The Orion Team. discussion

Here's an excerpt from my book. In this scene, Sarah (the main protagonist) will be taught Close Quarters Battle by the British SAS, but first she has to give a demonstration. Remember, this is a training scene.


Sarah sees that the door handle is on the right side and the hinges are hidden from view, meaning that the door opens inwards. After she enters, she’ll have to sweep left while clearing all of the X-Rays inside the room. Al said that there was only one X-Ray, but he could easily be lying. She’s used to these kinds of tricks during CQB training and even likes to do the same to her men. After all the X-Rays have been dispatched, she can finally handle the HVT.
Sarah first checks that the door is really unlocked, which it is. She stacks up by herself on the left side of the door while preparing her flashbang. She holds the lever with her right to prevent it from detonating and pulls out the pin with her left hand. As per SOP, she keeps the pin in one of the pockets of her black kit. She opens the door with her left hand and rolls the flashbang inside. She immediately closes the door and reaches with her right hand for the Sig Sauer, holstered on her right thigh.
After hearing the flashbang explode, Sarah makes her entry. She ensures the right-front area is clear before sweeping left. SCAN. She sees a target on the right-back side of the room. ACQUIRE. Sarah aims her Sig Sauer towards the centre mass of the target. SHOOT. SHOOT. Sarah fires twice with a shooting method called hammer pairs. ACQUIRE. Sarah makes sure her two shots hit the target. BREATHE. Sarah forces herself to exhale, inhale, and then let out half a breath. SCAN. Sarah keeps sweeping left. She sees that the HVT is stunned by the flashbang but since he’s not holding a weapon, she ignores him for the moment and keeps sweeping left. There’s another target to the left of the HVT, which she also shoots with hammer pairs. Sarah keeps sweeping left to clear the left-front side of the room, but sees no more targets. She does all of this while moving forward towards the HVT, who is already starting to react. All of this happened in only four seconds, from the time Sarah pulled out the pin of her flashbang to this very moment.
Sarah sees the HVT start to reach for his pistol. Quick as lightning, Sarah gives him a left hook to his jaw, flooring him down on his arse. With her pistol pointed at his face, she pulls on his hair with her left hand until he’s facedown on the floor. She holsters her pistol and handcuffs him with the plasticuffs. She frisks him thoroughly and takes the pistol in his waist, a small pistol by his groin, and another on his right ankle. She has to secure all the weapons she finds before storing them in her black kit. Then she pulls on his hair with her right hand and his arms with her left and drags him outside. She throws him face-first on the ground in front of Al and B Squadron.
“Two Tangos… I mean, two X-Rays down, HVT in custody,” says Sarah, securing her pistol and removing her respirator. “All clear and mission accomplished!”


What do you think?

Note: There is a glossary at the end of the book.

Justin

Justin wrote: "Here's an excerpt from my book. In this scene, Sarah (the main protagonist) will be taught Close Quarters Battle by the British SAS, but first she has to give a demonstration. Remember, this is a t..."

Hello Justin. Welcome to the group. I'm sure you'll enjoy it here. To answer your question. We do have several veterans and students of gunfighting. One person who is familiar with Swat assault tactics is Joshua Hood. The other is a Mr Michael mcconnick.

Justin wrote: "Here's an excerpt from my book. In this scene, Sarah (the main protagonist) will be taught Close Quarters Battle by the British SAS, but first she has to give a demonstration. Remember, this is a t..."

MR MCCONICK ON ROOM Breach And Clear.
https://crimefictionbook.com/2016/11/...

Thanks for the tip, Samuel! I'll send them a friend request.

Justin

Justin wrote: "Here's an excerpt from my book. In this scene, Sarah (the main protagonist) will be taught Close Quarters Battle by the British SAS, but first she has to give a demonstration. Remember, this is a t..."

It sounded reasonable to me, with the following issues/questions:

1. You are overestimating the lethality of handgun rounds. Here's an excerpt from an article I wrote for "The Writer's Guide to Weapons":

"The reason people carry handguns is because they are lightweight and easily concealable, not because they are the most lethal weapon available. More than 80% of the people shot with a handgun survive, according to The Wall Street Journal. Shot placement is far more crucial when using a handgun than a rifle.

