My Life As An Air Cop

By Sally B. Donnelly/Atlantic City

Arms locked out in front of me, I sweep my .357 semiautomatic pistol back and forth across the panicked passengers. My heart is thumping wildly, my breathing too rapid. Fighting the tunnel vision that comes from fear, I try to remember to scan the plane for threats. Just seconds earlier, I had heard the first bloodcurdling yell--"They're stabbing people back here!"

My partner had gone to the back to take on the attackers, and I had drawn my gun, rushing to the front of the first-class cabin and shouting "Police! Police! Police!" I whirled and faced the passengers, with my back to the cockpit door that I am to protect with my life. In these close quarters, I feel confident about only one thing: my Sig Sauer 229 handgun and its hollow-point bullets designed to mushroom inside the human body.

I can't see my partner. I can't hear him either; stress can impair hearing as well. I am only a few feet from horrified people yelling their lungs out, but it is as if I were deaf. I also feel that my eyes are bulging with the same terror I see in the passengers' faces.

Suddenly I see a passenger jump into my aisle, grasping something in both hands. I start to aim at him, but under the pressure I am experiencing, my muscles aren't responding well; it's as if my arms were moving through setting concrete. I hear the pop, pop, pop of his weapon. One round hits my stomach, another my right arm. The last, just below my eye. Trained to keep fighting even if shot, I focus the front sight of my Sig at his heart and pull the trigger repeatedly, riding the recoil. My assailant drops to the floor. I look for my partner and see he has taken down the other attacker. The plane is secure.

If this scenario had been real, I would be dead. Instead, it was just another day of hellishly realistic training for federal air marshals, the armed, plainclothes agents who patrol the skies. In this case, the bullets were made of paint; the terrorists and passengers were actors. And I was standing in as a federal air marshal in training--the first journalist ever allowed into the program's secure facility to drill alongside recruits.

The men and women selected to be federal air marshals spend 11 weeks in one of the best--and most specialized--federal law-enforcement training programs. Before 9/11, the U.S. employed just 33 marshals. Since then, thousands have been hired (the precise number is classified). The government has spent $31 million improving facilities at the Federal Air Marshal Training Academy in Atlantic City, N.J., adding, among other things, mock airplane cockpits and a $400,000 NFL-size gym.

Nearly every air marshal was once a soldier or a cop, so most ease right into the male-dominated, boot-camp atmosphere. Even a sedentary office worker like me felt a little bolder when I put on the trainee uniform (gray T shirt, black cargo pants, black boots), strapped my leather holster to my side and listened to the first instructor tell the class, "You've got to have a winning mentality. You have to believe you're Superman. Or maybe the Black Knight in Monty Python." I laughed, but my classmates didn't; they just nodded in silent agreement.

There is a locker-room camaraderie at the academy, but the atmosphere is never really relaxed. The staff plays to the peer pressure that already exists in this group of macho, Type A personalities. "If you're lying in your own blood at 30,000 feet, it's your own fault," warned a physical-training instructor, letting the words linger for a few seconds. "If you can't stay in the fight, thousands will die."

The key to an air marshal's work is his weapon. These agents have the highest standards for marksmanship in the law-enforcement business. I learned that actually firing the gun is almost an afterthought. Much more important were my stance, my breathing, my grip and my focus on the front sight of the gun. If a human target was wearing body armor, I was told to aim at the lower abdomen. "People will bleed out more quickly," my instructor said, "and a moving head can be hard to hit."

Air marshals are required to be not only accurate shooters but also fast. In one test, agents must draw their guns and hit a target 7 yds. away with two shots in 3 sec. More than one marshal has flunked out of the academy for being .001 sec. late. Under pressure, I was quick but not very accurate. In one hijacking exercise, I "killed" two civilians.

Physical training at the academy is designed to ensure that air marshals are fit enough to endure a struggle. We did wind sprints, jogs broken up with calisthenics and a three-mile run through the rain. We kicked, punched and kneed one another through a thick pad. At one point, as I held my body in a Pilates position--sideways, supported by only my forearm and the side of my foot--I wondered where all the water on the concrete floor had come from. It was just sweat pouring off my face.

During one classroom session, an expert briefed us on the vast array of bombs available to terrorists, from so-called pregnancy bombs (strapped to a woman's stomach) to tiny ones set off by $5 watches to cell-phone-triggered devices. The instructor went over some of the four types and 700 models of hand grenades. Another bomb specialist noted, "You guys are the only law-enforcement agents who have to move toward an explosive device rather than away from it." He explained how to place blankets and luggage around an onboard bomb so that if it goes off, the damage is limited. Another instructor underscored the sophistication of the enemy. "Look," he said, "al-Qaeda is a serious military organization that is very methodical. They are not going to launch an operation to fail."

Increasingly, air marshals are being trained not just to respond to hijackings but to detect them in advance. "Every criminal act requires some surveillance," says Thomas Quinn, director of the federal air-marshal program and a 20-year veteran of the Secret Service. "That is why we are out there looking for threats." An instructor taught us how to recognize suspected terrorists whose photos we had seen by focusing on the central triangle of a person's face, which doesn't change much with age or weight. We were trained in the use of the specially configured PDAs that all air marshals carry. These contain 34 categories of suspicious behavior--"taking pictures," "not taking a seat," "wearing clothes incompatible with the season." When a marshal makes an entry, it is immediately relayed to the systems operation division outside Washington, where analysts decide what kind of action to take.

Once they're in the air, marshals, unlike cops on the beat, know there is no backup. "There's no waiting for the cavalry to arrive," says Quinn. My fellow students say they are ready. "The threat is always there," a marshal told me at graduation. "We're permanently switched on. We'll stay in the fight."