Elite (34 page)

Daniel received the message, but didn’t appreciate Richfield’s little prank.

“But it is a
potential
threat,” Daniel countered.

“
Everything
is a potential threat,” Richfield shot right back. “Which is why I can only teach you so much in a classroom. I can lecture and you can take notes, but until you’re actually out in the field you can’t know the true art of identifying a threat. That requires instincts, and instincts are determined by two factors – nature and experience. A person must be born with great instincts, but the only way to truly understand those instincts is through experience.”

Daniel once again nodded, this time genuinely following Richfield’s logic.

“Let’s hope you were born with them,” he added ominously.

Just when Daniel had become completely secure in his future as an Elite agent, Richfield had given him a new reason to doubt himself. What if he didn’t have the instincts needed for this job?

There was only one way to find out.

“Now the best we can do to prepare ourselves for the
future, is to look at the past,” Richfield noted, shifting gears with his lecture. “Assassination – or murder in general – has become a lot like the movie industry. It seems like so much has been done before that it becomes harder and harder to come up with new stuff, so most people go back to what’s already been done, with their own creative twist. That is why it’s important for us to be aware of what’s been done before, so that we can be ready for what’s coming.”

“Like Ocean’s
Eleven,” Daniel chimed in, thinking about all of the different names of cons and maneuvers of misdirection the guys in the film had made reference to.

Richfield smirked as if he had understood Daniel’s reference.

“Kind of, yeah,” he replied.

“This morning we are going to look at what we at the CIA used to call ‘Dante’s Delivery.’ Now this occurred in Paris…”

Richfield leaned forward on the desk, his hands hanging between his legs as he rested his forearms on his thighs. He looked down at the floor as if visualizing the story he was about to tell. Daniel leaned forward on the now de-electrofied table, excited to hear the rest of the story. He believed he was going to like this class.

“The CIA had been tasked to protect the U.S. ambassador to France, whose life had recently been threatened by the French mafia.
An Agent Thompson had escorted the ambassador to the CIA safe house where he, along with his junior partner Agent Hines, werr assigned to protect the ambassador.”

Richfield paused for a moment, gathering his thoughts before continuing on with the story.

“Dante Monouís was the French mob’s best and most feared hitman, and the natural choice to be hired to take out the ambassador. Thompson knew this and was therefore especially edgy knowing that he was up against a true pro.

“Well several hours after arriving at the safe house there’s a knock at the door. Hines goes to answer the door to find a postman on the stoop, delivering a package. Thompson comes out of the kitchen where he had been having dinner with the ambassador to find his partner signing for a package.

“Well Thompson finds this all very peculiar,” Richfield explained, now looking up at Daniel while continuing his story. His hands had become more active as they began to gesture along with his retelling.

Daniel sat, enamored by the suspenseful nature of the story and anxious to hear what happened to the ambassador and the two CIA agents next.

Richfield continued, “There is no reason any package should be delivered to the CIA safe house, and the postman was wearing the wrong color uniform which didn’t seem to fit him right.

“So Thompson immediately pulls his sidearm on the postman and barks an order at Hines to put the package down and to step away. Thompson walks over to the postman and arrests him, while he has Hines move the package away from the house. He then brings the postman into the house and sits him down on the sofa, ordering Hines to watch the mysterious mail worker while he goes into the kitchen to call it in.

“When he gets into the kitchen he gets a big surprise – The ambassador sitting in his chair, his head lying in a pool of his own blood on the table.”

Daniel’s jaw dropped in disbelief, though he should have expected the outcome given the theme of this morning’s lesson.

“While the two agents were occupied with the postman, Monouís had broken in through the back door, snuck up on the ambassador in the kitchen and slit his throat.

“It turned out
Monouís had sent the package to the safe house, knowing that Thompson would be suspicious. He even went as far as to steal the postman’s uniform out of his locker the day before, knowing that he would then have to wear the spare that was kept in the post office – the spare being an older design which was a different color than the current uniform, and also not in our friend the postman’s size.”

“Just because it’s different, doesn’t mean it’s a threat,” Daniel repeated the day’s mantra, as if on some twisted episode of Sesame Street.

“Don’t be distracted by the unusual, and
never
leave the client unprotected,” Richfield emphasized.

Daniel nodded again in understanding, now a little giddy from Richfield’s story, excited to be a part of such a romantic, although terrifying line of work.

“Well I’m done talking,” Richfield said, hopping up from the desk. “Let’s go shoot stuff.”

Daniel felt the excitement building inside him as he and Richfield rode the elevator down to Level Five, which housed the shooting gallery. Daniel had never shot a handgun before, and he felt a great deal of enthusiasm about learning.

The doors of the elevator slid open and the two men made their way into a long, narrow hallway made entirely of concrete. To their right was a wall with a set of windows that extended the entire length of the hallway.

On the other side of the glass was another concrete room, though far more vast than the hallway. Five feet from the other side of the glass, a long metal surface ran parallel to the hallway, three feet off the ground. Every four feet along the surface was a divider made of some sort of white material that Daniel could not identify.

There were only two other agents on the rage currently – one female and one male – shooting at targets of different ranges. Daniel recognized the man though he could not put a name to the face. Currently the woman appeared to be shooting at a target that was further away than the man’s.

The sound of the shots was violent, echoing off the concrete walls in the room, but the glass wall greatly dampened the sound from the hallway.

