Former CIA Sniper: My Secret Life of Kill or Be Killed in Iraq

I was seventeen when I graduated from high school. My mother had died two years before and dad had just not been the same, he died a day after I graduated. I think he held on that long only because of me. The doctors said it was of natural causes. I think it was because he could not stand being without my mother. I was young and angry, so I joined the Army.

While I was waiting for the recruiter to do the paperwork I had a visitor. He did not say who he belonged to but I had the idea it was CIA. It seems that since I did not have any living relatives it flagged some program they had. He asked a lot of questions and I think he realized how angry I was. When he left he said they would be in touch. Since I was not eighteen someone from social services had to sign for me.

The branch of the Army I joined was the Infantry. I should have read the contract, it seemed that the CIA had added some things into it. Like Airborne school, Ranger school and then sniper school. How they managed the sniper school I will never know, you have to be assigned to a regular unit before they will accept you.

So nine weeks for basic, nine weeks for advanced training for Infantry and then four weeks for airborne school. After airborne school the fun began, seventy two days in ranger school. I can not even describe what that was like, think about being wet and starving all the time and then doing physical stuff that put a quarter of the class out because of injuries.

After ranger school I thought I was ready for anything, I was wrong. Do not get me wrong Sniper school is not extremely challenging physically, it challenges you mentally as well. The physical part deals with how you move and if you want to be a successful sniper you do not move fast, you move slow and carefully. You learn about ballistics, you learn how to notice things out of place.

You learn how to read the wind, how to stalk your target but most importantly you learn how to shoot. A sniper’s motto is, “One Shot One Kill.”

Out of fifty two men, five of us graduated. In fact, I was at the top of the class in every one of the schools. Before I left advanced training, I was promoted to private second class. Not that it mattered, I was still a private. I was promoted again before graduating from Ranger school to private first class.

I thought I was done and finally headed to a line company. I had requested a unit that was already deployed. The sergeant in personal frowned when he saw my orders and said I was being sent to a cushy division job. I was going to wait until I got to my new division to request a transfer out when a civilian in a suit stopped me outside the personal office and handed me a new set of orders.

My first thought was, CIA. What was Special Operations? I got my answer when I got off a C141 that had flown me into Iraq. SOG operated at the direction of division commanders but in cooperation with the CIA and other covert groups. I had become a CIA sniper!

My first challenge was a shooting competition with a Staff Sergeant. We used three different weapons, the closest range was ten feet. The longest? Well lets just say a fifty caliber bullet goes a long way. I won so I was in. I had spent over eight months training and suddenly I was on the line.

My first mission was not in support of our military. The CIA had one of the private mercenary companies raid a house and I was to take out anyone that tried to leave. My spotter was an old man that never spoke until he had to. I was using a silenced Armlite 7.62, that is basically an M16 chambered for 7.62 NATO. Only I was using 168 grain boat tailed hollow points.

I had been given three pictures to remember, they were primary targets. I was on top of a one story building six hundred meters away. All three were confirmed dead as well as four others. That was how I started, every time my tour was up the CIA offered me a bonus to stay and I did. They gave me more than a quarter of a million to extend my enlistment three more years. I stayed through four tours and was getting burnt out.

Not that I killed anything that moved, it was just that I had finally gotten over my anger. That last time they had a very specific target and really wanted me. I told them I wanted out, that I was going to find someplace quiet in the middle of nowhere. Well they made me an offer I could not resist, a ten thousand acre ranch in the middle of nowhere and a million dollars.

I will not tell you how many I killed, that is classified and I do not really want to talk about it. Most of the targets were never identified by the military. They gave me a name though and it should give you an idea of how good I became. The name came from the line units I supported from time to time, they called me Thantos. I was the ghost that appeared in the night after insurgents died suddenly during an attack.

I had spent six years in the military and five of those were in combat. With ninety days of leave and ten days travel allowance, I left the Army in the last week of March. I went from the airport to a car dealer I had contacted online. I paid in cash and drove off with a large flat bed truck.

When they had said the ranch was in the middle of nowhere they were not kidding. The nearest town was twenty minutes away, if you called it a town. The population was only fifty three. It had a diner, a gas station with a garage, a general store and finally a feed store for cattlemen. If you really wanted something they did not have you drove the other way for just over an hour.

The ranch backed up to public lands and I had a large ranch on each side of me. The ranch house was larger than I expected. It was a single story with four bedrooms and two baths. The kitchen was very large and the living room had a stone fireplace with a deer head mounted over the mantle.

It looked serviceable, even if it had not been lived in for awhile. There was a long open shed and a big barn. On the side of the barn I found three vehicles that had been left by the last owners. Two old Willey jeeps, and a 1947 ford pick up. Inside the barn, were trailers used for plowing and bailing hay. There were two trailers in a field behind the barn that looked like they were for hauling cattle.

In one end of the shed was an old tractor and at the other a large pile of wire. I frowned as I looked at the wire and moved closer to discover an old medium size bulldozer under it. Now all I had to do was fix everything, sell the cattle already on the ranch and buy some calves. Oh, and buy a horse and learn to ride.

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