"Training will last until we decide that you're good enough. After that you will be assigned to your duties. Some of you will be assigned to Hunter teams. We have teams stationed all around the country. Those teams respond to crises as they develop. Other people will work in direct support of the teams. We will go into greater details about how this entire thing works as training progresses. Every employee will be paid bimonthly according to your position. Any PUFF your personal team earns will be shared by the whole company, with your team getting the largest percentage. Think of it as profit sharing. That means that if your team wins a huge bounty you don't get to keep it all. Be careful not to bitch too much about that, however, because the next week it will probably be some other team that wins the big one and not you. Don't worry, though, the lowest paid employee we have probably made more than most of you did in the last year. Our business is monsters, and business is booming." He showed a lot of teeth when he smiled. It almost reminded me of when Mr. Huffman was about to eat me.
"Any questions?"
It was quiet. I was positive that there were many questions, but everyone was afraid to ask. I debated for a moment, but once again, curiosity got the better of me and I hesitantly raised my hand.
"Pitt." Harbinger pointed at me.
"What happened on December 15th, 1995?"
The instructors looked at each other uneasily. The pause was unnaturally long, and I realized from the creaking of folding chairs and the rustle of forty separate adjustments that the whole room was looking at me.
"How did you know something happened on that day?" asked one of the instructors in an accusatory tone. He was a handsome man, and was dressed more stylishly than the others. I immediately didn't like him.
"Lots of plaques with that date. Beginning of the big gap," I answered.
"Are you a detective or a reporter or something…"
Harbinger held up his hand and the other instructor shut up.
"Worse, he's an accountant." Harbinger nodded in my direction. "Very astute of you, Pitt. I'll answer your question, but not today. Most of you in this room are not going to make it through training. Those folks get to walk away from this place and never look back. They don't need to know. Trust me, they don't want to know. For those of you who make it, I'll tell you the story personally, because I was there, and it affects every single Hunter. It was the straw that broke the camel's back and got us shut down. It was the one hundred year anniversary of the founding of the company, and it was one hell of a Christmas party."
The room was quiet.
"Any more questions?"
No one else said a word.
"Okay, everybody grab your crap and follow me. I'll show you where you sleep, and then we get started. We have work to do."
Chapter 5
Over the last week I had become very familiar with the compound. There was the two-story office building/fortress, and several smaller buildings that served as barracks, classrooms, workshops and armories. A few hundred yards away was the hangar, housing one medium plane and one strange-looking helicopter of foreign origin. Behind the asphalt runway, just far enough away so that the noise would not be distracting, were the shooting ranges. Bulldozers had pushed up huge berms of red clay soil to serve as backstops. A razor-wire-topped chain link fence stretched around the entire property, intimidating and sharp wherever it had not been overtaken with kudzu vines.
At that moment I was standing in front of a small group of other recruits on one of the shooting ranges. Ten yards away were five eight-inch steel plates, each one about a yard apart. Snugly tucked into my shoulder was the rubber butt pad of a slicked up Remington 870, pump-action, 12-gauge shotgun. The muzzle was kept at the low ready, and my trigger finger was extended safely along the receiver. I could sense the instructor standing behind me, holding the PACT timer right behind my head.
"Shooter ready?" he asked, voice slightly amplified through my electronic earplugs. The MHI-issued plugs were the most advanced that I had ever used. Totally comfortable, and wired into a communications net, they would block all sounds over a certain decibel level, while normal conversation was perfectly audible, even if slightly directionally distorted. I nodded.
"Stand by," the instructor said mechanically. I waited.
The timer beeped. This was the moment I lived for. In one fluid motion I deactivated the safety and pulled the shotgun into position. Leaning forward with my center of gravity one with the shotgun, I focused on the plates and willed them to be shot. I had no conscious thought of controlling the trigger. Having practiced drills like this thousands of times, the muzzle automatically sought out the plates. With each shot my arm pulled the pump without thought or hesitation. The barrel rose slightly only to settle almost instantly on the next plate. I absorbed and rolled with the heavy recoil of the double-aught buckshot. I knew that each shot had been clean even before the last payload of shot had impacted the steel surface. I lowered the gun as the last two plates fell with a clang.
"Holy shit." The instructor's voice was incredulous as he glanced at the electronic timer. It was designed to pick up the sound of each shot and digitally record it. It was a very handy training device. "One-point-eight-seven seconds. You did a Dozier drill in one-point-eight-seven with a pump shotgun and full power buckshot. That was unbelievable."
I stayed facing downrange. My personal best on this particular drill had been several years earlier in a match at 1.75, but that was with one of my personal guns that I had worked over myself. Contrary to popular myth, a shotgun pattern is not a huge room-clearing boulder of death; at ten yards it is usually smaller than a basketball. The real key is learning how to be one with the recoil. I had been doing stuff like this since I was a little kid.
"It sounded like it was full-auto," one of the other newbies said.
"Fluke," said another voice that I had seriously grown to dislike. "Have him do it again."
"Okay," said the instructor, a former U.S. Navy SEAL turned Monster Hunter named Sam Haven. He was our main weapons and tactics instructor. Sam was a the walrus-mustached man, a burly guy with a penchant for western wear, rodeo belt buckles and Stetson hats. He was also a bad mofo, whom I would never on my best day want to mess with. "Load up."
Somebody else pushed the button to activate the pneumatic target system. The five plates reset themselves with a hiss. I decided to show off a little for the crowd. Since the action was open, I quickly plucked a spare round of buckshot from the elastic sidesaddle mounted on the shotgun's receiver. I dropped it into the chamber, and instantly slammed the pump forward. Instinctively my support hand moved to the bandoleer of spare shells strapped across my chest. Grasping four cases, I palmed them under the loading port and rapid fire shoved them in as if my hand itself was a spring-loaded mechanism. Snick, snick, snick, snick. Four shells loaded in under two seconds.
It was a trick used by three-gun competitors. We would often shoot in long field courses involving rifles, pistols and shotguns. The shotgun portions sometimes consisted of twenty or even thirty separate targets. Since we were scored according to our total time, and since shotguns are low capacity weapons of five to nine shots (with some exceptions), the winners were the people who could keep their weapons loaded the fastest. Combine large groups of hyper-competitive type A personality gun people, and I guarantee you will see some amazing and creative ways to do things.