The Bracken Anthology

by Matthew Bracken

  Remember that funny line-of-fish cartoon, and imagine it a few seconds later when the biting begins. It’s not so funny then — especially for the smaller fish.

  The second aggravating factor is the unstable triangle of the three-sided civil war. The Bosnian Serbs, Croats and Muslims provide a classic example. Each side of the unstable triangle will backstab yesterday’s ally at the moment they perceive themselves to be at a local disadvantage, or when they see an opportunity to wipe out an historic enemy with a new Final Solution. The unstable ethnic triangle in the United States will in many places be composed of black, white and Hispanic sides. By comparison, the old black and white social dichotomy was inherently stable, even when it might have been rife with injustice.

  In some areas, Asians, Middle-easterners, Native Americans and other groups will contribute to the formation of regional social geometries that are even more unstable than the unstable triangle. Study modern civil wars and you will cringe at the implications. A steel roller-coaster overloaded with old dynamite and electric blasting caps during a lightning storm comes to my mind.

  And finally, some urban settings are just disastrous during a modern civil war, even if they might offer a terrific quality of life during peacetime. Perhaps the top of the list of danger areas are high-rise buildings located near potential civil war flashpoints or fault lines. Living in a cluster of high-rises divided by a “green line” during a guerrilla sniper war is a worst-case horror show. Not to mention the misery attendant to life in a tall building without running water, electricity, sewage service, working elevators, heating or air-conditioning. While under intermittent sniper fire. For months.

  So should you stay or should you go? If you don’t believe that another civil war in America is possible, then simply disregard this column. But if you think that a second civil war could happen then picture the CW2 Cube and map your location within it. If you think that you live near a possible civil war fault line, especially as a local minority, consider relocating.

  After the fact, a common sentiment heard from urbane, secular Bosnians living in the Olympic City of Sarajevo expressed complete disbelief that a brutal, bloody civil war could have come to their modern European city and tear their lives apart.

  But it did.

  (A parting suggestion to students of modern civil war is to read “Seasons in Hell: Understanding Bosnia’s War” by the British journalist Ed Vulliamy. It’s currently collecting dust at your local public library, waiting only to be read.)

  Forewarned is forearmed.

  #3

  September 2010

  In Praise of Duplexed AR-15 Magazines

  Who wouldn’t want a sixty-round magazine for their trusty AR, one that fits in roughly the same space as a standard thirty-round mag?

  Nobody I know.

  Problem is, such a magazine doesn’t exist. But there is a way to link two thirty-round mags so that the switch from the thirtieth to the thirty-first cartridge is extremely fast. Much faster than any switch to a second magazine kept in a pouch on your body.

  Twice as fast.

  We were doing this in the SEAL Teams decades ago. Today companies make magazine duplexing gadgets that you can buy, but don’t bother with them. The old way is better, because the bottom of the homemade double mag is narrower and easier to grab and manipulate. This is because the two mags are in a narrow “V” shape. They are not parallel, as with the store-bought duplexing gadgets. You will understand why this matters when you do these speed changes in practice. The bottom of your duplexed mag is your handle during the switch.

  So here’s how you make it.

  Take two good thirty-round AR mags that you know work well. Then take an ordinary wood pencil, and cut off a two-inch piece, square at both ends. Place it cross-wise three inches up from the bottom of one magazine. Take green military “hundred-mile-an-hour” tape, duct tape, camo tape or green electricians’ tape, and bind the two mags tightly together, starting at their bottoms so they are touching.

  Tape them all the way up to the pencil location. To make an even more solid mount, fill the gap below the pencil with silicone rubber before you tape them up. The pencil placement three inches up from the bottom is important. The slot between the two mags will just clear the magazine well of your rifle, and it will allow enough space for the open dust cover.

  Now, what about taping two mags end-to-end, with bullets at top and bottom? Only in grade-z action movies. When you hit the ground, you will be pounding dirt into the open magazine at the bottom, and maybe even denting or deforming the critical feed lips. And besides, doing it the end-to-end way makes a double magazine much longer than it needs to be. This end-to-end method makes a little more sense with very curvy Kalashnikov magazines. Not every rifle’s construction permits the use of side-by-side duplexed mags. They are perfectly suited to ARs, however.

  Like a charm.

  Now you are at the range, and you have your duplexed AR mags ready to try. Load one so that the right-side mag is in the well, and the spare mag is fitting just along the left side of your rifle. This twice-as-heavy double mag will not fall out accidentally, or wear out the mag catch. It will drop free completely normally with the usual push of the mag release button. If you are doing a tactical reload before running dry, or if you do actually run out of cartridges, you will do everything the same as you did before, but faster.

  Quite a lot faster.

  Whether you are initiating an ambush or if you are on the receiving end, the first reload will very likely be the most critical of any engagement. If you can sustain rapid fire when the other guy’s weapon runs dry, your odds of seeing tomorrow will go up and his will go down. If you can cut your first reload time in half, it might make all of the difference.

