“You think that’s funny? Would you do that in combat?”
“Actually, I have.”
“Oh, would you look at the golden boy over here. Thank you for gracing us with your presence today,” he said as he mockingly slow-clapped for me. “The fucking poster child.”
People stared at me like I was an asshole. Some of them wanted to beat my ass, probably because they felt like they had gotten hustled. Who knew normal, humble Mat was such a cocky, ruthless, dead-eyed competitor? Others were just deflated, because they didn’t think this kind of thing was possible. You can’t be ruggedly handsome and a sharpshooter.
The reality is that I have always taken my shooting extremely seriously. I trained for years to be able to shoot with both hands and, eventually, to win a Ranger Battalion company stress shoot. The reason I was able to pull off this little stunt wasn’t because of any innate superpower. I just had the patience and motivation that most people don’t have, quite frankly, to put in the metric shit ton of work it takes to be great at something. To this day, I’m at the range three to four times a week when I’m home, keeping my shit tight. That’s not to say I’ve never been bested at shooting. Of course I have, don’t be ridiculous. It’s a humbling experience. But if you learn from your shortcomings and train even harder for the next go-round, it will only lead to higher performance.
* * *
—
The Live Wall represented the end of the shooting portion of qualification school. When we wrapped, they split us up into groups of six, loaded us into white commercial passenger vans, and sent us up the road to some run-down small town for the final portion of the selection process, fight school. I can’t imagine being a full-time resident of that town. Every two weeks a bunch of jacked, bearded dudes cycle through, invade the local bars and restaurants, and tell anyone who asks, “Yeah, I’m an accountant” or “I’m a bible salesman.”
The fun part about contracting is that you meet people from all over the spectrum of professional badassery. Army Rangers, Marine Raiders, Army Special Forces (a.k.a. Green Berets), Navy SEALs, and whatever other testosterone-filled face-shooting profession you can think of that isn’t cumshot porn. Most of the dudes in my van were former Special Operations, and except for me all of them had a gig confirmed already. They were just going through the motions in order to requalify and deploy. This created a bond and a quick, easy comfort level among the group, the kind where you already have each other’s backs. Where you can finish each other’s sentences and answer each other’s questions before they’ve been asked.
“How long is this—”
“Four fucking hours to the hotel,” one of the guys answered as the driver closed the sliding passenger door behind us.
“You know what would be—”
“Beers.”
“For the road.”
“Yes.”
“Totally.”
“Put it inside me—”
“Right fucking now.”
We had four hours to kill, and we didn’t have to report to fight school until 7 A.M. the next day, so what was the harm in a few beers with your new buddies? Well, when it’s a bunch of Special Operations guys in a van, there’s plenty of possible harm.
We had the driver pull over at the next available convenience store. We walked in and stared into the bottom-lit beverage coolers. Row after row of cans and bottles stared back at us, all of them in cardboard boxes covered in primary colors specifically designed to appeal to guys like us who move their lips when they read. One of the guys started bobbing his head like he was in the middle of a telepathic call-and-response with all the advertising.
“You guys thinking what I’m—”
“A thirty-pack apiece?” I asked.
“Yuuuuup.”
The driver—a fellow student who had been tasked with being the designated driver—stayed in the car for what I assume was plausible deniability. He started laughing and shaking his head when we came marching out of the store a few minutes later, each of us carrying an ice-cold brick of freedom, like we just walked out of the poster for Three Kings. Being an American is about celebrating diversity, so naturally we had everything from Natty Ice to Budweiser under our arms. For the fancy import lovers in our group, we even picked up some champagne of beers, Miller High Life. We were officially in business. When we were finally all back in the van, the driver slammed his door shut, turned, and looked at us hard.
“One, don’t offer me a beer. I gotta stay sober, because this is going to be a shit show. Two, I’m not stopping for piss breaks. You either hold it in or find another way. We good with those rules?”
“Easy day,” I said. Everyone either agreed or didn’t care.
The second we pulled out of the parking lot, all six of us cracked open cans of beer in unison. It was a symphony for alcoholics inside a van for crazy people. We spent the next hour or so laughing, talking about girls, and telling crazy fucked-up war stories. It was everything I loved about being in the Army and everything I missed while pretending to be furniture in Los Angeles. I finally felt like myself again…which is why I had no problem being the first one to pull his dick out and piss into one of the empty cans rolling around on the floor.
Once I broke the seal, every single other dude grabbed an empty can and followed suit. It was the quietest the van had been since we left the convenience store. The eerie silence caused the driver to look in his rearview mirror to see what was going on. What he saw was the fountains at Bellagio, in miniature and with urine. It was majestic and probably horrifying, which inspired him to jerk the wheel, fishtailing the van and making most of us piss on ourselves. Any piss we didn’t catch landed on the van’s rubber floor mats.
“Sorry about that, boys,” he said with a smile. “Armadillo. Didn’t want to hit it.”
When we finally got to the hotel, everyone wanted to continue the party. Fight school was kind of a joke. They don’t really do anything there that most of us haven’t already done. The worst that could happen is that we sloppily go through the motions, puke on ourselves, and get our hangovers punched out of our heads in the process. So why not enjoy ourselves? I walked up to the young female receptionist at the front desk to check in and tried to maintain whatever level of sobriety I had left.
“Excuse me, ma’am, after we get our keys, these lovely gentlemen and I are looking for your finest local watering hole.”
“There’s a bar next door,” she said, without even looking up from her keyboard, “but I would recommend showering first, because you guys smell like a urinal.”
“I’m sorry, in what sense?” I asked.