"I wish. I did get a letter from the guy I hunted with, Ray Johnson, not too long ago. He's planning on moving to South Africa. As far as the economy goes, I gather that things have really gone to hell in Rhodesia. He said in his letter they have a seventeen percent national sales tax now."

"I hope he doesn't have much money there," Tom Fleming said. The new government in Zimbabwe prohibited its citizens from taking their money out of the country, which made its residents all the more eager to do so.

"No, Ray's no fool. When I paid him for my trip, I wired most of the money to an account in Luxembourg. I think he only keeps enough around to meet expenses. Probably sell off the Land-Rovers to cover the last bills right before he cuts out."

"Speaking of Rhodesia," Rufus said, "a Rhodesian friend of ours, Earl Taylor-Edgarton, is coming to town in a few weeks to help us teach a class."

"Class? What kind?" Henry asked.

"Executive protection and antiterrorist measures," Rufus explained. "I handle protection strategy, and Tom covers carry methods and legal issues. Earl's the explosives expert. It's on the weekend of the twentyseventh. You ought to come-we'll get you a pass."

"I'm free."

"Good. I think you'll find Earl's presentation very interesting." Rufus and Tom shared a look. Henry said nothing. He knew he would find out sooner or later why they were grinning at each other.

"Earl has had some interesting experiences," Tom explained. "He was born in Rhodesia, and he was on the losing side during the recent overthrow. He's wanted in Zimbabwe for murder, violating whatever they call the neutrality act, and a few other things in conjunction with the war. He can't go back there."

"He hates socialist governments," Rufus added. Tom Fleming chuckled.

"Zimbabwe government still sends him his pension, though. They have to-it was part of the U.N. agreement for them to recognize the new regime." Tom Fleming looked at the book in his hand. "And speaking of governments, have you seen a copy of this yet?" Fleming held the softbound book out for his friend.

"What is it?" Henry took the 6" x 9" booklet from the lawyer and looked at the cover.

THE RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS.

REPORT.

OF THE.

SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CONSTITUTION.

OF THE.

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY UNITED STATES SENATE NINETY-SEVENTH CONGRESS SECOND SESSION.

February 1982 Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary "The results of using the entire research facilities of the Library of Congress to determine the original basis of the Second Amendment to the Constitution," Fleming explained. "The work of some of the best Constitutional scholars in the country. The findings of the '79 and '80 Treasury hearings on ATF practices. Also some position statements from some of the national anti-human-rights organizations. For comic relief, I guess," he added.

"No, I haven't seen it. 'For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U. S. Government Printing Office', huh?" Henry said as he read what was printed inside the cover of the 175-page book.

"Guess again," Tom Fleming said with a sardonic smile. 'They're already out of stock and-get this-they aren't going to print any more. Think maybe someone on the Committee doesn't want the public reading the results of their research? Look at the list of Committee members on the next page."

"Boy, there are some career slime buckets here, aren't there?" Henry agreed when he saw the list of names. Then he started thumbing through the contents of the government report. He stopped abruptly on page 20, and his eyes got bigger.

"They admit those Treasury assholes are out of control!" Henry said in astonishment. He started reading aloud from the section on the Treasury hearings that were held two and three years earlier.

'"At these hearings evidence was received...from experts who had studied the BATF, and from officials of the Bureau itself. Based upon these hearings it is apparent that enforcement tactics made possible by current federal firearms laws are constitutionally, legally, and practically reprehensible.' Well, that has a nice ring to it," Henry said. He scanned more of the chapter.

'"Bureau's own figures demonstrate that percentage of arrests devoted to felons in possession and persons knowingly selling to them...down to 10 percent of their cases' Christ! I didn't know it was that low! '...BATF has primarily devoted its firearms enforcement efforts to the apprehension of individuals who lack all criminal intent and knowledge...repeatedly enticed gun collectors into making a small number of sales...then charged them with engaging in the business of dealing in guns without the required license...law permits a felony conviction where individual has no criminal knowledge or intent...numerous collectors have been ruined by a felony record...' " Henry looked up. "Which is why I've had an FFL since I can remember." He returned to the document.

