Mr.Cowboy's Kinda Bad

Chapter 44- (Live Without Regrets)

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*mild* adult content

Tatum's P. O. V

(Three months later)

I was standing totally erect in front of our Staff Sergeant with my new infantry unit. This small group consisted of nine men and one woman. After we had all graduated basic training we all sat around for months wondering where they would send us. Some of my brothers would be going to places like Germany and some of them to Iraq and Afghanistan. I waited for my next position and as my roommate on base got the word he was going to Iraq, I knew they were going to keep me here.

Not because I was a bad student in basic training but because they wanted to train me more. I'm not sure what they want to teach us and help us perfect our skills in but now I stand here with my eyes looking straight.

The cold wind swept through my green Cotten tee shirt making me want to shiver. However, I kept my stance not wanting to be called out on my movement. Around us was a huge expanse of rolling hills. Behind our instructor was ten different tables all containing different guns on top of them. It wasn't until then that I realized the targets in front of each table. The first target was maybe thirty feet away from each table.

We all kept our bodies tense, hands at our sides as our new training officer began speaking in their usual authoritative tone, "Listen up maggots. Most of you are wondering why you are here. We kept you here because we picked you to be in our elite snipper unit. These past few months we've watched you carefully and we think you all could have a right fit but first you must go through more training. Look around you now because I guarantee some of you will not be standing here in three weeks when the course is over." The man cleared his throat, "Alright, your first task is to pick a table and stand there wait for further instruction. Do I make myself clear?"

"SIR YES SIR" the group of us shouted almost as if we were robots because of how much they brain washed us.

We walked over to the tables and I stopped at the second one in, standing in position again. On the tables I noticed your average handgun, a plain shot gun and on the ground was a bad ass assault rifle propped on a pile of sandbags. Next to the sniper rifle was a pair of high tech binoculars set up for spotters.

The instructor started to speak, "As you can already tell you have your basic Beretta nine millimeter handgun, your Remington 3200 shotgun and on the ground you have your M14 automatic. It's a bit old school but we just want to test the waters before we give you the big guns."

We blew through our first training session within a few hours. We didn't necessarily learn anything new, it was more for the instructor to see what we could do. Staff Sergeant Shaw had already kicked out one fella for missing the target three consecutive times.

This training will be tough...

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I now stood in my relatively impressive shower that was connected to my room on base. The way the living quarters was set up is that you share a room with someone else in your rank. Now that I'm going for more training though, I was privileged enough to receive my own room. Basically you got a bathroom and a bed with a dresser and a desk. Not much, but I'm lucky to have it all to myself this time around.

In the barracks was basically where you slept and showered. During basic training, you were up at five A.M and relieved of your work for the day after you ate dinner at the mess hall which wasn't normally until five o'clock at night.

In the mess hall was where we could eat together and socialize. This is where we ate all of our meals together for only thirty minutes. After that we would have only a few minutes before we stepped off into intense training. We worked from 0800-1200 hours every morning (basically 8 am to 12). Then lunch followed and the same process repeated with training. Dinner was at 1700 hours and after that we had lectures and smoking breaks. Most of the time our drill sergeant would just talk to us about the day. After that we would have about three hours for down time and to deal with personal hygiene. After that it was lights out at nine p.m.