Just 2 Seconds Read Online Free PDF Page A

just need the little opening, and a second of time."
    Arthur Bremer, shooter of presidential candidate George Wallace

     
     

 
Time
Chapter 2
     
Essential Lesson of this Chapter:
Attackers are profoundly handicapped by time, and ready protectors who are in position to respond can prevail, almost always.

    Imagine you are a bodyguard about to be profoundly tested. In your peripheral vision to the right, you can see the outline of your protectee. But your attention is drawn 15 feet to your left, to an athletic-looking man in a sports coat. There are a few people milling about behind him, but they are minor details because as surely as you've ever known anything, you know this man is about to draw a weapon. And you know your protectee is his target.
    Though he's trying to appear casual, you catch him looking directly at you for an instant. In that instant, a thousand details fly back and forth between the two of you like messengers with urgent news. This simultaneous mutual assessment of adversaries has been refined over millions of years, with outcome determined not just by strength or size, but also by a precise recipe of guile, timing, speed, intellect, intuition, and commitment.
    You find yourself thinking about what you'll do when the weapon is drawn, which you absolutely know is about to happen. If only you were closer to him than 15 feet, you think. It would make sense to move closer to him right now, you think. You think, you think -- realizing you are thinking rather than acting, thinking about being closer rather than being closer -- but something keeps you rooted where you are.
    You know your protectee won't be able to move out of harm's way -- and the very next thing you know is that a gun is firing, a gun that has appeared from beneath that man's coat.
    In just one second, your heart rate has jumped to 150 beats per minute, pumping blood to the muscles that move you across the 15 feet you must travel. You collide with the shooter's arm and shoulder, pushing the weapon downward. The gun continues to fire as you both tumble to the floor. Everyone present watches with perfect attention, and they'll all later agree that you moved as fast as anyone could have. They'll point out that had you reacted any slower, the shooter would have done more damage. That observation hardly matters now, however, as everyone can see a clean hole in your protectee's head.
     
You now know that in the time it takes to read this sentence up to this point, most attacks have begun and ended.
    In this instance, you're about to get something few protectors get after successful attacks: another chance. You help the shooter to his feet, hand him back his gun, and you both resume your positions standing on the marked floor. Only this time you're just 7 feet apart instead of 15 -- and for that reason, when the exercise is repeated, you have a viable chance of reaching the shooter before his bullets can reach the target.
    The exercise is called TAD, short for Time And Distance. It's undertaken hundreds of times each year in our firm's training academy. The majority of attacks on public figures in America are launched from less than 25 feet, with handguns, but no matter what the weapon or the attack strategy, most of TAD's lessons about protector response will apply. Because insights drawn from TAD will appear throughout the book, here's a detailed description of the exercise:
    The student in the role of attacker is given a real handgun loaded with six plastic Simunition (r) rounds. He is placed 20 feet in front of the "protectee," a man-sized cardboard cutout. He is told to try to surprise the protector by drawing and firing as quickly as possible, and as many times as possible. "Your mission is to get as many shots as you can into the target before the protector reaches you and disrupts your aim."

     
    The student selected for the role of protector is told, "Within 30 seconds, the suspect will draw the weapon and fire. Your mission is to