Just 2 Seconds (2 page)

Given such a small window of time, if the Moment of Recognition is moved forward by even a fraction of a second, allowing a protector to respond during that gained time, the odds of survival increase profoundly. You are about to learn concepts that can prepare your mind to reach the Moment of Recognition sooner.

Attackers have plenty of time before the Moment of Commitment, but from that instant onwards they have almost no time at all. The asset of surprise cannot sustain its value for it's spent entirely in a flash. After that flash, most attackers rely so heavily upon speed that it quickly becomes their greatest weakness. Speed is an enemy of accuracy and composure -- both necessary components of successful attacks. If the presence of protectors doesn't deter an attack, protective strategies can at least compel an attacker to rush.

Those intending assassination have some advantages over their targets, but many more factors work against them than for them.
Thousands of opportunities exist for them to fail, and only one slender opportunity exists for them to succeed.
Often, both literally and figuratively, assassins have one shot at success -- and they know this. Accordingly, though assassination might be seen as a reckless act, it is rarely committed recklessly.

There's a popular belief that attackers have the advantage, even over sophisticated protective operations, because they can choose when to attack. In reality, however, most attackers do not get to choose precisely when to attack. They may select the date or the general period, but the timing that really matters -- the Moment of Commitment -- is dictated and stimulated by events attackers rarely control: When does the target come into view or into the killing zone? How long will he remain there? When is the target nearest? Are protectors close to the attacker? Are protectors focused on the attacker? Are bystanders focused on the attacker? Is the target moving or stationary? When is the space between attacker and target most free of obstructions? Is this instant the best moment for attack, or this one... or will there be a better one if I wait?

Effective protective strategies can influence how an attacker answers these questions, and often, more often than we know, the answers cause him to delay, postpone, or even cancel his plans. Though history offers many examples of attackers who aborted their attempts, this book focuses on those who acted on their plans -- and on the few seconds it took them to do so.

It's About Time

The cases in the Compendium show the number of attacks that happened in the daytime versus at night, and how many were political versus personal -- but such information is not useful for our purposes here. If you know, for example, that 70% of past attacks occurred in the daytime, it doesn't mean you give 30% less attention or preparation during the night. Similarly, knowing that 75% of all assassins were mentally ill does not have much value to a bodyguard intercepting someone who suddenly charges through a crowd. There is no time for mental health diagnosis, and the bodyguard must not ignore people just because they appear sane or reasonable, nor focus only on those who appear deranged.

Some statistics, however, can be useful to protectors. For example, knowing that most attacks are launched from within 25 feet of the target can encourage protectors to focus most of their attention and resources on the close range, rather than watching only for snipers on distant rooftops.

The Compendium cases offer other useful insights:

• In the U.S., attacks are most likely to be undertaken by lone assailants
  (87% of the time). Outside the U.S., attacks are most likely committed by multiple assailants (71%).
  
• Attacks in the U.S. are about as likely to be indoors as outdoors
  (53% versus 47%). Outside the U.S., they are far more likely to occur outdoors (80%).
  
• Firearms are the most likely weapons of attack (71%).
  
• In the U.S., handguns are more than twice as likely to be used than long guns
  (51% handguns, 20% long guns). Outside the U.S., the reverse is true.
  
• Attacks in the U.S. are most likely to be at close range,
  less than 25 feet (81%). Only 19% occurred at more than 25 feet, the longest range being 263 feet. Outside the U.S., even though long guns are used twice as often, most attacks still occur at close range (70%). Combining this fact with the less effective emergency care found in most other countries, it's not surprising that attacks outside the U.S. are more likely to be lethal.
  
• Bombs succeed at killing intended targets only slightly more often than they fail
  (57% of the time).
  
• The most dangerous place to be is in or around the protectee's car.
  Sixty-four percent of attacks happen when the protected person is in or around the car, and these attacks succeed an astonishing 77% of the time.
  
• Not all targets chose to have protectors, however when attacks were unsuccessful, protector action was the reason about 57% of the time.
  History is giving a strong endorsement for at-risk people to have protectors!
  

While this information has value for developing protective strategies, once an attack has commenced, almost all knowledge becomes useless mental clutter.

Perhaps the single most valuable thing a protector could know is when future attacks will happen -- and that we do know, precisely:

One hundred percent of all attacks happen at exactly the same time: Now.

The only time
anything
can happen is in the present moment. Everything else is a memory (the past) or a fantasy (the future), and nothing in the past or future can hurt your protectee. An attacker's Moment of Commitment is always in the Now, and if you hope to meet him there, you too must be in the Now. Focusing attention on the Now is the surest way to be present and ready in the event of an attack, literally to be
in
the event, and not just a bystander watching events unfold.

To be present at the location is one thing, but to be there
in time
is the central issue of this book. You could place yourself in the perfect position for foiling an attack (many bodyguards have), and yet if you are not present in the moment,
pre-sent
as it were, your body being there is not likely to be of constructive consequence.

Preparing to Be Present

Professional protectors already know a lot about maintaining physical readiness, but it's the mind that must first be properly prepared, the mind that controls the hands, arms, eyes, and ears. There are strategies available to help prepare warriors, based upon knowing how the body responds to lethal combat, what happens to your blood flow, your muscles, judgment, memory, vision, and your hearing when someone is trying to kill you. Police officers, soldiers, and protectors can learn how to keep going even if shot, and how to prepare the mind and body for survival instead of defeat. This is much more than mere information; the knowledge itself can be a kind of armor.
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Just as a computer functions best when loaded with accurate and relevant data, we encourage protectors to mentally download the information in this book. Getting the strategies into practice begins with getting them into your mind.