"Hey, they even admit that 'Even in cases where...prosecutors failed to file criminal charges, agents of the Bureau have generally confiscated the entire collection of the potential defendant upon the ground that he intended to use it in that violation of the law.' Well, there went the Fifth Amendment," Henry added. "Jesus!" he said as he read on. "Here they document them confiscating a $7000 shotgun!" "Probably some Pommie dick-smoker's Purdey," Stokely Meier threw out. He could not imagine anyone paying that much money for a gun with no rifling in its bore.

Henry thumbed through the section, searching for something. "I don't see anything in here about them turning Ken Ballew into a vegetable," he said. Then he had a thought. "Hey, what happened to that Maryland cop they suckered into going along? The guy that put his round right between Ballew's eyes when nine Feds missed him completely from ten feet?"

"You mean Ciamillo? Ballew's family hit him with a civil suit. Couple million bucks, I think. Feds said they'd stick up for him, but when he got to the courtroom and started looking around, he was all by his lonesome. That's one of the worst things about that department. They have just about zero loyalty downwards along the chain of command. They'll hang their guys out in the wind in a minute. And that makes for zero loyalty up the chain."

"I talked to Lou last year," Rufus Ingram added. "I think if you took every ATF agent and wired 'em for sound with G.I. field telephones, it'd be fine with him."

For some reason, Henry Bowman paused and thought about Tom Fleming's words for several moments, and took the time to reflect on them. No loyalty up the chain of command, huh? Ought to be able to do something with that, someday he decided. That thought would stick in his mind thereafter, surfacing periodically over the next decade.

Henry continued to scan the government report and soon found another item of interest. "Says reform is needed right now, and some bill, S. 1030, will do it. Hmm...doesn't give the exact words, but looks like the gist of it is, no such thing as a non-violent gun crime."

"That bill's DOA," Tom Fleming said with a sneer.

"Yeah. Can't see that happening." Henry Bowman looked at the Table of Contents, checked a few pages, then looked again at the book's cover.

"So, our government assigned a committee to research the Second Amendment. They find out it means exactly what we've said all along. They admit their lawyers lied in the Miller case. They admit the adversarial process was absent there." He flipped some pages.

"Jesus! On page 32 they even quote the National Coalition to Ban Handguns saying that the Supreme Court has ruled that the right to keep and bear arms 'exists independently of the Second Amendment', meaning the Bill of Rights is a reminder to the government, not authorization." He thumbed further.

"They've got great case law in here! Here's a state decision from 1878: 'If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of constitutional privilege.'"

"The more things change, the more they stay the same," Tom Fleming commented.

"We needed that peckerneck on the Supreme Court in '34," Stokely Meier said.

Henry looked at his three friends. "So-they did all this research. Tom, what's going to be the upshot of it?"

"Upshot? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. It's the fox guarding the henhouse. If anyone like us reads it, it just tells us what we already know. It makes us feel good for five minutes. If Senator Arnold Katzenbaum reads it, he'll toss the whole thing in the trash after the first paragraph, and sponsor another ban." Fleming grinned as he thought of something. "I wonder if his son-in-law-the kid that has the chain of strip-mall law offices? I wonder how he did on Constitutional law in school, and what he thinks of his wife's father." Fleming shook his head and returned to the subject.

"Anyway, any reform bill that actually gets taken seriously, somebody will probably hang some horrible amendment on it, and the sponsors will agree to the 'compromise', and throw another baby out of the sleigh." Tom Fleming pointed to the government document in Henry's hand. "What they're talking about in there is just going to get worse." He shrugged. "But take it home and read it anyway. I got it for you."

Tom Fleming's prediction about a reform bill was exactly right, as the country would discover in four years. His comment about the situation getting worse also proved to be a bulls-eye.

April 24,1982 "Sit over there. If anyone asks, you're one of the small arms instructors," Rufus told Henry. Henry took a seat about halfway back and pulled a sheet from his pocket listing the instructors' curriculum vitae and the morning's agenda.

Protection Against Terrorism Drawing on experienced experts, the staff of DRC Services have put together lectures and field exercises to prepare governmental, military, or private security protective teams to guard their principals against kidnap or assassination. Due to the international commitments of the instructional staff, it has taken years to bring them together in the USA to offer this opportunity.