Your protagonist is going to need to be a good marksman, or very lucky, to kill someone with a handgun. That’s why you will commonly read newspaper stories where police officers have shot someone six or more times. It can easily take that many shots to stop an attacker by using a handgun, much less to kill them."

Two shots to center mass may or may not imobilize or kill your X-rays, but likely won't. Your protagonist needs to make sure they are truly out of action before moving on, or just finish them off with a shot to the base of the skull or to the ocular cranial vault.

2. Is your protagonist a skilled boxer? If not, perhaps a kick to the head or a palm strike to the nose, depending on the position of your HVT, might be a more realistic way of temporarily immobilizing them. Bare knuckle hand strikes ofen result in broken hands, unless you are an extremely skilled boxer.

3. You mention your protagonist has to "secure all the weapons" before stowing them away. Did you mean "clear all the weapons"? Clearing them would involve removing magazines and clearing any chambered rounds. I'm assuming that's what your character needs to do.

4. Why is your protagonist wearing a respirator?

Michael
http://michaelconnick.com

Hi Michael! Thank you very much for your input!

1. Just to give you a background, Sarah is an Indonesian police officer and the Indonesian Human Rights Commission, for some incredibly stupid reason, absolutely forbids cops from shooting criminals/terrorists in the head. This is explained in the book.

After her demonstration, the SAS instructor then taught her to use controlled pairs to the head instead of hammer pairs to the centre mass.

2. She is extremely skilled in unarmed combat. The SAS instructor then taught her NOT to do that. Anyhow, that punch will serve as some comic relief a few pages later.

3. Yes, you are right. Thanks!

4. The British SAS likes to use respirators in their assaults, right?

Justin

Justin wrote: "The British SAS likes to use respirators in their assaults, right?"

Ah yes, the SF10 Respirator, what we in the US would call a gas mask.

Apparently they do like to use them for psychological advantages (they look scary), they enable very quick recognition of other team members, and so that they can immediately use CS gas whenever they think it appropriate to do so. US Spec Ops teams typically don't use them unless absolutely necessary since they are hot and uncomfortable to wear, and they restrict vision. A good case of different strokes for different folks!

Michael
http://michaelconnick.com

Justin wrote: "Thanks for the tip, Samuel! I'll send them a friend request.

Justin,
I've been doing CQB since 2004, first in the Army and now in SWAT. Tactics have changed so many times since then but the basics of Speed, Surprise and Violence of Action are still the same. I think Michael will agree with me on that. There are literally thousands of ways to write that scene so it depends on what you want to do.
At first glance I see a few little problems.

1- She is on the hinge side and doing a "one man" Dynamic Entry, which means she will take the room blind. While not " wrong, typically you would 'pan' the door after opening it which would allow you to see clear 80% of the room without entering.

2- She has a bang in her left hand, pistol in the holster. What happens if someone come out since she has already announced her presence by jiggling the knob?

3- She opens the door, tosses the bang, then closes the door. The flashbang is designed to disrupt the OODA loop but opening the door, throwing it, then closing it she is losing the advatage. Most operators will either open, throw, pan (engaging hostiles from outside) or if you are going dynamic, crash the bang (follow it in)

4- I assume that the hammer pair is the same thing as the controlled pair, which is different than a double tap in execution.

And finally Michael covered the pistol aspect. I dont know of anyone who would hit a room, by themselves, with a pistol unless they absolutly had to. And if they did I would use a lot more than 2 shots per.

Joshua wrote: "I assume that the hammer pair is the same thing as the controlled pair, which is different than a double tap in execution. "

A hammer pair is a very rapid pair of shots using a single sight picture. A double tap is slightly slower with a flash sight picture on the second shot.

Joshua wrote: "She is on the hinge side and doing a "one man" Dynamic Entry, which means she will take the room blind. While not " wrong, typically you would 'pan' the door after opening it which would allow you to see clear 80% of the room without entering."

