same way. It could, but probably not. There are over twenty but less than fifty, don't bother counting.

"As your instructor I am responsible for safety in this course. I will be right behind you with a hand on the small of your back or rear of your belt. Discharging your firearm is deadly force. In situations that appear to call for it, use it! You may fire freely on apparent threats, we are using video projection, tire walls, dummies and remote controlled targets. However, every round you fire is one less round to survive with.
Make every shot count.

"When you are killed, I will issue the freeze command, disarm you, stun you, and start a short but intense after action review. You will receive a copy of the videos created during your run, including my critique, for self study. Another copy will go into your training files. We will help you with intensive training on any skill not up to standard. We encourage mastery.

"Any questions?"

I shook my head. This was insane. I had participated in shoot-not shoot video training in simulators, video walls for squad actions around vehicles ... everything US Army TRADOC could come up to train armor officers without getting into tanks.

"What is this training based on?"

"A mix of the NASA course of fire for armed security guards, OSS training in World War II, CIA training for clandestine contractors, GSA and FPS guard standards, and the post-Firecracker performance standards for Company armed guards. I am sure you will have no problem passing on your first attempt, Major. Here we go."

The room dimmed to red, the instructor grabbed my belt from behind with his left hand. Dim lights ran off on the edges of the floor into the distance ... power failure lights if powered by tiny bulbs. The red light dimmed further and became bluish.

The ceiling audio system spoke, "The perimeter has been breached! We have multiple breaches! Security Force personnel will respond to their emergency action station." In the distance, faint popping sounds.

I reached down to my non working radio to call in.

"No reply," the instructor said, so I moved down the corridor. A bend in the corridor was about ten feet ahead.

Wanting to slap myself for my stupidity, I drew my pistol and my tactical flashlight. I should have done that immediately.

Just in time as an eye and hand with a firearm peeked the corner and fired at me!

I immediately fired back, too startled to do anything else. After several shots it fell out of sight.

I reloaded and dropped the magazine. Then I thought better of it and fumbled on the floor until I found it again and put it in a pocket.

I went around the corner in best "slice the pie" fashion. A plywood target with a squib, controlled by a pulled wire. Another corridor ... ending in a building window that looked into a tiny scale model of a burning campus. By the window leaned a rifle, AK variant, not one of ours.

"Holster," the instructor commanded. He did something to the holster that I could only sense. "Go get the rifle and recon out the window." He then let go of my belt.

Empty handed I walked to the rifle when hundreds of pounds of person wearing armor slam tackled me off my feet from the side.

I started trying to kick and bite. I tried to clear my holster and put two rounds in his head from under his chin. But I couldn't draw! I could reach my knife and drew it and stabbed up again and again and again.

I was covered in lukewarm body fluid, from plastic bags I had popped with the knife. The instructor role player in the mugging suit slumped in apparent death, unhurt through the armor. I reached to check his pulse and he started fighting me again! So I stabbed a lot a second time and then handcuffed him.

Then I proceeded, with fighting knife in ready position, to check the area, get the rifle and point it out the oversized "window" at the miniature battlefield, complete with burning (candle) toy tank and little toy figures that were not our uniforms.

Mag check, the rifle had only 10 rounds. Chambered in .22 LR making it a training toy, not a useful battle rifle.

I evaluated what good I could do with ten rounds and fired once at each target.

After I fired seven times, a spotlight on an enemy vehicle below (a flashlight) swiveled to cover the window. I backed away then heard on the soundtrack ... sounds of the battlefield, something that made me push the rifle away, cover my head in my hands and hit the floor.

"RPG!"

And the room went BANG and filled with smoke.

The rifle was yanked forward out of my hands as a hand on my belt yanked me backward.

"This route is impassable," the instructor now said as he unfastened the lock on my belt holster and grabbed my belt again. "Find another."

I was covered in someone else's piss. I had simulated killing one man with a pistol, one with a knife, and several with a rifle. I was terrified. I was exhilarated.

I was back in combat just like on the run from Utah to California.

But unlike real combat, casualties could get up... and do better next time.

This was how San Jose trained? Its guards?

Maybe we had a chance.

I turned and walked a short distance in the only direction open to me.

Then I saw four bodies and drew and brought my handgun up to ready.

I evaluated the targets. Each had a valid site badge. One was missing her head. Seeing no threat, I brought my firearm to low ready and the instructor immediately barked "Holster." I did so and knowing what he was doing this time, sensed him applying the keyed padlock to the holster. The key was on a elastic bracelet over his left wrist. Taking no chances on a student pointing a live handgun at a roleplayer.

But I had just done that, hadn't I? Or ... not? I had come around the first corner to see a mirrored view of the room, floor to ceiling mirror. I still had no direct line of sight on the roleplayers. Smoke ... and mirrors. Only now the instructor pushed me forward and around the corner ... he'd have hauled me back if I'd rushed forward.

