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CHAPTER 13

And it was indeed soon. Two nights later Ariel trailed behind Mordechai as he entered an anonymous government building in northeastern Tel Aviv. Tonight they were both wearing dark clothing. For a change, Mordechai was wearing a turtleneck shirt and a blazer, but he still carried himself as if he was wearing one of his Savile Row suits. Ariel felt a little underdressed by comparison.

The building wasn’t extremely large, but unlike most of the buildings around them was set in a large cleared space which had more parking space than usual. Ariel looked around as they passed through the doors and through a security scanner. The walls the doors were set into seemed awfully thick. Mordechai caught his glance, and smiled. “Reinforced hardened polymer concrete, extra thick. The windows were originally thick armor glass. They replaced them with the new transparent aluminum last year. It would take one of the Americans’ bunker busters to take this building down.”

“Why?”

Mordechai snorted. “You don’t need to know. Just assume that there are good reasons. Come on.”

After passing through the security checkpoint, where Ariel was reluctantly admitted by the grim-faced guards only on Mordechai’s authorization, they went to the single elevator that was behind the checkpoint. Ariel was surprised to see more subsurface numbers than aboveground floors. Mordechai pushed the button for the bottom floor and looked over at Ariel.

“You…”

“…don’t need to know. Got it.”

Mordechai grinned and nodded, then turned to face the doors as the elevator slowed to a stop. The doors opened to an unremarkable hallway with surprisingly few doors along it. Mordechai led the way to the right and opened the only door on the right side of the hall. Ariel followed him into a very large and long high-ceilinged room where they were met by a short, stocky older man with short, grizzled hair and beard.

“Mordechai, you old rascal! How long has it been?”

The two older men embraced. Mordechai laughed, and said, “Only about six months, old friend.”

“Bah! When you get to be my age, six months goes by like the blink of an eye. But it’s good to see you.”

“Likewise, Shimon. Likewise.” Mordechai turned and beckoned Ariel forward. “Shimon, this is my friend and protégé Ariel Barak. Ariel, this is Shimon Aharoni, whom I have asked to teach you firearms.”

Shimon offered his hand. “Good to meet you, young man.”

“My pleasure,” Ariel said as they shook hands. The old man’s grip was very firm.

“So,” Shimon said, turning back to Mordechai, “does this have anything to do with the package you sent me?

“Indeed. That’s the pistol I want you to train him with, that he will carry after you pass him.”

“A Glock 40?” Shimon looked doubtful. Ariel caught a glimpse from the corner of the man’s eye. Shimon shifted to Hebrew. “Are you sure he can handle a ten-millimeter? He’s not very big.”

Mordechai smiled and laid his hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Trust me, Shimon, he can handle it.”

Shimon’s doubt did not decrease. “If you say so.”

The older vampire turned back to Ariel and pulled something from his pocket. “This is your weapon license.” Mordechai shifted back to English. “Carry this at all times, especially when you have the weapon with you. If you’re caught with the gun but don’t have the card, there will be serious consequences. And unlike America, Israeli weapon licenses are weapon specific. This license is only for the pistol that Shimon will be training you with. Don’t lose either one of them.”

Ariel took the license. It looked to be fairly similar to his Israeli ID card. He pulled his wallet out, tucked the license away, and put it back in his pocket. “Don’t lose it. Got it.”

“Okay. Shimon will get you started tonight. I have a meeting upstairs, but I’ll be back for you in a couple of hours.”

A moment later, Ariel was left with Shimon, who looked at him with a wry smile. “So, how good is your Hebrew?”

Ariel shrugged. “I can read and discuss Torah and Talmud with some success. Not so good at getting or giving directions on the street yet.”

“Eh, not so bad, then. It will come to you. But we’ll begin with English. Come over here, please.”

Ariel took off his windbreaker and joined the older man at a counter that ran across the back of the room. Shimon pulled over a black case with a big G impressed on it and flipped it open to reveal what looked to Ariel to be a very large pistol.