The Instructional Team Dean Copeland has spent 15 years with the Detroit Police Department, serving as a homicide sergeant and as the weapons and tactics instructor for the Special Response Team. Dean's articles on ammunition, weapons, and tactics have made him well known as an expert on deadly encounters.

Brian Rowan is the founder of the Surrey-based DRC Services, which provides and trains bodyguards worldwide. Among Brian's assignments has been heading up protection details for the Miss World Pageant. Brian is an expert at both unarmed and armed close combat techniques.

Thomas J. Fleming served as a U.S. Army infantry officer and later as an officer commanding a CID unit. An attorney and an acknowledged expert on training military and police in close combat with firearms, Tom is the author of THE WELL-TRAINED GUNFIGHTER and DEEP COVER TERRORIST. Tom's articles have also appeared regularly in GUNS REVIEW, LAW ENFORCEMENT MONTHLY, and other respected publications.

Earl Taylor-Edgarton served in the Rhodesian Light Infantry, Rhodesian SAS, Tracker Combat Unit, and as the training officer for the Selous Scouts. Later he served as an officer in South Africa's #5 Recce Commando. A veteran of a decade of counter-terrorist warfare, Earl has now emigrated to the USA and brings much expertise on explosives, demolition, bombs, incendiaries, and close combat to this course.

Rufus Ingram was an officer with the USAF Combat Security Police and later served with the SAS on VIP protection units in Europe and the third world. He trains anti-terrorist units in this country and others. His books DEAD CLIENTS GIVE LOUSY REFERRALS and EXECUTIVES DON'T EAT AT DONUT SHOPS have become standard works on close protection and anti-terrorism.

"Humpy" Atkinson spent 26 years with 22nd SAS regiment fighting in Borneo, Aden, and was an SAS Sabre Squadron sergeant major during the Dhofar War. Later he was the senior NCO in SAS Ops Research, ran the SAS combat survival course, and ran 22nd SAS Training Wing. Humpy was on the original SAS Bodyguard Training Team and helped form the SAS anti-terrorist unit. His book SAVE YOUR BUTT NO MATTER WHAT is an outstanding text on survival anywhere in the world.

Henry Bowman turned the sheet over and saw that the morning's lecture was to be given by the fourth man on the list, Earl Taylor-Edgarton. Soon a muscular man of medium height and curly blond hair walked into the room and stepped behind the podium. In a few seconds the room was quiet, and the man smiled at the people in the class.

"G'morning," he said, in the clipped British accent of native Rhodesians. "I'm Earl Taylor-Edgarton. The last two have a hyphen between, so either call me 'Earl' or use all three, but don't dump the middle one." The audience smiled. "I've been brought on to discuss the proper use of high explosives, how to improvise when the good stuff isn't available, what to do when it is, and most importantly, the proper construction, use, and handling of detonators.

"Even if your interest lies solely in recognizing terrorist threats and not in actually blowing something up, learning how to do it yourself gives the best background for finding charges that have been set. First I'll talk about explosive types, where they are usually set, and how they are typically detonated. Then I want to take bit more time on the subject of the detonators themselves, for they are the brains, you might say, of explosive weapons." Earl Taylor-Edgarton rubbed his hands together and nodded.

"Right, then. First up on the list of products to use is what we call ANFO." Earl wrote the letters on the chalkboard and turned back to the students. "This acronym stands for ammonium nitrate-fuel oil. Anyone here who has never mixed up a bit of this and tried it out has led a very sheltered life indeed." He turned back to the board and wrote the figure 5.7% underneath the four letters.

"If you are mixing up your own batch, five point seven percent fuel oil by weight is the proper amount to give a chemically balanced mixture for best combustion, much like the fuel-air mixture on a properly tuned carburettor." Henry Bowman glanced at the other attendees and saw that they were taking detailed notes of the man's lecture. Now comes the part about too much oil being better than too little Henry mentally predicted. Either that or how hardware-store fertilizer is almost as good as commercial blasting agents, but the powder companies don't want you to know that.

"Though the five point seven figure is ideal, a bit more diesel fuel results in only a slight degradation in performance. Too little, however, reduces the force of the explosion substantially. The mixture and performance curves are provided in the handout I've given each of you." Henry saw many of the students leaf through their papers to find the chart.

