Meeting a Blackwater Guy, For Real

My last paying job was as a video store clerk which derived most of its income from what the boss called the ‘family education section,’ or triple-x porn. On Sunday nights there was a dead period of almost no business from about 5:30 till about 5 minutes before we closed, and so I had plenty of time to chat with a visitor who came in then.
His name was Charley, he said, and he was from somewhere in southside Virginia. He did security work, he said. I was curious. I have done a little security work here and there, mainly bouncing in clubs. He said he worked for Blackwater Corporation as a courier. He was just in transport, he said, no actual operations. He said his job consisted of driving every week from Florida to Maine and back again carrying a small package. The package in the past had always been a computer disk, but this week he said it was a small heavy piece of heavy rock or metal. He said he was ordered to vary the route and avoid Interstate 95. Fo this he said he was paid over $100,000 per year. He described Blackwater Corp as the Bush family private mercenary force.
He was over six feet four, over 300 lbs. He wore a fine black leather coat that reached to his ankles. He claimed he had a record of 93 assaults, but I couldn’t tell if that was the law’s count on him or his own. I assume his own. He described the last one, involving alcohol and an ex girlfriend and Charley dragging some guy out of bed and beating him to a pulp. He said Blackwater preferred that recruits have some criminal record, ‘if it’s not too bad,’ he said, ‘a criminal record shows you’re not afraid to do what’s necessary to get the job done.’
He said the last in the last part of the training, he was awoken in the middle of the night, and told he was going to Saudi Arabia. He was given a side-arm but no ammo and flown in a military aircraft to a place that looked to him like Saudi Arabia. (Later he was told it had been Utah.) He was made to watch as apparent Saudis interrogated an apparent Saudi terror suspect, an elderly woman. The interrogation was pretty rough, he said, although all the talk was in a language he did not understand, as he watched through video monitors. When it was over, his commander told him that the woman had not had any good information after all, but that now she ‘knew too much.’ His commander handed him a single round of ammo for his pistol. Charley said he chambered the round, walked into the room, put the muzzle to her head and pulled the trigger. The bullet turned out to be a dummy, and he had passed the test. Now he was a Blackwater guy.