“This,” Shimon said, “is a Glock model 40, their best ten-millimeter pistol, which makes it one of the best and most powerful handguns in the world. Treat it with respect. If you don’t, it will probably kill you.”

Ariel shifted his gaze from the gun to Shimon’s face, and saw that he was deadly serious. A moment later he had a mental wince at the turn of phrase in his thoughts, but a moment after that realized it was appropriate for the subject. He nodded to show he was following.

Shimon nodded back. “Good. Now, listen to me. I have four rules that you will obey at all times, understood?”

Ariel nodded again.

“Good.” Shimon raised his left hand and lifted his index finger. “Rule 1: Do not point a weapon—pistol, rifle, shotgun, machine gun, it doesn’t matter—do not point a weapon at someone unless you intend to shoot them.”

Middle finger was raised to stand alongside the index finger. “Rule 2: Do not put your finger on the trigger unless you are about to shoot someone.”

Ring finger was elevated to join the others. “Rule 3: Never assume that any weapon, whether yours or someone else’s, is unloaded, even if the magazine has been removed. Always verify by removing the magazine and working the action to clear the chamber. Understand?”

“Don’t point a weapon at someone unless I intend to shoot them,” Ariel recited. “Don’t put my finger on the trigger unless I’m about to shoot someone. Never assume a weapon is unloaded. Got it.”

Shimon nodded and lowered his hand. “Good. Remember that.”

The old man’s face looked like granite in that moment. Ariel nodded. “Understood.”

Shimon raised his hand again with all four fingers now extended. “Rule 4: This is not a rule of the gun so much as it is a rule of what you do with the gun. First, understand that a ten-millimeter pistol will often shoot through a person.”

Ariel swallowed. “Seriously?”

“Seriously. Sometimes that’s not a problem—like when you’re in a combat situation with multiple foes. But sometimes it can be a problem—like when you’ve got a target who is holding a hostage in the middle of a group of hostages. So you can put a bullet into your target, but if it will travel through him and come out the other side, you might hit one of the hostages as well. Sometimes you don’t have any choice, you have to take the shot, but sometimes you can wait a few moments and see if whoever is behind him will move.”

“Wow.” Ariel thought for a moment. “So be aware of what’s behind your target.”

“Yes. That’s part of the fourth rule. The other part of the rule is to be aware of the difference between cover and concealment.”

Ariel was confused and tilted his head a bit. Cover? Concealment? What was Shimon getting at?

The older man grinned, walked over to a nearby closet, opened the door, and stepped behind it. “Can you see me?” Shimon’s voice had a trace of humor in it.

“No,” Ariel replied.

“So I’m concealed, right?”

Ariel nodded, then flushed as he realized that if he couldn’t see Shimon, Shimon couldn’t see him. “Sorry, right.”

“But am I covered? Would this door stop a bullet?”

Ariel snorted. “If it’s just a standard hollow interior door, not a chance.”

“Right,” Shimon announced as he came out from behind the door. “So most interior walls, most interior doors will not provide cover, only concealment. And a lot of exterior walls aren’t much better. But concealment can still get you killed. You have no idea what’s behind a concealment. You don’t know if it’s a chair, if it’s one unarmed man, or three men with knives, or five men with submachine guns. You just don’t know.”

Shimon leaned back against the counter that ran the length of the back wall and crossed his arms. “I can’t tell you how many movies and TV shows where I’ve seen a character shoot through a door or a wall to hit the bad guy. But a real-life cop almost certainly won’t do that. Do you know why?”

Ariel thought about it. “Because he doesn’t know what’s on the other side?”

“Correct! What if there’s a hostage on the other side? Or what if there are three girls who know nothing about what’s going on thirty feet away?”

Ariel sighed, and nodded.

“That said”—Shimon’s voice lowered in pitch—“sometimes you have to shoot anyway. Sometimes the man or woman you’re after is so dangerous you have to take the chance to keep them from getting away. And you pray with all your heart that no one innocent will be hurt. And sometimes those prayers are answered.”

Ariel understood the unspoken message—sometimes those prayers are not answered.

