Most of the candidates flunk out, so only the best make it through a grueling course that requires as much brain as brawn, because there is no such thing as a stupid sniper. The academic demands, from mathematics to botany, were harder than in any college classes I had taken and were only part of sixteen-hour days that also included backbreaking physical exercise. It was exactly what I wanted and needed at that point in my life, and I fit in there much better than I ever had at the university.

I grew steadily more comfortable with my rifle. It was a thrill every time we went to the shooting range, where I never had a bad day. Every time I pulled the trigger, every single time, I knew exactly what would happen, and even when I missed the bull’s-eye, I knew why. Nothing in my life, even throwing a ninety-mile-an-hour fastball, had ever given me such a feeling of being especially talented and confident, which drove me to gain even more knowledge and become even more accurate. Being a sniper soon became my life’s calling.

The scouting component was one of the most interesting courses I ever attended, better than survival schools, better than university classes, and even better than airborne training, for it was there that instructors taught me how to become invisible. I learned how to track my enemy and how to get up close enough to count the bad guys, determine how long they had been in the location, what they were doing, and what they were about to do. Once I had hunted them down, the job became how to remove or capture them. I learned to deal with physical discomfort and to accomplish my mission in rain, snow, desert wasteland, and triple canopy jungle where the vegetation was so thick that it was dark during the middle of the day. I was taught to get in, get close, kill quickly, and get out, without ever being seen.