Yeah, I was wondering about the issue of going into the room too quickly and not taking advantage of the concealment/cover provided by the walls around the doorway and "pieing the entry", but thought perhaps the need to take quickly take advantage of the affects of the flash bang was the reason for the more direct entry. I've never worked with them, myself.

Michael
http://michaelconnick.com

Joshua,

Thank you for joining this discussion!

1. Although not explicitly stated, she did the "pie" when entering the room.
2. I was wondering about that, but wouldn't she be in even more trouble if she didn't check the knob first? What if the door was locked?
3. YES! After her demonstration, the SAS instructor taught her to enter WITH the flashbang instead of after it detonates. Thanks for bringing this up.
4. In the book it is mentioned that hammer pairs are Acquire, Shoot, Shoot, Acquire. Controlled pairs are Acquire, Shoot, Acquire, Shoot, Acquire. Any thoughts?

Justin

Michael, absolutly right about the flashbang! If you throw it and the "pie the entry" you can take advantage of it by engaging from the outside without being seen, but if you "blow and go" you have to follow it or lose the effect.

Personally I think people get wrapped around the axle with the technical details, when all that really matters is the writing. While it is important to be accurate, I have learned (the hard way) that most readers dont really know much about CQB or guns. A writers job is to make them care about the characters. I learned that from a great writer on here named Scott Bell.
The old show vs tell is something that I still struggle with. Scott is awesome at it, and I say all of that b/c what you submitted reads almost like a list. She did this, then this and then this. If you put the reader in the room with her, let them see it and feel it, I promise that it wont matter if you use a controlled pair, hammer, double tap, Mozambique, failure drill or a squirt gun.

Justin wrote: "In the book it is mentioned that hammer pairs are Acquire, Shoot, Shoot, Acquire. Controlled pairs are Acquire, Shoot, Acquire, Shoot, Acquire. Any thoughts?"

You're correct about hammer pairs. They are a very fast pair of shots taken from a single sight picture. They are strictly short range shots, probably not taken past 3 yards.

You're also correct about controlled pairs. A sight picture is taken, the first shot fired, the gun recoils and settles back, a new sight picture is taken and the second shot then fired.

A double tap is in between those two. A sight picture is taken, the first shot fired, the gun recoils and settles back, and then a "flash sight picture" is taken, and the second shot fired. The flash sight picture is just the briefest glance at a coarse alignment of the front and rear sights in contrast to the more precise alignment taken with a controlled pair shot. It's probably usable out to about 7 yards,

Joshua is spot on - this is all probably way too technical for the average reader. I personally go to great lengths to maintain authenticity in my all my writing, but frankly if it's a good story, most readers won't care. I'm a technical and historical authenticity nut for my own enjoyment, rather than expecting my readers to really take that much notice of it.

Nevertheless, it doesn't take that much work to make sure that an author's stories are reasonably accurate in their details. Beyond a certain point, quite a few readers will take notice of ridiculous mistakes in stories. I'm actually amazed at how lazy some authors are in validating the accuracy of things they are writing about. Movies and TV shows are often horrendously unrealistic in their treatment of firearms and tactics.

Michael
http://michaelconnick.com

Joshua/Michael,

Yes, you are right. That scene was about training and mainly showed how the main protagonist can be as smart and tough as any SAS officer. This will be important for the plot.

Joshua,

Can you recommend me a book by Scott Bell?

Justin

Excellent advice Michael, hit the nail on the head as usual.

Scott has two book in the Yaeger series- the first one blew me away.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B011A908HE/...

Another guy who does it very well is Matt Betley his first novel Overwatch is a treat and he is great at getting inside the protagonist. He is a great guy and is on the fast track to be a superstar. http://matthewbetley.com

Finally I would also suggest Matthew Quirk's Cold Barrel Zero. It was his first attempt at a military thriller and he killed it. Perfect balance of story and tech, and in my opinion one of the best book of 2016.

I noticed that almost all military thrillers are written in simple past tense. Has anyone ever read a military thriller in present tense?