  Even having the ability to bluff greater firepower on your side than you actually possess is a good thing. You can do this simply by touching off up to sixty incredibly fast shots when breaking contact—a one-man Australian peel. Based on your rate of fire the opposition may then figure you for three or four shooters, at least, and pause to think things over while you slip away.

  This brings to my mind the old SEAL Team adage about the critical importance of dominating all sides of the following triangle, namely: “surprise, firepower, and violence of action.” (Law enforcement has tamed this down to “speed of action” or some such namby-pamby PC talk.) A duplexed mag in your rifle gives you more effective firepower, which is always a good thing — especially at the critical beginning of a firefight or ambush. If you’re too slow on that first mag change, you might not need a second magazine.

  Ever.

  Here’s a hypothetical example; your mileage may vary, but the principle will hold.

  How many rounds can you fire in three seconds? Really light up that trigger.

  That is how many rounds might be fired at you by one guy during the three seconds it may take you to fumble a mag out of its pouch and shove it up into the well. Why not cut that delay in half on your first reload?

  You won’t always have your battle rattle handy, much less already on your body when trouble comes calling. Goblins do not call ahead. Will you holler “time out” under incoming fire while you suit up like Robocop?

  You might not live long enough to be ready to fight, depending on the immediacy of the danger. No, when jumped, you will grab what is most handy and get in the fight, now! Maybe just the rifle itself. So keep sixty rounds really handy, in your rifle.

  Another nifty advantage to the V-shaped double magazine is that it will fit snugly over your belt. No time to throw on your high-speed tactical harness, web gear, plate carriers and all the rest? Shove a double mag over your street-clothes belt, bullets down. You already have a double mag in your rifle, right? Now head out of your door with 120 rounds ready to go on a moment’s notice. Be ready to dominate. Always!

  Should you duplex all of your AR mags?

  No way. Duplexed mags don’t fit easily in many standard pouches. Only two duplexed mags wil
l fit into a standard military three-mag pouch, a clear disadvantage. But your first sixty rounds can and should be hanging from your rifle, ready to go.

  The big double magazine lives in your rifle when you go in harm’s way. It’s not a pouch queen. It doesn’t give a damn about pouches. (Dump bags it loves, if you have the time.)

  One final point — there is the inevitable complaint that the open mag will be jammed with debris.

  It won’t.

  It’s up next to the receiver, and under your clear vision. You can see the open mag is clear.

  “Old Sarge” will say not to do this. “Old Sarge” also said electro-optical sights would never cut it.

  So why doesn’t everybody do this?

  This is just my hunch (since I’ve been out of the tactical ops arena for so long), but I think that the “Big Army” and other large military formations find “one size fits all” SOPs to be easier for everyone to follow up and down the chain of command. Same in police departments, and these restrictive SOPs permeate across the shooting world.

  In SEAL Teams, we didn’t suffer from this malady. We did whatever worked. And not even all SEALs liked this duplexed magazine trick.

  But you might. So give it a try — it costs virtually nothing!

  And on your next range outing with your AR, do some speed trials. Compare changing between duplexed mags to changing to a spare mag kept on your body in a pouch. If you find it useful, use this trick, and pass it on to your buddies. Otherwise, forget you read this piece, untape your duplexed magazines, and no harm done.

  But for me — make mine sixty, attached to my rifle and ready to go.

  #4

  November 2011

  Professor Raoul X

  (short fiction)

  It was late June and I was sitting in a café seven hundred miles from home, doing a little web surfing. There was plenty of room at mid-morning, so I could sit at the end of the coffee bar with my laptop. I was scanning the breaking news about the new mass-shooting. Like most people I was morbidly fascinated with the deranged young man who was the killer. That is, the trigger puller. But I was looking over his shoulder for something else: signs of a guiding hand.

  Why? Because I know something about the subject.

  You see, being a guiding hand is my life’s avocation. My secret avocation, that is. Outwardly I’m a tenured professor of sociology at a Mid-western university. A life-long bachelor, so my summers are my own. Ostensibly for writing, research, quiet reflection, bungee jumping or what have you. My summer hobby is traveling and meeting interesting people. Everything I do on these road trips can be explained under the rubric of field research, but even so I pay with cash and move like a ghost. I’m old school. It’s a harmless quirk. Nobody cares.

  I suppose if you polled my students, they’d declare me to be left wing, but not a rhetorical bomb-thrower. Am I closer to Karl Marx than to Ayn Rand? Well, naturally. Progressive politics were part of my upbringing and education. And of course that is also the best way to get along in academia, and I do like to get along.