“The problem with cover,” Shimon resumed with his regular voice, “is more ricochets than anything else. And you have no control over that, other than not shooting at all, which if the cover is good, is not a bad idea, so you don’t waste ammunition. Again, you can’t go by the movies. Unless your name is John Wick, you don’t carry a dozen loaded magazines around in your pockets or in belt packs. You just don’t. So if your situation lasts more than five minutes—and even outside of combat they occasionally do—making your ammunition last is a consideration.

“And finally, think about all this from your side of the table. If you take shelter behind something, is it good cover, or is it only flimsy concealment? That can be the difference between life and death for you—as it too often has been for our police and soldiers. Learn to look around you and be aware of your surroundings. Is a car concealment or shelter? Is a bus stop concealment or shelter? Is a restaurant table turned up on its side concealment or shelter?” He looked at Ariel with his eyebrows raised for a moment, but continued before Ariel could form a response. “Concealment only, and not good concealment at that.”

Ariel nodded soberly. Shimon nodded back.

After a moment, Ariel asked, “How many different types of ammunition are there for this pistol?”

“Good question.” Shimon smiled a little. “There are some special or unusual loads you’ll most likely never use, but there are three common types of ammunition.” He opened a drawer and pulled out three boxes of bullets that he set beside the pistol case. “Frangible”—he touched one box—“expanding or hollow point”—he touched the second box—“and full metal jacket.” He touched the third. He then pulled a bullet from each box and set them on the counter. “A frangible bullet breaks up on impact, leaves a serious wound but almost certainly doesn’t pass through the body and come out the other side. An expanding bullet will mushroom to maybe twice its original diameter on impact, which will slow it down some. It will leave a nasty wound as well, but in the right circumstances still might pass through and exit the body to strike someone or something else. A ten-millimeter full metal jacket bullet will almost certainly pass through the body and exit to hit someone or something else, especially if it’s an armor-piercing bullet.”

“Sounds like I need to use the expanding bullets.”

Shimon smiled again. “You’ll be training with hollow point loads. They’re not risk free, but they’re less risky than the full metal jacket loads for the kind of work the police do.” He put the frangible and full metal jacket bullets back in their boxes and then put them back in the drawer, but left the hollow point box on the counter.

Shimon sobered and looked at Ariel. “Okay. Now, because it’s Mordechai who brought you to me, I assume you’re going to be working with him.” Ariel nodded. “And it looks like he’s already pulled some strings since he’s already got you your weapon license. You don’t normally get that until after you’ve had the full training and had the weapon assigned to you. So I’m going to assume that you will be either working with the IDF, the police, or one of the secret agencies under Mordechai’s direction.”

Ariel didn’t respond to that. He didn’t know what Mordechai would want him to say.

“One last comment, and then we’ll get started.” Shimon’s mouth kind of quirked. “Despite all the movies and television programs, guns are not toys and are not carried for fun. Always remember that you are not Dirty Harry, you are not Rambo, you are not John Wick. When you carry that weapon, you will do so as a representative of the State of Israel and in defense of the Israeli people. If you will be working with Mordechai, the odds are very high that you will have to use that weapon for its designed purpose and shoot someone—probably several someones, over time. I can train you to use the weapon, to use it properly, to use it well, but when it comes down to it, you will be the one who will have to make the decision to pull the trigger. Make sure you do so for the right reasons.”

There was a moment of silence, then Shimon smiled. “Well, let’s get started.” He took the pistol out of the case. “The first thing I’m going to show you is how to disassemble and clean…”

By the time Mordechai returned, Ariel could routinely disassemble and reassemble his pistol in short order; he knew how to clean it; and he knew how to load the magazine and insert it in the pistol. Shimon had drilled him on that last several times, to make sure he could do so quickly and smoothly. All of that had taken less than an hour. Since then he had been shooting at human-outline targets on the back wall. Shimon had showed him a two-handed grip and had coached him through sighting and slowly squeezing the trigger. He thought he was getting the hang of it.

He heard Mordechai come through the door as he loaded a fresh magazine and chambered a round. “How’s he doing?” he heard Mordechai ask as he lined up the sights. He pulled the trigger as Shimon responded.