“The range is one-hundred yards deep,” Richfield spoke into Daniel’s ear

Halfway down the hallway was a glass door which led into the range. Daniel guessed that with all of the glass around the shooting range it had to all be bulletproof. As they approached the door Daniel noticed a table sitting just outside the gallery, an array of ear protection sitting on top of it. Most were the ordinary red, plastic headsets one would expect to see at a shooting range, but two of the headsets were black, with a microphone extending from the left ear. Those were the headsets Richfield picked up for he and Daniel.

“Put these on,” he said, handing one set to Daniel.

Daniel placed the ear pieces over his ears and Richfield reached up to flip a switch over his left side. Richfield then put on his own headset and did the same.

“Can you hear me?” Daniel heard Richfield’s electronically delivered voice sound in both of his ears.

“Yes,” Daniel responded, causing Richfield to cringe and throw his hands up over his ears. He then adjusted what Daniel guessed was a volume knob, before gesturing for Daniel to speak again.

“Is that better?” Daniel asked.

With a satisfied grin blank nodded and gave Daniel the thumbs up before heading into the range.

Just inside the doorway Mr. Blank was sitting on a plastic classroom chair reading the paper, a set of giant red earmuffs covering his ears.

“Hey, Danny Boy!” Blanked looked up to greet the man when he noticed the door open.

Daniel nodded in a sign of greeting, figuring that between the earmuffs and the gunshots Blank wouldn’t be able to hear a word he said anyway. He had barely been able to make out Blank’s greeting except for the fact that he was able to read his lips. He then looked at Richfield who gestured to the nearest shooting pod.

As Daniel stepped up to the table, there was already a black handgun there waiting for him. The slide was pulled back and an ammo cartridge lay next to it.

“Now have you ever shot a gun before?” Richfield’s voice asked over his headset.

“I shot a rifle once when I was thirteen,” Daniel responded, peering over his shoulder back at Richfield.

Richfield stared silently a moment before delivering an un-amused, “Great.”

“Well this isn’t going to be anything like that,” he added.

Daniel chuckled before looking down at the gun in front of him.

“This is a Glock twenty-two,” Richfield explained. “It fires a forty-caliber round, meaning that the round is point-four inches in diameter, or ten millimeters.”

Daniel nodded in understanding as he continued to eye the angled hunk of steel, anxious to get his hands on it and let her rip.

“This is your gun now,” Richfield stated.

Daniel turned and raised an eyebrow. He hadn’t expected to receive his very own pistol today.

“That’s right,” Richfield answered Daniel’s unspoken question. “Standard E-P-S-F issue. Same weapon the FBI uses.”

“And the Detroit Police!”
Blank yelled, somewhat audible now that the other two agents in the range had momentarily ceased fire.

Daniel and Richfield both turned to the man out of time with pondering glances.

“Hey,” Blank said, throwing his arms up in defense, “If it’s good enough for those guys…”

He let his sentence trailed off as though he had made his point.

Daniel and Richfield both shrugged, as if both seeing the man’s point, and turned their focus back toward the Glock.

“Now this is the only gun I’m going to teach you how to shoot, because most standard semi-automatic handguns will be similar to this one, and there should be absolutely no instance in this job where you should need to use anything else. You’re there to protect people, not kill them,” Richfield explained.

Daniel turned to Richfield with a pouty look upon his face. He was really hoping he would get to learn how to operate firearms of all different types.

“Well, maybe we’ll shoot some fully-automatics down the road just for fun,” Richfield said slyly, a grin of his own forming on his face.

“But this is the gun I need you to get used to. There are three primary defenses you will have at your disposal out in the field. The first and most important is your mind – especially yours. The second is your body – again, especially yours. The third and final line of defense is your Glock.”

Richfield looked to Daniel for understanding,

“And…well…” he added, “yours is just like everyone else’s in that instance.”

“So,” Richfield resumed, “Loading. Pick up the gun with your dominant hand.”

Daniel reached down and grabbed the handle of the gun with his left hand.

“No, no,” Richfield corrected, “Wait, are you left handed?”

Daniel looked at Richfield, then down to ponder for a moment. He used different hands for different things. He threw with his right, but he wrote with his left.

“Hold the gun out straight for me like you’re
gonna shoot,” Richfield instructed.

Daniel did as he was told and extended the gun out in front of him, wrapping his left index finger around the trigger.

“Left handed,” Richfield’s voice said over the headset. “Great.”

The tone in Richfield’s voice was the same as when Daniel had told him that he had never shot a handgun before. Daniel felt a bit offended by the remark, but decided to let it go.

“No big deal,” Richfield assured Daniel, patting him on the back. “I’ll just have to switch this out for a left-handed gun.”

He reached down to pick up the gun, but Daniel stopped him.

“No it’s fine,” Daniel assured him. “I’m pretty ambidextrous. I’ll just do it with my right.”

“Don’t be silly. You won’t be as accurate,” Richfield countered, again reaching for the gun.

“I’ll be fine,” Daniel retorted, reaching down and placing his hand on the gun to prevent Richfield from taking it. “I’ve never done it before, so it shouldn’t be that significant. I do a lot of things with my right hand.”

He wasn’t really sure why, but Daniel already felt some odd attachment to this particular gun, as if it had been his for over a decade rather than only ten seconds.

“Okay,” Richfield conceded, moving his hand back away.

Daniel reached down and picked up the gun, this time with his right hand.

“Now pick up the cartridge with your left hand, and use your left index finger to make sure the rounds are seated properly.”