  No question my academic career has been lackluster. That does not concern me. I have no wife or significant other to be concerned with my apparent lack of greater ambition or wealth. Seeking publication for papers that a few academic gnomes might eventually peruse does not interest me in the least. Writing some groundbreaking tome that will be reviewed in the New York Times and read by millions is not a realistic aspiration. I am no Jared Diamond in the rough. I won academic tenure, and that was enough. I have a house and a ten-year-old Beamer. I enjoy my little comforts. A small circle of friends, none close. I’d be the first to admit it’s been a mediocre life—outwardly.

  But my secret life has been anything but mediocre. I have engineered extraordinary events, but truth be told, there is little joy in secret celebration. So I am creating this document, properly encoded and hidden, to save for posterity. When my unsurpassed run is finally over, due either to my natural demise or other more precipitous causes, my secret history will conjure itself from millions of computer screens unfiltered, unspun and uncut. The truth will be known. This is my story, and no one can take it from me. My name will ring down through the ages, when my complete story is told!

  But not yet. There is more secret work to be done.

  I did not drive seven hundred miles to ponder my life’s ledger and tap on a keyboard. What interested me was the creature standing on the other side of the white coffee shop counter. The gaunt, long-haired young man by the espresso machine could have been taken for a college student in a college town. Really not too bad looking in person. Pushing six feet, skinny. Gray-blue eyes, a little too closely set. Decent complexion for his age. Maybe a few days since his mouse-colored hair had been washed or properly brushed, but overall he was quite presentable. Duncan it said on his plastic name tag. I already knew that his last name was McClaren. I wasn’t in this picturesque college town by accident. I was here to meet him, but he didn’t know this.

  Duncan McClaren was one of the most promising prospects I’d run down in years.

  My own students unknowingly provide me with many of my leads. We have free-ranging discussions, in and out of the classroom setting. From practice I know how to guide them toward a discussion of the weirdest people they’ve ever known. Duncan went to high school with one of my female students. His first name was mentioned casually by the student, tossed off her lips and promptly forgotten. Duncan sometimes heard voices, she said. Talked to himself. And he could not stop talking about whatever obsessed him at the moment. He cut right into conversations among people he hardly knew, and went off onto bizzaro-world tangents. And what really set him off was the country’s most famous talk radio host.

  Following that disclosure I did my own internet research. There was only one Duncan listed in her year at her high school. As a professor, I stay on the cutting edge of internet trickery. A critical part of my secret avocation involves doing internet research without leaving digital fingerprints. My students constantly come up with what they believe to be new ways to cheat or plagiarize without detection, so I’ve become somewhat of an expert at internet security. I do not take risks. I’m a very careful person. Typing this secret history and hiding it inside my computer is perhaps the biggest risk I’ve taken.

  In the course of my background investigation I learned that he had been expelled or otherwise ejected from high school numerous times. He’d been arrested and he’d been to juvenile boot camp. There were a number of sealed records and denied files, both medical and legal. But reading between the lines of what I could access, it was a safe guess that there had been serious drug use and there had been family violence. Rumors of arson at a very young age. His family had money and pull, and he was accepted for admission to an out-of-state institution of higher learning. His brief transcript was telling. His GPA for three completed semesters was made up equally of As and Fs. He had not finished his second year. No reason was given.

  Since dropping out of college Duncan had been adrift for a year, hitchhiking around the country, supporting himself mostly as a dish washer or at other menial short-term jobs involving limited social interaction. On his own walkabout journey of self-discovery, to give him the benefit of the doubt. He was for the moment a barista in this New England college town, and I arranged for our paths to cross.

  It’s always an intense moment, my first close look at a subject I’ve known only as an internet phantom. Duncan came over to take my order: regular coffee, with cream and sugar. When he filled my cup I laid a few dollars on the counter.

  Duncan tapped the bills and said matter-of-factly, “So, somebody still believes in paper money.”

  I looked directly at him and replied, “For some things, yes. Like paying for coffee.”

  He returned my gaze, his eyes narrowed to slits and he said, “Smart. Fly under the radar. Render unto Caesar—while you can. But it’s all just a matter of time. Just a matter of time.” He slowly nodded his head, as if agreeing
with himself.

  To release his floodgates all I had to ask him was, “What do you mean?” Then I listened attentively to a five minute diatribe covering many tediously familiar theories and a few original ones. A thirtyish female with a severe hairstyle, whom I guessed was the café’s manager, edged over and tried to redirect my waiter. “Dunc,” she said breezily, “You’re not bothering this man, are you? No more talking about that bank stuff, right?”

  Holding the full pot of hot coffee he slowly turned his entire body and fixed an icy glare upon her, but said nothing. He held his stare, boring into her with flat eyes. His arm seemed tensed to hurl the burning-hot brew at her. Her smile wilted, she turned and walked away. “She doesn’t understand,” said Duncan when she was gone. “Her mind is closed to the reality around her.”

  “Does that bother you?” I asked him.