“Not bad for a first-timer. His last couple of magazines have all been in five-inch groups.”

Ariel continued his measured shooting until his last two shots. He raised his sights for the fourteenth shot, and lowered them for the fifteenth. The action locked back, he lowered the pistol, ejected the magazine, made sure the chamber was clear, laid both on the counter before him, and pushed the button to have the target reeled back up to the counter. He smiled when it arrived and hung before him. The first thirteen shots were in a three-inch grouping in the center of the chest, the fourteenth shot was a hole in the center of the forehead of the figure, and the fifteenth was a hole just above the line that marked the bottom of the trunk between the legs. He turned to the others and raised his eyebrows, still smiling.

Klugscheißer,” Mordechai said in German as they came up on either side of Ariel. Shimon chuckled, and Mordechai’s mouth quirked up at one corner. Ariel didn’t know much German, so he didn’t know what the term meant, but from the context he had a pretty good guess. His smile broadened.

“Nice shooting,” Shimon said. “Nice tight grouping on the chest. The one to the head, good placement, but that’s a shot you don’t take unless you don’t have any choice. Even one of these”—he tapped the pistol—“can have a shot ricochet or skate off of the bone. Not very likely, but it does happen. This one”—he pointed at the groin shot—“his wife or girlfriend would curse you for ruining his sex life, and most likely it would be lethal, but not immediately so, so that’s another shot you wouldn’t take unless it was the only one available. If you can make that shot, you’d be better off to shoot his knee out from under him, because when he dropped you could put another shot into his chest. But not bad. Now, even though modern alloys and modern gunpowder formulas have reduced the problems of corrosion, it’s still a good idea to clean your pistol after shooting it. Go do so while I talk to Mordechai.”

Ariel picked up the pistol and the empty magazine and moved to the back counter. He stood with his back to the others while his hands disassembled the pistol to its component parts and he picked up the cleaning tools, but his hearing was focused on the others’ conversation.

“So what do you think?” from Mordechai.

“Eh, he’s not a genius with a pistol, but he’s the best first-timer I’ve seen in a long while. He listens, you don’t have to tell him twice, and he doesn’t argue. His first two magazines were rough, but after that, he seemed to catch the knack. I wouldn’t send him into a shooting contest just yet, but in a few months, with regular practice, could be.”

“Good to hear. Not surprising, but good to hear. How soon can you run him through the combat range?”

“You insist it has to be at night?”

“Yes.”

“First opening is two nights. You remember this usually is at least a week in duration?”

Mordechai chuckled. “Yes, I remember. I used to teach it, if you’ll recall. But he might surprise you.”

“How do you mean?”

“Ariel was raised Orthodox in the US. He went to public school, then to a parallel Hebrew school. His life was very focused, and he did well under it. He graduated from high school a year and a half early, then matriculated into university in a science program and did extremely well for a couple of years before an unplanned-for event blew his life apart. He focuses well, he learns quickly, which you’ve already noted, and he’s a lot tougher than you think he is. He may surprise you.”

“If you say so.” Shimon sounded a bit skeptical. “Regardless, I can’t start him until night after tomorrow.”

“Here?”

“No, the north range. It’s going to be shut down soon, and the classes have already moved to the new range. We should have it to ourselves.”

“Good.”

By now Ariel had cleaned and reassembled the pistol and was inserting bullets into the magazine. The last bullet clicked in, so he laid the pistol and magazine on the table before turning around to face the others.

“You ready to carry that for real?” Mordechai’s face was solemn.

That brought Ariel’s mind to a stop. Was he ready to carry a weapon? Was he ready to shoot someone if he had to, if the situation called for it? His mind circled back through the thoughts he’d had when he chose to come to Israel. If he was going to be one of the Gibborim, this would be part of his life. He took a deep breath, then released it. If this was what haShem had called him to do, then he had to be prepared to do it. He pulled the medallion from under his shirt, kissed it, and put it back. He looked up.

“Do you carry?”