Speaking of the mind, imagine for a moment that your mind is a time machine able to take you into the past or the future. Now realize that you need not imagine this at all, because your mind
is
a time machine, one that almost always takes you out of the present moment. You might have enjoyable or even useful journeys, but while you're on them, you cannot truly be in the present.

Every thought about anything outside the Now is a burden that makes you mentally heavier, while focusing your perception on the ever-changing Now makes you lighter and more agile. For a protector, it all comes down to this question: Will you be present to recognize the earliest detectable signs of an attack, or will you be elsewhere, called back to the moment by the sound of gunfire?

Even if a loud sound ends your time travel and pulls you back to the present, that doesn't mean you've reached the Moment of Recognition. You still have to spend time coming to understand what's happening. Your senses can alert you to danger, but on their own they can't tell you what caused that loud noise. In other words, the gunshot and the Moment of Recognition are rarely simultaneous.

You might think that all of your training on how to respond to an attack automatically kicks in at the sound of gunfire. But it doesn't. Nor should it. If you're an experienced protector, you already know this. You've heard many sounds at public appearances that were indistinguishable from gunfire -- dropped trays, firecrackers, cars backfiring, balloons popping -- and yet you didn't always pull your protectee from the stage. That's because even a sound like gunfire is rarely enough on its own to get you to the Moment of Recognition and stimulate the Big Response that might follow. On hearing such sounds, protectors (for better or for worse) tend to look for other indicators to complete the puzzle before responding.

On the one hand, protectors want to respond effectively at the earliest possible instant; on the other hand, they dread acting prematurely. Nobody wants to charge across the baseball field during the National Anthem, knock the famous singing star to the dirt -- and then find out that the gunshot sound was actually a backfire in the parking lot. This is the protector's great conflict: Act too early and risk embarrassment. Act too late, and risk everything.

The only way to be fully certain before responding is to allow more of the event to unfold. But how many pieces of the puzzle must you see before you can know what image is being formed (or at least be willing to commit to a guess)? The answer might differ from person to person, but clearly, in order to see the earliest pieces of the puzzle, your attention must be focused on the Now.

Consider the true meaning of the popular expression,
passing the time:
When someone is merely passing the time, he is passing events that are occurring right in front of him, passing the Now. Or another expression,
killing time,
which is, quite literally, killing the one resource a protector needs most. Imagine that a protector's mind is anywhere else when something calls him back to the present. He'll then need time to land, time to assess, time to conclude, time to respond. But he has been killing the very time he needs.

The concept of
spending
time is perfectly apt: Once spent, time is gone, just like any other resource. In the economy of public figure attack, time is spent in tiny increments -- and each one is priceless.

Just an instant before confirming that the sound of gunfire actually is gunfire, a bodyguard might have been thinking about the complicated route back to the car, or whether the protectee's speech is almost over, or about the loading-dock door that got stuck at the half-way point on this morning's advance. A bodyguard might have been thinking about staying on schedule, keeping intact a complex web of logistics, or he might be even farther from this moment, thinking about an upcoming vacation.

But wherever attention might have been an instant ago, from the Moment of Recognition onward, bodyguards are firmly rooted in the present, riding a terrible roller coaster of shifting priorities:

• Cover the protectee
  
• Stop the attack
  
• Subdue the attacker
  
• Get the protectee out of here
  

Though a bodyguard might have the objective of stopping the gunfire, that goal is rarely reached. In most incidents we studied,
it was the gunmen who decided when to stop shooting.

If the protectee has not been hit by gunfire, your priority might be to pull or push him out of danger, or to cover him. If you are closer to the attacker, your priority might be to disrupt the shooter's aim or view. If the protectee has just been shot, your priority shifts again, this time to ensuring that he is not hit by another bullet.

If the protectee has been injured and the attacker is no longer shooting, your priority likely shifts to stopping blood loss and getting the protectee to emergency medical care. That priority doesn't change even if the protectee is dead: Protectors rush to the damn hospital anyway, knowing all along the awful drive that doctors won't be able to do anything more than confirm the obvious.

This was the experience of protectors rushing to hospitals with the dead or soon-to-be-dead bodies of John F. Kennedy, Israeli Prime Minister Rabin, and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat -- hoping that time still mattered, while facing the one situation in which it doesn't matter at all. It's hard to imagine that gunfire aimed in one's direction is ever desirable, yet the protectors in these three cases would tell you they preferred the moments of danger over the moments that followed, and the years that followed.

Rewinding History

When Secret Service Agent Jerry Parr realized that someone was shooting at them, he moved President Reagan toward his limousine, with the intention of getting him out of harm's way. Looked at superficially, one could conclude that President Reagan was hit by one of Hinckley's bullets precisely because he was moved into the position where he was hit. (The bullet that hit the President entered his chest as he was being pushed into the car.) Secret Service Agent Dennis McCarthy who was on the scene that day later reported that had agents not reacted as quickly as they did, "Reagan probably wouldn't have been hit." In other words, had President Reagan been left where he was when the gunfire began, and had all other factors remained the same, he would not have been shot as he was.

To be clear, however, we totally favor getting the President into the car; that was the right move, and Jerry Parr did it effectively. Our larger point is that everything a bodyguard does or does not do during an attack has consequences. For example, a bodyguard for South Korean President Park Chung Hee shot at a gunman in the crowd, missed the gunman, and killed a young choirgirl. The assailant fired a poorly aimed bullet toward the bodyguard, and instead hit the President's wife in the head, killing her.