"The next consideration is the source of the ammonium nitrate. The companies which manufacture the material for blasting use will give you all sorts of reasons why you must purchase their product and woe betide anyone so foolish as to expect decent results using ordinary ammonium nitrate fertilizer." He gave a wolfish grin. "While it is true that the blasting grades absorb the diesel fuel a bit more thoroughly and may be a bit more efficient, thousands upon thousands of things have been blown up quite nicely using the hardware-store product, which is much easier to get and raises no eyebrows."

All of these facts were common knowledge to Henry Bowman. He had mixed up his first batch of ANFO at age thirteen and detonated it in a hole made by a post-hole digger. Now, as a contract geologist often working for petroleum companies, blasting agents were a fact of life. Earl Taylor-Edgarton's accent got Henry thinking about British things, which instantly got him daydreaming about large British double rifles such as his 4-bore, and soon he was thinking about Colonel Fosbery's collapsing bullet. This was a 19thcentury invention for large-bore rifles where a hollow slug was filled with a two-ingredient explosive mixture and solid base swaged onto it. It detonated on impact with heavy bone, or after about eighteen inches of penetration.

Henry was doodling sketches of Fosbery's collapsing bullet in his notebook when he caught a few key words that told him Earl Taylor-Edgarton was now talking about military plastic explosives. Henry started to pay more attention, for this was a subject he knew little about. He was still thinking about exploding bullets for his Rodda 4-bore, though, and was not listening as closely as he might have been, at least not at first.

"...common problem when using plastics and other high-grade agents for the first time is overestimating the amount required for the desired results. When I killed the President of Zambia, it was with a buried charge of two hundred pounds of Semtex concealed underneath the asphalt. I should say that the buried charge is one of the simplest delivery systems, and an excellent one provided that the target's route is known in advance." Earl pronounced it 'advonce'. Henry was jerked out of his daydream. Did he just say he killed the President of Zambia? Henry thought in astonishment.

"In this country, of course," the lecturer continued, "such a plan would be most fruitless. The President's planned route is a closely guarded secret, and the Secret Service checks every inch of it with metal detectors and other devices prior to his passage along it. However, in third-world countries, or for all U.S. officials of lesser concern than the immediate occupants of the White House, this is an excellent method of dispatch. Therefore, if you are assigned to keep some cannibal alive, you should take a leaf from the Secret Service boys' book and thoroughly examine the route prior to commencing travel. We will discuss the details of that process" (he pronounced it with a long o) "this afternoon." Earl Taylor-Edgarton looked baffled for a moment.

"Where was I, before I ran off about buried charges?" Earl Taylor-Edgarton asked himself. "Ah, yes- quantity. As I was saying, when I killed the President of Zambia, I used two hundred pounds of Semtex buried beneath the roadway. I have no excuse for what I did. I was used to using lower-grade, more universally available materials, and I did not alter my weight estimates whatsoever. The force of that explosion blew the President's car and his entourage's car over three hundred yards, which was entirely excessive and could have had-tragic results. Fortunately, the flying debris did not land on any of our people.

'Two hundred pounds of Semtex was entirely too much. In contrast, I used a mere half-pound charge on the leader of the SWAPO Party. By fixing the eight-ounce block of Semtex to the gasoline tank of the Audi Fox that he was driving," (he pronounced it 'Fawkes', which Henry thought appropriate) "I accomplished the same result with far less disruption. The gasoline tank is an excellent spot for placement, and one of the first places you should look if you are assigned protective duty. Should you be working the other side, a half-pound is sufficient for a lightweight vehicle such as the Fox, but a pound should be used in the case of a full-size American auto, and perhaps two pounds for a limousine or large truck."

Henry Bowman glanced around the room and saw that everyone was rapidly taking notes. He looked at what the man in front of him had written: Don't use too much Semtex. Gasoline tank is good spot

1/2 lb for small cars

1lb for Impalas/station wagons

2 lbs. limos & trucks

Tom and Rufus weren't kidding when they said Ms would be an interesting seminar Henry thought. Got to talk to this guy at lunch.

February 28,1985 "I don't like what I've been hearing, babe."

"I don't either, Randy. Maybe it's time you went to the courthouse and filed this, like we were talking about doing."

"Yeah. Can you watch the girls? I'll take Sammy with me."

"Of course. Can you pick up some milk when you're in town? We're about out."