"I need help my leg is bleeding," gushed a player wearing a CLIENT DEPENDENT badge. Fair enough, her leg was as advertised. A second player, also badged, sat with his head in his hands, mumbling to himself. The third and fourth - both in guard force uniforms and wearing some gear but not firearms - lay as corpses do.
Not surprising as they were manikins.

I ignored the missing head, checked the pulse on the other ("No pulse or breathing," the instructor murmured), and tried to talk to the man with the head injury while I bandaged the dependent's leg from my kit. ("The wound is bandaged.")

The man with the head injury muttered, looked agitated, got up and started to walk out of the room. He pushed by me deeper into the rooms.

"Freeze."

The room went dark. I heard a man - the man who had just walked out of the room - start begging for his life, drunkenly agitated, saying he worked for the CLIENT then a burst of automatic gunfire and a hacking cough that stopped suddenly.

The stage changed around me in the darkness like stagehands during intermission. Only when they were done did the instructor unlock my holster and coldly command "Draw."

The room lights came up. The female roleplayer was replaced by a manikin of the same hair color, covered in what looked like blood from her leg (a red sheet I found out later).

But immediately strobe lights flashed as they came toward me. Weapons lights.

I fired on each. One fell crazily to the floor. Three shut off. I reloaded with what I now realized was my last full magazine.

Cardboard and paper targets on cable tracks in ceiling mounts. The attached lights creating the impression of an enemy entry team.

But I had done nothing to identify myself to them or vice versa. Had I just blue on blued?

I checked the victim's pulse. ("No breathing or pulse, she bled to death," the instructor said quietly.)

I started to advance further into the scenario, considerably sobered.

Then stopped.

I was flunking. Badly. I was reacting. I was not planning or thinking.

I checked the bodies of the guards and resupplied my first aid kit from theirs. They had no ammo, but each had a pair of handcuffs.
Replacing the pair I had left behind on Mr. Stabby.

I counted rounds and topped up the magazine in my firearm. I now had 11 rounds in the firearm and 4 in the spare magazine.

I now carried the knife in my right hand and the pistol in my left. If chance offered I would stab rather than shoot.

I had five or six scenarios down and at least fourteen to go. More likely 25. With 15 rounds.

But I had already failed in the opening moments of the scenario. I just didn't know it yet.

I carefully bypassed a closed corridor door. After passing it, I could see a T intersection across the head of the corridor. One of the worst possible intersections for a single man to clear.

And I heard begging and screaming in a high pitched female voice, and male laughs and grunts. Audio from multiple sources, maybe video too.

I listened for a moment to the rape, trying to figure out if they were on the left or the right. And there were three of the attackers. Pistol work for certain. Or was it?

There was no way I was going to pass now. But I wanted to fail in style.

So I walked around the corner with pistol and knife to see how they would handle this decision ... and heard a full squib of automatic gunfire from behind, from the other side of the T.

"Freeze," the instructor said and stripped the pistol from my hands before thumbing the Stun ... and I began thrashing on the concrete to the sounds of the continuing atrocity, for a good five seconds.
I dimly realized that he had helped me fall so that I would not be injured.

This was painful. But a lot less painful than a burst through the lungs, say.

He shut the STUN off and glared down at me.

"You are dead. Two of them were entertaining themselves. The third was covering their backs with a submachine gun. There is no way for one man to cover two angles at once. Whichever you picked, the other would have backshot you."

I now saw the layout -- plywood targets for attackers and one for the victim. I might have even gotten both the guards assaulting her, without killing her as well, but the one behind...

The instructor helped me up and guided the training knife into its sheath.

"What should I have done?"

"There was another door you hadn't checked yet. With the facility under attack, bypassing this scenario is acceptable. These three are out of the main fight and three on one is poor odds.

"But what you could have done was to call one or more attackers to you, in the shaft of the T where you have the advantage. Throw an empty magazine on the ground, cry out, challenge them to fight ... yell like you are looking for someone. Be creative.

"More later, but the basic critique is this: fair fights get you killed. Missing details kills other people. Three of the four patients in the triage scenario were salvageable. If you had opened the first's airway, he would have started breathing. The man with the head injury needed to be restrained. Gently. You put a dressing on the woman's leg. You did not make sure you stopped the bleeding."

I shook my head. This was rough.

"Now let's get you wiped down and show you backstage. We have two control rooms. One is finishing your run now. A lot of video to go over, takes about twice as long as the actual run did. The techs like short runs, lets them catch up. The other is setting up the next run. You get to watch from the control room this time."

"And everyone here goes through this?"

"All Corporate Security and all armed Security Force personnel. Reaction Team members as opportunity permits."

I began to understand how the infirmary guard had acted so swiftly to end the hostage situation that it had never become one.

Even if the dead man had been acting on my orders.