Mordechai opened his blazer to show a large pistol tucked into each armpit.

Ariel’s mouth quirked, and he nodded. “Yes.”

Mordechai acknowledged that statement with a nod of his own as he buttoned his jacket. He looked at Shimon. “What kind of holster would you recommend?”

Shimon looked at Ariel, looked him up and down as if seeing him for the first time. “You’re right-handed.” That was a statement, not a question, but Ariel nodded to confirm it. “So, behind the back, right hip, left cross-body, or left shoulder. Do you have any preferences?”

Ariel shrugged. “I’ve never worn a holster before, so I don’t have a clue.”

“Not behind the back,” Mordechai said. “Too easy to be disarmed by someone behind you.”

“Agreed,” Shimon said. “Although you’d be surprised at the number of fools who insist on carrying there. Well, maybe you wouldn’t, but most would.” He crossed his arms and leaned back against the front counter. “I’d say either right hip or left shoulder. Hip will give a faster draw, shoulder will give better concealment.”

Mordechai pursed his lips. “Shoulder,” he finally said. “For now. We can always change later. Do you have a rig he can wear?”

“Might.” Shimon stood and moved to a locker in the far rear corner of the room. “I keep a few things in here. Let me see what I’ve got.” He rummaged around for a few moments, then pulled out what looked to be a balled-up mess of black leather straps. “Here it is. Let’s see if it fits.”

Shimon moved to the back counter and unrolled the bundle. “Yes, what I thought. This should work if it will fit.” He held it up. “Turn around, lad, and hold your arms up.”

Ariel did so, and felt the harness dropped over his hands and slide down his arms to land on his shoulders. He dropped his arms and shrugged, trying to get it to settle into place.

“Rule 5,” Shimon said. “You don’t carry your pistol with a round in the chamber. You can have a fully loaded magazine in the pistol, but you don’t chamber a round until you’re ready to shoot. Understand?” Ariel nodded. “You will hear arguments from gun owners and gun carriers from around the world about whether or not you should carry with a round in the chamber. We don’t, here in Israel. In fact, carrying with an empty chamber is often called the Israeli carry. Now, put the magazine in the pistol.

Ariel picked up the pistol, closed the slide, and inserted the magazine.

Shimon nodded. “Put the pistol in the holster.” Ariel did so with a bit of difficulty, forcing the gun to slide into the stiff leather. “Relax.” Ariel tried to, letting his shoulders drop a little. He felt Shimon’s hands on his back adjusting the harness. “There. Try moving around in that.”

Ariel shrugged his shoulders and moved his arms around. “Seems okay,” he said.

“Draw the weapon,” Mordechai said.

Ariel reached up and pulled the pistol out of the holster, keeping his finger off the trigger. It came out easier than it had gone in.

“Again,” Mordechai directed.

Ariel restored the pistol to the holster, then drew it out again.

“How does that feel?”

“I think okay,” Ariel said. “But I’ve never worn one of these before, so how would I know?”

Mordechai’s mouth quirked. “Fair enough. Put your jacket on and try it again.”

Ariel walked over and picked up his windbreaker. After putting it on, he left it unzipped and drew the pistol. It came out easily. He put it back and looked at Mordechai.

“No hang-ups, nothing binding?”

Ariel shook his head. “Not that I can tell.”

“So you’re ready to carry?”

Ariel nodded.

“Good enough.” Mordechai turned to Shimon. “Extra magazine?”

Shimon returned to his corner cabinet and came back with three more magazines and a belt holder for them. “You put this on, left side.” While Ariel struggled with that, Shimon loaded the magazines, rapidly clicking the bullets in one after another. He had them done by the time that Ariel had the holder settled. A moment later they were in place. Ariel pulled one out just to get the feel for it, then put it back in. Shimon nodded.

Mordechai clapped Shimon on the shoulder. “Thank you, old friend. We’ll see you Tuesday night at the north facility.”

They shook hands, and then Shimon shook hands with Ariel. “Good luck, young man.” There was a certain hint of you’re going to need it in the old man’s expression. Ariel didn’t disagree with him.


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